The Man Who Read Mysteries (Lost Classics) Read online

  The Man Who Read Mysteries

  Full Title

  The stories in this book are copyright © 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968,1969,

  1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1983 by

  William Brittain and were first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of William Brittain. Introduction copyright © 2018 by Josh Pachter and printed by permission of Josh Pachter.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact: Crippen & Landru, Publishers P. O. Box 532057

  Cincinnati, OH 45253 USA Web: www.crippenlandru.com

  E-mail: [email protected] ISBN (softcover): 978-1-936363-34-6

  ISBN (clothbound): 978-1-936363-33-9

  First Edition: November 2018 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION: THE BEST OF BRITTAIN. 7

  PART I: THE “MAN WHO READ” STORIES

  THE MAN WHO READ JOHN DICKSON CARR. 13

  THE MAN WHO READ ELLERY QUEEN. 19

  THE MAN WHO DIDN’T READ. 25

  THE WOMAN WHO READ REX STOUT. 31

  THE BOY WHO READ AGATHA CHRISTIE. 37

  THE MAN WHO READ SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. 47

  THE MAN WHO READ G.K. CHESTERTON. 57

  THE MAN WHO READ DASHIELL HAMMETT. 69

  THE MAN WHO READ GEORGES SIMENON. 79

  THE GIRL WHO READ JOHN CREASEY. 89

  THE MEN WHO READ ISAAC ASIMOV. 97

  PART II: THE MR. STRANG STORIES

  MR. STRANG GIVES A LECTURE. 111

  MR. STRANG PERFORMS AN EXPERIMENT. 125

  MR. STRANG TAKES A FIELD TRIP. 141

  MR. STRANG VERSUS THE SNOWMAN 153

  MR. STRANG, ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE. 165

  MR. STRANG INTERPRETS A PICTURE. 181

  MR. STRANG TAKES A TOUR 193

  AFTERWORD. 207

  CHECKLIST. 209

  INTRODUCTION

  THE BEST OF BRITTAIN

  Although he’s best known to the world at large for his four YA fantasies set in the made-up New England village of Coven Tree (the second of which, The Wish Giver, won a Newbury Honor Award in 1983) and his 1979 book All the Money in the World (which became a 1983 episode of the television series The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin), William Brittain is remembered by readers of mystery fiction for his eleven “The Man Who Read” and thirty-two “Mr. Strang” stories, which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) between 1965 and 1983.

  Born in Rochester, New York, in 1930, Brittain earned college degrees from Brockport State Teachers College (now the State University of New York at Brockport) and Hofstra University. In 1954, he moved to Long Island with his new bride Ginny, where he took a job teaching English at Lawrence Junior High School.

  For a period of almost twenty years, Brittain was not only a teacher but a mystery writer, publishing regularly in EQMM and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM).

  He sold to AHMM first: his “Joshua” appeared in the October 1964 issue and was followed by another eighteen stories over the next twelve years, ending with “Historical Errors” in February 1976.

  Although his first publication in EQMM came a year later than his AHMM debut, it was certainly an auspicious beginning, with both “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr” and “The Man Who Read Ellery Queen” appearing back-to-back in the December 1965 issue. Over the next eighteen years, forty-four more stories followed, culminating with “Mr. Strang Takes a Tour” in Mid-July 1983.

  That’s a total of sixty-five stories in nineteen years, an average of three and a half stories per year across the two publications.

  Up to this point, I’ve been referring to the man who wrote the “Man Who Read” and Mr. Strang stories as either “William Brittain” or just “Brittain,” but now I’m going to start calling him Bill, because that’s how I knew him.

  My own first published piece of crime fiction, “E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name,” appeared in EQMM’s “Department of First Stories” in December 1968. As a professionally published author, I was eligible for membership in the Mystery Writers of America, and I joined that organization in ‘69 and began attending its monthly cocktail parties at the Hotel Seville in midtown Manhattan. I wasn’t old enough to drink the cocktails, since I was only seventeen, but I was old enough to attend the parties, and I was taken under the wing of four lovely couples who made me feel not only that I was welcome but that I belonged: Ed and Pat Hoch, John and Barbara Lutz, Stan and Marilyn Cohen … and Bill and Ginny Brittain. I had many very friendly conversations with Bill and Ginny over the next couple of years, at cocktail parties and other MWA events — and, after I moved to The Netherlands in the late ’70s, Bill and I stayed in touch for a while. We didn’t have email then, not yet, so we passed what would now be called “snail mail” (but were then called, simply, “letters”) back and forth across the Atlantic. He wrote warm, chatty, informative and inquisitive letters, did Bill, keeping me up-to-date on his activities and always interested in mine.

  In 1986, after his retirement and right around the same

  time as the birth of my daughter Rebecca, the Brittains moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and somehowwelosttouch.Bill wrote the third and fourth of his Coven Tree books (Dr. Dredd’s Wagon of Wonders in ’87 and Professor Popkin’s Prodigious Polish in ‘91), and a few short stories for younger readers, and then retired fromwritingforpublicationin1994.He died in Weaverville, North Carolina, on December 16,2011

  — his eighty-first birthday. Not long after that, Ginny moved back to New York to be closer to her daughter and son-inlaw, Susan Brittain Gawley and John Gawley.

  In 2017, Dale Andrews and I began putting together a collection titled The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (Wildside Press, 2018), and we wanted to include Bill’s “The Man Who Read Ellery Queen.” To obtain the proper permission to reprint the story, I had to track Ginny down. She didn’t — and doesn’t — use email, but, thanks to EQ scholar Kurt Sercu, I was able to get a snail-mail address for her and wrote her one of those “letter” things I mentioned previously.

  I included my phone number, and on August 5, 2017, we spoke for the first time in some forty years. We had a lovely conversation, and she was delighted that I remembered “The Man Who Read Ellery Queen” and gladly agreed to allow Dale and me to use it. She was, in fact, so pleased that her husband’s work was still remembered that I suggested perhaps it was time for someone to put together a collection of Bill’s stories. Ginny was not only agreeable but enthusiastic. As soon as I hung up the phone, I emailed Doug Greene and Jeff Marks at Crippen & Landru to sound them out about the idea — and before I went to sleep that night they’d written back to say that they were on board.

  So here we are.

  My original suggestion for this volume was to include all eleven of Bill’s “Man Who Read” stories and all thirty-two of the Mr. Strangs. That would have resulted in much too thick a volume to publish at a sensible price point, though, so Doug and Jeff and I agreed to include all the “Man Who Read”s and a sampling of the Strangs, and it was left to me to decide which of the latter to select.

  I’ve chosen Mr. Strang’s first recorded case (“Mr. Strang Gives a Lecture,” from the March 1967 EQMM) and his final appearance (“Mr. Strang Takes a Tour,” from theMid-July 1983 EQMM), and to those I’ve added “Mr. Strang Performs an Experiment” (June 1967), which is Bill’s daughter Sue’s favorite, “Mr. Strang Versus the Snowman” (December ’72), which is my favorite, and, nostalgically and selfishly, “Mr. Strang Takes a Field Trip,” because itwasinthesameDecember ’68 issue of EQMM which contained my own first published story. Since that adds up to three stories from the ’60s, but only one each from the ’70s and ’80s, I’ve added “Mr. Strang, Armchair Detective” (December ’75) and “Mr. Strang Interprets a Picture” (August ’81) for a better balance.

  As I worked on gathering the material for this collection, I had many warm email exchanges with Susan Brittain Gawley and a number of delightful follow-up phone calls with Ginny Brittain. At one point, I asked Ginny why her husband stopped writing short crime stories. “After his retirement,” she told me, “his mind and his heart went to the children’s books. If he hadn’t been so successful with those, he probably would have gone back to Mr. Strang.”

  We also talked at length about Bill’s passion for education. Even after he retired from the public schools, she told me, he continued teaching, volunteering to instruct courses in mystery writing and old-time crime films through the University of North Carolina’s Asheville campus’ College for Seniors from 1993 to 2010.

  “When he died,” Ginny told me, “the funeral was packed with people who were his students.”

  Bill Brittain was a good friend, a good man, a good husband, a good father — and a good writer. Here are all eleven of his “Man Who Read” stories and seven of the Mr. Strangs. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed them when they were new … and enjo
yed them again as I was putting together this collection.

  Josh Pachter

  Herndon, Virginia

  April 2018

  PART I

  THE “MAN WHO READ” STORIES

  THE MAN WHO READ JOHN DICKSON CARR

  Although he did not realize it at the time, Edgar Gault’s life first gained direction and purpose when, at the age of twelve, he idly picked up a copy of John Dickson Carr’s The Problem of the Wire Cage at his neighborhood lending library. That evening after supper, he sat down with the book and read until bedtime. Then, smuggling the book into his room, he finished it by flashlight under the sheets.

  He returned to the library the following day for another of Carr’s books, The Arabian Nights Murder, which took him two days to finish — Edgar’s governess had confiscated the flashlight. Within a week, he had read every John Dickson Carr mystery the library had on its shelves. His gloom on the day he finished reading the last one turned to elation when he learned that his favorite author also wrote under the pseudonym of Carter Dickson.

  In the course of the next ten years, Edgar accompanied Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale, et al. through every locked room in the Carr-Dickson repertoire. He was exultant the day his knowledge of an elusive point in high-school physics allowed him to solve the mystery of The Man Who Could Not Shudder before the author saw fit to give his explanation. It was probably then that Edgar made his momentous decision.

  One day he, Edgar Gault, would commit a locked-room murder that would mystify the master himself.

  An orphan, Edgar lived with his uncle in a huge rambling house in a remote section of Vermont. The house was not only equipped with a library — that boon to mystery writers, but something few modern houses possess — but the library had barred windows and a two-inch-thick oak door which, opening into the room, could be locked only by placing a ponderous wooden bar into iron carriers bolted solidly to the wall on both sides of the door. There were no secret passages. The room, in short, would have pleased any of Carr’s detectives, and it suited Edgar perfectly.

  The victim, of course, would be Edgar’s Uncle Daniel. Not only was he readily available, but he was a believer in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, and, in order to help Edgar achieve that happy condition, Uncle Daniel had decided to cut the youth out of his will in the near future.

  Since Edgar was perfectly prepared to wallow in his uncle’s filthy lucre all the days of his life, it was up to him to do the old man in before the will could be changed.

  All of which serves to explain why Edgar, one bright day in early spring, was standing inside the library fireplace, covered with soot and scrubbing the inside of the chimney until it gleamed.

  The chimney, of course, was Edgar’s means of escape from his locked room. It was just large enough to accommodate his slim body and had an iron ladder that ran up the inside for the convenience of a chimney sweep. The necessity of escape by chimney somewhat disappointed Edgar, since Dr. Gideon Fell had ruled it out during his famous locked-room lecture in The Three Coffins. But it was the only exit available, and Edgar had devised a scheme to make use of it that he was sure John Dickson Carr would approve of. Maybe Edgar would even get a book written about his crime — like Carr’s The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey.

  It didn’t worry Edgar that he would be immediately suspected of the crime. Nobody saw his preparations — Uncle Daniel was away on business, and the cook and gardener were on vacation. And at the time the crime would actually be committed, Edgar would have two unimpeachable witnesses to testify that neither he — nor, for that matter, any other human being — could possibly have been the murderer. Finishing his scrubbing, Edgar carried the pail of waterto the kitchen and emptied it down the drain. Then, after a thorough shower to rid his body of soot, he went to the linen closet, took out a newly washed bed sheet, and returned to the library. Wrapping the sheet around him, he got back into the fireplace and climbed the iron ladder. Reaching the top, he came down again, purposely rubbing the sheet against

  the stones at frequent intervals.

  Stepping back into the library, he walked to a window, removed the sheet, and held it up to the sunlight. Although wrinkled, it had remained gleamingly white. Edgar smiled as he put the sheet into a hamper. Then, going upstairs, he unlocked the window of a storeroom beside which the chimney rose. After that, in his own room, he dressed in clothing chosen especially for the crime: white shirt, white trousers, and white tennis shoes. Finally, he removed a long cavalry saber from the wall, took it to the library, and stood it in a shadowy corner.

  His preparations were nearly complete.

  Early that evening, from his chair in the music room, Edgar heard his uncle’s return.

  “Edgar? You home?” The nasal New England twang of Uncle Daniel’s voice bespoke two hundred years of unbroken Vermont ancestry.

  “I’m in here, Uncle Daniel — in the music room.”

  “Ayah,” said Daniel, looking in through the door. “That’s the trouble with you, young fella. You think more o’ strum min’ that guitar than you do about gettin’ ahead in the world. Business first, boy — that’s the only ticket for success.”

  “Why, Uncle, I’ve been working on a business arrangement most of the day. I just finished about an hour ago.”

  “Well, I meant what I said about my will, Edgar,” Uncle Daniel continued. “In fact, I’m going to talk to Stoper about it tonight when he comes over for cards.”

  The weekly game of bridge, in which Edgar was usually a reluctant fourth to Uncle Daniel, Lemuel Stoper, and Dr. Har old Crowley, was a part of The Plan. Even the perfect crime needs witnesses to its perfection.

  Later, as Edgar arranged the last of three armloads of wood in the library fireplace — and added to the kindling a small jar from his pocket — he heard the heavy knocker of the front door bang three times. He took the opportunity to set his watch. Exactly seven o’clock.

  “Take the gentlemen to the music room and make them comfortable,” said Uncle Daniel. “Give ’em a drink and get the card table ready. I’ll be in presently.”

  “Why must they always wait for you, Uncle?” asked Edgar, his assumed frown almost a smirk.

  “They’ll wait forever for me and like it, if that’s what I want. They know where the biggest part of their earnings comes from, all right.” And still another part of Edgar’s plan dropped neatly into place.

  Entering the old house, Lemuel Stoper displayed, as always, an attitude of disdain toward everything not directly involved with Uncle Daniel’s considerable fortune. “White, white, and more white,” he sneered, looking at Edgar’s cloth-

  ing. “You look like a waiter in a restaurant.”

  “Don’t let him get to you, boy,” said a voice from outside. “You look fine. Been playin’ tennis?” Dr. Crowley, who reminded Edgar of a huge lump of clear gelatin, waddled in and smiled benignly.

  “No need to butter the boy up any more,” said Stoper. “Dan’l’s changin’ his will tonight.”

  “Oh,” said Crowley, surprised. “That’s too bad, boy — uh — Edgar.”

  “Yes, Uncle’s already spoken to me about his decision,” said Edgar. “I’m in complete agreement with it.” No sense in providing too much in the way of a motive.

  In a small but important change from the usual routine, Edgar led the men to the door of the library on the way to the music room. “Uncle,” he called, “Dr. Crowley and Mr. Stoper are here.”

  “I know they’re here,” growled Daniel. “Wait in the music room. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  The two men had seen Uncle Daniel alive and well. Everything was now ready.

  In the music room, Edgar poured drinks and set up the card table. Then he snapped his fingers and raised his eyebrows — the perfect picture of a man who had just remembered something.

  “I must have left the cards upstairs,” he said. “I’ll go and fetch them.” And before his guests could answer, he left the room.

  Once through the door, Edgar’s pace quickened. He reached the door of the library eight seconds later. Ignoring his uncle’s surprised expression, Edgar took the saber from its corner and strode to the desk where Daniel sat, a newspaper still in his hand.