Cops & Robbers: "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" (1987), "The Murder in Room 1010" (1987) and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch, the man of a thousand stories, was not only a prolific writer of short stories, who appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1973 until his death in 2008, but a varied one as well – whose works covers detective stories of all stripes and varietals. Mike Grost correctly noted that "many of Hoch's series detectives tend to personify mystery subgenres" and "can shift to any of these genres simply by altering his series protagonist." For example, Dr. Sam Hawthorne exclusively deals with impossible crimes, Jeffery Rand is a code cracking spy, Captain Leopold series are modern police procedurals and Ben Snow is a gun-slinging sleuth from the Wild West. So the series all take a different approach to telling a detective story, whether it be the characters or setting, but the plots unmistakably identifies them as works from Hoch's hands.

Some cynics will simply call it a formula, but it gives a harmonizing quality to Hoch's many, vastly different series. More importantly, it allowed Hoch to bring different series-characters together for a crossover story! Hoch wrote three such crossovers during the early '90s.

The first of these crossover stories, "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee" (1990), has an aged Ben Snow visiting Dr. Sam Hawthorne in the 1930s to consult him on a case from the 1800s he was never able to solve. "The Spy and the Gypsy" (1991) is a crossover between Rand and the gypsy detective, Michael Vlado, which I'll get to eventually. Sandwiched in between is a short story bringing Nick Velvet and Sandra Paris to Captain Jules Leopold's city. That short story gave me the idea for this three-for-one review discussing two short stories, one from the Nick Velvet series and the other a Captain Leopold story, which I picked based on Grost's praise – calling them "some of Hoch's purest and most delightful impossible crime tales." And concluding with the crossover between the two series.

"The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper," originally published as "The Theft of the Lost Slipper" in the April, 1987, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is the 54th short story to feature Nick Velvet. A thief-for-hire who only steals valueless things for a hefty fee (see The Thefts of Nick Velvet, 1978). This time, Velvet is approached by Gloria's brother, Arnie, who runs a Greenwich Village restaurant and normally wants nothing to do with Velvet or criminals in general. Velvet is surprised when Arnie asks him to steal a left shoe, "a woman's pump with a pink three-inch heel and pink straps," locked away in the safe of a fancy lawyer, Frederick Junis. The shoe in question belongs to a model the lawyer knew, Sophie Moment, but she ran away and left her shoe ("...sounds like Cinderella"). A complete pair is worth less than twenty-five dollars and so he accepts the assignment, but why is Arnie willing to pay him twenty-five thousand dollars to steal the shoe?

Velvet boldly goes to the office of Junis, located on the thirty-first floor of the Regal
Building on Wall Street, where he presents himself as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Sophie Moment. What he eventually learns is surprising to say the least. Sophie Moment has disappeared under seemingly impossible circumstances just outside the office. Junis had caught Moment going through his files and fled through a private door, opening onto a short corridor with just two other doors, where she simply vanished into thin air – because the people behind those two doors swear nobody came out. During her disappearance-act from the corridor, Moment lost a shoe which Junis keeps in his office safe as evidence. So, once again, the thief has to turn detective to figure out what happened. Not only to the disappearance from the lawyer's office, but who killed the body Velvet stumbles across after wiggling out of a tight corner.

The strength of "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" is not in a single trick or a clever, somewhat original idea. The solution to the impossible disappearance is a redressing of an old trick and something the story itself acknowledges (ROT13: “Yvxr Purfgregba'f cbfgzna fur'q orpbzr vaivfvoyr”). Instead the strength is in the neat dovetailing of the plot, folding everything beautifully together, complemented by the setting with its "postcard view of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor" and "the twin-towered World Trade Center." So another good, solid short story from Hoch, but not nearly as good as the next story.

"The Murder in Room 1010" first appeared in the November, 1987, issue of EQMM and recently reprinted in the Crippen & Landru collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) – introduced by Roland Lacourbe. Arguably, this is one of Hoch's better and more interesting locked room mysteries.

Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher are called to the staid old St. George Hotel, in the center of the city facing Veterans Park, where a dead man has been found in one of the rooms. The front desk received a report of a woman screaming in Room 1010, but a security guard who tried to go in with a pass key found it was also chain-locked. After cutting the chain, they find the body of a man with multiple stab wounds and "the screaming woman, barely conscious, next to the body of a murdered man" ("...maybe a little high on something"). The victim is a disgraced school teacher, Ken Armstrong, who turned to crime and the woman is identified as Anita Buckman. She claims to be innocent of the murder. Leopold finds an important clue, "a small, voice-activated tape recorder," in her handbag. An ex-colleague and private investigator, Max Hafner, had asked him about exactly such a recording device only days before. Hafner tells Leopold that Armstrong had been blackmailing Rudolph Buckman, "he'd had a fling with a prostitute and somebody took pictures," before trying to get more money from his wife Anita. Hafner advised her to record the transaction and use the recording as leverage to make him back off or the recording is handed over to the police. When she went to his hotel room to hand over the money, Anita blackouts and, somehow, a murderer entered and left the locked room. But how?

Just like "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper," the strength of "The Murder in Room 1010" is in the masterly dovetailing of the various plot-strands to create a first-rate, classically-styled locked room mystery – presented as a police procedural. The locked room-trick itself is not terribly complicated, on the contrary, it's a great example of simplistic brilliance. More importantly, the way Hoch used the circumstances to create the locked room situation. If you're interested in Hoch or impossible crime fiction, I recommend reading Grost's short review (beware of spoilers) going over why Hoch's approach to the impossible crime in "The Murder in Room 1010" is "unusual in mystery fiction" and "harder to do" than your average locked room puzzle. And why it's a somewhat atypical story for Hoch. Something he didn't mention, demonstrating Hoch's experienced hand as a plotter, is how he quietly eliminated the possibility of shenanigans with the crack allowed by the chain-lock by dispatching Armstrong multiple stab wounds. That would have been a different story had he been found with a knife-handle sticking out of his back. So a small gem of an impossible crime story and even better Hoch short story. A shoe-in for the next update of my list of favorite impossible crime stories.

"The Theft of Leopold's Badge" was first published in the March, 1991, issue of EQMM and almost reads like a three-act play. Hoch created Sandra Paris, the White Queen, to be rival to Velvet and introduced her in the short story "The Theft of the White Queen's Menu" (1983). Paris modeled her crimes and persona on the White Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871). So she only steals valuables before breakfast in seemingly impossible circumstances.

The opening of the story finds Sandra Paris backstage at "Breakfast with the Muses," a fancy fundraising event for the Parker Museum, where she has taken the place of one of the nine muses – whom she tied, gagged and stuffed into a closet. When the performance begins, Paris takes out a roadside flare, tossed it at a priceless Van Gogh painting and "watched it erupt in a flash of vivid flame." Naturally, the Van Gogh painting is not destroyed, but cleverly lifted by Paris. She nearly got away with it. Paris made a tiny, easily missed mistake, but she's in Captain Leopold's city. Leopold and Fletcher caught up with Paris and the stolen Van Gogh at the airport. Even worse, while Paris was stealing the Van Gogh, someone stole two more paintings and left a getaway car with a body in the parking lot. Paris asks for her one phone call and asks Nick Velvet to return an old favor ("...I got you out of jail once").

So the second-act, of sorts, is Velvet meeting Leopold and trying to get Paris released, which has that "worlds collide" feeling a crossover should have. Leopold immediately checked Velvet's background, "do people really hire you to steal items of little or no value?" ("there have been stories to that effect"), showing these characters come from very different series. Velvet is a charming criminal with a moral compass who's easily cheered on in his own series, but, in the eyes of Leopold, he's simply another criminal. So it's rather an odd choice Velvet gets to dictate the story from here on out. Leopold is not convinced Paris worked or could have done the job on her own and the murder is simply the result of thieves falling out. Velvet wants to prove Paris worked alone and had her hands full with stealing the Van Gogh by replicating its disappearance using Leopold's badge. Not to mention revealing who stole the other paintings and shot the man in the parking lot.

This messy description of the plot barely does justice how nicely Hoch layered it. From Paris' caper and the second theft/murder ("...someone took advantage of your presence to do a little work of their own") to the trick to make the painting/police badge vanish in front of several witnesses, which should please anyone who loves a bit of stage magic mixed with their mysteries. Not to forget characters from two entirely different series crossing paths and making it work. Hoch's approach to crossovers is an interesting one as one series-character always seems to have the upper hand over the other. In "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee," Snow needs Dr. Hawthorne to solve an impossible crime from the past. "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" begins with Leopold checkmating the White Queen, but then Velvet takes the lead and solves the case in the third and final act. I assume the same holds true for "The Spy and the Gypsy." So would liked to have seem more opposition from Leopold, but other than that, it's a rare and excellent crossover mystery. I loved Velvet's last line to Paris ("I think we'd both better stay out of his city in the future").

All in all, three really good short stories from Hoch! "The Murder in Room 1010" is obviously the best of the lot and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" is a genuinely rare treat, if you love (good) crossovers. Only "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper"
appears a bit average next to those two, but not one that'll disappoint fans of the series. So not bad and wish Hoch had continued pooling his series-characters. Just imagine the implications of Simon Ark casually turning up in a Dr. Hawthorne or Alexander Swift story!