LET'S KICK OFF the Yuletide season with a story about someone who would dare assassinate Santa Claus (the cur!) and another one featuring one of those perfect
crimes that somehow fail to achieve perfection. Both stories overlap each other
in the same magazine issue, so you won't have to go far for the second one.
(1) "A Slay for Santa Claus."
By Davisson Lough (?-?).
First appearance: 10-Story Detective, February 1946.
Short story (9 pages).
(Note: Text faded but legible.)
"Aw nuts!"
WHEN SANTA CLAUS gets gunned down on a busy street full of Christmas Eve shoppers, somehow nobody sees it. Police Detective Wilson Cory almost does when he arrives just moments later. What Cory doesn't anticipate is that Old Saint Nick's untimely demise isn't a robbery attempt but the result of a long and involved custody dispute, and he definitely doesn't suspect that before the night is over there'll be another murder and, curmudgeon
that he is notwithstanding, a heart-warming reconciliation . . .
Comment: With his addiction to cigars even when he's on the job, Cory seems to prefigure a certain shabby LAPD detective; and with a clue etched in glass, we can't help thinking of another detective who specialized in dying clues.
Principal characters:
~ "Santa Claus" ("It's just some old man"), Detective Wilson Cory ("thought they sang a little too sadly and just a bit off key"), Detective Spuggler ("I threw its hat in the wind"), Dr. Armin Thomsen ("After I returned home tonight and had put the car away, the killer tried it again"), Olun Thomsen ("It didn't cut any ice with me"), Handy Andy Laggard ("was out to get something for nothing, but this time it worked the other way around"), Roy Bubb ("This is where she lived and died"), and Mrs. Rose ("Some scabby heel had walked out on her").
References and resources:
- "the dip nearly got caught":
The holidays usually see a population explosion of this particular variety of criminals (Wikipedia HERE).
- "Eccentric dancing, I think it’s called":
"The style was used in stage performances such as minstrel shows, music hall or vaudeville. Dance styles which used eccentric moves and encouraged improvisation, such as the Charleston, became popular crazes in the 1920s." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "O, what may man within him hide,
"Though angel on the outward side":
From Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 2 (HERE).
- "spent three cents for a newspaper":
"The business model of having advertising subsidize the cost of printing and distributing newspapers (and, it is always hoped, the making of a profit) rather than having subscribers cover the full cost was first done, it seems, in 1833 by The Sun, a daily paper that was published in New York City. Rather than charging 6 cents per copy, the price of a typical New York daily at the time, they charged 1-cent and depended on advertising to make up the difference." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- Davisson Lough's FictionMags listing is pretty short (nv = novelette; ss = short story):
"The Slay Must Go On," (nv) New Detective Magazine, January 1946
"A Slay for Santa Claus," (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine, February 1946 (above)
"You Can’t Kill Me Twice," (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine, July 1947.
(2) "Crime Slips a Cog."
By Bill Morgan (?-?).
First appearance: 10-Story Detective, February 1946.
Reprinted in Cavalcade (Australia), August 1951.
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Short short story (4 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE; go to text page 67).
(Note: Text faded but readable.)
"Five minutes: ample time to be somewhere else and have an airtight alibi rigged up."
Self-justification is so easy, isn't it?
"The idea of murder was one he'd never contemplated before. Only it wouldn't be murder, he told himself. Not by any means. Murder was something you associated with tabloid newspapers, with fingerprinted guns, and with poisons the police could trace by autopsy. This was something else again, an accident, pure and simple. Neither clues nor suspicion to arouse the Law. What had happened accidentally to one man could happen to another . . ."
Of course. Just an accident . . .
Principal characters:
~ Earl Fannin ("A pattern of sweat beads gleamed on Fannin’s upper lip as he thought about it"), Eileen Kelsey ("Once when I opened my eyes he was standing over me"), Ben Kelsey ("had been home for three frightening days"), and Whitey Dunn ("There's your man!").
References and resources:
- "stared resentfully at the assembly belt that crawled endlessly":
"The massive demand for military hardware in World War II prompted assembly-line techniques in shipbuilding and aircraft production. Thousands of Liberty ships were built making extensive use of prefabrication, enabling ship assembly to be completed in weeks or even days. After having produced fewer than 3,000 planes for the United States Military in 1939, American aircraft manufacturers built over 300,000 planes in World War II. Vultee pioneered the use of the powered assembly line for aircraft manufacturing. Other companies quickly followed. As William S. Knudsen (having worked at Ford, GM and the National Defense Advisory Commission) observed, 'We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.'
. . . "Sociological work has explored the social alienation and boredom that many workers feel because of the repetition of doing the same specialized task all day long." (Wikipedia HERE.) But we're pretty sure that Earl's resentment is fueled by more than "sociological" reasons.
- "those returned soldiers were tough customers"; "back from the Pacific"; "a post-war nest egg"; "shrapnel groove":
Indirect references to the recently ended Second World War. (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "the arm of the drill press":
"Bench and floor-standing drills are powerful and dangerous machines, and work accidents are more common than many people think. Getting stuck in the machine can result in lost fingers or arms. Therefore it is recommended to not wear gloves, clothes with long sleeves or have long hair hanging while working." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- Job-related murders form the nuclei of several stories: Isaac Asimov's "The Billiard Ball" (HERE), L. A. G. Strong's "The Clue That Wasn't There" (HERE), and Randall Garrett's "Stroke of Genius" (HERE). And then there's the one about a worker robot, Dan Morgan's "Insecurity Risk" (HERE), as well as a workplace "accident" in space, John Brunner's "Puzzle for Spacemen" (HERE).
- Beginning in 1944, Bill Morgan seems to have produced only fiction for the crime pulps (ss = short story):
"Cancel the Camouflage," (ss) Thrilling Detective, March 1944
"Valley of Vengeance," (ss) Thrilling Detective, July 1944
"No Hits, No Aryans," (ss) Popular Detective, August 1944
"Blood Over the Dam," (ss) Ten Detective Aces, November 1944
"Hairbreadth Homicide," (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine, August 1945
"Death Paints a Poster," (ss) Ten Detective Aces, September 1945
"A Corsage for the Corpse," (ss) Thrilling Detective, January 1946
"Murder Off the Record," (ss) Ten Detective Aces, January 1946
"Crime Slips a Cog," (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine, February 1946 (above)
"The Big Red Splash," (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine, September 1946
"Killer’s Cargo," (ss) Mystery Book Magazine, Spring 1948.
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.
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