Bodies from the Library 5

Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense from the Golden Age of Detection

Tony Medawar

• Publisher: Collins Crime Club
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780008514808
• eBook ISBN:
  9780008514778
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

Classic crime fiction's 'Indiana Jones' Tony Medawar unearths more unpublished and uncollected stories from the Golden Age of suspense, including John Bude, John Dickson Carr, Dorothy L. Sayers and Julian Symons.

'Five books in, and the selection here might well be the strongest yet. This series continues to delight with the high standard of forgotten gems that Medawar uncovers, and there's sufficient range to ensure that all fans of the genre will find something to enjoy. Book 6 can't come soon enough.'
Jim Noy, author of The Red Death Murders

The end of the First World War saw the rise of an insatiable public appetite for clever and thrilling mystery fiction and a new kind of hero – the modern crime writer. As the genre soared in popularity, so did the inventiveness of its best authors, ushering in a "Golden Age" of detective fiction – two decades of exemplary mystery writing: the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.

The Golden Age still casts a long shadow, with many of the authors who were published at that time still hugely popular today. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although many have been republished in books over the last 100 years, Bodies from the Library collects the ones that are impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author's archive when they died . . .

Complete with fascinating biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, this latest volume in the annual Bodies from the Library series once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown, and is an indispensable collection for any bookshelf.

VACANCY WITH CORPSE

Anthony Boucher

I

Felicity Cain’s hair had started out to be red. It had stayed red until halfway through her high school days. This was why she had come to be known as ‘Liz’. You can’t call a freckle-faced carrot-top Felicity. That suggests lace and dimity and demureness, and there was nothing demure about Liz, not even after her hair turned the brownish blond you’ve seen in her publicity pictures.

The freckles had vanished when the red hair changed colour, but her eyes still had a greenish glint, and her spirit was still flamboyantly flame-crowned. Yet, here in the quiet, civilized atmosphere of the fashionable cocktail lounge, atop San Francisco’s most impressive skyscraper, with the clink of ice and glass to soothe the ear, she was more strikingly lovely than Ben Latimer ever remembered. It was a beauty that fascinated him, left him oddly breathless.

Out of the broad plate glass windows there was a noble view of the bay, bright with the afternoon sun. But he had no eyes for the view—not when Felicity was around. She had her arm in a sling, the result of an aeroplane accident—she was America’s most noted aviatrix—but the injury made no difference to Latimer. She still looked good to him.

He grinned as he set down his glass. ‘You’re like the bay, Liz,’ he said. ‘Wonderful.’

She smiled back. ‘You really mean I’m an institution, like the Barbary Coast, the cable cars—and the Cains! See any guide book.’

Ben Latimer winced. ‘No. You’re wrong.’ He waved his arm. ‘See that view. At first glance it’s perfect beauty. But look again and you notice a carrier and a couple of destroyers. There’s toughness under that beauty.’

‘La, sir!’ Liz said. ‘And likewise fie. Is that any way to speak of the woman you love? Don’t you know I’m all sweet femininity? At least as long as this damned arm keeps me grounded.’

Ben laughed. ‘It’s funny, Liz. When I think about you, it’s always with red hair. Even when I look at you I can’t get over being surprised.’

‘And when I think of you I still see you back on campus in a Letterman’s sweater. I just can’t get used to the idea that you’re now a policeman.’

‘Detective-Lieutenant, Liz, please,’ he corrected her. ‘Can you imagine the society pages of the papers writing up the marriage of a Cain to a mere policeman?’

‘I know.’ Her green eyes sparkled with glee. ‘At our wedding, do we line up your squad, or whatever you call them, and march out of the church under an arch of crossed rubber hoses.’

Ben shook his head. ‘No rubber hoses in war time,’ he said solemnly. ‘In fact, we haven’t had a single voluntary confession since the rubber shortage started.’

Liz fished in her glass, and said, ‘I like onions better than olives any time.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Why? What should be?’

‘Whenever you begin making irrelevant remarks like an Odets character, I know you’re shying away from something that bothers you. What is it?’

Liz hesitated. ‘I don’t know how to converse with a policeman.’

‘That’s never bothered you before.’

‘I’ve never done it before. I mean I’ve always just talked to Ben—my Ben!’ A smile softened her face, a smile such as you never saw in any of the press photos. ‘Now I want to consult with Detective-Lieutenant Latimer.’

Ben Latimer frowned. ‘What on earth kind of official business can you have on your mind? Remember I’m on Homicide.’

Liz vigorously nodded her brownish blond head. ‘Uh-huh.’

It wasn’t a gag. Her face was serious. She kept it averted as she carefully drew geometric patterns with the cocktail’s tooth-pick.

‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll try to look official even though I’m in plainclothes. What’s the trouble? Anybody I know? No, that doesn’t sound official. What, madam, is your complaint?’

‘It isn’t mine. It’s Graffer’s.’

‘Your grandfather? You mean there’s something sinister about his illness?’

‘Of course not!’ Liz smiled. ‘Graffer’s illness, God bless him, is just age and heart and things. You don’t think Dr Frayne could be fooled, do you? This is something else. It’s—it’s funny. Ben, if you hated a man and he was going to— to die, wouldn’t you just say to yourself, “Goody, goody,” and that’d be that?’

‘No,’ Ben said reflectively. ‘That’s not the way some minds work. You might say, “Damn it, he can’t die all by himself and do me out of the pleasure of killing him.” Is that what you mean?’

‘Uh-huh. Graffer’s been getting notes. Crazy notes. The Black Angel cannot claim you who belong to us. Strange things like that.’

Ben frowned. ‘It happens to every judge, I guess, if he’s been on the bench as long as your grandfather was. Half the time they’re from neurotic cranks. Are they signed, these notes?’

‘With a rubber stamp of a pointing hand. You know, what printers call a fist. I don’t know what it means.’

‘The Fist.’ Ben nodded. ‘It’s an imitation Black Hand racket which sprang up in the Italian colony here. And your grandfather did send Almoneri and de Santis to the gallows.’

‘But it’s so silly,’ Liz insisted. ‘That was twenty years ago. And now, when maybe he’s dying, why should they suddenly write him threatening notes? Perhaps I shouldn’t take them seriously. It must be some screwy kind of a gag. But Graffer wanted me to tell you about it.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t know if it’s silly, at that. You remember Vitelli wasn’t hanged? He got paroled a few weeks ago. He managed to disappear somehow and he hasn’t been reporting either to parole or alien authorities. Does your grandfather want a police guard?’

‘Uh-huh. Only quiet-like. You know Mother. You know what a policeman in the house would do to her. Especially at a time like this with my cousin, Sherry, coming and the servants changing all the time. Also, Graffer didn’t tell anybody but me. Not even Graffer’s secretary, Roger Garvey, knows. So could you arrange it somehow?’

‘I’ll fix things.’ Ben spoke in reassuring tones. ‘If it’s to be secret, I can’t do more than put a couple of men to watch the entrances to the house.’ He groped in his pocket. ‘Here—give your grandfather this whistle. It may set his mind at ease.’

‘Thanks, Ben. It seems so funny, talking to you official-like. You never did mention your work around me. Not even when you were on that suitcase murder and all the papers were full of it. Then, again, maybe I’d better not know too much. Just keep you for my Ben and not think of you that way.’

A bespectacled, studious-looking young man at the next table rose. started out of the room, but detoured to halt beside them.

‘Felicity!’ The man was Roger Garvey, Graffer’s secretary. He grinned. ‘Headed home? Oh, hello, Latimer.’

‘Hi, Garvey,’ Ben grunted.

Liz smiled at the difference between the two men. They were equally tall, equally well-built, but made from different moulds. Ben’s suit looked rather sloppy beside the sleek perfection of Roger Garvey’s well-tailored grey. Then, again, the detective’s broken nose—which had healed remarkably well from a wound inflicted by a three-time murderer—served to emphasize the pleasing profile of her grandfather’s handsome secretary. Even Ben’s easy casualness seemed rather crude when contrasted with Roger’s graceful suavity.

‘Roger’s right, Ben,’ she said. ‘I should be headed home. Mother’s got so much to do.’

‘I’ll squire you on the cable car, Felicity,’ Roger Garvey suggested. ‘Ridiculous nuisance, this having to leave one’s car at home. And I’ve no doubt the street-car will be full of filthy workmen in oil-stained overalls. Oh, well! The Japanese war’ll be over soon. Until then, I suppose we have to put up with these things.’

Ben’s face turned brick red. He opened his mouth to make an angry retort, but Liz gave him a warning glance so he only said, ‘Take good care of her, Garvey.’

‘That’s something I like to do, Latimer. I’ll never forgive you for getting the inside track. I suppose we’ll be seeing you at the great family dinner tonight?’

‘Sorry. I’m on duty.’

The secretary looked wise. ‘Oh, you remember that Sherry’s to be there?’

Ben didn’t answer for a minute. There was no sound but the clinking of glasses and the babble of voices.

‘Yes, I remember,’ Ben said at last. ‘Tell her I’ll try and get around tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure that even in her present state she’ll be anxious to see you, Latimer. Don’t you think so, Felicity?’

Liz said, ‘Come on. You can’t tempt Ben when he’s on duty. The only way we could inveigle him to the house tonight would be to stage a murder for him.’

After they had left, Detective-Lieutenant Ben Latimer sat alone at the table for some minutes. He frowned, and his finger outlined a pointing fist on the damp surface Then his frown deepened and he murmured, ‘Sherry!’

He was unreasonably annoyed when the waiter brought him a glass of light brown wine.

II

Mrs Vicky Cain’s hair was red, too, and people used to think that Liz had inherited hers from her mother. If so, it would have been a striking example of the transmission of acquired characteristics, and worthy of note in learned journals.

Usually Mrs Cain’s face was as skilfully made up as her hennaed hair, and she never looked old enough to have a famous aviatrix for a daughter. But now, as she greeted Liz, her face was hot and dripping, and her charmingly decorative apron had failed to protect her best tea-gown from unidentifiable stains.

As for the house, it was old-fashioned but wonderfully kept up. There were deep-piled rugs, waxed hardwood floors, panelled walls and tapestries, Chippendale cabinets, urns and Oriental vases, and overstuffed furniture, all blending into the colour scheme with excellent taste. At one side of the great front hall was the massive staircase, with its heavy newel-post and bronze figures, leading up to the second floor.

‘Mother!’ Liz gasped. ‘What have you been doing?’

Mrs Cain sighed. ‘It isn’t what I’ve been doing, it’s what other people have been doing. It’s all because Mary wanted to bend wires.’

‘To bend wires?’

Roger Garvey apparently foresaw trouble. He said, ‘Good evening, Mrs Cain,’ and vanished upstairs unobtrusively, to his secretarial duties.

‘Yes, she took a course at night school, and now she’s gone into your Uncle Brian’s factory.’ Mrs Cain sighed deeply. ‘What’s the good of my hiring good cooks if your Uncle Brian keeps stealing them away?’

Liz smiled and nodded. ‘Oh. The way you spoke it sounded as if she’d gone into an institution to cut out paper dolls. Well, aeroplanes are important to the progress of our country. Remember that.’

‘But why did your Uncle Brian need Mary to build aeroplanes?’ Mrs Vicky Cain persisted. ‘She’s better off in the kitchen.’

Liz patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Mother. The agency will find us another cook. They always do.’

‘But that isn’t the worst of it,’ went on Mrs Cain, smoothing her stained apron. ‘Today your grandfather decided to move into the west bedroom because he says he wants to be facing the sea when he dies. Which isn’t very cheerful, you’ll admit. As if we didn’t have trouble enough being without servants. How the nurse, Miss Kramer, and I ever got him moved there, I’m sure I don’t know!’

‘When did the cook leave?’ Liz asked.

‘This morning. I had to go out and do the marketing myself and the butcher was short of meat, and there are so many guests coming, I guess we’ll have to eat out of cans. When there was enough food, they wouldn’t let us buy it because that was hoarding, and now there isn’t any left. And if there was, we couldn’t get it anyway. So I don’t know where we are. Do you? It’s completely beyond me.’

Liz laughed. ‘I certainly can’t answer that one. Now I’m going upstairs, darling, and change into slacks, and be useful. Mother, haven’t you anything but gold lamé to wear in the kitchen?’

Mrs Cain gave a hasty glance downward and a look of surprise spread over her face.

‘Certainly, Liz. But I forgot. You know, I’m used to wearing something nice in the afternoon.’

Liz shook her head reproachfully and began to climb the broad staircase. This had been San Francisco’s showplace once, she reflected—the Cain Mansion. Now all its grand old neighbouring houses, on top of the hill, had been converted into three- or four-flat dwellings, housing families whom the Cains did not know. The one time ‘mansion’ had become just a funny old building. Her mother’s ideas were like that, too—all very well for a life of privilege,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Predestined
• Villa for Sale
• The Ginger King
• Sugar-Plum Killer
• Vacancy with Corpse
• Where do we go from here?
• Benefit of the Doubt
• Scandal of the Louvre
• The Pressure of Circumstance
• The Riddle of the Cabin Cruiser
• Skeleton in the Cupboard
• The Year and the Day
• Murder in Montparnasse
• The Thistle Down
• The Magnifying Glass
• The ‘What’s my Line?’ Murder
• Acknowledgements
• Keep Reading …
• Also available
• About the Publisher