Detective Duos Read online

  These stories also cover a wide range of detective fiction types: pure deduction, impossible crime, cozy, dark comedy, espionage, procedural, historical. Their locales are likewise varied: England, Europe, Antarctica, and such U.S. settings as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a pair of fast–moving trains–one heading from Chicago to New York and the other across California's Mojave Desert a hundred years ago.

  Readers will note the absence of a story featuring any African American detective other than Barbara D'Amato's Norm Bennis. This is because no suitable work exists. Chester Himes' Harlem police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones appear only in novels, as do Ed Lacy's Touissant Moore and other individuals who detect alone; and while there are short stories featuring such notable black detectives as Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins and Gar Anthony Haywood's Aaron Gunner, these characters also do not work with partners. Hawk, a featured player in Robert B. Parker's series of novels about Boston private eye Spenser, does not function in the capacity of a detective, or figure in the one Spenser short story.

  Similarly, Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, among other ethnic detectives, appear together in novels but no shorter work. The same is true of such famous nonethnic duos cited in this introduction as Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles, Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Paul Drake, A. A. Fair's Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, Ross Thomas's McCorkle and Padillo, Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, and Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. Nor are there any short stories featuring a gay male duo (or a gay male and a heterosexual partner), nor any duo stories by such best–selling crime–fiction writers as Patricia D. Cornwell, Sue Grafton, John Grisham, Elmore Leonard, and Sara Paretsky.

  There are, of course, many detective partnerships past and present not mentioned in the preceding pages. Space limitations precluded the listing of every established series and individual novel, and at the present rate with which detective series are being inaugurated in the booming mystery fiction market, it is quite probable that more than one new detective duo will have been launched between the time these words are being written and their publication. The possible variations on the types of partnership sleuths, as we've endeavored to point out, are dependent only upon an author's –or team of authors'– ingenuity, and therefore are virtually infinite.

  Marcia Muller

  Bill Pronzini

  Contents

  The Purloined Letter

  Edgar Allan Poe

  The Adventure of the Empty House

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Death at the Excelsior

  P. G. Wodehouse

  The Puzzle Lock

  R. Austin Freeman

  The Love Detectives

  Agatha Christie

  The Sealed House

  Hulbert Footner

  The Footsteps That Ran

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Pattern for Murder

  Frances and Richard Lockridge

  Fourth of July Picnic

  Rex Stout

  Two Over Par

  Kelley Roos

  One Morning They'll Hang Him

  Margert Allingham

  Puzzle for Poppy

  Patrick Quentin

  Once Upon a Train

  Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice

  The Phantom Cry–Baby

  Lawrence G. Blochman

  Phut Phat Concentrates

  Lilian Jackson Braun

  Before She Kills

  Fredric Brown

  And Start With a Blonde

  Jack Webb

  The Road to Damascus

  Michael Gilbert

  Dalziel's Ghost

  Reginald Hill

  Interpol : The Case of the Modern Medusa

  Edward D. Hoch

  The Holes in the System

  Marcia Muller

  The Desert Limited

  Brill Pronzini

  Stop, Thief!

  Barbara D'Amato

  The Adventure of the Perpetual Husbands

  Ellen Dearmore

  The End of the Earth

  Julie Smith

  CREDITS

  AUTHOR INDEX

  Edgar Allan Poe

  (1809–1849)

  Edgar Allan Poe was the founding father of the mystery and detective story as we know it today. In just five famous tales, he anticipated almost every conceivable type of crime–fiction plot: the sensational thriller and the locked–room “miracle problem” in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841); the analytic exercise and the fictional extrapolation of a real–life crime in “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842); the puzzle story in general and the code and cipher tale in particular in “The Gold Bug” (1843); the secret–agent adventure and the classic tale of ratiocination (a word Poe himself invented) in “The Purloined Letter” (1844); and the solving of a small–town murder mystery by the narrator in “`Thou Art the Man`” (1844). Poe also originated the first important series sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin – a character very much modeled on François–Eugéne Vidocq, the reformed thief and forger who became the –first chief of the Surete in 1811 and who later wrote a highly glamorized autobiography. By choosing to provide Dupin with an unnamed friend and biographer who narrates the accounts of his cases, after the fashion of Dr. Samuel Johnson's Boswell, Poe by extension invented the first detective duo. The use of this Boswellian device in the Dupin stories surely influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his creation of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson nearly half a century later. The life of Edgar Allan Poe has been so distorted by academics and filmmakers that it is difficult to obtain a true sense of the man. Until recently he was widely believed to have been a tortured genius suffering from dementia and beset by alcohol and drug problems; while there is still some doubt as to the state of his mental health, extensive research by modern scholars has determined that his alcohol and drug use was grossly exaggerated by a rival who sought to discredit him after his death, and that in fact Poe died not of substance abuse but of rabies. Of his literary worth there can be little dispute. The poet W. H. Auden once lamented the fact that in his own country, “Poe is taught as a respectable rival to the pulps,” as a consequence of the subject matter – murder, madness, supernatural horror – of much of his fiction and poetry. In fact, his voice and vision were serious, unique, enlightening, and quintessentially American – a true original in the keenest literary sense of the term.

  THE PURLOINED LETTER

  C. AUGUSTE DUPIN AND AN UNNAMED NARRATOR

  PARIS, FRANCE 1844

  Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. – Seneca.

  At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18––, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book–closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G––, the Prefect of the Parisian police.

  We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.

  “If it is any point requiring reflection,” observed Dupin, as he forbore to en
kindle the wick, “we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.”

  “That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”

  “Very true,” said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair.

  “And what is the difficulty now?” I asked. “Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?”

  “Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd.”

  “Simple and odd,” said Dupin.

  “Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether.”

  “Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault,” said my friend.

  “What nonsense you do talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.

  “Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Dupin.

  “Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?”

  “A little too self–evident.”

  “Ha! ha! ha! ––ha! ha! ha! ––ho! ho! ho!” ––roared our visitor, profoundly amused, “oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!”

  “And what, after all, is the matter on hand?” I asked.

  “Why, I will tell you,” replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. “I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one.

  “Proceed,” said I.

  “Or not,” said Dupin.

  “Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession.”

  “How is this known?” asked Dupin.

  “It is clearly inferred,” replied the Prefect, “from the nature of the document, and from the nonappearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's possession; ––that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it.”

  “Be a little more explicit,” I said.

  “Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable.” The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.

  “Still I do not quite understand,” said Dupin.

  “No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized.”

  “But this ascendancy,” I interposed, “would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who would dare––”

  “The thief,” said G., is the Minister D––, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question ––a letter, to be frank ––had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the Minister D––. His lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own letter ––one of no importance ––upon the table.”

  “Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy complete ––the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber.”

  “Yes,” replied the Prefect; “and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me.”

  “Than whom,” said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, “no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined.”

  “You flatter me,” replied the Prefect; “but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained.”

  “It is clear,” said I, “as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With the employment the power departs.”

  “True,” said G. “and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect our design.”

  “But,” said I, “you are quite au fait in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often before.”

  “Oh yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D–– Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be concealed.”