"Coroner's Inquest."
By Marc Connelly (1890-1980).
First appearance: Collier's Weekly, February 8, 1930.
Reprinted in EQMM, September 1944, EQMM's Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces, September 1944, and EQMM (Australia), September 1947 and February 1950.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online HERE and finishes HERE (scroll down to page 51).
(Warning: Some of the text is very hard to read.)
"Who killed Robel and Jimmy, the midgets? Follow the witness' answers to the end and bring in your own verdict . . ."
A knife comes between two brothers-in-law:
. . . "You can see it's a kind of a butcher knife. Then Mrs. Pike told me it was one that she'd missed from her kitchen a few weeks before. She'd never thought either Robel or Jimmy had taken it. It struck me as funny Robel or Jimmy had stolen it, too. Then I put two and two together and found out what really happened."
Resources:
- A brief Wikipedia article about Connelly (who won a Major Award the same year) is HERE, and an even briefer FictionMags listing is HERE.
- A lot of Connelly's fiction was dialogue-only; an ingenious story written in the same style (Steven R. Novak's "No More Questions") can be found in Tricks and Treats (1976), edited by Joe Gores and Bill Pronzini, a mystery anthology that's well worth tracking down.
The bottom line:O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
— Shakespeare, 'Othello'
"The Case of John Van Arsdale."
By Ernest H. Crosby (1856-1907).
First appearance: The Century Magazine, November 1889.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online HERE.
Our narrator takes pains to assure us these things actually happened:
SEVERAL years have passed since the newspapers were full of the D—— murder case. It was particularly remarkable on account of the social prominence and previous high reputation of the accused and the strange circumstances which followed his trial. The story offers promising material for a penny dreadful, but I do not recall it to the attention of the public on that account. I had peculiar opportunities for knowing the alleged criminal, and he had exhibited to me, more perhaps than to any one else, the state of his mind. I then believed that I owed it to psychological science to give some report of the case, and with that intention I made some memoranda at the time. On looking over these notes I am still of the opinion that they should be published. . . .
Insanity, jealousy, both—or neither? Ambiguity abounds as a man becomes obsessed with the idea that his cousin, a prominent politician and someone he sees as a rival, is deceiving the world:
. . . "He is loathsome — dishonor, meanness, sin itself . . . He is not a man; he is a fiend."
His obsession will culminate in death and a bizarre court trial—but, wonders our narrator, is he really guilty of murder? And, further, could he have been justified in his hatred for his rival?
Resources:
- Crosby, an ardent admirer of Tolstoy and a vegetarian, has a rather short FictionMags list HERE.
- Also noteworthy about this issue of The Century is the first appearance of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
The bottom line: Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
— William S. Burroughs
Here are last month's top 5 posts, with the previous two Octobers tossed in:
October 2015
(1) "It Is a Difficult Thing, However, to Hush Up As Serious a Matter As Murder, Particularly on Shipboard" HERE.
(2) Four More for EQ and One That Didn't Make It HERE.
(3) "A Master of the Psychology of Fear, of the Torments of the Crime-Burdened Conscience" HERE.
(4) "The Detective Story Is Looking Up": Reviews from THE BOOKMAN I HERE.
(5) "Something Had, Obviously, Gone Wrong" HERE.
October 2013
(1) The Correspondence School Detective HERE.
(2) "A Cleverly Disguised Homage" HERE.
(3) Why Aren't There More—and Better—Science Fiction Mysteries? HERE.
(4) Clay-footed Gumshoes HERE.
(5) Criminal Scholarship HERE.
October 2014
(1) "You Fancy Yourself Quite a Toff But I'll Show You I'm Toffer Than You Are" HERE.
(2) Who Was Dexter Drake? HERE.
(3) "There Are Murders, There's a Detective, and Sleuthing of a Sort, but the Solution Is in the Stratosphere" HERE.
(4) The Hext Files HERE.
(5) OLD-TIME DETECTION, Summer 2014 HERE.
In the October 1938 issue of Scribner's the mystery fiction reviewer encounters several durable classics as well as a couple of obscurities:
~ Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout (1886-1975):
The latest Nero Wolfe opus, Too Many Cooks, deserves recognition as Nero's most toothsome case. A famous and much hated chef is fatally quenched at a culinary convention, and Nero solves the murder between courses.
Wikipedia HERE - GAD Wiki HERE - FictionMags HERE
~ A Body Rolled Down Stairs by Inez Haynes Irwin (1873-1970):
The folks in A Body Rolled Down Stairs are all so beautifully mannered and the New England scene is such a museum piece that murder seems unthinkable and is—almost—unsolvable. First class.
Wikipedia HERE - Goodreads review HERE - FictionMags HERE
~ Murder a la Stroganoff (a.k.a. A Bullet in the Ballet) by Caryl Brahms (1901-82) and S. J. Simon (1904-48):
Murder a la Stroganoff is both hilarious and exciting. The scene is the Riviera, and almost all the people are mixed up in some way with the effervescently temperamental Ballet Stroganoff. Adam Quill, ex-Scotland Yard, is the harried detective.
Wikipedia HERE and HERE - Goodreads reviews HERE - GAD Wiki HERE - FictionMags HERE and HERE
~ The Dawson Pedigree (a.k.a. Unnatural Death) by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957):
Harcourt, Brace is reissuing some early Dorothy Sayers' novels in double helpings. Peter Wimsey is almost always worth three cops [our rating system], and The Dawson Pedigree plus Lord Peter Views the Body is worth $2.
Wikipedia HERE - GAD Wiki HERE - FictionMags HERE
~ Murder in Newport by Gerard B. Lambert (1887-1967):
Gerard B. Lambert, who sails J-boats, has written a first-class puzzler in Murder in Newport. Watch the way the detective, one Vardon, a yachtsman, unravels the case and fathoms the remarkable device on which it hinges. Don't be put off by occasional pompousness.
Lambert and the America's Cup HERE
Resource:
- Our last encounter with Scribner's was HERE.
Category: Detective fiction criticism
"Make Way for Your Corpse."
By Milton Lesser (later legally changed to Stephen Marlowe, 1928-2008).
First appearance: Fantastic Adventures, December 1952.
Short short story (5 pages).
Parental caution: Strong language.
Online HERE (smudgy text).
"You've made a horrible mess of things, Mr. Slagg, a horrible mess."
If you met someone who looked just like you and said the following, would you do it?
"Look, all you have to do is go outside and get yourself killed. It's not too much to ask."
Resources:
- To judge from his presence on the Internet, our author Milton Lesser (a.k.a. Stephen Marlowe) could not be described as obscure: Wikipedia HERE; The Guardian obit HERE; Mystery*File HERE; LocusMag HERE; FictionMags HERE; the SFE HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and Project Gutenberg HERE.
Category: D.O.A.
"In Thin Air."
By Albert M. Treynor (1884-1984).
First appearance: Top-Notch Magazine, February 15, 1914.
"A complete novel" (22 pages, actually).
Online at the Pulpgen Archive (HERE).
"New York Tale of a Baffling Diamond Mystery"
The stones festooning the Pelham pendant, worth seventy thousand dollars, go missing under nearly impossible circumstances, with the thief or thieves leaving everything else in the vault undisturbed:
. . . John Faye picked up the remnant of jewelry, studied for a moment its bright, silverlike coils, and dropped it again distractedly upon the desk. "But tell me how?" he groaned. "The pendant was in the vault. No one could have got in there without leaving some sign. The burglar alarm is mechanically infallible. If the door had been opened the bell would have gone off. That’s a certainty. But it didn’t. And when we took off the combination a few minutes ago, there was no indication of tampering. Yet I am positive that the diamonds were stolen some time last night, after we had locked up. I want to know how!"
. . . as does Merrill, the detective the bank has hired to investigate:
. . . Faye reached into his pocket, and thrust the platinum chain into Merrill’s fingers. The detective walked over to the closed window, where the morning rays from the midwinter sun were strongest, and began to examine the empty settings. Presently he produced a jeweler’s microscope, adjusted it to his eye, and bent more intently over the dainty links.
Two overconfident and relatively unhelpful police detectives of the Keystone Kops school heap mild scorn on Merrill: "You’ve eliminated every possible way the job could have been done. What are you going to hunt for now?" to which the private eye responds: "The impossible way." Later he expatiates:
. . . "As I told those two detectives,” he said, "there’s only one course to follow. When you’ve exhausted every possibility, begin searching for the improbabil-ities. Our friends, the precinct men, are incapable of reasoning beyond the obvious. To their minds every crime must have a set formula—be accomplished in some manner known to previous experience. The moment they need to use their imagination you find them floundering helplessly. Now, I am absolutely certain that no human being entered that vault last night. I am equally sure that the stones vanished during the night. How was this thing done? Frankly, I don’t know. But I believe that the crime is unique in the history of theft. I believe the criminal had devised methods of work that have never been heard of before. But I still believe my intelligence equal to his. If he can pull diamonds from that vault, I am confident that I can discover how he did it."
Discover it he eventually does, but first he must stash a young lady, slug a policeman and go on the run, buy a cart and assume a disguise, swear out a warrant, break and enter, steal a bunch of diamonds, and cheerfully get himself arrested; for Merrill, evidently, it's all in a day's work.
Resources:
- For more about diamonds as described in the story go to Wikipedia HERE.
- Our author's FictionMags list is HERE.
 |
| One of Treynor's novels |
The bottom line: Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.
— John Webster, 'The Duchess of Malfi'
"Sleuth of the Air Waves."
By Emile C. Tepperman (1899-1951).
First appearance: Ten Detective Aces, January 1942.
Short story (10 pages).
Parental caution: Strong language.
Online at Roy Glashan's Library HERE.
"Rod Mallory, the Air Wave Detective, pulled his most sensational radio scoop. For, in full sound of millions of listeners, he was announcing the report of the gun that would end his own life."
You never know what you'll get when you stop for hitchhikers, such as the accused murderer of the local District Attorney:
. . . The girl took a small twenty-two calibre automatic pistol out of her handbag, and pointed it at him. "In case you don’t know it, I’m wanted for murder, and I’m trying to get away. I’d just as soon shoot you as not." . . .
Unfazed by this threat, Rod Mallory sees an opportunity to exploit the situation:
. . . "I’m going to put you on the air tonight. I have an hour and thirty-five minutes to go before broadcast time. I think I can manage it. In return for your guest appearance, I’ll guarantee, on behalf of my sponsor, to hire the best lawyer in the state to defend you. If you’re innocent, we’ll get you acquitted. If you’re guilty, we’ll try to squeeze you past the electric chair. That ought to be fairly easy with your looks." . . .
On their way to the radio studio, however, Mallory and his unexpected passenger run into the police, who are already predisposed to hostility towards him ("for stealing a march on the police department," he boasts) and an unfortunate tendency towards conclusion-jumping:
. . . "We thought the Blake girl would identify him [the killer] from the picture—since she saw the actual shooting. But instead, what does she do? She kills the D.A. It was cold-blooded murder, I tell you, and she’ll fry for it!" . . .
Mallory, no dummy, manages to evade the cops, but now it's a race against time, as he sets a dangerous trap to catch the real murderer of the D.A. using a fifty thousand-dollar bribe, an open telephone line, and a very frightened girl with saggy pants:
. . . "Remember—you told me that you know how I work, and I know how you work? Well, you were wrong. I know how you work, all right; but you don’t know how I work!" . . .
Resources:
- A short article about our mysterious author is available HERE at The Vintage Library, while the usual bibliographical data are HERE (FictionMags) and HERE (ISFDb).
The bottom line: "I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio." — Rodney Dangerfield
