This week Barry shares a different excerpt from
his locked room mystery, "The Play Of Light And Shadow."
The novelette has gained very positive reviews, including one on the blog “At
The Scene Of The Crime,” which you'll find here.
THE PLAY OF LIGHT AND
SHADOW
by Barry Ergang
Literature professor Alan Driscoll,
on sabbatical from the university and tending bar in a Philadelphia pub, introduces university
colleague Dr. Barton Gaines, art historian, to Darnell, a private detective.
Gaines has recently purchased a painting titled Nomad by the artist Charles Riveau, and he and his wife are throwing a party
to celebrate the acquisition. Gaines fears that Riveau's former
colleague-turned-enemy, master thief Paul Marchand, will steal—and destroy—the
painting, as he has done to other Riveau works. Whether he'll also resort to
murder becomes another question.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Just to be
safe, let’s make a final check.”
He nodded and
let me precede him into the room, empty except for the benches, the paintings,
and the sculptures, silent except for our footfalls. Nomad still rested on its easel, placid and undisturbed but
disturbing to look at. Darnell entered and crossed the room as I opened the
closet. Except for the ladder, duster, and hose, it was the same narrow empty
space we had seen earlier. I shut the door.
“Everything
under control?” Darnell asked.
“Perfectly.”
Gaines drew in
his lips in an uncertain grimace. “I suppose it’s what they call ‘showtime.’”
We left the
gallery. Gaines locked the door and went to fetch his guests.
“Sorry I took so
long,” Darnell said, “but I had to find Chadwick, then chase him between the
kitchen and the deck to ask questions. He says everyone here today has worked
for him at least six months.”
Five minutes
later we heard a burble of voices, then Gaines and Marjorie came into view,
their guests an orderly procession behind them. Gaines turned and smiled at them
proudly but nervously. “I crowed enough in the living room; I won’t keep you
waiting any longer. Have a look at Nomad.”
He unlocked the
door, stepped aside, and the guests streamed into the gallery, Darnell and I at
the rear. The sound of the crowd was at first just a murmur, rippling and gradually
building in volume that erupted into a dissonant chorale of gasps and suppressed
cries. Someone, perhaps Carol, blurted, “Oh, God, no!” and someone demanded,
“Is this a joke, Bart?”
Gaines pushed forward
through the throng, and his voice silenced them with an agonized bellow:
“Marchand!” The name echoed and rang in that long high room, an invocation and
a curse. An adrenaline chill surged through me when I saw why. The gilt frame
still reposed on the easel, but it was empty now. On the floor below lay the
wooden stretcher from which the canvas had been removed.
A lengthy hush
enveloped the gallery as though an ethereal, malign presence at its margins
mocked our collective sense of invasion and loss. In an astonished whisper, Julian
Lakehurst put the exclamation point to it: “My God, he’s done it!”
The others roused; their murmurs and stirrings
made the room hum again with apprehension. Darnell swore, staring at the empty
frame. The brackets around his mouth deepened.
“Nobody got past us, Darnell,” I said
tightly.
Barry Ergang ©2014
The Play of Light and Shadow is available at Amazon and Smashwords,
along with some of Barry Ergang's other work, for a mere ninety-nine cents.
Formerly the Managing Editor of Futures
Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, winner of the Short Mystery Fiction
Society’s Derringer Award for the best flash fiction story of 2006, his
written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic.
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