Polly MacDougal printed the final draft of “The Neon Reproach,” her latest children’s mystery story, and took it out front to the antiques shop. With tax time drawing nigh, her husband Wallis was working on the books while tending the store, a slight man dwarfed by the immense unsaleable bookcase and drop-front writing desk combination they now used as a desk/display case.
Polly laid the story by his elbow as he muttered over his addition. She did not expect Wallis would like it. He preferred her detectives male, like H. H. Hopp, the rabbit private eye, or Humbert Bugg, B.A., the riddle-solving grasshopper. But she valued his opinion, nonetheless.
Then she threaded her large body through the antique clutter to the display window and began the overdue job of taking down the small Christmas tree. As she wrapped each wooden icicle, spun-glass moon, celluloid santa, and tin angel in tissue paper, she put it away in the pigeonholed decoration box.
Snow was falling again in the midafternoon gloom. White Swan had recently experienced three heavy snowstorms. As Polly watched the slanting and thickening flakes, a figure in a well-cut gray overcoat and a maroon hound’s-tooth deerstalker came up the narrow trench the Claggett boy had dug for them. The man walked between the three-foot-high piles of snow, holding a large canvas carryall in front of him like a bass drum.
A moment later the street door opened and the man backed into the shop. “Mr. MacDougal?” he asked and, turning around, carefully set the carryall down on the floor.
Polly watched as Wallis eyed the man cautiously. Had he come to buy or sell? The new arrival appeared to be in his fifties, cheeks plump and red from the weather, eyes bright and frank, and manner grave. “My name is Charles Kern,” he said, turning to include Polly in his words. “Dr. Muir at Simon Cameron University suggested I place a certain matter before you.”
Polly’s pulse quickened. Angus Muir had joined the faculty there a year or so before Wallis retired. He was a devotee of detective fiction and an admirer of her husband’s skill as a solver of mysteries. It sounded like a case. And Polly, weary of playing Watson to her husband’s Holmes, had resolved that on the next one she and Wallis would work together as equal partners.
Inviting the man to take off his coat, Wallis introduced his wife. Kern bowed to Polly. “Delighted, dear lady.” Shedding his coat and scarf but keeping the deerstalker, he added, “My nephew subscribes to Hardboiled Humpty Magazine. He’s a real fan of yours, Mrs. MacDougal. Wait till I tell him we met.”
“Tell him you got two detectives for the price of one,” smiled Polly.
Wallis shot her a worried look before putting the shop ledger away and offering Kern one of a pair of kitchen Windsor chairs with original paint priced at $325. His worry increased when Polly marched over, sat in the other chair, and gave Kern her full attention.
“Where to begin, where to begin?” wondered Kern out loud. “Are you familiar with miniature rooms? Not dollhouses, just single rooms.”
“The kind you find in museums?” asked Wallis. “A French Empire salon, a Queen Anne dining room, done to a scale of one inch to the foot. That sort of thing?”
“Actually I meant something more modest,” said Kern. “Something for the average hobbyist to put together. Their growing popularity may be a sign of the times. Our shrinking apartments are too small for dollhouses. Enter the miniature room.”
Kern tapped his own chest. “And enter Murders in Miniature. I design and manufacture small scenes of the crime, scenes of famous murders. Julius Caesar being assassinated in the Senate, Macbeth killing Duncan, Sweeney Todd in his barbershop with his next victim in the chair and the tiny little bottles of bay rum on the shelf behind him, Lizzie Borden with her miniature axe, et cetera. The hobbyist can buy my plans and specifications, or a kit containing everything needed to put the room together for himself.
“I’m branching out into scenes of fictional crimes,” Kern continued, “a field where Dr. Muir has considerable expertise.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Actually I hope he’ll find us a nice, juicy Highland murder or two to begin with. My Macbeth scene of the crime has never sold well and I’ve got bolts of mini-plaid cloth all over the place.”
As he spoke, Kern drew two magnifying glasses from his jacket, passing one to Wallis and the other to Polly. “With each kit we will include a hand-glass and a deerstalker’s cap.” From the carryall he brought out the mate to the cap he was wearing. “I’d’ve brought two if I’d known you were going to be here, Mrs. MacDougal,” he said apologetically, offering the cap to Wallis. But Wallis had a thing about looking ridiculous to no purpose and waved the cap away. He regretted this at once when Polly, seeing Kern’s disappointment, intercepted the cap, took a deep breath, and put it on.
Thanking her with a smile, Kern said, “Here, this’ll show you what I’m talking about.” With their permission he brought down six volumes from a set of the works of Elbert Hubbard from the left bookcase and placed them in two piles of three each on the drop-front desk. Removing a dark rectangular box about a foot and a half long, a foot high, and a foot deep from the carryall, he set it at Polly’s eye level atop the books. Then, gently and apologetically, he wheeled Wallis and his office chair over beside his wife. Finally, Kern took a sheepshank of electrical cord from the back of the box and inserted the plug into the nearest electrical outlet.
Through the framed sheet of glass that formed the front of the box Polly saw a small, brightly lit room, a Victorian study. Three walls covered with a red and cream wallpaper in a lozenge pattern that rose up to high plaster moldings and a complicated plaster medallion from which hung a decorated gas chandelier. A white marble fireplace stood against the far wall with a merry fire in the grate. Its mantel held a heavy ormolu clock and above it, in a gilt frame, a tiny Landseer-like painting of stags. High bookcases stood on either side, and several chairs upholstered in deep blue. A large red Bokara rug covered the floor. In the center of the room was an elaborately carved, marble-topped table and beside it an elephant’s-foot wastebasket.
But the room’s overall look of solidity and correctness was marred by the figure of a man in a brocade dressing gown seated at the table with the upper part of his body thrown across the marble tabletop. Around the jeweled hilt of a small knife that protruded from the figure’s back was a small pool of what seemed to be fresh blood.
Leaning forward together, the MacDougals bumped heads. They backed off and, more cautiously, examined the murder scene through their hand-glasses.
From the clock on the mantel, the dressing gown, and the overturned nightcap glass on the table, Polly concluded the murder had occurred just before 11:53 in the evening.
“It’s all wonderfully done,” said Wallis. “Isn’t that a Belter table?”
Kern nodded proudly and drew a ballpoint pen from his pocket to use as a pointer. “Those upholstered chairs are Belters, too. I’m a bit of a collector.”
“But I sure don’t recognize the murder,” admitted Polly.
“I’m not surprised,” said Kern. “It’s a murder that hasn’t happened yet. One, I trust, that never will. You see, the little figure there is supposed to be me. This room is a replica of my study back in Brooklyn Heights. The murder weapon in my back is the letter opener I kept on the table. It disappeared two weeks ago, along with my cat.”
He turned to Wallis. “And, as you said, the workmanship is museum quality. My Murders in Miniature are much humbler efforts. In my Julius Caesar scene I’ve even stooped to using cake dividers for columns.”
“Those thingees they use to separate the layers on wedding cakes?” asked Polly.