Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

The German Cologne Mystery by Josh Pachter & Jon L. Breen An Ellery Queen Parody

An hour before a dark Manhattan midnight, Inspector Wretched Breen broke down the unlocked door of the fast-declining Hotel Madrid’s room 521. He came in response to a phone call from his son, celebrated mystery writer and accomplished amateur detective Celery Breen.

“Got your message, Cel,” the birdlike inspector chirped, “and flew right over. Where’s the deceased?”

Celery pointed. On the floor, behind the neatly-made double bed, the body of a small, dark-complected Latin type with a pencil-thin moustache and a receding hairline lay sprawled in a kidney-shaped pool of blood.

The inspector recognized the dapper victim at once. “Carlos Nacionale.” The name erupted from between Breen’s thin lips like a cough.

“You know him, Dad?”

“Oh, I know him. Cuban refugee, came over with the Marielitos in ’80. They say he scratched out a living as an errand boy for one of the mobs in Miami for a while before he came to New York and got into the numbers racket here. Florida cops never did pin anything on him, though, and neither could we. Not for want of trying, I’ll say that.” The inspector washed a wiry hand across his chin. “He lived with a daughter, if I remember correctly.”

With a nod, Celery indicated the raven-haired beauty sitting on the sofa across the room. The woman’s attention was focused on her father’s corpse; she seemed oblivious to the by-play between Breen pere and Breen fils.

“My condolences, miss,” said the inspector, and she regarded him sadly for a moment with teary eyes. Then she turned away again, and Celery crisply began to outline the facts.

Half an hour earlier, on her return from a dinner date with a girlfriend, Velvet Nacionale had let herself into the suite of rooms she shared with her father to discover his body dead on the floor. She had screamed, of course. By the purest chance, Celery had at that moment been playing cards with several acquaintances in a room down the hall from 521, and Velvet’s shriek had brought him running.

Taking in the scene with a glance, Celery had immediately called Sentry Street to summon Inspector Breen and the boys from Homicide. While awaiting their arrival, he had examined the body, with two unexpected results: First, he had gotten his hands and trousers unpleasantly sticky, and second, he had discovered a pair of ordinary dice clutched firmly between the dead man’s right thumb and forefinger. Held with a single black dot visible on the exposed face of each die, the two small cubes resembled nothing so much as a pair of eyes staring blindly at the ceiling.

“A strange one, son,” observed Inspector Breen. “But with that mysterious dying message and all, it’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is, Dad, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave it in your capable hands for the time being. I’ve got another appointment in a couple of minutes, and I don’t want to be late for it. If I miss you at breakfast, I’ll come down to Sentry Street as soon as I can, all right?” Pausing at the door on his way out of the room, Celery added casually, “By the way, Dad, Carlos Nacionale was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” the wiry old inspector protested. “But, Cel, what about all this blood?”

It was too late for an answer. The younger Breen was already gone. The inspector was surprised to see his son leave the scene of a bizarre murder so abruptly.

But he knew from experience that Celery would come through in the crunch.

As promised, the gifted sleuth strolled into his father’s office early the following morning, his face bandaged from one of his chronic shaving cuts but otherwise looking fresher than he had the night before.

Velvet Nacionale was already there, and she rushed up to Celery with her sad black eyes wide. “Have you learned anything, Mr. Breen?” she urged, her voice low and pleading.

“I’ve just been talking with Doc Probably,” Celery told her. “He’s our medical examiner here in the city, and he’s just completed an autopsy on your father.”

“And was he—?”

“Dead? Yes, certainly.”

“I mean, was he poisoned, like you said last night?”

“Oh. Oh yes. I’m afraid he was.”

“By what?” asked the inspector.

“I don’t know.”

“Probably didn’t tell you?”

“Probably doesn’t think he was poisoned at all. He thinks Nacionale’s throat was slit, the irascible old quack. But all the classic symptoms of poisoning are there.”

“What symptoms?” Inspector Breen demanded.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? No heartbeat, no pulse, no nothing. He was poisoned, Dad. Q.E.D.”

“C.O.D.?” Velvet wondered.

“Never mind that,” said the inspector. “What about the stab wound on his neck?”

Celery fingered the bandage on his own throat reflectively and murmured, “Cut himself shaving, Dad. Happens to the best of us.”

“Do you have any idea what those dice he was holding are supposed to mean?” Velvet Nacionale breathed eagerly.

“That’s the key point of this entire case, Ms. Nacionale,” Celery congratulated her. “Obviously your father wanted to leave behind a message of some sort, perhaps a clue to the identity of his killer. There were no writing materials in the room, so he had to use the only thing available to him at the time: that pair of dice. Once I can figure out what he meant by holding them as he did, I’ll know who killed him. But so far, I’m stumped.”

The telephone trilled, and Inspector Breen scooped up the receiver. He listened intently for several minutes, then scowled and shouted a series of instructions in a birdlike bark before hanging up.

“What was that all about, Dad?”

“Bank robbery late last night,” the inspector frowned, “over on Lexington. They think they’ve got the guy who pulled the job downstairs, but they can’t get anything out of him. Forget about that, though, Cel, and tell me what you’ve got on those dratted dice.”

Celery shook his head. “It’s a dead end, Dad. I’ve wracked my brain, but I can’t come up with a connection that makes any sense. I’ve considered every possibility, but it’s just no good. Two dots held side by side — it doesn’t add up. Unless...”

“Unless what, son?”

“Unless Nacionale wasn’t holding them side by side, after all,” Celery said slowly.

“Cel, I don’t—”

“Dad, that’s it! I’ve been a blundering, incompetent nincompoop not to have seen it sooner! I don’t know how I can have been so utterly, insufferably stupid! My failure to grasp such a simple point rivals the great intellectual disasters of human history. Not even the shortsighted fools who assured Columbus that the world was flat were as hopelessly, fatuously misguided as—”

“Celery!” the inspector intervened. He had to: During one recent case, he had sat through half an hour’s worth of his only offspring’s self-flagellation to discover at the end of the tirade that Celery in his fury had completely forgotten the sudden insight that had set it off in the first place. Now, two months later, that case was still in the open file. “Put a cork in it and tell me what the heck you’re talking about!”

“Yes, of course. Thanks, Dad. But you see, it’s so elementary! In fact, it’s even simpler than elementary. It’s positively preschool. Why, the very idea that I can have taken so long to—”

“Celery!”

“What? Oh yes, Dad. Nacionale was trying to get across two dots, all right. But not side-by-side dots. The message he intended us to see was two dots, one on top of the other!”

“Yes, Mr. Breen, go on,” Velvet whispered.

“No time for that now,” exclaimed Celery. “You wait here, Velvet. Let’s go, Dad. I only hope we’re not already too late!”

Celery swung open the mirrored door and rummaged through the medicine cabinet impatiently. “Aspirin... mouthwash... toothpaste... ah, here it is!”

He held aloft an ornate cut-glass bottle and waved it triumphantly.

“What is it, son?”

“Dad, Dad, Dad! Don’t you see it yet? It’s all so wonderfully simple. Two dots. One on top of the other. What does that mean to you?”

“Gosh, Cel, I don’t—”

“Punctuation, pater! Simple punctuation!”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a colon, Dad, just a silly little colon!”

“So what?” the inspector muttered darkly.

“I’ll show you so what, you lovable old ignoramus,” Celery said affectionately. “Look, what is it I’m holding here?”

“A bottle of fancy aftershave. Like I said, so what?”

“It’s not aftershave, Dad. It’s cologne. Expensive cologne.”

“It’s no good, Cel. I still don’t get it.”

Celery slapped his forehead impatiently. “But it’s all so obvious, Dad. Nacionale, poisoned, dying, wanted to tell us where to locate the deadly stuff that was doing him in. If he’d had a pen or a pencil he could have written ‘in the cologne.’ But he didn’t. All he had at hand was those dice. So he made a crude representation of a colon, hoping someone would draw the connection between colon and cologne. It was a gamble, but it paid off.”

“Son, are you trying to tell me Carlos Nacionale drank a bottle of aftershave lotion?”

“Of course not,” the younger Breen said indulgently. “Nacionale was in the bathroom shaving. He cut himself, which explains the blood we saw. Then, when he was finished, he splashed cologne on his face. Either the stuff contained some sort of contact poison, or else it was the noxious fumes that killed him. Either way, it didn’t finish him off until he’d had time to set up that message with the dice.”

“I don’t know, Cel. I mean, it doesn’t even say ‘cologne’ on the bottle...”

“Doesn’t it, Dad? Look at the label. ‘Made in Germany,’ it says. Once you check it out, I’m betting you’ll find that this Borgian brew was cooked up in Koeln — or, to give it its Americanized name, Cologne — in western Germany, and that whoever gave it to Carlos Nacionale was his killer.”

But the following morning at breakfast, a dejected Wretched Breen was wondering if the vaunted Celery had at last begun to go to seed. Following a call from headquarters to the Breen apartment, he told his son softly, “About that aftershave lotion of yours...”

“The cologne? What about it? From Koeln, right?”

“Aftershave, Cel. From Frankfurt.”

“Well, it’s a good thing Carlos Nacionale didn’t realize that. He might not have left us any message at all. Did you find out who gave it to him?”

The inspector sipped coffee and sighed. “Yeah. Velvet picked it up for him, a couple of weeks ago.”

“Velvet? That’s quite a blow, Dad,” Celery said solemnly. “I liked that young woman. I even hoped that, someday, perhaps, maybe... Ah well, that’s all part of the detective game, I suppose. It’s happened before, and no doubt it’ll happen again, as long as sleuths are born with hearts. And Celery Breen, whatever his detractors may say of him, does have a heart. Yes, well, I’ll muddle through somehow, I expect. Don’t try to console me. I’ll be all right. Have you got the murderous little minx in custody?”

“Celery. Son. Carlos Nacionale’s aftershave was not — repeat, not — poisoned.”

“It wasn’t? But how else could the fatal toxin have been administered?”

“Think back, Cel. Remember all that blood around the body?”

“Yes? What of it?”

“Nacionale was stabbed, son. His throat was slit wide open.”

“That was a lousy shaving cut, Dad!”

“Probably—”

“No, definitely!”

“I meant Doc Probably. He—”

“He has a steady hand with a postmortem knife, but no imagination, Dad.”

“Son, listen, I know you’re no garden-variety sleuth. But even you are bound to be wrong sometimes, and I’m afraid that this is one of those times.”

Celery stalked furiously out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, though, the door swung back open to re-admit him. “Okay,” he said, “then who killed Nacionale? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know who killed him, son. Not yet. I’m going down to headquarters. Want to come along?”

“No! The answer’s in those dice, Dad, and I’m not leaving this room until I figure it out.”

“Okay, son, you sit here and vegetate if you want to,” said the birdlike inspector, “but I’ll just keep pecking away until I come up with the truth.”

And, his feathers ruffled, he hopped out the door.

Celery pounded his forehead to stimulate thought. He thought of the dismal failures of his salad days, of the brilliant successes of his recent past, and, most of all, of the body, the blood, and the dice, the dice, the dice...

The phone was ringing when Wretched Breen let himself into his office. “Yeah?... Oh jeez, I forgot all about him. Is he still down there?... Yeah, bring him on up.”

Moments later, a two-headed shadow appeared at the frosted glass door to Inspector Breen’s office. The door swung open to reveal the beefy frame of Sergeant Thomas Veal, handcuffed at the wrist to a nervous little man with beady, reptilian eyes.

“Mr. Luigi Calamare,” the sergeant announced.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old friend Luigi the Snake,” the inspector greeted them. “Shoo him in, Thomas, and help him find a chair.”

“What’s the big idea, Inspectuh?” the little man hissed. “I been here all night, this lunk won’t let me call my lawyuh, and I din’ even do nothin’.”

“We hear otherwise,” the old inspector snapped. “We got a tip you knocked over the Second National Bank on Lexington the night before last, sometime around midnight.”

“That’s a lie! I wasn’t nowheres near no bank that night. I was playin’ pokuh ovuh on Nint’ Avenoo with some of the boys. You can ast them, they’ll tell yuh.”

“Sure they will, Luigi. They always do, don’t they?”

“It’s the troot, Inspectuh, I swear it. Hell, you can ast your kid if yuh don’t believe me!”

“Celery? Was he there?”

“Yeah, sure, up to the time that dame started screamin’, anyways. He dropped a bundle, too. That kid’s no card-playuh, Inspectuh.”

Wretched Breen lifted himself from his chair and began to pace the floor, thoughtfully stroking the day-old stubble on his chin. Silence reigned.

“Where was it you were playing?” he asked at last.

“The Hotel Madrid. Room 530.”

“And what time did you get there?”

“Eight-thirty, maybe nine uh’clock. I don’ remembuh exackly.”

“Do you remember what time you left?”

“Afta one, Inspectuh. I swear to you I—”

“Did you leave the game at all during the course of the evening?”

“Just once, to grab a fresh pack uh cigarettes. It’s the troot, Inspectuh. Just ast the boys, they’ll back me up.”

“How long were you out of the room when you went for cigarettes?”

“A coupla minutes — ten, maybe, fifteen tops. I couldn’a got all the way ovuh to Lexington, if that’s what yuh thinkin’.”

“You certainly couldn’t have.” The inspector scowled. “But you could have gotten somewhere closer to hand. Take him back downstairs and book him, Thomas.”

“For robbery?” Veal frowned. “But you just said—”

“Not for robbery. For murder.”

When the inspector broke down the unlocked door to his son’s bedroom an hour later, he found Celery still lost in reverie.

“I have to talk to you, son.”

“The dice, Dad. The dice...”

“It’s all over, Cel. The Nacionale case is closed. We’ve got the killer.”

“You do? Who was it?”

“Luigi Calamare.”

“Luigi? But that’s impossible! I was with him when Nacionale was killed.”

“No, you weren’t. Calamare left your card game to get a pack of cigarettes, remember? At least, that’s where he said he was going. But actually he had an unopened pack in his pocket all the time, and when he left Room 530 he simply ducked down the hall to 521, slit Nacionale’s throat, and then returned to the game.”

“But why, Dad? It doesn’t make sense!”

“Nacionale had evidence of Calamare’s involvement in the rackets, evidence that would have sent your pal Luigi to prison for a long, long time if we’d gotten a look at it.”

“Luigi was a gangster?” said Celery incredulously.

“I’m afraid so, son. And Carlos Nacionale was blackmailing him. But Calamare wanted out from under, so he set up a meeting with Nacionale for the night before last, arranged a poker game as an alibi — with you as an unimpeachable witness — then killed Nacionale and stole back the incriminating evidence.”

“And the dice, then? You mean they had nothing to do with it, after all?”

“They had everything to do with it, Cel. Two dice, each with a single spot showing, right? Well, son, thanks to those beady little eyes of his, Luigi Calamare has a cute nickname among his underworld pals. Snake Eyes, they call him, and that’s what Carlos Nacionale was trying to tell us when he died: Snake Eyes killed him.”

“You’re sure about all this?”

“Positive. When I told Calamare about Nacionale’s dying message, he spilled the whole story.”

“Well, congratulations, Dad,” Celery said with ill-concealed disappointment. “You solved the case without a bit of help from me. From now on, I guess you’ll have to take old Celery’s advice with a grain of salt, eh?”

The inspector hesitated for a moment, then licked his lips and went on. “Calamare told us something else, son. He said you lost an awful lot of money in that card game the other night, but that you paid it all back bright and early the next morning.”

“That — that’s right,” Celery said nervously.

“Yeah. Well, I hate to ask you this, Cel, but after you left the Hotel Madrid night before last for that ‘other appointment’ of yours, you didn’t happen to go anywhere near the Second National Bank on Lexington, did you?”

“I–I—”

Inspector Wretched Breen shook his head sadly. “I thought you had more moral fiber than that, Celery.”

“But, Dad, they said they’d cream me if I didn’t pay what I owed them!”

“Well, you’re in the soup now, son, I can tell you that.”

And, as if someone had propped him upright in a glass of red ink, Celery’s face flushed a bright, embarrassed crimson.

Copyright (c); 2005 by Josh Pachter & Jon L. Breen.