Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 13 Designs for Escape

We threw Malloy to the wolves, those ravenous journalistic ones that were howling lugubriously on the outer doorstep. He had been supplied by Gavigan with a shrewdly contrived statement that included enough blood and thunder to still the baying for the moment, but not so much that the news hawks would think they were being ribbed. Some of the facts in this case would have strained the credulity of even a gypsy tea reader’s clientele.

Gavigan, Merlini, Quinn, and myself made a dash for the Inspector’s car, Duvallo having been left behind to follow with Malloy.

The car whirled crosstown, pedestrians staring after us as our siren screamed like a hoarse banshee. The new snow glistened softly in the brilliant splash of the headlights, and the tall buildings rose around us ghostly and dark into a black sky.

Gavigan took out his pipe and fumbled with it. “It’s high time we had our sleight-of-hand technician’s report,” he declared. “You have the floor, Merlini.”

Merlini took it and unexpectedly broke out in rhyme.

And before anyone could stop him,

One school of thought holds that the most effective procedure, in such cases, is the maintenance of a cold, dignified silence. The Inspector and I tried it. Merlini was, however, a hardened offender. He chuckled.

“Your criticism is probably sound. I find it difficult—” we turned a corner with a sickening skid—” to compose while traveling at this rate of speed.”

Then, with sudden seriousness, he asked, “Ever heard of Dr. Fell, Inspector?”

Gavigan’s grunt was negative.

“Harte?”

“I’m way ahead of you. You’re thinking of his ‘Locked Room Lecture’ in The Three Coffins.[8] Right?”

Merlini nodded, his eyes twinkling. “Yes. Dr. Fell, Inspector, is an English detective of considerable ability, whose cases have been recorded by John Dickson Carr. Locked rooms are a specialty of his. And, in the book Harte mentions, he outlined a fairly comprehensive classification of the possible methods of committing murder and contriving to have the body found in a sealed room — minus murderer.

“He mentions two major classes: A. The crime that is committed in a hermetically sealed room which really is hermetically sealed, and from which no murderer has escaped, because no murderer was actually in the room, and B. the crime that is committed in a room which only appears to be hermetically sealed, and from which there is some more or less subtle means of escape.”

Gavigan puffed at his pipe and I listened carefully.

“The first class includes such devices as,” he ticked them off on his fingers,

“1. Accident that looks like murder.

2. Suicide that does the same.

3. Murder by remote control, in which the victim meets death violently, and apparently by someone’s hands, but in reality through poison, gas, or at his own hands, being forced to it by outside suggestion.

4. Murder by a long list of mechanical lethal devices, some of which, as they occur in detective fiction, are pretty silly.

5. Murder by means of an animal, usually a snake, insect, or monkey.

6. Murder by someone outside the room, but which looks as if the murderer must have been inside; dagger fired through windows from air guns — that sort of thing.

7. Murder by illusion, or the Cockeyed Time Sequence. The room is sealed, not with locks and bolts, but because it is watched. The murderer kills his victim and walks out; then, when the observer has taken up his place before the only door, he makes it appear that the victim is still alive. Later, when he is discovered foully done in, it appears impossible.

8. The reverse of 7. The victim is made to appear dead while he is still alive, and the murderer enters the room just in advance of the others, and accomplishes his dirty work then.

And, finally, No. 9 is perhaps the neatest trick of them all, because essentially it is the simplest. The victim receives his mortal wound elsewhere, in the conservatory or the music room; and then, still traveling under his own power, enters the room in question, preferably a library, and manages to lock himself securely in before popping off.”

“They don’t do that when they’ve been strangled,” Gavigan protested.

“No,” Merlini agreed. “Sabbat’s murder doesn’t seem to fall in Class A, unless you can conceive of some mechanical contraption that will strangle a man and then evaporate. Icicle daggers or bullets that vanish by melting may be practical, but offhand I’d say a man couldn’t be strangled very efficiently with a piece of ice.”

“You forgot method No. 10,” Gavigan added quietly. “Murder by the supernatural, which includes such damn foolishness as homicidal pixies who can dematerialize and Watrous’ theory of strangulation by etheric vibrations. Proceed, professor. Get the rest of it out of your system.”

“You’ve got the patter down very well, Inspector.” Merlini grinned. “It begins to get interesting now. Class B, the hermetically sealed room that only looks that way because the murderer has tampered with the doors, transoms, windows, or chimneys; or because he has been thoughtfully provided with a sliding panel or secret passageway. The last contingency is so whiskered a device that we’ll pass it without comment. Doors and windows, however, can be hocused by

“1. Turning the key which is on the inside from the outside with pliers or string. The same goes for bolts and catches on windows.

2. Leaving at the hinge side of the door, without disturbing either lock or bolt, and replacing the screws.

3. Removing a pane of glass and reaching through from outside to lock the window, and replacing the glass from the outside.

4. Accomplishing some acrobatic maneuver that overcomes the seeming inaccessibility of a window — hanging by one’s teeth from the eaves or walking a tightrope.

5. Locking the door on the outside, and then replacing the key or throwing the bolt on the inside, after breaking in with the others to discover the body.

“Duvallo’s explanation is a neat combination of methods 1 and 5. The kitchen door was locked from the outside with some sort of picklock, and the stuffing was pulled into the locks with a string from the outside, while the bolt was thrown and the cloth switched from the inside after the discovery of the murder.”

“We don’t seem to have any choice,” Gavigan said. “We’ve eliminated all the other methods. Duvallo’s must be right. But, Merlini, wouldn’t you say that it was just a little too complicated for him to have figured out as quickly as he did?”

“You forget that he’s an escape artist and he’s trained himself to think quickly along exactly those lines. Suppose something goes wrong when he’s inside a locked milk can filled with water? He has to be able to think fast. Besides, I’d figured that method out myself before he came through with it. And I’m not claiming any superior deductive ability. It’s merely that since I’m a magician, I have to know something about the mechanics and technique of deception. I stalled you off because I wanted to hear what Duvallo had to offer.”

“You agree then that Duvallo’s answer is correct? You seem to have mentioned all the possible methods and a lot of highly improbable ones.”

“Improbable!” Merlini sat up. “Improbable, Inspector? Perhaps you can tell me something that, on close examination, isn’t improbable. This afternoon I would have considered it eminently improbable that I should now be veering across town in a police car expounding locked-room theory to an Inspector of Police! Some people think detective fiction is improbable. Sure! So is all fiction. So is life. Hmmpf! Have you ever studied the life history of the liver fluke? Did you ever see a wilde-beeste, a spiral nebula, a fly under magnification or… or a bustle? They’re all as improbable as hell. And what have the physicists been doing these last few years but reducing matter itself to a vague improbability… an improbability so utterly—”

“Hey!” the Inspector yelled. “Stop it! Just consider I didn’t mention the subject.”

Merlini spluttered a bit, then calmed down. “There is,” he announced unexpectedly, “one more class of locked-room flim-flam. Class C.”

The Inspector gaped. I chuckled to myself. When the Great Merlini rolled up his sleeves and started coaxing surprised rabbits out of a hat, he really worked at it.

“Class C,” he continued calmly, “completes the outline. C’est finis! Kaput! There is no Class D, and matters are thus simplified. We’ve just two and only two possible methods—”

“The hell with Class D!” the Inspector thundered. “What is Class C?”

“It’s something Dr. Fell didn’t mention, as I remember. Superintendent Hadley was always interrupting him in the most interesting places.”

“If this Fell person always had to work up a lather of suspense on his listeners before he came out with it, I don’t blame the Superintendent. Get on with it!”

“Class C includes those murders which are committed in a hermetically sealed room which really is hermetically sealed and from which no murderer escapes, not because he wasn’t there, but because he stays there, hidden—”

“But—” Gavigan and I both started to protest. “Stays there hidden until after the room has been broken into, and leaves before it is searched!”

“Harte!” Gavigan turned on me. “What about it?”

“Not a chance,” I said, and then, almost before my words had traveled a foot, I saw it. I grimaced; it was so ridiculously simple. Our attention had been so occupied with the triplicate sealing of the doors, the locking, bolting, and keyhole stuffing, that we had overlooked the obvious. Gavigan saw me start. “Now what?” he asked. “It’s easy as pie,” I said excitedly. “The movies’ mildewed old gag of hiding behind the door and walking out after someone comes in, behind them. Only this time the murderer crawled under the davenport when he heard us in the corridor, and when we pushed into the room he wriggled out the opposite side, straight into the hall. Even if we’d been actually watching the door we couldn’t have seen him, and the rolled-up rug would have screened him in the unlikely event that anyone had his face down at floor level.”

The Inspector scowled at Merlini. “So that’s why you were poking around under that davenport!” He was silent a moment Then he said, “No. I don’t think so. Would any murderer be such a confounded ass as to stay in a locked room for sixteen solid hours, with only the body of his victim for company, waiting for someone to come and please let him out? If he did, we’ve got a loony to hunt for.”

“Of course,” Merlini said, “we must remember that this isn’t the usual garden variety of murder case, and that we do not have the ordinary run-of-the-mine grade of suspects. It’s not entirely out of bounds to suppose that the murderer knew just when someone would show up… and perhaps even who. Maybe he arranged for it. Then again he may not originally have planned to have the murder occur so early. Or perhaps the person or persons he expected didn’t show up on schedule. I don’t know. I’m just letting the possibilities crowd in. I understand it’s bad form not to examine all the possibilities. Sometimes the least likely one turns—”

“You’re being trite now,” Gavigan criticised, “and besides, those aren’t possibilities you’re letting crowd in, they’re improba—” He caught himself too late.

Merlini sighed exaggeratedly. “Yes, of course. Have it your own way. So what? You’ve got an improbable kettle of suspects, and you’ve got a devilishly improbable murder. An improbable method would, at least, be consistent. It’s a damn sight better than a downright impossibility, which is what has had us on our ears all evening.”

“But look, Merlini,” I said, as an idea occurred to me, “suppose we had entered by the kitchen door instead. There’s Mr. Murderer, all nicely curled up under the davenport, and no place to go. And how would he plan on accounting for that sixteen hours? It’s hard enough to fake a good alibi covering sixteen minutes. All we’d have to do is locate someone who can’t give a corroborated account of his whereabouts from 3 A.M. to 6 P.M.”

“Can you?” Merlini asked.

“The Inspector’s already checked that. I was working until 5 A.M. and I’ve got a dozen witnesses.”

“Inspector?”

There was a mildly thunderstruck expression on Gavigan’s face. He blinked rapidly. “Damn you, Merlini,” he growled. “No, I can’t. When I hit the hay at midnight I was shy two nights’ sleep after finishing off that Bryant Park case. I slept all day and arrived at the station just a few minutes before the call came through that brought us to Sabbat’s. I didn’t see a soul I knew the whole time!”

Merlini roared.

“Funny, is it?” Gavigan said testily.

“Yes, it’s so damned improbable. I’m in the same fix. Mrs. Merlini is visiting relatives in Philadelphia. I spent the day at home working on a new Guillotine illusion. I made two phone calls, but I could have done that from Sabbat’s. I don’t understand, though. I didn’t see you under the davenport, Inspector.”