According to the introduction — and why else would I pay for a bunch of 80 year old public domain stories — this is “the most atypical story one could imagine in the pages of a pulp: a little old lady takes a hard-boiled detective and leads him around by the nose.” Well, the age and the body part are different, I’ll give’m that.
Shay was summoned to the Conklin Mansion, as it was known yesterday, to meet Miss Conklin about her murdered maid. He liked the old woman immediately. She looked like an old-fashioned grandmother dressed up in 5th Avenue clothes. Her clothes fitted her perfectly and undoubtedly had cost her a lot of money. But she didn’t seem to belong in them. Yeah, but she damn well better stay in them if they expect me to finish this story. [1]
Conklin says $1,864 was stolen from her desk drawer. Strangely, there were $50,000 in bonds in the same drawer, but none were taken. Also, her 28 year old maid Mary Morse was murdered (I’m picturing Anne Hathaway’s intro in The Dark Knight Rises). She did not call the police because she didn’t want them tramping through the house, and she has her own way of handling things.
Suspects are plentiful as Miss Conklin hires only ex-prisoners for her staff. For example, the Butler was sent up for Armed Robbery and Assault, and her Chauffeur is also “an ugly bird”, presumably of the jail variety. She does not want them hassled.
I thought of the butler and the cutthroat who had driven us to the house — and lord knows what other specimens around the house — and said, “Mrs. Conklin, I’d as soon live in a cage with wild tigers as here.
“That is very unfair,” she said.
“If Mary could talk, I’ll bet she wouldn’t agree with you.”
Boom! The police arrive and determine that the Chauffeur had indeed done time in Dannemora and Joliet. The Gardeners had collectively done time at McAlester, Folsom, and Leavenworth. The Cook killed her husband with a frying pan. Mary and the other Maids had done time for minor infractions such as shoplifting and practicing lesbianism without a license. Also in the house are her nephew George and her niece Frances.
The butler tells Shay that Mary had been shaking George down for cash. In fact, George had roughed her up about it recently. Miss Conklin asks him not to pass that tidbit on to the cops until she has time to investigate it herself.
She lays a trap for her nephew, but he spoils it by actually being concerned about his aunt. Then, her niece’s boyfriend — described problematically as a “small, dark man” — enters to conk Conklin on the head. Luckily, Shay is hiding behind the fern and shoots him in the shin. Yeah, right in the bone, splitting it in two. I’m cringing just thinking about it.
Like the apocryphal liberal who has been mugged, Miss Conklin suddenly sees the light on punishment. She pulls a horsewhip out of a drawer and begins whaling on Frances. Shay has to stop her before she kills the girl.
Turns out, Miss Conklin’s sympathy for criminals was not ideologically driven. She had actually done time herself, so felt an affinity for these jailbirds. After that beating she gave her niece, she might get a chance to be around a lot more of them.
I could imagine this story being very entertaining if it were expanded. The older woman taking charge is new. The staff of criminals has great possibilities for fun. And who doesn’t like a crook’s leg being blown off? At just a few pages, though, it wasn’t possible to do much with it.
Other Stuff:
- [1] Sorry about the ageism, but 30 minutes ago, I was traumatized by a scene on TV with a naked 100 year old woman. Luckily, this was just basic cable so there is no lasting retinal damage. On the plus side, it is an opportunity to recommend The Mick — maybe the funniest show since Arrested Development (Seasons 1-3 (it is also funnier than AD Seasons 4 and 5 but so is [insert any name here]).
- First published in the May 25, 1940 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly