Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

I told you, smokers these days, we see things that other people don’t. If Jake was to come out with me on the doorstep, and pay attention, he’d see Linda come out three or four times a week to her waiting taxi. And he’d see her arrive back at work at two minutes to two. Regular as clockwork.

But what he’d also see is that it’s always the same taxi. Linda’s shagging the taxi driver. Obvious. To anybody who cares to look. If any money’s changing hands, it isn’t coming out of Linda’s purse. That’s what Jake would see if he came out to socialize with the smokers.

But I very much hope he doesn’t. If he was to start hanging out with us smokers it would put a serious cramp in my style. That’s because it’s me who is taking the occasional bag, and passing it over to Molly from the double-glazing at break times for her to sell to her mate on the market.

She gets a tenth what they sell for in Harrods. So I get a twentieth. But that’s fine with me. Every little bit helps. Not least because they’re bloody expensive these days, cigarettes.

Final Escape by Dennis Richard Murphy

Muffled men in rubber boots are digging late at night.
They grunt with every pound of earth they shovel from the site.
In dark cloth coats and baseball caps, considerate of death,
Their flashlights cut the misty air and backlight puffs of breath.

The stillness of the early hour makes loud the sounds of men.
By shovelfuls the pile grows higher: “They buried deep back then.”
Now deeper dug and panting more, no one no longer talks
When flashlights freeze and breath is held as someone hits a box.

Renewed, they dig around the sides and bring the thing to view,
A fiberglass sarcophagus, the handles rusted through.
“A plastic job, the rage back then,” says one who seems to know.
“No dust leaks out, no worms get in; it makes the process slow.”

From far above a winch comes down to soiled sweating men
Who take the weight and slip the straps beneath the coffin’s ends.
Then out they climb, the webbing strains, the windlass motor hums.
A moment stopped: “It’s stuck,” says one, then up the long box comes.

Beside its pit the coffin sits, still stained from years below.
It seems, at misty thickened dawn, to cast a ghastly glow.
No one speaks but all move up, each elbowing for view.
A small man with a piece of steel busts out the rusted screws.

The flashlights pan the bones and dust, the tie clasp and the threads.
Unseen, unheard, a wraith escapes, and screams above their heads.

A Way With Horses by Therese Greenwood

Therese Greenwood grew up on Wolfe Island, Ontario, the largest of the Thousand Islands, where her family has lived since 1812. The region forms the backdrop for her historical crime fiction, including “Fair Lady,” a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada’s 1999 Arthur Ellis Award for best short story. She has a masters degree in journalism and has worked as a newspaper reporter, editor, and broadcaster.

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