Puzzles of the Black Widowers

The Alibi

Emmanuel Rubin was in an uncharacteristically mild mood during the cocktail hour preceding the Black Widowers' banquet. And uncharacteristically thoughtful, too. - But characteristically didactic.
He was saying to Geoffrey Avalon (though his voice was loud enough to reach all corners of the room), "I don't know how many mystery stories - or suspense stories, as they tend to call them these days - have been written, but the number is approaching the astronomical and I certainly haven't read them all.
"Of course, the old-fashioned puzzle story is passe, though I like to write one now and then, but even the modern psychological story in which the crime is merely mentioned in passing, but the inner workings of the criminal's tortured soul occupies thousands of tortured words, may have its puzzle aspects.
"What it amounts to is that I'm trying to think up a new kind of alibi that is broken in a new kind of way, and I wonder - what are the odds of my thinking one up that has never been used before? And no matter how ingenious I am, how can I possibly know that someone long ago, in some obscure volume I never read, did not use precisely the same bit of ingenuity? I envy the early practitioners in the field. Almost anything they made up had never been used before."
Avalon said, "What's the odds, Manny? If you haven't read all the suspense stories written, neither has any reader. Just make up something. If it's a repeat of some obscure device that appeared in a novel published fifty-two years ago, who will know?"
Rubin said bitterly, "Somewhere someone will have read that early novel and he'll write to me, very likely sarcastically."
Mario Gonzalo, from the other end of the room, called out, "In your case, it won't matter, Manny. There are so many other things to criticize in your stories that probably no one will bother pointing out that your gimmicks are old hat."
"There speaks a man," said Rubin, "who in a lifetime of portraiture has produced only caricature."
"Caricature is a difficult art," said Gonzalo, "as you would know if you knew anything about art."
Gonzalo was sketching the evening's guest in order that the sketch might be added to those that marched along the wall of the room at the Milano Restaurant in which the banquets took place.
He had what seemed an easy task this time, for the guest, brought in by Avalon, who was host of the evening, had a magnificent mane of white hair, thick and lightly waved, shining like spun silver in the lamplight. His regular features and spontaneous, even-toothed smile made it quite certain that he was one of those men who grew statelier and more handsome with age. His name was Leonard Koenig and Avalon had introduced him merely as "my friend."
Koenig said, "You are making me look something like a superannuated movie star, Mr. Gonzalo."
"You can't fool an artist's eye, Mr. Koenig," said Gonzalo. "Are you one, by any chance?"
"No," said Koenig without further elaboration, and Rubin laughed.
"Mario is right, Mr. Koenig," said Rubin. "You can't fool an artist's eye."
With that the conversation grew more general, breaking off temporarily only when the soft voice of that peerless waiter, Henry, announced, "Please take your seats, gentlemen. Dinner is being served." - And they sat down to their turtle soup, which Roger Halsted, as the club gourmet, sipped carefully before giving it the benediction of a broad smile.
Over the brandy, Thomas Trumbull, whose crisply waved white hair lost caste, somehow, against the brighter, softer hair of the guest, took up the task of grilling.
"Mr. Koenig, how do you justify your existence?" he asked.
Koenig smiled broadly. "In view of Mr. Rubin's problems with the invention of alibis, I suppose I can most easily justify my existence by pointing out that in my time I have been a breaker of alibis."
"Your profession has not been announced by Jeff," said Trumbull. "May I take it, then, that you are on the police force?"
"Not quite. Not on an ordinary police force. I am in counterespionage, or, to put it more accurately, I was. I retired early and moved into the law, which is how I met Jeff Avalon."
Trumbull's eyebrows shot up. "Counterespionage?"
Koenig smiled again. "I read your mind, Mr. Trumbull. I know of your position with the government and you're wondering why you don't know my name. I assure you I was a minor cog, who, except for one case, never did anything notable. Besides, as you know, it's not department policy to publicize its members. We do our work best in obscurity. And, as I said, I retired early, and have been forgotten in any case."
Gonzalo said eagerly, "That alibi you broke. How did you do that?"
"It's a long story," said Koenig, "and not something I should talk about in detail."
"You can trust us," said Gonzalo. "Nothing that's said at any Black Widowers meeting is ever mentioned outside. That includes our waiter, Henry, who's himself a member of the club. Tom, tell him."
"Well, it's true," said Trumbull reluctantly. "We are all souls of discretion. Even so, though, I can't urge you to talk about matters that should not be talked of."
Avalon pursed his lips judiciously. "I'm not sure we can take that attitude, Tom. The conditions of the banquet are that the guest must answer all questions and rely on our discretion."
Gonzalo said, "Well, look, Mr. Koenig, you can leave out anything you think is too sensitive to talk about. Just describe the alibi and don't tell us how you broke it, and we'll break it for you."
James Drake chuckled. "Don't make rash promises, Mario."
"We can try, anyway," said Gonzalo.
Koenig said thoughtfully, "Do you mean you want to make a game of this?"
"Why not, Mr. Koenig?" said Gonzalo. "And Tom Trumbull can disqualify himself if it turns out he remembers the case."
"I doubt that he will. The whole thing was on a 'need to know' basis and he was not part of the same organization I was." Koenig paused to think for a moment. "I suppose it's possible to play the game, but it was almost thirty years ago. I hope I remember all the details." He cleared his throat and began.
"It's interesting," said Koenig, "that Mr. Rubin mentioned the tales that talk about the psychology of the criminal, because in my old business a lot depended on the psychology of the spy. There were people who betrayed their country for money, or for spite, or out of sexual infatuation. These are easy to handle, in a way, because they have no strong underpinning of conviction and, if caught, give way easily."
"Greed is the thing," said Halsted feelingly, "and you don't have to be a spy. The corrupt politician, the tax-finagling businessman, the industrialist who defrauds the armed forces with overcharges and shoddy work, can damage the country as badly as any spy."
"Yes," said Rubin, "but these guys will shout patriotism all over the place. They can steal the government and the people blind, but as long as they hang out the flag on Memorial Day and vilify foreigners and anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, they're great guys."
"That's why," said Avalon, "Samuel Johnson pointed out that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel."
"Undoubtedly," said Koenig, "but we're veering from the point. I was going on to say that there are also spies who do their job out of a strong ideological feeling. They may do so out of admiration for the ideals of another nation, or because they feel they are serving the cause of world peace, or in some other way are behaving nobly in their own eyes. We can't really complain about this, for we have people in foreign countries who work for us for similar idealistic reasons and, in fact, we have more of these than our enemies have. In any case, these ideologues are the really dangerous spies, for they plan more carefully, are willing to take greater risks, and are far more resolute when caught. A man of that sort was Stephen. Notice that I'm using only his first name, and Stephen is not the true first name, either."
Stephen lived a quiet life [Koenig began]; he did not draw attention to himself. He did not make the mistake of trying to cover his true purposes by an unrealistic profession of patriotism. It's just that he had available to him, in the way of his work and of circumstances, a great many items we did not want the enemy to have. Still, there are many people who know matters that had best be confidential, and the vast majority of them are thoroughly dependable. There was no reason to suppose that Stephen wasn't as dependable as any of them.
However, there were certain data that the enemy would particularly want to have, data to which Stephen had access. He could easily pass it along to the enemy, but if he did, circumstances were such that he would surely be suspected. In fact, there would be what would amount to a moral certainty that he was the culprit. Yet such was the importance of the information that he had to obtain it.
Notice, by the way, that I don't tell you anything at all about the nature of the data in question, about the manner in which he had access, or the manner in which he would make the transfer. All that is irrelevant to the little game we are playing. Now let me try to put myself into Stephen's mind
He knew he had to perform the task, and he knew he would instantly be suspected, strongly suspected. He felt that he had to protect himself somehow. It was not so much that he feared imprisonment, for he might be exchanged. Nor, I imagine, did he fear death, since the circumstances of his life were such that he must have known that he lived with the possibility of death, even unpleasant death, every day.
Nevertheless, as a patriot - I suppose he could be considered that if viewed through his own eyes - he did not want to be caught because he knew he could not easily be replaced. Furthermore, if he could somehow be absolved of suspicion, our department would have to look elsewhere. That would waste our energies and place any number of innocent people under suspicion, all of which would work to our disadvantage.
But how could he avoid being caught when he was, of necessity, the obvious culprit? Clearly, he would have to be in two places - in the city, where he could carry through his task, and, at the same time, in a far away place so that it would seem he could not possibly have had anything to do with the task. The only way he could achieve this was to be two people.
Here is the way he managed it, as we eventually found out. The country Stephen worked for provided a look-alike, whom we might call Stephen Two. I imagine that if Stephen and Stephen Two stood next to each other it would be easy to distinguish between them, but if someone saw Stephen Two and then, a few days later, Stephen himself, it would seem that he had seen the same person.
It also seems logical to suppose that Stephen Two's resemblance to Stephen was reinforced. He would be given Stephen's hairstyling, would cultivate Stephen's thin mustache, would practice Stephen's voice as given on recordings, and his signature as recorded on documents. He would even have learned to make use of some of Stephen's favorite expressions. Naturally, he would have to be someone who spoke English and understood the culture as well as Stephen did.
All this must have taken considerable time and effort, but it is a measure of the importance of what the enemy country was after that the time and effort was spent.
We eventually pieced together what it was Stephen did and are satisfied that the account is essentially correct. As the time approached, Stephen let it be known, in as casual a manner as seemed appropriate, that he would be going to Bermuda for a week's vacation by way of a cruise ship. When the time came, he went into hiding and changed his appearance slightly, so that he would not readily be recognized while he carried out the theft and transmission of the data as quietly and as obscurely as possible. It was Stephen Two, of course, who took the ship to Bermuda.
Stephen himself, as it happened, had never been to Bermuda, and that struck him as a useful fact. Having been there but once would account for the fact that he might not know all there was to know about the island. He had, however, to know what he himself had done on the island, and for that purpose, he had Stephen Two send him, by way of a simple code and a secure accommodation address, a condensed but detailed account of what he did and saw on Bermuda. In particular, Stephen Two must do a number of unimportant things that he would have to recount in detail, so that Stephen could use them as proof of having been in Bermuda. A casual reference to the unimportant could be made to seem convincing evidence.
We are quite certain that Stephen ordered Stephen Two to make friends with some reasonably attractive woman on the ship and get along with her well enough so that she would be certain to remember him - yet not so well that she could detect some difference between the two Stephens.
In particular, he did not want Stephen Two to get intimate and start a romance. I imagine that Stephen did not want to be handed a situation that might make him uncomfortable, and a woman who imagined they had been lovers, when that was something he would not be able to deny without great danger to himself, would certainly represent something uncomfortable.
The week during which Stephen Two was in Bermuda must have been a period of great suspense for Stephen. He carried through his own task, but what if the cruise ship foundered, or Stephen Two fell overboard, or had an accident in Bermuda and was hospitalized, crippled, or even killed? Or suppose Stephen Two were fingerprinted for some reason, or had turned traitor (or had, from our point of view, defected). Anything like that would have ruined Stephen's alibi and made his jailing certain.
In actual fact, of course, none of these things took place. Stephen Two sent his letters faithfully, numbering each so that Stephen could be certain that none had been lost. Stephen carefully memorized each letter as well as he might.
Eventually, Stephen Two returned from Bermuda, and with quiet skill faded out and went back to his own country, while Stephen resumed his identity.
It was two weeks after the end of the Bermuda trip that we had reason to suspect that the data Stephen had been after had been tampered with. A quick investigation proved the case, and the finger of suspicion pointed forcefully and without question at Stephen.
A group of us descended upon him.
He was quite admirable in his way. His distress at the loss of the information seemed quite sincere and he admitted ruefully that he was the logical suspect, and indeed the only one.
"But," he said with gentle patience, "I was on the Island Duchess from the ninth to the sixteenth, and I was in Bermuda between the eleventh and the fourteenth. If the loss took place during that period, I simply couldn't have done it."
He gave us full details and, of course, had ample records to the effect that he had bought tickets, embarked, disembarked, paid his bar bill and some other expenses, and so on. All seemed in order. It didn't even seem suspicious that he could produce this all on demand. He said, "I'm going to claim part of this as a business expense, so I'll need records for the IRS."
There seemed to be a disposition among my confreres to accept this and to wonder if there might be other suspects after all. I held off. Stephen seemed, for some reason, to be too smooth to me, and I insisted on continuing to question him while others tackled other angles of the case. That was my big achievement as a spy catcher, of course. If I had had one or two more like that, the department might not have been so willing to let me go when I asked for retirement, but I didn't. This was my one and only.
In a second interview, I said to him, "Were you on the ship or on Bermuda every moment from embarkation to disembarkation?"
"Yes, of course," he said, "I was at the mercy of the ship."
"Not entirely, sir."
He frowned a bit, as though trying to penetrate my meaning, then said, "Do you mean that I might have flown from the ship to here and then back to the ship and, in that way, have been here for the job and there for an alibi?"
"Something like that," I said grimly.
"I couldn't get on a plane without identifying myself."
"There are such things as deliberate misidentifications."
"I understand that," he said, "but I suppose you can check as to whether any helicopter encountered the ship at any time. I suppose you can check every passenger on every plane between here and Bermuda during the time I was on the island and see whether any passenger is unaccounted for, or is anything but a real person distinct from myself."
I didn't bother to tell Stephen that such checks were actually under way - and in the end, they uncovered nothing.
Our interviews were recorded, of course, with Stephen's permission. We had read him his rights, but he said he was perfectly willing to talk and required no lawyer. He was the very model of an innocent citizen confident of his innocence, and that simply raised my suspicions somehow. He seemed too good to be true, and too confident. It was about then that I began to wonder if he had a twin brother so that he could seem to be in Bermuda even while he was at home. That was checked out, too, and it was established he was a single birth and, indeed, an only son - but the idea of a look-alike remained in my mind.
I said, in a later interview, "Did you stay on the ship while in Bermuda? Or at a hotel?"
"On the ship."
"Had you ever been to Bermuda before? Are you a well-known figure there in any way?"
"It was my first trip to Bermuda ever."
"Is there anyone who can vouch for your presence on the ship each day? Is there anyone who can vouch that you were indeed in Bermuda at those times you were off the ship?"
He hesitated. "I was on the cruise alone. I didn't go with any friends. After all, I had no idea, no faintest notion - how could I? - that I would have to prove I was on the ship."
I half smiled. That seemed a hair too ingenuous. "You're not going to tell me," I said, "that you were a recluse, skulking in corners and speaking to no one."
"No," he said, looking a little uncomfortable. "As a matter of fact, I was friendly enough, but I can't guarantee that any of the people I interacted with casually would remember me. Except  - "
"Go on! What is the exception?"
"There was a certain young woman I grew friendly with at the start of the cruise. She became my steady companion, so to speak, at ship's meals, and for much of the time on Bermuda. - Don't get me wrong, Mr. Koenig. There was nothing improper about the relationship. I'm not a married man, but even so it was just a casual friendship. I think she might remember me. We danced on board ship and, in Bermuda, we visited the aquarium, went on the glass-bottom boat together, took tours, ate at the Princess Hotel. Things like that. She went to the beach alone, though. I tend to avoid the sun."
"Did you see her every day?"
He thought a moment. "Yes, every day. Not all day, of course. And not at night. She was never in my room and I was never in hers."
"We're not concerned with your morals, sir."
"I'm sure you're not, but I don't want to say anything that would unfairly reflect on her morals."
"That's very considerate of you. What was the young woman's name?"
"Artemis."
"Artemis?" I said, rather in disbelief.
"That's what she told me her name was, and that's what I heard others call her. She was a very pretty woman, in her early thirties I should judge, with dark blond hair and blue eyes. About five feet six in height."
"And her last name?"
He hesitated. "I don't remember. She may not even have mentioned it. It was shipboard, you know, very informal. She called me Stephen. I don't think I ever mentioned my own last name."
"Her address?"
"I don't know. She spoke as though she were a New Yorker, but I don't know. You can always look at the ship's records for the week. She'd be listed, and I'd say the chances were virtually zero that there would be two Artemis's. They would surely have her last name and her home address."
I turned off the recording device at that and warned him that, as had been established, he would continue to be confined to his apartment for the duration of the questioning, but that anything necessary would be brought to him, and any reasonable errands would be run for him.
I was determined to prove if I could that whoever had been on Bermuda, it was not Stephen, but for that I would clearly need the woman.
It took three days to arrange matters, and each day was an annoyance. Obviously, I could not keep Stephen under wraps indefinitely, and once he began to complain loudly enough, we would have to come up with something definite or let him go.
But he did not complain. He continued to be a model citizen and once I had Artemis in tow, I arranged to have her see him when he did not know she was looking at him. She said, "It certainly looks like Stephen."
"Let's meet him, then. Just act naturally, but please keep your eyes open and let me know if, for any reason, you think it's not the man you met on the ship."
I brought her into the room and Stephen looked at her, smiled, and said without hesitation, "Hello, Artemis."
She said, a little hesitantly, "Hello, Stephen."
She was no actress. She looked at him anxiously, and Stephen would have had to be far less intelligent than he clearly was not to guess that, under instructions, she was trying to tell whether he might not be an imposter.
Finally, she said, "He certainly looks like Stephen, except Stephen had little tufts of hair on the back of the rear end of his fingers. I thought that was so virile. I don't see them now."
Stephen didn't seem to mind being discussed in the third person, or to be offended that the woman searched for difference. He merely smiled and held up his hands. "The hair is there."
She said, "It should be darker." She didn't sound definite about it, though.
Stephen said, "Remember the time when I tripped over my own two left feet while we were dancing and my hand slipped out of yours and you said it was because they were so smooth? That doesn't sound as though you were so terribly impressed over their hairiness, does it?"
Artemis's face lit up. She turned to me and said, "Yes, that did happen."
"And you remember I apologized for being a clumsy dancer, and you kept saying I was a good dancer, but I knew you were just being sweet, and trying to make me feel better. Remember, Artemis?"
She said happily, "Yes, I remember. Hello, Stephen. I'm glad it's you."
He said, "Thanks for recognizing me, Artemis. I'd have been in considerable trouble if you hadn't."
I interrupted a bit irritably, I suppose. "Wait, Miss Cataldo. Don't rush to conclusions."
He said, "Is that your last name, Artemis? They asked me, but I didn't know. You'd never told me."
I waved him quiet. I said, "Ask him some questions, Miss Cataldo; little things that he ought to get right."
Artemis flushed. "Did you ever kiss me, Stephen?"
Stephen looked a little embarrassed. "I did once - just once. In the taxi, Artemis. Remember?"
I didn't give the woman a chance to reply. I said sharply, "The details, Stephen. And no hesitation."
He shrugged. "We were in the taxi being driven to a place called Spittal Pond, a bird refuge that Artemis wanted to see. Artemis teased me because I said how pleasant it was to be going with a young woman who wanted to see bird refuges and not nightclubs and she said that by the next week, I would have forgotten her completely, and I wouldn't even remember her name. So I said gallantly, 'What? Forget Artemis, the chaste huntress?' I reached over her and wrote the name on the car window on the left. It was a humid day and there was a thin film of moisture on it."
"Where does the kiss come in?" I demanded.
"Well, I was seated on her right," said Stephen, "and I reached across her chest with my right arm to write her name. My left arm was on the back of the seat." He showed me how it was, stretching his left arm behind an imaginary companion, and then pushing his right hand across in front, so that his arms nearly enclosed that companion. "I had just finished writing her name when the taxi lurched, for some reason. My elbow nearly collided with the driver's head so I grabbed Artemis's shoulder to steady myself - pure reflex - and there I was embracing her." He was still demonstrating. "I found the position so irresistible that I kissed her. Only on the cheek, I am sorry to say."
I looked at the woman. "Well?"
Her eyes were shining. She said, "That's exactly how it happened, Mr. Koenig. This is Stephen, all right. There is just no question about it." She added dramatically, "I identify this man as the man on the ship and in Bermuda."
Stephen smiled with just a touch of triumph, it seemed to me, and I said, "Very well. You can leave now, Miss Cataldo."
And that's it.
Koenig stopped talking and looked at the Black Widowers with his eyebrows raised.
Gonzalo said explosively, "That's it? I thought you said you cracked his alibi."
"So I did. But you wanted me simply to tell you about the alibi and that you would then break it down."
"And you haven't left out anything?"
"Nothing essential," said Koenig.
Avalon cleared his throat and said, "I presume you found Stephen Two. That would break the alibi."
"So it would," said Koenig cheerfully, "but we never found Stephen Two, I'm sorry to say."
Halsted said, "Is it possible that Miss Whatsername was paid off? That she was lying?"
"If she was," said Koenig, "we found no evidence to back it. In any case, the alibi was broken quite apart from anything she said or didn't say. - Have any of you gentlemen visited Bermuda?"
There was a general silence and finally Gonzalo said, "I was taken there when I was four years old or so. I don't remember anything."
Trumbull said, "Are you hinting that Stephen got some of the places in Bermuda wrong? Was it that there was no bird refuge of the kind he mentioned or no Princess Hotel or something like that?"
"No, he got all the places correct. No mistake that we could find as far as the geography or sights of the place were concerned."
Again there was a silence and Drake finally said, "Henry, is there anything about this that strikes you as making sense?"
Henry, who was just returning from the reference shelf, said thoughtfully, "I can't speak through firsthand knowledge because I, too, have never been on Bermuda, but it's possible that what Mr. Stephen said may have proved that he was never on Bermuda, either."
Drake said in surprise, "Why, what did he say?"
Henry said, "Mr. Koenig ended his tale with the account of the kiss in the taxi, so I thought that perhaps something about that account broke the alibi. Now, Bermuda is a British crown colony and it strikes me that it may follow British custom as far as traffic is concerned. I have just checked the Columbia Encyclopedia on the reference shelf and it says nothing about that, but it is a possibility.
"If, in Bermuda, traffic is always on the left, as it is in Great Britain, the automobiles must have the steering wheel, and, therefore, the driver, on the right side of the front seat as in Great Britain; whereas in the United States, with traffic on the right, steering wheel and driver are on the left. If Mr. Stephen was sitting to the young woman's right and reaching over her to write her name on the left window as he said, he could scarcely have nearly struck the driver when the taxi lurched. The driver would have been on the other side.
"I imagine Stephen Two told Mr. Stephen about the kissing incident, but neglected to mention the matter of the steering wheel or the driver, taking that for granted. Mr. Stephen added the matter of the driver for added verisimilitude and that was his great mistake, for, undoubtedly, Mr. Koenig saw the point at once."
Koenig sat back in his chair and smiled admiringly. "That's very good, Henry."
"Not at all. The praise is yours, Mr. Koenig," said Henry. "I knew you had broken the alibi; I knew you had done it by reason; and I knew that the reasoning had to be deduced from the facts you gave us. You, in breaking the alibi, did not have the advantage of that special knowledge."
Afterword
The influence of my having been on my Bermuda vacation (see the previous Afterword) shows itself clearly in this story, which first appeared in the September 1989 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.