Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

“That’s a great deal of speculation,” Art Hale told me. “Can you prove any of it?”

“You were the first to return to the kitchen counter for your wallet and keys, when that paring knife was made to disappear. But I can do better than that. I can show that you and only you could have murdered Sandra Gleam.”

He smiled slightly. “Without a weapon? With Sheriff Lens guarding the door?”

“You had a weapon, and Sheriff Lens of all people should have guessed what it was.”

The sheriff seemed baffled by my words. “I should have guessed? Why me?”

“Because Art cut the blackmailing Sandra Gleam’s throat with a broken lens from his eyeglasses.”

Hale’s face turned ashen as I ticked off the points on my fingers. “As I noticed the other night at Max’s Steakhouse, your regular eyeglasses have gold frames. The ones you’re wearing now — an extra pair, no doubt — have silver frames. And in the hours after the murder you wore no glasses at all. You even commented to me that you were unable to choose the correct key up close without your glasses. The sheriff found them in your leather case, in your pocket, after the killing, but as I remember, he only pulled them partway out of the case.”

“How could he have done it, Sam?” Sheriff Lens wanted to know.

“By drugging the wine after I’d taken a sip, while we were distracted by the knife grinder’s arrival. He then pretended to drink while Kate and Sandra really did. When they’d dozed off, after several minutes he took Sandra’s scarf, which he would have known she’d be wearing, covered his fingers while he broke a lens of his glasses, and then held the largest piece with the scarf while he cut her throat with it. The scarf protected his fingers against getting cut, as well as helping shield him from the blood. Then he drank the wine and collapsed along with his wife. Even if we’d taken the glasses from their case we might not have noticed immediately that there was a lens missing.”

“What happened to the broken glass?” the sheriff wanted to know. “Are you telling me he swallowed it?”

“No, I’m telling you he ground it to dust underfoot, against the concrete floor. Ask your deputy about that sample of grit he gathered from the floor.”

That was when Kate turned to him. “Art, is this true?”

“She was blackmailing me, Kate, and using our heartbreak over Ron’s death to bleed us for money. After the pain of his death, I couldn’t stand to have you learn I’d found comfort with another woman. If I hadn’t killed her, it would have gone on and on.”

It was a sad case with a sad ending. Sheriff Lens and I barely spoke at first, after Art had been taken away. Finally the sheriff said, “There were only the two of them with Sandra, Doc. He must have known Kate would be certain of his guilt.”

“Not necessarily, Sheriff. It was a chance he had to take. If he could make the crime seem impossible, perhaps she’d believe someone from the spirit world really had killed Sandra. That was why he hid the paring knife when he had a chance, to strengthen the impossibility of it.”

When I saw Annabel that evening she told me a cat had died at the Ark that day. “I actually cried a bit, Sam. She was such a pretty thing. Do you ever shed any tears about murder victims?”

“I had no tears for Sandra Gleam,” I said, and then sat down to tell her about it.

Here Lies by Barbara Cleverly

Barbara Cleverly’s first novel, The Last Kashmiri Rose, was published in the U.K. by Constable & Robinson in 2001, followed by Carroll & Graf’s U.S. release in 2002. With the book, now available in paperback, hailed as “spellbinding” by the New York Times, and two others in the same series, Ragtime in Simla and The Damascene Blade, out in hardcover, Ms. Cleverly has turned to short stories — this one featuring architect-sleuth Ellie Hardwick.

1

The two bodies were lying side by side in the south aisle of the church of Tilbrook St. George. The figure on the right, an armoured knight, his hands folded in prayer, his feet resting on a lion, was impressive enough, but it was the pallid alabaster beauty of the lady at his side which took the breath away. Her delicate hands were peacefully folded below her breast, her feet rested on a tasselled cushion. The knight had lain here in this quiet place carved in white stone for nearly six hundred years. His lady was of flesh and blood and was newly dead. He had a dagger at his side; she had a dagger in her heart.