“Does it interest you?” She stooped quickly and pulled down the sofa loose-cover where it had “runkled” up, as though the sofa legs were indecent.
“Beatrice, what would you do if I’d killed somebody?”
“Laugh,” said she, wearily.
“If I’d killed a woman?”
“Laugh harder. Do you know any women?”
She was a lovely thing, really: he’d ruined her, he supposed. He was all in a panic. “Beatrice, swear you won’t go down to the chapel.” Because she might, well — of course she’d go down: as soon as she was alone and they didn’t notice she’d go creeping down to the chapel. It had been that kind of kiss.
“Oh, be quiet about that old chapel!” Already he’d spoiled last night for her. How she hated him! He looked round for John. John had gone away.
On the hall table were two letters, come by the second post, waiting for Josephine. No one, he thought, ought to read them — he must protect Josephine; he took them up and slipped them into his pocket.
“I say,” called John from the stairs, “what are you doing with those letters?” John didn’t mean to be sharp but they had taken each other unawares. They none of them wanted Terry to feel how his movements were sneaking movements; when they met him creeping about by himself they would either ignore him or say: “Where are you off to?” jocosely and loudly, to hide the fact of their knowing he didn’t know. John was Terry’s elder brother, but hated to sound like one. But he couldn’t help knowing those letters were for Josephine, and Josephine was “staying in the house.”
“I’m taking them for Josephine.”
“Know where she is?”
“Yes, in the chapel... I killed her there.”
But John — hating this business with Terry — had turned away. Terry followed him upstairs, repeating: “I killed her there, John... John, I’ve killed Josephine in the chapel.” John hurried ahead, not listening, not turning round. “Oh, yes,” he called over his shoulder. “Right you are, take them along.” He disappeared into the smoking-room, banging the door. It had been John’s idea that, from the day after Terry’s return from Ceylon, the sideboard cupboard in the dining-room should be kept locked up. But he’d never said anything; oh no. What interest could the sideboard cupboard have for a brother of his? he pretended to think.
Oh yes, thought Terry, you’re a fine man with a muscular back, but you couldn’t have done what I’ve done. There had, after all, been Something in Terry. He was abler than John (they’d soon know). John had never kissed Josephine.
Terry sat down on the stairs saying: “Josephine, Josephine!” He sat there gripping a baluster, shaking with exaltation.
The study door-panels had always looked solemn; they bulged with solemnity. Terry had to get past to his father; he chose the top left-hand panel to tap on. The patient voice said: “Come in!”
Here and now, thought Terry. He had a great audience; he looked at the books round the dark walls and thought of all those thinkers. His father jerked up a contracted, strained look at him. Terry felt that hacking with his news into this silence was like hacking into a great, grave chest. The desk was a havoc of papers.
“What exactly do you want?” said his father, rubbing the edge of the desk.
Terry stood there silently: everything ebbed. “I want,” he said at last, “to talk about my future.”
His father sighed and slid a hand forward, rumpling the papers. “I suppose, Terry,” he said as gently as possible, “you really have got a future?” Then he reproached himself. “Well, sit down a minute... I’ll just...”
Terry sat down. The clock on the mantelpiece echoed the ticking in his brain.
He waited.
“Yes?” said his father.
“Well, there must be some kind of future for me, mustn’t there?”
“Oh, certainly...”
“Look here, father, I have something to show you. That African knife—”
“What about it?”
“That African knife. It’s here. I’ve got it to show you.”
“What about it?”
“Just wait a minute.” He put a hand into either pocket: his father waited.
“It was here — I did have it. I brought it to show to you. I must have it somewhere — that African knife.”
But it wasn’t there, he hadn’t got it; he had lost it; left it, dropped it — on the grass, by the tank, anywhere. He remembered wiping it... Then?
Now his support was all gone; he was terrified now; he wept.
“I’ve lost it,” he quavered, “I’ve lost it.”
“What do you mean?” said his father, sitting blankly there like a tombstone, with his white, square face.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Nothing,” said Terry, weeping and shaking. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
A Case of Facsimile
by Viola Brothers Shore
Viola Brothers Shore’s “Rope’s End” won a Second Prize in our Second Annual Contest. When the story appeared in the October 1947 issue of EQMM, Lou Roseman, mystery-reviewer for the Oakland, California, “Post-Enquirer,” was kind enough to comment as follows: “If you want to find out how to extract the mystery story from its present blind alley, you should read Viola Brothers Shore’s ‘Rope’s End’... It’s meaningful mystery that merges with the mainstream of all literature... Miss Shore, who is a screen writer and part-time detective scribe, tells a whyhedunit rather than a whodunit tale. She is interested in people and what makes them tick... [‘Rope’s End’] is the murder story brought up to date, or as Miss Shore puts it, psychoanalyzed.”
Well, Viola Brothers Shore has more than one string to her bloodhound bow. She can write dead-serious detective stories and she can write live-humorous ones. Here is a sample of what might be called Miss Shore’s serio-comic vein — a rare commodity, indeed, in the gumshoe genre, especially when it turns out to be such gorgeous spoofing as “A Case of Facsimile.”
We now take you behind the scenes of the Edgar Allan Poe school, situated outside of Shamusburg, in Dicks County, Pa. Meet the sleuthian sorority which cavorts and capers on the E. A. Poe campus. These daughters of detection reside, of course, in Baker Street Dorm, read a school paper called “Poe Pourri,” borrow books from a school library in charge of Miss Zadig, obey the scholastic edicts of Dean Dupin, and learn some of the facts of ferreting from Professor of Psychology, Luther Trant. Oh, we forgot to tell you who they are, but you will have no trouble whatever identifying the forebears of Shirley Holmes (and her ever-present Jean Watson), Samantha Spade, Regina Fortune, Nerissa Wolfe, Elsie Queen, and Charlotte Chan.
We call your special attention to the singular word construction of the title, “A Case of Facsimile,” and even more especially to a singular remark made by Shirley Holmes, namely: “You will find a parallel among my father’s adventures.” Note Shirley Holmes’s precision in the use of the word “adventures” — she did not say “memoirs.”
Would you call the females of the species the weaker ’tecs?
“My dear girls,” said Shirley Holmes, stretching her long legs before the radiator in our room at the Baker Street Dorm, “life is infinitely stranger than fiction. The things going on in this school make the adventures of fiction heroes seem stale and unprofitable.”
“Not my father’s,” said Samantha Spade who often drops in to snoop around. “His adventures are never stale and they always pay off. Don’t forget he’s the original 4F op.”