Great Detectives

by Otto Penzler

  Above all, therefore—Cockie’s progenitor had patients. And what does a doctor bring to the study of his patients, but those very qualities that we claim for the chief inspector? Observation, understanding, the ability to cleave through the irrelevant to the right and only diagnosis; a keen appreciation of cause and effect, an ever-increasing experience; integrity, wisdom …

  Shrewd and wise he was, my father-in-law, and so is Inspector Cockrill shrewd and wise. Like a good doctor, he inquires into every detail. A young man confesses to the murder of a girl. He has laid upon her breast a brooch in the form of a cross, “to show I was sorry, like.”

  “You’re telling lies,” says Cockrill. “The brooch was lying there crooked, with the pin upwards. That doesn’t sound much like reverence, does it?” But later, someone discloses that, finding the body, he has picked up the brooch and just dropped it back again. When he had first seen it, it had been the right way up. “I thought it could have been placed there—well, because it was a cross.” He added: “Is it important?”

  “It depends on what you call important,” says Cockie in his acerbic way. “It’s going to hang a man.”

  But in fact he was wrong that time; and often he is wrong—till the last hour. He is by no means cocksure—surely the greatest weakness in detective or doctor alike? In Green for Danger, out of his depth in the world of anesthetics and operating theaters, he has some bad moments. “Cockrill could not bear to look. His mind, usually so keen and clear, was a dark confusion of terror and self-questioning and a hideous anxiety. He had made an experiment, thinking it all so safe: had taken a terrible gamble with a man’s life and suddenly everything was going wrong.” He wipes his damp hands down the sides of the theater gown, fighting off a black panic.

  He is sufficiently sure, however, to work without the somewhat inevitable sergeant, a uniformed Dr. Watson to whom he can confide, as he goes along, the workings of his mind—that is, perhaps, why we know so comparatively little of them, until at the end he makes them clear. No doubt some splendid, reliable chap will be at his beck and call in the regular way, to take instructions and see things carried out; but no complacent underling sits at Inspector Cockrill’s side, interrupting interrogations with chirpy questions of his own. (I once asked a way-up policeman if a sergeant would really act like this when his superior was present. He replied in a deep voice: “Not if he ever hoped for promotion.”)

  With Mr. Charlesworth, when he becomes involved in cases where that young gentleman is in charge, the inspector maintains an armed neutrality. “Oh, yes!” Charlesworth remarked in his guileless way on their first introduction, “You’re the chap that made such a muck of that hospital case down in Kent?” Infiltrating into his cases on behalf of his friends (always with the most generous welcome—Cockie is scrupulous in sharing information and deduction, only very, very slightly obscuring this little point or that—if the silly young fool can’t take a hint, too bad!) he pursues his own somewhat Machiavellian way. And Charlesworth is a little inclined to Kindly Pity. He can hardly keep back a grin as he listens to the inspector’s great build-up of a highly elaborate case—against the wrong suspect—at the end of the Jezebel affair. A bit past it, poor old boy—these dear old duffers are all the same! Cockie observes the grin and his blood boils; but—“You’re a clever little man,” says the real murderer, inveigled by the fantasy into confession at last. And with a single look into Mr. Charlesworth’s face, off goes the inspector, clopin-clopant into the night.

  My father-in-law was a small man, white haired already when I knew him. An old mac trailed over his shoulder as he stumped off on his short legs into the veil of fine rain that hangs incessantly over the valleys of South Wales; visiting twenty or thirty patients in a day, he had a rich choice of hats. But nobody thought of him as a figure of fun! His mind was keen, his glance was bright with a sort of mischievous glee. His surgery was an old converted stable; from it he dispensed a little medicine and a great deal of down-to-earth advice, and patients have seriously told me that he could raise the dead. To me, when I write about Inspector Cockrill, it seems that I also for a little while raise the dead, and live again a few hours in the company of one whom I deeply admired and respected and deeply loved. Louli was wrong when she thought of my inspector as a funny little man. “Do you think that the truth really mattered so much?” asks the saddest and best—in the sense of intrinsic goodness—of my murderers; and, “Yes,” says Cockie. “It’s something sacred. If you’re a doctor—you have only one idea, to preserve life. If you’re a policeman, ditto—to preserve the truth.” Nothing small or funny, it seems to me—about that?

  Two thousand words, he said. Or thereabouts.

  Captain José Da Silva

  Robert L. Fish

  MOST OF THE GREAT writers of mystery fiction are English or American, and it is therefore hardly surprising that most of literature’s great detectives are English or American. Although Robert L. Fish is no exception to this long-established tradition, Captain José Maria Carvalho Santos Da Silva is. As the pride of the Brazilian law enforcement establishment, Da Silva has been a policeman for some fifteen years (though still in his late thirties).

  Fish lived in Brazil for more than a decade as a consultant to that country’s plastics industry, acquiring a familiarity with Brazilian life that lends authenticity to the Da Silva series.

  The first book about the courageous police captain, The Fugitive, earned Fish an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for best first novel of the year, in 1962. But Da Silva is not the only memorable character created by the prolific Fish. A series of police procedural novels and short stories (written under the pseudonym Robert L. Pike) features Lieutenant Clancy of the N.Y.P.D., whose name was changed to Bullitt when Steve McQueen portrayed him as a San Francisco cop in the film version of Mute Witness, and later became Lieutenant Reardon of San Francisco.

  A long cycle of parody-pastiches published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine involves Schlock Homes of 221B Bagel Street and his assistant, Dr. Watney. One of the great crooks of recent years is also a Fish character: Kek Huygens, a Polish-born smuggler with a Dutch name, who carries a valid American passport. And in 1963, Fish completed The Assassination Bureau, a crime novel left unfinished by Jack London at the time of his death. The resemblance of the book to the film made from it (starring Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas) ends with its title. The 65-year-old author lives with his wife in Trumbull, Connecticut.

  Captain José Da Silva

  by Robert L. Fish

  THE FIRST TIME I met Captain José Da Silva—Zé Da Silva, I later learned, to his friends—was at Mario’s, that great restaurant with its world-famous brandy bar located in Leme, that short cul-de-sac portion of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro that runs north from the Avenida Princesa Isabel to deadend in rock and ocean, barring further passage. I was living in the section called Leblon at the time, rather a distance from Leme and Mario’s, but I had gotten into the pleasant habit of dropping in there for a drink or two on my way home each evening. It was very relaxing to sit at one of the small outdoor tables in that quiet backwater on the otherwise busy beach and watch the shadows darken on the ocean while they lightened on the glass in your hand. The vast endlessness of the Atlantic, stretching to the dimming horizon, was soothing; it seemed to put a person into a more proper perspective after a day in the city battling small people for small rewards and somehow thinking it important.

  This particular day I had seated myself and was waiting for a waiter to appear. Two men began to pass me, edging their way toward an unoccupied table, when the one in the lead suddenly stopped and bent toward me, smiling, his hand outstretched.

  “You’re Robert Fish, aren’t you? The writer?”

  I made my living as an engineer in those days, and the writing was almost a hobby, but I cannot imagine a writer failing to respond to such an implied suggestion that his work had been read. It took me several moments, though, even while shaking the man�
�s hand, to realize he was a Mr. Wilson I had met several times at the American embassy, the first time when I had gone there to register as an American living permanently in Brazil. Wilson—to my shame I cannot recall his first name to this day—was the type of person, not only whose first name could easily be forgotten, but whose face could elude one as well. This must have been the third or fourth time I had seen the man, and it was only now that his nondescript personality was impressing itself upon me to the extent that allowed me to recognize him.

  “Mr. Wilson. Sit down. Please!” I said, somehow happy with the interruption. It had been a dull day and Wilson’s companion appeared to be a rather interesting type. Not, certainly, a man one would forget as easily as one did Mr. Wilson.

  The two men seated themselves and Wilson introduced his friend to me as a Captain José Da Silva, of the Rio Police. (It was only later I learned the full extent of his rather effulgent name, or the fact that he was the Brazilian representative to Interpol—even as I later learned that Wilson was his American counterpart in Brazil …)

  I must say that my first reaction was one of complete surprise. At first glance, Da Silva seemed much more the type the police might pursue, rather than the type to be the pursuer. He was a bit taller than myself, which would make him about six foot, or six foot, one inch in height; he had an athletic build with, I judged, between one-eighty and one-ninety pounds in weight. He had wide shoulders, narrow waist and hips, and while his face was well structured, some early childhood disease had covered it with pockmarks. He wore a brigand mustache almost as a challenge, and both it and his wild black shock of unruly hair could have stood a barber’s attention. There was a saturnine look on his Indianlike face, a humorous glint in his black eyes, as if he were reading my thoughts and being amused by them. As for his dress—and one must remember this was in a day when Brazilian functionaries wore jackets and neckties as regulation, regardless of the insufferable heat—Da Silva was dressed carelessly and comfortably in an open-necked sport shirt, and I later realized the only reason he wore a jacket at all was to conceal his belt holster and the gun he carried.

  There were several things that impressed me about the man, though, that first evening we met. First was the fact that he was no sooner seated than a waiter appeared, as if by magic, carrying a drink for both him and Wilson. At Mario’s, this is no small recognition! I have seen ministers of the state wait as long as I have before a waiter would deign to notice them. The second thing that impressed me was that, as if by magnet, every feminine eye in the place swung around to study him with obvious approval, as well as several women merely walking pets in the area. Although Da Silva gave no indication that he was aware of the inspection, I was sure he not only knew of it, but enjoyed it thoroughly. Since in my opinion he was not, and is not, a particularly handsome man, I could only concede some magnetism on his part that is, frankly, beyond my understanding.

  Still, I found Captain Da Silva quite interesting that first evening, and remarkably well informed. His English was perfect, which was just as well since my Portuguese at that time was rather sketchy. I knew for a certainty as we spoke that the captain’s many adventures could well prove excellent grist for the mill of my restless typewriter. But it was only after we had bade each other good-evening and I was driving home that I realized that while the captain had been quite gregarious—one might even say garrulous—he had managed to reveal remarkably little about himself.

  The next day, by now thoroughly intrigued by the idea of putting Captain Da Silva on paper, I called the American embassy and was fortunate in finding Wilson free for lunch. I felt sure I could discover far more about the captain from his friend than I could from his own lips. Wilson and I met at the upper-deck restaurant in the Santos Dumont Airport terminal, a place I later learned was a favorite of Da Silva himself. Over our first drink I mentioned my thought of doing some fiction based on Da Silva, and added that I would like to include Wilson in the stories as well, being positive that such flattery to a man as prosaic as Wilson was sure to guarantee me his complete cooperation. “But,” I added, “I’m afraid I will need your help. Captain Da Silva seems rather—well, possibly modest isn’t the exact word …”

  Wilson laughed delightedly. “Yes, I must agree with you on that. Modest is not the exact word for Zé.”

  “What I mean is,” I went on doggedly, “is that he talks a lot, but he says so little about himself.”

  “Count your blessings,” Wilson said in the tone of one giving valuable advice. “You only met him last night.” He saw the look on my face, and smiled. “Tell me, as a writer how do you see Da Silva? As what type of character?”

  I gave the matter some thought. “I see him as an adventurer,” I said at last. “The captain of a ship running contraband—well, chasing contraband, then—or the pilot of a fighter plane, swooping down on the enemy, guns blazing—”

  Wilson laughed again. “Da Silva hates airplanes with a passion! He nearly swoons with fear every time he has to climb into one. He is utterly convinced of the theory of gravity, and he is positive every time he gets into one that he is signing his own death warrant. He is sure it will crash.”

  I stared at the man, by now convinced that Wilson was merely jealous of the captain’s exploits. “Are you saying that Captain Da Silva is a coward?” I asked coldly.

  Wilson’s smile disappeared instantly. He looked at me with a touch of disappointment, as if wondering how anyone as dense as myself could ever aspire to becoming a writer.

  “I am saying quite the contrary,” he said evenly. “I am saying that Zé Da Silva is the bravest man I know. He hates and fears airplanes, but he flies in them. He has an almost pathological fear of snakes, but he once went to an island that was literally covered with them, in order to solve a case. He hates fat women in slacks, but he once—” His smile returned and with it his previous lightness of tone. “Well, I don’t know if his bravery went quite that far. You’ll have to ask him that one yourself.” He raised a hand for a waiter. “Look, I’ve been invited to his mother’s home on Sunday for cocktails; I imagine she feels much as you apparently do, that she can get more information on her son and his doings from me than from him. Why don’t you come along? I’m sure you’ll find it interesting …”

  So Sunday found me at the home of Dona Beatriz Carvalho Santos Da Silva, in the suburb of Santa Teresa, high in the wooded hills above Rio. The home was quite a surprise; I had no idea that policemen’s families ran to such luxury. But his mother was equally surprising. I’m not sure exactly what I had been expecting, but certainly not this small, delicate woman with beautiful eyes that seemed to read my thoughts. Wilson was there when I arrived and apparently he had briefed Dona Beatriz on my mission, so I wasted little time.

  “How did it happen that your son took up police work?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem to be—well, I mean the majority of police I’ve seen here—as well as in most places—well, they aren’t particularly educated, and it doesn’t seem to be the type of profession—what I mean is—”

  She saved me in my floundering. “José Maria”—she never referred to her son in any other way, I discovered—“José Maria is rather stubborn, as you’ll discover if you get to know him better.” (Her English was as good as her son’s—or as mine. It was only later I learned her mother had been American, and that English was the home language.) “José Maria became interested in criminology when he was studying in the United States, and fortunately our family can afford to let him indulge in his hobbies. I’m afraid I spoil both José Maria and his sister, but they are all I have. Their father died when they were children.”

  I had so many questions I didn’t know where to begin. “You consider his work merely a hobby? Does he?”

  “I hope so,” she said calmly. “Any work properly done must be a hobby if it isn’t to become boring. But if you’re thinking of a hobby as something to be dropped when one is tired of it, then we are at odds. José Maria will never drop police work. He likes
it, which is all that counts.” She smiled at me. “He is also very good at it.”

  There was little I could say to that, so I plowed on.

  “You say he studied in the United States?”

  “Only his last two years of university. He had been studying law here at the University of Rio, but he was thrown out after he put a knife through his cousin’s hand.” I’m afraid I stared, but Dona Beatriz was not at all perturbed. “Nestor had taken something without José Maria’s permission, which was very foolish of the boy. But Nestor was always doing foolish things. Poor Nestor! He was killed in a foolish way not too long ago. Fortunately, José Maria was able to find the people responsible.”

  There was the sound of the bell, and a moment later a group came in. Apparently Sunday was a get-together day at Dona Beatriz’s home, and our hostess had to excuse herself and take charge of her other guests. Wilson walked to the sideboard, refreshed our drinks, and sat down beside me.

  “Are you sure you want to write about Zé Da Silva?” he asked. “He’s quite a bit different from most fictional policemen, or private-eye detectives, you know.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “Well,” Wilson said, “to begin with, most fictional policemen—official policemen—are stupid, and their cases are solved either by brilliant amateurs or by private-eye detectives. Zé is far from stupid, and I pity the brilliant amateur who gets in his way on a case. And as for the private-eye detectives, the Mike Hammers and their ilk, if they’re hit on the head with a sledgehammer, they merely scramble themselves some eggs (why always eggs?), wash them down with whiskey—a sickening thought in itself—take a cold shower, and are as good as new, ready to get right back to criminal-chasing. Well, first of all, Zé hates cold showers, although I do admit he’s fond of eggs. And when he’s hit on the head—which has happened several times to my knowledge—he bleeds, and gets to a doctor as fast as he can. Zé recognizes the danger of infection from dirty sledgehammers, which most fictional detectives apparently do not.”