Tales of the Black Widowers

When Roger Halsted made his appearance at the head of the stairs on the day of the monthly meeting of the Black Widowers, the only others yet present were Avalon and Rubin. They greeted him with jubilation.

Emmanuel Rubin said, "Well, you've finally managed to stir yourself up to the point of meeting your old friends, have you?" He trotted over and held out his hands, his straggly beard stretching to match his broad grin. "Where've you been the last two meetings?"

"Hello, Roger," said Geoffrey Avalon, smiling from his stiff height. "Pleased to see you."

Halsted shucked his coat. "Damned cold outside. Henry, bring-"

But Henry, the only waiter the Black Widowers ever had or ever would have, had the drink waiting. "I'm glad to see you again, sir."

Halsted took it with a nod of thanks. "Twice running something came up... Say, you know what I've decided to do?"

"Give up mathematics and make an honest living?" asked Rubin.

Halsted sighed. "Teaching math at a junior high school is about as honest a living as one can find. That's why it pays so little."

"In that case," said Avalon, swirling his drink gently, "why is free-lance writina; so dishonest a racket?"

"Free-lance writing is not dishonest," said free-lance Rubin, rising to the bait at once, "as long as you make no use of an agent-"

"What have you decided to do, Roger?" interrupted Avalon blandly.

"It's just this project I dreamed up," said Halsted. His forehead rose white and high, showing no signs of the hairline that had been there perhaps ten years ago, though the hair was still copious enough at the top and around the sides. "I'm going to rewrite the Iliad and the Odyssey in limericks, one for each of the forty-eight books they contain."

Avalon nodded. "Any of it written?"

"I've got the first book of the Iliad taken care of. It goes like this:

"Agamemnon, the top-ranking Greek,

To Achilles in anger did speak.

They argued a lot,

Then Achilles grew hot,

And went stamping away in a pique."

"Not bad," said Avalon. "In fact, quite good. It gets across the essence of the first book in full. Of course, the proper name of the hero of the Iliad is Achilleus, with the 'ch' sound as in-"

"That would throw off the meter," said Halsted.

"Besides," said Rubin, "everyone would think the extra 'u' was a mistake and that's all they'll see in the limerick."

Mario Gonzalo came racing up the stairs. He was host for that session and he said, "Anyone else here?"

"Nobody here but us old folks," said Avalon agreeably.

"My guest is on his way up. Real interesting guy. Henry will like him because he never tells a lie."

Henry lifted his eyebrows as he produced Mario's drink.

"Don't tell me you're bringing George Washington!" said Halsted.

"Roger! A pleasure to see you again... By the way, Jim Drake won't be here with us today. He sent back the card saying there was some family shindig he had to attend. The guest I'm bringing is a fellow named Sand- John Sand. I've known him on and off for years. Crazy guy. Horse-race buff who never tells a lie. I've heard him not telling lies. It's about the only virtue he has." And Gonzalo winked.

Avalon nodded portentously. "Good for those who can. As one grows older, however-"

"And I think it will be an interesting session," added Gonzalo hurriedly, visibly avoiding Avalon's non-libidinous confidences. "I was telling him about the club, and that for the last two times we had mysteries on our hands-"

"Mysteries?" said Halsted with sudden interest.

Gonzalo said, "You're a member of the club in good standing, so we can tell you. But get Henry to do it. He was a principal both times."

"Henry?" Halsted looked over his shoulder in mild surprise. "Are they getting you involved in our idiocies?"

"I assure you, Mr. Halsted, I tried not to be," said Henry.

"Tried not to be!" said Rubin hotly. "Listen, Henry was the Sherlock of the session last time. He-"

"The point is," said Avalon, "that you may have talked too much, Mario. What did you tell your friend about us?"

"What do you mean, talk too much? I'm not Manny. I carefully told Sand that there could be no details because we were priests at the confessional, one and all, as far as anything in this room is concerned, and he said he wished he were a member because he had a difficulty that was driving him wild, and I said he could come the next time because it was my turn to host and he could be my guest and-here he is!"

A slim man, his neck swathed in a thick scarf, was mounting the stairs. The slimness was accentuated when he took off his coat. Under the scarf, his tie gleamed bloody red and seemed to lend color to a thin and pallid face. He seemed thirtyish.

"John Sand," said Mario, introducing him all round in a pageant that was interrupted by Thomas Trumbull's

heavy tread on the steps and the loud cry of "Henry, a scotch and soda for a dying man."

Rubin said, "Tom, you can come early if you relax and stop trying so hard to be late."

"The later I come," said Trumbull, "the less I have to hear of your Goddamn stupid remarks. Ever think of that?" Then he was introduced, too, and all sat down.

Since the menu for that meeting had been so incautiously devised as to begin with artichokes, Rubin had launched into a dissertation on the preparation of the only proper sauce for it. Then, when Trumbull had said disgustedly that the only proper preparation for artichokes involved a large garbage can, Rubin said, "Sure, if you don't have the right sauce-"

Sand ate uneasily and left at least a third of an excellent steak untouched. Halsted, who had a tendency to plumpness, eyed the remains enviously. His own plate was the first one cleaned. Only a scraped bone and some fat were left.

Sand seemed to grow aware of Halsted's eyes and said to him, "Frankly, I'm too worried to have much appetite. Would you care for the rest of this?"

"Me? No, thank you," said Halsted glumly.

Sand smiled. "May I be frank?"

"Of course, If you've been listening to the conversation around the table, you'll realize frankness is the order of the evening."

"Good, because I would be anyway. It's my-fetish. You're lying, Mr. Halsted. Of course you want the rest of my steak, and you'd eat it, too, if you thought no one would notice. That's perfectly obvious. Social convention requires you to lie, however. You don't want to seem greedy and you don't want to seem to ignore the elements of hygiene by eating something contaminated by the saliva of a stranger."

Halsted frowned. "And what if the situation were reversed?"

"And I was hungry for more steak?"

"Yes."

"Well, I might not want to eat yours for hygienic rea-

sons, but I would admit I wanted it. Almost all lying is the result of a desire for self-protection or out of respect for social convention. To myself, though, it seems that a lie is rarely a useful defense and I am not at all interested in social convention."

Rubin said, "Actually, a lie is a useful defense if it is a thorough-going one. The trouble with most lies is that they don't go far enough."

"Been reading Mein Kampf lately?" said Gonzalo.

Rubin's eyebrows went up. "You think Hitler was the first to use the technique of the big lie? You can go back to Napoleon III; you can go back to Julius Caesar. Have you ever read his Commentaries?"

Henry was bringing the baba au rhum and pouring the coffee delicately, and Avalon said, "Let's get to our honored guest."

Gonzalo said, "As host and chairman of this session, I'm going to call off the grilling. Our guest has a problem and I direct him to favor us with it." He was drawing a quick caricature of Sand on the back of the menu card, with a thin, sad face accentuated into that of a distorted bloodhound.

Sand cleared his throat, "I understand everything said in this room is in confidence, but-"

Trumbull followed the glance, and growled, "Don't worry about Henry. Henry is the best of us all. If you want to doubt someone's discretion, doubt someone else."

"Thank you, sir," murmured Henry, setting up the brandy glasses on the sideboard.

Sand said, "The trouble, gentlemen, is that I am suspected of a crime."

"What kind of crime?" demanded Trumbull at once. It was his job, ordinarily, to grill the guests and the look in his eye was that of someone with no intention of missing the grillage.

"Theft," said Sand. "There is a sum of money and a wad of negotiable bonds missing from a safe in my company. I'm one of those who have the combination, and I had the opportunity to get to it unobserved. I also had a motive because I've had some bad luck at the races

and needed some cash badly. So it doesn't look good for me."

Gonzalo said eagerly, "But he didn't do it. That's the point. He didn't do it."

Avalon twirled the half-drink he was not going to finish and said, "I think in the interest of coherence we ought to allow Mr. Sand to tell his story."

"Yes," said Trumbull, "how do you know he didn't do it, Mario?"

"That's the whole point, damn it. He says he didn't do it," said Gonzalo, "and that's good enough. Not for a court maybe, but it's good enough for me and for anyone who knows him. I've heard him admit enough rotten things-"

"Suppose I ask him myself, okay?" said Trumbull. "Did you take the stuff, Mr. Sand?"

Sand paused. His blue eyes flicked from face to face, then he said, "Gentlemen, I am telling the truth. I did not take the cash or the bonds. That is only my unsupported word, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I can be relied on."

Halsted passed his hand over his forehead upward, as though trying to clear away doubts. "Mr. Sand," he said, 'you seem to have a position of some trust. You can get into a safe with assets in it. Yet you play the horses."

"Lots of people do."

"And lose."

"I didn't quite plan it that way."

"But don't you risk losing your job?"

"My advantage is, sir, that I am employed by my uncle, who is aware of my weakness, but who also knows I don't lie. He knew I had the means and opportunity, and he knew I had debts. He also knew I had recently paid off my gambling debts. I told him so. The circumstantial evidence looked bad. But then he asked me directly whether I was responsible for the loss and I told him exactly what I told you: I did not take the cash or the bonds. Since he knows me well, he believes me."

"How did you come to pay off your debts?" said Avalon.

"Because a long shot came through. That happens, too, sometimes. That happened shortly before the theft was discovered and I paid off the bookies. That's true, too, and I told this to my uncle."

"But then you had no motive," said Gonzalo.

"I can't say that. The theft might have been carried out as long as two weeks before the discovery. No one looked in that particular drawer in the safe for that period of time-except the thief, of course. It could be argued that after I took the assets the horse came through and made the theft unnecessary-too late."

"It might be argued," said Halsted, "that you took the money in order to place a large bet on the horse that came in."

"The bet wasn't that large, and I had other sources, but it could be argued so, yes."

Trumbull broke in, "But if you still have your job, as I suppose you do, and if your uncle isn't prosecuting you, as I assume he isn't... Has he gone to the police at all?"

"No, he can absorb the loss and he feels the police will only try to pin it on me. He knows that what I have told him is true."

"Then what's the problem, for God's sake?"

"Because there's no one else who can have done it. My uncle can't think of any other way of accounting for the theft. Nor can I. And as long as he can't, there will always be the residuum of uneasiness, of suspicion. He will always keep his eye on me. He will always be reluctant to trust me. I'll keep my job, but I'll never be promoted; and I may be made uncomfortable enough to be forced into resignation. If I do, I can't count on a wholehearted recommendation, and from an uncle, a halfhearted one would be fatal."

Rubin was frowning. "So you came here, Mr. Sand, because Gonzalo said we solved mysteries. You want us to tell you who really took the stuff."

Sand shrugged. "Maybe not. I don't even know if I can give you enough information. It's not as though you're detectives who can make inquiries. If you could tell me just how it might have been done-even if it's farfetched,that would help. If I could go to my uncle and say, 'Uncle, it might have been done this way, mightn't it?' Even if we couldn't be sure, even if we couldn't ever get the assets back, it would at least spread the suspicion. He wouldn't have the eternal nagging thought that I was the only possible guilty party."

"Well," said Avalon, "we can try to be logical, I suppose. How about the other people who work with you and your uncle? Would any of them need money badly?"

Sand shook his head. "Enough to risk the possible consequences of being caught? I don't know. One of them might be in debt, or one might be undergoing blackmail, or one might be greedy, or just have the opportunity and act on impulse. If I were a detective I could go about asking questions, or I could track down documents, or whatever it is they do. As it is-"

"Of course," said Avalon, "we can't do that either... Now you had both means and opportunity, but did anyone else?"

"At least three people could have gotten to the safe more easily than I and gotten away with it more easily, but not one of them had the combination, and the safe wasn't broken into; that's certain. There are two people besides my uncle and myself who have the combination, but one had been hospitalized over the period in question and the other is such an old and reliable member of the firm that to suspect him seems unthinkable."

"Aha," said Mario Gonzalo, "there's our man right there."

"You've been reading too many Agatha Christies," said Rubin at once. "The fact of the matter is that in almost every crime on record, the most suspicious person is indeed the criminal."

"That's beside the point," said Halsted, "and too dull besides. What we have here is a pure exercise in logic. Let's have Mr. Sand tell us everything he knows about every member of the firm, and we can all try to see if there's any way in which we can work out motive, means, and opportunity for some one person."

"Oh, hell," said Trumhull, "who says it has to be one person? So someone's in a hospital. Big deal. The telephone exists. He phones the combination to a confederate."

"All right, all right," said Halsted hastily, "we're bound to think up all sorts of possibilities and some may be more plausible than others. After we've thrashed them out, Mr. Sand can choose the most plausible and use it, too-"

"May I speak, sir?" Henry spoke so quickly, and at a sound level so much higher than his usual murmur, that everyone turned to face him.

Henry said, softly once more, "Although not a Black Widower-"

"Not so," said Rubin. "You know you're a Black Widower. In fact, you're the only one who's never missed a meeting."

"Then may I point out, gentlemen, that if Mr. Sand carries your conclusions, whatever they may be, to his uncle, he will be carrying the proceedings of this meeting beyond the walls of this room."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Halsted said, "In the interest of saving the ruin of an innocent person's life, surely-"

Henry shook his head gently. "But it would be at the cost of spreading suspicion to one or more other people, who might also be innocent."

Avalon said, "Henry's got something there. We seem stymied."

"Unless," said Henry, "we can come to some definite conclusion that will satisfy the club and will not involve the outside world."

"What do you have in mind, Henry?" asked Trumbull.

"If I may explain... I was interested to meet someone who, as Mr. Gonzalo said before dinner, never tells a lie."

"Now come, Henry," said Rubin, "you're pathologically honest yourself. You know you are. That's been settled."

"That may be so," said Henry, "but I tell lies."

"Do you doubt Sand? Do you think he's lying?" said Rubin.

"I assure you-" began Sand, almost in anguish. "No," said Henry, "I believe that every word Mr. Sand has said is true. He didn't take the money or the bonds. He is, however, the logical one against whom suspicion may rest. His career may be ruined. His career, on the other hand, may not be ruined if some reasonable alternative can be found, even if that does not actually lead to a solution. And, since he can think of no reasonable alternatives himself, he wants us to help him find some for him. I am convinced, gentlemen, that this is all true." Sand nodded. "Well, thank you."

"And yet," said Henry, "what is truth? For instance, Mr. Trumbull, I think that your habit of perpetually arriving late with a cry of 'Scotch and soda for a dying man' is rude, unnecessary, and, worse yet, has grown boring. I suspect others here feel the same."

Trumbull flushed, but Henry went on firmly. "Yet if, under ordinary circumstances, I were asked if I disapproved of it, I would say I did not. Strictly speaking, that would be a lie, but I like you for other reasons, Mr. Tram-bull, that far outweigh this trick of yours, so the telling of the strict truth, which would imply a dislike for you, would end by actually being a great lie. Therefore I lie to express a truth-my liking for you."

Trumbull muttered, "I'm not sure I like your way of liking, Henry."

Henry said, "Or consider Mr. Halsted's limerick on the first book of the Iliad. Mr, Avalon quite rightly said that Achilleus is the correct name of the hero, or even Akhil-leus with a 'k,' I suppose, to suggest the correct sound. But then Mr. Rubin pointed out that the truth would seem like a mistake and ruin the effect of the limerick. Again, truth creates a problem.

"Mr. Sand said that all lies arise out of a desire for self-protection or out of respect for social convention. But we cannot always ignore self-protection and social convention. If we cannot lie, we must make the truth lie for us."

Gonzalo said, "You're not making sense, Henry."

"I think I am Mr Gonzalo. Few people listen to exact words, and many a literal truth tells a lie by implication. Who should know that better than a person who carefully always tells the literal truth?"

Sand's pale cheeks were less pale, or his red tie was reflecting light upward more efficiently. He said, "What the hell are you implying?"

"I would like to ask you a question, Mr. Sand. If the club is willing, of course."

"I don't care if they are or not," said Sand, glowering at Henry. "If you take that tone, I might not choose to answer."

"You may not have to," said Henry. "The point is that each time you deny having committed the crime, you deny it in precisely the same form of words. I couldn't help but notice since I made up my mind to listen to your exact words as soon as I heard that you never lied. Each time, you said, 'I didn't take the cash or the bonds.' "

"And that is perfectly true," said Sand loudly.

"I'm sure it is, or you wouldn't have said so," said Henry. "Now this is the question I would like to ask you. Did you, by any chance, take the cash and the bonds?"

There was a short silence. Then Sand rose and said, "I'll take my coat now. Goodbye. I remind you all that nothing that goes on here can be repeated outside."

When Sand was gone, Trumbull said, "Well, I'll be damned!"

To which Henry replied, "Perhaps not, Mr. Trumbull. Don't despair."

Afterword

This story first appeared in the October 1972 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Man Who Never Told a Lie." I think the magazine title is pedestrian, so I changed it back to my original one.

I wrote this story on February 14, 1972. I remember that, not because I have a phenomenal memory, but because it was written in the hospital the day before my one and (so far) only operation. Larry Ashmead, my Dou-bleday editor, visited me that day and I gave him the manuscript and asked him to see that it was delivered to the EQMM offices by messenger.

I also told him to explain that I was in the hospital, as I ordinarily deliver the manuscripts myself so that I can flirt with the beauteous Eleanor (to say nothing of the vivacious Constance DiRienzo, who is the executive editorial secretary).

Larry did as requested, of course, and I got the news. that the story was taken while I was still in the hospital recovering. Since then I have wondered (when I had nothing better to do) if the story was accepted out of sympathy for my poor, suffering self, but I guess not. It was tapped for a best-of-the-year mystery anthology put out by Dutton, so I guess it's okay.

Oh, and that accounts for the fact that this story is the shortest in the book. I had to get it done before the surgeon took his scalpel from between his teeth, whetted it on his thigh, and got to work.