“Exactly,” said Miss Phipps. “Then dismiss that idea altogether from your mind and consider the facts you have laid before me. Don’t you see what they all point to? The origin of the tragedy remains as yet obscure to me, because your sketch of the characters is so lamentably imperfect. But one fact emerges clearly. Don’t you see that the wrong person tripped over that string?”
“What?” shouted Tarrant; his voice was so loud that several of the dahlias stirred and nodded. “How do you reach such a preposterous conclusion?”
“But you told me yourself,” objected Miss Phipps mildly, “Mrs. Stacey moved Rachel’s bedroom so that she could hear the child if she cried in the night. What do you do when you hear a child cry in the night? You hurry to soothe her. Who, then, often ran down those stairs in the night? Eleanor Stacey. Who knew that fact? Everyone in the household, including Rachel. So much is established fact. I then went one step further and said: What do highly-strung children often feel toward their stepmothers?”
“You mean Rachel meant to murder Mrs. Stacey out of jealousy? Good God! And she’s such a nice little kid; I was so sorry for her. How horrible!”
“That’s what I thought,” said Miss Phipps sweetly. “But don’t you see, the siphon clears her. She adored her father. She knew that he might come down to fetch the missing siphon. Would she, then, place the string there just that night? No; for to do so was to risk her father’s life, and there were many other nights. Therefore Rachel did not place the string that night. But the string was placed that night. Therefore we must look elsewhere for the murderer—and how gladly,” said Miss Phipps, beaming, “we do so.”
“Rachel’s only a child; she mightn’t have worked all that out about the siphon; she might have forgotten all about the siphon,” said Tarrant in a tone of gloom.
“In that case the siphon has no significance at all,” snapped Miss Phipps. “For I refuse to believe that either young Thornhill or Eleanor would risk a method of killing Ambrose so dangerous to Eleanor; while if Eleanor was to be killed, the siphon had no part to play. We are just where we were before.”
At this moment the train burst through a series of bridges with a lamentable clatter; the passengers, startled awake, tossed up and down as they took down hats and picked up handbags; evidently the train was approaching some station.
“We’re much worse than we were before,” shouted Tarrant above the din. “I had one clue, and at least the identity of the victim was clear, but now you’ve thrown away the siphon and confused even the object of the crime. If Eleanor Stacey was the intended victim, an entirely fresh set of motives must be found. I wish—”
“You wish I’d never spoken to you,” said Miss Phipps regretfully. “That I can well understand. I really don’t know,” she added with a sigh, “how I came to commit such an impropriety—”
The detective colored and protested.
“—as to interrupt someone else’s cerebration,” concluded Miss Phipps firmly. “It was unpardonable and I offer you my sincerest apologies. How did I come to do such a thing? Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “I remember now! Mr. Tarrant! You’ve been deceiving me! You have omitted from your account of this tragedy one of the characters.”
“I don’t think so,” said the detective, hesitating. “The servants had only been there since the marriage this spring. I don’t think so.”
“But I’m sure,” insisted Miss Phipps. “Positive! Listen. Ambrose Stacey, aged fifty-nine. Eleanor his wife, fair and gentle, in her twenties. Rachel, child, aged twelve. Jack Thornhill, in his twenties. Then who was sullen and vehement and in the thirties?”
The detective stared.
“I read it in your notebook,” cried Miss Phipps, pointing impatiently. “Who was aged thirty-five, sullen and vehement?”
Tarrant, startled, flipped the pages. “That was Rosa Dorlan, Rachel’s nursery governess,” he discovered.
“How long had she been with the Staceys?” cried Miss Phipps eagerly.
“Seven years,” said Tarrant.
The station, an animated scene with porters, passengers, newsboys, and buffet attendants darting hither and thither like gnats above a flower bed, burst upon them.
“Then there you are!” cried Miss Phipps hastily in triumph. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see her? Rosa. Handsome. Dark. Ripe. Flushed cheeks. Vehement. Sullen. Involved with Stacey. Hopes to be his wife. The new wife comes. Finds child neurotic and unhappy. Dissatisfied with Rosa. Keeps child near her night and day. Often comes down in night to see her. Nurse knows this. String. Wife trips. End of wife. Nurse not lose job. Indispensable again to Stacey. Perhaps his wife. Siphon a chance, an accident. Wrong person killed. Great distress of Rosa. So great, she forgot to replace bulb and remove string. How’s that?”
“So good,” said Detective-Sergeant Tarrant, standing up and reaching for his hat, “that I shall get out at this station and go straight back to Brittlesea. It will make so much difference to—er, to all concerned, to have their innocence clearly established.” He pulled out an official card and offered it to her respectfully. “If you have any ideas on any future murder problems, Miss Phipps,” he said, “I wish you would drop me a line about them. Meanwhile, if there is anything I can do—”
“You’ve done it,” sighed Miss Phipps happily, snatching her pencil and writing: “Fair, young, gentle.”
DETECTIVE: ROSE GRAHAM
MURDER IN THE MOVIES
Karl Detzer
LIKE SO MANY WRITERS, Karl Detzer (1891–1987) had several careers first, many experiences of which served as colorful backgrounds or story ideas for future work. At sixteen, he took a job at his hometown newspaper, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, as a reporter and photographer, and remained a reporter for several papers in the area until he joined the army in 1916. Sent to Mexico to fight Pancho Villa’s insurgents, he then went to France and took command of the newly formed Department of Criminal Investigation to battle the wave of criminals trying to take advantage of a chaotic government after years of war. He returned to the United States in 1920 to face a court-martial for having tortured and cruelly treated prisoners, with more than a hundred witnesses against him, but he was acquitted and resigned from the army.
He soon decided that he could earn a living as a writer and gained prominence for his series of articles about the “Fire House Gang” for The Saturday Evening Post, based on incidents he observed while riding with firemen. He replicated the idea and tone for a series based on his riding along with the Michigan State Police, also for the Post, which served as the basis for a movie, Car 99 (1935), starring Fred MacMurray and Ann Sheridan.
Detzer went on to write more than a thousand stories and articles, as well as several books, most notably True Tales of the D.C.I. (1925), which contained, in fact, fictionalized accounts of some of his exploits.
“Murder in the Movies” was originally published in the May 1937 issue of The American Legion Monthly.
Murder in the Movies
KARL DETZER
JACK HARTER WAS MURDERED; no argument there. He died of a .32-caliber bullet through his heart. That’s in the record. The murder took place on sound stage Number 21 on the Titanic studio lot in Hollywood, the night of April 13th. The time was somewhere between eleven o’clock and eleven-five, which is close enough.
This much is history and nobody denies it. So why do I bring it up? Because this month the Hollywood fan magazines began picking the case to pieces again, saying the whole story hasn’t been told; ran pictures of Jack Harter, and Marie Fleming, and Sam Masterford, and Joe Gatski, and Joan Nelson, and Rose Graham, with question marks all around them. One of the magazines even used my picture. It said, “Has property man told all?” Think of that!
The writers of a Hollywood fan magazine have to have something to write about, I suppose. But there isn’t any mystery in the Jack Harter case, and never was, except between eleve
n o’clock that night and four in the morning. By the time the city police got there (and I admit we were a bit slow in calling them) all the cops needed to do was write the answer down in the book.
I’m telling it now, just the way it happened, so that there needn’t be any more pictures surrounded by question marks.
To begin with, there were thirteen of us on Stage 21 at the instant the murder occurred, on the night of the thirteenth, and maybe that had something to do with it, and maybe not. Thirteen on the stage, and one man guarding the door.
It had been a tough day on Joe Gatski’s unit. Gatski was the supervisor, what’s called an associate producer on some lots. He was the big shot on this particular production, understand, responsible to the front office for bringing it in under schedule and holding down costs and making it good box office. He picked the story, and the writers, and the director, and the star, and the extras, and the camera and sound crews, everybody. It was his baby.
This was a fourteen-day job, according to the production charts, which means that from the time the camera first turned over on it till the last retake was in the cutting room, would be two weeks. And not ten minutes over. What’s more, it looked as if we’d beat the schedule, too.
We started grinding the morning of the first, and here it was the thirteenth at eleven o’clock at night, and only one shot to finish before midnight, and we’d wrap it up in thirteen days. Thirteenth of the month, thirteen days of shooting, and thirteen people on the sound stage, and up pops a murder. Quite a combination of cause and effect, if you believe some people.
That morning the call board had us booked for a location shot out in Cahuenga Pass at eight o’clock. We had that shot in the can before eleven, and were at the studio and through with lunch and all set up to go on the back lot at one o’clock. This was a trucking shot in the Paris street, a retake of one we’d done the week before. Joe Gatski had picked it to pieces in the rushes, and ordered Sam Masterford to shoot it over.
Then we went back to the sound stage and worked in a couple of added comedy gags that Gatski had figured out which couldn’t have got by the Hays office, but we shot them anyhow. Everything going fine, you see, until three o’clock, and then Gatski came out on the stage and began to cause trouble. He didn’t think we were putting our heart into his gags, so he turned on the old temperament. That was easy for Gatski.
You’d think from the way he hollered and swooned and swore that this was a million-dollar opus we were shooting. But it wasn’t. It was a little item called “Back of the Boulevard.” Maybe you remember it, that mystery piece laid in Paris where an American detective saves the life of the Park Avenue girl. If it cost a nickel over a hundred grand to produce, well, the business manager must have been cheating again. Just an ordinary Class B flicker, for double runs in the nabe houses—that’s all it was intended for.
Marie Fleming was the star and Jack Harter played opposite her. Funny coincidence, too, because Jack used to be her husband, and not so long ago, either. She married him in 1931, when they both were just a couple of contract players. By the next year her name was in the lights on the marquee, a full-time star. And in 1931 she met Clem Batting, and she divorced Jack and married Clem before you could say Joseph B. Mankiewitz.
Jack never was a star and never would be. But everybody figured he was good for male leads for ten more years and for good character parts the rest of his life. He was a good actor, you see, but not one of these pretty boys.
I say it was a coincidence, Marie and Jack playing opposite each other. But nothing more than that. They didn’t get hostile to each other the way a lot of people do after the divorce. It was always “Hi, Jack!” when she met him, and he’d answer “ ’Lo, Marie!” and they’d act glad to see each other. Why, one night the newspapers got pictures of them dancing together at the Troc.
You’d think that it would be easy to handle them in a love scene, then, wouldn’t you? Well, it wasn’t. Sam Masterford, the director of this opus, had plenty of trouble whenever they got together. And in this fade-out shot, it was a real headache.
Oh, they went through all the motions of falling into each other’s arms; they followed the book on dialogue; and he planted the kiss on her lips for a good long ten count. But somehow, it didn’t jell. It was phony, if you get what I mean. The customers wouldn’t believe it in a thousand years.
So here we were, on the night of April 13th, making the fade-out again. It was a simple dolly shot, of the two of them going into the clinch, while the camera trucked forward on them. Do it right once, and the picture’d be finished.
It’s always a tough proposition, in the last hours of any production, whether it’s a colossal super-super or just a plain quickie. Like an orchestra winding up faster and faster for the final big um-pah. Nerves are ready to snap, and the emotions come right up to the skin where it’s worn thin. It takes only one small drink to get a man drunk on the cleanup night. You get mad easy, and you find yourself laughing like hell at something that really isn’t funny. And you’re just as like as not to fall in love with anybody that happens to be around.
I can’t explain it exactly. But ask anybody that’s ever worked in a studio. Grover Jones should have written a piece about it.
To make things worse this night, here was Joe Gatski being a general nuisance and giving bad advice and getting in everybody’s way. Sam Masterford, the director, was trying to hold things together. He was sweating and pale. It was like trying to drive a four-horse chariot with Joe Gatski scaring the horses. We started shooting the fade-out at eight o’clock, and had made two takes on it, neither of which satisfied Masterford, and were in the middle of the third when Gatski hollered, “Cut!”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jack Harter asked.
“Everything,” Gatski answered. He could have an insulting voice when he wanted to, and this night he sure did want to. “There’s two ways of doing that scene, Harter,” he said, “Clark Gable’s way and your way. And strange as it may seem, the people like Gable’s way best. You better try it.”
Sam Masterford said, “I thought they were going through it pretty well that time, Joe.”
Joe didn’t even look at him. He just said, “You thought, did you? You better tell it to Louella, so she can put in her newspaper colyum. ‘Sam Masterford has a thought.’ ”
Sam started to answer, then he put his hands in the pockets of his slacks and walked slowly out into the lights. Sweat was running off his long, thin nose and his lips were moving in and out, but he wasn’t saying anything.
“What about it, Sam?” Marie asked.
“We’ll rest a few minutes,” the director answered. “Then we’ll do it again.”
The gaffer—he’s the chief electrician—hollered “Save ’em!” and the light operators up on the scaffolds threw their switches and the big floods and stone lights went out, and the spots and baby spots on the floor dimmed. Marie was still in Jack’s arms all this time. He sort of pushed her away now and crossed to his dressing table and sat down and began to pat his forehead with a piece of cotton, very carefully, to take off the perspiration without smearing the make-up. And Joan Nelson, the hairdresser, came up behind Marie and started to fix her back hair where it had got mussed up in Jack’s arms.
Marie’s stand-in was over by the bulletin board, and Marie called to her: “You run along home, honey. I’ll not need you again tonight.”
Her voice seemed to startle Joe Gatski, for he got up quickly and walked out to the middle of the set.
“Listen, you two!” he yelled. “You, Fleming, and you, Harter. I’m sick of this. Me, spending all this money to get a fade-out right, and you double-crossing me! Now, when you put on that scene, put it on hot! What I mean, hot!”
Gatski was a little man, about forty years old, with a bay window like a basketball and a voice like a baseball umpire’s. He began tramping up and down now, and his heels
, hitting the floor, made echoes up against the roof, in spite of the acoustic lining. And as soon as he was through with Marie and Jack, he turned on Masterford.
“You call yourself a director?” he hollered. “A director! Why, you couldn’t direct a dog and pony act! You know this is costing me money? You know what money is? Or don’t you know anything?”
Masterford didn’t answer, just kept on sweating, all over his pale, high, narrow forehead, and blinking his gray eyes behind his thick glasses. A good director, Sam Masterford, even if he did get his start in horse operas. He looked at his watch after a while and called, “Ready, Marie? How about you, Jack? Okay, then. All ready, everybody. This is going to be the one we print.”
He always said that when things weren’t breaking right, and he had to shoot a scene over and over. Sort of pep talk. All directors use it. It’s their idea of psychology.
Well, we all were hoping he was right this time. Rose Graham, the script girl, held her script book up so no one could see her yawn, and went back to the little folding chair in front of the camera and sat down.
The three men on the scaffolds got set, and when Otto Schmidt, the gaffer, yelled “Lights!” they threw on the heat. The set wasn’t much, just a plain interior with a window and a sunlight arc shining through it, and a table with some books on it down left, and this door. In the previous scene Jack had come in the door and halted, and then the camera panned around to show Marie looking at him. She lifted her arms to him slowly while the camera trucked forward, and then the script called for a cut to this dolly shot of the two of them.
We started in on it again, the fourth take since supper. Some directors would have been boiling, but Sam stayed cool, on the surface at least. The cameras were grinding, and everybody was hoping this would be the last one when Gatski began to yell again.
“If I wanted Ann Harding in this production, I’d hire her,” he said to Marie. “Who ever gave you the idea that the fade-out was supposed to cool off the audience? The idea is to send ’em out heated up!”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 115