Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 42, May 1947

The House-in-Your-Hand Murder by Roy Vickers

About the Author: Roy Vickers left Oxford (no, he was not sacked) because he was convinced that wealth and fame awaited him in his chosen profession — writing. For two solid years he wrote novels, short stories, articles, and plays, and all he had to show for his efforts was a collection of typewritten rejection slips. Bowing to the Great God Economo (although only on a part-time basis), Mr. Vickers became a salesman, dividing his energies between huckstering insurance, cigarettes, and houses, and continuing to write. It didn’t work out: he realized that he was ruining his chances for literary success by leading a “double life.” So he started all over again — as a “ghost writer.” Immediately Mr. Vickers found that he had struck pay dirt; he built a high-powered industry for himself, turning out sermons, speeches, and lectures, all “strictly business” at four-and-six pence per thousand words (including finished manuscript). But Fate still carried a concealed weapon — a monkey-wrench: an ill-advised political article broke a scandal over Mr. Vickers’s head and he retired from the ghost racket to accept a modest job on a popular weekly periodical. Here he rose to the exalted position of “Competitions Editor” and all went well until that Alice-in-Wonderland moment when 416 contestants all won first prize! Again Mr. Vickers beat a hasty retreat. He began afresh writing articles and once more the Wheel of Fortune turned his way: in the next three years he wrote 1,000 articles on soup-to-fish and sold two-thirds of them. But success can become boring: the monotony of a steady stream of checks instead of the old torrent of rejection slips drove Mr. Vickers back to writing fiction. But success can also become a habit: now he sold everything he wrote! Came an interlude (called the War to End War) when Mr. Vickers traded in the mightier weapon for the sword — but that is now over (we hope). Mr. Vickers is writing steadily again. You may have read his work and not known it — he has used pseudonyms, including John Spencer, David Durham, and Sefton Kyle...

The murder of Albert Henshawk, headlined as the House-in-Your-Hand Mystery, became a test case for plainclothes constables who had put in for promotion. It is still used to emphasize that the most trivial remark of a murderer — such as a comment on a work of commercial art — may contain the raw material of a clue.

Henshawk, who specialized in financing the purchase of houses, had been running an advertisement showing, in an outstretched palm, a picturesque country cottage, with the slogan: A House in Your Hand is Worth Two in the Clouds. It is noteworthy that the picture in the advertisement was a photograph of a model. The whole model, including the outstretched hand, covered an area about equal to that of a pocket handkerchief. It was kept in Henshawk’s office under a glass dome, flanked by the bronze statuette with which Henshawk was battered to death. It is an ironical comment on this amiable egotist that the statuette was the work of Henshawk, and the subject — Henshawk himself.

A tubby, chubby little man in the early forties, he was naively proud of himself and his not inconsiderable talent as an artist. “Neat bit of work, that model, eh! Supplied the idea myself,” he would say, if you were a business acquaintance. Your attention would be directed to the seventeenth-century thatched cottage, to the oaks on one side of it, to the sloping meadow in which a cow drank at a sluggish brook, to a somewhat startling confusion of farm stock in the foreground.

“And, mind you, it isn’t a studio fake, except for those pigs and things. Made from a drawing. A little effort of my own.” You were urged to inspect a charcoal drawing — complete with farm stock but minus the outstretched palm — hung in a somewhat elaborate frame. “Of course, I’m only an amateur, but you can see it’s drawn from life.”

The last statement was confirmed, after the murder, by a number of experts, consulted independently. Each said, in his own words, that if the model had been a work of fancy it would have exhibited certain essential differences. Architects, also consulted independently, passed the house as structurally and historically correct; surveyors agreed that the layout of the land contained no absurdity.

The murder took place on February 16th, 1938, at about six forty-five, in Henshawk’s office in Gorlay House, Westminster. After lunching at the Redmoon Restaurant, Henshawk had spent the afternoon at his club, discussing business with an official of a big investment trust, for which he was, in effect, an agent.

At a few minutes past six, when his staff had left, with the exception of his secretary, he entered his room by the private door, which opened directly on the corridor. In the wall on your right as you entered by this door was another door, now ajar, to the staff room, in which Miss Birdridge was waiting.

She heard his key, then his voice talking to a companion. Of the latter she had only an oblique view. But she was able to state that he was between forty and fifty, of medium height, regular features, and with an iron-grey mustache.

“I must have a word with my secretary — shan’t be a minute,” Henshawk was saying. “Suppose you look about until I get back. I think you’ll be pleased.” He went into the staff room, leaving the communicating door open.

“Miss Birdridge, I simply must get that report off tonight. So will you go and have a meal right away, and be back here at seven sharp.” Henshawk had a booming voice: the other man must have overheard him. “Oh, and you might ’phone Mrs. Henshawk that I shan’t be home till about ten and I’ll eat in Town.”

There was nothing unusual in this. Miss Birdridge was a middle-aged woman with no home ties, who appreciated a restaurant dinner at the firm’s expense and the extra payment for late work. Henshawk lingered in the doorway while she reported an item of minor importance, but she noticed that his attention had shifted to the other room.

“Ah! It caught your eye at once, old man. Neat bit of work, eh! Made from that drawing of mine on the wall there.”

Then the other man’s voice: “But, my dear fellow, that damned cow spoils the whole thing! And why is it perched on a giant’s hand? Makes it look like a cartoon.”

“You’re not far off. I’ve been using it for an advertisement display. I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. After all—”

At that point the communicating door was closed. Miss Birdridge was sure that it was exactly at that point, and sure that she had reported the exact words used by each man.

She went out to dinner, returning as Big Ben was striking seven. In the meantime the communicating door had been used and was again ajar. A couple of minutes later, having equipped herself for work on the report, she went into the inner office, to find Henshawk sprawling face downwards, over his chair patently murdered. She observed no more than this before rushing back into the outer office and calling the police.

By midnight, Detective Inspector Karslake had a clear outline. For about forty minutes, during which he had smoked four of Henshawk’s cigarettes, the murderer had sat in the client’s chair, with his back to both doors.

At about six-forty, Henshawk’s wife had knocked on the private door. Henshawk had opened the door but had stepped into the corridor to speak to her. He told her, she said, that he was engaged with a client, so could not take her home. He himself expected to be home late.

Over her husband’s shoulder Mrs. Henshawk had seen a man sitting in the client’s chair with his back towards her. She did not take particular notice of him, because, she said, being a client he was of no interest to her. She was somewhat hurt because her husband had apparently forgotten that he had asked her to call for him at the office.

After getting rid of his wife, Henshawk had probably sat down again in his chair. But a few minutes later he had got up and turned his back, whereupon the other had struck him on the back of the head with the statuette, causing almost instant death.

At the cupboard-toilette the murderer had washed bloodstains from his hands. He had not removed bloodstains from the soap well. He had left the statuette immersed in the basin.

Although his time was running perilously short, he had lingered in order to remove a drawing from its frame on the wall. As this drawing was the original from which the House-In-Your-Hand model was made, the incident gave emphasis to the remark, overheard by Miss Birdridge, seeming to connect the deceased with the cottage depicted in the model.

The murderer left by the outer office, within two minutes of seven o’clock, carrying the drawing loosely wrapped in tissue paper. In the hall he asked the porter to call him a taxi. He was getting into it when Miss Birdridge returned, though she noticed no more than that a man was getting into a taxi, carrying something flat and loosely wrapped in tissue paper. He told the driver to take him to the Westminster Station of the Underground. Nothing further was known of his movements.

“The porter is no good, sir,” said young Rawlings. “All he can do is a ‘middle aged, middle height, middling well-dressed gentleman with a mustache’ — which of course will be shaved off by now.”

“Never mind his mustache — he has practically left us his address, hasn’t he!” snorted Karslake. He had recently had several big successes and was becoming a trifle didactic.

“Yes, sir — that cottage!” said Rawlings, who had not yet learned how to handle seniors.

“I guessed that myself,” snapped Karslake. “Where is that cottage? What’s it called?”

Rawlings slunk away and woke Miss Birdridge by calling her on the telephone.

But Miss Birdridge did not know, had always thought the cottage was an imaginary one until she had overheard the murderer’s reference to it. Next he rang Mrs. Henshawk, who was equally unhelpful. Her husband was a prolific amateur artist, but she knew nothing about art and he never talked to her about his hobby.

“All right then — we’ll advertise for that cottage,” said Karslake. “The papers will make a news story of it, with picture. Warn all stations in the U. K. to study that picture in the Press and report to us if the cottage is in their district.”

In his Appreciation for the Chief, Karslake wrote: “An unpremeditated murder (cigarettes) by a man on familiar terms with deceased, who was urging Henshawk to do something important enough to make the latter forget his appointment with his wife (Mrs. Henshawk’s admitted annoyance). Mrs. Henshawk’s interruption broke the trend of their talk. Henshawk rejected the proposition, whereupon the other lost his temper and struck with the nearest object, not necessarily intending to kill. The murderer owns, or has some direct or indirect interest in, the cottage (theft of drawing: remark reported by Miss Birdridge — ‘I felt sure you wouldn’t mind’ i.e., use of cottage as advertisement). There should be little difficulty in tracing such a cottage.”

Karslake had Miss Birdridge’s report under his hand as he wrote. Yet he missed the clue-value of that other remark about “that damned cow.”

True, the murder was, in the legal sense, unpremeditated. But it might be argued that Harold Ledlaw had been unconsciously premeditating the murder for eighteen years, though he did not know that the victim would be Henshawk.

Ledlaw had been waiting outside Gorlay House expecting Henshawk to leave at the end of the office day. But he spotted him at once when he stepped out of the taxi that brought him from the club.

“Hullo, Albert!... Dammit, you’ve forgotten me!”

“I certainly have not—” a second’s pause “—Harold Ledlaw, of course.” He was pumping the other’s hand. “You’ve changed a lot, old man, but I’d have known you at once anywhere. I suppose we shall both soon be what they call middle-aged. Well, I’m jiggered! We must fix something. Are you staying long?”

“I’m not going back to Canada. It has done me proud, but I’m back for keeps. I landed last week. Been getting acclimatized. I’m counting on you to give me the low-down on one thing and another.”

“Look here, I’m rushed off my feet, but come up to the office for a few minutes and we’ll fix something.”

They ignored the lift and walked to the first floor, exchanging the commonplaces of an almost forgotten friendship, for Ledlaw had been in Canada for nearly eighteen years.

At the first pause, which occurred just outside Henshawk’s private door, Ledlaw said:

“Whiddon Cottage! I heard some of the timber had been cut. Can you tell me anything about it?”

“It so happens I can tell you quite a lot about it — though I’m not in touch with — er — anyone.” He unlocked the private door, said that he must speak to his secretary and, with a fatuous archness, invited the other to look about the office.

The first thing one noticed in that office was the model under its glass dome. Ledlaw stared at it, at first in confusion, then with full recognition.

“My God, what damned cheek, and what the hell does it mean!” he muttered under his breath, then warned himself that he must keep his temper. Albert Henshawk was braying at him from the doorway: he must say something in reply.

“But, my dear fellow, that damned cow spoils the whole thing!” Ledlaw heard his own voice making the protest, and asking what the hand meant, and Henshawk telling him it was a sort of advertisement.

“I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. After all, a place like that belongs, at least in its artistic aspect — well, it belongs to England, don’t you think! It symbolizes the urban Englishman’s dream of home. And that’s my line of business now, Harold — helping the hard-up middle-class to own their homes. I had to put those beastly animals in afterwards on the advice of the advertising experts. You see, the town dweller always fancies he’ll do a spot of spare-time farming, the stock to look after itself and pay off the mortgage.”

There was a good deal of it, but Ledlaw barely listened. He had already decided that they would not “fix something.” He would find out the two things he had come to find out, and then he need never see Henshawk again.

“You were going to tell me about the timber, Albert.”

“Ah! Wheels within wheels! I have not seen — er — Mrs. Ledlaw. But I heard last year through a mutual acquaintance — a woman you don’t know — that your daughter, Harold, wants to be a doctor. Let’s see, she’s nearly eighteen now, isn’t she? That’s a seven-year course. Well — er — my informant said that you would not be asked to make any further contribution. So Mrs. Ledlaw decided to sell the timber in Swallowsbath Rise. Mind you, it won’t affect the look of the place, being the other side of the hill.”

He had been speaking with some awkwardness which now slipped away.

“When I heard this, I thought perhaps Mrs. Ledlaw might want to sell the whole outfit, as I knew you had bought it outright for her. I went down to see her last year, but she was on holiday and the place was shut up. So I thought I’d sketch it. I wrote to her asking if it was in the market and got a reply, written in the third person, saying no. I don’t suppose she remembers me. I haven’t seen her since — well, since.”

So that was that! He had the right to see that his daughter took her medical course in comfort. Now for that other question that must be approached circuitously. Twenty past six. He would have to hurry or he might fumble the showdown he had planned — if indeed it was to be a showdown, of which he was not yet certain.

“There’s another thing I want to ask you, Albert. You perhaps remember that, when Ruth divorced me, I withdrew the defense I had previously entered denying infidelity. I then vamoosed to Canada. I want to know whether you believed what that Valerie Carmaen said — that I had been her lover?”

“Really, Harold, after all these years!” Henshawk was definitely embarrassed.

“You knew her. And you knew she was the kind of dirt I wouldn’t touch if she were the only female left in the world.”

“Yes, yes, Harold! Just as you say!”

“Then you believe she faked that bedroom incident — that my original pleading, which I showed you, stated the truth?”

“Of course, I believe it if you say so! Didn’t I tell you at the time that I believed you! I wondered why you didn’t go on with the defense.”

“I withdrew the defense because Ruth made it clear that, whatever was proved in court, she would believe me guilty. That broke me up, Albert. Ruth and I hadn’t started too well. The first few months had been difficult. But we were just getting right. Life was going to be grand. And then this thing happened.”

“But it’s more than eighteen years ago, old man!”

“To me it’s as if it were yesterday. I know it’s an obsession and not quite sane, and all that. But all these years, when I’ve not been actually working, I’ve felt much as I felt at the time — humiliated, washed up, finished.”

Henshawk was making soothing noises. He looked sympathetic, not afraid. Perhaps, thought Ledlaw, there was no reason why he should be afraid. Perhaps the information he had received about Henshawk had been incorrect. He glanced at the clock — he would know in a few minutes.

“Have you any idea why that girl picked on me? I didn’t like her, but I never insulted her. She had no reason to hate me.”

“No, of course not! You shouldn’t let your mind dwell on it, old man. What about seeing a good psychiatrist?”

“She didn’t hate me. She just used me callously because she wanted to be divorced.”

He was not thinking now of Henshawk. In the grip of his obsession, he repeated the words he had been repeating for eighteen years.

“She had an income in her own right and could have fixed it with a professional co-respondent for a tenner and a little bother. But what she did to me is worse than positive cruelty, which at least has the excuse of malice or perversion. I think of that woman as the lowest moral type — a moral slug.”

“You’re working yourself up, Harold. It’s bad for you, and it’s very distressing for me — ah, excuse me!”

There had come a knock on the private door — the knock for which Ledlaw had been waiting. Both glanced at the clock. It was twenty-two minutes to seven.

Henshawk went to the door. Ledlaw remained still, his back — as Superintendent Karslake had inferred — to both doors. He would let her get well into the room before he turned and faced her. And if she were not the woman, he would just acknowledge the introduction and go.

“I am in conference,” he heard Henshawk say.

Too late, Ledlaw turned round. Henshawk had stepped into the corridor and was speaking to her there. Ledlaw could see neither. He sprang up, intending to thrust himself into the corridor. But Henshawk had already returned alone and shut the door.

“Only an anxious client! Look here, I don’t want to turn you out, old man, but I must get some work ready for my secretary who will be back presently. What about dining with me at the club tomorrow night?”

Ledlaw saw that a simple bluff would give him the answer he must have.

“ ‘An anxious client’, you said, Albert. Why did you say it?”

“I don’t get you, old man.”

“Was it your wife, Albert? I ask, because I sent Mrs. Henshawk a wire in your name asking her to call here at six-thirty. I ’phoned it from the Redmoon — where you were lunching. She was a little late.” He paused, decided it was safe to add: “I saw her face, Albert. I must apologize for having called your wife a moral slug.”

Ledlaw got up, actually intending to go. The love of self-torture that accompanies such an obsession as his had something new to feed on. Fate had used him even more vilely than he had known, for Henshawk had been his friend since school days.

But Henshawk, the frank egotist who had delighted in making a statuette of himself, could not endure the loss of face.

“I am sorry you saw Valerie. It can only deepen the tragedy for all three of us. To know all, Harold, is to forgive all. I want you to sit down again and let me explain.”

“Go ahead.” Ledlaw dropped back into the client’s chair. “It might be amusing to hear why she smashed up my life to save herself a tenner. Why, surely, she could have got the tenner from you! And you’d have gladly taken all the bother off her hands.”

“I didn’t know what she was doing until she had done it,” Henshawk began. “And I didn’t know the man was you until you yourself told me. It all originated in my refusal to deceive her husband. I’m like that, as you know — I can’t bear anything underhand. Well, I went to Carmaen and asked him to divorce her and let us marry. If ever there was a dog-in-the-manger it was Carmaen. He refused. But, being a beast, he gave Valerie to understand that, if it was anybody but myself, he would gladly divorce her. I happened to mention that I had recommended that hotel when you had to run down to Frensmouth for the night, and Valerie ran down too — but without my knowledge.”

“But what about your knowledge when I showed you the writ and my defense? You didn’t believe that I had been her lover?”

“No, of course not! Naturally, I put it to Valerie. And she refused to budge an inch. Said it was entirely her affair, and that I could take what attitude I pleased. What could I do? Telling you about it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“Yet you married her! Built your marriage on the ruin of mine!”

“Ruin of my grandmother’s aunt!” exploded Henshawk. Both were standing, glaring at each other across the table. “Can’t you see you’re pulling your own leg? Ever asked yourself why Ruth didn’t believe you? Of course she believed you! Your marriage had crashed. D’you think I didn’t know that much? Ruth couldn’t stick you any longer, and she jumped at the chance of release which Valerie had given her.”

To Ledlaw the words brought horrifying self-suspicion, the glimpse of an utterly unbearable truth. As Henshawk turned his back, Ledlaw snatched up the object nearest his hand and struck. He struck at the image of a self-pitying poltroon, at himself posing and strutting for eighteen years in order to hide from himself the truth that his wife had been unable to endure his affection — that she had been driven to a mean escape.

But what he had actually done was to kill Henshawk.

Returning clarity brought, not remorse, but renewed self-pity.

“Just my luck! I lost my head for half a second and now I shall be hanged.”

Not death, but the dreadful ritual of trial and execution, awakened self-preservation. He remembered the danger of fingerprints. When he had washed his hands, he refilled the basin and put the statuette in it. With Henshawk’s sponge he wiped the ashtray and the arms of the chair.

“That secretary may have heard him blithering to me about the cottage. I shall be hanged! Steady! I shall just have to bet she didn’t hear — or that he hasn’t told anybody where it is.”

He stood over the model, wondering whether there would be any safety in smashing it.

“That damned cow!” Taut nerves and muscles suddenly relaxed, and he giggled like a schoolgirl. A moment later he had sobered and turned to the charcoal drawing on the wall.

“It looks more realistic without the hand. And the damned cow isn’t so pronounced.” About to pass on, he turned back on impulse, dipped his hands in the basin and removed the drawing from its frame.

“The outer office would be better — more people turn the handles.” With hands still wet he opened the communicating door. In the outer office he caught up a piece of tissue paper and wrapped it loosely round the drawing.

Downstairs the porter was loafing about the hall. If he were to try to slink past, the fellow might think he had stolen the drawing. What was the most ordinary and natural thing to do?

“Get me a taxi, please.”

In the taxi he checked his first impulse to leave the drawing under the mat. That drawing must be burned — the mill board was too stiff to be torn in small pieces. He re-wrapped it in the tissue paper.

At Westminster he traveled by Underground to Earl’s Court. He was staying at the Teneriffe Hotel, near the station. He emptied a dispatch case and put the drawing in it. He would take it out to the countryside and burn it tomorrow. He had the illusion of forgetting Henshawk and his own peril. Active thought was suspended. He dined in the hotel, and afterwards went back to the West End to a music hall.

The next morning the London editions carried the photograph of the model. When Ledlaw opened a paper over breakfast he instantly accepted failure.

With a certain coolness he worked out how arrest would come. Ruth would see the picture and the police appeal. As a respectable citizen, she would write to Scotland Yard. A detective would call, would learn from her that she had passed her childhood in the cottage, that her father had been compelled to sell it, that some years later, on her marriage, her husband had bought it and made it over to her, that they had lived in it for a short time. Then the divorce and his departure to Canada. They would hardly need to trace him through the bank. The shipping lists would show that he had arrived six days ago and put up at the Teneriffe Hotel.

At a guess, he would have about forty-eight hours — at worst, twenty-four, unless Ruth telephoned, which was improbable.

Before he died, he wanted to see his daughter. Even more than that, he wanted to know whether Henshawk’s taunt had any foundation. In short, he would go at once to the cottage and see Ruth, whether she wanted to see him or not.

In his baggage were some things he had left her in his will — a photograph album of snapshots he had taken during their first year, a packet of her letters to him before marriage, a rare edition of Canterbury Tales which her father had given him. In half an hour he had sorted them out.

He put them in the dispatch case on top of the drawing, which no longer had any importance. In his sense of defeat, he thought only that he had been a fool for his pains in bringing it away. He had forgotten that Ruth would be sure to recognize the photograph of the model at once. And she would remember Henshawk’s name.

He would take no further precautions against arrest. He would not even shave his mustache.

By the middle of the morning, he was in the train for Hallery-on-Thames. There was no taxi at the little station and no car to be hired in the village, so he had to walk the half mile along the towpath and then tackle the stiff climb up the hillside.

He was hot when he arrived at Whiddon Cottage, and stopped to rest a minute by the oaks. While he was getting his breath, he reflected, with the self-conscious wistfulness of one who believes that his days are numbered, that the beauty of Whiddon was even greater than his memory of it. Set high on a hill on the edge of the Berkshire Downs, there was a clear view of undulating country for fifteen miles. To the rear of the cottage the downland sloped half a mile in a green carpet to the Thames. And now for Ruth.

She opened the door to him. She was a tall woman who had once been pretty and was now handsome, but with an air of masterfulness that was not romantically attractive. Yet at sight of him, he thought, she had looked afraid.

“Harold! Why have you come?” Her tone was reproachful, but not unfriendly.

“I want to see Aileen. I imagine you will not raise objections.”

“Of course not! But she’s away for a few days with friends.”

“I also wanted to see you. May I?”

It was ridiculously formal, not in the least as he had planned. It chilled them both into small talk. She offered him lunch, and he said he had already lunched, which was untrue. They chattered about Canada and London. He congratulated her on her success as an author.

“Well, of course, only students read my books and only a few of those, though I get good reviews. Harold, is that man who has been murdered the Henshawk you used to know?”

“Yes. You’ve seen the paper, I gather. I rather took it for granted that you had already notified Scotland Yard. I knew you must recognize the picture, in spite of the pigs and hens and that preposterous cow.”

“Harold?”

“Yes, Ruth — I killed him.” She had guessed before he said it. He added. “Did you know that he married Valerie Carmaen?”

She winced at the name. “No. But that was no reason for killing him.”

“He knew that woman had borne false witness against me. I accused him of building his marriage on the ruin of mine. And I lost my temper when he said that you, too, knew it was false — that you had jumped at the chance of getting rid of me. Did you, Ruth?”

She was long in answering. His own tension had vanished. It was as if he were no longer interested in her answer.

“I believed her evidence at the time. But after a few years I began to suspect I was wrong. It would be meaningless to say that I am sorry. As young lovers — well, we were not successful, Harold. In our maturity, I can feel deep friendship as well as gratitude for your generosity.”

“Well, my dear, that’s that! This case—” he placed the dispatch case by the side of the huge open hearth “—contains a few purely personal knicknacks you might like to keep. I’ll leave it.” He got up to go.

“Will you be caught, Harold?”

“Yes, I think so. Someone will bring them to this cottage, and then they’re bound to find me. I wish I could have seen Aileen.”

“If they come here I shall do everything I can to put them off. You may say you do not wish me to make sacrifices on your behalf. I am thinking of Aileen and — frankly — my public, small though it is. If you are tried, and if you give your reason for — doing what you did — the scandal will hurt us both. I want to do everything we can both do — to ensure your escape.”

Three quarters of a mile away, the village police sergeant was advising Scotland Yard of the existence of the seventeenth century cottage, known as Whiddon Cottage, identical in appearance with that in the published picture.

There are more seventeenth century cottages in England than many Englishmen would believe. By midday, local police had reported eighty, of which thirty-three were “possibles.” By the end of the week, the grand total for all Britain stood at one hundred and seventy-three “possibles.”

In sorting, three features beside the cottage itself were deemed essential: oaks on left of cottage; contiguous, sloping meadow; brook from which it would be possible for an animal, such as a cow, to drink. Sixty of the hundred and seventy-three contained these essentials. But the balance included cottages, of the correct period and dimensions, whose oaks had been felled, whose meadow had been built over, whose brook had been diverted.

Within a week, the sixty “probables” had been inspected, without noteworthy result. In another fortnight, the balance of “possibles” had been eliminated. Detective Inspector Karslake felt that he had been handed a raw deal.

Within twenty-four hours identification of the cottage had become the solitary line of investigation. The comb had been run through all Henshawk’s business and social acquaintances. The telegram to Mrs. Henshawk had been telephoned from a call box at the Redmoon Restaurant. This started new hope — until a client reported that he had lunched there with Henshawk, who had excused himself for a few minutes before lunch in order to telephone.

At the end of the month the Press, somewhat grudgingly, complied with the request to reprint the photograph of the model and the police appeal. They helped its newsvalue and at the same time got their own back by writing up the absurdity of such a cottage being untraceable. The comic artists were allowed free play. There was a rather unkind picture of a cow goggling at a model of Scotland Yard on an outstretched palm.

In short, Karslake was unable to advance in any direction. At the end of April the case was allowed to drift into the Department of Dead Ends.

By its very nature it was impossible for the Department to originate any investigation. Cases sent there were, in effect, put into cold storage against the chance of some other case accidentally criss-crossing, the chance of some unrelated circumstance happening to throw a sidelight.

A day or so after the statuette of Henshawk, the model under its glass dome, and the empty picture frame had been sent to Detective Inspector Rason, Karslake made a perfunctory inquiry and received a somewhat voluble answer.

“Well, sir, since you ask me, I think that, instead of looking for the cottage, we ought to have looked for that cow.”

It was a dangerous moment, for there had been a comic picture in the Daily Record rather in that sense.

“I mean, I think there’s something funny about this case — something psychological, if you understand me.”

“I don’t,” said Karslake.

“There’s that remark in the girl’s statement about what he calls ‘that damned cow.’ Why was it a ‘damned’ cow? And why should it spoil the whole thing? A cow is just what you’d look for in those surroundings. You’d miss it if it wasn’t there. Now, suppose that man had been frightened by a cow when he was very little — too young to remember? All his life, though he doesn’t know why—”

“Now look here, Rason, if you talk to the Press with a tale of a man frightened of cows, there’ll be trouble good and hot, and all of it for you.”

“I was thinking of the mental hospitals—”

“So was I — only I don’t mean what you mean. It’s facts we want, Rason. And if you’re lucky enough to find any, then we’ll fix ’em up with a theory.”

Lucky enough! Rason’s past successes in linking apparently unconnected events, in perceiving method in that which seemed blind chance, had never earned him a pat on the back for anything but his “luck.” Even when he found Harold Ledlaw, Karslake ungenerously asserted that success was thrown into his lap solely because he chanced to go to a particular picture theatre on a particular night with his sister-in-law.

He had invited his niece, whom he regarded, since his brother’s death, as an honorary daughter; but her mother had come instead.

They had arrived too early and were afflicted with a “short,” advertising a breakfast food, in which a spirit voice whispered to a young wife that her husband could not do a hard day’s work on just tea or coffee. What, therefore, should she put in his cup, held in a slender bejeweled hand? Trick photography then showed a huge cow galloping into the picture and leaping into the breakfast cup.

“Sorry, Meg,” said Rason. “I’ve got to go.”

“Why, George, what is it?”

“That damned cow!” chuckled Rason, and left her.

That was not luck, in Karslake’s sense. The whole of Scotland Yard might have seen that film without learning anything from its apparent irrelevance. But it was lucky that Ledlaw happened to be at Whiddon Cottage when Rason took Karslake there — though they would have caught him just the same if he had been elsewhere.

The day after his visit to Whiddon, Ledlaw had met his daughter. They had met as strangers and had approved of each other. When a month had gone by and the chances of his escape now seemed overwhelming, Mrs. Ledlaw consented to another meeting.

After the failure of the second Press campaign, Ledlaw was convinced that the trail was utterly lost, and Mrs. Ledlaw concurred. He reasoned that, if the police ever succeeded in finding the cottage, they would inevitably reach him through Mrs. Ledlaw. Therefore he risked nothing by taking his daughter home — which he did one evening in June. The efficient domesticity he witnessed awakened dormant longings.

“I have been thinking, Ruth,” he said at the end of June, “that if anything were to happen — not that we need fear it now — but if it were to happen, you would be in a dangerous position for having shielded me. You would certainly go to prison. But if we were married, you could successfully plead that you acted under my domination — absurd, my dear, though it may sound.”

On the understanding that it was to be a marriage of companionship only and on the further understanding that he would take steps to pursue his profession of engineering, Mrs. Ledlaw re-married him on July 11th.

By this time he had long lost all sense of peril. Indeed his crime, when he thought of it, seemed no more than a bad dream, of which the details were already blurred.

In August there was a strike at the engineering works, leaving nothing for the supervising engineer to do. So Ledlaw was pottering in the garden when the car containing the detectives arrived towards the end of the morning. Mrs. Ledlaw, hearing the car, came out of the cottage.

Rason, carrying a largish bag, was in nominal charge. As they got out of the car, Karslake muttered: “It’s not the place. It’s not a bit like it, except for the cottage itself. It’s no different from sixty others.”

“Mr. Ledlaw?” asked Rason, having learned the name at the local police station. “We are from Scotland Yard. I believe you knew Albert Henshawk?”

“The fellow who was murdered? We wondered.” He turned to his wife. “This is Mrs. Ledlaw. We knew an Albert Henshawk slightly some twenty years ago. But we lost touch. Anyhow, what did you want to ask us about him?”

“I want to know when you last saw Albert Henshawk, Mr. Ledlaw.”

“But you aren’t connecting my husband with the murder?” boomed Mrs. Ledlaw, “because we live in a seventeenth century cottage. The local sergeant told me he had reported this cottage at the time, and it was inspected by a Scotland Yard man.”

“It isn’t very like the one in the picture, you know,” said Ledlaw tolerantly. “True, there are somewhat similar oaks. But there—” he waved his hand at the half-mile of hillside sloping down to the Thames.

Karslake maintained a glum silence, wondering how they would explain Rason’s ineptitude. Rason opened his bag, took out the original model of the cottage, and laid it on the ground.

“I admit it’s not a bit like it,” he said.

Ledlaw smiled, while Karslake looked glummer than ever. Rason continued:

“But that is because — that darned cow spoils the whole thing, Mr. Ledlaw.”

Ledlaw’s face was expressionless.

“I can’t follow that,” said Mrs. Ledlaw.

“Funny thing, Mrs. Ledlaw. I went to the pictures last night. Saw a film where a whopping big cow appears to jump into a tea cup. Clever bit of photography — messing about with perspective. Made me think of this cow. So I thought — well, look here!”

The last was addressed mainly to Karslake. As Rason spoke, he plucked the figure of the cow from the model.

“Good Lord!” muttered Karslake, gaping from the model to the landscape and back again at the model.

With the removal of the cow, the meadow had vanished! It became, in fact, a half-mile of sloping hillside, while the “brook” was instantly recognizable as the Thames, half a mile away in the valley below.

“No deception in this trick, ladies and gentlemen!” chirped Rason, and fitted the peg back into its socket — thus restoring the meadow, with a brook from which a cow was drinking.

“It’s messing about with perspective. Got the idea from that cow jumping into the tea cup.” he told them all over again. “That’s what you meant when you told Henshawk the damned cow spoiled the whole thing, wasn’t it, Mr. Ledlaw! I suppose you can account for your movements on the evening of February 16th?”

“I can, if he can’t,” said Mrs. Ledlaw. “He was here. I remember the date, because he was asking me to marry him.”

“Last February, madam!” cut in Karslake. “We are informed that you have a grown-up daughter. And that she’s known as ‘Miss Ledlaw’.”

“Yes, but it’s all quite simple, really,” said Mrs. Ledlaw. “You see, we were divorced some years ago. And then we thought better of it — you look as if you didn’t believe me.”

“It’s of no great importance at the moment, Mrs. Ledlaw—”

“It is of great importance to me,” retorted Mrs. Ledlaw. “I insist on your inspecting my marriage certificate. I will not keep you more than a couple of minutes.”

When she had gone, Karslake spoke to Ledlaw.

“If you deny that you saw Henshawk that day, Mr. Ledlaw, are you willing to come back with us to London and let us see if Henshawk’s secretary and the porter recognize you?”

“Certainly not. You’ve no case against me. You can darned well bring them down here, if you’re so keen to waste your time.”

Mrs. Ledlaw was coming from the house carrying his dispatch case, which had become hers.

With horror he suddenly remembered.

“The certificate is not in there, dear. I took it out last week. Don’t you remember, Ruth?”

“Oh, of course! How stupid of me!”

But there had been altogether too much anxiety in Ledlaw’s voice. Karslake strode forward.

“I’ll have that opened, please, Mrs. Ledlaw!”

“Oh, very well, if you wish!” Mrs. Ledlaw did not know why her husband had shouted that nonsense about removing the certificate. It surely couldn’t matter much when they re-married.

Inside the case were: a packet of Mrs. Ledlaw’s letters, a photograph album, a rare edition of Canterbury Tales, the marriage certificate, a few other oddments and — Henshawk’s drawing of the cottage, loosely wrapped in tissue paper.

About the Story: The first Department of Dead Ends story was Roy Vickers’s “The Rubber Trumpet.” The moment we finished that tale of The Merry Widower we realized that we had just completed a rare experience — we had read a contemporary classic in the field of the detective short story. Immediately we set about purchasing the story for EQMM, and with it all the other Department of Dead Ends stories written up to that time — a half-dozen or so; further, we urged the author’s American literary agent to persuade Mr. Vickers to continue the series by writing originals especially for EQMM — we were that certain from the very beginning that readers of EQMM would find the Department of Dead Ends one of the most fascinating criminological bureaus in all the annals of detection and the stories themselves one of the most satisfying crime series in modem fiction.

We were not wrong: constant readers of EQMM have testified to that. Like present-day Oliver Twists they keep asking for more.

A short time after we published “The Rubber Trumpet” we received professional confirmation of our critical opinion. One day we traveled to Morningside Heights with Herbert Mayes, the remarkably perceptive editor of “Good Housekeeping,” to serve as one of his panel of “guest experts” in the post-graduate course in Journalism at Columbia University. Sitting next to us on the platform was Carl Van Doren, the famous author, critic, biographer, and Pulitzer Prize winner. At the end of the class the “lecturers” tarried long enough to talk shop. Imagine our delight when Mr. Van Doren complimented us on having published “The Rubber Trumpet”! He was so impressed by the story that he considered it one of the finest detective shorts he had ever read. Mr. Mayes was piqued by Mr. Van Doren’s enthusiasm and asked to be let in on a good thing. The very next day we sent a copy of EQMM containing “The Rubber Trumpet” to Mr. Mayes by special messenger and subsequently Mr. Mayes added his editorial accolade. Indeed, in the three and a half years since “The Rubber Trumpet” originally appeared in EQMM, we have heard nothing but extravagant praise for that first tale of the Department of Dead Ends. Such connoisseurs as Christopher Morley, Vincent Starrett, Anthony Boucher, Howard Haycraft, James Sandoe, Charles Honce, E. A. Osborne, and other true aficionados, have written or spoken to your Editor, unanimously selecting that great story for the Honor Roll Award.

Well, the Department of Dead Ends series has grown mightily since the publication of “The Rubber Trumpet.” No less than a dozen D.D.E. stories have appeared in EQMM up to the time of this writing. Naturally, the level of quality has varied from story to story — no writer can produce a masterpiece every time he sits in front of his typewriter. Some of the later tales — like “The Man Who Murdered in Public” and “The Case of the Merry Andrew” — are four-star accomplishments; but while it can be said in absolute truth that Mr. Vickers has never written an indifferent Department of Dead Ends tale, no story that followed “The Rubber Trumpet” ever quite equaled that first major triumph.

Then, for EQMM’s Second Annual Contest, Mr. Vickers submitted another D.D.E. story — “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder.” Perhaps this new story also falls short of “The Rubber Trumpet”; but if it does, it falls short by the narrowest of margins. In your Editor’s opinion “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder” is the closest Mr. Vickers has yet come to performing a literary miracle — making lethal lightning strike twice in the same place. Like all the other stories in the series, “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder” projects a kind of realism unmatched in its field. That realism, however, is not drab or prosaic. It is shot through with the credible fantasy which occurs repeatedly in real life — that peculiar touch of the unreal which somehow stamps all works of genuine imagination with the very trademark °f reality. You know what we mean — you’ve read the story...