THE WEIRD WORLD OF WES BEATTIE
John Norman Harris
FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK
To E W.D. and L H.D.,
in whom Aunthood reached its finest flower
John Norman Harris is widely credited with having written the first genuinely Canadian mystery novel; in The Weird World of Wes Beattie (and its sister-novel, Hair of the Dog) he not only set his story in Toronto, but also crafted a plot that relied specifically on various Canadian preoccupations and concerns.
“First true Canadian mystery writer” would be sufficient accolade for most people, but Harris was also a gold-plated war hero: After graduating from university, and with Europe on the brink of war, he traveled to England to train as a pilot, eventually joining the RAF. In 1942 his plane was shot down over Germany, and he spent the rest of the war in a POW camp known as Stalag Luft III. While there, he was instrumental in planning the largest prison-break in the history of WWII. The story of the breakout was eventually turned into several novels and films, including “The Great Escape,” starring Steve McQueen.
After the war, Harris returned to Canada, and built a thriving career in public relations and as a short-story writer. He died suddenly, in his late 40s, on a family vacation to Vermont. The Weird World of West Beattie was the only mystery he published during his lifetime.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
One
IT WAS A SMALL SEMINAR, attended by doctors, lawyers and social workers, for the discussion of medicolegal problems.
The discussion leader for the evening was Dr. Milton Heber, an eminent psychiatrist.
“I hope you will excuse the pulp-magazine title I have chosen for my little discourse,” he said, “but I have been living in the weird world of Wes Beattie lately, and it is affecting my vocabulary. For the benefit of our distinguished visitors from the U.S.A., I will explain that Wes Beattie is a young man, age twenty-one, who is facing trial for murder in this city. The case is sub judice, so I must ask you to keep this information private. I am using it simply because it is live and topical and illustrates the need for greater cooperation among our various professions.
“Now this weird world that Wes lives in is peopled by strange, sinister criminals, grown men and women who seem to have spent a lot of time conspiring against an obscure bank clerk. They are very real people to Wes, and their influence is everywhere. They are out to get him. If you play along with Wes, he will discuss this Mystery Gang quite rationally. If you express doubts or laugh at him, he gets shrill and hysterical; then he withdraws, and won’t speak to anyone for days.
“A lot of people have been wondering what made Wes Beattie kill. A timid, shy, immature boy, not strong, commits a brutal murder. The Crown Attorney will present a credible motive. For our American friends, the Crown Attorney is your old friend the D.A. under a different name. Mr. Massingham, our genial Crown Attorney, will claim that Wes killed for money. He was due to inherit a substantial sum from his uncle, Edgar Beattie. Edgar was about to change his will and cut Wes out. So Wes killed him. All very simple. And all, in my opinion, completely false.
“Wes Beattie wouldn’t have had the guts to kill for money. He wouldn’t have killed for a free pass to Fort Knox. Then what was the motive?”
He smiled and looked at the small audience seated round the hotel salon.
“I will tell you, very briefly, why Wes Beattie killed. First of all, I will touch on the significant factors in his background. Wes’s father came from what is called a fine old family, living in a stately home in Rosedale, one of the pleasantest residential districts in Toronto. His father, Rupert Beattie, married a girl his mother didn’t approve of, and was kicked out of the home. There were two children—an older sister and Wes. The father went overseas and was killed in Italy. The mother neglected the children. So old Mrs. Beattie, full of contrition, took them away from the mother and raised them in Rosedale. The mother, I may say, had no objections that a little money wouldn’t overcome.
“Family pride, more than love of the children, prompted the move. Young Wes was spoiled in a way, but he was, I feel, starved of real affection. The one relation he really loved and admired was his Uncle Edgar, a big, rather earthy man with what old Mrs. Beattie would call ‘low tastes.’ Uncle Edgar took Wes to ball games and circuses and gave him good birthday presents. I think he made Wes a little ashamed of liking flowers and music and paintings. Wes put on a lowbrow front to win Uncle Edgar’s approval, but secretly he had less rugged tastes.
“Well, it all came out in the post-adolescent wash. Wes grew up a dreamer, a lazy boy, a chronic liar who would tell tall tales about having explored the Upper Amazon during his summer holidays and all that sort of thing. His school grades weren’t good enough to get him into university, so they got him a job in a bank. He was careless and didn’t progress very fast. He had a girl who encouraged him to spend a lot of money. He got into debt. He cadged and borrowed until his family was fed up with him. And at last he reached the fatal day when he couldn’t beg or borrow a dollar from anyone at home or at the office, and that day came at a time when he desperately needed thirty bucks or so to take his girl to the Art Gallery Ball— she was on the junior committee.
“If Wes had been a teller, he probably would have borrowed the money from the till. But he wasn’t, so what he did was the stupidest thing you could think of. He sneaked away early from the office one Thursday last May, and went to the car park behind a place called the Midtown Motel, over Spadina way, which is really just a hotel and restaurant with some motel units behind it as a gimmick. It is sometimes jocularly referred to as the Mothel, short for motor brothel.
“Wes went to the car park, looked through the cars, saw a woman’s handbag in one and stole it. He stuffed the bag under his raincoat and was making off when the car park attendant caught him. He tried to lie out of it. He said the car was his girlfriend’s car and the purse was hers too. She was in the bar, and he had come back to get her purse for her. But then the real owner of the handbag came along and claimed it. Wes tried to break away and run. But they took him to the police station, where he told more lies. He gave a false name and address. He said that the girl he had been with was a nice girl, who had obviously run away when the trouble started, because her parents would have been horrified to learn that she had been drinking at a motel; then he decided he had been with a married woman who had a jealous husband, and that she had been forced to run away.
“The upshot of all this was that Wes was dragged into police court next day, convicted and sentenced to two months for theft.”
“Next day?” a voice said. “And he got two months for a first offense?”
Everyone turned to look at the questioner. He was a short, slender man whose enormous head was surmounted by a mop of wiry black hair. He wore outsize horn-rim specs, behind which he frowned in ferocious concentration.
“Shut up, Gargoyle,” somebody said. “Don’t interrupt.”
Dr. Heber laughed. “Discussion is most important in our little project,” he said. “Please don’t hesitate to interrupt. Yes sir, Wes did get two months for a first offense, and he was tried the next day. Perhaps we could go back to that aspect later.”
“I certainly think we should,” the little man with the large head said.
“Very well. Now everything that Wes said and did at that time indicated an emotional disturbance requiring skilled therapy. What he got was two months in Guelph, where he was a bad prisoner, and when he came home he was moody, surly and withdrawn. He had already made up a story of having been framed by a mystery gang of crooks, and he plagued all his relations with the story until they were sick of it.
“Nevertheless, they handled Wes with considerable intelligence and sympathy. They humored him. An uncle got him a job with an ad agency. They tried to rehabilitate him. But another uncle—Uncle Edgar—behaved with a notable lack of sympathy. He took the attitude that Wes was a rotten little sneak thief who had turned to crime the moment he couldn’t get what he wanted honestly. He wanted no part of him.
“Now Uncle Edgar’s approval was all-important to Wes. He bugged the man. He phoned him and wrote letters. He said that the theft charge was a frame-up. He went to the police and demanded the address of the woman witness whose handbag had been stolen. They naturally wouldn’t give it to him. They don’t want released convicts to go persecuting witnesses. This was fuel for Wes’s imagination. The woman was a member of the gang, he said. But Uncle Edgar was obdurate, and he had a new will drafted, cutting Wes out. I honestly do not believe that the will had anything to do with what happened.
“For the benefit of our international guests, I will quickly run through the details of the actual murder. Edgar Beattie lived in an old-fashioned apartment where he was looked after by an elderly housekeeper, who was also a distant relative.
“The old lady is arthritic and goes to bed very early. One Friday evening she had gone to bed, leaving Edgar sitting on a sofa watching the television and drinking a few bottles of beer. At about ten-thirty something woke her up and she lay awake listening. All she could hear was the television, but after several minutes she heard the sound of a telephone being dialed—her hearing is quite acute. She called out ‘Ed-gar!’ but, getting no reply, she shuffled into the living room and found Edgar lying dead on the sofa. Beside him was a heavy blackthorn stick, which normally resided in an umbrella stand in the vestibule. It had been used to crush Edgar’s skull with a single blow, delivered with maniacal force.
“The police conducted the normal routine investigations, in the course of which they found some fingerprints on the telephone which were neither the housekeeper’s nor Edgar’s. They checked them against the prints of known criminals in the files and found they belonged to one Wesley M. Beattie, who had served two months for theft.
“At the time it didn’t seem important. After all, he was a relative. But a police inspector called on Wes and questioned him. Where had he been on the night of the murder? Drinking beer with a couple of guys, he said, and he had also gone to a show. The guys were called Pete and Al, and he couldn’t remember the name of the film. But, most significant of all, he insisted that he had not been in or near his uncle’s apartment for over six months. The housekeeper later corroborated this.
“So he was taken to headquarters, where he changed his story. He had spent the evening of the murder with a girl at her house. He wouldn’t name her—note the pattern—because she was a nice girl and her parents would be horrified to know she had been keeping company with an ‘ex con.’ Wes likes tough words like ‘ex con’ and ‘stir.’ Police told him that a nice girl wouldn’t let him hang, so he changed once more—and again we see the pattern—into a married woman with a jealous husband.
“Then after a few hours of that, he abandoned all efforts at realism and produced his conspiracy story, which goes like this: This gang that had framed him was still after him. But he was after them, too. And so was Uncle Edgar. Uncle Edgar had only been pretending to think that Wes was guilty of the theft. In reality, he was ruthlessly tracking them down. The woman witness was the key to the whole thing. She was one of the gang. Uncle Edgar was on her trail, and eventually he would have laid the whole pack of them by the heels.
“However, the brain that runs this gang is pretty crafty. He got one of the gang to call Edgar and warn him to lay off—or else. But you couldn’t frighten old Edgar like that. No sir.
“So they worked this frame-up. One of the dolls in this mob picked Wes up and lured him to her apartment, and that’s where he spent the evening of the murder. The cunning witch got hold of Wes’s key container and slipped in a key to Edgar’s apartment, as part of the frame-up. Meanwhile, other members of the gang went to Edgar’s place and finished him off. Very well, you say, who was the girl? Where is the apartment?
“But Wes says he was driven to the apartment at night by a roundabout route. He went in by a rear entrance. He can’t even guess what district it’s in. Far from getting the license number of the girl’s car, he isn’t even sure of the make. The girl’s name was Gail—she never told him her last name. Confronted with the evidence of the fingerprints, Wes stumbled a bit, then decided that this gang had invented some subtle photographic process for transferring prints. And so, Wes was charged with murder.
“And now I’ll tell you my theory of how it happened. Wes tried every device to win back Edgar’s approval, but Edgar, being a blunt fellow, simply rejected him. That rejection so disturbed his emotional balance that he was led to kill his great hero. He probably toyed with the idea for some time. We don’t know, for instance, exactly when he obtained a key to the uncle’s apartment, or how. On that fatal Friday, everything came to the boil. He went to the apartment and let himself in, and the uncle, watching TV, with his back to the door, did not hear him. Wes may have planned new entreaties; he may have stood there quivering for several minutes before frustration rose in him and nerved him to pick up the blackthorn stick, take two strides and deliver one smashing blow.
“Then, I think, he stood there, reeling with horror at what he had done. It was, of course, an insane act, and I do not think he took the consequences of the act into account at all. As the climax approached, he wasn’t even thinking about getting away with it, or possible punishment. It was a blind impulse.
“He knew, of course, that the elderly housekeeper was there. He probably knew that her hearing and eyesight were good for a woman of her age. But he certainly knew that she was extremely immobile and very feeble. It takes her a good five minutes to collect her two sticks, pull herself painfully out of bed and make her way to the living room—and longer if she pauses to put her teeth in and find her spectacles, slippers and dressing gown. As I said, he probably took none of this into account; but if he had, if she had appeared to be at all dangerous—if, for instance, the uncle had called out his name—then, I fear, the old lady would have been dealt with quickly and in panic. The same thing would apply if she had succeeded in getting to the living room before he had left the premises. But the fact is that she didn’t.
“And, in the circumstances, I believe that Wes’s first impulse, when he began to realize what he had done, was to give himself up. I think he went to the telephone, peeled off his gloves—the absence of fingerprints on the murder weapon itself could indicate a degree of premeditation—and, barehanded, started to telephone the police. But then the housekeeper called out, and Wes panicked and departed.
“There is something rather wonderful about what took place after that. The horror of the deed was so great that it was completely blotted out of his memory. He couldn’t face it. His mind rejected it, and wove the whole thing into the fantasy which he was already partly living in. This became the work of the gang. The gang had killed his uncle, and Wes and his uncle, shoulder-to-shoulder, had been fighting their villainies. This fantasy allows him to live with himself. He has retired into his dream world, probably forever, and there we plan to leave him. But gentlemen, if proper therapy had been applied at the time of his first arrest, all of this would have been avoided. Now then, the gentleman who had some questions. Let’s hear from him.”
***
All of the lawyers present were acquainted with Sidney Grant, who was known to his classmates as the “Gargoyle.” He looked, th
ey claimed, like some evil figure leering down from a Gothic cathedral. They remembered him best in a characteristic attitude, sitting on the dressing table in the large attic bedroom which he had occupied for years, and frowning down on his guests like some Mephistophelian judge, while he argued endlessly.
The Gargoyle had been called to the bar only a few months before, but, unlike most other young lawyers, he had not gone into an established firm. He had hung up his shingle and commenced the practice of criminal law in the lower courts, where he was already establishing a reputation as a tough battler.
“Okay, Gargoyle, fire away,” someone said, and Dr. Heber smiled.
“Question one,” Sidney Grant said. “Why such a stiff sentence for a first offense—on the theft charge?”
“Answer one,” Dr. Heber said. “The magistrate was like some Fielding character. Wes Beattie broke down in court and made a rather sorry exhibition of himself. He was still trying to lie his way out of it, and he got this old Colonel Blimp magistrate pretty angry, so he threw the book at him.”
“Question two,” Sidney said. “Why was he tried next day? Why wasn’t the case remanded for two weeks so that Beattie could get himself a bit organized? I mean, if he’d pleaded guilty he would simply have got a suspended sentence. If the case had been remanded…”
A beautifully groomed young lawyer stood up at the back of the room. “Dr. Heber,” he said, “there is no use trying to protect me any longer. Gargoyle Grant is going to find out all about it, so I will confess. Sidney, I was Wes Beattie’s counsel in the magistrate’s court, and I have to take a share of the blame.”
“James Bellwood!” Sidney said. “What were you doing in the police court anyway? Not your class of client at all.”
“Mr. Grant,” Bellwood said, “you may go jump in the lake. Our clients get into the magistrates’ courts every now and then, usually by mixing alcohol with gasoline. But this case was different. For the visitors I must explain that I am a junior in a very high-class corporation law firm, the sort of firm that my learned and belligerent friend treats with amused contempt. And I will state that if ever one of our clients gets into an action in which Mr. Grant represents the opposition, we will advise him to settle right away, because Mr. Grant is going to be one of our great courtroom lawyers.”
The Weird World of Wes Beattie Page 1