AHMM, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Tell me,” said Latimer, “are you still working for Edward Delavan?"

  I was surprised I had divulged it. “Why do you ask?” I stalled.

  Then Sir Stephen Latimer, Solicitor, described how it was such an amusing coincidence because right after our meeting, he had gone for lunch at the Argracu Club, where he was new at the time, but was just that day introduced to an Edward Delavan.

  Alarmed, I interrupted quite casually and said that, in fact, I had left Delavan's employ under frankly difficult circumstances—I hoped my long-suffering expression implied that his fellow Argracu member was a ravening libertine—so I would appreciate his not mentioning this conversation.

  "Naturally,” he exclaimed, blushing. He had remarked to Delavan what a charming secretary he has—why, Miss Jessel, of course—and how she had been enquiring after a friend's will. Minor male heir, paternal line, uncle secondary legatee and so on. He found it quite fascinating, really, and then I mentioned your next appointment for the twenty-seventh at ten a.m.—he agreed you would probably be taking the 8:55 train from the country—and that I hoped that it wouldn't interfere with your secretarial duties. “Miss Jessel,” said Edward Delavan with what seemed, if Latimer was not mistaken, true appreciation, “is damnably thorough."

  * * * *

  "You came.” Flora Delavan looked up at me with a charming smile where she sat in what she called her fairy garden. It was sheltered from the mansion by a low crumbling wall, and because it was only April, the vines were still brown. She wore a smock over her mourning clothes, and in the slender sunlight of early spring, her wide-set blue eyes were the brightest colour around. I stayed only as articulated as she could make me, so as not to frighten her. She had spied a chameleon, she told me, as though I were still her governess. And a meadow vole. And a dragonfly. I praised her powers of observation.

  "Flora,” I then said, and my voice sounded like part of the warm breeze, “what happened to Miles was wrong.” I told her I needed her help, that there was no one else whose help would matter, and when she asked if it would bring Miles back to Bly, I had to admit it would not. But it would mean consequences for very bad behavior. She declared she liked consequences very much. I explained that I needed her to write a letter to her Uncle Edward, telling him she wants to speak to him about the last gift he had sent to Miles, and that she has interesting information she wants to share about arrow poisons. Mrs. Grose will bring her on the Wednesday of next week, and she will meet him at eleven a.m. outside Liverpool Street railway station.

  She wanted to know how she could persuade Mrs. Grose, but I smiled and glimmered and told Flora she wouldn't actually be going. I would be meeting Uncle Edward instead. Flora reached out a hand as though to touch me. I missed her so much at that moment that I ached, so I fully corporealized, grabbing her close in a hug. “Flora,” I told her, “you are a very wealthy girl,” and I handed her a folded piece of blue stationery on which I had written Sir Stephen Latimer's address. “Here is someone who will help you.” She slipped it into the pocket of her smock.

  "Next week,” I went on, “tell Miss Dalrymple that you are making an appointment with him because you will be requiring financial assistance and general guidance. And as for Miss Dalrymple—” Surely she could find someone better. “—you will be able to find someone less desirous of drawing room drama. Someone who doesn't see romance in a mud puddle."

  Flora's brows drew together. Dalrymple, she said judiciously, was really quite good at maths. “Besides, if I let her go,” she said with the imperturbable good sense of an eight year old, “who else will have her?"

  On Wednesday of the following week, I sat outside the house on Harley Street, dressed in the cap, muslin shirt, and Sebastian trousers from Quint's Costumerie. When Edgar had scrutinized me, he felt the outfit was missing something, so he allowed me to wear his black greatcoat. It was Peter Quint who had found the horses for me, two particularly lively war horses that had died in the Crimea. Where he got the hansom cab, I never knew, but I strongly suspect that someone was missing one. For the moment, the horses and I were fully corporealized, and their hooves clattered nicely on the cobblestones. When they whinnied, I found myself missing Terra life, but not all the desperate endeavors.

  Gentlemen in handsome topcoats and ladies most definitely not wearing trousers strolled along Harley Street, hardly noticing just another cabbie. While I waited, I reminded myself that I was there as an ambassador of Miles Delavan, caught somewhere in the permabrane, but now that I remembered pieces of that February day over a year ago, my mind kept seeing it again and again—me, on my way to my late afternoon appointment with Sir Stephen Latimer.

  * * * *

  The twilight, the lamplighter starting his rounds at the far end of the deserted boulevard, even the hawkers gone for the day. And then I was starting across the street, and suddenly there came the sound of a carriage, a team, a whip cracking, a voice like the end of time itself—"Hyaa!"—spurring the horses on, out of nowhere, nowhere. Feeling myself churn under the wheels, the weight, the killing weight, my shout cut off forever—Was he even stopping?—my final certainty that it was just a terrible accident as everything about me was lost in the crush of flesh on stone. Had I any time to turn my head, I know now I would have recognized the driver.

  No wonder I lingered in the permabrane for six weeks. Only resolving spontaneously when I naturally belonged in Ectoplis Enquiries, and could investigate the crime of my own death. I checked the pocket watch Quint had provided me. Fifteen minutes to eleven, Wednesday the seventeenth of April. And then Edward Delavan emerged, off to meet his niece Flora, looking pleased to find a cab so handy, as if this was his lucky day. Ah, he had chosen his dove grey frock coat. Pity.

  Without so much as looking at me, he climbed in and gave me the address Flora had provided. I garbled something back at Delavan by way of saying whatever you say, sir, and I jostled the reins at my team, who snorted at the trotting pace, which was nothing like what they had seen in the Crimea.

  When we reached the Strand, I cracked the whip and watched the team's shoulders ripple in the gallop they had been missing for the last thirty years. The wind rushing by us blew their manes in many directions as we flew along the wide thoroughfare, and their fine heads seemed to chew at the simple Terran air that fell away from us as we raced. It was finally enough to alarm my fare, and Edward Delavan was shouting, something about stop and madman, and I saw his gloved hand clutch at the top of the cab.

  "Hyaa!” I cracked the whip over the horses, who couldn't get enough, and as we flew unstable over the cobblestones, Delavan half pulled himself, screaming, out the side of the cab. As he turned to look at me, I flung off my cap, shook my hair, and leaned my body into the task at hand. Closer. Closer still. The horses and I grew more transparent, and as Edward Delavan struggled against the speed to look me in the face, I felt radiant with satisfaction.

  When he recognized me, a glimmering madwoman in trousers driving a hansom cab at breakneck speed, his terror was complete and lasted for a full five seconds before I drove us headlong into the brick wall of a factory. My Crimean beauties and I sailed through the factory wall without a problem. But the cab—and Edward Delavan—did not.

  * * * *

  Miles and Peter Quint and I finally found the spot in the permabrane where he was eternally imprisoned. I pulled Miles close to me, running my forearm along the top of his dear head, as we looked. Delavan gets to keep the dove grey frock coat, but it was a bloody mess for all eternity, which bothered the fastidious Quint, who had been his valet, after all. Edward Delavan was stored forever in a scuttling crab position, where no art could ever penetrate his neverending consciousness. He didn't even have the luxury of space, caught there between the likes of the cannibal Sawney Beane and the strangler Ann Whale.

  He could only catch glimpses of Terra. But right now his eyes were directly on our little group, and the tantalizing draw of Eutopia. I have kept the trousers, and wear them more frequently
. Edgar has taken Miles on as office boy. Quint has been negotiating a costuming contract with a Eutopian West End theatre owner named Will. The Crimean horses went back to the stable and await their next assignment. As for Edward Delavan, judging by the look on his face, he was a man who had finally found his horse.

  Copyright © 2010 Shelley Costa

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  Department: THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by by Willie Rose

  Each letter consistently represents another. The quotation is from a short mystery story. Arranging the answer letters in alphabetical order gives a clue to the title of the story.

  TGJ W EGEUFL KXU KLGGO IMZLU KLZDD; LXUF KXU EWOU W YMJZGMK VUKLMJU PZLX XUJ JZVXL XWFO, VWNU W KEWDD AJUWLXR KGMFO WFO TUDD TGJPWJO WL XZK TUUL.

  —FVWZG EWJKX

  Cipher Answer: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  Solution listed in Table of Contents

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  Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) and William G. Tapply (1940-2009): An Appreciation

  The deaths of William G. Tapply on July 28, 2009 and of Stuart M. Kaminsky on Oct. 9, 2009 lend added poignancy to reading what may be their last published books. Both authors had long, distinguished writing careers that garnered fans and accolades from their earliest efforts onward.

  Over the course of my reviewing career since 1986, I've been fortunate to cover more than twenty books by the two authors, and I've read considerably more by them. And still, my reading barely scratches the surface.

  Stuart M. Kaminsky, who earned lifetime achievement awards from both the Mystery Writers of America (2006) and the Private Eye Writers of America (2007), was not just a prolific mystery novelist. He was also an astute editor, biographer, television writer, interviewer, and graphic novelist. In a writing career that spanned almost four decades, Kaminsky wrote or edited close to ninety volumes.

  Kaminsky had a rich academic history: a BA in Journalism and MA in English, both from the University of Illinois, and a PhD in Speech from Northwestern University. He taught film and film history at Northwestern for sixteen years. His love of film informed his biographies of Clint Eastwood, Ingmar Bergman, and John Huston, among others. He also co-authored a book on filmmaking, Basic Filmmaking (Arco, 1981), and an instructional guide for small-screen scribes, Writing for Television (Dell, 1988). And, of course, he wrote for television, and he penned novels based on TV series such as Rockford(The Green Bottle, Forge, 1996 and Devil on My Doorstep, 1998) and CSI: New York (Dead of Winter, Pocket Star, 2005, Blood on the Sun, 2006, and Deluge, 2007).

  Kaminsky created five series mysteries, and while I'm sure each has its adherents, I suspect that his twenty-four Toby Peters mysteries and his sixteen Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries would garner the most votes.

  Toby Peters, a Hollywood P.I. in the 1940s, parlayed his 1977 debut—Bullet for a Star, in which he bails out Errol Flynn from a blackmail scam—into a very busy career rescuing movie stars and other celebrities from everything including murder to embarrassing peccadilloes. The series allowed Kaminsky to utilize his knowledge of films and film history, and half the fun of the Peters series is the detailed attention Kaminsky pays to the 1940s setting. Each detail—the cars, the music, clothes, and furniture fashions—is perfectly tailored to reflect the era.

  Bullet for a Star took place in 1942, and the busy detective had only reached 1944 when the twenty-third volume, Mildred Pierced, appeared. By that year Toby was driving an old Crosley—a car that “runs on washing machine and refrigerator parts” and listening to The Aldrich Family on the radio. The projected cost of a post-war auto will be “$900 for most, as much as $1,400 for a luxury model.” Would it were so.

  An excellent continuing supporting cast led by Sheldon Minck, inept dentist and inventor; Gunther Wherthman, suave linguist and little person; and massive wrestler/poet Jeremy Butler adds to the pleasure. Among the celebrities featured are Howard Hughes, Bela Lugosi, Gary Cooper, Mae West, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Wayne, and Salvador Dali.

  As good as the Toby Peters series is, however, my favorite Kaminsky series stars Moscow policeman Porfiry Rostnikov. Two of the series novels were finalists for Edgar awards (Black Knight in Red Square and Tarnished Icons), and A Cold Red Sunrise won the 1989 Edgar for Best Novel. Rostnikov, the burly ex-wrestler with the bum leg (later an artificial leg), is a shrewd detective and a shrewd judge of character. Both skills are necessary to survive in a job where he must wage battles against criminals within and outside the Russian bureaucracy.

  Rostnikov and his supporting cast evolve more than those in the Peters series, and fans will be grateful for a whisper to the living (Forge, $23.99), which provides a fitting capstone to the series. Rostnikov takes on a serial killer dubbed the Bitsevsky Maniac who is intent on surpassing the record kill total for a Russian murderer. Members of Rostnikov's staff are involved in other investigations as well as life-changing personal events. Son Iosef and Elena Timofeyeva are just days away from their wedding. Emil Karpo—reclusive, cadaverous, and relentless—finds an outlet for his affections. Sasha Tkach's wife, Maya, has tired of his endless affairs and taken their children and left him. And the bachelor, Arkady Zelach, who still lives with his mother, has to face the prospect of her imminent death.

  Kaminsky keeps several investigations and personal dramas moving at a steady clip, with Rostnikov again managing to work his magic to thwart enemies on both sides of the law.

  * * * *

  In addition to penning mystery novels, William G. Tapply wrote numerous books about fishing and the outdoor life, was a contributing editor to Field & Stream magazine, and wrote a column for American Angler. As Writer in Residence at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, he taught English. He also wrote The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit, published in 1995, with a second, expanded edition released by Poisoned Pen Press in 2004. For Elements, Tapply culled advice from top writers, editors, agents, and publishers including Otto Penzler, Fred Morris, Jeremiah Healy, Barbara Peters, and Robert L. Rosenwald.

  The majority of William G. Tapply's crime fiction output featured attorney Brady Coyne, who, like his creator, frequently indulged his passion for fishing. Tapply's first mystery, Death at Charity's Point, won the 1984 Scribner Crime Novel Award and was a finalist for the British Crime Writers’ Association First Blood Dagger. It was followed by an even better entry, The Dutch Blue Error, which demonstrated Tapply's plotting skills at their best. Tapply proceeded to take Coyne on twenty-five more adventures usually resulting from seemingly innocuous requests from his clients.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  In 2001, Tapply's Brady Coyne and Philip R. Craig's J.W. Jackson teamed up in First Light for the first of three joint cases. It was an inspired match, as the authors’ friendship and shared love of fishing and outdoor life made it a natural fit for their characters.

  In 2005's Second Sight, Tapply and Craig wrote alternating chapters that occasionally required each to write the other's character. The result was so smooth that one author might have written the book. Before Craig's untimely death in 2007, the duo completed a third mystery, ironically titled Third Strike.

  A trio of recent books, including his latest, dark tiger (Minotaur, $24.99), featured Stoney Calhoun, a man suffering from trauma-induced amnesia that has tarnished his memory of who he is, without damaging the language and weaponry skills he learned in his earlier life. Tapply began this series in 2004 with Bitch Creek, whichintroducedCalhoun and was followed by Gray Ghost in 2007. Calhoun lost his memory as the result of a lightning strike, but was able to forge a new life as part owner of a Maine bait shop and as a fishing guide. He is in thrall to a mysterious “Man in the Suit” who periodically shows up and gives Stoney assignments with the promise of revealing more about Stoney's past life.

  In Dark Tiger, Tapply's third Calhoun mystery, the Man in the Suit threatens to destroy Stoney's new
life unless he goes undercover at an exclusive fishing camp to solve the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl and a federal agent. With nothing to go on, Stoney simply keeps probing until he finds a veritable hornet's nest of secrets. It is vintage Tapply, and leaves readers wondering what path Stoney would have eventually traveled to self-discovery.

  Copyright © 2010 Robert C. Hahn

  * * * *

  ALL POINTS BULLETIN: AHMM contributor Doug Allyn's new novel, THE JUKEBOX KING, was recently published in Europe by Editions Payot & Rivages, Paris.

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  Fiction: HIGH FINANCE by Andrei Bhuyan

  Portman and Block swung around the corner of the Australian Stock Exchange building. Thursday, seven p.m. Their car bounced and screeched like a cartload of scrap tin.

  Portman looked outside. A news reporter and a cameraman huddled against the cold. The reporter held a sheet of foolscap paper with notes in her outstretched hand. The paper fluttered in the wind. Above her ran a ticker tape of stock prices, every stock code colored red.

  Block said, “I don't get it. The stock market lost another billion. Or ten. Some folk had millions invested. What do they want? If I had that kind of money, I'd be well quit. Boss?"

  Portman didn't answer. He rolled down the car window. The air was dry and sharp as a razor.

  Block continued, “Live on interest. Two houses, a jacuzzi in each. A chauffeur? Maybe. Hard to find someone who can drive well, not these days..."

  Portman tuned out Block's voice. He thought about Nikki. He thought of the curve of her smile, her abundant hips, the small chin that he could cup in the palm of his hand. She wasn't happy when the call came. She didn't say it. But he saw the look that she gave him, the look of an animal, uncomprehending and hurt.