Murder Most Scientific: "The Shredded Rose" (1978) by Lynwood Sawyer

Lynwood Sawyer was twenty-five when he submitted his first and only short story, "The Shredded Rose," to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and it was published in the July, 1978, issue as the magazine's 500th "First Story" – a "whodunit-howdunit" with an armchair detective and "a scientific type of locked room." Frederic Dannay, one half of "Ellery Queen" and editor-in-chief of EQMM at the time, wrote in his introduction that Sawyer's "The Shredded Rose" is "a detective story that flashed our memories back to the Golden Age." That's all I needed to know! 

"The Shredded Rose" is really a short-short covering a little more than five pages and begins with Sheriff Fedder visiting Dr. Austin Lyle, professor emeritus or organic chemistry at Medlin College, to consult him on strange case. A possible murder without a hint of foul play.

Sheriff Fedder is investigation the death of a botanist and health nut, Professor Tate, who used his bathroom as a greenhouse and had a whirlpool installed in his bathtub. On the evening of his untimely death, Professor Tate told his housekeeper he was going to take his whirlpool bath, but, when she returned the following morning, the bathroom door was still locked and she could hear whirlpool machine still running – except there was no response to her knocking. So the police broke down the door and found the professor's body in the tub "as if he had fallen asleep." There was "a sort of shredded rose on the floor" and "a vase split in half on top of it." Officially, Professor Tate died of natural causes, because the autopsy was unable to find any other cause of death. How exactly did the professor die? And, if it's murder, how did the murderer entered a locked bathroom with the only window closed that's covered on the outside with a thick, strong grille.

Dr. Lyle asks Sheriff Fedder whether the dust on the floor was in little circles, "almost like dust which has been struck by rainwater," which reveals a simplistic, science-based method that came close to producing a perfect crime. Since the method often reveals the criminal, Dr. Lyle is able to tell Sheriff Fedder the murderer's name as "the murder could have borne his signature." As clever as this little short-short is, I don't believe Sawyer intended his story to be a throwback to the Golden Age of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke series. "The Shredded Rose" struck me as a conscious imitations of Arthur Porges' scientific locked room puzzles like "Dead Drunk" (1959), "Coffee Break" (1964) and "The Scientist and the Exterminator" (1974). Either way, "The Shredded Rose" is clever little short-short that impressively rolled an armchair detective story, locked room mystery and scientific detection into barely a handful of pages. So not bad for a first try and definitely a short-short editors should consider for inclusion in a future locked room/impossible crime anthology. 

A note for the curious: Dannay introduced Lynwood Sawyer who earned his degree in organic chemistry from New College, Sarasota, Florida, but retired early to found a music company and "working the graveyard shift as a package sorter at United Parcel Service" – while spending his free time reading, writing, fishing or wine making. Sounds like "the patchwork multi-activity background of a blossoming author," which made me curious. What else has Lynwood Sawyer written? I found out Lynwood Sawyer is Clyde Lynwood Sawyer, Jr. who co-wrote An Uncertain Currency (1999) with Frances Witlin and has an IMDb page as Lynwood Shiva Sawyer. Interestingly, Sawyer is still credited as the author of EQMM's 500th First Story, but wrongly titled "The Tattered Rose." It's also possible Sawyer submitted the story under the title "The Tattered Rose" and Dannay changed it to "The Shredded Rose."