Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Douglas Shea Advice, Unlimited

Mr. Gihon Gore

℅ Chutney & Chives, Inc., Publishers

New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Gore:

Although your mystery stories have not been exactly unheard of by me, last week was the first occasion I had to pick one up and read it. I am speaking of Brent’s First Case. Generally speaking I found the book adequate but there were two errors in Chapter 21. You speak of the killer African bees navigating to the bedroom of elderly pig-iron heiress Harriet Heald (a) by polarized light from the sky and (b) by being attracted to the interior of the bedroom by the phlox-scented room-freshener spray used by Miss Heald. I’ll take the easy one first.

Bees are never attracted to phlox, Mr. Gore. Their tongues are too short to reach the nectar deeply buried within the flowers. The bees know this and you might say that they wouldn’t even stick out their tongues (ha, ha) at phlox scent. Try cyclamen scent. Your bees will go bananas over that one.

Now about that polarized light bit. It is true that bees do navigate by polarized light from the sky but never (I repeat, never) on cloudy days. You have to have blue sky in order to detect polarized light at certain angles to the sun. Cloud particles destroy the effect by scattering the light.

What to do?

The cloudy day seems necessary in order to give Miss Heald her attack of sinus migraine, an attack which brings old Dr. Physick tottering to her bedside so that they can be killed by bee venom together. On the other hand, if the sun isn’t shining, forget the polarized light.

Thinking the matter through, I believe that skilled replotting of Chapters 21, 22, 23, and 24 might turn the trick. You might want to consider this in your next edition of Brent’s First Case.

                        Very truly yours.

                        George Ohm

                        Associate Professor of Science

                        Dimwiddie University

                        Glen Cove, L.I., N.Y.

From: Quentin Quarles, Editor

Chutney & Chives, Inc., Publishers

New York, N.Y.

As Mr. Gore now receives several thousand items of mail a year, it is not possible for him to answer you personally. Hence this form letter designed to answer 95 % of the questions he is asked.

His home address is Waldorf Towers, New York, N.Y.; his London office ℅ Cratchit and Marley, Solicitors. 54 Dewlap Road, London N22. 4PP.

Biographical details will be found in Who’s Who, Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Novelists. Dictionary of International Biography, Celebrity Register, Britannica 3. See also profile in Time of September 12, 1972.

Mr. Gore has now written 37 books. See above references, or the list in any recent edition.

Permission to quote should be directed to Chutney & Chives, Inc.

Mr. Gore never supplies photos or autographs. Also he cannot autograph and mail back books.

Lecture requests are no longer accepted. Nor can questions be answered about how to plot good mystery stories. The only advice he can give to beginners is this: Read, read, read. Read at least one book a day. Also write, write, write. And remember one thing about getting fresh ideas; there is no substitute for living. As Ernest Hemingway said, “Writing is not a full-time occupation.”

Mr. Quentin Quarles, Editor

Chutney & Chives, Inc.. Publishers

New York, N.Y.

Dear Quentin, Quentin, Quentin:

I return your form letter herewith, having studied it carefully. I took your advice, Quentin: you told me to read, read, read, and to write, write, write.

Please refer to page 209 of The Case of the Undertaker’s Hat. See where Gore sends the hemophiliac crashing through a thin sheet of invisible glass blocking the garden path? Another no-no, Quentin. Fact is, there’s no such thing as “invisible” glass. Gore means nonreflective glass, sometimes called invisible glass by tyros. Such glasses have the light that they would reflect at normal incidence almost completely suppressed by interference.

But the condition for said destructive interference can be fulfilled for only one wave length. This is usually chosen to be near the middle of the visible spectrum. The reflection of red and violet light is then somewhat larger and these two colors combine to form purple.

Take a look at a coated lens in a camera. See the purplish hue? A sheet of glass that color across anybody’s path would stand out like your cars, ears, cars, old friend. No matter what wave length you try to suppress, others will be reflected. And that’s the name of the game. That seems to knock out Chapters 11 and 12, also pages 209 through 218, also Chapters 23, 24, and 25. I don’t know how you fix up that mess. Sorry about that.

                               George Ohm

Mr. Quentin Quarles, Editor

Chutney & Chives, Inc., Publishers

New York, N.Y.

Dear Quentin:

Where are you: I miss those little inspirational words of yours.

Incidentally, I found some more boo-boos — in The Slim Man. Say please and I’ll tell you what they are. Pretty please, Quentin?

                               George Ohm

Memo: From the suite of Gihon Gore

To: George Ohm

Get lost.

                               Gihon Gore

GG: Louise L’Erotique

cc: Quentin Quarles

Memo: From George Ohm

To: Gihon Gore

I have your little note. Gore, you need help and I’m here to give it to you. Let’s begin with The Slim Man.

In one scene you have The Slim Man, astronomer Herschel Skyanier, look through the eyepiece of the Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain while the tube of the instrument is lowered for routine inspection. If I read you correctly, and I believe I do, Skyanier thereby witnesses a murder being committed five miles down the mountain slope. Gore, there’s so much wrong with that that I hardly know where to begin — but I’ll try.

In the first place, you can’t even deflect the tube of a modern astronomical telescope to the horizon, let alone point it down a mountain slope. Take a look at a picture of any observatory anywhere in the world, Gore. Notice the position of the slit in the dome. In the case of the Hale Telescope of which you write, the floor on which the mountain of the instrument rests is 75 feet below the level of the slit. What I’m saying is that with one of these big babies you can only look up at the sky — never down.

And another thing: the field of view of any large telescope is so small that even if you could look at a murderer five miles away about all you’d see would be a nose or an eyebrow. Finally, Gore, the image would be inverted. You see, they don’t bother with erecting eyepieces on astronomical telescopes. It’s an absolutely unnecessary refinement. Ask yourself the question: what’s up, what’s down in the case of the heavenly bodies? and you’ll have the answer why.

You slipped up badly in The Slim Man, Gore. Tonight I’m going to rifle through The Affair at Byles to see if I can be of use to you there. Don’t lose heart.

Yours for Science,

                               George Ohm

Mr. Gihon Gore

Waldorf Towers

New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Gore:

You have scarcely had time to digest the information I sent you re The Slim Man, but I wanted you to know that I have finished The Affair at Byles and I think we are in real trouble this time.

As you tell it, Thedabara Gam, spoiled, filthy-rich heiress to the Gam millions, is giving a lawn party at Byles, her family estate, for a small gathering of 200 persons come to honor her engagement to Herman Opdyke, polo-playing scion of her father’s business associate. Meanwhile, unbeknown to all, Shamus McGillicuddy, Miss Gam’s jilted ex-suitor, just back from the Amazon, has secreted himself in the third cook’s tent, murder burning in his black heart.

At an opportune moment McGillicuddy sticks the tip of an Orinoco blowgun through the tent fly and lets Opdyke have it full in the chest with a curare-dipped dart. In the resulting confusion he thereupon escapes through the back of the tent, disguised as an attendant bearing a tray of petits fours, ladyfingers, and strawberry preserves.

Oh, this is dreadful! How shall I begin?

Item Number One. Curare is a highly unreliable poison, its toxicity varying greatly with its source and method of preparation. See The Merck Index or any of the several pharmacopoeias. More than that, curare isn’t nearly strong enough or quick-acting enough. I myself would prefer to use sodium cyanide. Sodium cyanide is freely soluble in water. It can also be readily obtained since it is widely used in extracting gold and silver ores, in electroplating baths, in fumigating citrus and other fruit trees, and in disinfecting ships, railroad cars, warehouses, etc. Only four to eight grams of this chemical would prove lethal to a horse.

Dissolve a thimbleful of the crystals in a tablespoonful of water when your murderer is ready to go and you’ve got it made. Have him carry the solution to the scene of the crime in a small plastic-capped vial. The victim who receives a shot of this will die in seconds.

Item Number Two. The blowgun. Do you have any idea how long an Orinoco Indian blowgun is? Well, it would reach from the ground almost to a man’s armpit. Try sawing it off to a more practical length and you destroy its accuracy. How did McGillicuddy carry that monstrosity to Byles? — tucked down his pants’ leg and up his shirt? Really, Gore, you’d have a veritable stiff before you ever got to the murder. May I suggest replacing the blowgun with a tranquilizing gun and a tranquilizing dart? It seems so obvious to me.

Yours for Science,

                               George Ohm

Look, Ohm:

I’ve had you pegged for some time. You’re a medical school dropout with a useless smattering of sixth-grade science. You have such a gnawing sense of inferiority that it gives you a compulsion to pester famous people with your paranoid prattle. If Einstein were living, I’ll swear you would be deluging him with a onesided tirade about his mistakes in the theory of relativity. Now don’t bother me any further with your puerile disquisitions, Ohm.

Be sure you hang onto my letters, though. The autographs may bring you a buck or two when you come to a decrepit old age.

                               Gihon Gore

GG: Louise L’Erotique

Dear Mr. Gore:

“Puerile disquisitions,” eh? Hoity-toity now!

As for saving your letters, be informed that I use them for a very special purpose. I do find that 20-pound bond paper a little abrasive, though. How much would you want to switch to a 9-pound weight?

Well, Gore, I’ve prayed with you and I’ve wrestled in spirit with you and I finally see that I’ve wasted my time. En garde now, Gore!

I see you don’t know about my fall and winter Saturday night lectures on popular science. Yes, pompous one, I circulate up and down a good part of the Atlantic seaboard, stopping off at many of the smaller colleges where I have an invitation to speak. I kick off this season’s series this coming Saturday night right here in Peter Piper Hall at good old Dimwiddie.

Guess what this season’s topic is, Gore? “Scientific Boo-boos in the Works of a Famous Mysterymonger.” Do you like the title? Well, guess who I’m going to talk about?

Do you know how popular you are on college campuses, Gore? — almost as popular as Tolkien with his Hobbit stories. Think of the rage and disgust of all those students when the word starts to pass that their idol has typewriter keys of clay.

I’ll bury you, buster!

Yours for Science.

                               George Ohm

INTERIM REPORT

From: Seymour Kravitz, Detective

To Inspector Attila Hund, Homicide

(on cassette tape)

I arrived at Peter Piper Hall, Dimwiddie University, at 8:52 P.M. approximately 25 minutes after the commission of the crime. The body of the victim, George Ohm, white, 34, had not been touched, being still in place on the platform where it had fallen. Death was due to a hypodermic dart which still protruded from the upper left quadrant of the victim’s chest. The Medical Examiner reports that the dart, of the type used to tranquilize animal subjects, had been filled with a concentrated aqueous solution of either potassium or sodium cyanide. (Details later on receipt of report of analysis from Departmental chemist.)

A quick-witted student, Gary Cooper Rabinowitz, white, 21, had taken temporary charge pending my arrival and no one had left the theater.

“A Chinese detective with a Jewish name!” exclaimed Gary when I introduced myself. “Welcome, landsman!”

“Yes. And you should be a good Jewish boy and help me further so that we may find the murderer and give him such a hurt that he will pray for the death of ten thousand tickling nightingales’ tongues.”

My words seemed to strike a responsive chord in Gary who I later learned is an exchange student from Sweden.

There were 47 persons in the theater — 36 students and 11 senior citizens who excitedly explained to me that they were receiving Social Security benefits and didn’t want any further trouble with the government. All 47 persons were eventually released.

The theater is a small one, seating approximately 300 persons. The front platform on which Ohm was standing is elevated about three feet above floor level. Entry to the theater is gained by means of two sets of double doors, right and left, leading in from a spacious corridor. Between the two entrances is a single door leading to a projection booth. As seen from within the theater, the projection booth is a mat-black boxlike structure closed on three sides except for the usual small projection ports which in this case are about eight feet above theater floor level.

An important witness was Willie Crumble, black, 21, who was sitting in the center of the theater two rows from the back and just under the line of sight from the projection ports. Willie was anxiously awaiting the arrival of his girl friend and kept turning and glancing toward first one entrance, then the other. Willie is prepared to swear that no one entered or left the theater after Professor Ohm — Associate Professor of Science at the institution — began to speak.

Only about a half dozen sentences of Ohm’s lecture were delivered when the tragedy occurred. No one knows the import of the lecture except that it had to do with technical or scientific mistakes in the writing of mystery fiction. No notes were found, either on the platform or in Ohm’s bachelor apartment.

According to a majority of witnesses, Ohm had just uttered the partial sentence, “And so tonight I want to tell you about—” when there was a very faint throop sound whose point of origin in the theater could not be determined. Ohm fell backward, flung his arms wide, and emitted a single unintelligible guttural groan that sounded like Gorrr-r-r!

And that was it. He died immediately alter.

Ohm seems to have been a man of catholic tastes. On the night stand beside his bed were three paperbacks by Mickey Spillane; in the library-study the complete set of Beilstein’s Organischen Chemie. Over the desk hung framed pictures of Olga Korbut and Thomas A. Edison. He evidently had no enemies, according to the consensus of all students interviewed.

You know my methods, Inspector. I was able to deduce that the lethal dart had come from one of the two projection ports and such indeed proved to be the case. The booth door in the corridor was secured, but I was easily able to open it with a picklock. Inside I found a dart gun on the floor just under the right port. Against it was propped a 3-by-5-inch unlined white index card bearing the legend in block letters: STOLEN FROM THE NASSAU COUNTY SPCA. PLEASE RINSE THOROUGHLY AND RETURN.

According to our handwriting expert the card was lettered by a right-handed person using his left hand. No fingerprints were found anywhere except for some smudged repetitions on the cylindrical sides of the projection lenses, obviously accumulated there by the projectionist. There was a faint fragrance of Brut cologne pervading the air.

There was a curious circular smudge on the end of the dart gun barrel and I was almost immediately able to deduce what it was. The gun was used with an appurtenance which had been tossed or had rolled into one corner. It is probably the first time in history that a tranquilizer gun was used with a silencer.

Inspector, there is really nothing by which to get hold of this case. The Saturday night cultural events at the University are largely informal affairs, no admission being charged, and it is this very informality that allowed the murderer to come and go as he chose.

The homicide itself has the simple line that marks the hand of a master. Hsi Tz’u Chuan says that what is easy is easy to know; what is simple is easy to follow. One part of me wants to believe this — to keep delving and triumph — but another part remembers what the Talmud says: Much talk, much foolishness.

Inspector Hund, I reluctantly have to report to you that at last we seem to have stumbled on The Perfect Crime.