ARTHUR PORGES “Her Last Bow.” Stately Homes #1. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1957, Collected in Three Porges Parodies and a Pastiche, edited by Michael H. Kean (Magico, 1988) and in The Adventures of Stately Homes and Sherman Horn: Being the Compleat Sherlockian Writings of Arthur Porges, edited by Richard Sims (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, trade paperback, 2008).

   Arthur Porges’s Wikipedia page begins thusly: “Arthur Porges (20 August 1915 – 12 May 2006) was an American writer of numerous short stories, most notably during the 1950s and 1960s, though he continued to write and publish stories until his death.” I haven’t found an accurate countless of the short fiction, essays and poems he had published over his lifetime, but the list is a long one. He, on the other hand, never wrote a novel.

   He began writing science fiction in 1950. “Her Last Bow” is not his first work in crime fiction, but it is close to it. It is his first story to appear in EQMM, and it is also the first of several adventures of Stately Homes stories he wrote over the years.

   It is also a Locked Room Mystery, as Jane Marple’s body is found in one such. The room is completely inaccessible, with only a five inch circular opening in the door to be found. Even more puzzling is the way in which the body has been mutilated, sliced up vertically, from head to toe, and then tied up together again.

   The tale is humorous (his assistant is a gent by the name of Sun Wat) but not as laugh-out-loud funny as Robert L. Fish’s stories of Schlock Homes stories are. I could expound on the tale considerably, but I have decided that I have already told you enough about the plot for you solve it on your own. (The story is only five pages long.) I do not own either of the two collections of Stately Homes stories, but I wish I did.

         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