Mon 16 Mar 2020
Locked Room Stories I’m Reading: ARTHUR PORGES “Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot.â€
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[10] Comments
ARTHUR PORGES “Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot.†Stately Homes #5. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Collected in The Adventures of Stately Homes and Sherman Horn: Being the Compleat Sherlockian Writings of Arthur Porges (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, trade papeback, 2008).
Based on this story as my only sample to date, Stately Homes must have been Schlock Homes’ indolent brother. All he seems to do for a full quarter of this four page story is stay in his flat he shares with his assistant Sun Wat (from India) and play his violin, all the while depending on the members of the Baker Street Irregulars to do the leg work for him.
Dead is a man found shot and killed while sitting at his office desk with his back to the window, which was open ten inches from the bottom. The door to the fourth floor room was under close observation at the time. Obviously the shot came through the open window, but the only angle possible does not match the point of entry of the bullet.
It sounds good, but the story fails as a story, unless you consider “humorous,†which I allow was the likely attempt, to include stories as poorly thought out as this one. One essential clue to the solution is withheld from the reader until very nearly the end, and that is that the killer was an expert at billiards. Match this up with the fact that the walls of the room were covered with rare coins and medallions. You can take it from there.
The Stately Homes series –
Her Last Bow (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1957
Another Adventure of Stately Homes (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov 1961
Stately Homes and the Invisible Slasher (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2001
Stately Homes and the Invisible Giant (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2003
Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2004
March 16th, 2020 at 9:07 pm
Not Porges best, though he wrote a classic Arsene Lupin pastiche.
March 16th, 2020 at 9:38 pm
I had to go looking for that one, David, but I think I’ve found it. It’s “In Compartment 813” in the June 1966 issue of EQMM, though that’s all I’ve found.
But while looking, I found that Porges wrote two stories about a certain character called Celery Green. Those I’d like to read.
March 16th, 2020 at 10:03 pm
That’s the one. Straight pastiche and not comedy.
Celery Green, eh? I guess it’s as good as Leroy King.
March 16th, 2020 at 11:06 pm
These stories sound quirky enough for me to go looking for.
March 16th, 2020 at 11:13 pm
Hot dog! I found I had the “Celery Green” story in a book on my shelves so I’ve added that to my “to be read” group.
March 16th, 2020 at 11:27 pm
The cover is a reprint from Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY magazine(1930’s). I used to own the original painting. Artist is John Counglin who for 20 years did just about every cover for DETECTIVE STORY on a weekly basis. I traded it for another painting but it’s a nice symbolic painting.
March 17th, 2020 at 9:17 am
Sounds like spotting this cover on my blog was like seeing an old friend, Walker, one you hadn’t seen in a while.
March 17th, 2020 at 7:21 am
You can find one of the amusing Celery Green stories, “The English Village Mystery,†in the 2018 anthology The Misadventures of Ellery Queen. Yes, it was a quirky story, but with a bit reason to its madness.
For anyone who’s interested, Richard Simms has collected and published numerous volumes of Porges’ short stories over the past few years with most of them being exclusively locked room short stories. The Curious Cases of Cyriack Skinner Grey, No Killer Has Wings: The Casebook of Dr. Joel Hoffman and These Daisies Told: The Casebook of Professor Ulysses Price Middlebie all come highly recommended, but recently, Simms also published The Price of a Princess: Hardboiled Crime Fiction. I’ve haven’t read that one yet, but it’s one my wishlist and hope Porges’ hardboiled stories are in the same vein as Edmund Crispin’s “The Pencil.â€
March 17th, 2020 at 9:21 am
I have some of those collections of Porges stories, but I suspect not all of them. I’ve been a fan of his work for a while, so was doubly disappointed after reading this one. I had expected better. If I’d been the editor, I would asked for a rewrite. (Not a rejection, but a rewrite)
March 18th, 2020 at 10:28 pm
[…] the Porges story (recently reviewed here) in the same issue of EQMM, Hoch takes his time (fourteen pages rather than only four), to describe […]