Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 01/01/11 Read online

  Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

  Saturday, January 1, 2011

  EQMM turns 70!

  Janet Hutchings, Editor

  The ringing in of a new year always seems to bring a mix of reflections on what’s gone before and plans, hopes, and expectations for the future. This year that’s especially true for EQMM, because we’ve come to an important milestone: the start of our 70th year of publication. More than a dozen...

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  Fiction

  Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

  EQMM turns 70!

  Janet Hutchings, Editor

  The ringing in of a new year always seems to bring a mix of reflections on what’s gone before and plans, hopes, and expectations for the future. This year that’s especially true for EQMM, because we’ve come to an important milestone: the start of our 70th year of publication.

  More than a dozen American magazines exceed EQMM’s longevity—Scientific American, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and literary magazines such as The Virginia Quarterly and The Yale Review, to name a few. But if we consider only magazines that publish popular fiction, there is, I believe, just one that can claim continuous publication for longer than EQMM and that’s one of our sister magazines, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, which began life under the title Astounding in 1930.

  We’ve reached this near-record run thanks to continued contributions to our pages from top writers in the field and because we have the good fortune to have a discriminating and loyal readership. Another factor in our success, I think, has been staying true to our original purpose, which Ellery Queen stated in the very first issue as being to provide “all types of detective and crime short stories” and for “consistently good writing” to be as important a requirement for inclusion as “original ideas, excitement, and craftsmanship.”

  Despite shifts in fashion, EQMM covers as much of the genre as possible in each issue. Hardboiled private-eye stories are found shoulder to shoulder with “cozies,” “impossible crime” tales, psychological suspense, noir pieces, and police procedurals. Over the years, as the fortunes of the various sub-genres have waxed and waned, EQMM has provided the same steady home for them, sometimes sustaining writers whose novels have been temporarily cut from book publishers’ lists due to changes in the prevailing winds, only to see them come back into novelistic favor again a few years later.

  Serving the community of writers was, for Ellery Queen, the other side of the coin to providing readers with a rich reading experience. In that first issue he said: “We propose to give you stories by the big-name writers, by lesser-known writers, and by unknown writers.” To that end, in the late 1940s he instituted one of EQMM’s most famous features, the Department of First Stories, and in its pages brought into print for the first time many writers who came to be among mystery’s leading lights.

  Over the course of this anniversary year we’ll be highlighting aspects of EQMM’s history and current attractions and also making some projections for the future. We start, as seems appropriate with the new year about to arrive and Baby New Year running across our cover, with a salute to EQMM’s first-time writers. In The Jury Box, Jon L. Breen reviews the novels of several authors who got their start in EQMM, and we’re presenting the short-story debuts of two new writers in this issue. One appears, as is traditional, in the Department of First Stories, the other, because the style of his story is so fitting for Black Mask, under that department’s aegis.

  Since 1941, when EQMM’s first issue—described by Ellery Queen as “experimental”—found its way into readers’ hands, many other mystery and crime short-story publications have come and (mostly) gone. EQMM remains because of your enthusiastic support. As we celebrate our milestone, it’s with special appreciation for all of you.

  Fiction

  Fiction

  NAVIDAD

  By Elizabeth Zelvin

  This story’s protagonist, Diego, a young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s first voyage, first appeared in “The Green Cross” (EQMM August 2010). Elizabeth Zelvin is currently at work on a historical novel...

  A BULLET FROM YESTERDAY

  By Terence Faherty

  Terence Faherty returns this month with a new adventure for Scott Elliott, the second series character he created, after the popular Owen Keane. A former actor and World War II vet turned private security operative, Elliott takes on a case here involving a supposed artifact from World War I. But as...

  WHERE THE SNOW LAY DINTED

  By Sue Pike

  A past winner of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for best short story, Sue Pike has also been active as an anthologist. She is one of the original members of the Ladies Killing Circle, which began as a...

  SNOWMAN STEW

  By James Powell

  James Powell’s stories are always full of interesting references. In this one, his allusion to the silent movie version of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables comes from Montgomery’s diaries, which were published a few years ago. “It stayed with me,” he says, “because the Regent, the movie...

  MR. BO

  By Liza Cody

  Bloody Brits Press, which is dedicated to bringing more writers from the U.K. into print in the U.S., will be releasing their edition of Liza Cody’s Gimme More just days before this issue goes on sale. Liza Cody is not a terribly prolific writer, and that may explain why she hasn’t become better...

  THE ADVENT REUNION

  By Andrew Klavan

  This new story began life in 2009 as an online performance piece (a video) rather than as prose fiction. The author has rewritten it for the page and created a fine Christmas ghost story. Andrew...

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  Fiction

  NAVIDAD

  By Elizabeth Zelvin

  Art by Allen Davis

  This story’s protagonist, Diego, a young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s first voyage, first appeared in “The Green Cross” (EQMM August 2010). Elizabeth Zelvin is currently at work on a historical novel of suspense entitled Voyage of Strangers, in which Diego joins Columbus on his second voyage. In it, Diego has to save his sister Rachel from the Inquisition, in an adventure the author says will “blow the lid off the ‘discovery’ of America.” Meanwhile, here’s Diego experiencing Christmas (and a secret Chanukah) in the New World.

  I crouched in the crow’s nest of the Santa Maria, praying to Ha’shem that I would succeed in coaxing my tinderbox to strike a spark. That spark must then ignite two short lengths of cable, dipped in lamp oil and wedged upright in an open leather pouch filled with sand, before anybody on deck noticed that I was not among them. It was the 25th day of Kislev in the year 5253 according to the Hebrew calendar, the second night of the Festival of Lights. It was also December 24th in what the others, including the Admiral, called the Year of Our Lord 1492: Christmas Eve.

  My breath caught as the candles in my improvised menorah flared up, then settled down to glow with a steady flame. To my relief, they did not smoke or flicker. Getting caught would be a disaster too dreadful to contemplate: hanging, here or back in Spain, for practicing my forbidden Jewish faith, and a flogging I might not survive for that heaviest of transgressions at sea, kindling unauthorized fire on a wooden ship.

  I muttered the b’rucha rather than chanting it aloud, as I sometimes did when the ship was scudding along under full sail and the wind’s howl drowned out my song of praise to Adonai. I would not have risked even that, but the watch had just changed, and all who could do so had dropped where they stood onto the deck and fallen at once into a heavy sl
umber.

  They had good reason. For the past two days, we had been besieged by visitors from the villages beyond the shore of the beautiful bay the Admiral had named Santo Tomás. More than a thousand of the folk we call Indians, for want of a better term, had swarmed onto the Santa Maria from canoes, along with half as many more who came swimming out to us, although we had anchored a full league offshore. All were unclothed, even the women, and all bore gifts, evidently valuing a calabash of water or a strange, sweet fruit as highly as a nugget or ornament of gold. Though I would not confess it even to Fernando, my only friend on board, I had never seen a naked woman before. I accepted the fruit and water with thanks—none offered me gold—and shied away from their questing hands, which made them laugh. The older seamen had no such inhibitions. I kept my eyes on Admiral Columbus, who was dignified and gracious as always.

  “Mark how freely they give, Diego,” he said softly at a moment when only I stood near him. “It is easy to recognize when something is given from the heart.”

  My heart swelled with pride, as always on the rare occasions when he spoke my name, tacitly acknowledging his old bond with my father, which must never be mentioned. Yet it also felt ready to burst with grief, in spite of the Admiral’s kindness. These naked and untutored folk welcomed strangers to their table, just as we had at Passover back in Seville, before we were driven out. Now we were all strangers in a strange land ourselves, my parents and my sisters no less than I and my comrades on this unpredictable voyage.

  My lip curled when it occurred to me that the villagers’ offerings of gold resembled the coin we gave to children at the Festival of Lights. It was at that moment that I conceived the plan of lighting my own menorah. I could not try it on the first night, when the decks were still crowded with visitors and not a man aboard had gotten a night’s sleep since we first greeted our Indian guests. When the excitement had seemed to be dying down, it was roused again by the arrival of gifts for the Admiral from a cacique named Guancanagarí, who seemed to be the king or prince of this region. Chief among the gifts was a magnificent mask with nose, tongue, and ears of hammered gold, along with baskets heaped with food, skeins of spun cotton, gold, and parrots that screeched, flashed brightly colored feathers, and dropped dung all over the vessel. Guancanagarí also invited the whole ship’s company, and the Niña’s as well—for the Pinta had gone off on her own some time before, and we were fearful of her fate—to come ashore and feast with him.

  “He’s inviting us for Christmas dinner,” one of the seamen said, and all around him laughed.

  “To dinner or for dinner?” another asked, and they laughed again. In fact, it was the warlike Caribe who were said to eat human flesh, not these amiable Taino.

  But then all realized that if this cacique had so much gold to give away, it followed that he must know the location of the mine we had long searched for. Even Admiral Columbus’s eyes blazed with gold fever, for he longed to be able to lay a vast treasure at the feet of the king and queen as repayment for the cost of the voyage. Our Indian interpreters from the other islands, at his urging, questioned many, but their dialect was different. Indeed, I thought these fellows had told us nothing but what they believed we desired to hear from the day we carried them aboard our ships. For many had escaped, and I believed that none of them stayed with us willingly, but only out of fear of our muskets and steel swords.

  At any rate, the Admiral determined that we would keep Christmas with Guacanagarí.

  “Our Lord in his goodness guide me that I may find this gold,” I heard him pray.

  So we weighed anchor and bade farewell to the bay of Santo Tomás and its friendly people. By nightfall, Christmas Eve, we had reached the great headland that I could still see now from the crow’s nest if I looked astern, though in the dim light of the waning moon, it seemed no more than a looming black shadow. There was little wind, and the ship barely rocked as it moved onward, following the Niña, which had drawn ahead. Being a caravel, she was always a little faster than our sturdy tub.

  I was just thinking what a blessing it was to have calm seas for my devotions—I knew from experience that the whole mast, with the crow’s nest atop it, swung wildly in any kind of swell—when a tremendous jolt and shudder knocked me off my feet and into the menorah. Luckily, the leather flap closed as I fell heavily against it, driving the candles into the sand and extinguishing them. Stuffing the whole into my shirt along with my tinderbox, I shinnied down the ropes and leaped softly to the deck, giving thanks to Ha’shem that my feet were bare and the night so dark that no one noticed.

  The crisis was severe, for we had run aground upon hidden shoals while, as we learned later, all on watch, including the helmsman and the young sailor he had ordered to take the tiller, slept. The next two hours were a time of chaos and confusion, shouting and a frenzy of activity in our desperation to save our ship. Whenever I paused in my labors, my heartbeat pounded in my ears. We were only a league offshore. If the Santa Maria broke up, I could swim ashore, as my father and the Admiral had in their youth when wrecked together off the coast of Portugal. That was the origin of their lifelong friendship, and my father, grateful for every day of his continued life since then, had made sure I knew how to swim at an early age. But the whole Ocean Sea separated us from the lands and people we knew. What if we were stranded on these shores with no means of return? We must not lose the ship!

  Indeed, we might have saved her if the Santa Maria’s master, Juan de la Cosa, had acted as he ought. The Admiral, seeing what must be done, gave immediate orders. But De la Cosa failed to obey them. Instead, he ordered his closest cronies, my old tormentor Cabrera among them, to launch the ship’s boat and flee to the Niña, determined to save their own skins at the cost of ours, if need be. This so shocked all who remained, even the Admiral, that they were gone before any thought to prevent them.

  Meanwhile, increasing swells drove the Santa Maria further and further onto the coral reef. By the time Vicente Yáñez, who commanded the Niña, had ordered the fugitives back and sent a boatload of his own men to help, it was too late. With horror and despair, we watched the timbers of the hull come apart at the seams and the sea come rushing in. Before dawn, the Admiral had to command all to abandon ship and leave the dying vessel to her fate.

  The disaster changed all our plans. We labored mightily to salvage the contents of the Santa Maria, while the admiral wept. Thanks to Ha’shem for the goodwill of Guacanagarí. The kind cacique offered the help of his tribesmen, food for all, housing in his village to relieve the overcrowded Niña, and many pieces of gold. He shrewdly surmised that these would dry the Admiral’s tears and go some way toward consoling him for the loss of his flagship. By the day after Christmas, he had come to believe that the shipwreck was the will of the Almighty, meant to guide him to make a more permanent landing in this hospitable place and seek the fabled gold mine of Cibao. Our whole company applauded this new plan, being equally eager for gold. Only I failed to join in this feverish enthusiasm, having seen well enough how the possession of riches could lead to the envy and malice of others, as it had for the Jews of Spain.

  It was decided to build a fort upon the shore within sight of the wreck of the Santa Maria. Many clamored for the privilege of being left behind to man it, having not only gold but the availability of the friendly native women as inducements. All awaited eagerly the Admiral’s choice as to which of us would go and who remain. I was happy enough working hard at building the fort, which the Admiral declared would be called La Navidad. For good measure, I made a new friend. The Admiral had enlisted Taino from the nearest village to labor alongside us. The youngest of these seemed drawn to me as the nearest to him in age. At first, he fingered my garments and asked questions beyond the smattering of Taino that I had learned earlier in the voyage. Then he began to teach me. Curious as he was about me, I was equally curious about him. What did he make of these strange white-skinned men with our birdlike yet vulnerable ships and our metal tools and weapons? Wha
t did his bright black eyes read in our faces? Could he discern Cabrera’s dark soul and the Admiral’s goodness? What thoughts lay beneath the coarse, dark thatch of his hair?

  I learned that the Taino took pride in their names, just as we did. The Taino boy told me his was Hutia. He made me laugh by showing me with gestures and movement that a hutia was a kind of rabbit, the name given to him because he could run fast. He had a sister named Anacaona, golden flower. Guarico was “come.” Guaibá was “go.” Most of the sailors knew only caona, gold, and chicha, the villagers’ beer, made of corn, which they complained about but drank a good deal of nonetheless.

  I had difficulty explaining “Diego,” which was the name of a Christian saint. None of the Indians had succeeded in grasping the concept of saints, eager as the Admiral was to convert them. They responded better to images of Jesus on the Cross, but only because they interpreted crucifixion as an effective way of tormenting one’s enemies—as indeed it was to the Romans who killed Jesus, or so my father had taught me. Like us, the Christians’ God was punished for being a Jew.

  While we built the fort, all had a hitherto unknown measure of freedom and privacy. I was happy to complete my Chanukah observance with the loss of only three out of the eight nights of the festival. Not all had a purpose as innocent as mine in venturing beyond the mangrove swamps into the wilderness beyond. On the eve of the New Year, when all had been given several extra measures of strong drink, I witnessed, by pure chance, an act that in pure evil surpassed anything Cabrera had done before.

  I had stolen away at twilight, being relieved from my post for the whole of the next watch. I carried my tallit and t’fillin, intending to perform my daily prayers. I had already bound the t’fillin around my arm and brow when I heard screams of distress coming from some distance away. I crashed through the underbrush, seeking the source of the disturbance. The raucous cry of parrots disturbed by my headlong progress mingled with the human screams, which now held a note of terror.