bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, pp. 38–43
He was a dark and stormy knight. She was a Swede, 16. Lightning flashed tritely as his Vespa 10cc thundered past the skull-topped wall of the old Same mansion. Sullenly, they disappeared into a fog as thick as midnight marshmallow. Their paragraph was over, but the story moved on.
Standing at the mansion’s front door, Cheeseplunger sped his dinner guests on their way with barely-concealed impatience. And in one case, a barely-concealed cattle prod. I was supposed to be guarding the family jewels, so stayed inside keeping an eye on the six guests that Cheeseplunger had asked to stay. In this ritzy neighbourhood, my trench coat should have stuck out like a tarantula on meringue. But it had been a Bogart costume party, everyone dressed as one of his movie characters, so just slipped on a badge that said “Philip Marlowe.” The situation was only mildly complicated by the fact there weren’t any jewels in the house.
Cheeseplunger came back in, slamming the door. Gathering the remaining guests in the main salon, he served another round of drinks and said, “All right. Now that the herd has moved on, the lions can talk. Some of you wouldn’t come if I invited you to a pow-wow, but I was sure you’d be here for a party. Well, we’ve known each other for a long time, so I won’t beat around the bush. I’ve got cancer, inoperable, be dead in a month or so. But before I went, I wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to Zelda that night in ’57.” One of the guests, Pearlmumbler, dropped a crystal glass. It shattered on the hearth in a pool of scotch. None of them noticed.
“We’ve always known,” Cheeseplunger went on, “that one of us killed her. No-one else was near the lodge that night. She’d made up her mind to marry, she said, and would tell us about it at midnight. We never knew which of us it was to be, since somebody found out it wasn’t him and couldn’t take it. So he killed her. And none of us has ever recovered – seven crusty old bachelors. We never found the killer, and I couldn’t take that any more, so I hired Mr. Dikk to do so. Which, I am half-glad and half-sad to say, he has done.” They all looked at me. None of the looks was friendly and the one from the cadaverous Mr. Adobewallet could curdle rocks.
“We were once friends, so I’m giving the killer a last chance to come clean before we play out the whole Christie scenario. half an hour to finish this with dignity before I name him myself. Meanwhile, all the doors and windows are locked.” He turned away to pour himself a drink. Hatwoad and Darkleman came up to argue, but he shrugged them off. Bozofilovic sneered at a truly amazing piece of kitsch in one corner of the room and Mendacity just sat, head in hands.
The clock struck eleven. Cheeseplunger asked me to sweep the upper floor and the basement to ensure that no-one was there. All empty – even the servants had gone. But when I got up to the top of the basement stairs, the door was locked. I pounded, but no-one came. Then the lights went out. At first, I thought someone had sapped me, but then I worked out it was a power failure. Then a gun went off. Enough of the soft-boiled approach. The door was heavy and the angle bad, but in a couple of minutes I broke through. Just as I did, the lights went on again and I saw Cheeseplunger at the kitchen fusebox. “It’s Bozofilovic,” he said tensely. “Shot. I know he was the one that killed Zelda, but this wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m a law-abiding man. I just wanted to hand him over to the police.” Then he rushed into the dining room.
Lieutenant Lou Tennant of Homicide showed up twenty minutes later. I took him around and explained the situation. Bozofilovic’s body lay twisted in the middle of the main salon. A single bullet had gone straight into his heart. On the floor beside him was a gun no-one claimed to recognize, plus a hat belonging to Pearlmumbler. The outside guards said that no-one had entered or left the place since the last regular guests were shown out. I could testify that no-one was left in the house except the six men kept behind — one permanently — and their host.
Tennant was unamused to hear Cheese-plunger’s story of the evening, and livid that I hadn’t told him about my cold case investigation. He threw me out and told me to be in his office the next morning. When I got there, he glowered as he poured me a cup of coffee from the pot behind his desk. I took a sip and stifled a comment about police brutality. “No powder burns on his suit, so it wasn’t suicide.
No way to trace the gun, no fingerprints and no powder residue on anyone’s hands. They all had a motive, if fifty years of lost love means that much to them. The lights were blown with a simple cross-wired plug. It could have been slipped into any wall socket in the place. No chance of sweating the truth out of them – every one rich and lawyered-up. Bozofilovic wasn’t on anyone’s ’most likely to get a big wet kiss’ list, but he’d still be alive if you’d told me when you should. So you owe me some help.” The coffee tasted bitter as February in Frobisher, but I couldn’t deny his logic.
“So what do you have?” I asked. Tennant actually blushed, a first. It turned out the police computers had been hit by some major malware overnight. This had scrambled the notes his crew had taken on the case. All that they had been able to recover were two sets of information. “We really need to convert to Linux,” he sighed. “The first info we re-assembled was a random list of facts describing the man in each occupied room (5, 6, 7, 9, 10, I and 12) when the lights went out”
Tennant continued, “The second list is a fragmentary transcript of recorded statements from the men associated with each of the rooms — except of course room 6, where the occupant wasn’t talking anymore. The lab boys were able to analyze the statements using a voice stress monitor. They worked out that each man told just one lie, except for one man who told two. Unfortunately, that is where the file got blitzed – we have no idea which statements were false, only how many.”
I looked over the scattered material. “There’s enough here,” I said. “First we figure out the name and details of the man in each room when the lights went out. Then we work out which of the statements must be lies and which are therefore the truth. There are lots of contradictions among the statements but we know only seven are false, so all we need to find is the pattern of truth that results in exactly that number of lies. Then we can use the true statements to figure out the killer.” “If you say so,” said Tennant doubtfully. But I managed to work it out for him.
NOTES 1 Sabbath R Adobewallet, in the washroom (room 5 on the attached floorplan) came as Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny.
2 The writer, who wore a new fedora, was in a room that connected with the dining room (room 12).
3 The first name of the man in the hall (room 9) was DePest; he was a CEO and came as Fred C. Dobbs.
4 The ambassador with the first name Audacious was in a room with two windows.
5 The professor who came as the Bogart character in Casablanca has the man with the Stetson through one archway and Hatwoad through two others. (An archway is defined as a passage between two rooms that doesn’t have a door.)
6 The gossip columnist with the first name Runcible came as “Mad Dog” Earle from High Sierra.
7 Bozofilovic, the corpse in the main salon (room 6), brought no hat.
8 The man with the first name Ansible, who wore a merchant marine cap, was in a room at one corner of the house; Mendacity, who came as Duke Mantee from The Petrified Forest, was in another; and Pearlmumbler, who brought a panama, was in a third.
9 The retired Olympian with the naval cap was in a room with no direct connection to the main salon.
10 The man in the kitchen (room 7) wore an old fedora.
11 The man whose first name was Kanata came as Frank McCloud from Key Largo and was in an odd-numbered room; Cheeseplunger, the millionaire, came as Charlie Allnut.
12 Darkleman is not the man whose first name is Rudimen (aka “Terry”).
STATEMENTS
Room 5 @ I was in the washroom when the lights went out and just coming out of it when i heard the gunshot.
O I immediately ran out to the entranceway and saw one of the Bogarts duck into the kitchen carrying a towel.
@ I looked into the main salon and saw the body and a gun, with Mendacity standing over them. D Just before I went to the washroom, I saw Pearlmumbler wearing his hat. e I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
Room 7 A When the lights went out, I was in the kitchen. Someone called me from the dining room, so I went in through one of the swinging doors.
• The windows were curtained and I barked my shin in the dark, so lit a candle. There was no-one else in the room. When the gun went off, I went right into the main salon to see what happened. di I never touched Pearlmumbler’s hat.
• I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
Room 9 O The initials of the killer’s real name are
• I was in the hall (9) the whole time the lights were off and I am sure no-one else went through it.
I heard Mendacity swear in the dining room and then I saw him light a candle. l When the gun went off, I was talking to Pearlmumbler through the archway into salon 10.
@ I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
Room 10 a From this salon (10), I saw the gunflash in the doorway leading from the entrance area to the main salon.
• just as the lights went out, Hatwoad walked through the French doors from salon I onto the terrace.
I left my hat in the dressing room when I got here and haven’t touched it since. dl When the lights came on, Mendacity was already in the main salon and Cheeseplunger entered from the dining room a little while later.
• I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
Room I al I stayed in this salon (11) throughout the blackout.
O A bright moon had just come out – no-one else went in or out of the room during that time.
I saw the gunflash in the archway from the hall (9) to the main salon. Di I saw Mendacity carrying Pearlmumbler’s hat just before the lights went out.
& I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
Room 12 A I was in the dining room for the whole time the lights were off.
O I saw the gunflash in the doorway leading from the entrance area to the main salon.
The French doors to the terrace were locked all evening and I have the only key. Ol Of all of us, Adobewallet hated Bozofilovic the worst.
• I didn’t kill Bozofilovic.
As I expected, Bozofilovic’s killer was the man who told two lies. We collared him later that day at his house. Once he got out on bail, he tound me and admitted that the whole evening at the same place had been a put-up job, with all of them in on it but Bozofilovic. Cheeseplunger had told everyone else about the results of my investigation, and they had drawn lots. They wanted to end things up close and personal, but they didn’t want to go to jail if they didn’t have to. The rich are like that. One did the actual murder, while the rest did their best to throw sand in our eyes. I was there as stage setting, as an outside witness who believed the charade and as muscle in case something went wrong. “We didn’t get away with it like we hoped, but at least Bozofilovic is dead,” he said. “I was the designated executioner and I don’t regret it. There’s no way they can prove collusion, since I made sure there was no corroborating evidence and no witnesses to this conversation.”
Even so, he was taking a big risk. Maybe he needed an outsider to justify himself to, and thought I was safely compromised. I looked around the sunny park where we sat and grasped for something to say. Then a Vespa raced up and skidded to a stop in front of us. The dark knight and his lady dismounted. The killer looked at her and gasped, “Zelda.” The kid looked at him and said, “We read about this on the Net and thought you should know. Zelda wasn’t going to marry any of you big shots.” The girl went on, “She was already married in secret to the man she loved, a guy who worked in a grocery store. You killed her with your jealousy, all of you, and for nothing. But she had a baby before she died.” The kid finished it. “Zelda was our grandmother. Your story is over. Hers isn’t.”
Can you duplicate Shamus’ feat by determining the first and last names of the man who killed Bozofilovic? Not necessary as a solution to the puzzle, but can you also fill out the matrix and identify the seven lies among the 25 statements? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by July 7, 2006. The winner will receive a book prize autographed by A Aalto.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, pp. 38–43. Read the rest of this issue →
