Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

I took his body back to Hanover and buried it alongside my grandfather, because Etta wouldn’t have anything to do with it. In Hanover, he became a great Example. The wages of sin is death, they said, but they never said anything about the wages of the way Homer was brought up, or the wages of living with Etta.

Last week Martha and I drove out to Ontario to see about buying our winter apples and before I thought about it we were passing the old Sammis house. The roof had fallen in and it was almost hid by bushes, and the pasture where Homer and I had lain in the sun was muddy and frozen. The cattle stood with their heads together and their tails towards the November wind.

Looking for a Diamond by Edmund Crispin

Gervase Fen, professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, found Ann Cargill waiting for him in his rooms in college when he returned there from a quiet dinner at the George. She was a quiet, good-looking girl, the pleasantest if not the brightest of the few undergraduates to whom he gave private tutoring.

“Nice to see you back,” he said. For he knew that Ann’s father had recently died and that she had been given leave of absence for the first few weeks of term in order to cope with that situation and its aftermath.

“It’s not about work, I’m afraid,” she confessed. “Not altogether, I mean. I... I was wondering if you could help me in something — something personal.”

“Surely your moral tutor—” Fen began, and then suddenly remembered who Ann’s moral tutor was. “No,” he said. “No, of course not. Wait while I get some drinks, and then you can tell me all about it.”

“I’m probably being several sorts of fool,” said Ann as soon as they were settled with glasses in their hands. “But here goes, anyway.... I don’t know if you know anything about my family, but my mother died years ago,

I’m an only child, and my father — well, the important thing about him, for the moment, is that he had a passion for jewels.

“Jewels weren’t his business. They were his hobby. And two or three months ago he sunk an enormous amount of money — about three-quarters of his capital, I should think — into buying a single diamond that he’d set his heart on, a huge thing, quite flawless.

“Well now, at the beginning of this year Daddy shut up our house at Abingdon — I live on my own in the vacs, you see, in a flat in Town: he liked me to do that — and flew out to Australia on business. He didn’t take the diamond with him. It was left in the house—”

Fen lifted his eyebrows.

“Ah, yes, but the point is, it was really quite as safe there as it would have been in the bank. At the time he started collecting jewels, Daddy had his study made as near burglar-proof as money could buy; and there was only one set of keys to the door and the safe; and when he went to Australia he left those with Mr. Spottiswoode, his solicitor.”

Ann took a deep breath. “And then he... he was killed. In a street accident in Sydney... I... I went down to Abingdon after the wire came, and wandered about there a bit. Remembering. That was when I saw Mr. Spottiswoode, the solicitor, driving away from the house.

“I don’t think he saw me. I called after him, but he didn’t stop. And of course, being Daddy’s executor, he had a perfect right to be there. But I always hated Mr. Spottiswoode...”

Ann wriggled in her chair. “And I’m pretty sure,” she added, “that he was a crook.”

After a brief pause: “I’ve no proof of that,” she went on. “And you don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to. I only mentioned it because it’s one of the reasons why I’ve come to you. Mr. Spottiswoode—”

“You say he ‘was’ a crook.”

“Yes, that’s the next thing. Mr. Spottiswoode’s dead. He died three weeks ago, very soon after I saw him at Abingdon — quite suddenly, of a heart attack. And at that stage he hadn’t yet got what they call a grant of probate of Daddy’s will.

“So that what’s happened since is that my Uncle Harry, who’s now my legal guardian, has been made administrator of the estate on my behalf. In other words, Mr. Spottiswoode did have the only set of keys to Daddy’s study, and Uncle Harry has them now.”

Fen watched Ann’s lips tremble, then he asked softly: “And is Uncle Harry a crook too?”

Ann wriggled some more. “I know it must sound as if I’ve got some hellish neurosis, a persecution mania or something, but... well, yes, frankly, I think he is! Only not the same kind as Mr. Spottiswoode. Uncle Harry’s the rather nice, inefficient, sentimental sort of crook who always gets caught sooner or later.”

“In which case we must hope that it’s he who has stolen your father’s diamond, and not Mr. Spottiswoode,” said Fen briskly. “I take it the theft is what you have in mind.”