Murder in the Zoo / Murder in Church

A pair of sophisticated mysteries from the 1930s by Babette Hughes (1905-1982).

Murder in the Zoo: After the body of an experimental psychologist is found in the animal room at a university laboratory, the homicide squad delves into the hatreds and jealousies underneath the respectable surface of academia. In the end, it's up to a professor of philosophy, Ian Craig, to uncover the truth.

Murder in Church: Visiting English scientist Arthur Quinn, notorious atheist, is invited to a church service by a university president-only to meet his death. Was murder incited by his disparaging remarks on religion? His research efforts that belittled his fellow scientists? Or as a result of his philandering? Ian Craig is once again coaxed into a criminal investigation with the reputation of a university on the line.

For more enjoyable vintage mysteries, visit Coachwhip Books.

From Chapter 1, Murder in the Zoo:

It was approximately four-thirty Friday afternoon that Hulse appeared for the second time in the doorway of the departmental library. "Mr. Craig!" he said in a hoarse, unnatural voice. I looked quickly up. His face, ordinarily pale, was mottled and, in a flash, my brain reviewed the story of a man who choked to death on underdone liver.

In the same moment I had sense enough to go to him. "Dr. Brown!" he exclaimed in the same strangled manner. "Murdered!" I raced upstairs; I think Hulse recovered sufficiently to come directly behind me. Anyway, I know that a few minutes later he was standing beside me in the "zoo," the animal laboratory maintained by the psychology department.

As I looked at Brown, sprawling face up on the floor beside the animal maze, horror was not, strangely enough, my first emotion. Or rather, horror was there, dominated for the moment by one of my more heretical selves, summoned to the surface by this heretical sight, whose only reaction was that Brown would have hated, more than being murdered even, to be looked down on and pitied by myself, the janitor and two students. This illuminating thought, more than anything else, restored me to a balanced state of mind. Brown was murdered; there seemed to be no doubt of that. "Have you telephoned the police?" I asked the boy and girl who were regarding me with that childish hopefulness that expects to see Humpty Dumpty put together again.

"I'll do it, Dr. Craig," the boy volunteered, eager to escape that ghastly sight.

"You can use the telephone in Brown's office," I said. "Don't forget to dial the outside."

The boy fled, and I was left alone with Hulse and the girl whom I recognized as one of Brown's student assistants. "Who found him?" I asked. Hulse, seemingly oblivious to my question, had stooped down to peer into the maze.

"He did," the girl said.

"What are you doing?" I asked Hulse. "You mustn't touch anything, you know."

"Listen!" he said, his head at the opening of the maze. From within came a muffled squawk. "There's a pigeon in there-poor thing!"

"Never mind!" I pulled him away. "We'll get it out later. The main thing now is to leave things as they are until the police have come. If you bother with that pigeon the police will find your fingerprints on the cage and think you killed Brown." As I said the words I couldn't help smiling at the absurdity of such a supposition: Hulse, frail, ignorant and timid-Brown's murderer!