The Marble Orchard, page 20
part #2 of Black Mask Boys Series
"She was lying to you," said Elina. "When she came over tonight to kill Merv she had the gun in her left hand. There was no indication that she couldn't use that hand. I don't think there's any question about the fact that she shot herself. This is suicide, Mr. Chandler."
"Well, I'll admit you know a lot about suicide. You staged Julian's beautifully."
She was suddenly shrill: "Are you saying that I killed Julian?"
"That's right. And I'm also saying that you killed David DuPlaine and your puppet boyfriend, Merv Enright."
Hammett and Gardner were staring at me; this was the last thing they'd expected to hear.
"Now I can see why you write detective stories," said Elina coldly. "It's because you have such a vivid imagination. How could I kill anyone when I was locked in the bathroom?"
"You faked it," I said, "just the way you gave yourself that black eye, pretending that Merv had done it."
She glared at me, saying nothing.
"Let's just run through tonight's activities," I said, "starting with a visit to your sister here at her home. She trusted you completely, so it was a cinch to set up this little scene… get her watching one of her vampire films, obtain the .22, walk up to her in the dark, and shoot her in the forehead, close enough to leave powder burns."
"So you're saying I put the gun in her hand?"
"Not right away, you didn't. First you needed it to kill Enright so the bullets would match. You went to Ridgecrest, shot him, then drove back here and placed the .22 in Carmilla's left hand."
"So how, in this preposterous murder fantasy of yours, could I end up in a locked bathroom, tied and gagged?"
"You never were."
"Never in the bathroom! But you found me there. You had to break down the door!"
"I mean that you were never tied or gagged. After killing Carmilla, you drove back to Ridgecrest and entered the bathroom, locking it from the inside. There's a small window in there, and you could have opened the window and thrown the key out. I'm sure the cops will find it in the bushes when they know where to look."
"What about the rope and the gag?" asked Gardner. "How could she tie and gag herself?"
"She carried a rope in with her, along with the gag. Left 'em on the floor to make it look as if she'd struggled free. Then, when she knew we could hear her, she started screaming."
"Were you onto her before we came here?" asked Hammett.
"No, not before tonight. I bought her story about being beaten by Enright and wanting to get away for a chance at a new life."
"So it was the gun in Carmilla's left hand that tipped you?" asked Gardner.
"Along with this," I said, taking the folded sheets of paper from my coat. "A letter from Julian Pascal to my wife."
I turned to face Elina. "It was written the same week Julian died, just after you went to see him."
"What Julian and I had was ancient history. We'd been out of touch for years. Why would I want to see him?"
"To take advantage of his good nature, his sense of fairness. You wanted to use him. But you found out that he knew about your affair with David DuPlaine."
"That's a lie! I was never sexually involved with David!"
Ignoring her outburst, I went on: "The blackmail money from your sister would dry up eventually, so you went to see your old lover and asked him to use his influence to help you get back into acting. Julian had the connections, and you told him that he 'owed you' based on your past relationship, that he had a 'moral obligation' to help an old flame. But he felt you didn't deserve his help, that you'd double-crossed your own sister when you got sexually involved with her lover. You were shocked that DuPlaine had told Julian about your affair."
"Lies! All lies!" Her face was tense, eyes heated.
"Suddenly you were worried about Julian. Until then, he hadn't told Carmilla that you were the other woman in David's life, and she had never suspected it-but now that you had resurfaced, you were afraid that Julian might go to her and tell her the truth about you and David. You knew how jealous she was, and that she'd never forgive you for betraying her with Duplaine. You'd be cut out of her will-and you couldn't let that happen. Julian had to be shut up."
"That letter's an obvious fake," she declared. "Nothing in it is true."
"So you came up with the ritual Chinese suicide idea," I continued. "But, by then, Julian had written this letter to my wife, telling her that he was in a moral dilemma. Should he help you get back into the industry out of past loyalty? Was he being too judgmental about your relationship with DuPlaine? Of course, you killed him before he could mail the letter." I gave her a cold smile. "They say that the first murder is always the toughest. After killing DuPlaine, I'll bet Julian was easy for you."
"But Carmilla shot David!" Elina protested. "She admitted it to you."
"Sure, she admitted it-after you successfully tricked her into believing she'd killed him."
Hammett looked doubtful. "How do you know that Ray?" he asked. "You told us that Carmilla was in a jealous rage that night and that she'd been fighting bitterly with DuPlaine."
"True enough," I said. "But Elina's turning out to be the other woman alters the equation. Carmilla didn't remember shooting DuPlaine. She went into a drunken blackout, and when she came out of it, the gun was in her hand. Elina told her she'd seen the shooting."
"But I did! It was Carmilla!" Elina's face was red with anger and indignation.
I continued speaking to Hammett: "Putting everything together, it's now obvious that Elina shot DuPlaine in order to set up her sister for blackmail. After Elina's film career ended, the only money she had access to was Carmilla's. Merv Enright was an ideal patsy: a bully on the outside, but obviously spineless inside and someone she could easily manipulate." I glared at Elina. "It was perfect for you. You could play Merv's victim, when actually you were in full charge from the beginning."
"Why would I want to kill my own sister?"
"Because of the will. Obviously, Carmilla named you as the principal beneficiary. She told me that there were no other relatives left in the family. You'd get it all, her estate, bank accounts, stocks, investments-a nice little haul."
"Since you're so inventive, Mr. Chandler, just how did I kill Julian Pascal?"
"My guess is that when you made The Dragon's Daughter, you got interested in Chinese culture. That's not unusual; many actors become personally interested in the milieus surrounding their roles. So you learned enough to be able to rig Julian's death to look like a ritual Chinese suicide-after you planted that Chinese book in his apartment. It never belonged to Julian. The shop owner who sold it told me that it had been bought by a white woman."
"Good luck in trying to prove any of this ridiculous nonsense in court," Elina said in a mocking tone. "I'll walk, Mr. Chandler-and then I'll sue you blind for slander and defamation of character!"
"No, you won't," I said, smiling tightly. "Your prints are all over the gun. When you put it into Carmilla's hand, you weren't able to close her fingers around it."
Elina lunged to her feet, darted across the room, and snatched the .22 out of her dead sister's hand. She swung toward me, the gun leveled. "Now, you smart-assed son of a bitch, I'm going to give you what I gave all of them!"
Hammett's .38 roared.
His bullet struck Elina's gun arm and she dropped the .22, screeching in pain. Blood spurted from the wound as she fell to one knee, gripping her shattered elbow.
Dash carefully picked up the .22, slipping it into his coat pocket. "How did you know her prints were on the gun?"
"I didn't. She could have worn gloves or wiped off the gun before she put it in Camilla's hand, but it was worth a bluff. And it got results."
"It almost got you killed," said Gardner.
I took in a deep breath, feeling very shaky. Erle was right about how close I'd come to dying. A sobering realization. I sat down in a chair, my legs suddenly weak. My palms were sweating again.
"She was right about proof," said Hammett. "Until she went for the gun, your case was pretty thin."
"You gonna call McQuillan?" Gardner asked.
"Yeah," I said, taking another deep breath, "I'm gonna call McQuillan."
And I did.
TWENTY-ONE
Another burial.
Another marble orchard.
Black skies. Heavy rain. Perfect weather for interring a vampire. Inside the coffin, she was draped in her long black cape, the one she'd first worn in The Blood Countess. It had been my idea, to bury her in the cape. Appropriate, I felt. A bit of irony she'd appreciate. Vampire Queen Buried in Batcape. The papers loved it.
Of course, she was never the Vampire Queen. Not really. She was just a desperately unhappy woman from Newark, New Jersey, named Letty Knibbs, living alone, betrayed by the man she loved, victimized and murdered by her ruthless sister.
But she would be remembered. Her fans would keep her memory alive. Her motion pictures would continue to be shown. Film historians would write books about her, analyze her brooding cinema appeal, dissect her work, and nurture her legend. Chaney… Karloff… Lugosi… Blastok. Carmilla had earned her place in the pantheon of terror.
She would have been flattered at the turnout for her burial. Hundreds of fans crowded the cemetery, shivering under open umbrellas in the chilled downslash of rain, eager for a final encounter with their dark idol.
Studio people had also gathered here, producers and writers and technicians who had worked with her in the plush years of her screen career. No family members, of course, beyond Jack Snowden, her ex-husband. No blood kin. Alone into the cold earth.
Alone.
Cissy and I had helped arrange the burial; I felt obligated to help. Somehow, despite the brief time I had known her, I felt a painful degree of sadness at Carmilla's passing.
Buddy and Margaret were here, standing together in honor of a woman they'd never known. Hammett was here, of course, and Gardner. In neatly pressed dark suits. Paying their final respects.
The minister droned on as ministers do, but I wasn't listening. I was thinking of Carmilla in her prime, tall and regal and commanding on the screen, taking joy in her performance, her black cape unfolding like the wings of night, eyes shining with triumph.
In an odd, tragic way, she had achieved her ultimate dream-to transcend her mortal flesh, to be of the Undead.
Now, because of her unique talent, the Vampire Queen would live forever.
AFTERWORD
It is essential for readers to understand a key element in my Black Mask Boys series. These books are novelistic case reports, each being filed first-person, book to book, by Hammett, Chandler, or Gardner. When I had Dashiell Hammett narrate The Black Mask Murders, there was no pretense that he was writing another Maltese Falcon; he was simply reporting what had happened in the case of the missing Cat's Eye.
In The Marble Orchard, Chandler is not writing a Philip Marlowe novel, he is recounting his experiences in relation to the death of Julian Pascal and the events that followed it. And in the third book of my series, when I have Erle Stanley Gardner narrate Sharks Never Sleep, he will not be dictating a Perry Mason novel, he will be filing a firsthand case report.
What I am doing with these books is rooted in and inspired by the real-life agency reports filed by Hammett when he worked on and off as a Pinkerton detective from 1915 into 1922. (He once claimed these case reports taught him how to write.) My reports are, of course, much more elaborate and are presented within a novelistic framework for dramatic effect-but they are reports nonetheless.
I make no claim to have reproduced, exactly and precisely, the writing style of each author. Since, in my books, these writers are "talking on paper," their narrative voices are modified. I have tried to maintain the individual flavor of each author's style within this report mode; certainly, the Chandler of The Marble Orchard differs considerably from the Hammett of The Black Mask Murders.
Chandler is much more loquacious and self-reflective, and though he is definitely tough-minded, he is not nearly as tough as Hammett in a physical sense. He was, after all, raised to be a British gentleman. His habitual perceptions are unique: He notices and describes a character's clothing and appearance in greater detail, is given to outrageous similes on occasion (more on these later), and is keenly attuned to locale and landscape (flowers, trees, furniture, architecture, geography, etc.).
Chandler's classical education in England stands in direct contrast to that of Hammett, who was self-taught, after being forced to leave school at fourteen. The cop/gangster argot so natural to Hammett's world was a foreign language to Chandler; he reproduced it with fascination, not familiarity. Chandler wrote about the mean streets; Hammett had walked them.
Of course, the murder cases they are involved in throughout this series are entirely fictional. But there is reality here; the Hollywood background of the 1930s is as factual as I can make it, and I use many actual personalities, including legendary film stars, to flesh out the era.
Julian Pascal was the real ex-husband of Cissy Chandler and his early background is authentic. I have no idea when and how he died, but he certainly was not murdered in a Chinese cemetery.
Cissy, herself, is something of a mystery woman. In all of the Chandler material I've read, there are very few references to her (beyond Chandler's own letters). I could find no personal memoirs by others relating to Cissy and her daily life with Chandler. Yet I feel that my portrait of her in this book is true to Cissy's spirit and character. She was the abiding love of Chandler's life. After her death he self-destructed, even attempted suicide.
Hammett's actual chauffeur was a "Negro" named Jones (reflective of the period, his first name is unrecorded). In this series, he has been fictionalized into Haitian immigrant Leonce "Buddy" Desvarieux. The character of Margaret Stetler is invented, but the embryonic relationship between Margaret and Buddy-as well as the interaction of these two people with the other characters in the novel-illuminates a vital, sparsely recorded, and heretofore largely invisible part of 1930s American life: the black experience.
The name of the western San Fernando Valley community of Girard was changed to Woodland Hills in 1941, five years after the events in this novel-and several years before my wife's parents moved there (from near the Los Angeles Coliseum and U.S.C.) to establish their family residence, thus making Woodland Hills my wife's "hometown."
Legally, there is no such place as Woodland Hills; it is simply one of the several dozen communities which, grouped together, constitute the vast and highly varied geographical area within the corporate limits of the City of Los Angeles. Legalities aside, the various communities within the city have individual, well-defined identities recognized by all Angelenos (and in the case of Hollywood, by the world), and my wife is proud to be the daughter of one of the first post-World War II "pioneering" families in Woodland Hills.
The personal history I have attached to each of my three protagonists, Hammett, Chandler, and Gardner, is based entirely on historical fact. As for dialogue, I have them say what they very well might have said within the fictional situations I provide. In other words, I "play fair"-which is the job and responsibility of every historical novelist. My historical approach may be lighter, faster, funnier, but it is no less relevant.
I believe that The Marble Orchard is fundamentally a more serious novel than The Black Mask Murders, but that's because Chandler was essentially a more serious man than was Hammett; certainly he was much more open in an emotional sense. Hammett always played his cards very close to the vest; he mistrusted emotionalism and valued precise objectivity.
There is also a basic difference in attitude between the two: Hammett was frittering away his life and career in the 1930s; Chandler, on the other hand, was building his life and career. I think this is reflected in the content of my two books. Despite Hammett's on-again, off-again love/hate relationship with Lillian Hellman, he had no single companion, no Cissy, in his life. He was, in effect, drifting without an emotional rudder.
As regards Chandler's vaunted style, the reader may be disappointed to find that there are very few really outrageous similes in The Marble Orchard. Surprisingly, as I discovered in researching his work, Chandler used these only in his novels-the first of which was published three years after the events depicted in my book. A careful reading of his shorter 1930s fiction will prove my point. The wild similes are simply not there.
In preparation for writing The Marble Orchard I concocted a host of new "Chandlerisms" designed to be incorporated into the narrative. I was quite happy with them; they seemed to match the famous Chandler style. Examples:
She was the kind of blonde who sits in your lap while you're still standing up.
His breath was strong enough to stop a horse at full gallop.
The room was as empty as a pimp's soul.
His smile was as stiff as a bishop's collar.
She was a hippy young thing in a swimsuit she almost had on.
Her eyes were hot enough to melt the enamel off a plaster saint.
She was as jumpy as a nun in a bawdy house.
He was as inconspicuous as an alligator in red shorts.
I had dozens of these, all ready to insert into the book. Alas, I couldn't use them; they didn't match the narrative tone or content. Sure, I stubbornly inserted a few, but kept such writing to a bare minimum; Chandler is not Philip Marlowe.
Enough. Just let me add a special acknowledgment to my wife and fellow writer, Cameron Nolan, for her wise and loving counsel, insightful editing, and valued input. Without her, The Marble Orchard would be greatly diminished, and I extend to her my heartfelt thanks. I'm very fortunate to have Cam in my life.
She's my Cissy.
-William F. Nolan
West Hills, California
