Puzzles of the Black Widowers
The Envelope
Emmanuel Rubin arrived at the Black Widowers banquet in a foul mood. This was not much worse than his usual attitude, to be sure, but his eyes, magnified behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, flashed dangerously.
"Uh-oh," said Mario Gonzalo, host of the occasion, "someone has received a well-deserved rejection."
"I have not received a rejection," snapped Rubin, "well-deserved or otherwise. It's much worse than that."
Geoffrey Avalon stared down from his seventy-four-inch height at the diminutive Rubin and said in his stately baritone, "Much worse than a rejection? For a free-lance writer like you, Manny? Come now."
"Listen," said Rubin furiously, "I walked into the local post office this morning and asked for a roll of twenty-five cent stamps. That irks me to begin with. I can remember when it cost two cents to mail a letter, but the price keeps going up and up without seeming to affect the eternal deficit - "
"At least," said Roger Halsted, "the service gets worse to balance the increase in rates."
"You say that because you think it's funny, Roger," said Rubin, "but you happen to be dead right. - Thank you, Henry."
Henry, the unsurpassable waiter of the Black Widower banquets, recognizing the demands being made on Rubin by his passion, had brought him a refill of his drink.
James Drake, lighting his perennial cigarette, said, "I remember when stamps were two cents, too, and the morning newspaper was two cents, and a pack of cigarettes was thirteen cents - and my weekly salary was fifteen dollars. So what?"
"I haven't finished," said Rubin. "So I asked for a roll of twenty-five-cent stamps and the confounded idiot at the window looked me right in the eye and said, 'We don't have any.' I was stunned. It was a post office, damn it. I said, 'Why not?' And he just shrugged and shouted, 'Next!' I mean, no sign of regret or embarrassment. They might have put up a sign to say the rolls were temporarily out. I had to wait half an hour in line to be told I couldn't have one."
Gonzalo said, "Suppose we cool you down to your usual state of semi-sanity, Manny, so that I can introduce my guest - Francis MacShannon. He's a good friend of mine."
Rubin shook hands loftily. "Any good friend of Mario's, Mr. MacShannon, is highly suspect in my eyes."
"Which is what you'd expect," said Gonzalo, "from someone who falls into a tirade over a roll of twenty-five-cent stamps. - I'll give you a few to tide you over, Manny. No charge."
"No, thanks," said Rubin. "I got my roll later in the day. It's a matter of principle."
"I apologize for Manny's dubious principles, Frank," said Gonzalo. "He makes one up whenever he can't get his way."
Francis MacShannon laughed. He appeared sixtyish, with a round and jolly face above a short, plump body. He had a ruddy complexion and a gray chin-beard, giving him the appearance of a semi-shaven Santa Claus.
"I'm on your side, Mr. Rubin," he said in a high-pitched voice that rather spoiled the Santa Claus image. "I have complaints about the post office, too."
"Doesn't everyone," growled Thomas Trumbull, who had arrived a moment before and who had seized upon the scotch and soda that Henry held out for him.
There was a pause while MacShannon was introduced to the final newcomer, and then he said, "My own complaint is with the matter of postmarks. Nowadays, they are only dirty smudges, but when I was young, post-marks were legible and beautifully clear. They were geography lessons. In fact, I built up a huge collection of postmarks."
Avalon's formidable eyebrows raised. "How does one do that, Mr. MacShannon?"
"To begin with, my parents gave me the envelopes they received in the mail. So did the neighbors up and down the street, once they learned how serious I was about it. The best part of it, though, was finding discarded envelopes in the street, in backyards, under bushes. You'd be surprised how many envelopes it was possible to find. Each new postmark I had never before encountered was a treasure and I'd look it up carefully in the atlas. I made lists of them by states and nations and pasted the envelopes into notebooks in organized fashion. I became an aficionado of envelopes such as you could scarcely imagine. In fact, it was my interest in envelopes that led to my - "
It was at this point that Henry's softly authoritative voice said, "Dinner is served, gentlemen."
They sat down to their melon prosciutto, followed by cream of asparagus soup and a mixed green salad. The conversation dealt with the new Russian probe designed to study the Martian satellite, Phobos, and over the roast capon, the discussion grew heated over whether a joint Soviet-American Mars expedition was desirable or not. The post office and its manifold sins dwindled and vanished in the fire of the new controversy. Down went the chocolate almond pie and the coffee and, over the brandy, Gonzalo called for the grilling.
"Manny," he said, "you be the griller, and I invoke host's privilege and tell you that the subject of the post office must not be mentioned."
Rubin scowled and said, "Mr. MacShannon, how do you justify your existence?"
MacShannon said amiably, "I'm a computer programmer and designer. These days I think that speaks for itself."
"Maybe," said Rubin. "We might get back to that later. Obviously, your present labors have nothing to do with your activities as a child - I mean your postmark collection. You had said - "
"Manny," said Gonzalo abruptly, "I ruled out the post office."
"Fire and brimstone," exploded Rubin. "Who's talking post office? I'm talking postmark collection. I appeal to the membership."
"All right. Go ahead," said Gonzalo resignedly.
"Now, then," said Rubin, after an unnecessarily protracted glare at Gonzalo, "you said that it was your interest in envelopes that led you to your - And then, before you could finish your sentence, you were interrupted by the announcement that dinner was ready. Now, then, I would like to have the sentence finished. What did your interest in envelopes lead to?"
MacShannon frowned thoughtfully. "Did I say that?" Then his brow cleared and a look of almost comic self-satisfaction crossed his face. "Oh, yes, of course. Back in 1953, it was through my interest in envelopes that I caught a spy. A real honest-to-Pete spy."
"In 1953?" said Avalon, frowning suddenly. "Don't tell me you were one of the young men working for Senator Joseph McCarthy."
"Who? Me?" said MacShannon, clearly astonished at the suggestion. "Never! I never had any use for McCarthy at all. Of course - " he pondered the matter a moment, "he did make the nation spy-conscious and traitor-conscious, and that couldn't help but affect me, I suppose. You couldn't help thinking in that direction even if you disapproved of McCarthy's tactics, as I did."
"National paranoia, I call it," said Rubin seriously.
"Maybe," said MacShannon, "but anyway, whatever you call it, I suppose that that's what put the whole melodrama in my mind. In a quieter, less frenetic time, I would have seen that envelope and never given it a thought."
"Tell us about it," said Rubin.
"Certainly, if you wish. After thirty-six years, it can't be sensitive. Besides, I don't know the details, only the general outline. I was just starting out in the world, had my engineering degree, had a small job, was living by myself for the first time. I was twenty-four years old, though, and still a little uncertain of myself.
"There was another person, living across the hall from me - Benham was his name. I don't remember his first name. He was about thirty, I think, and I would occasionally see him going in or out. He was a scowler, if you know what I mean, unfriendly, never addressed me. I said hello once or twice, in passing, but he would give me the curtest possible nod and freeze me with his expression. I grew to dislike him intensely, of course, and since I was a great reader of thrillers in those days, I fantasized that he was something villainous - a criminal, a hitman, or, best of all, a spy.
"Then, one day, as we were both waiting for an elevator to take us to our two apartments on the eighth floor, he tore open an envelope he was carrying, which I assumed he had just picked up from his letter box. I had checked mine earlier and it was empty, as it almost always was in those days, except when my mother wrote me. I watched my neighbor out of the corner of my eye, partly because I would naturally watch someone I was fantasizing to be a mysterious villain, partly because I envied anyone who got a letter, and even partly because I never quite got over my childhood fascination with envelopes.
"Having torn open the envelope, he extracted the letter, unfolded it, read it without the slightest expression on his face, then crumpled it and tossed it into the trash basket that stood by the elevators in the hall. He then, still without expression, placed the empty envelope inside his inner jacket pocket. He did it very carefully and patted the front of his jacket as though to assure himself it was well-seated."
Trumbull interrupted. "How did you know it was an empty envelope? There could have been an enclosure along with the letter. A check, for instance."
MacShannon shook his head amiably. "I told you I had this quasi-professional attitude concerning envelopes. It was a flimsy kind, semi-transparent. He had held it in the hand near me while he scanned the letter and I could tell it was empty. No mistake was possible."
"Odd," said Halsted.
"The odd thing about it," said MacShannon, "was that at first I didn't think it was odd. After all, people frequently discard envelopes and keep letters, but I had never seen anyone discard a letter and keep an empty envelope and yet I didn't think it was odd. I said to myself, 'Gee, he's collecting postmarks,' and for a moment I was a ten-year-old again and remembering the thrill of the chase. In fact, for a little while I recognized this Benham as a fellow postmarker and I could feel myself warming to him.
"Maybe it was just as well, for if I hadn't had the postmark thought, I might not have kept the envelope in mind. But as it was, I did keep it in mind, and by the time I reached the eighth floor, I had other thoughts. As usual, my neighbor had not addressed a word to me, or cast me a glance, and my heart hardened toward him again. He couldn't be a postmarker, I decided, because postmarks had already deteriorated past the point where collecting could be profitable. Already, one never saw a clear postmark except on the occasional commemorative envelope.
"Why, then, did he save the envelope? It took me only ten seconds to convert the matter into a spy thriller and I had it. He had received a casual, meaningless message anyone could see and dismiss, but the real message was on the envelope where no one would look for it, and which he therefore kept for later study.
"By the time I had thought of that, I was in my apartment. I waited there for about half a minute, then peered out into the hall to make sure my neighbor wasn't lingering there. He wasn't, so I got back into the elevator, went down to the lobby, and retrieved that crumpled letter."
Rubin said, "Which, I suppose, turned out to be completely uninteresting."
"Well," said MacShannon, "at least it seemed to show Benham in a more human light. The letter was in a feminine handwriting, but by no means a cultivated one - a semi-legible scrawl."
Avalon said with a sigh, "That is about the best you can expect in these degenerate days."
MacShannon smiled. "I suppose so. In any case, I studied that letter so closely over the next few days that I still remember it thirty-six years later - not that there was much to remember. It wasn't dated and it just started, 'Dear Mr. Benham, I had a very good time and it was kind of you to promise to check the matter of the job opening. Please let me know, and thank you.' "
"I see what you mean," said Halsted. "This neighbor might freeze you out, but his female correspondent thought him a kindly man."
Trumbull said, "Many a curmudgeon will unbend to a young woman to achieve the usual end."
MacShannon said, "I didn't think of anything like that. All it seemed to me was that the letter seemed totally innocuous, as I had thought it would have to be. The whole thing about job openings and kindness might just be a matter of writing at random, so to speak. To me, it meant that the envelope was all the more likely to be the important item. The question was, what ought I to do about it? I dithered for several days, and then finally took action. - Please remember that I was young and naive in those days, because in the end I went to the local office of the FBI."
Drake smiled and fingered the ashtray before him. "You risked making a fool of yourself."
"Even I knew that much," said MacShannon. "In fact, I remember that as I told my story to an apparently politely bored functionary, I felt more and more foolish, as I sounded less and less convincing in my own ears. I had several things on my side, though. Senator McCarthy had made it impossible for any agent to ignore any tale of spies. After all, it would be his neck if he let one go that he should not have."
"I can see that," said Halsted. "An agent dismissing something wrongfully would probably be accused of being a spy himself, or a card-carrying member of the Communist party."
"Yes," said MacShannon. "The FBI has to investigate anything brought to it even in easygoing times, but at the height of the McCarthy mania - Then, too, it turned out that Benham, this neighbor of mine, had a post in the infant computer industry and was in a position to know a few things the Pentagon distinctly wanted to have kept secret. In fact, it was my eventual understanding of this that roused my own interest in computers, so that I owe my present career to Benham, in a sense. In any case, I was listened to and the letter was taken from me. I was given a receipt, even though it wasn't my letter."
"It was in your possession," said Rubin, "and it belonged to you, since its previous owner had thrown it away and abandoned it, making it the property of anyone who picked it up."
"In a way," said MacShannon, "I entered into a distant partnership with the FBI, for I was asked to keep an eye on Benham and report anything further I thought unusual or suspicious. It made a common spy out of me, which, looking back on it, makes me feel a little awkward, but I honestly thought I might be dealing with an enemy agent, and I was a bit of a romantic in those days."
"And you might have been infected by the times," said Avalon.
"I wouldn't be surprised," said MacShannon agreeably. "At the time, of course, I didn't know exactly what the FBI was doing, but eventually I became friendly with the agent I had first spoken to, especially as it slowly turned out that Benham was indeed more than he seemed, so that the agent couldn't help but think highly of me."
Rubin said, "Then the hidden envelope turned out to be important, I suppose."
"Let me tell you how things worked out in order," said MacShannon. "They investigated the letter I gave them for some sort of code. What seemed nonsignificant to me might contain a hidden meaning. They could find none. Nor could they find hidden writing, or anything technically advanced, and that just made my story the more persuasive, since I, of course, had stressed the importance of the envelope from the beginning.
"They took to intercepting Benham's mail and opening it, reading it, resealing it, and sending it on. I watched the process on one occasion and it gave me a grisly feeling. It seemed so un-American. There was no way of telling at the conclusion that the letter had been opened, or in any way tampered with, and I have never been able to trust my own mail entirely since then. Who knows who might be studying it without my knowledge?"
Rubin said dryly, "For that matter, phone calls can be listened to, rooms can be bugged, conversations in the open can be overheard. We live in a world devoid of privacy."
"I'm sure you're right," said MacShannon. "In any case, they were particularly interested in any letters that Benham got from the young woman whose letter I had myself picked up. These had their own points of interest to a nosybody, for, as I was eventually told by my friend the agent, it was plain that there was a burgeoning love affair going on there. The letters grew more impassioned and devoted, but the woman's letters, at least, were always scrawled, brief, and continued to show no great intellectual capacity."
Drake grinned. "Intellectual capacity is not necessarily what a man might be after."
Halsted asked, "How long did the investigation go on?"
"Months," said MacShannon. "It was an on-and-off affair."
"Say," said Gonzalo, "if this was a love affair, the letter might not be significant in any case. If agents are in the business of collecting and transmitting information, they're not going to fall in love."
"Why not?" said Avalon sententiously. "Love comes as it pleases, sometimes to the most unlikely participants in the most unlikely situations. That's why Eros, the god of love, is often pictured as blind."
"That's not what I mean," said Gonzalo. "Of course they can fall in love, but they wouldn't use their official communications, if I may call them that, as a vehicle. They'd make love on their own time, so to speak, in their own way, and leave the important messages alone."
MacShannon said, "Not if the real messages were on the envelope. The more immaterial the letter itself, the better. Why not carry on a love affair, even a sincere love affair, in the letter itself? Who would think of looking at the envelopes in cases where the letter itself seems so all-important to the writer and reader? If I hadn't seen him save that first envelope - "
"Well," said Trumbull, a little impatiently, "get on with it. I have some connection with counterintelligence myself and I'm sure they investigated the envelopes."
"They did, indeed," said MacShannon. "Every one of them, whether they were from the young lady or not. At least, the agent told me they did, and I had no reason to think he was lying. Of course, I wondered, at the time if what they were doing was legal. It seemed un-American to me, as I have already said."
"Undoubtedly it was illegal," said Trumbull. "They had no evidence of wrongdoing. Saving an empty envelope may be puzzling, but it is not a crime. Still, national security purifies a multitude of sins and a bit of illegality here and there is winked at."
"Bad in principle," growled Rubin. "A bit of illegality leads to a lot, and in no time we'd be at the Gestapo level."
"We aren't yet," said Trumbull, "and there's a tight rein placed on these organizations."
"Yes, when they're caught," said Rubin.
"And they're caught often enough to be kept within bounds. Come on, Manny, let's let MacShannon proceed. You were telling us they inspected the envelopes."
"Yes, they did," said MacShannon. "They removed the stamps to see what might be underneath. They studied every bit of writing on the envelope to the last detail and they subjected the paper to every known test. They even substituted new envelopes which they made just like the old except that they made small nonsignificant changes. They wanted to see if the new envelope had something distorted that would reduce its message to nonsense."
Drake said, "That's a lot of trouble to take for anything as thin as your story.
"You can thank McCarthy," said MacShannon briefly. "But they never did find anything either in the letters or on the envelopes."
Rubin said, "Hold on, Mr. MacShannon, when you started this story, you said that as a result of your interest in envelopes, you caught an honest-to-Pete spy. Did you or didn't you?"
"I did," said MacShannon urgently, "I did."
"Are you going to tell us," said Rubin, "that as a result of the investigation, a different person altogether was trapped as the spy?"
"No, no. It was Benham. Benham."
"But you said the letters and the envelopes showed nothing. You did say that, didn't you?"
"I didn't quite say they showed nothing, but I did say the FBI found nothing in the correspondence. However, they didn't confine themselves to that. They worked at the other end - his job. They inspected his work record, kept him under hidden surveillance, and eventually found out what he was doing and with whom. I gathered that quite a substantial spy ring was broken and I got some nice words from the bureau. Nothing official, of course, but it was the big excitement of my life and I owed it all, in a way, to my having collected postmarks as a boy."
There was perhaps less satisfaction on the faces of the assembled Black Widowers than there was on MacShannon's.
Avalon said, "What about the young woman? Benham's light o' love? Was she picked up, too?"
For a moment, MacShannon looked uncertain. "I'm not dead sure," he said. "I was never told. My impression at the time was that there was insufficient evidence in her case, since they got nothing out of the letters or envelopes. - But that's the one thing that bothers me. I got Benham because he had saved that envelope. Why couldn't they find anything on the envelopes, then? If Benham and company had some secret communication system that the FBI didn't penetrate, who knows what damage has been done since then by its means."
Halsted said, "Maybe the FBI found nothing on the envelope because there was nothing to find there. Even spies can't be spies every minute of the day. Maybe the love affair was only a love affair."
MacShannon's good humor, until then unfailing, began to evaporate. He looked a little grim as he said, "But then why did he save that envelope? It always comes down to that. We're not talking about an ordinary person, but about a spy, a real spy. Why should he discard a letter so casually that anyone could pick it up, and save an empty envelope. There has to be a reason. If there's an innocent reason that has nothing to do with his profession, what is it?"
Avalon said gently, "I take it that you yourself have never thought of an adequate reason, Mr. MacShannon."
"None, except that the envelope bore a message of some sort," said MacShannon.
"I suspect," said Rubin, "that you haven't tried thinking of what we have been calling an innocent explanation, Mr. MacShannon. Perhaps you have been too satisfied with your message theory."
"In that case, you think of an alternate reason, Mr. Rubin," said MacShannon defiantly.
"Now wait," said Halsted, "the spy thing was not Mr. MacShannon's original assumption. At first he thought that Benham was collecting postmarks - or possibly stamps, for that matter. Suppose that very first thought was correct."
MacShannon said, "Don't underestimate the FBI. I had mentioned my original thought and, on one occasion, they managed to search his apartment. There were no signs of any collecting mania of any kind. Certainly, there were no envelope collections. They told me so."
"You might have told us that," said Rubin.
"I just have," said MacShannon, "but it's not important. The chance of his saving the envelope for collecting purposes was so small that it made no sense to dwell on it. - Well, then, have you come up with some other explanation for saving the envelope, Mr. Rubin? Or any of you?"
Drake said, "It could have been a thoughtless action. People do things out of habit, all sorts of silly things. Your Mr. Benham meant to save the letter and discard the envelope and, without thinking, he did the reverse."
"I can't believe that," said MacShannon.
"Why not? It's called being absentminded," said Drake. "Later, when he found he had saved the envelope, he may have gone downstairs to recover the letter and found it gone."
MacShannon said, "A man whose career is espionage is surely not absentminded. He wouldn't last long if he were. Besides, he knew what he was doing. He read the letter and crumpled it at once and discarded it. Then he looked at the envelope thoughtfully and put it away carefully. He knew what he was doing."
"Are you sure?" said Drake. "It happened thirty-six years ago. With all due respect, you may be honestly remembering what you want to remember."
"Not at all," said MacShannon frigidly. "It was the big excitement of my life and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. My memory is accurate."
Drake shrugged. "If you insist, it's impossible to argue, of course."
MacShannon looked about the table from face to face. "Now, then, who has an alternate explanation? No collection. No absentmindedness. What else? - And no sentimental attachment for the writer. There might have been a love affair afterward, but that letter Benham discarded was clearly the first one he had received. He had just met her. And even if it was love at first sight, something he didn't strike me as subject to, he would have kept the letter, not the envelope."
There was silence around the table and MacShannon said, "There you are! It's bothered me for all these years. What was there about the envelope that defeated the FBI? I guess I'll just have to keep on wondering for the rest of my life."
"Wait," said Avalon, "the communication, if there was indeed one, may have been on the first envelope only, the one he saved and the one that the FBI presumably never saw. All the others may have been clean and irrelevant."
MacShannon's little beard quivered at that. "I'll leave it to Mr. Trumbull," he said. "He said he was with counterintelligence. Does a conspirator of some sort give up a method of communication once it has been proven successful?"
Trumbull said, "It's not a cosmic law, but successful gambits are not lightly abandoned, it's true. However, it might no longer have been particularly successful. That envelope he kept may have just happened to be the last of a line of such things that was using a technique that had grown risky. It could then have been abandoned."
"Might! May have! Could have been!" said MacShannon, his voice rising to a squeak. "We have two actual facts. The man was a spy. The man did keep an empty envelope. Let's find an explanation as to why a spy should keep an empty envelope, an explanation that isn't pure speculation."
Again there was silence about the table and MacShannon smiled sardonically and said, "There is no such explanation, except that it bore a message."
At this point, Henry, from his post at the sideboard, said mildly, "May I offer a suggestion?"
MacShannon whirled at this unexpected entry into the conversation and said in annoyed fashion, "What is it you want, waiter?"
Gonzalo immediately held up his hand in a stop gesture and said, "Henry is a member of the club, Frank. He's expected to contribute."
"I see," said MacShannon, without any noticeable easing of his manner. "What is it you wish to say, then, my man?"
"Only, sir, that saving an empty envelope is something so reasonable that any of us might do it and that each of us may, in fact, have done so at some time or another."
"I deny that," said MacShannon.
"Consider, sir," said Henry quietly, "that the letter you obtained from the trash can was, as you yourself have said, the first between them. They had been out together on a date or, perhaps, as the result of a casual meeting. They talked. She told him of her difficulties in locating a suitable job, and he offered to help her. Since he was not an agreeable character from your description of him, Mr. MacShannon, he must have been attracted to her and strove to be agreeable against his natural bent. We don't know if she was young and pretty, but that's a reasonable assumption. She must have been attracted to him, too. Certainly the letter expressed gratitude and encouraged a continuation of the correspondence. She said, 'Please let me know.' And, in fact, there was further correspondence and there is apparently no question but that a certain romance eventually began between them. Would you judge me correct in all this?"
"Yes," said MacShannon, "but what of it?"
"We might further reason," said Henry, "that Mr. Benham would want to continue the correspondence with a woman who may have been young and pretty and was certainly being grateful and inviting. Now you told us the contents of the letter, Mr. MacShannon, and said you remembered it word for word. It was not a long letter and I accept your memory. It was the letter of a pleasant, but not well-organized, young woman, for you said it was undated, and almost anyone with any sense of order would date a letter."
"Yes," said MacShannon. "It was undated, but I still don't get what you're driving at."
Henry said, "Someone casual enough to leave a letter undated may well have omitted other things as well. You said it started, without preamble, with a 'Dear Mr. Benham.' I take it then that there was no return address included on the letter sheet."
MacShannon's frown smoothed out and he said, with a note of surprise, "No, there wasn't."
"Then," said Henry, "since the letter was not a love letter and Benham was not the type, perhaps, to place even a love letter next to his heart, he crumpled it and threw it away. However, he did want to answer it and perhaps encourage a relationship he suspected might be sexually satisfying. People who don't put the return address on the letter itself often do place it on the envelope. So Mr. Benham looked at the envelope, noted that it carried the return address, and naturally saved it so that he could answer the young lady. Surely that is a reasonable explanation."
A wave of brief applause swept the table, and Henry, flushing slightly, said, "Thank you, gentlemen."
MacShannon, clearly taken aback, said, "But in that case the envelope had nothing to do with Benham's espionage."
"As Mr. Halsted said earlier," said Henry, "a spy needn't be a spy every second. There are bound to be intervals of normality. However, he did break a cardinal rule of the profession, I think."
"What was that, Henry?" asked Trumbull.
"It seems to me that anyone engaged in the difficult profession of espionage must, above all, refrain from attracting attention of any kind. The envelope should not have been saved and the letter discarded in front of a witness. It should not even have been opened and read in front of a witness. - Of course, Mr. Benham had no way of knowing that the young man he always studiously ignored had once collected postmarks and was therefore sensitized to envelopes."
Afterword
My favorite time for writing Black Widowers stories is when I'm on vacation. Every once in a while, Janet and I go on a cruise to Bermuda. For seven days, I'm away from my typewriter, my word processor, and my reference library. What I do, under such abysmal conditions, is smuggle a pad of paper and some ballpoint pens into my luggage, and then I write fiction. This story and the following one were written on the Bermuda trip in July of 1988, together with a third story that was not a Black Widowers, so the vacation was not entirely a waste of time.
Incidentally, it was not till I was putting the stories together for this collection that I noticed that the central point of "The Envelope" was used as a subsidiary point in "Sunset on the Water." That sort of thing is bound to happen once in a while, especially when one writes as much and as assiduously as I do, but it makes me feel bad just the same.
This story first appeared in the April 1989 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
"Uh-oh," said Mario Gonzalo, host of the occasion, "someone has received a well-deserved rejection."
"I have not received a rejection," snapped Rubin, "well-deserved or otherwise. It's much worse than that."
Geoffrey Avalon stared down from his seventy-four-inch height at the diminutive Rubin and said in his stately baritone, "Much worse than a rejection? For a free-lance writer like you, Manny? Come now."
"Listen," said Rubin furiously, "I walked into the local post office this morning and asked for a roll of twenty-five cent stamps. That irks me to begin with. I can remember when it cost two cents to mail a letter, but the price keeps going up and up without seeming to affect the eternal deficit - "
"At least," said Roger Halsted, "the service gets worse to balance the increase in rates."
"You say that because you think it's funny, Roger," said Rubin, "but you happen to be dead right. - Thank you, Henry."
Henry, the unsurpassable waiter of the Black Widower banquets, recognizing the demands being made on Rubin by his passion, had brought him a refill of his drink.
James Drake, lighting his perennial cigarette, said, "I remember when stamps were two cents, too, and the morning newspaper was two cents, and a pack of cigarettes was thirteen cents - and my weekly salary was fifteen dollars. So what?"
"I haven't finished," said Rubin. "So I asked for a roll of twenty-five-cent stamps and the confounded idiot at the window looked me right in the eye and said, 'We don't have any.' I was stunned. It was a post office, damn it. I said, 'Why not?' And he just shrugged and shouted, 'Next!' I mean, no sign of regret or embarrassment. They might have put up a sign to say the rolls were temporarily out. I had to wait half an hour in line to be told I couldn't have one."
Gonzalo said, "Suppose we cool you down to your usual state of semi-sanity, Manny, so that I can introduce my guest - Francis MacShannon. He's a good friend of mine."
Rubin shook hands loftily. "Any good friend of Mario's, Mr. MacShannon, is highly suspect in my eyes."
"Which is what you'd expect," said Gonzalo, "from someone who falls into a tirade over a roll of twenty-five-cent stamps. - I'll give you a few to tide you over, Manny. No charge."
"No, thanks," said Rubin. "I got my roll later in the day. It's a matter of principle."
"I apologize for Manny's dubious principles, Frank," said Gonzalo. "He makes one up whenever he can't get his way."
Francis MacShannon laughed. He appeared sixtyish, with a round and jolly face above a short, plump body. He had a ruddy complexion and a gray chin-beard, giving him the appearance of a semi-shaven Santa Claus.
"I'm on your side, Mr. Rubin," he said in a high-pitched voice that rather spoiled the Santa Claus image. "I have complaints about the post office, too."
"Doesn't everyone," growled Thomas Trumbull, who had arrived a moment before and who had seized upon the scotch and soda that Henry held out for him.
There was a pause while MacShannon was introduced to the final newcomer, and then he said, "My own complaint is with the matter of postmarks. Nowadays, they are only dirty smudges, but when I was young, post-marks were legible and beautifully clear. They were geography lessons. In fact, I built up a huge collection of postmarks."
Avalon's formidable eyebrows raised. "How does one do that, Mr. MacShannon?"
"To begin with, my parents gave me the envelopes they received in the mail. So did the neighbors up and down the street, once they learned how serious I was about it. The best part of it, though, was finding discarded envelopes in the street, in backyards, under bushes. You'd be surprised how many envelopes it was possible to find. Each new postmark I had never before encountered was a treasure and I'd look it up carefully in the atlas. I made lists of them by states and nations and pasted the envelopes into notebooks in organized fashion. I became an aficionado of envelopes such as you could scarcely imagine. In fact, it was my interest in envelopes that led to my - "
It was at this point that Henry's softly authoritative voice said, "Dinner is served, gentlemen."
They sat down to their melon prosciutto, followed by cream of asparagus soup and a mixed green salad. The conversation dealt with the new Russian probe designed to study the Martian satellite, Phobos, and over the roast capon, the discussion grew heated over whether a joint Soviet-American Mars expedition was desirable or not. The post office and its manifold sins dwindled and vanished in the fire of the new controversy. Down went the chocolate almond pie and the coffee and, over the brandy, Gonzalo called for the grilling.
"Manny," he said, "you be the griller, and I invoke host's privilege and tell you that the subject of the post office must not be mentioned."
Rubin scowled and said, "Mr. MacShannon, how do you justify your existence?"
MacShannon said amiably, "I'm a computer programmer and designer. These days I think that speaks for itself."
"Maybe," said Rubin. "We might get back to that later. Obviously, your present labors have nothing to do with your activities as a child - I mean your postmark collection. You had said - "
"Manny," said Gonzalo abruptly, "I ruled out the post office."
"Fire and brimstone," exploded Rubin. "Who's talking post office? I'm talking postmark collection. I appeal to the membership."
"All right. Go ahead," said Gonzalo resignedly.
"Now, then," said Rubin, after an unnecessarily protracted glare at Gonzalo, "you said that it was your interest in envelopes that led you to your - And then, before you could finish your sentence, you were interrupted by the announcement that dinner was ready. Now, then, I would like to have the sentence finished. What did your interest in envelopes lead to?"
MacShannon frowned thoughtfully. "Did I say that?" Then his brow cleared and a look of almost comic self-satisfaction crossed his face. "Oh, yes, of course. Back in 1953, it was through my interest in envelopes that I caught a spy. A real honest-to-Pete spy."
"In 1953?" said Avalon, frowning suddenly. "Don't tell me you were one of the young men working for Senator Joseph McCarthy."
"Who? Me?" said MacShannon, clearly astonished at the suggestion. "Never! I never had any use for McCarthy at all. Of course - " he pondered the matter a moment, "he did make the nation spy-conscious and traitor-conscious, and that couldn't help but affect me, I suppose. You couldn't help thinking in that direction even if you disapproved of McCarthy's tactics, as I did."
"National paranoia, I call it," said Rubin seriously.
"Maybe," said MacShannon, "but anyway, whatever you call it, I suppose that that's what put the whole melodrama in my mind. In a quieter, less frenetic time, I would have seen that envelope and never given it a thought."
"Tell us about it," said Rubin.
"Certainly, if you wish. After thirty-six years, it can't be sensitive. Besides, I don't know the details, only the general outline. I was just starting out in the world, had my engineering degree, had a small job, was living by myself for the first time. I was twenty-four years old, though, and still a little uncertain of myself.
"There was another person, living across the hall from me - Benham was his name. I don't remember his first name. He was about thirty, I think, and I would occasionally see him going in or out. He was a scowler, if you know what I mean, unfriendly, never addressed me. I said hello once or twice, in passing, but he would give me the curtest possible nod and freeze me with his expression. I grew to dislike him intensely, of course, and since I was a great reader of thrillers in those days, I fantasized that he was something villainous - a criminal, a hitman, or, best of all, a spy.
"Then, one day, as we were both waiting for an elevator to take us to our two apartments on the eighth floor, he tore open an envelope he was carrying, which I assumed he had just picked up from his letter box. I had checked mine earlier and it was empty, as it almost always was in those days, except when my mother wrote me. I watched my neighbor out of the corner of my eye, partly because I would naturally watch someone I was fantasizing to be a mysterious villain, partly because I envied anyone who got a letter, and even partly because I never quite got over my childhood fascination with envelopes.
"Having torn open the envelope, he extracted the letter, unfolded it, read it without the slightest expression on his face, then crumpled it and tossed it into the trash basket that stood by the elevators in the hall. He then, still without expression, placed the empty envelope inside his inner jacket pocket. He did it very carefully and patted the front of his jacket as though to assure himself it was well-seated."
Trumbull interrupted. "How did you know it was an empty envelope? There could have been an enclosure along with the letter. A check, for instance."
MacShannon shook his head amiably. "I told you I had this quasi-professional attitude concerning envelopes. It was a flimsy kind, semi-transparent. He had held it in the hand near me while he scanned the letter and I could tell it was empty. No mistake was possible."
"Odd," said Halsted.
"The odd thing about it," said MacShannon, "was that at first I didn't think it was odd. After all, people frequently discard envelopes and keep letters, but I had never seen anyone discard a letter and keep an empty envelope and yet I didn't think it was odd. I said to myself, 'Gee, he's collecting postmarks,' and for a moment I was a ten-year-old again and remembering the thrill of the chase. In fact, for a little while I recognized this Benham as a fellow postmarker and I could feel myself warming to him.
"Maybe it was just as well, for if I hadn't had the postmark thought, I might not have kept the envelope in mind. But as it was, I did keep it in mind, and by the time I reached the eighth floor, I had other thoughts. As usual, my neighbor had not addressed a word to me, or cast me a glance, and my heart hardened toward him again. He couldn't be a postmarker, I decided, because postmarks had already deteriorated past the point where collecting could be profitable. Already, one never saw a clear postmark except on the occasional commemorative envelope.
"Why, then, did he save the envelope? It took me only ten seconds to convert the matter into a spy thriller and I had it. He had received a casual, meaningless message anyone could see and dismiss, but the real message was on the envelope where no one would look for it, and which he therefore kept for later study.
"By the time I had thought of that, I was in my apartment. I waited there for about half a minute, then peered out into the hall to make sure my neighbor wasn't lingering there. He wasn't, so I got back into the elevator, went down to the lobby, and retrieved that crumpled letter."
Rubin said, "Which, I suppose, turned out to be completely uninteresting."
"Well," said MacShannon, "at least it seemed to show Benham in a more human light. The letter was in a feminine handwriting, but by no means a cultivated one - a semi-legible scrawl."
Avalon said with a sigh, "That is about the best you can expect in these degenerate days."
MacShannon smiled. "I suppose so. In any case, I studied that letter so closely over the next few days that I still remember it thirty-six years later - not that there was much to remember. It wasn't dated and it just started, 'Dear Mr. Benham, I had a very good time and it was kind of you to promise to check the matter of the job opening. Please let me know, and thank you.' "
"I see what you mean," said Halsted. "This neighbor might freeze you out, but his female correspondent thought him a kindly man."
Trumbull said, "Many a curmudgeon will unbend to a young woman to achieve the usual end."
MacShannon said, "I didn't think of anything like that. All it seemed to me was that the letter seemed totally innocuous, as I had thought it would have to be. The whole thing about job openings and kindness might just be a matter of writing at random, so to speak. To me, it meant that the envelope was all the more likely to be the important item. The question was, what ought I to do about it? I dithered for several days, and then finally took action. - Please remember that I was young and naive in those days, because in the end I went to the local office of the FBI."
Drake smiled and fingered the ashtray before him. "You risked making a fool of yourself."
"Even I knew that much," said MacShannon. "In fact, I remember that as I told my story to an apparently politely bored functionary, I felt more and more foolish, as I sounded less and less convincing in my own ears. I had several things on my side, though. Senator McCarthy had made it impossible for any agent to ignore any tale of spies. After all, it would be his neck if he let one go that he should not have."
"I can see that," said Halsted. "An agent dismissing something wrongfully would probably be accused of being a spy himself, or a card-carrying member of the Communist party."
"Yes," said MacShannon. "The FBI has to investigate anything brought to it even in easygoing times, but at the height of the McCarthy mania - Then, too, it turned out that Benham, this neighbor of mine, had a post in the infant computer industry and was in a position to know a few things the Pentagon distinctly wanted to have kept secret. In fact, it was my eventual understanding of this that roused my own interest in computers, so that I owe my present career to Benham, in a sense. In any case, I was listened to and the letter was taken from me. I was given a receipt, even though it wasn't my letter."
"It was in your possession," said Rubin, "and it belonged to you, since its previous owner had thrown it away and abandoned it, making it the property of anyone who picked it up."
"In a way," said MacShannon, "I entered into a distant partnership with the FBI, for I was asked to keep an eye on Benham and report anything further I thought unusual or suspicious. It made a common spy out of me, which, looking back on it, makes me feel a little awkward, but I honestly thought I might be dealing with an enemy agent, and I was a bit of a romantic in those days."
"And you might have been infected by the times," said Avalon.
"I wouldn't be surprised," said MacShannon agreeably. "At the time, of course, I didn't know exactly what the FBI was doing, but eventually I became friendly with the agent I had first spoken to, especially as it slowly turned out that Benham was indeed more than he seemed, so that the agent couldn't help but think highly of me."
Rubin said, "Then the hidden envelope turned out to be important, I suppose."
"Let me tell you how things worked out in order," said MacShannon. "They investigated the letter I gave them for some sort of code. What seemed nonsignificant to me might contain a hidden meaning. They could find none. Nor could they find hidden writing, or anything technically advanced, and that just made my story the more persuasive, since I, of course, had stressed the importance of the envelope from the beginning.
"They took to intercepting Benham's mail and opening it, reading it, resealing it, and sending it on. I watched the process on one occasion and it gave me a grisly feeling. It seemed so un-American. There was no way of telling at the conclusion that the letter had been opened, or in any way tampered with, and I have never been able to trust my own mail entirely since then. Who knows who might be studying it without my knowledge?"
Rubin said dryly, "For that matter, phone calls can be listened to, rooms can be bugged, conversations in the open can be overheard. We live in a world devoid of privacy."
"I'm sure you're right," said MacShannon. "In any case, they were particularly interested in any letters that Benham got from the young woman whose letter I had myself picked up. These had their own points of interest to a nosybody, for, as I was eventually told by my friend the agent, it was plain that there was a burgeoning love affair going on there. The letters grew more impassioned and devoted, but the woman's letters, at least, were always scrawled, brief, and continued to show no great intellectual capacity."
Drake grinned. "Intellectual capacity is not necessarily what a man might be after."
Halsted asked, "How long did the investigation go on?"
"Months," said MacShannon. "It was an on-and-off affair."
"Say," said Gonzalo, "if this was a love affair, the letter might not be significant in any case. If agents are in the business of collecting and transmitting information, they're not going to fall in love."
"Why not?" said Avalon sententiously. "Love comes as it pleases, sometimes to the most unlikely participants in the most unlikely situations. That's why Eros, the god of love, is often pictured as blind."
"That's not what I mean," said Gonzalo. "Of course they can fall in love, but they wouldn't use their official communications, if I may call them that, as a vehicle. They'd make love on their own time, so to speak, in their own way, and leave the important messages alone."
MacShannon said, "Not if the real messages were on the envelope. The more immaterial the letter itself, the better. Why not carry on a love affair, even a sincere love affair, in the letter itself? Who would think of looking at the envelopes in cases where the letter itself seems so all-important to the writer and reader? If I hadn't seen him save that first envelope - "
"Well," said Trumbull, a little impatiently, "get on with it. I have some connection with counterintelligence myself and I'm sure they investigated the envelopes."
"They did, indeed," said MacShannon. "Every one of them, whether they were from the young lady or not. At least, the agent told me they did, and I had no reason to think he was lying. Of course, I wondered, at the time if what they were doing was legal. It seemed un-American to me, as I have already said."
"Undoubtedly it was illegal," said Trumbull. "They had no evidence of wrongdoing. Saving an empty envelope may be puzzling, but it is not a crime. Still, national security purifies a multitude of sins and a bit of illegality here and there is winked at."
"Bad in principle," growled Rubin. "A bit of illegality leads to a lot, and in no time we'd be at the Gestapo level."
"We aren't yet," said Trumbull, "and there's a tight rein placed on these organizations."
"Yes, when they're caught," said Rubin.
"And they're caught often enough to be kept within bounds. Come on, Manny, let's let MacShannon proceed. You were telling us they inspected the envelopes."
"Yes, they did," said MacShannon. "They removed the stamps to see what might be underneath. They studied every bit of writing on the envelope to the last detail and they subjected the paper to every known test. They even substituted new envelopes which they made just like the old except that they made small nonsignificant changes. They wanted to see if the new envelope had something distorted that would reduce its message to nonsense."
Drake said, "That's a lot of trouble to take for anything as thin as your story.
"You can thank McCarthy," said MacShannon briefly. "But they never did find anything either in the letters or on the envelopes."
Rubin said, "Hold on, Mr. MacShannon, when you started this story, you said that as a result of your interest in envelopes, you caught an honest-to-Pete spy. Did you or didn't you?"
"I did," said MacShannon urgently, "I did."
"Are you going to tell us," said Rubin, "that as a result of the investigation, a different person altogether was trapped as the spy?"
"No, no. It was Benham. Benham."
"But you said the letters and the envelopes showed nothing. You did say that, didn't you?"
"I didn't quite say they showed nothing, but I did say the FBI found nothing in the correspondence. However, they didn't confine themselves to that. They worked at the other end - his job. They inspected his work record, kept him under hidden surveillance, and eventually found out what he was doing and with whom. I gathered that quite a substantial spy ring was broken and I got some nice words from the bureau. Nothing official, of course, but it was the big excitement of my life and I owed it all, in a way, to my having collected postmarks as a boy."
There was perhaps less satisfaction on the faces of the assembled Black Widowers than there was on MacShannon's.
Avalon said, "What about the young woman? Benham's light o' love? Was she picked up, too?"
For a moment, MacShannon looked uncertain. "I'm not dead sure," he said. "I was never told. My impression at the time was that there was insufficient evidence in her case, since they got nothing out of the letters or envelopes. - But that's the one thing that bothers me. I got Benham because he had saved that envelope. Why couldn't they find anything on the envelopes, then? If Benham and company had some secret communication system that the FBI didn't penetrate, who knows what damage has been done since then by its means."
Halsted said, "Maybe the FBI found nothing on the envelope because there was nothing to find there. Even spies can't be spies every minute of the day. Maybe the love affair was only a love affair."
MacShannon's good humor, until then unfailing, began to evaporate. He looked a little grim as he said, "But then why did he save that envelope? It always comes down to that. We're not talking about an ordinary person, but about a spy, a real spy. Why should he discard a letter so casually that anyone could pick it up, and save an empty envelope. There has to be a reason. If there's an innocent reason that has nothing to do with his profession, what is it?"
Avalon said gently, "I take it that you yourself have never thought of an adequate reason, Mr. MacShannon."
"None, except that the envelope bore a message of some sort," said MacShannon.
"I suspect," said Rubin, "that you haven't tried thinking of what we have been calling an innocent explanation, Mr. MacShannon. Perhaps you have been too satisfied with your message theory."
"In that case, you think of an alternate reason, Mr. Rubin," said MacShannon defiantly.
"Now wait," said Halsted, "the spy thing was not Mr. MacShannon's original assumption. At first he thought that Benham was collecting postmarks - or possibly stamps, for that matter. Suppose that very first thought was correct."
MacShannon said, "Don't underestimate the FBI. I had mentioned my original thought and, on one occasion, they managed to search his apartment. There were no signs of any collecting mania of any kind. Certainly, there were no envelope collections. They told me so."
"You might have told us that," said Rubin.
"I just have," said MacShannon, "but it's not important. The chance of his saving the envelope for collecting purposes was so small that it made no sense to dwell on it. - Well, then, have you come up with some other explanation for saving the envelope, Mr. Rubin? Or any of you?"
Drake said, "It could have been a thoughtless action. People do things out of habit, all sorts of silly things. Your Mr. Benham meant to save the letter and discard the envelope and, without thinking, he did the reverse."
"I can't believe that," said MacShannon.
"Why not? It's called being absentminded," said Drake. "Later, when he found he had saved the envelope, he may have gone downstairs to recover the letter and found it gone."
MacShannon said, "A man whose career is espionage is surely not absentminded. He wouldn't last long if he were. Besides, he knew what he was doing. He read the letter and crumpled it at once and discarded it. Then he looked at the envelope thoughtfully and put it away carefully. He knew what he was doing."
"Are you sure?" said Drake. "It happened thirty-six years ago. With all due respect, you may be honestly remembering what you want to remember."
"Not at all," said MacShannon frigidly. "It was the big excitement of my life and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. My memory is accurate."
Drake shrugged. "If you insist, it's impossible to argue, of course."
MacShannon looked about the table from face to face. "Now, then, who has an alternate explanation? No collection. No absentmindedness. What else? - And no sentimental attachment for the writer. There might have been a love affair afterward, but that letter Benham discarded was clearly the first one he had received. He had just met her. And even if it was love at first sight, something he didn't strike me as subject to, he would have kept the letter, not the envelope."
There was silence around the table and MacShannon said, "There you are! It's bothered me for all these years. What was there about the envelope that defeated the FBI? I guess I'll just have to keep on wondering for the rest of my life."
"Wait," said Avalon, "the communication, if there was indeed one, may have been on the first envelope only, the one he saved and the one that the FBI presumably never saw. All the others may have been clean and irrelevant."
MacShannon's little beard quivered at that. "I'll leave it to Mr. Trumbull," he said. "He said he was with counterintelligence. Does a conspirator of some sort give up a method of communication once it has been proven successful?"
Trumbull said, "It's not a cosmic law, but successful gambits are not lightly abandoned, it's true. However, it might no longer have been particularly successful. That envelope he kept may have just happened to be the last of a line of such things that was using a technique that had grown risky. It could then have been abandoned."
"Might! May have! Could have been!" said MacShannon, his voice rising to a squeak. "We have two actual facts. The man was a spy. The man did keep an empty envelope. Let's find an explanation as to why a spy should keep an empty envelope, an explanation that isn't pure speculation."
Again there was silence about the table and MacShannon smiled sardonically and said, "There is no such explanation, except that it bore a message."
At this point, Henry, from his post at the sideboard, said mildly, "May I offer a suggestion?"
MacShannon whirled at this unexpected entry into the conversation and said in annoyed fashion, "What is it you want, waiter?"
Gonzalo immediately held up his hand in a stop gesture and said, "Henry is a member of the club, Frank. He's expected to contribute."
"I see," said MacShannon, without any noticeable easing of his manner. "What is it you wish to say, then, my man?"
"Only, sir, that saving an empty envelope is something so reasonable that any of us might do it and that each of us may, in fact, have done so at some time or another."
"I deny that," said MacShannon.
"Consider, sir," said Henry quietly, "that the letter you obtained from the trash can was, as you yourself have said, the first between them. They had been out together on a date or, perhaps, as the result of a casual meeting. They talked. She told him of her difficulties in locating a suitable job, and he offered to help her. Since he was not an agreeable character from your description of him, Mr. MacShannon, he must have been attracted to her and strove to be agreeable against his natural bent. We don't know if she was young and pretty, but that's a reasonable assumption. She must have been attracted to him, too. Certainly the letter expressed gratitude and encouraged a continuation of the correspondence. She said, 'Please let me know.' And, in fact, there was further correspondence and there is apparently no question but that a certain romance eventually began between them. Would you judge me correct in all this?"
"Yes," said MacShannon, "but what of it?"
"We might further reason," said Henry, "that Mr. Benham would want to continue the correspondence with a woman who may have been young and pretty and was certainly being grateful and inviting. Now you told us the contents of the letter, Mr. MacShannon, and said you remembered it word for word. It was not a long letter and I accept your memory. It was the letter of a pleasant, but not well-organized, young woman, for you said it was undated, and almost anyone with any sense of order would date a letter."
"Yes," said MacShannon. "It was undated, but I still don't get what you're driving at."
Henry said, "Someone casual enough to leave a letter undated may well have omitted other things as well. You said it started, without preamble, with a 'Dear Mr. Benham.' I take it then that there was no return address included on the letter sheet."
MacShannon's frown smoothed out and he said, with a note of surprise, "No, there wasn't."
"Then," said Henry, "since the letter was not a love letter and Benham was not the type, perhaps, to place even a love letter next to his heart, he crumpled it and threw it away. However, he did want to answer it and perhaps encourage a relationship he suspected might be sexually satisfying. People who don't put the return address on the letter itself often do place it on the envelope. So Mr. Benham looked at the envelope, noted that it carried the return address, and naturally saved it so that he could answer the young lady. Surely that is a reasonable explanation."
A wave of brief applause swept the table, and Henry, flushing slightly, said, "Thank you, gentlemen."
MacShannon, clearly taken aback, said, "But in that case the envelope had nothing to do with Benham's espionage."
"As Mr. Halsted said earlier," said Henry, "a spy needn't be a spy every second. There are bound to be intervals of normality. However, he did break a cardinal rule of the profession, I think."
"What was that, Henry?" asked Trumbull.
"It seems to me that anyone engaged in the difficult profession of espionage must, above all, refrain from attracting attention of any kind. The envelope should not have been saved and the letter discarded in front of a witness. It should not even have been opened and read in front of a witness. - Of course, Mr. Benham had no way of knowing that the young man he always studiously ignored had once collected postmarks and was therefore sensitized to envelopes."
Afterword
My favorite time for writing Black Widowers stories is when I'm on vacation. Every once in a while, Janet and I go on a cruise to Bermuda. For seven days, I'm away from my typewriter, my word processor, and my reference library. What I do, under such abysmal conditions, is smuggle a pad of paper and some ballpoint pens into my luggage, and then I write fiction. This story and the following one were written on the Bermuda trip in July of 1988, together with a third story that was not a Black Widowers, so the vacation was not entirely a waste of time.
Incidentally, it was not till I was putting the stories together for this collection that I noticed that the central point of "The Envelope" was used as a subsidiary point in "Sunset on the Water." That sort of thing is bound to happen once in a while, especially when one writes as much and as assiduously as I do, but it makes me feel bad just the same.
This story first appeared in the April 1989 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
