"It Will All Come to You When I Die, My Boy"

SETTING UP the perfect murder doesn't get much easier than this ("The victim practically selected himself"), but, you see, that's just the problem . . .

"Nearly Perfect."

(Subtitled "Shortest Mystery Ever Written" in Cosmopolitan).

By A. A. Milne (1882-1956; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Cosmopolitan, August 1950.

Reprinted in (FictionMags data):

  Best Detective Stories of the Year—1951.

  Good Housekeeping’s Best Book of Mystery Stories, 1958.

  Suspense (Australia), September 1958.

  Suspense (U.K.), September 1958 (today's text).

  Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1994.

  The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, 1998.

Short short story (7 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 115).

   "For him, one murder in a book was no longer enough. There must be two, the first one preferably at a country house party, with plenty of suspects."

THE EXPRESSION "out of left field" almost certainly has its origin in the great American pastime of baseball, but it's an avaricious Englishman who will discover just how unexpectedly an oversight can come out of left field that will ensure him an appointment 

with the hangman . . .

Comment: As in The Red House Mystery and elsewhere, Milne is having fun playing with common detective fiction clichés.

Principal characters:

~ The unnamed narrator ("Is it a murder story?"), Coleby ("I don't know if any of you have ever wondered about how to murder an uncle"), Julian Crayne ("'You know, Uncle Marius,' he said, 'you ought to write a detective story'"), Uncle Marius ("Oh, I dare say I should be all right with the deduction and so on—that's what I'm really interested in—but I've never thought of myself as a writer"), and Sir George Corphew ("Julian was no great chess player, but he was sufficiently intimate with the pieces to allow Sir George the constant pleasure of beating him").

Reference:

- football-pool:

  Of course Milne is referring to British football:

  "In the United Kingdom, the football pools, often referred to as 'the pools,' is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking place in the coming week. The pools are typically cheap to enter, and may encourage gamblers to enter several bets." (Wikipedia HERE).

Resources:

- A. A. Milne is most famous among detective fiction fans for The Red House Mystery, a collection of reviews of it being gathered (HERE). Other ONTOS intersections with Milne: "The Watson Touch" (HERE); The Red House Murder, which was the original title (HERE); several shorter pieces (HERE); and "A Didactic Novel: The Mystery of Gordon Square" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~