Leo Wollenborg Jr. was
the son of a German-born Italian economist and a journalist, who
moved to the United States in response to the introduction of the
leggi razziali (racial laws) in 1938, but he left behind, what
some have called, one of the most beautifully imagined Italian locked
room mysteries, Il mistero dell'idrovolante (The Flying
Boat Mystery, 1935) – published as by "Franco
Vailati." So it was only a matter of time before The Flying
Boat Mystery appeared on the radar of John Pugmire's Locked
Room International.
The Flying Boat
Mystery opens on the surface of the water basins of Ostia
Airport, near Rome, where a flying boat is ready to depart for
Palermo.
The passenger list
comprises of three country tradesmen, Giuseppi Sabelli, Giovanni
Marchetti and Pagelli-Bertieri. A middle-class, middle-aged couple,
Augusto and Maria Martelli. A fascinating lady dressed in red, named
Vanna Sandrelli, who carries "a lizard-green bag" which
clashes horrendously with her clothes. Somewhat of a crime in Italy,
I imagine. A plucky journalist of the La Gazzetta, Giorgio
Vallesi, who only had eyes for another female passenger, Marcella
Arteni. The last passenger of the list was supposed to be an
Italian-born Greek banker, Francesco Agliati, but a bank-teller,
Larini, arrived when the plane was full and ready to go – which
forced him to part with a packet of lire to get the mechanics
seat in the cockpit. And the mechanic traveled, cushioned with money,
in the luggage compartment.
So this was suppose to be
a routine, ninety-minutes flight from Ostia to Naples, but, during
the flight, Agliati "decided suddenly to retire his large, bulky
figure into the small toilet." Agliati never returned to his
seat nor did he respond to repeated calls and knocking.
When the flying boat
landed, the door was broken down and, to everyone's surprise, the
small toilet was completely empty! The door had been locked on the
inside and the only possible exit is a small skylight in the roof of
the toilet, but its dimensions makes it absurdly impossible for the
large, bulky man to have passed through and what reason could he have
had for such "an absurd acrobatic exploit" in mid-flight?
This eliminates the options of accident, suicide and murder. So what
happened?
Vice Questore (Assistant
Commissioner) Luigi Renzi reads in the newspaper that his old college
friend, Giorgio Vallesi, was on board of the hydroplane when the
banker inexplicably vanished and decides to insert himself into the
investigation, but the impossible disappearance is swathed in
complications – such as finding out everyone's reason for traveling
on that plane. And, as to be expected, every single one of them is
holding something back from the investigators. But that's not all.
A second, more grisly,
problem presents itself when the head and arms of a person, who was
on that miraculous plane ride, are found crammed in a suitcase that
was left in a train compartment. This adds a complex little puzzle
involving a dismembered corpse and suitcases with mysterious numbers
written on the inside. Why not? Why settle on just an impossible
disappearance from a locked toilet in mid-flight, when you can throw
a little corpse-puzzle in the mix. However, the locked room problem,
premise and solution, is the high point of the plot.
I figured out an
essential part of the vanishing-trick, but only because the locked
room situation resembled, in some ways, a unique aspect of a short
story that was written in the past twenty-five years. I doubt the
writer in question was aware of this Italian mystery novel, but found
it interesting to see how they found two very different applications
for exactly the same idea. What makes The Flying Boat Mystery
such a joy is that Franco Vailati didn't stop there.
Once you figured out the
basic principle behind the trick, the problem is still far from
solved and you can even say that it becomes more complicated. Vailati
showed the craftsmanship of a Golden Age writer with a beautifully
done, partially false-solution to explain the second part of the
vanishing-trick before Renzi shows the reader what really happened
with a simple diagram – destroying a well-hidden alibi in the
process. What a shame this was Vailati's only detective novel!
The Flying Boat
Mystery was translated by Igor Longo and he wrote an article, "The Italian Mystery Novel," that ended the book and some parts
hit a little close to home. Longo mentions that one of the reasons
why the traditional detective story is in such a poor state, in
Italy, was "the disapproving eye of dons, newspaper critics and
other Arbiter Elegantiarum" unduly "praising the tosh
written by their own pets" and "the locked room murder was
laughed about" – used "only for epitomizing what the "good writer" was called to destroy." You can unfortunately
say the same of my country. Where even the traditional detective
fiction that had been written have rarely, if ever, been reprinted
and have pretty much been forgotten about today or have even become
lost altogether.
And to make it even more
painful, Longo goes over a whole list of notable Italian writers of
traditional detective stories and locked room mysteries! Most of them
untranslated! I've a feeling JJ
will lose his goddamn mind when he learns there's "a sort of
minor Italian Rupert
Penny" who's entirely out of his reach. Pugmire really has
to make these Italian mystery writers part of the LRI family.
So, all in all, The
Flying Boat Mystery is a very short, but fun, novel with a busy
plot, good setting, an original vanishing-trick and an interesting
use of the partially false-solution, which should satisfy the
fanatical locked room reader.
