Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 47, No. 4. Whole No. 269, April 1966

Handon C. Jorricks Hocus-Pocus at Drumis Tree

The murder occurred right before Guy Moran Caine’s eyes and instantly it brought dire peril to the beautiful girl with whom Guy had fallen in love at first sight...

For the first time in a week Guy Moran Caine wasn’t marveling at finding himself in London. Instead, he was marveling at a young lady. She was one of a party at the next table at the Drumis Tree, a restaurant which the guidebook had rightfully told Guy he would find delightful — though it could hardly have anticipated his reasons.

The young American couldn’t have said why he found so enchanting someone he didn’t even know, but there it was. In addition to a vibrant beauty which reached him all too clearly at the next table, there was something in her smile, both warm and exciting, that made him feel he simply had to meet her.

He was not so approving of her behavior toward the good-looking young man on her left, a behavior which seemed altogether too friendly. It was no part of Guy’s rapidly forming dream that she should be in love with someone else. He observed them toast each other with the wine that the waiter had just poured — champagne, Guy thought it was. They put their heads together for a moment, and then exchanged glasses.

The girl had barely sipped hers when she gasped and stared, horrified, at her companion. He had slumped over the table, oddly inert.

As Guy watched, a little man with a goatee and a fussy manner rose from his place at the young man’s left and bent over him. He seemed to study the young man closely, then he straightened and said something in a low voice to the other three people at the table.

Guy, who was frankly straining his ears, caught the words dead, poison, and police. Then the little man gave the girl a queer look and said something that Guy couldn’t catch at all, but her color drained completely.

The others at the table — an immoderately gorgeous woman and a rather nondescript, rumpled-looking man — were staring at his beloved in a way Guy didn’t care for. They edged away from her and huddled at the other side of the table.

Guy felt his blood boil. Without stopping to think, he stormed over to the neighboring table. “Look here,” he blurted out to her, ignoring the others, “let me help. You must think I’m crazy,” he added, “but I can see there’s trouble and you need someone to stand by you.”

“Galahad and the damsel in distress,” murmured the little man in a suave voice, tinged with a foreign accent. “My dear sir, I think we can handle our own affairs without help from a total stranger,” and turning to the girl he said pointedly, “Can’t we, Melissa, my dear?”

She hesitated, then flung up her head. “No,” she said clearly and firmly. “I don’t know who he is, but it’s good of him, and perhaps some objectivity is just what we do need.”

She turned to Guy, who refrained from pointing out that objectivity was not what he was offering. “I’m awfully grateful. I’m Melissa St. Dinserd, and this” — indicating the little man with the goatee — “is my guardian, M. Druerre. Over there is Ramora Glussot, and her agent, Herr Girden. There’s been talk all week about their making a movie together — my guardian to finance it, and Ramora to star. They want... wanted—” She broke off and looked at the dead man, “They wanted him to be in it too.”

Ramora Glussot! No wonder the other woman seemed more gorgeous than life — she was the glamorous star of French films. He could only put down his initial lack of recognition to the magic of Melissa, which for Guy obscured all else.

He told Melissa his name, still ignoring the others beyond a curt nod when they were introduced, and steered her to his own table.

“What kind of friends and guardian have you?” he demanded. “It looked as if they were accusing you of murder.”

It never entered his bewitched head that she might in fact be a murderess. Even when he had been a table away, he had felt that she radiated honesty and decency, along with her other more physical qualities.

“I’d better explain,” she said, biting her entrancing lower lip. “I can’t blame them for wondering. He... the d-d-dead man — is... was — Peter Osch. He seems to have been poisoned — in the champagne, the glass smells of it — and we had just switched glasses. Besides, his glass was between him and me. No one else could have given him poison. They think I doctored my glass and then asked him to change, but actually it was he who suggested changing glasses. I don’t see how it was done, but I certainly didn’t do it.”

“Of course not,” Guy said with such heat that she stared at him, and a flush crept along her cheeks. “He must have taken it himself.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she frowned. “He’s not the suicidal type, I’m sure. Anyhow, I used to know him rather well (Guy winced) and we talked sometimes about suicide — in the idle way one does, what methods one would or wouldn’t use. He always said poison was not for him — he knew too many instances of people who’d been pulled through.”

For some time Guy had been disturbed by the vague sensation of people hovering about them, a sensation enhanced, now that he came to think of it, by the odor of an evil-smelling pipe. This was now followed by a low but penetrating rumble that would have done credit to the foghorn of a transatlantic liner.

“Lordloveaduck,” this voice thundered, “who in blue blazes are you?”

Guy’s glance reluctantly left the girl and traveled upward. It alighted first on the companion of the speaker, a mild, stolid-looking man carrying a neat bowler. Next, his gaze went to the speaker himself, lingering in fascinated and delighted disbelief. He took in the bald head, the prominent abdomen, the disreputable suit, the whole improbably-put-together and fiercely scowling individual whom (next to Melissa, of course) he most wanted to meet in all England — and certainly at this moment most urgently needed.

“You’re Sir Marvin Rhyerlee!” he exclaimed. “My father raised me on tales of you — and I always thought he was exaggerating. (In spite of the tension, he couldn’t help smiling.) You’re the man who solves impossible problems. Well, there’s an impossible murder right here.”

“Well. Now.” The gentleman in question allowed himself to be mollified. “I’m the Old Man, all right. I’m the one they come to when they’re stuck, and laugh at the rest of the time. Even you, son, I saw it! But burn me,” he roared, his wrath returning, “what’s going on here, and why can’t I have a peaceable lunch like any peaceable citizen, without something always going wrong?”

“Peaceable” was somehow the last word Guy would have used in connection with Sir Marvin Rhyerlee, but he let it pass. Before he knew it, they were all being ushered into a private room — M. Druerre, Herr Girden, and Mlle. Glussot, as well as Melissa and himself. Sir Marvin’s luncheon companion turned out to be Inspector Starmes of the C.I.D., who promptly took charge of the investigation.

When they were comfortably settled, Guy explained to Sir Marvin and Starmes how he had become involved. A reminiscent chuckle rumbled out of Sir Marvin when Guy gave his name. “Sure, son, I remember your dad. Those were great times we had in America.”

“So he said,” Guy commented drily. “But even though I’ve barged into something that wasn’t my business, it looked to me as if this crowd was ready to pin a murder on this young lady, just like that. I ask you, sir, does she look like a murderess?”

“We-e-ell,” said Rhyerlee, “lotsa murderers don’t. Ask Starmes here. Just the same, it’s a pretty fast conclusion to jump to. I think,” he looked hard at Druerre, “we ought to hear more.”

“Of course, m’sieu, of course.” The little man with the goatee was all cooperation. “Peter Osch was my ward, as is Melissa St. Dinserd. They are not related to me, nor, for that matter, to each other — otherwise, they could not have been affianced, as they were.”

Melissa made a protesting sound, but M. Druerre continued, unheeding. “Young Osch has been in Africa for a few years, and has only been back in England a few days. Today was the great day of his life — when he came of age — and we were celebrating his birthday. But he was out of touch — we were his only acquaintances in England, and he hardly knew Mlle. Glussot and he only met Herr Girden this morning. It would not make sense for them to take his life. But the young lady here — I do not like to say it, but she is of a hot temper, and she sat next to the wine glass. I can only suppose that they had a — what do you call it? — a lover’s quarrel.”

“Steady, sir,” Starmes cut in affably. “The young lady switched drinks with the gentlemen, didn’t she? Just so. Didn’t it occur to you that perhaps someone might have been trying to poison her, and because of a romantic notion of the young man’s, the murderer got the wrong victim?”

A strangled sound came from Melissa. “Murder me!” Her voice had a queer pitch, but she spoke steadily enough. “Oh, no! But for the record,” she flashed in a different tone, “I was not engaged to him. (Guy felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest.) We once had some sort of childhood notion, but it was never definite, and we hadn’t seen each other for a long time. As you heard, he’s only been back in this country a few days. I am quite heartwhole and fancy free,” she added firmly, and Guy almost stood up and danced a jig-

“But, mademoiselle,” purred Mlle. Glussot, “he did want to marry you, did he not? Le pauvre enfant told me all about you when we met this noon, and he had such high hopes.” Her eyes were twinkling. “Do you know what he told me? That my friend had actually given him a drug that would make you fall in love with him.”

“Miss Glussot!” Starmes couldn’t contain himself. “Do you expect us to believe that?”

“Cherie, you must have misunderstood,” M. Druerre added suavely.

The famous movie star shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “That is what he said. An imaginative type — that young man.”

“It’s just possible,” said Melissa thoughtfully. “He believed in all kinds of crazy nonsense — black magic, voodoo, things like that. Give anyone a little time to win his confidence, and they could probably make him believe anything.”

“But why?” Starmes asked. “Herr Girden, you have a bizarre sense of humor.”

“Ach, nein!” came the angry protest. “I did no such thing. Ramora, where did you get such a crazy idea?”

Guy’s wits had sharpened remarkably when Melissa had said she was fancy free, and suddenly he had a brainstorm. “Look here,” he said, unaware that he was shouting, “the guilty person must be this German chap. If Miss St. Dinserd was the intended victim, Girden might have handed Osch a poison to give to her under pretense of this claptrap. He was sitting next to her — on her other side — so he might even have done it himself. Maybe,” he added wildly, “it’s a plot between the beautiful Frenchwoman and the sinister German. One of them’s lying about this love potion business — that we know.”

“Looky here, son.” Rhyerlee took Guy aside. “Girden didn’t put poison in the gal’s glass. Fact is,” he muttered, “Starmes and I had our eyes on Girden for other reasons. That’s why we were here — Starmes wanted me to get a look at him. We never took our eyes off him, and I personally can vouch for the fact that he put nothing in any drink. Besides, Starmes has had him tailed all week, and it’s true that he never met the boy until this morning.”

“Wait,” said Guy, “I’ve got it. We only have M. Druerre’s word that the poison was in the drink. Maybe it was in the food — and he poisoned the drink later to confuse the trail. Or maybe Osch took vitamins and they were doctored.”

“Say, son,” Sir Marvin boomed, “you got possibilities.”

Starmes was listening with one ear while he received a report from one of his men with the other. Dismissing his man, he said, “Clever, all right. But Osch didn’t take pills — none were found on him, nor a container. My man just told me. And besides, the food doesn’t smell of cyanide, which it looks like he died of — but the drink does. We’ll have to wait for medical and laboratory reports to be certain, but unofficially I’d stake my shirt on it that he was poisoned in the champagne. And that,” he added, “seems to wash out all the possibilities.”

Starmes turned to Marvin Rhyerlee. “Unless, sir, you can think of something?”

The sweetly polite question was not without irony, born of long and frustrating experience. The Old Man was a master at providing explanations in situations where Starmes could have sworn that no explanations were possible.

“Why, sure, son.” Rhyerlee was doing it again. “Meantersay you haven’t tumbled to it? I don’t know how you’re going to pin it on him, but here’s your man.” And he pointed M. Druerre.

“This is an outrage!” The Frenchman was furious. “Why should I kill Miss St. Dinserd?”

“Won’t wash, son.” Rhyerlee sounded tired. “You don’t hocus me with that one. It ain’t Miss St. Dinserd who’s dead. It’s Peter Osch, and that’s just who you meant it to be. As to why — I daresay you’ve been monkeying with the young man’s estate while he was too far away in Africa to know about it. Maybe that’s how you raised the money to finance a movie for this particularly expensive star. Starmes can find out easy enough. I expect you felt threatened with exposure when Osch came back and became of age to manage his own affairs.”

“Yes, you will find out,” said Druerre, who seemed suddenly to have lost a lot of his bustle. “But I couldn’t have killed my ward. I was nowhere near his glass.”

“That was the diabolically clever part,” Sir Marvin admitted. “You got the boy to commit his own murder. Mlle. Glussot’g ‘friend,’ who sold him a lot of bunkum about a love drug, was you. And you also gave Osch something to take himself, didn’t you? — ‘to be equal to the flaming love of his sweetheart.’ And of course you suggested that he switch glasses, so he could dope ’em both — so that we would get on another wrong track, if we didn’t fall for Miss St. Dinserd as the murderess. Only it wasn’t a love drug, of course. What you gave him for Miss St. Dinserd was harmless, but for himself it was poison.”

Druerre sagged, but he made a final effort. “If you are right about the method, Melissa, or even Ramora or Girden, could have done it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” said Sir Marvin. “Aside from the fact that your motive sticks out a mile, the gal couldn’t have spun him that moonshine about a love potion to affect her. As for Herr Girden, he only met him this morning — so there’s no motive — and if it weren’t for Mademoiselle we’d never have known about the drug. She wouldn’t have told us if she’d killed him, and there’s no other way he could have been killed.

“And that ain’t quite all, son,” M.R. finished quietly. “That monicker of yours labels you the murderer anyhow.”

EDITORS’ NOTE: Yes, as M.R. said, M. Druerre’s monicker labels him the murderer... For once again the author, whose real name is Mrs. Norma Schier, is up to her anagrammatical tricks. Once again she has converted every proper name in the story (except London and England) into an anagram. To wit:

M. Druerre = murderer

Guy Moran Caine = young American

Melissa St. Dinserd = damsel in distress

Peter Osch = the corpse

Ramora Glussot = glamorous star

Herr Girden = red herring (a cute one!)

Drumis Tree = murder site

Starmes = (Chief Inspector) Masters (of the C.I.D.) Marvin Rhyerlee = Henry Merrivale

And the supposed author’s name — Handon C. Jorricks (a wonderful anagram!) — is of course (to quote from Mrs. Schier’s note) “the Old Man’s creator, master of the impossible situation, and a far wilier plotter than my anagrammatic ‘pastiche’ does justice to — none other than John Dickson Carr.”