The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series) Read online

  MIKE ASHLEY is an author and editor of over seventy books, including many Mammoth titles. He worked for over thirty years in local government but is now a full-time writer and researcher specializing in ancient history, historical fiction and fantasy, crime and science fiction. He lives in Kent with his wife and over 20,000 books.

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  The Mammoth Book of

  Historical

  Whodunnits

  Third New Collection

  Edited by Mike Ashley

  ROBINSON

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55-56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2005

  Collection and editorial material

  copyright © Mike Ashley 2005

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-47211-481-5 (ebook)

  Contents

  Foreword: Three Thousand Years of Crime, Mike Ashley

  Acknowledgments

  His Master’s Servant, Philip Boast

  Death in the Desert, Jean Davidson

  The Judgment of the Gods, Rob Reginald

  The Oracle of Amun, Mary Reed & Eric Mayer

  Cupid’s Arrow, Marilyn Todd

  The Spiteful Shadow, Peter Tremayne

  Catherine and the Sybil, Sharan Newman

  The Jester and the Mathematician, Alan R. Gordon

  The Duke’s Tale, Cherith Baldry

  Sea of Darkness, Sarah A. Hoyt

  The Stone-Worker’s Tale, Margaret Frazer

  The Witching Hour, Martin Edwards

  The Dutchman and the Wrongful Heir, Maan Meyers

  If Serpents Envious, Clayton Emery

  The Uninvited Guest, Edward D. Hoch

  Benjamin’s Trap, Richard Moquist

  The Serpent’s Back, Ian Rankin

  Botanist at Bay, Edward Marston

  The Living and the Dead, Judith Cutler

  Footprints, Jeffery Farnol

  The Tenth Commandment, Melville Davisson Post

  Murder in Old Manhattan, Frank Bonham

  The Abolitionist, Lynda S. Robinson

  Poisoned with Politeness, Gillian Linscott

  Threads of Scarlet, Claire Griffen

  The Gentleman on the Titanic, John Lutz

  Foreword

  Three Thousand Years of Crime

  The title may be the same but the contents are all different. Here is an entirely new selection of historical whodunnits and period puzzles covering over 3,000 years, from the Queen of Sheba to the Titanic. Twenty-six stories, fifteen of them entirely new and specially written for this collection.

  As always I’ve looked for stories that cover as wide a range of history as possible, but also a wide geographical spread. So we have stories from ancient Assyria to colonial Australia, from the Crusades to Revolutionary America and from Pisa to Old Manhattan.

  We have several characters returning from past anthologies so you will find Herodotus trying to solve a puzzle in Egypt, Claudia up to her tricks again in ancient Rome, Chaucer trying to avert a war, Dame Frevisse bringing her sleuthing techniques to the monastic world, and Sister Fidelma solving an unusual crime in seventh century Ireland.

  But we also have a lot of new characters and settings. They range from such renowned historical individuals as Prince Henry the Navigator and Hildegarde of Bingen to those whom history overlooked such as Theophilus the Fool, Jasper Shrig, the Bow Street Runner and Ian Rankin’s creation, Cully the Caddy in Old Edinburgh.

  So let’s part the mists of time to reveal the mysteries of the past.

  Mike Ashley

  December 2004

  Acknowledgments

  All of the stories are copyright in the name of the individual authors or their estates as follows. Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright. In the event of any inadvertent transgression of copyright please contact the editor via the publisher. My thanks to David Sutton of Copyright Watch and Bill Pronzini for their help in tracing authors’ estates.

  “The Duke’s Tale” ©
2005 by Cherith Baldry. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “His Master’s Servant” © 2005 by Philip Boast. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Dorian Literary Agency.

  “Murder in Old Manhattan” © 1945 by McCall Corporation. First published in Blue Book Magazine, January 1946. Copyright © renewed 1973 by Frank Bonham. Reprinted by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.

  “The Living and the Dead” © 2005 by Judith Cutler. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Death in the Desert” © 2005 by Jean Davidson. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Dorian Literary Agency.

  “The Witching Hour” © 2005 by Martin Edwards. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “If Serpents Envious” © 1998 by Clayton Emery. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1998. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Footprints” © 1929 by Jeffery Farnol. First published in Collier’s Weekly, 11 May 1929. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  “The Stone-Worker’s Tale” © 2005 by Margaret Frazer. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Jester and the Mathematician” © 2000 by Alan R. Gordon. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Threads of Scarlet” © 2005 by Claire Griffen. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Uninvited Guest” © 1996 by Edward D. Hoch. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Sea of Darkness” © 2005 by Sarah A. Hoyt. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Poisoned with Politeness” © 1997 by Gillian Linscott. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Gentleman on the Titanic” © 1999 by John Lutz. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Botanist at Bay” © 2005 by Edward Marston. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Dutchman and the Wrongful Heir” © 2005 by Annette and Martin Meyers. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.

  “Benjamin’s Trap” © 1994 by Richard W. Moquist. First published in The Franklin Mysteries (Salt Lake City, Northwest Publishing Inc, 1994). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Catherine and the Sybil” © 2005 by Sharan Newman. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Tenth Commandment” originally © 1912 by Melville Davisson Post. First published in Saturday Evening Post, 2 March 1912. Copyright expired in 2001.

  “The Serpent’s Back” © 1998 by John Rebus Ltd. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1998. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Curtis Brown Ltd.

  “The Oracle of Amun” © 2005 by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.

  “The Judgment of the Gods” © 2005 by Robert Reginald. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Abolitionist” © 2005 by Lynda S. Robinson. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Cupid’s Arrow” © 2003 by Marilyn Todd. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Spiteful Shadow” © 2005 by Peter Tremayne. First publication; original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, A. M. Heath & Co.

  His Master’s Servant

  Philip Boast

  For once I shall part with convention. In all my previous anthologies I have set out the stories in chronological order from the earliest setting to the most recent. Although the rest of the anthology follows that format I wanted this story to open the book because it contains a theme which will keep recurring. It is set during the Crusades when the European and Arabian cultures clashed, something we are still all too familiar with today, and the basis of this story prepares us both to look further back in time and to consider the present. You will find the theme of prejudice throughout this anthology, whether it be religious, racial, sexual or philosophical.

  Philip Boast has written a number of historical epics, often with a fantasy or religious theme, including Sion (1999), the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and Deus (1997), which also has links with the Crusades and deals with the legacy of a crime committed in London in the thirteenth century.

  The Templar fortress, Jaffa, the Holy Land, October 1192

  “Hear your servant, O Lord!”

  I waited. Darkness. The single candle flame. The stone walls of my prayer-cell.

  “Your humble servant begs you to hear, Lord.”

  Silence.

  “Lord, give me strength to slaughter the infidels,” I prayed. “Guide my sword to the throats of the Saracen demons. Give me grace to kill those spawn of Hell, their women, and children, and their animals, and burn their buildings and blasphemous books, to make a world fit for your holy Cross.”

  I whispered prayers until I was hoarse. Not a sound in the great fortress; the ninth hour of the night, the soul’s darkest hour between Matins and Lauds. My aching knees bled into my chain mail, my hair-shirt burned and itched my flesh. I rested my forehead on my sword-hilt shaped like the Cross. “Lord, give us back Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, City of God, that we call Hierosolyma. “Let me die seizing your holy City from the devils. Show me a sign.”

  But my master, the one true God, did not reply.

  I groaned, falling on my face. What earthly master notices his servant? None. The servant performs his duties or is whipped. But to be ignored is worse.

  I grasped the whip-handle that lay on the stone bed, tore my back bare of my hair-shirt, raised the whip high.

  “Grant my eyes one last sight of Jerusalem, O Lord,” I prayed.

  “Sir Roger,” said a small voice.

  I brought down the whip upon my back, in flagellante delicto, the agony both startling and familiar.

  Know me, Christian: I am Sir Roger de Belcourt, servant and slave of the One True God, Knight of the Order of the Poor Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. I am Knight Templar, soldier of God, warrior-priest. My life is God and death.

  The healing blood trickled on my spine. More, more, I cried. Hear your loyal servant, O Lord. I was dizzy with prayer.

  “Sir, ’tis me!” That small voice again, mouse-small, frightened.

  I paused, panting and rose to my knees. The boy stood in the doorway, sixteen years at most, head bowed over the candle in his hand, peeping eyes terrified. He was small because starved as a child, abandoned at Temple Gate in London; I am six feet tall, my sword longer than he. I stared at the lad through my sweat, the lead tails of the whip dripping my blood, trying to think.

  “Sir Roger,” he quavered, “ ’Tis I, Dickon-a-Ferret, your servant.”

  “Ah,” I croaked. “You. It’s wrong for a master to forget his servant.” I tousled his hair. “Dickon, yes.”

  “For the last five years,” he said eagerly, “since I was a child and Jerusalem was lost to Satan, I serve you night and day.”

  I’d hardly noticed the boy; why should I, my weapons and armour are always oiled ready, my war-horse saddled; on campaign he turns up wine, a cockerel leg, a loaf, something; a good servant.

  “Well, boy, goodnight.” I threw myself on
the straw. “I’ll sleep now. Wake me for Lauds.”

  In chapel we thousand knights pray as one man, brothers all. There are no women here, not one. No female contaminates our purity. The only female flesh I have touched, to my knowledge, is my mother when I was born. My war-horse is a stallion, to ride a meek small mare would disgrace me. Hen, or sow, or ewe, or cow meat, has never passed my lips. No milk, ever. The boy coughed, still waiting. I sighed. “What?”

  “Sir,” he burst out. “ ’Tis someone!”

  I opened my eyes.

  “The Master sent me, sir. He commands your presence.”

  “The Master?” I blinked, fully awake. “De Gondemar commands me?”

  “Himself!” squeaked the boy. “Quick, sir.” He covered my torn hair-shirt with a linen vest (permitted in hot climates), jumped on the bed to pull my tabard over my head, lifted my sword from the rack with both hands and strapped it around my waist. “He commands no delay!”

  There’s no mirror in my cell lest the sin of vanity claim me, but there was a water trough in the stone corridor. I glimpsed my face as I plunged my head beneath the surface: my blue eyes in blistered sunburnt cheeks, lips split by weeks of thirst on campaign, black beard matted to my chest, unkempt hair to my shoulders.

  My tabard was blazoned with the Holy Cross, red on white, in God’s fresh blood.

  I walked fast. “Is the castle attacked?”

  He ran behind me, not my equal. “All’s quiet, sir.”

  It was too quiet. The king’s men snored. I stepped over them in the shadows. None woke. Where were the sentries? From the winding stair I crossed the Order’s immense stable, a thousand stallion ready for battle at an hour’s notice despite the truce forced on us by Satan’s army. Princes back home stabbed us in the back with intrigues and vices, and so the Devil, taking the shape of his creature Saladin, mocked us safe from the conquered heart of Christendom: our holy, bleeding city of Jerusalem, which my eyes would never see again.

  “Where’s the stable boys?” I whispered.

  No sentries on the ramparts, only the moonlit sea. I pushed the boy away and drew my sword. “Orders, sir,” he whispered. “No one sees you come or go. The Master says so.”