"Your Murder, Sir!"
By John L. Benton (Standard Magazines house pseudonym used by Robert Sidney Bowen, 1900-77; Tom Curry, 1900-76; Norman A. Daniels, 1905-95; Samuel Mines, 1909-98; and Emile C. Tepperman, 1899-1951; take your pick).
First appearance: Thrilling Mystery Novel Magazine, January 1946.
Short story (5 pages).
"Williams, the perfect butler, was planning the perfect murder."
IN CLASSIC MYSTERIES the hired help don't commit murders; that would be déclassé, since only important people commit important crimes. But along comes an uppity butler seeking to rise above his position and reap the rewards of a fortune in embezzled funds:
"Williams had never thought he was going to enjoy the excitement of it so. He guessed he was a natural born actor, and that all this hocus-pocus he was going through now of making believe he had just found the body of his employer was a realization of a long-frustrated urge to act. Often, he knew, when he had been attending to detail on a Hollywood sound stage, he had wished he had been a performer instead of a mere accessory.
"But there was no doubt about it now. Tonight he was playing the lead role."
There are others, however, who could also be characterized as "natural born" actors, and our perfect butler is about to run into one who will take "the lead role" away from him, upstaging him into a date, fittingly enough, with the gas chamber . . .
Main characters:
~ Williams ("hated detective stories. He thought them thin, stupid, inane—and false both to life and literature. He was nauseously surfeited with listening to them"), Eric Hathway ("Williams, I smell gas!"), Gladys ("Lover, you are so clever!"), the medical examiner ("The time on the note he left—nine-twenty peeyem—corresponds to the actual time of death"),
and Detective Ferrari ("just to be romantic for a moment").
Resource:
- We encountered other crime fiction ("No Blood") by John L. Benton (whoever he was) (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.
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