Tag Archives: Detective Fiction Weekly

Mansion of Death – Roger Torrey (1940)

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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

The Duchess Pulls a Fast One – Whitman Chambers (1936)

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Spike, Katie, Pinky, and The Duchess — surprisingly humans, not puppies — are hanging out in the City Hall Press Room on a “dark and rainy night” when a fire alarm comes in.  Apparently, the fire house is actually in City Hall because the three run just down the hall to see the fire engine pulling out.  All three jump on the back of the vehicle as it pulls out.  This is a thrill for the ladies because they were were told it is men-only.  It is a thrill for Spike because he was once an 8 year old boy.

Turns out it is Kurt Bergstrom’s chemical plant going up.  Spike says it is fine with him if Bergstrom is inside.  Bergstrom might be an inventor and wealthy, philanthropic dude, but Spike says he is a publicity hound, and we are told “reporters do not like publicity hounds”.  Unlike now when any camera-whore with a face will be put in a little box on cable news to give their unchallenged talking points.

They are happy to hear there was a fatality, but it is not Bergstrom.  His assistant John Hamlin was working late and became smoked Hamlin.  After getting the facts, they pile into a cab to go see Bergstrom who is dining at the Hotel Drake because the Drake Hotel was not fancy enough.  Spike brusquely tells him that Hamlin is dead.  Bergstrom takes the news calmly, then inexplicably invites the reporters to go with him to break the news to Mrs. Hamlin.

Mrs. Hamlin reveals that her husband had fortuitously just purchased an $80,000 life insurance policy.  This immediately makes Spike and Pinky suspect that Hamlin’s death was faked for the insurance money.  He suspects collusion between Bergstrom, Hamlin and possibly the Russians.  They tell the story of a guy named Schwartz who had done exactly the same thing.  The Duchess cracks the story and invites the gang back to the hotel for the denouement.  Bergstrom and the widow Hamlin are also invited and an unlikely self-incrimination is made.

Pleasant enough, but not much going on here.

Other Stuff:

  • First published in the September 19, 1936 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.

The Dilemma of the Dead Lady – Cornell Woolrich (1936)

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1.

Babe Sherman, “a good looking devil,” is packing his steamer trunk for a boat ride home from France.  He used his looks to fleece a woman out out her life savings earned at the largest jewelry store on Rue McClanahan de la Paix.  He also managed to pull a switcheroo with a string of pearls at her store, swapping out a $75,000 [1] string with a diamond clasp for a cheapo string.

He is hiding the pearls in a secret compart-ment in his shoe heel when there is a knock at his door.  A woman’s voice says, “Let me in, Bebe, [2] it’s me!”  He opens the door and she wonders why he’s dressed and packing a trunk.  He says he’s just going on a business trip, but she spots his ticket to the US.  The get into a tussle about the money he stole from her — one of them tussles that undoes the tiny screws on a shoe heel — and the pearls spill out.

Knowing he can’t let her leave, “he flung the long loop of pearls over her head from behind like a lasso.”  C’mon, how freakin’ long is this string of pearls?  Is it one o’ them 6 foot strings like flappers wore?  If so, how tall are his heels that he hid them in?  What are they, from the Tom Cruise collection?

So, he strangles her with the string of pearls.  It says they are on “a platinum wire” but that seems a little far-fetched.  Babe laments that she is “Dead.  Strangled by a thing of beauty, a thing meant to give pleasure” just like the woman in Florida who choked to death giving a blow job.  Ironically, a pearl necklace might have saved the Florida woman’s life.  But I digress.

2.

As always seems to happen, the porter knocks on his door while a dead woman is on the floor.  Christ, it’s like they have ESP.  Babe quickly realizes the only way out is to take the corpse with him in the steamer trunk.  He unpacks some of the hotel towels, robes and ashtrays, then “dragged her over, sat her up in the middle of it, folded her legs up against her out of the way, and pushed the two upright halves closed over her.”  He slaps a label on the trunk indicating it is to be delivered to his cabin, not put in the hold, and opens the door.

Babe and the porter take the trunk downstairs in an old cage elevator.  There seems to be a concern whether the elevator will take the weight.  So no one has ever ridden down from the 3rd floor with their luggage [3] before?

The elevator lands safely, and the porter takes the trunk to a taxi.  Babe wants the trunk stowed inside, but the driver wants it “tied on in back, on the top, or even at the side.”  How does that side storage work?  Finally a 2.5 X fare persuades the driver to put the trunk in the back seat.  At the train station, Babe tries to book a private compartment, but is forced to share one with a Yank.

3.

Babe insists the trunk be stowed in the hall outside his cabin, but the conductor says it is against the rules.  Babe flashes a few francs and persuades him.  Finally, after the train is in motion, he swings the trunk into it.  Babe discovers his compartment mate is a cop.

When they arrive at the ship, a familiar scene plays out.  The ship steward says the trunk is too large for a cabin and must be stowed in the hold.  The cop says, “Listen, I’m in there with him . . . put it where the guy wants it to go.”

4.

So the huge trunk goes into the cabin.  Babe figures he is going to have to resolve this situation in 2 days because the Frenchwoman is going to start stinking up the joint like a Frenchman.

His first move is to try to switch cabins.  That seems possible until the steward realizes who he is.  Suddenly nothing is available.  He suspects the cop got to the steward.

The cop ups the game by purposely spilling liquid shoe polish on Babe’s white shirt.  He has no way to retrieve a shirt from the trunk and can’t go to the dining-car dressed like that since he isn’t from Florida.[4]

The rest is very episodic, much like Woolrich’s earlier story in this anthology Two Murders, One Crime.  Fortunately, he is great at this kind of story.  Both stories turn into a rambling comedic pas de deux between a cop an a killer.  Both would have made great episodes of AHP.  Chandler might be the great stylist in this collection, but for pure entertainment, Woolrich is my favorite.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] $1.3 million in today’s dollars.
  • [2] His name is Babe, but the woman calls him Bebe.  OK, that’s French for baby, but it’s a strange choice by the author since it just looks like a typo.
  • [3] I never really looked at that word before.  You lug it around; it is literally your luggage.  I wonder which word came first.
  • [4] I am stilled scarred by a 50 year old guy I saw at lunch today wearing a wife-beater.  It wasn’t a 4-star restaurant, but have a little class, dude.
  • First published in the July 1936 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
  • Also that month: It got up to 114 degrees in Wisconsin.  Bloody global warming!