The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

This story and the next three are a little group of early impossible crime stories to give a flavour of the past. In fact this story is one of the very earliest, the second only after Poe’s“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, to feature an amateur detective seeking to solve a locked-room murder. The story is a self-contained episode in the rather rambling novel Out of His Head (1862). Thomas Bailey Aldrich(1836-1907)was an American poet, author and editor – he edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1881 to 1890. He wrote a number of stylish and idiosyncratic novels and stories of which the most popular in his day was“Marjorie Daw”(1873)about a man who falls in love with a girl he later discovers never existed. In The Stillwater Tragedy (1880),Aldrich introduced a private detective some years before Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Although the following is the oldest story in this anthology, it remains remarkably fresh today, a testament to Aldrich’s skills and inventiveness.

I

I am about to lift the veil of mystery which, for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not shrink from the unveiling.

No hand but mine can now perform the task. There was, indeed, a man who might have done this better than I. But he went his way in silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.

On the corner of Clarke and Crandall Streets, in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house. It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy look, though once it must have been a blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful, according to their experience. The very air of some front-doors tells their history.

This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable number of Irish families, while a picturesque junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at the time of which I write, it was a second-rate boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and rather largely patronized by poor, but honest, literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus, and such like gilt people.

My apartments on Crandall Street were opposite this building, to which my attention was directed soon after taking possession of the rooms, by the discovery of the following facts:

First, that a charming lady lodged on the second-floor front, and sang like a canary every morning.

Second, that her name was Mary Ware

Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and had two lovers – only two.

Mary Ware was the leading lady at The Olympic. Night after night found me in the parquette. I can think of nothing with which to compare the airiness and utter abandon of her dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She was one of beauty’s best thoughts, then. Her glossy gold hair reached down to her waist, shading one of those mobile faces which remind you of Guido’s picture of Beatrix Cenci – there was something so fresh and enchanting in the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking out winningly from under their drooping fringes, were at once the delight and misery of young men.

Ah! you were distracting in your nights of triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets made the pulses leap; but I remember when you lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank day-light, with the glory faded from your brow, and “none so poor as to do you reverence.”

Then I stooped down and kissed you – but not till then.

Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of them was commonplace enough – well-made, well-dressed, shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets out of patience with her best works, throws off such things by the gross, instead of swearing. He was a lieutenant, in the Navy I think. The gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.

The other was a man of different mould, and interested me in a manner for which I could not then account. The first time I saw him did not seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an after-impression.

Every line of his countenance denoted character; a certain capability, I mean, but whether for good or evil was not so plain. I should have called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving him a sardonic expression when he smiled.

His frame might have set an anatomist wild with delight – six feet two, deep-chested, knitted with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to amble on plush carpets.

“Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant out of that second-story window.”

I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two men Mary Ware loved most – for I think she loved them both. A woman’s heart was the insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.

The flirtation, however, was food enough for the whole neighbourhood. But faintly did the gossips dream of the strange drama that was being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of Sophocles, under their noses.

They were very industrious in tearing Mary Ware’s good name to pieces. Some laughed at the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth; but they all amiably united in condemning Mary Ware.

This state of affairs had continued for five or six months, when it was reported that Julius Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall Street, and Julius waited upon Mary’s footsteps with the fidelity of a shadow.

Yet – though Mary went to the Sunday concerts with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the Lieutenant’s roses in her bosom.

II

One drizzly November morning – how well I remember it! – I was awakened by a series of nervous raps on my bed-room door. The noise startled me from an unpleasant dream.

“O, sir!” cried the chambermaid on the landing. “There’s been a dreadful time across the street. They’ve gone and killed Mary Ware!”

“Ah!”

That was all I could say. Cold drops of perspiration stood on my forehead.

I looked at my watch; it was eleven o’clock; I had over-slept myself, having sat up late the previous night.

I dressed hastily, and, without waiting for breakfast, pushed my way through the murky crowd that had collected in front of the house opposite, and passed up stairs, unquestioned.

When I entered the room, there were six people present: a thick-set gentleman, in black, with a bland professional air, a physician; two policemen; Adelaide Woods, an actress; Mrs Marston, the landlady; and Julius Kenneth.

In the centre of the chamber, on the bed, lay the body of Mary Ware – as pale as Seneca’s wife.

I shall never forget it. The corpse haunted me for years afterwards, the dark streaks under the eyes, and the wavy hair streaming over the pillow – the dead gold hair. I stood by her for a moment, and turned down the counterpane, which was drawn up closely to the chin.

“There was that across her throat

Which you had hardly cared to see.”

At the head of the bed sat Julius Kenneth, bending over the icy hand which he held in his own. He was kissing it.

The gentleman in black was conversing in undertones with Mrs Marston, who every now and then glanced furtively toward Mary Ware.

The two policemen were examining the doors, closets and windows of the apartment with, obviously, little success.

There was no fire in the air-tight stove, but the place was suffocatingly close. I opened a window, and leaned against the casement to get a breath of fresh air.

The physician approached me. I muttered something to him indistinctly, for I was partly sick with the peculiar mouldy smell that pervaded the room.

“Yes,” he began, scrutinizing me, “the affair looks very perplexing, as you remark. Professional man, sir? No? Bless me! – beg pardon. Never in my life saw anything that looked so exceedingly like nothing. Thought, at first, ’twas a clear case of suicide – door locked, key on the inside, place undisturbed; but then we find no instrument with which the subject could have inflicted that wound on the neck. Queer. Party must have escaped up chimney. But how? Don’t know. The windows are at least thirty feet from the ground. It would be impossible for a person to jump that far, even if he could clear the iron railing below. Which he couldn’t. Disagreeable things to jump on, those spikes, sir. Must have been done with a sharp knife. Queer, very. Party meant to make sure work of it. The carotid neatly severed, upon my word.”

The medical gentleman went on in this monologuic style for fifteen minutes, during which time Kenneth did not raise his lips from Mary’s fingers.

Approaching the bed, I spoke to him; but he only shook his head in reply.

I understood his grief.

After regaining my chamber, I sat listlessly for three or four hours, gazing into the grate. The twilight flitted in from the street; but I did not heed it. A face among the coals fascinated me. It came and went and came. Now I saw a cavern hung with lurid stalactites; now a small Vesuvius vomiting smoke and flame; now a bridge spanning some tartarean gulf; then these crumbled, each in its turn, and from out the heated fragments peered the one inevitable face.

The Evening Mirror, of that day, gave the following detailed report of the inquest:

“This morning, at eight o’clock, Mary Ware, the celebrated danseuse, was found dead in her chamber, at her late residence on the corner of Clarke and Crandall Streets. The perfect order of the room, and the fact that the door was locked on the inside, have induced many to believe that the poor girl was the victim of her own rashness. But we cannot think so. That the door was fastened on the inner side, proves nothing except, indeed, that the murderer was hidden in the apartment. That the room gave no evidence of a struggle having taken place, is also an insignificant point. Two men, or even one, grappling suddenly with the deceased, who was a slight woman, would have prevented any great resistance. The deceased was dressed in a ballet-costume, and was, as we conjecture, murdered directly after her return from the theatre. On a chair near the bed, lay several fresh bouquets, and a water-proof cloak which she was in the habit of wearing over her dancing-dress, on coming home from the theatre at night. No weapon whatever was found on the premises. We give below all the material testimony elicited by the coroner. It explains little.

“Josephine Marston deposes: I keep a boarding house at No. 131 Crandall Street. Miss Ware has boarded with me for the past two years. Has always borne a good character as far as I know. I do not think she had many visitors; certainly no male visitors, excepting a Lieutenant King, and Mr Kenneth to whom she was engaged. I do not know when King was last at the house; not within three days. I am confident. Deceased told me that he had gone away. I did not see her last night when she came home. The hall-door is never locked; each of the boarders has a latchkey. The last time I saw Miss Ware was just before she went to the theatre, when she asked me to call her at eight o’clock (this morning) as she had promised to walk with ‘Jules,’ meaning Mr Kenneth. I knocked at the door nine or ten times, but received no answer. Then I grew frightened and called one of the lady boarders, Miss Woods, who helped me to force the lock. The key fell on the floor inside as we pushed against the door. Mary Ware was lying on the bed, dressed. Some matches were scattered under the gas-burner by the bureau. The room presented the same appearance it does now.

“Adelaide Woods deposes: I am an actress by profession. I occupy the room next to that of the deceased. Have known her twelve months. It was half-past eleven when she came home; she stopped in my chamber for perhaps three-quarters of an hour. The call-boy of The Olympic usually accompanies her home from the theatre when she is alone. I let her in. Deceased had misplaced her night-key. The partition between our rooms is of brick; but I do not sleep soundly, and should have heard any unusual noise. Two weeks ago, Miss Ware told me she was to be married to Mr Kenneth in January next. The last time I saw them together was the day before yesterday. I assisted Mrs Marston in breaking open the door. (Describes the position of the body, etc., etc.)

“Here the call-boy was summoned, and testified to accompanying the deceased home the night before. He came as far as the steps with her. The door was opened by a woman; could not swear it was Miss Woods, though he knows her by sight. The night was dark, and there was no lamp burning in the entry.

“Julius Kenneth deposes: I am a master-machinist. Reside at No.-Forsythe street. Miss Ware was my cousin. We were engaged to be married next-(Here the witness’ voice failed him.) The last time I saw her was on Wednesday morning, on which occasion we walked out together. I did not leave my room last evening: was confined by a severe cold. A Lieutenant King used to visit my cousin frequently: it created considerable talk in the neighbourhood: I did not like it, and requested her to break the acquaintance. She informed me, Wednesday, that King had been ordered to some foreign station, and would trouble me no more. Was excited at the time, hinted at being tired of living; then laughed, and was gayer than she had been for weeks. Deceased was subject to fits of depression. She had engaged to walk with me this morning at eight. When I reached Clark Street I learned that she-(Here the witness, overcome by emotion, was allowed to retire.)

“Dr Wren deposes: (This gentleman was very learned and voluble, and had to be suppressed several times by the coroner. We furnish a brief synopsis of his testimony.) I was called in to view the body of the deceased. A deep incision on the throat, two inches below the left ear, severing the left common carotid and the internal jugular vein, had been inflicted with some sharp instrument. Such a wound would, in my opinion, produce death almost instantaneously. The body bore no other signs of violence. A slight mark, almost indistinguishable, in fact, extended from the upper lip toward the right nostril – some hurt, I suppose, received in infancy. Deceased must have been dead a number of hours, the rigor mortis having already supervened, etc., etc.

“Dr Ceccarini corroborated the above testimony.

“The night-watchman and seven other persons were then placed on the stand; but their statements threw no fresh light on the case.

“The situation of Julius Kenneth, the lover of the ill-fated girl, draws forth the deepest commiseration. Miss Ware was twenty-four years of age.

“Who the criminal is, and what could have led to the perpetration of the cruel act, are questions which, at present, threaten to baffle the sagacity of the police. If such deeds can be committed with impunity in a crowded city, like this, who is safe from the assassin’s steel?”

III

I could but smile on reading all this serious nonsense.

After breakfast, the next morning, I made my toilet with extreme care, and presented myself at the sheriff’s office.

Two gentlemen who were sitting at a table, busy with papers, started nervously to their feet, as I announced myself. I bowed very calmly to the sheriff, and said, “I am the person who murdered Mary Ware!”

Of course I was instantly arrested; and that evening, in jail, I had the equivocal pleasure of reading these paragraphs among the police items of the Mirror:

“The individual who murdered the ballet-girl, in the night of the third inst., in a house on Crandall Street, surrendered himself to the sheriff this forenoon.

“He gave his name as Paul Lynde, and resides opposite the place where the tragedy was enacted. He is a man of medium stature, has restless grey eyes, chestnut hair, and a supernaturally pale countenance. He seems a person of excellent address, is said to be wealthy, and nearly connected with an influential New England family. Notwithstanding his gentlemanly manner, there is that about him which would lead one to select him from out a thousand, as a man of cool and desperate character.

“My Lynde’s voluntary surrender is not the least astonishing feature of this affair; for, had he preserved silence he would, beyond a doubt, have escaped even suspicion. The murder was planned and executed with such deliberate skill, that there is little or no evidence to complicate him. In truth, there is no evidence against him, excepting his own confession, which is meagre and confusing enough. He freely acknowledges the crime, but stubbornly refuses to enter into any details. He expresses a desire to be hanged immediately!

“How Mr Lynde entered the chamber, and by what means he left it, after committing the deed, and why he cruelly killed a lady with whom he had had (as we gather from the testimony) no previous acquaintance – are enigmas which still perplex the public mind, and will not let curiosity sleep. These facts, however, will probably be brought to light during the impending trial. In the meantime, we await the dénouement with interest.”

IV

On the afternoon following this disclosure, the door of my cell turned on its hinges, and Julius Kenneth entered.

In his presence I ought to have trembled; but I was calm and collected. He, feverish and dangerous.

“You received my note?”

“Yes; and have come here, as you requested.” I waved him to a chair, which he refused to take. Stood leaning on the back of it.

“You of course know, Mr Kenneth, that I have refused to reveal the circumstances connected with the death of Mary Ware? I wished to make the confession to you alone.”

He regarded me for a moment from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

“Well?”

“But even to you I will assign no reason for the course I pursued. It was necessary that Mary Ware should die.”

“Well?”

“I decided that she should die in her chamber, and to that end I purloined her night-key.”

Julius Kenneth looked through and through me, as I spoke.

“On Friday night after she had gone to the theatre, I entered the hall-door by means of the key, and stole unobserved to her room, where I secreted myself under the bed, or in that small clothes-press near the stove – I forget which. Sometime between eleven and twelve o’clock, Mary Ware returned. While she was in the act of lighting the gas, I pressed a handkerchief, saturated with chloroform, over her mouth. You know the effect of chloroform? I will, at this point spare you further detail, merely remarking that I threw my gloves and the handkerchief in the stove; but I’m afraid there was not fire enough to consume them.”

Kenneth walked up and down the cell greatly agitated; then seated himself on the foot of the bed.

“Curse you!”

“Are you listening to me, Mr Kenneth?”

“Yes!”

“I extinguished the light, and proceeded to make my escape from the room, which I did in a manner so simple that the detectives, through their desire to ferret out wonderful things, will never discover it, unless, indeed, you betray me. The night, you will recollect, was foggy; it was impossible to discern an object at four yards distance – this was fortunate for me. I raised the window-sash and let myself out cautiously, holding on by the sill, until my feet touched on the moulding which caps the window below. I then drew down the sash. By standing on the extreme left of the cornice, I was able to reach the tin water-spout of the adjacent building, and by that I descended to the sidewalk.”

The man glowered at me like a tiger, his eyes green and golden with excitement: I have since wondered that he did not tear me to pieces.

“On gaining the street,” I continued coolly, “I found that I had brought the knife with me. It should have been left in the chamber – it would have given the whole thing the aspect of suicide. It was too late to repair the blunder, so I threw the knife-”

“Into the river!” exclaimed Kenneth, involuntarily.

And then I smiled.

“How did you know it was I!” he shrieked.

“Hush! they will overhear you in the corridor. It was as plain as day. I knew it before I had been five minutes in the room. First, because you shrank instinctively from the corpse, though you seemed to be caressing it. Secondly, when I looked into the stove, I saw a glove and handkerchief, partly consumed; and then I instantly accounted for the faint close smell which had affected me before the room was ventilated. It was chloroform. Thirdly, when I went to open the window. I noticed that the paint was scraped off the brackets which held the spout to the next house. This conduit had been newly painted two days previously – I watched the man at work; the paint on the brackets was thicker than anywhere else, and had not dried. On looking at your feet, which I did critically, while speaking to you, I saw that the leather on the inner side of each boot was slightly chafed, paint-marked. It is a way of mine to put this and that together!”

“If you intend to betray me-”

“O, no, but I don’t or I should not be here – alone with you. I am, as you may allow, not quite a fool.”

“Indeed, sir, you are as subtle as-”

“Yes, I wouldn’t mention him.”

“Who?”

“The devil.”

Kenneth mused.

“May I ask, Mr Lynde, what you intend to do?”

“Certainly – remain here.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Kenneth with an air of perplexity.

“If you will listen patiently, you shall learn why I have acknowledged this deed, why I would bear the penalty. I believe there are vast, intense sensations from which we are excluded, by the conventional fear of a certain kind of death. Now, this pleasure, this ecstasy, this something, I don’t know what, which I have striven for all my days, is known only to a privileged few – innocent men, who, through some oversight of the law, are hanged by the neck! How rich is Nature in compensations! Some men are born to be hung, some have hanging thrust upon them, and some (as I hope to do) achieve hanging. It appears ages since I commenced watching for an opportunity like this. Worlds could not tempt me to divulge your guilt, nor could worlds have tempted me to commit your crime, for a man’s conscience should be at ease to enjoy, to the utmost, this delicious death! Our interview is at an end, Mr Kenneth. I held it my duty to say this much to you.”

And I turned my back on him.

“One word, Mr Lynde.”

Kenneth came to my side, and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, that red right hand, which all the tears of the angels cannot make white again.

“Did you send this to me last month?” asked Kenneth, holding up a slip of paper on which was scrawled, Watch them – in my handwriting.

“Yes,” I answered.

Then it struck me that these few thoughtless words, which some sinister spirit had impelled me to write, were the indirect cause of the whole catastrophe.

“Thank you,” he said hurriedly. “I watched them!” Then, after a pause, “I shall go far from here. I can not, I will not die yet. Mary was to have been my wife, so she would have hidden her shame – O cruel! she, my own cousin, and we the last two of our race! Life is not sweet to me, it is bitter, bitter; but I shall live until I stand front to front with him. And you? They will not harm you – you are a madman?”

Julius Kenneth was gone before I could reply.

The cell door shut him out forever – shut him out in the flesh. His spirit was not so easily exorcised.

After all, it was a wretched fiasco. Two officious friends of mine, who had played chess with me, at my lodgings, on the night of the 3rd, proved an alibi; and I was literally turned out of the Tombs; for I insisted on being executed.

Then it was maddening to have the newspapers call me a monomaniac.

I a monomaniac?

What was Pythagoras, Newton, Fulton? Have not the great original lights of every age, been regarded as madmen? Science, like religion, has its martyrs.