The Appleby Story, also known as The Last Laugh, is a mystery short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Union Club series, it was first published in the December 1981 issue of Gallery magazine. Later collected in The Union Club Mysteries.
Summary[]
At the Union Club, the discussion of white-collar crime leads Griswold to recount the case of Thomas Appleby. Appleby was a jovial, garrulous government clerk with a passion for telling jokes. His habit was to seek out new audiences, introduce himself as working for the government, and regale them with stories.
One afternoon, Appleby entered a dingy coffee shop and joined a group of men at the counter. He told several jokes, including his current favorite, about a man named Moskowitz. During his visit, the counterman unusually offered him sugar. Appleby, who normally used a sugar substitute, remarked he would have "the real thing for once" and took one packet. He later finished his coffee and left.
Two hours later, Appleby was found murdered in his apartment, strangled. Nothing was stolen, but his clothing appeared to have been searched. The police investigation uncovered the events at the coffee shop, a known haunt for unsavory characters, but found no obvious motive until Griswold was consulted.
Griswold deduced the motive from Appleby's comment about the sugar. He reasoned that the coffee shop was a front for drug distribution, using pink packets identical to sugar substitute to hold heroin. When the counterman offered sugar, he was attempting to steer Appleby away from the substitute packets. However, amidst the distraction of Appleby's successful joke-telling, Appleby had inadvertently taken several of the drug-filled packets. The criminals then tracked him down, searched his apartment to recover the packets, and killed him to eliminate a witness. A subsequent police raid on the coffee shop confirmed this theory, uncovering the drug operation.
Characters[]
- Griswold
- Club Member (the narrator)
- Jennings
- Baranov
- Thomas Appleby
- The Counterman
- The observant patron
- The Police
- Moskowitz (from Appleby's joke)
- Moskowitz's Wife (from Appleby's joke)
- The Maid (from Appleby's joke)
- The Lover (from Appleby's joke)
- Moses (from Appleby's joke)
- The Elders of Israel (from Appleby's joke)