"It is an historical fact. Sharing has never been humanity's defining attribute."- Professor Charles Xavier (X2: X-Men United, 2003).
I first
learned of Timothy Zahn's "Red Thoughts at Morning" in a web article titled
Locked Room Mysteries and Other Improbable Crimes on Steve Lewis' now torpid
Mystery File Online, which preceded the (current) blog of the same name, compiling eight
columns of stories not catalogued by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders and
Other Impossible Crimes (1991) – praising Zahn's hybrid concoction for its
fair play and working as "a mystery as well as a better than average science
fiction story."
There
was a straightforward reason for seeking out this particular, futuristic tale
of the impossible, beside the compelling premise and promise of a fairly
constructed plot. The brief synopsis and commentary put a possible solution in
my head and simply wanted to see if I was correct. Hey, it wouldn’t be the
first time I solved a locked room story by merely reading a description or the
back cover of a book! I found there were two sources available for "Red
Thoughts at Morning," the original publication in a 1981 Analog Science
Fact/Fiction magazine and the collection Distant Friends and Others
(1992), but a cheap copy of Analog was also easily available.
Amos
Potter of Euraka, California, was a renowned telepath who'd won his small
community tolerance from a world eyeing them with suspicion, because telepaths
can't help in this universe reading the thoughts of people in close proximity of
them. The death of Amos Potter therefore comes as a shock to telepaths such as
Dale Ravenhall, who read in the newspaper the commuter plane Amos was on
got hijacked and instructed to fly to Cuba. They were overrun during a stopover
in Las Vegas to refuel, but the body of the telepath was discovered in the unlocked
lavatory of the plane – stabbed in the chest with one of the galley's steak
knives. Dale is currently a witness in a robbery case and the court is debating
over whether or not his testimony as a telepath could be admitted as evidence,
which shows the hassle and abuse telepaths still have to go through. In a way,
the world of the Distant Friends reflects the Marvel universe (if every mutant
was a telepath) and Amos even invented a telepath-finder. But it's during the
next day in court that Dale asks himself the one-million dollar question: "how
the hell do you unexpectedly stab a telepath?"
The
rules of Zahn's Distant Friends universe on telepaths state that they can't
come into close contact with each other with disastrous effects and Dale
constantly communicates with his Distant Friends by telepathy, but ordinary
humans are unable to shield their thoughts and intentions from a telepath –
leaving open the question why Amos didn’t lock himself in. It's an impossible crime witin a reverse locked room mystery! Zahn's explanation
adheres to these rules, however, it grounds the story firmly in SF/Fantasy territory
and it's the complete opposite of the solution I had in mind. My solution would
depend on the murdered telepath to have an assistant, because I suspected
having such kind of powers would be a hassle on account of the skyjacked
airplane. I envisioned the assistant (or maybe a wife) was the actual telepath,
but resented the public perception and created a public avatar. The telepath
receded in the background as the "assistant" and worked the public "telepath"
as a puppet through telepathy, but the "assistant" panicked when they came
after the "telepath" and killed him to keep everyone from finding out. Little
did he know the matter would be resolved in Las Vegas. Anyhow, that's how I
would've played it.
But
wait, I have one more short story to review!
Mr.
Paul Snyder of a reputable detective agency in New Oxford Street has a peculiar
case on his desk: Captain Gunner was found dead in his room in a Southampton
waterfront boarding-house of snake poison, however, the door was locked and the
open, but bared, window too high to offer an escape for a snake. The search for
the tricky serpent is as fruitless as the one for a tangible motive and the problem
is deemed insoluble. Snyder sees the case as a perfect lesson in patience and humiliaty
for Elliot Oakes, who recently joined the staff and has been far too conceited and
self-absorbed with his own skills for his liking. Needless to say, I rather liked
Oakes.
The
plan to lower Oakes' self-esteem appears to work, at first, until Snyder
receives a telegram announcing the case has been solved and the young detective
delivers a solution from the Poe-Doyle School of Impossible Crimes. Unfortunately,
for Oakes, a rival detective appears: the proprietress of the
Excelsior-boardinghouse, Mrs. Pickett, who impressed Oakes as "having very
little intelligence." Mrs. Pickett basically plays the Mr. Chitterwick to
Oakes' Roger Sheringham (c.f. The Poisoned Chocolates Case, 1929) and I
can imagine Wodehouse gave Anthony Berkeley an idea or two with this story.
However, in defense of Oakes, it's not much of a victory if the actual solution
is even more preposterous than the false one.