It has been a while since I read this collection, but for various reasons I wasn’t able to put up a review nearer the time. So, this review is going to be a test of how good my notes are…
Story No. 1: ‘Elsewhen’ (?) by Anthony Boucher
I have put a question mark where the date should be as I noticed a conflict of dates between the copyright information at the beginning of this collection, which states 1943 and the information provided in the story’s introduction: ‘“Elsewhen” was originally published in the December 1946 issue of Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine […]’ Does this mean Boucher wrote the story three years before it was published? It seems a long runup time, but I guess it could be possible.
The story opens with Mr Harrison Partridge announcing to his sister at breakfast that he has invented the first working time machine. Her caustic reply is brilliant:
‘His sister showed no signs of being impressed. “I suppose this will run the electric bill up even higher,” she observed.’
I love how she punctures his enthusiasm, not least when she learns it doesn’t travel very far into the future, only between 42minutes and just under 2 hours.
The narrative then goes back into the past and shows how he came to make his discovery. We also learn about his desire to marry local woman, Faith Preston; a desire which is thwarted by the fact that she is getting married to Simon Ash next month. To prevent this, Partridge believes that he needs his time machine to work much better, so that he can become successful and famous. For that to happen he need loads of money and not only does Cousin Stanley have plenty, but he is also the current heir to great uncle Maxwell’s fortune. If Stanley was eradicated, Harrison is sure he can get the money he needs. Naturally he plans to use his time machine to give himself an alibi. However, an unintentional consequence of this murder is that Ash is arrested for the deed, a move which leads to Faith hiring private detective Fergus O’Breen, Boucher’s series sleuth.
Harrison and Fergus interact in a cat and mouse fashion, with the former becoming ever more confident after committing his crime, and the latter getting ever closer to cracking Harrison’s alibi. Fergus has to make a large deductive leap to realise there is a time machine involved, yet I feel like it was always going to be hard to deliver that part of the plot. The bait/trap trope is used in an unexpected and exciting way in this mystery. And if it had ended there, the story would have been wonderfully reminiscent of Anthony Berkeley and Richard Hull’s work. But the endeavour to provide greater resolution leaves the ending flat.
Story No. 2: ‘Whistler’s Mother’ (1946) by Fredric Brown
This story was ‘first published in the December 1946 issue of Street & Smith’s Story Magazine; it was first collected in The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders […] It has also been reprinted as “Mr Smith Protects His Client.”’
I’ve enjoyed the three novels I have read by Brown to date: The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), Murder Can Be Fun (1948) and Night of the Jabberwock (1950). The first of these has been reprinted by American Mystery Classics.
Henry Smith arrives at a big country house which is in mourning. He notes a large man on one of the parapets, who wears a gun beneath his coat. Both occurrences elicit no more than a “Dear me!” from Mr Smith, although perhaps with more feeling after noticing the man with the gun. Henry Smith had an appointment with Walter Penny regarding life insurance, but the man with the gun, Sheriff Osborne, opens the door and reveals that Walter’s uncle has been killed, knifed in bed last night, despite there being two private detectives on the roof to check no one else entered the house. The solution is a simple one, but the nature of it means that information must be withheld from the reader. Mr Smith has a phone call we don’t know about until the end, and I can see why as it immediately enables the reader to solve the case. Nevertheless, it still makes the ending a less satisfying, which is a shame as I like Henry Smith as a character.
Story No. 3: ‘The Third Bullet’ (1937) by Carter Dickson a.k.a. John Dickson Carr
This mystery ‘was first published as a separate novella’ in the UK in 1937 by Hodder & Stoughton, whilst ‘it was first published in the United States (as by Carr) in a shortened form in the January 1948 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It is about twenty percent shorter than the book publication, an abridgement wholly endorsed by Carr.’ It is the second version which is included in this anthology.
The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is in conference with Inspector Page, who is struggling to solve the murder of Mr Justice Mortlake. There is a prime suspect, Gabriel White, a man ruing revenge after being sent down by the victim, as he was the only one close enough to have committed the shooting in the locked pavilion, having been found inside there with the victim. But despite there being two shots, only one was fired from his gun. The second gun belongs to one of the judge’s friends and to make things even more complicated the bullet found in Mortlake’s body does not belong to either gun.
To begin with the Story is structured around this conversation between the two policemen and I appreciated how it gets the reader up to speed, on what is a complicated case, quite efficiently. I like the Assistant Commissioner as a character, and I found him to be far more amusing and dynamic compared to Inspector Page. This mystery has a very complicated solution, built on a great deal of theorising on the assistant commissioner’s part and some information he obtains off the page. The denouement is technically skilled in how it puts the pieces of the puzzle together, but I didn’t enjoy it as a reading experience. Upon reflection I think I might prefer simpler solutions with murders that have fewer stages/steps. The limited engagement with the suspects during the story also did not help to boost my enjoyment levels.
Story No. 4: ‘Fingerprint’ (1947) by Joseph Commings
Commings’ tale ‘was originally published in the May 1947 issue of 10-Story Detective Magazine’ and for those new to this author, his series character was Senator Brooks U. Banner. He is described as ‘the giant (6’3”, 270-pound) accomplished magician and adventurer.’ The introduction to this story further adds that: ‘The adventures of the elephantine detective were developed when Commings made up stories to entertain his fellow soldiers in Sardina during World War II.’
Senator Brooks U. Banner is calling home from the Sphinx club, when he notices in a telephone booth nearby, Larry Drollen, a fellow magician, having an acrimonious phone call. It appears that Larry is refusing to have any more to do with someone and there is a hint that he knows too much, but what about? A disjointed conversation with Larry follows, which refers to the murder of Dr Gabriel Garrett, who was stabbed in his office two weeks ago. Larry is planning on conducting a séance of his own, so he can triumph where a rival did not, in trying to get an answer as to who is the killer. At the séance Larry is tied to a chair, and the participants are strait-jacketed and buckled. Unsurprisingly once light has been restored to the room after the activity has ended, Larry is found stabbed to death. The offending knife in cabinet has fingerprints on, but not from anyone who is present. Banner didn’t appeal to me as a character, and I felt the narrative told rather than showed the reader what was going on. I also found it to be a jarring narrative, particularly with the scene transitions. It was almost like the structure was clipped; in the way you might clip speech. I am not sure if this is the best introduction to the character.
Story No. 5; ‘The Calico Dog’ (1934) by Mignon G. Eberhart
I have not read anything by this author for nearly three years, The White Cockatoo (1933) being my last read from her. The story in this collection ‘was originally published in the September 1934 issue of Delineator […]’ I didn’t realise how long Eberhart’s writing career went on for, starting in 1929 and concluding in 1988. This mystery features Eberhart’s series character Susan Dare, who I think only appeared in short stories rather than novels – but do correct me if I have got that incorrect. Susan Dare is a mystery writer.
Idabelle Lasher was widowed over a year ago. Her husband, Jeremiah Lasher, is said to have been a patent medicine businessman ‘resisting it is said, his own medicine to the end with the strangest vehemence’. Idabelle wants Susan to identify which of two men (Duane and Dixon), she has staying with her, is her long-lost son Derek, who she has not seen in 20 years. Derek had been kidnapped when he was four years old and there was never a ransom note. Dare is uncomfortable taking on the case due to the millions of dollars involved. As the opening line of the story says: ‘It was nothing short of an invitation to murder.’
Identifying a genuine heir and exposing imposters is a common theme in mystery fiction, with Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar (1949) and Julian Symons’ The Belting Inheritance (1965) springing to mind. But is it less common to have a story in which someone needs to pick between two possible candidates?
Susan takes on the case, yet her big plan for solving it is to create a trap using the household as bait. When she gets Idabelle to state she thinks Duane is her Derek, one wonders if Susan is inciting murder? An idea which is corroborated when murder does strike in seemingly impossible conditions at a charity ball. The solution is simple, which is always a bonus, but it is plagued with withheld information, and I am not the biggest fan of plots which feature an amateur sleuth causing needlessly dangerous chaos which then has to be resolved by someone else.
Story No. 6: ‘The Exact Opposite (1941) by Erle Stanley Gardner
I have already reviewed this story when I looked at the October 1951 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Interestingly, they give the copyright date as 1939, whilst this anthology says the story ‘was originally published in the March 29, 1941, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.’ The anthology introduction also comments that:
‘Most of Gardner’s pulp characters were criminals, including Lester Leith, the “hero” of more than seventy novelettes. Leith worked as both a detective and as a Robin Hood figure that was very popular in the Depression era. He stole from the rich, but only those who also were crooks, and gave the money to charities – after taking a twenty per cent “recovery” fee.’
Story No. 7: ‘The Light at Three O’clock’ (1930) by Mackinlay Kantor
This story ‘was first published in the July 1930 issue of Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories.’ I have come across some of his work already through Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, in particular the stories ‘Sparrow Cop’ (1933) and ‘Painless’ (1948). From what I can remember of them they tend to have violent elements and scenarios which make it dangerous to be a crook or a cop. Kantor began his journalist career at the young age of 17 and the 1949 film Gun Crazy, was an adaptation of his 1940 short story with the same name, which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.
Eddie Shultz is a night duty telephone operator. He is woken from his sleep at the switchboard. A red light is flashing for apartment 22. Yet each time Eddie connects the caller, no one talks, only a swallowing sound can be heard, before the caller hangs up. Eddie gets so wound up, out of fear, he calls his boss, insisting he come down. After all, no one is meant to be in that apartment, since the occupant Mr Duncan got killed last night. Yesterday the door had been broken down and whilst there were signs of a struggle, bullet damage and blood, there is no body, and now the apartment is supposed to be locked up, with Eddie’s boss, Mr Edwards, holding the key.
The pair nervously go to investigate. They see nothing until Mr Edwards finds blood on his hand. At this point he decides to stay in the apartment alone and send Eddie back to the switchboard. He says if a call comes through from 22 again, ring for the police, as Mr Edwards plans to lie in wait for the person he suspects must still be inside the apartment.
This is an action focused short story with tension and drama, making you wonder what is going to happen next. The characters are not theorising about the locked room/impossible crime aspect of the situation, which differs to other stories in this collection. The characters are simply reacting to what is happening in front of them and there is an emphasis on sensation and horror:
‘Far away, in one of the other rooms, a sound broke the stillness. It was unmistakable – the creak of the wood, of an opening door. Edwards waited, swallowing fearfully. Something had moved! He was not alone! Once again he heard the creaking. It was followed by the tinkle of glass and a sound of footsteps, creeping slowly and heavily. It was coming. It was moving nearer, out of the dining room and into the living room. Its body thudded softly against some obstructing piece of furniture. There was a frightening sound, half human and half animal, a muffled cough and growl […] Nearer it came, and nearer. It moved between him and the court window – a thin shape like a clothed skeleton.’
As you can see Kantor is great at conjuring up dramatic mental pictures and I think he conveys Edwards’ growing anxiety very well.
So, it is a shame that the ending is hurried and the solution to the mysterious goings on in the apartment are a bit too guessable. As I have said I like simple solutions but not ones which are too obvious or bland. However, I don’t feel like the impossibility of the situation is the focus of the piece. Terror is the priority and once that has dissipated the writer seems to want to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
Story No. 8: ‘The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem’ (1935) by C. Daly King
C. Daly King is an author I only tried for the first time earlier this year when I read Obelists at Sea (1932). His short story in this collection ‘was first published in The Curious Mr Tarrant […]’ Otto Penzler describes this anthology as King’s ‘undoubted masterpiece’.
The sleuth is the wealthy and cultured Trevis Trent, who has a Japanese valet called Katoh, who also seems to be a doctor and a spy, according to the introduction. The story is narrated by a Watson-like character called Jerry, who kicks off the tale writing:
‘The episode of the nail and the requiem was once of the most characteristic of all those in which, over a relatively brief period, I was privileged to watch Trevis Tarrant at work. Characteristic, in that it brought out so well the unusual aptitude of the man to see clearly, to welcome all the facts, no matter how apparently contradictory, and to think his way through to the only possible solution by sheer logic, while everyone else boggled at impossibilities and sought to forget them.’
This makes Trent sound rather Holmes like in the way he solves cases.
The case in this story concerns an artist’s penthouse studio flat. The artist is called Michael Salti and for hours continuous loud music has been emanating from the studio. A requiem mass no less. There is no response from anyone inside, nor is there anyone visible. Eventually the police break in and they discover that the artist’s model has been murdered. Stabbed in fact, which the canvas reflects with a nail taking the place of a knife. The police believe Michael is the killer, as after all his fingerprints are on the knife. But how did he leave the studio? There is a dark note to ending, with Trent not being quite the perfect Holmes figure. I would say this is a true howdunnit and if you are like me then you don’t have a chance of solving it. Aside from maybe a good or random guess. Again, there is a lot of telling required to deliver the solution, which I find less appealing.
Story No. 9: ‘The Riddle of the Yellow Canary’ (1934) by Stuart Palmer
This story feature Palmer’s series amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers, and his series police officer, Inspector Piper and it ‘was originally published in the April 1934 issue of Mystery […]’ It is an inverted mystery, which sees Arthur Reese planning to poison Margie Thorens, a songwriter who is becoming difficult and is in a position to blackmail him. He sets it up, so it looks like an act of suicide in a locked room. We get to see how the sleuthing duo rumble the killer and I found the role of the canary interesting.
Story No. 10: ‘The House of Haunts’ (1935) by Ellery Queen
This mystery ‘was first published in the February 1935 issue of American Magazine; it was retitled “The Lamp of God” when it was collected in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen’ in 1940.’
Ellery Queen begin with a metafictional opening:
‘If a story began: “Once upon a time in a house cowering in wilderness there lived an old and eremitical creature named Mayhew, a crazy man who had buried two wives and lived a life of death; and this house was known as ‘The Black House’” – if a story began in this fashion, it would strike no one as especially remarkable. There are people like that who live in houses like that, and very often mysteries materialise like ectoplasm about their wild-eyed heads.’
I felt like this passage is laying down the groundwork for the story to come, hinting at what type of elements it might have, whilst also suggesting that the writing duo have upped the ante.
Following on from that the narrative stresses the orderliness and rationality of Ellery Queen (the sleuth, not the author – who I will now always refer to as Ellery). His disbelieves in miracles and strange happenings:
‘The truth is, Mr Queen would have said, there is something about the harsh, cruel world we live in that’s very rough on miracles […] This is a reasonable world and everything that happens in it must have a reasonable explanation.’
We then see this philosophy put to the test with the unusual occurrences at Sylvester Mayhew’s house later in the story.
Ellery, like your typical amateur sleuth, is the sort of person to be summoned by a legal friend to join a trip at a moment’s notice, being given no information except to bring a revolver. Ellery is in the dark and like the reader has to find snippets of information here and there to build up the whole picture.
Slyvester Mayhew died recently, and Ellery along with Mr Thorne (his legal pal) and Sylvester’s half-brother, Dr Reinach, are meeting his estranged daughter, Alice, who is then being taken to the remote houses where Sylvester and other family members lived. But this is not a pleasant reunion as it only takes one car ride for everyone to be fed up with the rude Dr Reinach:
‘Alice did not reply. Her uncle, whom until today she had not seen, was an obscene enigma; the others, waiting for them at their destination, she had never seen at all, and she had no great hope that they would prove better. A livid streak ran through her father’s family; he had been a paranoiac with delusions of persecution. The Aunt Sarah in the dark distance, her father’s sister, was apparently something of a character. As for Aunt Milly, Dr Reinach’s wife, whatever she might have been in the past, one had only to glance at Dr Reinach to see what she undoubtedly was in the present.’
Ellery Queen set up the impending drama well:
‘Ellery felt prickles at the nape of his neck. The farther they penetrated this wilderness the less he liked the whole adventure. It smacked vaguely of a foreordained theatricalism, as if some hand of monstrous power were setting he stage for the first act of a colossal tragedy… He shrugged this sophomoric foolishness off, settling deeper into his coat. It was queer enough, though. Even the lifelines of the most indigent community were missing; there were no telephone poles and, so far as he could detect, no electric cables. That meant candles. He detested candles.’
The ending of this passage adds an unexpected note of humour. The tension is not allowed to overpower the writing so early in the story. And the authors’ engaging way of writing can also be felt in the way they describe things such as Sylvester’s house: ‘The house to the left was of stone; once gray, but now so tarnished by the elements and perhaps the ravages of fire that it was almost black. Its face was blotched and streaky, as if it had succumbed to an insensate leprosy.’
Sylvester was a miser and hoarded his wealth as gold (which it was illegal to possess at this time), never telling anyone the location. He was going to tell Alice, but he died before she could reach him. Given the family members Sylvester had, Mr Thorne is worried about Alice’s interests, and these fears are confirmed when the next morning there is a dramatic shock – the black house of Sylvester’s has gone completely! There is no debris on the ground of any kind, and it snowed overnight too, the icing on the cake. The idea of a missing house put me in mind of Michael Innes’ The Daffodil Affair (1942). The snow also prevents the visitors from leaving, as do the anonymous threats of violence and death.
The unusual type of disappearance in this mystery, that of a house, raises the stakes but the detection around this mystery or rather the lack of detection means the story loses its attraction. Ellery keeps all his thoughts to himself, which on the one hand limits the overt detection on the page, but on the other hand means he does not endlessly and painfully theorise. One aspect of the solution for the disappearing house was an idea that I had considered, and the location of the wealth is also easily guessable. However, there was a pleasing twist in the ending which I had not anticipated.
Story No. 11: ‘Off the Face of the Earth’ (1949) by Clayton Rawson
Rawson was a magician before he added an extra string to his bow and also started writing detective stories. He was not overly prolific, but I have read one of his novels, Death from a Top Hat (1938), which was later adapted under the name of Miracles for Sale (1939). This short story ‘was first published in the September 1949 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine […]’ and it begins at a magic shop owned by The Great Merlini, who is Rawson’s amateur sleuth. A week ago, a woman disappeared in Central Park, a vanishing act which was predicted three days previously by a peculiar fortune teller called Zyyzk. He goes on to predict a further disappearance, that of a suspected corrupt judge. This too comes to pass from a watched phone booth. I did not enjoy this story as much. Without mentioning spoilers, I felt the solution hinged upon a less satisfying trope.
Story No. 12: ‘His Heart Could Break’ (1943) by Craig Rice
I have always been more familiar with this author’s novels than her short stories. In fact, I don’t think I read any of her shorter works until this year. This began when I reviewed Murder, Mystery and Malone (2002), a collection which was edited by Jeffrey A. Marks. ‘His Heart Could Break’ like many of the stories in this anthology, was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I noticed there was disagreement between some of the information in introduction to this collection and Jeffrey A. Marks’ Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery (2001; 2021). Penzler’s anthology suggests that Rice’s parents ‘took off for Europe when she was only three years old’, yet Marks biography states that her father was in Europe when she was born (her mother having returned to America for the birth) and that her mother then rejoined her husband as soon as she was fit for travel. It was when Rice was three years old that they returned to reclaim her (only to dump her back on relatives when she was six).
The tale commences with John J. Malone going to meet his client on death row, as he successfully managed to get him a re-trial, although the way he did this was rather dubious:
‘It hadn’t been evidence that had turned the trick, though. Just a little matter of knowing some interesting facts about the judge’s private life. The evidence would have to be manufactured before the trial, but that was the least of his worries.’
This final remark is perfectly true as when John J. Malone goes to meet his client, Paul Palmer, he seems to have hung himself in his cell. All he left was a dying message to his lawyer, ‘It wouldn’t break’. The narrative landscape shifts somewhat with this dramatic development and I like how Craig Rice defies expectations with her plots. In the traditional manner, Malone gathers the suspects for the big reveal of the solution. The clues in this story were slim but Rice made interesting use of a song and a dying message.
Story No. 13: ‘Murder Among Magicians’ (1939) by Manley Wade Wellman
Wellman is a new-to-me author. He ‘began writing in the 1920s and, by the 1930s, was selling stories to the leading pulps in the horror and supernatural genes: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories […] His short story, “A Star for a Warrior,” won the Best Story of the Year Award from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1946, beating out William Faulkner, who wrote an angry letter of protest to Frederic Dannay, the editor of the magazine […] Wellman also wrote for the comic books, producing the first Captain Marvel issue for Fawcett Publishers. When D. C. Comics sued Fawcett for plagiarising their Superman character, Wellman testified against Fawcett, and D. C. won the case after three years of litigation.’ It was interesting reading about how diverse his writing portfolio was. The story in this collection ‘was originally published in the December 1939 issue of Popular Detective.’
It all begins with several magicians being invited to Magic Manor, a castle owned by Secutoris ‘the foremost stage magician and escape artist of his day’. Secutoris is the not easiest person to get on along with, so it is not surprising when someone locks him inside his new escape artist paraphernalia. The others leave him for 10 minutes to see if he can escape, during which time an electrical black out occurs. When everyone returns to find Secutoris, naturally he has been killed inside the contraption, a leg iron having been used to strangle him. This is another story which tells rather than shows and it felt like anyone could have been the killer, the ultimate choice seeming quite random.
Story No. 14: ‘Murder at the Automat’ (1937) by Cornell Woolrich
I have enjoyed my reading of Woolrich’s work so far, particularly the novels The Bride Wore Black (1940) and Deadline at Dawn (1944). ‘Murder at the Automat’ ‘was first published in the August 1937 issue of Dime Detective Magazine […]’ and it is one of three locked room puzzles that Woolrich wrote, the other two being, ‘The Screaming Laugh’ (1938) and ‘The Room with Something Wrong’ (1938). In this story a man is poisoned with cyanide in his sandwich at a diner. The victim was Leo Avram and despite being a miser at home, he had $1000 in his shoe. The difficulty for the police officer protagonist is figuring out how the poison was administered, as it could only have occurred once the sandwiched had left the kitchen pre-wrapped. Moreover, Nelson’s captain latches on to one man and decides that he must be the killer, and he is prepared to trick a confession out of him, as well as detain him for too long in police custody. Nelson tries to stay on side with him, whilst also trying to find the real killer. The choice of killer is interesting, and there is a great cat and mouse scene between them and the police officer, leaving the latter character in a morally dubious position. However, the motivations of the killer perhaps could have been examined a little more thoroughly and with greater nuance. There is a broad stroke assumption of mental instability, rather than a consideration of environmental and social factors. Nevertheless, I think this was my favourite story of the collection.
Rating: 3.5/5
Source: Review Copy (American Mystery Classics)