Friday, October 31, 1941
“And what,” Lieutenant Marshall asked Concha Duncan as they drove west through the fall sunshine, “what is Matt’s particular grudge against Hilary?”
The girl frowned. “I don’t blame him really. Only it isn’t funny to talk about murder.”
“Murder’s like suicide. Or writing. The more you talk about it, the less apt you are to do it. Release mechanism. But what’s the motive?”
“It was a nasty trick . . . I don’t suppose you know who Don Stuart is? Anyway he was an important science fiction writer and now he’s editor of Surprising Stories (that’s science) and The Worlds Beyond (that’s pure fantasy). He’s bought some of Matt’s stuff and seems to think he’s a comer. So Stuart got the bright idea wouldn’t it be fun to have some contemporary Dr. Derringer stories.”
Marshall nodded. “That’s an idea. Foulkes died over ten years ago, didn’t he? And he was even then a little behind the times. There are whole fields of modern science the magnificent doctor never touched. Think what he could do with atom-smashing or Dunne’s time theories. Let’s see—how old is Dr. Derringer now?”
“You mean how long ago were the stories?”
“I mean how old is that great man. The first stories were around the turn of the century and he was then about forty . . . That’d make him eightyish now. He could still be going strong.”
“You talk as though he were a real man.”
“Isn’t he? I mean, doesn’t one feel that he is? But go on with your story.”
“That’s what Stuart said. About how people think he’s real. So he wrote to Austin Carter and outlined this idea and said if he didn’t want it he should farm it out to somebody else in the M.L.S., and so—”
“Whoa! Just to keep things straight, who’s Austin Carter?”
“He’s the biggest name in all Stuart’s stable of writers. In fact, he’s I think three of the biggest names. He’s nice, too; he got Matt started in the field.”
“And the M.L.S.?”
“That’s the Mañana Literary Society. Austin Carter started calling it that because people always talk about the terrific honey of a story they’re going to write tomorrow. Like you said about . . . murder. Only lots of them do really write them. The M.L.S. is all the people around here who work at fantasy and science fiction, and Carter is sort of a contact between them here and Stuart in New York.”
“I follow. Though I’ve got a feeling I’m on the edges of a strange new world. Go on.”
“So Carter farmed out this Derringer idea to Matt. Of course Matt was all excited because he says the three greatest men ever written are Dr. Derringer, Sherlock Holmes, and the Scarecrow of Oz. So he worked out synopses for six stories and Stuart okayed them, and he wrote to the Foulkes estate and they gave permission for a nominal fee to be arranged upon completion, and he worked like anything and turned out the set.
“Only then Hilary announced the fee. It was fifty dollars a story, and you couldn’t do any ‘arranging’ about it. Matt was getting a bonus rate of a cent and a quarter from Stuart on these, so that made it about sixty-two fifty a story for him. And by the time he gets through paying Hilary, that’ll leave him a total profit of seventy-five dollars for six stories. And he’s not through paying yet because we spent the money from Stuart most of it, and he says he’s damned if he’ll touch any of my money to pay his business debts.”
Marshall grunted. “I don’t much blame him myself. I mean for the murderous gleam. Hilary sounds sweet.”
“And I haven’t told you the worst. The very day that Matt got Hilary’s letter and hit the ceiling, we read in a gossip column where Mrs. Hilary Foulkes had just bought a fifty-dollar fur jacket for her dog. Honest, Lieutenant, if I ever see that dog . . . Matt says he wouldn’t mind so much if his honest sweat had bought Mrs. Foulkes a dress or champagne or anything humanly reasonable; but a fur jacket for a dog . . .”
“And I bet it’s a Peke at that.”
“It probably—Oh, you turn to the right here.”
The convent of the Sisters of Martha of Bethany had originally been laid out as a rich and formal estate in the Westwood hills. At the depth of the depression, it was munificently bestowed upon the nuns by a wealthy and generous layman who could no longer afford the taxes and assessments.
To the nuns it was a beautiful white elephant, a never-ending source of worry and delight. The sun, the view of the ocean from the hilltop, and the unspoken but patent envy of the Mothers Superior of other orders made partial atonement for the mile-and-a-half walk to the bus line and the constant cares of upkeep. And the ornate swimming pool furnished a splendid treat for the Mexican children who came weekly in school busses from the north end of town.
The sister portress lowered suspiciously at Lieutenant Marshall (she enjoyed her own slightly heretical views concerning the importance of men, tending to visualize Heaven as a noble matriarchy where the Virgin generously conceded a certain position to her Son), but smiled at Concha, whose aunt was one of the most loyal supporters of the convent.
“You can wait in the patio,” she told them. “Though there’s another lady there already waiting for Sister Ursula.”
Even on overcast days, this patio seemed greenly bright with that peculiar submarine greenness of growing things. Today, in vivid autumn sunlight, it was verdantly aglow.
“I like this place,” Marshall confessed, “even if I don’t feel I fit. I used to have strange ideas of a convent. Maria Monk stuff. Dank and dismal and silent, save for an occasional wail from a newly bricked wall. But all this is so fresh and clean. It’s . . . it’s like a hospital without pain.”
“It is a hospital,” said Concha. “And it cures the other kind of pain.”
Marshall paused in filling his pipe. “What a solemn thought from you, Concha! And why do Catholics always like to talk in paradoxes?”
She blushed a little. “I didn’t think that up myself. I heard Sister Ursula say it once. But you won’t tell me what we’re here for? What are you going to ask her?”
The Lieutenant lit his pipe reflectively. “Nothing spectacular. Unfortunately. I just need some technical information.” He took the seven-decade rosary from his pocket. “Ever see anything like this?”
Concha frowned. “That’s a funny one. No. I thought Aunt Ellen had every kind of rosary and scapular and medal that ever existed, but I never saw one before with seven decades. Does that—is it a clew?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m here.”
“Sir!” a woman’s voice demanded imperatively.
Marshall turned. The woman was not what one might expect to find in a convent. Her body was ripe with a fullness which comes from neither of those two ideals of the Church, virginity or motherhood. And her smart fall outfit must have cost—well, he knew nothing precisely about such things; but if he saw it on Leona, he’d certainly worry about their bank account.
“Must you, sir?” she said.
Marshall looked blank. “I beg your pardon. Must I what?”
“Must you smoke a pipe here in this holy spot?”
He grinned relief. “Sorry if it offends you, madam. But the nuns rather like it. Sister Ursula says the monks call pipe smoke ‘the gardener’s incense.’ ”
The woman raised well-plucked eyebrows. “But such levity! Even if I smoked myself, I should no more think of smoking here than—”
“Did I keep you waiting?” The robes of an order make most women seem to move either with undue bustle or with equally undue majesty. On Sister Ursula, however, they always seemed the only possible garments for her at once quiet and vigorous movements. Her voice, too, had neither hushed piety nor disciplinary sternness; it was simply a good and pleasing voice.
“I was helping Sister Patientia shellac Braille pages. You’ll forgive me?” She smiled at Marshall, kissed Concha lightly, and glanced curiously at the strange woman.
“This lady was here ahead of us,” Marshall said.
“Dear me, Lieutenant! You make me sound like a butcher shop.”
“I do not wish to intrude.” The woman dripped offended hauteur. “I shall wait in the chapel. Where the only incense,” she added emphatically, “is that offered to the honor and glory of God.” She swept away. Her walk was at once devout and dignified; but still you noticed the curving sway of her full hips.
“My!” Concha gasped. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know, my dear. I don’t even know her name. She simply came and told the portress that she was suffering and that she wanted to talk with a Bride of Christ. I think Reverend Mother was a little startled by such devout language, but she asked me to talk with her. After all, if she’s in any sort of trouble and we can help her . . .”
“And,” Concha added with kindly malice, “you are having trouble with funds for that baby clinic out by the Lockheed plant.”
Sister Ursula smiled. When she smiled, she looked not much older than Concha. When she was serious, she was completely ageless. Lieutenant Marshall, and even his shrewdly feminine wife, had never dared venture a guess as to her actual age. “I am sure,” she said reprovingly, “that no such unworthy thought ever crossed Reverend Mother’s mind. At least, not consciously.”
Marshall relit his briar. “She thought I was being sacrilegious to smoke here.”
“Oh dear. I foresee troubles with her. It’s hard enough as a rule to try to make people holy at all. But when they set themselves up to be far more holy than God or His Church ever intended them to be, then it’s a really dreadful problem to bring them down to humanity again.” She led the way to a sunny stone bench. “Is this your day off, Lieutenant, or are you calling on duty?”
“On duty, I’m afraid.”
“You mean you want me to—” Sister Ursula had leaned forward, an almost imperceptible sparkle in her eyes. But abruptly she broke off and sat back. “Oh dear, there I go again,” she sighed, “We Brides of Christ, as the lady rightly calls us (though I must say I find the expression far more comfortable in a devotional poem than in ordinary conversation), do have our faults. And you know mine and you keep pandering to it. But first tell me: how is Ursula?”
“She smiles now, and you know she’s human. And she weighs two ounces more than Terry did at her age. Come and see her.”
“I will try.” She smiled as Marshall reached into his pocket. “Snapshots already?”
“No.”
The smile changed to a perplexed frown as she saw what he brought out. “Lieutenant! I thought you were the staunchest of agnostics.”
“I’m afraid I’m not carrying this rosary for devotional purposes. I just want to know what you can tell me about it.”
Sister Ursula puzzled over the skillfully and elaborately carved beads. “Where did you get this?” she asked at last.
“What is it?” Marshall countered.
“It is a rosary,” she said slowly. “But it is not the Rosary. That is, it is not the conventional set of beads with which one meditates on the mysteries of the redemption in devotion to our Blessed Mother.”
“So? I thought a rosary was a rosary.”
“Oh dear, no. The popular devotion revealed to the monk Dominic is certainly the most widespread of rosaries, but there are others. I know, for instance, of a rosary of the Infant of Prague; and I believe that there are indeed Tibetan and other non-Christian rosaries. The number and arrangement of the beads varies naturally with the prayers intended to be recited, and this has seven sets. The crucifix, of course, eliminates anything like a lamaic rosary. But what might seven symbolize. The seven sacraments . . . The seven dolors . . .”
“Or it might be a multiple of seven,” Concha suggested. “The regular rosary has five decades, and you say it three times round for the fifteen mysteries.”
“A multiple . . . Yes, thank you, Mary. I remember now.”
“You know what this is.”
“Yes. It is a rosary of the Stations of the Cross. There are fourteen of those, and you say this twice, meditating on a station with each decade.”
“I never heard of that,” said Concha.
“I am not surprised. A priest in San Francisco started the devotion some forty years ago, so that the many Californians who then lived near no church might still make the stations. But Father Harris was killed in the earthquake, and the devotion died out. I believe that it was never formally approved by the Holy See. Not, of course, that that means it’s to be condemned. Any individual is free to say the proper prayers in the devotional form that most appeals to him.”
Marshall looked disappointed. “You mean, then, that this is perfectly all right? It’s orthodoxly Catholic?”
“Not precisely orthodox, perhaps, but certainly not heretical.”
“Hang it. If it had belonged to some strange minor offshoot of a sect, it could have been a great help to me in narrowing things down.”
“I should think you could narrow things down a good deal even from this. This devotion flourished for only a few years and almost entirely in one city. The wood is unusual, and the carving is exceptionally fine; this rosary was probably made to order and cost a good deal. It doubtless belonged to one of Father Harris’ wealthy patronesses.”
Marshall nodded. “That sounds logical. And if the rosary’s worth something on its own as an object of art, that might account for . . .”
“May I make a suggestion? Leave it with me, and I’ll show it to Sister Perpetua, who knows more about religious art than I should ever have thought possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could even tell you the name of the carver and in fact the period of his work to which it belongs.”
“Thanks. We’ll try that.” He handed over the rosary.
“And Lieutenant . . . You wouldn’t care to tell me anything about the . . . the circumstances?” There was that sparkle in her eyes again.
“Certainly. But there’s nothing interesting about them. Not worthy of you, Sister. Just a matter of trying to trace a floater who got himself killed. This rosary’s about the only lead we’ve got to check his identity.
“Go on . . . No! Oh, Lieutenant, I’m ashamed of myself, I’ve been good for a year now, haven’t I? We’ve been good friends and I love your children and I’ve never once tried to interfere and solve your cases for you. I even shut my ears that night you tried to tell me about the Magrudei poisoning affair, and look how beautifully you solved it yourself.”
“In three weeks,” said Marshall, “and I’ll swear you wouldn’t have taken five minutes to spot the point of that unused match folder.”
“Please. Don’t try to flatter me. It’s your business to solve crimes, and it’s not mine. I want to be good. But I’ve been good so long that I—I’ve begun to itch.”
“Madam, after the job you did a year ago, you’re more than welcome to solve my cases any time you want to. If you itch so, why shouldn’t you scratch it?”
“It’s hard to explain . . . But look at it this way. You’ve met Sister Felicitas. She has a vice; it’s loving sleep too much. You’d be—well, you might almost say an occasion of sin if you proffered her a nice feather bed. Or Sister—no, I shan’t name names; but I can think of two or three that only the Devil himself should leave a box of chocolates beside.
“You see, the rules of the order, to say nothing of our own religious devotion, don’t leave much scope in our lives for what the world thinks major and serious vices. So we come to realize the importance of the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins. Everyone admits the evil of Lust and most people include Avarice, at least on principle; but there are dangers to the soul in Gluttony too, and in Sloth. And in Pride.
“Before, when you were kind enough to say that I helped you— No, that’s false modesty, which is the worst emblem of Pride. When I helped you, I took great pride in how clever I was being. I felt power. I even,” she lowered her eyes, “I even exercised power over a man’s life. And I won’t do it again. I’ll do all I can to find out what you need about this rosary, but I don’t want to know any more. Or rather I want to, but I want not to want to.”
“All right. But I’ve got a confession to make too. For the past year I’ve been hoping somehow to tempt you back where I think you belong. I needed the dope on this rosary, yes; but I welcomed that need because it gave me a chance to present you with a criminal case needing your specialized knowledge. It isn’t much of a case, but if you’d hear me out and tell me—”
“No,” said Sister Ursula firmly. For a moment they sat, the policeman and the nun, looking at each other as earnestly as unhappy lovers.
Then Marshall grinned. “All right. But if the Devil ever rides you unbearably hard, I’ll always stand ready to take his side. The force lost a wonderful policewoman when you decided to take the veil.”
“Thank you. And now I must try to console Sister Patientia—or no, there’s that strange woman waiting in the chapel.”
“What’s the matter with Sister Patientia?” Concha demanded. To her the nuns, who had known her from childhood, were like so many aunts.
“I’m afraid she’s rather vexed, and understandably so.”
“What happened?”
“She was engaged in a Braille transcription of one of the Dr. Derringer novels, and wrote to the Foulkes estate to clear copyright. You know that such consent is always given free automatically; you simply have to secure permission as a matter of form. Well, the heir replied that he would be delighted to have the blind read his father’s work, and that the standard commercial reprint fees would apply.”
Lieutenant Marshall whistled. “That Hilary! I’m going to be investigating his murder yet.”
2.
The chapel—the chaste new white-and-gold Rufus Harrigan Memorial Chapel, gift of Concha’s Aunt Ellen—was empty save for the smartly dressed woman who knelt at the communion rail. As she heard the nun’s footsteps she rose and crossed herself, slowly, as one for whom the gesture still has to be thought out step by step.
Sister Ursula genuflected before the altar. “You wished to talk with me?” She asked quietly.
“If you will be so kind to one who has suffered.”
“We can go out in the patio. The irreverent man with the pipe has gone now.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
“What was it you wanted?” Sister Ursula asked as they walked along the corridor.
“I want to know all about what it is like to be a Bride of Christ.”
The nun’s hand toyed unthinkingly with the strange rosary. “That isn’t an easy question to answer, you know. Sister Immaculata is working on a biography of Blessed Mother La Roche, the founder of our order. She says that any one who would attempt to put the true meaning of a nun’s life into words must be either Saint Theresa or a simpleton.”
“Saint Theresa!” the woman sighed. “That dear sweet little thing!”
Sister Ursula smiled. “I mean the other Theresa, of Avila, who—”
But the woman interrupted her. “I beg your pardon, Sister, but that rosary—”
“Yes?”
“Where did you get it?” For a moment her devotional manner had vanished, and she seemed alertly interested. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” Sister Ursula answered truthfully. “Why? Do you know anything about it?”
“Know anything? Why, I’m sure it’s my—” The woman paused. She raised her clasped hands to her full breasts and let her head sink pensively. “But we must not think of such things now, must we? No, Sister, it makes no difference. Tell me what you can of your life.”
Sister Ursula bit her lip. That rosary came from a murdered man. If this woman knew anything about it . . . Though what connection there could be between such an expensive article as this and what the Lieutenant had called a “floater” . . . Still if she could try to find out . . .
The angel of Satan had rarely buffeted her so strongly. But she said only, “I think the best way I can explain is to show you a little of our work. We are called, as you know, the Sisters of Martha of Bethany, because Mother La Roche believed . . .”
3.
In the early days of Olsen and Johnson, long before Hell zapopped, they had a skit which took place in a hotel room. Among the manifold and wondrous inconveniences of this room was a drunk who wandered in from time to time trying to find the bathroom.
On his fifth entrance he looked at the two unhappy comedians and moaned desolately, “Are you in all the rooms?”
So Lieutenant Marshall felt now. He had dropped Concha off at the Duncans’ apartment, refusing to interrupt Matt’s work even for the laudable project of splitting a beer, and driven on to the very different and opulent apartment hotel whose phone number he had found on the Tarbell corpse.
On the way to the convent he had heard about Hilary Foulkes from Concha. At the convent he had heard more about Hilary Foulkes from Sister Ursula. And here the first name that caught his eye on the mailboxes was
HILARY ST. J. FOULKES
“. . . in all the rooms . . .” Lieutenant Marshall muttered.
A uniformed maid answered the door. To Marshall’s, “I want to speak to Mr. Foulkes,” she replied, “I will take in your card, sir.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t one on me. Just tell him it’s the police.” He was about to add some reassuring phrase to ward off the usual civilian terror of police authority, but the girl’s face instantly brightened.
“Oh yes, Inspector, I’ll tell him. He’ll be delighted.”
Marshall did not scratch his head. He was not given to the gesture, and in fact had never known anyone who was; but he understood the emotion which novelists mean when they write, “He scratched his head.” He had never before encountered any individual who welcomed the police so eagerly; and he certainly should have expected Hilary St. John Foulkes, from all he had heard so far, to be the last to do so.
He seated himself gingerly on an exquisite and spindly chair. This living-room was a woman’s room. There was no solid comfortable chair for leg-stretching and pipesmoking. The entire room was daintily and painfully neat. No trace of ashes or glasses or magazines or other normal signs of human enjoyment. The only reading matter was a small bookcase filled with admirably tooled leatherbound volumes. Marshall felt sure, even before he examined them, that they were the complete works of Fowler Foulkes.
He lit his pipe, looked about for an ashtray, and ended hopelessly by tucking the match into the cuff of his trousers. He was here, he admitted to himself frankly, because he was curious to see what the hell this Hilary was like. There was not a chance in a hundred—or to be more precise, there was just one chance in twenty-four—that Hilary had anything to do with the Tarbell corpse on Main Street. But, he assuaged his conscience, you had to start someplace in this apartment hotel.
“Inspector! But this is splendid!”
The voice surprised Marshall. He hardly knew why, but he had expected an effeminate piping. This voice, deeper and clearer and more rounded even than his own had been at the height of his debating career, hardly fitted his first rough concept of Hilary.
The man fitted better visually than aurally. He was a little under average height and a little over average weight. Not that he was fat; just that one might have preferred cheeks a trifle less plump and a neck that did not roll over the collar. He wore a beautiful red-and-gold dressing gown, which Marshall instantly coveted, over too tightly cut pin-stripe trousers and a shirt of delicate pink with stiff white collar, all of which Marshall wouldn’t have worn to a masquerade.
There was a penguinish waddle to his walk, and the officer half expected a flipper instead of the soft hand that eagerly took his.
“The name,” he said, “is Marshall. And the rank is just Lieutenant.”
“Delighted, Lieutenant, delighted. Do sit down. Shall I ring for tea?”
“No thanks. I won’t take up much of your time. I merely want to ask a couple of questions.”
Hilary Foulkes sat leaning forward politely, his hand pinching the lobe of his right ear. Marshall faintly remembered a widespread publicity still of his father in the same pose. “Naturally, naturally. But I am amazed, Lieutenant, at such prompt service.”
“Service?”
A tone of hurt doubt was apparent in Hilary’s voice. “You are from Homicide, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
Hilary settled back relieved. “Go ahead. Go ahead. It was only that it seemed so rapid. It can’t be an hour since I phoned.”
“You phoned to Homicide?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t you if someone were trying to murder you?”
Marshall preserved impassivity behind his pipe. “Of course, Mr. Foulkes. I only wish that more citizens had your civic conscience.” If a notable visitor was going to think wonders of the department for its rapid service, why disillusion him? Actually, Marshall reflected, the call had probably been routed through to poor old Halloran, who had a way with cranks, and who might get around here some time in the next week or two.
“Now I don’t know quite how to commence, Lieutenant. Perhaps if you were to ask me the usual formula questions—or do you have a formula for a man who’s being murdered?”
“We’re more used to dealing with him after the fact, I’m afraid; but it’s a pleasure to get in ahead of time for once. First of all, Mr. Foulkes, who is trying to murder you?”
“Heavens! Heavens, Lieutenant, if I knew that, do you think I’d have sent for you? This is all a mystery to me so far. And naturally I’m curious.”
“Then what was the nature of the attempt?”
“The attempts, Lieutenant. The attempts. There have been several. Let me see . . . The first was the car—or was it the brick? But both of those are so uncertain.”
“Well now, the car. The car. That would be a week ago, more or less. I was taking Pitti Sing for her walk. We were crossing Wilshire Boulevard when a car made a left turn through a stop sign, going I should guess a good forty miles an hour, and bore down on us. We escaped only by the skin of our teeth. Skins of our teeth? No matter.”
“That could have been an accident. Our Los Angeles drivers, I’m afraid, are notorious.”
“I know. Once could be an accident, I know. So could the brick that fell so near me the next night, from an unfinished building where no workmen were in sight.”
“You take these walks regularly?”
“Regularly? Frequently, at least. Yes, frequently. Usually about seven in the evening I take Pitti Sing for a walk.”
“Pitti Sing is your dog?”
“My wife’s, Lieutenant. A Pekinese.”
Marshall managed not to smile, remembering the fur jacket and his now verified guess. “Notice anything about the car?”
“It was a convertible—I believe a Mercury, though I would not swear to the fact. I didn’t notice the license, nor even who was driving. It all happened so suddenly . . .”
“Of course. Any further details on the brick episode?”
“Nothing.”
Marshall puffed at his pipe. “I don’t know that you need worry yourself, Mr. Foulkes. I realize that two such episodes on successive evenings are enough to perturb one, but don’t you think—?”
“Oh, but I haven’t told you about the chocolates. The chocolates. I had a birthday last week, and among various other gifts I received a box of chocolates by mail. There was no card, but I thought nothing of that. Stores do make mistakes in wrapping, you know. But when I took the first piece—how I thank Heaven that my wife was not with me then! If she had tasted first . . . But fortunately as I lifted this chocolate cherry, I noticed a tiny mark like a pinprick in the bottom. I had only recently read a novel concerning poisoned chocolates, and I must confess I trembled.
“Call me foolishly apprehensive if you will, Lieutenant. But the combination of the car, the brick, the missing card, and the novel frightened me. I took the chocolates to a chemist for analysis. Each of them contained quite enough cyanide to kill a half dozen people—providing, of course, that a half dozen people could eat one chocolate.”
Marshall grunted. He had expected nothing but the recital of a pampered neurotic with a persecution complex, and the car and the brick fitted that pattern beautifully. The chocolates were different. He took the copy of the analyst’s report which Hilary handed him. He knew the firm. Irreproachable standing. Damn it, he’d really happened on to something.
“I’ll confess,” he said, “that this puts a different complexion on things. Do you have the wrappings of that candy box?”
“No,” Hilary admitted ruefully. “The maid had burned all the birthday wrappings before I made my discovery.”
“You have the box itself?”
“It is still at the analyst’s with the chocolates. I shall give you a note to him.”
“Did you happen to notice where it was from?”
“Here in Los Angeles. It was one of the standard two-pound boxes of the Doris Dainty Shoppes, though I have of course no idea from which branch.”
Marshall sighed. Try tracing the purchase of a box of standard mixture from any one of thirty-odd branches! “So,” he said. “All right. Maybe we better approach this from the other end. Who would have any interest, Mr. Foulkes, in killing you?”
“Me? In killing me?” Hilary Foulkes spread his plump hands in the blandest of innocence. “That’s what worries me. Who on earth could possibly want to kill me?”
Before Marshall could quite choke at this charming effrontery, a girl came into the room. She was slim and long-legged and carried herself with an easy and unobtrusive grace. “Cousin Hilary—” she began. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had—”
Marshall rose, but Hilary did not. He waved one hand languidly and said, “Yes, my dear?”
“I don’t like to interrupt, but Alice wants to know if Veronica is going to be home to dinner. I don’t even know where she’s gone.”
“Neither do I, my dear. Neither do I. But she will doubtless be home. You may tell Alice so.” His eyes lit on the still uncomfortably standing police officer. “Oh, Jenny, this is Lieutenant Marshall. My cousin, Miss Green.”
The girl’s voice was light and friendly, with a trace of an English accent. “How do you do, Lieutenant. I hope Cousin Hilary is showing you proper hospitality. We can’t do too much for those who may so soon have to defend us.”
Marshall smiled. “Not that kind of Lieutenant, I’m afraid. Just police.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Hilary, what on earth have you been up to?”
Hilary wriggled. “Nothing of importance, my dear. Nothing of importance. The Lieutenant was merely . . . was merely . . .”
Marshall took up the sentence. “I merely wanted to know if your cousin had ever heard of a man named Tarbell. Part of a routine check-up.”
Hilary and the girl looked equally blank.
“Jonathan Tarbell,” Marshall added. “Or,” he went on, “whether a rosary with seven decades meant anything to him.”
“That’s sets of beads?” the girl asked. “Seven sets? Wasn’t that—” There was no perceptible movement from Hilary, or at most a slight flicker of his eyes, but the girl broke off. “No,” she said. “I’m thinking of something else.”
Hilary smiled blandly and said, “And I fear the Lieutenant is not finding me very helpful. Mr. Tarbrush and the rosary are equally unfamiliar to me.”
“I won’t ask counter-questions,” Jenny Green smiled. “I’ll just leave you to plague Hilary. Oh.” She paused. “Are you the Lieutenant Marshall who solved the Harrigan case last year?”
Marshall nodded.
“My! We were in New York then, but even there the papers were full of it. That was wonderful and don’t try to say anything because I know I’m only embarrassing you. Sorry, and goodbye.”
Hilary glanced after the girl as Marshall reseated himself. “You understand I didn’t wish to mention these murder attempts in front of her. It would only worry her.”
“Of course.”
“And I’d like to congratulate you, Lieutenant, on the rapidity with which you picked up my hint. Most ingenious, those questions about the rosary and Mr. Tarpon. Most ingenious.”
Marshall let it go at that. Those leads could be followed up later to better advantage. “But to return to our motives—” he began.
“And I am most fortunate,” Hilary went on, “to have drawn the man who solved the Harrigan case. Most fortunate. That was a curious business, wasn’t it? Locked room affair, as I remember.”
“Yes,” said Marshall tersely. “But to get back to our own case: It’s nonsense, Mr. Foulkes, to say that there’s no one who might want to murder you. There’s never been a living human being of whom that was true. Surely you can make some nominations?”
Hilary puzzled. “Frankly, Lieutenant, no. Frankly. I lead a quiet, peaceful, and unobtrusive life. I have no close friends, and therefore no close enemies. My wife is faithful to me, and I to her.”
“And you are a wealthy man.”
“True. But need the fact necessarily mean that anyone wishes to kill me?”
“I’m afraid so. Sex and money are the two all-dominant motives for murder, and of the two I’ll lay odds on money every time. So let me ask: Who is your heir?”
“My wife, of course. We have no children. Miss Green, whom you just met, will receive a comfortable income for life from a trust fund. Otherwise my wife inherits the whole of the estate.”
“That includes your father’s estate?”
“Naturally.”
“And who will act as literary executor of the Foulkes properties?”
“My wife’s brother, D. Vance Wimpole. He seemed a logical choice for the post since his father was something of a self-appointed Boswell to mine. Moreover he is himself a writer, though for the pulps,” Hilary uttered the horrid word with ineffable disdain, “and is so very much part of the family. Not only is he my brother-in-law; he is soon to marry my cousin.”
“Then by your death this Mr. Wimpole would secure a wife with a comfortable life income and the control over an exceedingly valuable literary estate?”
Hilary looked uncomfortable. “Nonsense, my dear Lieutenant. Utter nonsense. Vance is an eccentric, a madman if you will, but a murderer— Heavens! Besides, he is at present in Kamchatka or Kalamazoo or some such outlandish place. The chocolates were mailed in Los Angeles.”
Marshall looked about hopelessly for someplace to knock out his pipe. “Mr. Foulkes, if you insist that you’re being attacked, as this analyst’s report certainly confirms, you must admit that someone has a reason for doing so. Obviously your wife, your cousin, and your brother-in-law stand to gain markedly by your death. What about others? Have you . . . Have you ever made any business enemies? Say through your administration of the Foulkes estate?”
Hilary resumed the lobe-pulling pose. “You seem a sympathetic man, Lieutenant. So many people will not understand the difficulties of my position.”
“Yes?”
“If my father had invented Mr. Emerson’s mousetrap, no one would question my right to collect fees from those who followed the beaten path to his door. If my father had built up some great and world-embracing business enterprise, no one but a Communist would begrudge me the income from it. But because my father enriched the world with a great character and a number of immortal narratives, some men sneer at me and assert that I have no right to this income.
“As you are well aware, I have every legal right. Our copyright laws protect an author’s offspring quite as thoroughly as they do the author himself. And I have moral right too. In fact a moral duty. A moral duty to see that my father’s work is respected, that it does not enter the public domain where any insignificant dolt may do as he will with it, that the works of Fowler Foulkes are as carefully guarded now as he would have guarded them were he still alive.”
“In short,” Marshall summarized, “you do think you might have made some enemies in administering the estate.”
“It is possible. Possible, although it seems ludicrous that such petty enmities might lead to murder. But if you pin me down, Lieutenant, I can think of no one who might wish to kill me, Hilary Foulkes, an individual. These attacks must be directed against the son of Fowler Foulkes, against the administrator of the Foulkes estate.”
“One point though. Your birthday. Timing it for that day made sure you’d open a box you might otherwise have regarded with suspicion. Wouldn’t that point at some intimate?”
“My birthday is mentioned in my father’s autobiography. In Wimpole’s memoir too, I imagine.”
“So.” Marshall frowned and drew out his notebook. “All right. Now, Mr. Foulkes, if you could give me the names of any individuals who—”
The maid came in just then with a bulky package. “Excuse me, sir. This came by special messenger and it’s marked rush. I thought perhaps—”
Hilary waved it away. “Set it down there. Well, Lieutenant, it’s naturally impossible for me to remember the names of all those whose unreasonable requests I have at one time or another seen fit to reject. Possibly—”
“That package,” Marshall interrupted. “Something you ordered?”
“No. I’ve no notion what it is. No notion. But that can wait. The most recent of these—”
Marshall leaned over the package and held up his hand for silence. The peremptory authority of the gesture hushed Hilary instantly.
In the silent room the ticking was clearly audible.
4.
“Where’s your phone?” Marshall snapped.
“It ticks,” Hilary observed. “How curious! It ticks . . .”
“Where’s the phone?”
“It . . . Oh my heavens! Lieutenant! It’s a bomb!”
“There is,” Marshall admitted dryly, “that possibility. Now where’s a phone?”
For the first time Hilary moved with rapidity. He leaped at the package, and Marshall had to counter swiftly to ward him off.
“But Lieutenant! We’ve got to go put it in the bathtub! We’ve got to—” His voice had gone up an octave.
Marshall held him by the arm and spoke firmly. “You called the police. All right. The police are here and in charge, and you’re doing what I say. Leave that box alone and show me a phone.”
“Leave it alone and show you the phone.” Hilary giggled. “You rime, Lieutenant. You rime.”
“The phone!” Marshall snapped.
“Right here.” Still on the verge of hysterical giggles, Hilary removed the decorative flounces that had hid the instrument.
“Playing with possible bombs isn’t healthy,” Marshall explained as he dialed, automatically noting that Hilary’s phone had a different number from the number of the building found on Tarbell. “And popping them in water is a popular fallacy. The only safe medium is lubricating oil, and I doubt if you’ve got a tubful of that handy.—Hello. Marshall speaking, Homicide. Give me the Emergency Squad.—No, Mr. Foulkes, we’ll leave it to the experts. You can clear out if you want to and—Hello. Lieutenant Marshall speaking. I want to report a possible bomb. I—”
His attention had been distracted from his host, and Hilary Foulkes seized the opportunity to make a dash for the package. What his intentions might have been was never to be learned. Marshall’s long leg shot out across his path, and Hilary came down with a crash and lay still.
“No,” Marshall went calmly on into the phone. “That wasn’t the bomb. Just interference.”
He gave the address, received the usual warning to do nothing until the squad got there, and hung up. He bent over Hilary, worried for a moment, but found nothing seriously wrong. Bump on the back of the head from hitting one of the spindly chairs. No damage, and Hilary would probably be less trouble if simply left on ice for a bit.
Marshall frowned, then nodded. Through two corridors he found his way into the kitchen. The maid, who apparently doubled in aluminum, was peeling potatoes. “Hello,” he said. “Mr. Foulkes is expecting some visitors on very secret business. They don’t want to take any chances in being seen. Would you please go for a walk?” He handed her a dollar bill. “Have a soda or see a newsreel or something.”
“But I’ve got to get dinner and if it isn’t ready on time Mrs. Foulkes’ll—” she paused. “You’re the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go.”
“Please tell Miss Green too. Is there any one else in the apartment?”
“Only Pitti Sing, and she’s asleep.”
“She can stay,” said Marshall grimly. “And who’s in the apartment under us?”
“It’s vacant, sir.”
“Good.”
The Foulkes apartment was large and multiple. The turning and the door that Marshall was sure would bring him back to the living-room led him instead into a chastely furnished bedroom.
“I’m blind as a bat without my glasses,” he announced loudly. “Is that you, Mr. Foulkes?”
Jenny Green laughed, a laugh that was half embarrassment and half youthful pleasure: “You’re a gentleman, Lieutenant.” Her fresh pink and white skin disappeared into a faded wrapper.
“At times I regret it,” Marshall confessed. “But look: Your cousin has secret affairs coming up and wants you should clear out for a half hour.”
“Are you joking?”
“No. He seems to mean it.”
“Oh. And when Hilary means something . . . I know. Thanks.”
The second try worked and he reached the living-room. Hilary was still unconscious. And the package still ticked.
Marshall lifted a corner of the rug, shook out his pipe, and dropped the rug back over the ashes. He lit up a fresh pipeful and stared at the box. The temptation to investigate it was strong, but he remembered the cheering stories taught in the police training school of what happened to smart coppers who decided they were as good as the Emergency Squad. He copied down in his notebook the name of the messenger service and the cryptic numerals which presumably could help trade the order.
The box went on ticking.
He heard the maid leave, and a little later Miss Green. The apartment below was vacant. The ceiling was high. If the bomb did go off in the next ten minutes, it could injure no one—except, of course, Hilary Foulkes and the Lieutenant. He could probably arouse Hilary and carry him downstairs. But at the same time he should stay here and stand guard over the bomb. Mrs. Foulkes would probably be home soon. If she should come in and decide to investigate the package . . .
He puffed and tried to sort out what he knew so far. A car, a brick, poisoned chocolates, and a bomb. Somebody was decidedly in earnest, and at the same time curiously inefficient about it. And somewhere there tied into this a rosary and a phone number and a Main Street corpse. They had to fit in; there had been a marked reaction on that rosary question.
The box went on ticking.
The discrepancy of the phone numbers was easy to explain. This was probably an unlisted phone. Anyone trying to get in touch with Hilary would be unable to get it from the company and forced to content himself with the apartment house phone. But why should Jonathan Tarbell . . .
The ticking was louder now.
Louder than a jukebox at midnight, louder than a radio serial, louder than an air raid siren, louder than the world. It was the world, that ticking.
Marshall thought of the Tell-Tale Heart. But that was proof of Death Past. This ticking was proof of Death to Come, of . . .
He swore at himself, looked around the room, found a radio, and switched it on full blast. He never noticed what the sound was once it came over. He knew only that it drowned out the ticking.
It also drowned out the entrance of Veronica Foulkes. The first that Marshall knew of her presence was a loud scream, loud enough to top ticking and radio and all.
“. . . to keep the loveliness of your hands soft and white in the hardest water . . .” a dripping voice was booming.
Marshall switched off the radio.
“You!” Veronica cried. “You’re the man with the pipe in the garden!”
The Lieutenant bowed. “How nice to meet again. Now, madam, if you would kindly—”
“Hilary! What have you done to Hilary! He won’t speak to me! He . . . he just lies there . . .”
“Your husband, Mrs. Foulkes, has had a slight accident. Everything will be all right. I represent the police and am in charge. Now if you will just—”
“I don’t believe it. You’re not a policeman!” Her bosom heaved, and she was just the guy to do it. “You’ve attacked Hilary, and I—”
“Please!” Marshall protested. “I’m trying to warn you. Will you kindly leave this apartment?”
“Warn me? So you admit you’re a criminal! I knew it. Policemen don’t smoke pipes in convents. Get out of here! And at once, or I’ll call the real police!”
“But Mrs. Foulkes, I’m trying to tell you, since I must. There’s a bomb—”
“Bomb! Oh! You’re trying to kill us all. You—”
With that, she flung herself upon him. The phrase “tooth and nail” suddenly assumed a fresh and vivid meaning for Lieutenant Marshall. He felt blood coursing from the gouge in his cheek as he vainly tried to pinion her wrists to her sides. The long spike heels of her shoes dug viciously into his shanks, and she poured out words that seemed scarcely apposite in so punctilious a critic of conventual etiquette.
At last he secured a firm and clenching grip on her wrists and managed to wrap his long leg around her threshing ankles. “Now, madam,” he panted, “will you be good?”
Her next move left him speechless. She looked up, murmured, “You’re so strong,” and kissed him with full and parted lips.
It was, of course, at this moment that the Emergency Squad arrived.
The Squad seemed more interested in this tableau than in the bomb. With a deceptive appearance of ease and carelessness two of the men transferred the ticking package to a metal container full of lubricating oil. Sergeant Borigian said, “There’s an undeveloped lot next door; we’ll take ’er apart there.” With the same routined indifference the two men lifted the container and carried away the oil and the ticking. And all this time their eyes seemed never to leave the red-faced Lieutenant, the buxom and gasping woman, and the unconscious man on the floor.
When the men had gone, Sergeant Borigian grinned and observed, “Looks like you’ve done a little taking apart yourself, Lieutenant.”
Marshall started to speak, but Veronica Foulkes cut across him with, “My husband! Aren’t you going to do anything about him?”
“Looks like he’s done plenty,” the Sergeant ventured.
Hilary groaned. In an instant Veronica was beside him, stroking his forehead and murmuring phrases that might have been better suited to Pitti Sing. Slowly Hilary opened his eyes and seemed astounded to behold himself and the room still in one piece.
“It ticked . . .” he faltered. “Where is it?”
“There,” Veronica murmured. “He won’t hurt ums again. There’s a real policeman here now. With a uniform.”
“Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Borigian, “what worries me is I can’t decide whether to report your conduct to headquarters or to your wife.”
Hilary sat up, “Where did you come from, Ron? But that doesn’t matter. Where’s the bomb, Lieutenant? Where’s the bomb?”
“Mr. Foulkes,” said Marshall, “this is Sergeant Borigian of the Emergency Squad. His men are looking after the bomb. Everything’s under control, and you’re perfectly safe.”
Veronica gazed from one man to the other. “What is happening here?”
Hilary wavered onto his feet. “There, my dear, there. I’ll explain later. And you will find out who, Lieutenant?”
“I’ve got damned little to go on, Mr. Foulkes, as you very well know, and I’ll have to have another session with you tomorrow. But right now what I’ve got to do is check up on the delivery of this parcel.” He hesitated and glanced at Veronica. “One thing . . .”
“You may speak freely before my wife, Lieutenant. It will be hopeless now to try to keep things from her. Hopeless.”
“Do you want us to put a guard on your apartment? It can easily be arranged.”
Hilary shook his head fuzzily. “I think not. You see, Lieutenant, I want to know who this is. If we frighten him away with a guard, we may never manage to learn his identity.”
“Think it over. I’d sooner not know who tried to murder you than prove positively who succeeded. I’ll give you a ring in the morning. Coming, Sergeant?”
As they waited for the elevator, Sergeant Borigian suggested, “Want to watch the investigation? From a distance of course; we don’t want no amateurs from Homicide cluttering things up.”
“No thanks. I’ve got to check this delivery while the trail’s warm. Let the clerk sleep on it and he’ll forget everything. I’ll phone into Headquarters for your report in about—will an hour be all right?”
“For a preliminary, sure.” The heavy-set Sergeant fell broodingly silent. Then he burst out, “Look, Lieutenant. My job’s to keep bombs from going off and find out what they’re made of. It’s nothing to me who sent ’em to who or why. But when I walk in and find a detective Lieutenant . . . Will you tell me what the hell’s going on up there?”
“Brother,” said Marshall feelingly, “I wish you’d tell me.”
5.
Tracing an order is a job that Marshall hates. It always means much brandishing of credentials and the assumption of the heavy policeman role. Executives seem to fear that every inquirer is the sinister agent of some foreign power, or worse yet, of a competitor.
After a great deal of this official brow-beating, Marshall had prevailed upon the central office of the Angelus Parcel Delivery Service to divulge that the package whose number he gave had been sent from the Hollywood branch, and upon the manager of the Hollywood branch to admit that q73x4 meant our Miss Jones.
Our Miss Jones would have been markedly pretty if she had not been made up on the chance that a casting director might sometime want to send a parcel. “Sure,” she said cheerfully, “I remember the guy sent that package.” She checked back in her records. “That was at ten thirty-five this morning, only he said we shouldn’t make delivery till three this afternoon. I remember him swell.”
“You must take quite a few orders in a day,” Marshall ventured cautiously. “Was there anything to make you remember this man especially?”
“Sure. First of all I thought it was kind of screwy marking a package rush and then leaving instructions not to deliver it for four and a half hours. And then I noticed the name it was going to. Hilary Saint John Foulkes.”
“. . . all the rooms . . .” thought Marshall. “And why should you notice that name in particular?”
“On account of last night me and my boyfriend were looking at a magazine and there was an ad for men’s talcum powder with a lot of signatures-like—you know, endorsements—and they were all big shots only I didn’t know who was this one so I said to my boyfriend, I said ‘Who’s this Hilary?’ and he said ‘That’s the son of Fowler Foulkes’ and I said ‘But who is he?’ and he said ‘Just that, far’s I know’ and I said ‘So just because you’re somebody’s son you get dough for endorsing stuff?’ and he said ‘Somebody’s son? But he’s the son of Fowler Foulkes!’ and I said ‘So who’s he?’ so then we had a fight. So that’s how come I noticed the name.”
Marshall nodded satisfied. “All right.” Witnesses can be like the overhelpful natives who tell the explorer exactly what he wants most to hear, true or not; and such witnesses never survive cross-examination; but this sounded circumstantial and convincing. “Now, Miss Jones, can you describe the person who sent this package?”
“Sure. He was a funny old boy.”
“Old?”
“Yeah. He must’ve been all of fifty if he was a day. He wasn’t so very tall, but he was built big, if you know what I mean. He had a big barrel of a chest on him, like a gorilla or something. His nose was big and kind of hooked—Roman, I guess you’d call it. And he had a great big black beard. You wouldn’t forget him very easy. Oh yes, and he carried a cane, with a silver head on it.”
Our Miss Jones wondered why the detective should first look so blankly incredulous and then burst out into an admiring guffaw.
He was, Marshall realized, up against a murderer with a peculiarly outrageous gag sense. The girl had just given a perfect description of Dr. Derringer.
6.
“There’s nothing like beer when you knock off from a day’s work.” Matt Duncan popped the top off and handed the foaming bottle to Lieutenant Marshall.
“Don’t you want a glass?” Concha suggested.
“If I can’t have a stein,” said Marshall, “right straight from the bottle is next best. And besides, why make more dishes for you to wash?”
“Thank you, kind sir.”
“Aren’t you having any?”
“Uh uh. I don’t like beer, and I’m not going to be one of these girls who go around pretending they do.”
Matt exhaled loudly after a mighty draft. “Hits the spot, that does. Now what are you on the trail of, Terence?”
Lieutenant Marshall looked mournful. “Curse of the profession. Nobody ever suspects you of just a friendly call in passing.”
“This is non-professional?”
“Well . . .”
“It is not,” said Concha. “I can see that gleam in your eye. I’ll bet it’s still that floater with the rosary you were asking Sister Ursula about.”
“What’s that?” Matt asked idly.
“Nothing important. Fellow named Tarbell got bumped off down on Main Street. But that isn’t what I—”
Matt wrinkled his brow. “Tarbell . . . I met a Tarbell somewhere recently. It’s not a common name. Jonathan Tarbell . . .”
Marshall leaned forward. “So. Maybe this is a professional call after all. Where? When?”
“Damn, I can’t remember. It was just casual . . . I know. It was at Austin Carter’s.”
“You remember,” Concha put in. “The man I was telling you about with the Mañana Literary Society.”
Marshall nodded. “Friend of Carter’s then, this Tarbell?”
“No, I think he’d come with somebody.”
“Who?”
“I can’t remember. Nobody I know well. Runcible maybe, or Chantrelle.”
“So.” Marshall nodded slowly to himself. “Matt, I’m going to ask you for a favor, and I’m not going to explain any of my reasons. You’ll have to take me on trust.”
A buzzer buzzed. Concha said, “Phone. I’ll take it,” and vanished.
“O.K.,” Matt conceded. “Tentatively granted. What goes?”
“I want you to take me out to Carter’s for the next meeting of the Mañana Literary Society. Don’t introduce me as Lieutenant; I’ll be just another tomorrower.”
“I ask you no questions and you tell me no lies, is that it?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Well for one thing, Terence, you’ve got a wrong idea of the M.L.S. It isn’t a matter of regular meetings. It’s just when some of the boys happen to get together, usually at Carter’s. And for another, I don’t know as I like furnishing the sheep’s clothing for a wolf like you in our quiet flock.”
Marshall set down his beer. “Matt, if I talked I could make you see how important this might be. There’s a damned good chance it could solve one murder and forestall another. And if you insist, I’ll talk. But I don’t want to. Not yet.”
Matt started to speak, then sat glaring into his beer. “Friendship’s one thing,” he said at last, “and police duty’s another. I don’t know as I’m willing to—”
It was just then that Concha returned. “The phone’s for you, Lieutenant, and it’s Sister Ursula of all people. Oh and look, while I think of it: we’re going out to Carter’s tonight, and he always likes to meet people. Why don’t you and Leona come along? You’ll like fantasy writers. They’re nuts.”
Matt shrugged resignedly. “You can’t win.”
Marshall was smiling to himself as he answered the phone. “Yes, Sister?”
“Leona told me you weren’t home yet, so I thought I’d try here. It might be important.”
“Yes?”
“That rosary, you know. Sister Perpetua says it’s a very famous piece of carving which was thought to be lost. She says it was done by Domenico Saltimbanco, which is apparently a most eminent name from the way she pronounces it, and was carved to order for the first Mrs. Fowler Foulkes.”
Marshall expressed himself, and then hastily apologized. “Don’t apologize, Lieutenant. It is surprising, isn’t it, when we were speaking of Hilary Foulkes only this afternoon? But this isn’t Hilary’s mother; I think he was born of the second marriage. The first Mrs. Foulkes was a most prominent laywoman, you know.”
“I don’t know how I can thank you, Sister.”
“If you really wanted to thank me . . . But no. I won’t even ask it. I do try to be good, you know. Goodbye, Lieutenant.”
7.
! ! ! DANGER ! ! !
NITROSYNCRETIC LABORATORY
! KEEP OUT !
Marshall paused and stared. “So,” he observed. “And what the hell is a nitrosyncretic laboratory?”
Matt Duncan smiled. “Nice gag, isn’t it? You see, the way this house is situated on a hill, people come to this door before the proper main door. This is Austin’s workroom, and he used to have a hell of a time with Liberty salesmen. Poundings on the door are distracting-like when you’re working on the collapse of an interstellar empire. But since he put up that sign, salesmen take one look, shudder, and get the hell out.”
Leona laughed. “I’ll have to try something like that for when the children take naps.”
“The children . . .” Concha repeated. “It must be nice to say that so casually.”
“Do I really sound casual? I know I try to, but I still go sort of warm all over.”
Marshall coughed. “The children are home and asleep and there’s a competent girl in charge of them. For the moment they’re hers, and we’re just people. Come on, darling. Let’s see the science fiction menagerie.”
Bernice Carter met them at the proper door. “Austin’s holding forth,” she said softly. “We’ll postpone introductions till he’s done.”
“These people,” Matt told her, “are Marshalls. They just want to listen.”
“They’ll have the chance,” said Bernice.
The menagerie was meager this evening. In the large living-room were only five men. The tall thin one established in the heavy chair under the reading lamp Marshall rightly took for his host. Of the others, one was somewhat plump and somewhat short—rather like a poor man’s edition of Hilary without that almost unconscious assumption of self-importance which only being born heir to the Foulkes fortune could give. One was a stocky individual with a goatee (and no mustache) and a serious air. One was an open-faced youth who might well be a college sophomore. The fourth was a small sharp-faced man whose little eyes conveyed an odd mixture of boredom and complete absorption.
“And that,” Austin Carter was saying, “is just the trouble with his stuff. It’s too damned galactic. Science fiction can be interesting only so long as you preserve the human frame of reference. Of course the reader should think, ‘Golly, this is wonderful! Space ships and blasters and stuff!’ But he should also think, ‘After all, maybe that’s just the way I’d feel if I rode on a space ship.’ If your concepts become too grandiose, you’ve left the reader a thousand parsecs behind.”
“Still,” the sharp-faced man protested, “his stuff sells. And his fans yowl for more.”
“I’m laying a bet they won’t much longer. You can distend a reader’s mind with new concepts only so far. Eventually he says ‘Phooey!’ and goes back to the more homely commonplaces of Joe here, or me, who modestly consider the destruction of a solar system or maybe just a planet as colossal enough, without annihilating galaxies left and right.”
The sophomore opened his mouth, considered, and said hesitantly, “Stapledon.”
“Olaf Stapledon’s a special case. For one thing, he’s a great writer, which most of us haven’t much hope of being. For another, he’s not hitting the magazine market. But most of all, he’s got the amazing faculty of leading you on so gradually that you’re willing to accept his vasty concepts as familiar.”
“And that,” said the goatee, “is one of the greatest services that science fiction can render to science. In which respect Stapledon is surely the most notable talent to enter the field since Fowler Foulkes.”
Austin Carter frowned at the name of the Master. The sharp-faced man snorted. Bernice took advantage of the silence to become hostess.
“These people seem to be listening raptly, but they might as well know who they’re listening to. Or whom, just in case they’re that kind of people. Matt, I think you know everybody, and probably you do too, Concha. And these, Matt informs me, are Marshalls. My husband, Austin Carter, Mr. Runcible,” (the plumpish one) “Mr. Phyn,” (the sharp-faced one) “Mr. Chantrelle,” (the goatee) “and Joe Henderson.”
Marshall and Leona duly gave and received greetings.
“They’re novices,” Matt explained. “Don’t expect them to show due reverence for a great name. And I don’t mean you, Austin.”
“So?” Marshall glanced inquiringly at the poor man’s Hilary. Runcible, if not a great name, was at least a delightfully freakish one.
Runcible shook his head and waved an indefinite gesture of disclaimer. Austin Carter laughed. “No. Runcible so far is just a name signed to letters to the editor. Though you might mark it down for future reference; some first-rate men have come up from the fan ranks. But the name that struck Matt dumb with awe when he first heard it was Joe Henderson.”
The sophomore shuffled and hung his head. “I write a little.”
“By which,” Bernice Carter translated, “he means that he’s the oldest name in science fiction that’s still big-time. When he can find the time between hacking out Captain Comet, he can still turn out stuff that puts young upstarts like Austin and me right in our places. He’s been leading the field for fifteen years, and he still looks nineteen and if only I had a goose handy I could offer a very pretty demonstration of Joe not saying boo to it.”
Joe Henderson’s grin spread over his face as slowly as that of the Cheshire Cat and far more warmly. “Get along with you, Berni,” he drawled.
Carter slapped him on the back. “The modesty of true genius,” he announced. “Which makes me just as glad that I’ve never laid claim to either quality. But as I was saying to Joe when you folks came in—”
“One more minute of being hostess,” Bernice interrupted. “Then you can go on.” She collected wraps, took orders for drinks, and vanished.
“Anybody else coming?” Matt asked. “I’d like these poor innocents to see the M.L.S. in full swing.”
“Anson Macdonald and Lyle Monroe may be around, and possibly Tony Boucher. Tell me, Matt, what’d you think of that last opus of Tony’s?”
“Nuts. He wrote it with his eyes shut and one hand tied behind him. Same old stuff. Mutiny on a space ship, the uncharted asteroid loaded with uranium ore, and Martians trying to steal it on a time warp. Hell, it’s routine.”
Marshall blinked. “It’s a little hard for an innocent, as Matt rightly calls me, to take that all in one gulp. I can’t quite think of space ships and uranium and Martians as being drably commonplace.”
“You get to think that way,” said Austin Carter. “Supposing in real life you broke down a locked door and found a corpse bleeding from twenty wounds with no possible weapon any place. You’d maybe think it a trifle peculiar. But the mystery fan would say—”
Leona, being a mystery fan, picked up her cue. “Just another locked room.”
“Exactly. So to us it’s ‘just another space ship’ or ‘just another time warp’ or—”
“And what,” Marshall asked, “is a time warp?”
“Mostly,” Carter confessed, “a handy device. The term refers of course to the theory of the curvature of the Space-Time continuum. A warp in that framework could produce most curious results—possibly send you off, not on ordinary time travel, but completely out of this continuum.”
“I like ‘ordinary time travel,’ ” said Leona. “So prosaic.”
“You can have fun with a time warp,” Joe Henderson contributed.
Concha laughed. “The first time I came across one was in a story of yours, Joe. There was a reference to a character in an earlier episode who had gone off on a time warp and never been seen again. I thought it was a new kind of binge.”
“Time warps,” Carter went on, “are handy. They’re part of the patter, like subspace, which don’t ask me to explain. They let you do the damnedest things and make them sound scientific. As indeed they quite possibly are. Ask Chantrelle here; he’s from Caltech.”
“To my mind, Mr. Marshall,” the goatee observed somewhat ponderously, “the free imagination of these writers is of more scientific value to the progress of mankind than ninety per cent of the theses written for the doctorate.”
“And this imagination is absolutely free? You must get away with murder.”
Carter shook his head. “Not any longer. Or at least not in the better markets. Good science fiction requires more self-consistency, more plausibility than any conceivable realism. Your world of the future can’t exist in any high-fantastic vacuum. It’s got to be real and detailed and inhabited by real people. With all due apologies to Captain Comet, Joe, the days of the pure gadget story and the interplanetary horse opera are over.”
Marshall gratefully accepted beer from his hostess. “I’m not sure I follow those terms.”
Carter looked about the group. “With two new victims, I’m afraid I’m about to repeat my famous lecture on science fiction. Runcible won’t mind because there’s nothing a fan loves like listening, and Phyn here is always hopeful I may say something worth stealing. To the others I apologize, but here goes:
“Science fiction is essentially a magazine field. Outside of Fowler Foulkes and H. G. Wells, practically no contemporary imaginative writer has been commercially successful in book form. So its development has to be studied in the mags. And these, way back in the early days, were possibly, to the non-fan outsider, not so good. They had, to be sure, scope and imagination, an originality and a vigor that few other pulps could equal; and neither quality had ever been markedly prized in the slick field.
“But they also had a sort of cold inhumanity. The science was the thing, and the hell with the people involved. On the one hand you had what I call the interplanetary horse operas, which were sometimes pretty weak even on their science. These were pure Westerns translated into cosmic terms. Instead of fighting off bands of hostile red-skins, you fought off bands of hostile Martians, and as you pulled out your trusty blaster, they regularly bit the stardust.
“The gadget stories were more interesting. They frequently made honest attempts at forecasting scientific developments. Atomic power, stratosphere exploration, the rocket flight that so absorbs Chantrelle, all the features that may revolutionize the second half of this century as thoroughly as radio and the airplane have transformed this half—all these became familiar, workable things.
“But the writers stopped there. Interest lay in the gadget itself. And science fiction was headed for a blind alley until the realization came that even science fiction must remain fiction, and fiction is basically about people, not subatomic blasters nor time warps.
“So there’s a new school now, and I suppose Don Stuart, the editor of Surprising, is as responsible as anybody. Don’s idea was this, and it was revolutionary: Grant your gadgets, and start your story from there.
“In other words, assume certain advances in civilization, then work out convincingly just how those would affect the lives of ordinary individuals like you and me.
“For instance, in one story of Rene Lafayette’s there is a noble amount of whisky-drinking, and the name of the whisky is Old Space Ranger. And that one phrase paints an entire picture of a civilization in which interplanetary travel is the merest commonplace. No amount of gadgetary description could make the fact of space ships so simply convincing.
“In other words, to sum it all up in a phrase of Don’s: ‘I want a story that would be published in a magazine of the twenty-fifth century.’ ”
8.
After this lecture, the conversation grew general. Matt and the Carters talked shop, the thin-faced Phyn interjected an occasional word of wry commercialism, and Mr. Chantrelle spoke of the coming test run of his latest rocket car.
Marshall sat back and drank his beer. It was indeed a strange new world, and a fascinating one. But he could not give it his whole attention. The policeman’s mind kept reverting to duty, and in the midst of phrases about klystrons and space orbits and the positronic brain tracks of Asimov’s robots he tried to sum up these people in connection with the attempts on Hilary Foulkes’ life.
They didn’t fit. Not at all well. Despite the high-flown fantasy of their conversation, they were as quietly ordinary people as he ever encountered. Or were they? Were not their very ordinary traits the possible marks of murder?
Motives he could not know yet; but it seemed not too unlikely that anyone in this field might at some time have had a run-in with Hilary. And granting motive, how could these individuals react?
Bernice Carter was coolly efficient as a hostess and as a conversationalist. Might that efficiency extend to the calm performance of a necessary elimination?
Austin Carter was, in a far more intelligent way, as self-sufficient and self-important as Hilary. Might two such dominances conflict fatally?
Phyn (apparently an agent specializing in this field of fiction) was shrewd and acquisitive. Might he not find personal gain a sufficient motive for any action?
Joe Henderson was inarticulate and repressed. Might repressions gathered too long burst forth lethally?
Chantrelle . . .
But this was random guesswork, unworthy of a detective lieutenant even when off duty. Marshall waited for the next passing of an angel and said, “I met somebody the other day might interest people in your field. Hilary Foulkes—the great Fowler’s son.”
“Oh,” said Austin Carter. “Hilary.” His voice was absolutely expressionless.
“You know him?”
“I know his brother-in-law, D. Vance Wimpole. There, sir, is one of the damnedest and most fabulous figures in the whole pulp field, and he tackles most of it. Fair on science fiction and excellent on fantasy. But what I mean by fabulous: One night in New York Don Stuart and I were seeing him off to Chicago. He got talking and outlined a fantasy short ad lib from hook to tag. Don liked it, but said, ‘The trouble is, now you’ll never write it. You never do write what you’ve talked out first.’ And Vance said, ‘Oh, won’t I?’
“He left by train for Chicago around eight. The next morning the story was on Don’s desk, air-mail special delivery from Chi. I won’t say it was a masterpiece, but it was publishable as it stood and it drew good fan mail.”
Joe Henderson nodded. “That’s Vance for you.”
“Where is he now?” Bernice asked.
“I had a letter from him yesterday,” Chantrelle said. “Postmarked from Victoria. He’s on his way back from Alaska and should be here in a week or so. I’m postponing the test run until he arrives.”
“Sure of that?” the agent demanded. “I thought—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
“I’d like to meet this prodigy,” said Marshall. “But about—”
“Oh,” Carter picked up his story, “Vance is something. He uses an especially geared electric typewriter because he composes faster than any ordinary machine can go. He works only six months out of the year and spends the other six hunting anything from polar bears to blondes. He—”
Marshall reluctantly listened to all the unbelievable saga of D. Vance Wimpole. The subject of Hilary had been deftly killed, but not before he had caught a sharp glitter in the little eyes of Phyn and an expression of relief on the face of Bernice Carter as her husband maneuvered away.
Around eleven Leona interrupted a fascinating discussion (on whether you could construct a robot werewolf) to say, “This is fun, but we’ve got a girl staying with the children and she has to go home sometime.”
The Carters’ sorrow sounded most sincere. “You too, Matt?” Austin added.
“Afraid so. I want to get some work done in the morning.”
“Just a minute then. I want to show you those pictures of the Denvention. I keep forgetting.”
As Carter went downstairs to the Nitrosyncretic Laboratory, Marshall asked, “I’m still innocent. What’s a Denvention?”
Bernice explained. “The science fiction fans are highly organized, and they have Annual World Conventions. The last one was in Denver, so the fans, ever incorrigible neologists, called it the Denvention. The next one’s here in Los Angeles, and I’m afraid it’s called the Pacificon.”
There followed ten minutes of looking at pictures of people of whom Marshall knew nothing. Carter, he gathered, was an enthusiastic camera fiend with every known photographic gadget and even an adjunct to the Nitro Lab in which he did his own developing and printing. The pictures were good, particularly the nude which had wandered in by mistake. It reminded him of Leona in her unreformed days. He said as much, and the men thereafter accorded her a certain respect which they had not displayed to the mother of two wonderful children.
“And what,” he asked at last, “is this weird display?”
“That? They had a costume party on the last night. Come as Your Favorite S-F Character. Berni wanted to go as Dale Arden, but I’m afraid it was an overambitious project.”
“And who’s this lad with the beard and the stick?”
“That’s Austin,” said Bernice. “I took this picture.”
“So. And what did you finally go as?”
“The Wicked Queen of Ixion in Joe’s Cosmic Legion stories. It was fun.”
9.
“It was fun,” Leona echoed as they went down the stairs. “I think I’ll lay off mysteries for a while and try this strange stuff. It sounds appetizing. How about you?” After a silence, she repeated: “How about you?”
“Uh? Oh. Sorry dear.” Lieutenant Marshall was wondering if he should tell Hilary Foulkes how shrewd a guess he had suddenly made as to the identity of his so far fumbling murderer.