Bodies from the Library 2, page 20
part #2 of Bodies from the Library Series
It was now recalled that on February sixth a johnny named Otto—I forget his last name—had come to the police with the information that he had seen and spoken to Beckert between midnight and one a.m.—ten hours after the fire. But as Otto had an unsavoury reputation and was known to have been on bad terms with Beckert, he was not believed and was told to run along and mind his own business.
The German Minister and Baron von Welseck now remembered that, when they visited the Legation offices on the morning of February fifth, the floor had been newly washed, and that Beckert was not wearing his custom’ry pince-nez. The deduction appears inevitable that at that time the unlucky Tapia had already passed to his Maker and that his mortal remains lay hidden behind the office files—a supposition which agreed with the result of the post-mortem. It had been ascertained that death could not have been later than eleven-thirty a.m.
There was no longer any question that the charred body was that of Tapia; and the unescapable corollary was that Beckert had been the murderer, for the latter’s belongings found by the body could have been placed there only by Beckert himself.
The German government immediately waived all diplomatic immunity for Beckert, and thus turned the case over to the jurisdiction of the Chilean authorities, who at once launched forth on the man-hunt with great gusto.
The body, which had been buried amid the inspirin’ vocal strains of the German Liederbund, was now disinterred, and a third autopsy performed. A microscopic examination of the skin and hair proved that the dead man was of swarthy complexion and had dark hair, whereas Beckert was conspicuously blond.
Immediately following the fire a general alarm had been sent out for Tapia; and on February tenth, simultaneously with the discovery of the true identity of the corpse, a report arrived from the Chief of Police of Chillan, a little town on the Southern Railroad about two hundred miles south of Santiago.
The report stated that a traveller had appeared before the Chillan police with the information that on February seventh he had met a man on the train who, though representing himself as wealthy, had travelled second-class.
The chief of police had regarded this information as suspicious and had sent an inspector to Victoria, the train’s destination. The inspector found and talked to a man bearing a passport made out in the name of Ciro Lava Motte, which had been issued by the State Department the preceding January for a voyage to the Argentine. But as the passport seemed to be in order, the inspector had returned to Chillan.
However, on the arrival of the news about Tapia the chief of police, thinking that the mysterious Señor Motte might be the missing messenger, telegraphed to Santiago for Tapia’s description.
In Santiago the police immediately checked up on Señor Motte and discovered that in January Beckert had applied to the Foreign Office for a passport for his brother-in-law, giving as that mythical gentleman’s name Ciro Lava Motte.
But even this was not sufficient evidence for the Santiago police. They were most careful and thorough. Within a few hours they had discovered that on the day in January when Beckert had applied for the passport he had also bought a blackjack at a local hardware store, had ordered three false boards and a brunet wig, and had bought a travelling suit, leather puttees, a trunk, and a rifle with a leather case—all of which he had inscribed with the initials ‘C.L.M.’ Beckert had also bought a revolver and cartridges and twenty yards of lamp wick.
While the police were thus engaged in checking up on the preparations of Beckert’s perfect crime, the German Minister was endeavouring to find a motive for the murder. It didn’t take long, for in going over the missing man’s accounts it was discovered that for more than a year Beckert had been forging drafts and discounting them at the bank. It was estimated that he had diverted to his own pocket nearly 50,000 marks ($12,000).
But even this mass of corroboratory evidence did not entirely satisfy the Santiago police. They were treading on delicate ground—the honour of their fair nation was at stake—and so they turned their suspicious eyes upon Beckert’s private life. They discovered that he had not been the virtuous family man and model husband that everyone had thought him. He was, indeed, a gay dog, and had spent many leisure hours in the company of charming but fragile señoritas.
To one of these light-o’-loves he had written several letters in a disguised hand, signed ‘Tito Bera’. He had later confessed to his dulcinea the authorship of these amat’ry epistles. The lady produced the letters, and the chirography proved to be the same as that of the author of the letters signed by the varios chilenos.
In fact, all these threatening letters had been part of the preparation of Beckert’s astoundin’ plot. With them he had prepared everyone for his approaching murder. So well had he planted the whole idea that after the crime the identity of the body was hardly questioned.
There was now enough evidence even for the squeamish Santiago police, and a telegraph order for Beckert’s arrest was sent to all stations along the Southern Railroad. Beckert had by this time quitted Chillan and was proceeding toward the Argentine border. But on February thirteenth, barely six miles from the frontier, the carabinieri overtook their quarry; and on February sixteenth the author of the almost perfect crime was safely lodged in the bastile at Santiago.
The preparation for Beckert’s trial took over six months—the Chilean authorities wished to have an absolutely clear case to present to the court. Also, the legal aspects of the case had to be gone into with great care, for the question of extraterritorial immunity was raised by the defence.
The trial, however, took place on September 2nd, 1909, and ended with Beckert’s conviction on all counts. He was not only sentenced to death but given thirty-eight years’ penal servitude and fined sixteen hundred pesos—a sweet bit of legal inconsistency, but quite characteristic of legal procedure, don’t y’know.
Beckert naturally appealed. Even in Chile such processes are part of the noble game of jurisprudence. But the Supreme Court denied the appeal; and after several stays of execution—so reminiscent of our own legal procedure—the unfortunate gentleman faced a firing squad on the fifth of July, 1910.
Vance lighted another Régie.
‘Y’know Markham, my sympathies are all with Beckert. He did a noble and thorough piece of work. He spent almost two years concocting a perfect crime. Really, he should have succeeded … No, I fear that I shall never go in for murder. The fickle goddess of chance … The perfect crime! Yes, yes. The cards were stacked against the unfortunate Wilhelm. Most distressin’, eh what?’
‘Yes, very distressin’,’ mocked Markham. Then: ‘There have been curious parallels of the Beckert case in America. There was the H. H. Holmes case, for instance, and the Udderzook case—both attempted insurance swindles.’
‘Oh, quite,’ Vance returned indolently. ‘Criminals are not original. Circumstances, don’t y’ know. There are parallels in most crimes, human nature bein’ what it is. Especially is this true of crimes passionnels. They’re based on the caressin’ theory that one woman differs from another. Silly notion, what?
‘Regard our own Snyder-Gray case. Lovers eliminatin’ a husband. Very sad. And yet, lovers have been eliminatin’ husbands since time immemorial. I shall never be a husband, Markham. Much too dangerous.’
S. S. VAN DINE
‘S. S. Van Dine’ was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (1887–1939), art critic, philosopher and champion breeder of Scottie dogs. Wright was born in 1888 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of relatively wealthy parents. He was fiercely intelligent and in 1906 he went to Harvard. However, he came down a year later, claiming that ‘they had nothing more to teach me’. His first story had been published in 1906 and, after studying art for a year in Paris, he returned to America where in 1907 he married Katharine Belle Boynton, with whom he would have a daughter, and also became literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. Three years later he was among the journalists who escaped when the newspapers’ offices were destroyed with dynamite, killing 21 staff.
As well as conducting interviews and delivering a regular column on ‘New Books and Book News’, Wright wrote for the Times on all sorts of literary subjects, the most significant of which was undoubtedly a piece lauding a book by H. L. Mencken: it was subsequently through Mencken’s influence—and an incendiary essay on Los Angeles—that in 1913 Wright became editor of the prestigious Smart Set magazine at the age of only 25. A precocious talent, he was also in demand as a public speaker on literary matters and, more contentiously, on subjects such as the advantages of stupidity in dramatic censorship and England’s continuing ‘intellectual colonisation’ of America as well as women’s suffrage, which Wright vehemently opposed. He also reviewed books and theatre for Town Topics and other journals like the North American Review while remaining editor of the Smart Set until he was sacked in 1914.
1914 also saw the publication of Europe after 8:15, in which he wrote about Vienna and London while other cities were considered by his co-authors, H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, then the Smart Set’s theatre critic; the three had collaborated before for the Smart Set under the pen name ‘Owen Hatteras’. Other books followed, including Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (1915) and What Nietsche Taught (1915), as well as an unpleasantly misogynistic novel The Man of Promise (1916) and a series of short crime stories under the pseudonym ‘Albert Otis’, named for General Harrison Otis, former editor of the Los Angeles Times. Another book Misinforming a Nation (1917) criticised America’s entry into the First World War, prompting some of his former colleagues to shun him, and towards the end of the decade this and various other issues led him to take up drugs.
While Wright worked as literary editor of the New York Evening Mail and wrote for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and International Studio, his health declined. In 1923, after the publication of his book The Future of Painting, he suffered a complete breakdown and the story goes that his psychiatrist—or was it his doctor?—allowed him nothing more stimulating than detective stories which the patient read avidly for the next two years—or was it three?—before deciding that he could do better.
For what would become an immensely successful series of books, Wright adopted a pen name because he felt that ‘detective stories come under the head of froth and frivolity’ and so might damage his reputation as a serious critic. And so ‘S. S. Van Dine’ was born. When The Benson Murder Case (1926) was published—on the 13th of October, as all of the Van Dine novels would be—the publishers stated that Van Dine was a Harvard graduate, which Wright most certainly was not, and that Van Dine was also ‘not only an expert in criminal psychology and in the various Continental and American methods of crime detection but a thorough student of the literature of crime both historical and fictional … for many years … collecting material and adapting it to detective form for his new series’, which at least was partly true.
An untiring self-publicist, Wright made public appearances as Van Dine and also used the name for numerous newspaper and magazine articles in which the fictional Philo Vance analysed notorious non-fictional crimes such as the infamous Hall-Mills murders of 1922. In parallel, under his own name, Wright edited The Great Detective Stories (1927), an excellent anthology whose publication fuelled speculation that the famous critic and the reclusive author were one and the same, which was revealed in 1928 by Harry Hansen of the New York World not long after Wright, as Van Dine, had prescribed a set of rules for detective stories in The American magazine.
In 1929, with the popularity of the Philo Vance stories fuelled by William Powell’s portrayal in the films The Canary Murder Case (1929) and The Greene Murder Case (1929), Wright took self-promotion to a new level when, as Van Dine, he agreed to serve as Police Commissioner of Bradley Beach, New Jersey. Expecting a sinecure, he was shocked when, not long after his appointment, a local man was murdered and he found he was expected to lead the investigation. With newspapers challenging S. S. Van Dine to solve what they termed ‘The Pajama Murder Case’, Willard Huntington Wright stepped down.
In 1930, not long after the divorce from his first wife, Wright married again, this time to the painter Eleanor Rulapaugh. As Van Dine, while continuing to write the Philo Vance novels, Wright also produced scenarios for twelve ‘two-reel detective stories’, which were developed into scripts by Burnet Hershey. The films feature the bullying Inspector Carr and Dr Amos Crabtree, a psychology professor; and the scripts of some were published in cartoon form with Philo Vance as the sleuth.
Almost one hundred years after the publication of the first of Philo Vance’s twelve murder cases, the detective’s affectations have dated badly and even as early as 1931 the character was ridiculed—Ogden Nash spoke for many when he joked that ‘Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance’. Undoubtedly, the quality of the books diminishes, albeit erratically, and the last two—The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1938) and The Winter Murder Case (1939)—are little more than padded scenarios for films starring, respectively, the comedienne Gracie Allen and the ice skating champion Sonja Henje.
Nonetheless, the novels of S. S. Van Dine—at least the early titles—remain classic puzzles of Golden Age detection and Willard Huntington Wright one of the most important figures in the history of the American detective story.
Wright’s health continued to decline through the 1930s and he died of a heart attack in New York in April 1939.
One of a series, ‘The Almost Perfect Murder Case’ was published in Cosmopolitan in July 1929.
THE HOURS OF DARKNESS
Edmund Crispin
1
At ten thirty-five p.m. on Christmas Eve, Noel Carter said to Janice Mond:
‘This is perfectly senseless, Janice. What does it matter if we are discovered?’
‘If you’re going to play a game at all, Noel,’ said Janice sententiously, ‘you must play it properly.’
‘I didn’t ask to play the damned game. Anyway, it’s obviously unfair to be hiding outside the house—quite apart from the fact that we shall both be laid low with pneumonia in a few hours. Good heavens, Janice, it’s freezing. I don’t know how you can stand it. You’ve got practically nothing on.’
‘You ought to be very pleased,’ Janice replied coolly. ‘After all, Noel, the sole purpose of playing hide-and-seek is to allow people to make love in decent privacy for a few minutes. Nothing will make me believe that Duncan is actually looking for anyone,’
‘I wish he’d find us,’ said Noel unchivalrously. ‘I wish he’d find us and take us back to the fire. I should like some whisky. I wish you were a salamander.’
Janice sighed, but made no remark. Noel got up and went to the door of the little summer-house, from which he surveyed the black bulk of Rydalls looming against a star-lit but moonless sky, and the thin sheet of snow, marked only with their own footprints, which stretched bleakly in every direction. A small but chilling wind was moving among the bare branches of the trees in the park, and the only sound was the distant howling of a dog. It rose and fell on the night air with a monotonous persistency which became, after a few minutes, extremely trying.
‘Dogs only make that noise,’ Noel observed, ‘when there are vampires leaving their graves.’
‘Come and make love to me, Noel,’ said Janice from the gloom at the back of the summer-house.
‘Darling, I should love to,’ said Noel carefully, ‘if it weren’t for the fact that my animal heat—which, I may say, is always rather precarious—has now quite deserted me … How much longer do we have to stay in this detestable hovel?’
Janice felt in her handbag and produced a tiny gold cigarette-lighter. Its wavering flame lit up her ash-blonde hair and her pretty, petulant, childish features. She could not, thought Noel, be more than twenty. She looked at her wrist-watch, a tiny, jewelled rectangle on her slender wrist.
‘Ten minutes,’ she announced. ‘Then they’ll ring the gong, and we can go back, and you can have your damned whisky.’ She paused, and then said:
‘You don’t approve of me, do you, Noel?’
‘I think you’re very attractive indeed,’ he answered—with truth, since the lighter was gleaming on her slim and gently rounded body in its white slipper satin gown, and her bare arms were smooth and soft to look at.
‘Then why don’t you make love to me?’
‘Because’—the remark sounded a trifle priggish—‘I just don’t make love to every pretty girl I happen to meet.’
‘Why not?’ she asked disconcertingly.
‘I have principles,’ Noel replied mendaciously. As a matter of fact he had none.
‘You mean you’re terrified of getting involved.’
‘Very well.’ Noel was annoyed at so much perceptivity. ‘I’m terrified of getting involved. Also, I’m cold.’
‘You needn’t worry,’ said Janice, with all the scorn of her youth. ‘I shan’t run after you … Damn, this thing’s getting hot—’
The lighter fell with a clatter on to the uneven wooden floor of the summer-house. They were in darkness again. Noel dutifully groped about for it.
‘I suppose the fact is,’ Janice resumed in implausibly casual tones, ‘that you’re interested in Patricia.’
‘Here’s your lighter.’
‘Thanks. Of course I don’t blame you. Patricia’s a very attractive girl, though I must say, I wish she wouldn’t use that particular shade of lipstick.’
‘Puss, puss.’
‘Oh, don’t be childish, Noel … I wonder who it was attacked her the other night?’
They heard a car coming up the drive, its tyres crackling in the frozen snow. The dog gave one last, devastating howl, and then was mercifully silent. When the ignition of the car was turned off, it was possible to hear the high, metallic singing of the telephone wires in the road beyond the low flint wall which bounded the little estate. A freezing gust of wind blew through the summer-house door; Noel shivered.
