Puzzles of the Black Widowers
The Recipe
Roger Halsted said in a whisper to Geoffrey Avalon, "He's my plumber."
Avalon stared at him for a moment or two, more in incredulity than in disapproval. "Your plumber?"
"Used to be, actually. He's retired and moved to the suburbs. He's a nice fellow, and if you want to judge by the usual criterion of American success, he has always made a lot more money than I have."
"I'm not at all surprised," said Avalon. "A master plumber - "
"He was that. And I just teach algebra at a junior high school. No comparison. But, you know, Jeff, we always get professional men as guests at these Black Widower banquets and I thought it would be rather refreshing to have someone who works with his hands."
Avalon said, rather unconvincingly, "Far be it from me to indulge in social snobbery, Roger, but he may find us uncomfortable."
"You can't tell. - And it may give us a chance to find out about plumbing."
In another part of the room, Thomas Trumbull nursed his scotch and soda and said, "I've just read The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr, Jim."
James Drake squinted at Trumbull and said, "That's an oldie."
"It's about half a century old, according to the copyright notice. I read it decades ago, as a matter of fact, but I didn't remember it well enough to spoil my fun. It's one of those locked-room mysteries, you know."
"I know. That was Carr's specialty. No one did them as consistently, or as well, as he did."
"And yet - " Trumbull shook his head. "Something bothered me."
Emmanuel Rubin had gravitated toward the pair at the first mention of a mystery. He said, "Let me guess what's bothering you, Tom. Carr is terrific, but he has his faults. For one thing, his writing tends to be overdramatic so that the reader is always uncomfortably aware that he is reading fiction. Then, when Carr finally gets to the solution, he has devised one that takes at least twenty pages. What's more, it is so intricate that the reader can't follow it without reading it several times, which he never does. And that means that it's all unconvincing."
"That's the point," said Trumbull. "That last bit. It's unconvincing. A locked-room mystery is usually so tortured in its construction and in its solution that you just can't accept it. I mean, has there ever been a locked-room mystery in real life? Somehow I doubt it."
Drake said, "We'd have to ask someone who is a connoisseur of real-life mysteries. Manny?"
"Don't look at me. I confine myself strictly to the fictional variety. I've never tried a locked-room mystery because, frankly, I think Carr killed the market for them. I can't bring myself to undertake thinking up a new variation."
Mario Gonzalo joined the group at this point. He said, "That reminds me of a game you can try sometimes. It's called, 'What's the greatest not by.' "
"What does that mean?" said Rubin suspiciously. "Assuming you know."
"Easy. It's asking a question like, what's the greatest Elizabethan tragedy not by Shakespeare?"
"The usual answer to that," said Rubin, "is Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, though I never liked it."
"All right. What's the best waltz not by Johann Strauss?"
" 'The Merry Widow Waltz' by Franz Lehar, I would say," said Rubin.
"What about 'The Skater's Waltz'?" demanded Gonzalo.
"A matter of taste," said Rubin.
"What's the greatest comic opera not by Gilbert and Sullivan?"
"How about Strauss's Die Fledermaus?" said Rubin.
"Or anything by Offenbach?" suggested Drake.
"And now," said Gonzalo, "what's the greatest locked-room mystery story not written by John Dickson Carr?"
There was a tremendous silence, followed by three people beginning to talk at once and others joining. In the increasing babble, Henry, that imperturbable waiter, announced that dinner was served.
Halsted's guest, the plumber, was Myron Dynast. His aging had not been entirely graceful. His hair was mostly gone, he had pouches under his eyes, a corrugated neck, and a pronounced paunch. His eyes, however, were sharp, his voice was not harsh, and his vocabulary was reasonably good. Avalon consequently said in a whisper to Halsted, "He doesn't sound like a plumber."
Halsted said, "What you really mean, Jeff, is that he doesn't sound like your mental stereotype of a plumber."
Avalon drew himself to his full height and brought his formidable eyebrows downward to affix Halsted with an offended glare. But then he thought better of it and said mildly, "Perhaps you're right, Roger."
Dynast, however, did not talk a great deal. Whether he was abashed at finding himself in intellectual company, or whether he was simply interested in the topics of conversation that enlivened the meal, he listened quietly, for the most part, his quick eyes darting from speaker to speaker.
Finally, over the brandy, Halsted rattled his spoon against his water glass and said, "Jeff, will you do the honors with respect to our guest."
"Gladly," said Avalon. With a somewhat exaggerated courtesy, he turned to Dynast and said, "It is customary at these, our banquets, to begin by asking our guest to justify his existence. How do you justify your existence, Mr. Dynast, or, in other words - "
"I don't need other words, Mr. Avalon," said Dynast. "Just being a good plumber is all the justification I need. Has anyone ever awakened in the middle of the night and realized that he suddenly needed a hotshot nuclear physicist? Think of all the emergencies in which you would be a lot happier if you lived next door to a plumber like me than to a professor like - like - "
"Like any of us," said Avalon, and cleared his throat. "You are quite right, Mr. Dynast. I accept your answer. Tell me, how long have you been a plumber?"
Dynast suddenly looked anxious. "Is this what it's going to be? Are you going to ask me all about plumbing?"
"Possibly, Mr. Dynast, we might."
Halsted interrupted in his soft voice. "I told you, Mike, that the conditions of the banquet are that you must answer all the questions we ask."
"I will, Rog, but I've got something more interesting to say - if you'll let me."
Avalon paused thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "It is not our intention to hamper you unduly, Mr. Dynast. You may tell us what it is you want to say, but if we go back to plumbing, you must accede to that. That is - "
"I know what you said, Mr. Avalon, and it's okay with me," said Dynast. "What I want to say is that before the banquet I heard you talking about locked-room mysteries. I heard you say you didn't know if a locked-room mystery could happen in real life. The thing is that I have one."
That brought the table to a frozen moment of immobility. Even Henry, who was quietly and efficiently clearing the last remnants of the banquet, looked up in thoughtful surprise.
Finally, Trumbull said in what was almost a hushed tone, "Do you mean you've heard of one, or that you've experienced one? Are you saying that you yourself have been involved in one?"
"Not me. My wife. She was."
Mario Gonzalo, at the other end of the table, was leaning forward in his seat, a look of unholy glee on his face. "Wait awhile, now, Mr. Dynast, are you going to tell us there was a locked room and someone was killed inside and it wasn't suicide and there was no murderer inside and your wife was there and knows all about it?"
Dynast stared in horror at that. "Murder? I'm not talking about murder. Good Lord, there was no murder. Nothing like that."
Gonzalo deflated visibly. "Then what are you talking about?"
Dynast said, "There was this room that was locked. And something happened that couldn't happen, that's all. And it involved my wife. It doesn't have to be murder to be a locked-room, does it?"
Avalon raised his hand and said in his deepest baritone, "I am doing the grilling, gentlemen, so let's have order. This may well be interesting and it may supersede our probing of the plumbing profession, at least temporarily, but let's go about it reasonably."
He waited, frowning, for silence, then said, "Mr. Dynast, exactly what happened in the locked room that couldn't have happened?"
"Something was stolen."
"Something of value?"
"To my wife, it had a great deal of value. Can I explain? I can't really talk about it without some explaining."
Avalon looked about the table. "Are there any objections to our listening to Mr. Dynast?"
Gonzalo said, "I have objections to not listening to him."
"Yes, Mario, I should suppose you have. Very well, Mr. Dynast, but you must understand we will interrupt with questions at such times as we have any."
"Sure, go ahead." Dynast turned to Henry, who had taken up his accustomed position at the sideboard. "Waiter, could I have more coffee?"
Henry obliged, and Dynast said, "My wife, gentlemen, was born in a small town. She married me when she was thirty-three and, as it happened, we never had children. We spent some twenty years in the city, but she never got over being a small-town girl. Old-fashioned, too, if you know what I mean."
"I'm not sure we do," said Avalon. "What do you mean?"
"I mean she went out for church socials, and picnics, and all kinds of neighborhood activities. You couldn't really do much of that in the city, you know, but once I retired and we moved out of town, and bought a nice little house with some land, she went right back into the swim. It was as though she were trying to be a girl again. With no children, and no money problems, she could spend all her time at that sort of thing. And I'm willing - as long as she doesn't drag me into it."
"I take it, then, you're not a small-town boy," said Rubin.
"Definitely not. I'm a boy out of the concrete canyons."
"Don't you find it rather dull in the suburbs, then?"
"Oh, sure, but in the first place, I'm not so far from the city that I can't come in, now and then, to fill my lungs with the foul air. Ginny - that's my wife - doesn't mind. And then, too, I'm not entirely retired. I take on plumbing jobs when someone needs it, and that fills some of my time. You know, each plumbing job is different, each one is a challenge, especially if you want to do it well. And the plumbing in the suburbs is just different enough from that in the city to be interesting. Besides - "
He paused and flushed a little. "Besides, Ginny has been a good wife. She stuck it out in the city when things weren't so hot sometimes and didn't complain any more than she had to. Now it's her turn and she's happy - or was happy - and I wasn't about to spoil it for her.
"She keeps busy. Not having children, she sort of makes up for it by always being ready to do some baby-sitting. Half the time, the house has kids in it, running around and making noise. She loves it."
"Do you love it?" asked Trumbull, scowling.
"No, I don't, but it's her job. She doesn't ask me to help out. I know nothing about kids."
"Does your wife? If she has none of her own - " said Avalon.
"Oh, Lord. She just hasn't had any - uh - biologically, but she was the oldest of six. She spent practically all her life till she married me being a kind of assistant mother. Me, I had one big brother and we never got along. Kids are a closed book to me, but I don't miss them. Once we talked about adopting, but I was sort of against it, and she didn't force it on me."
Gonzalo said, with a touch of impatience, "Are we getting to the locked room?"
"There's one more point I have to explain. What makes my wife popular at these church socials is that she's a great cook. I can't explain it myself. I'm just an eater and I don't know what makes food special, but hers is special and I spent my whole life trying not to get fat on her food." He looked down at his abdomen with some chagrin as he said that.
"Listen, if she were a bad wife, I'd still stand her for the sake of her cooking - but she's a good wife. I don't say her cooking is fancy. She doesn't turn out the kind of food you get in fancy restaurants. Hers is plain stuff, but it melts in the mouth. Just to show you, her specialty is blueberry muffins. That doesn't sound like much because you can get them anywhere, but once you taste Ginny's blueberry muffins, you'll never buy them again. Compared to hers everything else is trash.
"She's got dozens of little things she does better than anyone else. I don't know how. Maybe it's spices, or how she mixes them, or how long she cooks, or who knows - She's just a genius at it, like I'm pretty good at plumbing. When she brings in her creations to one of these socials or picnics she goes to, everyone stands around with their tongues hanging out. And she loves it. It's her passport to fame and success. But what she's proudest of, what's nearest her heart, are those blueberry muffins.
"No one can get any recipes out of her. She doesn't have them except in her head, and that's where she keeps them. Secret! They're her crown jewels. She never lets anyone into her kitchen when she's cooking except me, because she knows I don't know what's going on."
Drake said, "I remember my mother used to be a bit like that. When cooking is your expertise, you don't want anyone competing with you by making use of your own discoveries."
"That's right," said Dynast. "But you know, people kept talking to her about writing down all the recipes and making a book out of it. One of the ladies brought in a friend who worked at a publishing house and she talked to Ginny and said that cookbooks made money, and that a good cookbook of plain food could be a gold mine. She also said that someday Ginny would pass on and it wouldn't be right that her cooking secrets should die with her. She flattered Ginny right out of her shoes, and I could see Ginny was beginning to think there was something to it.
"To tell you the truth, I was sort of in favor, too. I would have liked to have her known far and wide for her cooking. I would be proud. So I pushed her, and she began thinking about it even more.
"Not that it was easy, you know. She talked about it and she would say things like, 'I just cook. I do things without even thinking about it. I add and mix and it's all in my fingertips, not in my brain. If I sit down to write a recipe, I would have to figure each one out.'
" 'Do it anyway,' I said. 'Even if it's hard, you do it. Writing any kind of book is hard. Why shouldn't a cook-book be hard, too?'
"So she started to work at it now and then, and she'd keep all the recipes she worked out in a little fireproof box, which locked up with a key, and she would say to me, 'I just can't include the blueberry muffin recipe. That's my secret.' I would say, 'Come on, Ginny, no secrets,' but I knew what she meant.
"Those blueberry muffins were the one thing that created hard feelings against Ginny. They were so good and all the husbands loved them so much that all the wives had their noses out of joint. The other things lots of them could do almost as well, but Ginny's muffins were just out of reach. There was a lot of sentiment that she ought to put the recipe up on the church bulletin board and that it was a lack of Christian charity to hog it like that. But Ginny wouldn't be moved.
"Anyway, now you have the explanation. One day, they were having some meeting at the church and, for a wonder, Ginny didn't feel she had to attend. She explained she wanted to stay home and work on her recipes and she said she would take care of some of the younger kids for those who attended the meeting to make up for not going. She ended up with five kids in the house for about three hours. In those three hours, the house was locked up, even the windows, because we had air-conditioning. There was no one in the house but Ginny and five little kids. That was it."
"Where were you, Mr. Dynast?" asked Avalon.
"I was in the city. To tell you the truth, I always try to be elsewhere when the kids get too thick. Ginny doesn't mind. Glad not to have me underfoot, I suppose."
Gonzalo said, "Is this the locked room you're talking about, Mr. Dynast? Your house locked up with just your wife and the five children in it?"
"That's right."
"I should have thought," said Avalon, "that Mrs. Dynast would get very little work done with five children underfoot."
"It wasn't bad," said Dynast. "Four of the children were old-timers, so to speak, who'd been in the house lots of times. They knew Ginny and Ginny knew them. They were all three or four years old and they had cookies and milk, and toys, and games. One of the children was new, but he was the best one. He belonged to a cousin of one of the regular mothers. The cousin and her husband were both going to the meeting with the mother, and Ginny was glad to take on the new child. His name was Harold and he was maybe almost five, very well-behaved and good-natured, according to Ginny. He helped take care of the other children, in fact. He was very good with them.
"So Ginny kept working on her recipes and, for the first time, she actually wrote down the recipe for her blueberry muffins. She hated to do it, she said, so she wrote it down in pencil, lightly, as though that were equivalent to only half writing it down. Even so, she lost heart because just before it was all over and the children were taken away, she tore the card into confetti.
"That was what was so impossible to explain. She had written down the recipe near the start of her babysitting stint; she had torn it up near the end. It had existed maybe two and a half hours in that closed house, with no one inside but her and the five children, and during that two-and-a-half-hour period the recipe was stolen. - Wouldn't you call that a locked-room mystery?"
Trumbull said, "The recipe was stolen? I thought you said she tore it up."
"I didn't say the piece of paper was stolen. The recipe on it was stolen. The next day that recipe was on the church bulletin board, word for word, as she had written it. Poor Ginny. She was devastated. Since then, she's just been a different woman. She's not going to do the cook-book now, and she's not going to have anything to do with the church anymore."
"She's angry with the whole church?" said Gonzalo. "Who did the stealing?"
"She doesn't know, and I don't know. We don't know who stole it and we don't know how it was stolen. If we did know, she might get over it. She might have some specific person to be enraged with. She might see it was her own carelessness. As it is - " He shook his head. "That's why I was so interested when someone said there were no locked-room mysteries in real life. What do you call this?"
There was a silence, and Rubin said, "You were away the whole time? You saw none of this?"
"Almost the whole time, Mr. Rubin. I came home just as everything was breaking up. The others were milling about, taking their kids, and thanking Ginny. There was the cousin and her husband, the parents of little Harold. They were both quite short - about five feet tall each - but friendly and pleasant. I saw their boy for a moment. He was introduced to me and shook hands like a little man. It was all the height of pleasantness but, by that time, Ginny had already torn up the recipe and it had already, somehow, been stolen."
Halsted leaned back in his chair, hands clasped across his abdomen. "How sure can you be, Mike, that the house was really the equivalent of a locked room, that there was no window open and no way of getting in?"
Dynast shook his head. "That really doesn't matter, does it? All the doors and windows were locked, because Ginny is very careful, and as long as the kids are in her care, she wants none of them falling out a window or wandering out of the house. But never mind that. The fact is that she and the recipe were in this particular room and no one entered that room during all the time the recipe existed. It's just not possible that someone might have gotten in without her noticing."
"Even if she was absorbed in her recipes?" demanded Rubin.
"She wouldn't be that absorbed. The children came first. She would be on the alert at all times."
Gonzalo said, "And she never left the room at any time? She didn't go to the bathroom?"
"Listen," said Dynast. "We talked about this and I asked her that particular question. No, she didn't have to go to the bathroom, but she did leave the room. She left the house, in fact."
"Ah," said Gonzalo. "Why?"
"She remembered she had promised to deliver something to the neighbors who lived across the way, and she was afraid she would continue to forget if she didn't bring it over right then. It was only a matter of fifty feet and it would only take a minute. So she ran over, rang the bell, the husband came out, she shoved it into his hands with an explanation - his wife was at the meeting - exchanged two sentences, and dashed back. The whole thing took two minutes at the most."
Gonzalo said, "You weren't there, Mr. Dynast. A woman may feel she took only two minutes, and actually take twenty."
"Never," said Dynast indignantly. "She had a houseful of kids to take care of. She wouldn't take more than two minutes. She had no reason to take more than two minutes."
"Did she lock the door when she left?" asked Gonzalo.
"No, she didn't like to. Without being there, she was afraid that if something happened to her, and then something happened to the children, and there was a locked door to delay people getting in, well - But that doesn't matter. She had the front door under observation at all times. No one approached it. No one came anywhere near it. When she got back, and locked the door again, she asked little Harold if anything at all had happened when she was gone and he said nothing had. Certainly nothing was disturbed and the children seemed perfectly contented."
Gonzalo said, "Just the same, it's not really a locked room if it was open at some point."
"Let's not be legalistic, Mario," said Avalon. "If the story is accurate, then the house is still the equivalent of a locked room. I must admit, though, that the story is secondhand. I wish we could interview Mrs. Dynast first-hand."
"Well, we can't," said Rubin.
Trumbull said, "Now wait awhile. If we were talking about something material that was stolen, then the house might be considered a locked room. However, nothing material was stolen. The card on which the recipe was written was destroyed by Mrs. Dynast herself. All that was stolen was the information on the card, and that makes the situation different. - Mr. Dynast, I believe that you implied that Mrs. Dynast's friends, her church-social associates, knew that she was preparing recipes."
"Oh, yes, it was big news."
"And would they know that she was working on those recipes at this particular time, when the rest attended the church meeting?"
"Yes, I believe I mentioned that she had told them so, as her excuse for not going."
"And in preparing the recipes, she would label each and identify it, wouldn't she?"
"Certainly. In fact, the blueberry muffin recipe would be labeled 'Grandma's Blueberry Muffins' because that's how she always referred to them to me and to everyone else. Her grandmother had apparently taught her the recipe and she had then improved on it."
"And I presume the room in which she worked had windows."
"Yes, of course."
"In that case," said Trumbull, you certainly didn't have a locked room. People might not have been able to reach into it physically to steal a recipe card, but they could surely look through a window and read what was on the recipe card, couldn't they?"
"No, I don't think so, Mr. Trumbull," said Dynast. "The front of our house was street level, but the ground slanted downward as one moved away from the street. That left room for a basement and garage with openings at ground level in the backyard and with a driveway going back there. But the back rooms, in which Ginny was working and had the kids, was one story high. You couldn't very well look into the windows unless you were ten or eleven feet high, or unless you used a ladder. And I rather think Ginny would have noticed in either case."
Trumbull wouldn't let go. "He might have been in a tree, if the room faced a backyard."
"He might have been - or she - but there was no tree within twenty feet of those windows. Besides, as I had said, Ginny had been irresolute and had written the recipe very lightly in pencil. I don't think anyone could have read it even if his or her nose had been pressed right up against the glass of the window. And then, to make matters worse, in order to keep it even more secure, Ginny had slipped the recipe under a book after she had written it. It was still under the book when her heart failed her and she took it out to tear it up."
Drake said, "Was that the only time the recipe was written down?"
"The only time."
"And was it really quoted word for word? It couldn't have been a merely similar recipe that someone else had independently invented, could it? After all, I must tell you that even the greatest scientific discoveries are sometimes independently thought up by two different scientists at more or less the same time. These things do happen."
"The same words," said Dynast intransigently. "Ginny swears to it and I believe her. At one point, she said, 'Stir furiously till your hand is in danger of falling off. Then count ten rapid breaths and - ' All that was right there. That's the way she talks about cooking when she talks to me. No one else is likely to talk that same exact way."
There was silence around the table and Avalon said, "I'm afraid, Mr. Dynast, that I don't see how it could have been done. You're not making this up as a joke, I suppose."
Dynast shook his head. "I wish I were, Mr. Avalon, but it's no joke to Ginny, and if we don't find out how it's done, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, we'll have to sell our house and move away. Ginny can't bear the thought of living near the people who did this to her."
Drake said, "Would you say that your wife has really told the entire truth?"
"I'd stake my life on it," said Dynast.
"Then with a room containing one woman and five young children you have to conclude that the woman herself stole her own recipe. Do you suppose it is possible that Mrs. Dynast arranged the whole thing herself as an excuse to be able to move away?"
Dynast said, "If she wanted to move, she would just have to say so. She wouldn't have to arrange a big, fancy trick. And if you knew Ginny, you'd know how impossible it would have been for her to play tricks with her blueberry muffins. You can't imagine what they meant to her."
Rubin said, "Well, it's the damnedest locked-room mystery I've ever heard. There's no solution."
At this point, Henry said half apologetically, "Gentlemen?"
Rubin looked up. "Come on, Henry, are you trying to tell us there is a solution?"
"I can't guarantee it, but I would like to ask Mr. Dynast a question."
Avalon said, "Would that be all right with you, Mr. Dynast? Henry is a valued member of our organization."
"I suppose so," said Dynast. "Sure."
"In that case, the oldest child - Harold."
"Yes?"
"How old did you say Harold was?"
"Five at the most."
"How do you know, Mr. Dynast?"
"Ginny said so."
"How did she know, Mr. Dynast?"
"I suppose she asked him."
"Did she say she had asked him?"
"N-no. - But I saw him myself when I came home. I told you. He was a little fellow. Five at the outside."
"But, Mr. Dynast, you also said that you saw Harold's parents and that each was five feet tall. You wouldn't say that because they were each five feet tall they were teenagers."
"No. They were just short."
"Exactly. And short parents may well have short children. It is possible that Harold may look five, judging by his height and size, and yet be eight years old. And, for all we may know, he may be uncommonly bright for eight."
"Good Lord," said Avalon. "Do you really think that could be so, Henry?"
"Consider the consequences, Mr. Avalon, if it is so. One of the women of the neighborhood desperately wants the recipe. She has a short sister who has married a short man, and the two have an uncommonly small boy, who happens to be a prodigy. He is a bright eight-year-old who can easily pass for an unremarkable five-year-old. This bright boy is placed in your house, Mr. Dynast, and told what to look for.
"Mrs. Dynast would feel no concern if this little boy were watching her, or staring curiously at what she is writing. He is, after all, to all appearances, a preschool youngster who cannot read. He might see her do a recipe for 'Grandma's Blueberry Muffins' and place it under a book. Then, when she leaves on her errand, even if it is only for two minutes, the boy can take the recipe out from under the book, read it, memorize it, and put it back. It would not be a terribly long thing to memorize, and particularly bright children can pick up such things as though their minds were blotting paper. I remember that well from my own childhood."
Gonzalo said triumphantly, "Sure. That explains it, and there's no other explanation possible."
Henry said, "It is merely a possibility. However, if you can find out the name of the cousin and her husband, it would be simple to find out how old the boy is, what school he is going to, what grade he is in, and how well he is doing. If the woman refuses to give you any information about her cousin and her nephew, then that in itself would strongly imply that our theory is correct."
"Who'd have thought it?" said Dynast blankly.
Henry murmured, "There must be a rational explanation to everything, sir, and, as usual, the Black Widowers had carefully eliminated all possible explanations and left me to point out what remained."
Afterword
I was reading The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr, as Trumbull did in the story, and it occurred to me that I had never written a Black Widowers story involving a locked-room mystery.
Naturally, I was at once overwhelmed with a desire to do so, but it didn't seem possible to me to think up a new gimmick involving a locked room. John Dickson Carr had simply done it all, and other writers had filled in what inconsiderable gaps might remain.
However, I hated to give up. Could I possibly think of some new way of explaining a locked-room mystery? And to my astonishment, I found I could.
In great excitement, I sat down and wrote "The Recipe" in one sitting - the whole thing. I don't think I ever enjoyed writing a story more.
And now that this collection is done, may I tell you once again that I'm still in reasonably good health and have no intention of stopping. The Black Widowers, I assure you, will continue as long as I do.
Avalon stared at him for a moment or two, more in incredulity than in disapproval. "Your plumber?"
"Used to be, actually. He's retired and moved to the suburbs. He's a nice fellow, and if you want to judge by the usual criterion of American success, he has always made a lot more money than I have."
"I'm not at all surprised," said Avalon. "A master plumber - "
"He was that. And I just teach algebra at a junior high school. No comparison. But, you know, Jeff, we always get professional men as guests at these Black Widower banquets and I thought it would be rather refreshing to have someone who works with his hands."
Avalon said, rather unconvincingly, "Far be it from me to indulge in social snobbery, Roger, but he may find us uncomfortable."
"You can't tell. - And it may give us a chance to find out about plumbing."
In another part of the room, Thomas Trumbull nursed his scotch and soda and said, "I've just read The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr, Jim."
James Drake squinted at Trumbull and said, "That's an oldie."
"It's about half a century old, according to the copyright notice. I read it decades ago, as a matter of fact, but I didn't remember it well enough to spoil my fun. It's one of those locked-room mysteries, you know."
"I know. That was Carr's specialty. No one did them as consistently, or as well, as he did."
"And yet - " Trumbull shook his head. "Something bothered me."
Emmanuel Rubin had gravitated toward the pair at the first mention of a mystery. He said, "Let me guess what's bothering you, Tom. Carr is terrific, but he has his faults. For one thing, his writing tends to be overdramatic so that the reader is always uncomfortably aware that he is reading fiction. Then, when Carr finally gets to the solution, he has devised one that takes at least twenty pages. What's more, it is so intricate that the reader can't follow it without reading it several times, which he never does. And that means that it's all unconvincing."
"That's the point," said Trumbull. "That last bit. It's unconvincing. A locked-room mystery is usually so tortured in its construction and in its solution that you just can't accept it. I mean, has there ever been a locked-room mystery in real life? Somehow I doubt it."
Drake said, "We'd have to ask someone who is a connoisseur of real-life mysteries. Manny?"
"Don't look at me. I confine myself strictly to the fictional variety. I've never tried a locked-room mystery because, frankly, I think Carr killed the market for them. I can't bring myself to undertake thinking up a new variation."
Mario Gonzalo joined the group at this point. He said, "That reminds me of a game you can try sometimes. It's called, 'What's the greatest not by.' "
"What does that mean?" said Rubin suspiciously. "Assuming you know."
"Easy. It's asking a question like, what's the greatest Elizabethan tragedy not by Shakespeare?"
"The usual answer to that," said Rubin, "is Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, though I never liked it."
"All right. What's the best waltz not by Johann Strauss?"
" 'The Merry Widow Waltz' by Franz Lehar, I would say," said Rubin.
"What about 'The Skater's Waltz'?" demanded Gonzalo.
"A matter of taste," said Rubin.
"What's the greatest comic opera not by Gilbert and Sullivan?"
"How about Strauss's Die Fledermaus?" said Rubin.
"Or anything by Offenbach?" suggested Drake.
"And now," said Gonzalo, "what's the greatest locked-room mystery story not written by John Dickson Carr?"
There was a tremendous silence, followed by three people beginning to talk at once and others joining. In the increasing babble, Henry, that imperturbable waiter, announced that dinner was served.
Halsted's guest, the plumber, was Myron Dynast. His aging had not been entirely graceful. His hair was mostly gone, he had pouches under his eyes, a corrugated neck, and a pronounced paunch. His eyes, however, were sharp, his voice was not harsh, and his vocabulary was reasonably good. Avalon consequently said in a whisper to Halsted, "He doesn't sound like a plumber."
Halsted said, "What you really mean, Jeff, is that he doesn't sound like your mental stereotype of a plumber."
Avalon drew himself to his full height and brought his formidable eyebrows downward to affix Halsted with an offended glare. But then he thought better of it and said mildly, "Perhaps you're right, Roger."
Dynast, however, did not talk a great deal. Whether he was abashed at finding himself in intellectual company, or whether he was simply interested in the topics of conversation that enlivened the meal, he listened quietly, for the most part, his quick eyes darting from speaker to speaker.
Finally, over the brandy, Halsted rattled his spoon against his water glass and said, "Jeff, will you do the honors with respect to our guest."
"Gladly," said Avalon. With a somewhat exaggerated courtesy, he turned to Dynast and said, "It is customary at these, our banquets, to begin by asking our guest to justify his existence. How do you justify your existence, Mr. Dynast, or, in other words - "
"I don't need other words, Mr. Avalon," said Dynast. "Just being a good plumber is all the justification I need. Has anyone ever awakened in the middle of the night and realized that he suddenly needed a hotshot nuclear physicist? Think of all the emergencies in which you would be a lot happier if you lived next door to a plumber like me than to a professor like - like - "
"Like any of us," said Avalon, and cleared his throat. "You are quite right, Mr. Dynast. I accept your answer. Tell me, how long have you been a plumber?"
Dynast suddenly looked anxious. "Is this what it's going to be? Are you going to ask me all about plumbing?"
"Possibly, Mr. Dynast, we might."
Halsted interrupted in his soft voice. "I told you, Mike, that the conditions of the banquet are that you must answer all the questions we ask."
"I will, Rog, but I've got something more interesting to say - if you'll let me."
Avalon paused thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "It is not our intention to hamper you unduly, Mr. Dynast. You may tell us what it is you want to say, but if we go back to plumbing, you must accede to that. That is - "
"I know what you said, Mr. Avalon, and it's okay with me," said Dynast. "What I want to say is that before the banquet I heard you talking about locked-room mysteries. I heard you say you didn't know if a locked-room mystery could happen in real life. The thing is that I have one."
That brought the table to a frozen moment of immobility. Even Henry, who was quietly and efficiently clearing the last remnants of the banquet, looked up in thoughtful surprise.
Finally, Trumbull said in what was almost a hushed tone, "Do you mean you've heard of one, or that you've experienced one? Are you saying that you yourself have been involved in one?"
"Not me. My wife. She was."
Mario Gonzalo, at the other end of the table, was leaning forward in his seat, a look of unholy glee on his face. "Wait awhile, now, Mr. Dynast, are you going to tell us there was a locked room and someone was killed inside and it wasn't suicide and there was no murderer inside and your wife was there and knows all about it?"
Dynast stared in horror at that. "Murder? I'm not talking about murder. Good Lord, there was no murder. Nothing like that."
Gonzalo deflated visibly. "Then what are you talking about?"
Dynast said, "There was this room that was locked. And something happened that couldn't happen, that's all. And it involved my wife. It doesn't have to be murder to be a locked-room, does it?"
Avalon raised his hand and said in his deepest baritone, "I am doing the grilling, gentlemen, so let's have order. This may well be interesting and it may supersede our probing of the plumbing profession, at least temporarily, but let's go about it reasonably."
He waited, frowning, for silence, then said, "Mr. Dynast, exactly what happened in the locked room that couldn't have happened?"
"Something was stolen."
"Something of value?"
"To my wife, it had a great deal of value. Can I explain? I can't really talk about it without some explaining."
Avalon looked about the table. "Are there any objections to our listening to Mr. Dynast?"
Gonzalo said, "I have objections to not listening to him."
"Yes, Mario, I should suppose you have. Very well, Mr. Dynast, but you must understand we will interrupt with questions at such times as we have any."
"Sure, go ahead." Dynast turned to Henry, who had taken up his accustomed position at the sideboard. "Waiter, could I have more coffee?"
Henry obliged, and Dynast said, "My wife, gentlemen, was born in a small town. She married me when she was thirty-three and, as it happened, we never had children. We spent some twenty years in the city, but she never got over being a small-town girl. Old-fashioned, too, if you know what I mean."
"I'm not sure we do," said Avalon. "What do you mean?"
"I mean she went out for church socials, and picnics, and all kinds of neighborhood activities. You couldn't really do much of that in the city, you know, but once I retired and we moved out of town, and bought a nice little house with some land, she went right back into the swim. It was as though she were trying to be a girl again. With no children, and no money problems, she could spend all her time at that sort of thing. And I'm willing - as long as she doesn't drag me into it."
"I take it, then, you're not a small-town boy," said Rubin.
"Definitely not. I'm a boy out of the concrete canyons."
"Don't you find it rather dull in the suburbs, then?"
"Oh, sure, but in the first place, I'm not so far from the city that I can't come in, now and then, to fill my lungs with the foul air. Ginny - that's my wife - doesn't mind. And then, too, I'm not entirely retired. I take on plumbing jobs when someone needs it, and that fills some of my time. You know, each plumbing job is different, each one is a challenge, especially if you want to do it well. And the plumbing in the suburbs is just different enough from that in the city to be interesting. Besides - "
He paused and flushed a little. "Besides, Ginny has been a good wife. She stuck it out in the city when things weren't so hot sometimes and didn't complain any more than she had to. Now it's her turn and she's happy - or was happy - and I wasn't about to spoil it for her.
"She keeps busy. Not having children, she sort of makes up for it by always being ready to do some baby-sitting. Half the time, the house has kids in it, running around and making noise. She loves it."
"Do you love it?" asked Trumbull, scowling.
"No, I don't, but it's her job. She doesn't ask me to help out. I know nothing about kids."
"Does your wife? If she has none of her own - " said Avalon.
"Oh, Lord. She just hasn't had any - uh - biologically, but she was the oldest of six. She spent practically all her life till she married me being a kind of assistant mother. Me, I had one big brother and we never got along. Kids are a closed book to me, but I don't miss them. Once we talked about adopting, but I was sort of against it, and she didn't force it on me."
Gonzalo said, with a touch of impatience, "Are we getting to the locked room?"
"There's one more point I have to explain. What makes my wife popular at these church socials is that she's a great cook. I can't explain it myself. I'm just an eater and I don't know what makes food special, but hers is special and I spent my whole life trying not to get fat on her food." He looked down at his abdomen with some chagrin as he said that.
"Listen, if she were a bad wife, I'd still stand her for the sake of her cooking - but she's a good wife. I don't say her cooking is fancy. She doesn't turn out the kind of food you get in fancy restaurants. Hers is plain stuff, but it melts in the mouth. Just to show you, her specialty is blueberry muffins. That doesn't sound like much because you can get them anywhere, but once you taste Ginny's blueberry muffins, you'll never buy them again. Compared to hers everything else is trash.
"She's got dozens of little things she does better than anyone else. I don't know how. Maybe it's spices, or how she mixes them, or how long she cooks, or who knows - She's just a genius at it, like I'm pretty good at plumbing. When she brings in her creations to one of these socials or picnics she goes to, everyone stands around with their tongues hanging out. And she loves it. It's her passport to fame and success. But what she's proudest of, what's nearest her heart, are those blueberry muffins.
"No one can get any recipes out of her. She doesn't have them except in her head, and that's where she keeps them. Secret! They're her crown jewels. She never lets anyone into her kitchen when she's cooking except me, because she knows I don't know what's going on."
Drake said, "I remember my mother used to be a bit like that. When cooking is your expertise, you don't want anyone competing with you by making use of your own discoveries."
"That's right," said Dynast. "But you know, people kept talking to her about writing down all the recipes and making a book out of it. One of the ladies brought in a friend who worked at a publishing house and she talked to Ginny and said that cookbooks made money, and that a good cookbook of plain food could be a gold mine. She also said that someday Ginny would pass on and it wouldn't be right that her cooking secrets should die with her. She flattered Ginny right out of her shoes, and I could see Ginny was beginning to think there was something to it.
"To tell you the truth, I was sort of in favor, too. I would have liked to have her known far and wide for her cooking. I would be proud. So I pushed her, and she began thinking about it even more.
"Not that it was easy, you know. She talked about it and she would say things like, 'I just cook. I do things without even thinking about it. I add and mix and it's all in my fingertips, not in my brain. If I sit down to write a recipe, I would have to figure each one out.'
" 'Do it anyway,' I said. 'Even if it's hard, you do it. Writing any kind of book is hard. Why shouldn't a cook-book be hard, too?'
"So she started to work at it now and then, and she'd keep all the recipes she worked out in a little fireproof box, which locked up with a key, and she would say to me, 'I just can't include the blueberry muffin recipe. That's my secret.' I would say, 'Come on, Ginny, no secrets,' but I knew what she meant.
"Those blueberry muffins were the one thing that created hard feelings against Ginny. They were so good and all the husbands loved them so much that all the wives had their noses out of joint. The other things lots of them could do almost as well, but Ginny's muffins were just out of reach. There was a lot of sentiment that she ought to put the recipe up on the church bulletin board and that it was a lack of Christian charity to hog it like that. But Ginny wouldn't be moved.
"Anyway, now you have the explanation. One day, they were having some meeting at the church and, for a wonder, Ginny didn't feel she had to attend. She explained she wanted to stay home and work on her recipes and she said she would take care of some of the younger kids for those who attended the meeting to make up for not going. She ended up with five kids in the house for about three hours. In those three hours, the house was locked up, even the windows, because we had air-conditioning. There was no one in the house but Ginny and five little kids. That was it."
"Where were you, Mr. Dynast?" asked Avalon.
"I was in the city. To tell you the truth, I always try to be elsewhere when the kids get too thick. Ginny doesn't mind. Glad not to have me underfoot, I suppose."
Gonzalo said, "Is this the locked room you're talking about, Mr. Dynast? Your house locked up with just your wife and the five children in it?"
"That's right."
"I should have thought," said Avalon, "that Mrs. Dynast would get very little work done with five children underfoot."
"It wasn't bad," said Dynast. "Four of the children were old-timers, so to speak, who'd been in the house lots of times. They knew Ginny and Ginny knew them. They were all three or four years old and they had cookies and milk, and toys, and games. One of the children was new, but he was the best one. He belonged to a cousin of one of the regular mothers. The cousin and her husband were both going to the meeting with the mother, and Ginny was glad to take on the new child. His name was Harold and he was maybe almost five, very well-behaved and good-natured, according to Ginny. He helped take care of the other children, in fact. He was very good with them.
"So Ginny kept working on her recipes and, for the first time, she actually wrote down the recipe for her blueberry muffins. She hated to do it, she said, so she wrote it down in pencil, lightly, as though that were equivalent to only half writing it down. Even so, she lost heart because just before it was all over and the children were taken away, she tore the card into confetti.
"That was what was so impossible to explain. She had written down the recipe near the start of her babysitting stint; she had torn it up near the end. It had existed maybe two and a half hours in that closed house, with no one inside but her and the five children, and during that two-and-a-half-hour period the recipe was stolen. - Wouldn't you call that a locked-room mystery?"
Trumbull said, "The recipe was stolen? I thought you said she tore it up."
"I didn't say the piece of paper was stolen. The recipe on it was stolen. The next day that recipe was on the church bulletin board, word for word, as she had written it. Poor Ginny. She was devastated. Since then, she's just been a different woman. She's not going to do the cook-book now, and she's not going to have anything to do with the church anymore."
"She's angry with the whole church?" said Gonzalo. "Who did the stealing?"
"She doesn't know, and I don't know. We don't know who stole it and we don't know how it was stolen. If we did know, she might get over it. She might have some specific person to be enraged with. She might see it was her own carelessness. As it is - " He shook his head. "That's why I was so interested when someone said there were no locked-room mysteries in real life. What do you call this?"
There was a silence, and Rubin said, "You were away the whole time? You saw none of this?"
"Almost the whole time, Mr. Rubin. I came home just as everything was breaking up. The others were milling about, taking their kids, and thanking Ginny. There was the cousin and her husband, the parents of little Harold. They were both quite short - about five feet tall each - but friendly and pleasant. I saw their boy for a moment. He was introduced to me and shook hands like a little man. It was all the height of pleasantness but, by that time, Ginny had already torn up the recipe and it had already, somehow, been stolen."
Halsted leaned back in his chair, hands clasped across his abdomen. "How sure can you be, Mike, that the house was really the equivalent of a locked room, that there was no window open and no way of getting in?"
Dynast shook his head. "That really doesn't matter, does it? All the doors and windows were locked, because Ginny is very careful, and as long as the kids are in her care, she wants none of them falling out a window or wandering out of the house. But never mind that. The fact is that she and the recipe were in this particular room and no one entered that room during all the time the recipe existed. It's just not possible that someone might have gotten in without her noticing."
"Even if she was absorbed in her recipes?" demanded Rubin.
"She wouldn't be that absorbed. The children came first. She would be on the alert at all times."
Gonzalo said, "And she never left the room at any time? She didn't go to the bathroom?"
"Listen," said Dynast. "We talked about this and I asked her that particular question. No, she didn't have to go to the bathroom, but she did leave the room. She left the house, in fact."
"Ah," said Gonzalo. "Why?"
"She remembered she had promised to deliver something to the neighbors who lived across the way, and she was afraid she would continue to forget if she didn't bring it over right then. It was only a matter of fifty feet and it would only take a minute. So she ran over, rang the bell, the husband came out, she shoved it into his hands with an explanation - his wife was at the meeting - exchanged two sentences, and dashed back. The whole thing took two minutes at the most."
Gonzalo said, "You weren't there, Mr. Dynast. A woman may feel she took only two minutes, and actually take twenty."
"Never," said Dynast indignantly. "She had a houseful of kids to take care of. She wouldn't take more than two minutes. She had no reason to take more than two minutes."
"Did she lock the door when she left?" asked Gonzalo.
"No, she didn't like to. Without being there, she was afraid that if something happened to her, and then something happened to the children, and there was a locked door to delay people getting in, well - But that doesn't matter. She had the front door under observation at all times. No one approached it. No one came anywhere near it. When she got back, and locked the door again, she asked little Harold if anything at all had happened when she was gone and he said nothing had. Certainly nothing was disturbed and the children seemed perfectly contented."
Gonzalo said, "Just the same, it's not really a locked room if it was open at some point."
"Let's not be legalistic, Mario," said Avalon. "If the story is accurate, then the house is still the equivalent of a locked room. I must admit, though, that the story is secondhand. I wish we could interview Mrs. Dynast first-hand."
"Well, we can't," said Rubin.
Trumbull said, "Now wait awhile. If we were talking about something material that was stolen, then the house might be considered a locked room. However, nothing material was stolen. The card on which the recipe was written was destroyed by Mrs. Dynast herself. All that was stolen was the information on the card, and that makes the situation different. - Mr. Dynast, I believe that you implied that Mrs. Dynast's friends, her church-social associates, knew that she was preparing recipes."
"Oh, yes, it was big news."
"And would they know that she was working on those recipes at this particular time, when the rest attended the church meeting?"
"Yes, I believe I mentioned that she had told them so, as her excuse for not going."
"And in preparing the recipes, she would label each and identify it, wouldn't she?"
"Certainly. In fact, the blueberry muffin recipe would be labeled 'Grandma's Blueberry Muffins' because that's how she always referred to them to me and to everyone else. Her grandmother had apparently taught her the recipe and she had then improved on it."
"And I presume the room in which she worked had windows."
"Yes, of course."
"In that case," said Trumbull, you certainly didn't have a locked room. People might not have been able to reach into it physically to steal a recipe card, but they could surely look through a window and read what was on the recipe card, couldn't they?"
"No, I don't think so, Mr. Trumbull," said Dynast. "The front of our house was street level, but the ground slanted downward as one moved away from the street. That left room for a basement and garage with openings at ground level in the backyard and with a driveway going back there. But the back rooms, in which Ginny was working and had the kids, was one story high. You couldn't very well look into the windows unless you were ten or eleven feet high, or unless you used a ladder. And I rather think Ginny would have noticed in either case."
Trumbull wouldn't let go. "He might have been in a tree, if the room faced a backyard."
"He might have been - or she - but there was no tree within twenty feet of those windows. Besides, as I had said, Ginny had been irresolute and had written the recipe very lightly in pencil. I don't think anyone could have read it even if his or her nose had been pressed right up against the glass of the window. And then, to make matters worse, in order to keep it even more secure, Ginny had slipped the recipe under a book after she had written it. It was still under the book when her heart failed her and she took it out to tear it up."
Drake said, "Was that the only time the recipe was written down?"
"The only time."
"And was it really quoted word for word? It couldn't have been a merely similar recipe that someone else had independently invented, could it? After all, I must tell you that even the greatest scientific discoveries are sometimes independently thought up by two different scientists at more or less the same time. These things do happen."
"The same words," said Dynast intransigently. "Ginny swears to it and I believe her. At one point, she said, 'Stir furiously till your hand is in danger of falling off. Then count ten rapid breaths and - ' All that was right there. That's the way she talks about cooking when she talks to me. No one else is likely to talk that same exact way."
There was silence around the table and Avalon said, "I'm afraid, Mr. Dynast, that I don't see how it could have been done. You're not making this up as a joke, I suppose."
Dynast shook his head. "I wish I were, Mr. Avalon, but it's no joke to Ginny, and if we don't find out how it's done, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, we'll have to sell our house and move away. Ginny can't bear the thought of living near the people who did this to her."
Drake said, "Would you say that your wife has really told the entire truth?"
"I'd stake my life on it," said Dynast.
"Then with a room containing one woman and five young children you have to conclude that the woman herself stole her own recipe. Do you suppose it is possible that Mrs. Dynast arranged the whole thing herself as an excuse to be able to move away?"
Dynast said, "If she wanted to move, she would just have to say so. She wouldn't have to arrange a big, fancy trick. And if you knew Ginny, you'd know how impossible it would have been for her to play tricks with her blueberry muffins. You can't imagine what they meant to her."
Rubin said, "Well, it's the damnedest locked-room mystery I've ever heard. There's no solution."
At this point, Henry said half apologetically, "Gentlemen?"
Rubin looked up. "Come on, Henry, are you trying to tell us there is a solution?"
"I can't guarantee it, but I would like to ask Mr. Dynast a question."
Avalon said, "Would that be all right with you, Mr. Dynast? Henry is a valued member of our organization."
"I suppose so," said Dynast. "Sure."
"In that case, the oldest child - Harold."
"Yes?"
"How old did you say Harold was?"
"Five at the most."
"How do you know, Mr. Dynast?"
"Ginny said so."
"How did she know, Mr. Dynast?"
"I suppose she asked him."
"Did she say she had asked him?"
"N-no. - But I saw him myself when I came home. I told you. He was a little fellow. Five at the outside."
"But, Mr. Dynast, you also said that you saw Harold's parents and that each was five feet tall. You wouldn't say that because they were each five feet tall they were teenagers."
"No. They were just short."
"Exactly. And short parents may well have short children. It is possible that Harold may look five, judging by his height and size, and yet be eight years old. And, for all we may know, he may be uncommonly bright for eight."
"Good Lord," said Avalon. "Do you really think that could be so, Henry?"
"Consider the consequences, Mr. Avalon, if it is so. One of the women of the neighborhood desperately wants the recipe. She has a short sister who has married a short man, and the two have an uncommonly small boy, who happens to be a prodigy. He is a bright eight-year-old who can easily pass for an unremarkable five-year-old. This bright boy is placed in your house, Mr. Dynast, and told what to look for.
"Mrs. Dynast would feel no concern if this little boy were watching her, or staring curiously at what she is writing. He is, after all, to all appearances, a preschool youngster who cannot read. He might see her do a recipe for 'Grandma's Blueberry Muffins' and place it under a book. Then, when she leaves on her errand, even if it is only for two minutes, the boy can take the recipe out from under the book, read it, memorize it, and put it back. It would not be a terribly long thing to memorize, and particularly bright children can pick up such things as though their minds were blotting paper. I remember that well from my own childhood."
Gonzalo said triumphantly, "Sure. That explains it, and there's no other explanation possible."
Henry said, "It is merely a possibility. However, if you can find out the name of the cousin and her husband, it would be simple to find out how old the boy is, what school he is going to, what grade he is in, and how well he is doing. If the woman refuses to give you any information about her cousin and her nephew, then that in itself would strongly imply that our theory is correct."
"Who'd have thought it?" said Dynast blankly.
Henry murmured, "There must be a rational explanation to everything, sir, and, as usual, the Black Widowers had carefully eliminated all possible explanations and left me to point out what remained."
Afterword
I was reading The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr, as Trumbull did in the story, and it occurred to me that I had never written a Black Widowers story involving a locked-room mystery.
Naturally, I was at once overwhelmed with a desire to do so, but it didn't seem possible to me to think up a new gimmick involving a locked room. John Dickson Carr had simply done it all, and other writers had filled in what inconsiderable gaps might remain.
However, I hated to give up. Could I possibly think of some new way of explaining a locked-room mystery? And to my astonishment, I found I could.
In great excitement, I sat down and wrote "The Recipe" in one sitting - the whole thing. I don't think I ever enjoyed writing a story more.
And now that this collection is done, may I tell you once again that I'm still in reasonably good health and have no intention of stopping. The Black Widowers, I assure you, will continue as long as I do.
