I was writing unnumbered (and unproduced) plays then, and every so often a few short stories. And when, in morbid moments, I now go back and reread them, I’m ashamed of my exceedingly slow development as a writer.
As an editor, I’ve bought highly attractive and polished stories from authors as young as sixteen. Most of my colleagues in science fiction (which seems oddly to mature its writers earlier than the mystery field) were well established in print before they could vote. Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, went on well into my middle twenties producing stuff for which “unprofessional” is the kindest epithet.
So I have no complaint about the harshness or imperceptiveness of the editors who kept sending back those printed forms without even a penciled note; the only mistake an editor made with me in my youth was buying that first ghost story. With maybe one exception, and that’s this “Threnody.” I’ve always had a weakness for it; and whatever it is in the absolute it’s at least incomparably better, in both plot and writing, than anything else I did around that time.
It’s strictly of its period, the ’30’s. Alexander Woollcott no longer sways mass enthusiasms; Granville Hicks no longer contributes to The New Masses; Corey Ford (damn it!) no longer writes brilliant parodies. In these respects it does seem dated—which is, at that, proper for such a retrospective anthology. In others I hope it may still prove readable, and justify me in the belief that every author must cherish: that he was at least once unjustly rejected.
At any rate, appearing as it does for the first time in print, it’s as hymenally intact as a maiden murder can be.
THRENODY
In the spring of that year they were both completely unknown. They said good-by in a cheap beer joint. There was a red and white checked cloth on the table, and the pianist was playing a Rodgers and Hart tune of six months past. Lawrence Winton looked at his departing friend, felt low, and ordered another beer.
Al Hanford had never seemed more hale nor blithe. His coming wanderings in Mexico inspired him, and he talked gaily and unceasingly. But Winton felt a self-conscious sense of foreboding. It was, he supposed, because he was a poet and imagined some sort of damned obligation to spread a blob of lyric sadness over any suitable occasion. For one clear analytical moment he looked at Hanford and wondered why they were friends. He was acute enough, in these rare instants of clear vision, to see through Hanford’s surface charm to the weakness beneath it. But the fresh round of beer came, Al began to speak of the volume of verse which Winton had submitted to the Caxton Printers, and the rare instant passed.
The Caxton Printers were reaching a conclusion on that volume on the day in July when Lawrence Winton learned of his friend’s death at the hands of Mexican bandits. He was seated at his desk when the wire came (a letter with his return address had been found on the body), and his world folded. There was no clear instant in this grief, only the knowledge that his friend was dead. For a moment he held in his hand the paper cutter—a small dagger which Al Hanford had picked up somewhere in the East. It was still sharp and would serve. But he threw it down and took up his pencil instead.
It was midnight before he had stopped writing, erasing, rewriting, and shaping. He was hungry and his hand was cramped; but on his desk lay the final draught of “Threnody—for Alaric.” His mind was unable to judge the poem then. His only thought was a vague surprise at the realization that he had never written out Al’s full name before. He looked at the threnody for a little while and then went to the kitchen to fry an egg.
The letter from the Caxton Printers came two days later. The editors were mildly enthusiastic about his verse, but found the quantity submitted slight. If he had some longer work to round out the volume … So he typed out a good copy of “Threnody” and sent it on.
Saturn in Sables, by Lawrence Winton, was published in due time. It got passable notices and, for verse, nearly passable sales, and that was all. Winton went on teaching night school and lucky to have that. And then someone gave a copy of the book to Alexander Woollcott.
So impressed was he by “Threnody,” although the other poems left him unmoved, that he devoted an entire radio program to sugared ecstasies on the greatest elegy of our times, ending by reading, with orchestral accompaniment, extensive excerpts. With unerring taste he chose exactly those portions which Winton, on reading the printed volume, had decided should be cut if the thing ever saw another edition.
The next day every librarian, public or rental, found himself besieged by customers who demanded the book that had “Threnody” in it. The title of the book and the name of the author were generally unknown. Those librarians who had heard the Woollcott broadcast had already, and wisely, ordered copies. The others lost no time in identifying the desired book.
Within a week Lawrence Winton was famous and “Threnody” had become a byword. Much to his own surprise, he discovered that in this expression of his purely personal grief and hope he had written a comforting panacea for America’s sorrows. The ever narcotic assurance that death is, after all, a beautiful thing had never before been expressed in words so suited to the understanding of the American public.
In its own lyric way “Threnody” became a public menace, in the manner of “Yes, We Have No Bananas” or a “Music Goes Round and Round.” Bing Crosby scored an even greater hit than usual as the introducer of a new song entitled “Threnody.” (It ended: “for this melody is my threnody of love.”) Benjamin Z. Fineberg bought the film rights to the title and handed the poem to five writers in turn, with injunctions to turn out a story treatment on this by Monday. Of the five writers, only three were shortly removed to sanitariums for acute alcoholism.
Lestrois Parish compiled a two-page article for Hearst’s American Weekly on the world’s great elegies. The literati succumbed to the craze, and argued violently as to whether “Threnody” bore more resemblance to “Lycidas” or to “Adonais.” A minority held out for “Thyrsis.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology published a carefully annotated essay on “Lawrence Winton’s ‘Threnody’: a comparative study in the influences of Milton, Shelley, Arnold, and Jorge de Manrique.” Manrique, whom Winton had never read, was an easy winner.
James Hilton, who had himself endured an almost equally amazing mass enthusiasm, referred in a radio talk to Mr. Winton’s admirable “Threenody.” This sent thousands scurrying to the Oxford English Dictionary, and set other thousands writing indignantly to their pet radio editors. Fifty-three per cent of these managed an indirect reference to England’s war debt.
Corey Ford wrote an ingenious parody on the poem, which was refused by his publishers as being in questionable taste. Mr. Ford consoled himself with a brilliant burlesque of all raves on “Threnody.”
Only the New Masses remained immune to the epidemic; and even there Granville Hicks contrived to mention Lawrence Winton’s obvious subconscious fascism.
And Chico Marx, in a Kaufman-Ryskind political satire, described himself as a threnody people.
Lawrence Winton, meanwhile, gave up his teaching job two weeks after the Woollcott broadcast. Mr. Fineberg’s check for the film rights was in itself enough to keep him comfortable for years, to say nothing of the royalties on the book itself and the numerous incidental rights which he had acquired. He realized that this wild popularity was bound to blow up in time. Consequently he lived quietly as always and saved the greater part of his fabulous income.
He had begun the new narrative poem for which his publishers were so eager when he received a telegram from Mr. Fineberg begging him to come to Hollywood at once on his own terms. “Threnody” was causing a tragic depletion in the ranks of Fineberg writers, and the genius of screen production had decided to let the author do his own adaptation.
The prospect fascinated and terrified Lawrence Winton. He had never written anything in the least dramatic, and yet he had the feeling common to all who ever attend the films that, by God, he could do better than that. He was still in lonely indecision when the doorbell rang.
> It was some minutes before he recognized in this bearded, shabby tramp his friend Al Hanford. When recognition came, he seized Al warmly by the hand. Hanford answered the grip indifferently and walked into the house. First he asked for a drink, and then congratulated Winton on his success. Not until after the second drink could he be made to tell how he happened to be alive.
It was simple enough. He had had pressing reasons (which he left purposely vague) for disappearing. He stumbled across the corpse of a victim of bandits, planted all his identification on it, and vanished. When at last he heard of the success of “Threnody,” he could not rest until he had thanked his friend for that magnificent tribute.
Throughout his narrative he smiled absently as though thinking of what he was leading up to. Soon he began to point out what would happen if his continued life became known. He chose his words sharply. Winton writhed as he outlined the country’s reaction. People would think the whole thing a hoax in bad taste. Not only would money stop coming in, but Winton’s further writings would prove quite unsalable. It was a convincing picture.
He ended with the obvious proposition. Fifty per cent of Winton’s income paid to him through specified channels and he would remain dead.
Winton looked at him a long while. He saw what he would be damned to—utter servile dependence on this weakling cheat. All his former moments of clear vision were concentrated now in one blazing light. But he saw more. He saw that Hanford had changed, changed so much that he himself could scarcely recognize him. He saw that the clothes looked like those of any cheap tramp, and that nothing about the man could suggest to anyone the object of the famous “Threnody.”
He slipped the paper-knife in his pocket unobserved. After a moment’s silence he gave a nod of assent and rising walked behind Al Hanford’s chair.
On the way back from his long automobile drive to the outskirts of town, where tomorrow an unidentified vagabond would be found dead, Winton stopped at a telegraph office to send his acceptance to Benjamin Z. Fineberg. Death was, he thought as he signed the blank, an even more beautiful thing than he had ever realized.
(1936)
Design for Dying
It is particularly easy to kill a man when he plots his own murder for you. This is especially true if his mind is superior to your own (which is incidentally one of your motives for murder) and you can feel assured that the plot has no flaws. You are spared all the creative pangs of the ordinary murderer; you are purely the interpretive artist, and all your energy can go into perfecting that interpretation, with no needless worry as to the soundness of the created structure.
Not that Ronald Markham would have phrased his position so elaborately as that. The ideas of that opening paragraph are more in the manner of John Bennington, who was always so shrewd at analyzing the thoughts of his characters and so sublimely oblivious to the thoughts of those around him. That, naturally, is why he had no notion that Markham had decided to murder him—no notion, even, that Markham might want to murder him.
When Markham took his dictation pad into the study that morning, he had the desire but not the decision—the fixed thought that his own life would be better if Bennington were dead, but no planned intent to bring about that betterment.
Bennington changed all that.
The old mystery novelist was pacing up and down the study, melodramatically enveloped in a black cape with crimson lining which flared flamelike with his movements. Day by day, thought Markham, this senile genius assumes more of the mannerisms of his sleuth Dr. Carmichael. It would not be surprising to see him smoking a hookah.
Bennington paused in his pacing when he saw his secretary. “Ah, there you are,” he said. Every weekday morning for five years he had said, “Ah, there you are,” in exactly that same tone of courteous flamboyance. Ronald Markham had other and far more impressive motives for murder, but this was not the least in weight.
“Yes, sir,” said Markham. “Have you straightened out that snag yet in The Siege Perilous?”
“Devil take The Siege Perilous.” The old man’s eyes glittered. “It’s good enough; it’d take another month of research on Arthurian symbolism, and at that the clues might be too subtle for the reviewers. I’ve something better than that. Look!”
Markham took the contraption of wood, steel, and rubber which his employer handed him and regarded it dutifully. “Interesting,” he said. “What is it?”
Bennington sat down, throwing his cloak back so that he seemed to float in a pool of blood. “It’s the plot of my next book. If I haven’t been too smart even for myself.” Involuntarily his eyelids closed.
“But what is it, sir?” Markham asked. He had to repeat his question twice before those aged lids opened again.
“Sorry,” said Bennington brusquely. “It’s getting worse … But this little gadget now—it’s a gem. It’s the perfect murder.” In the best manner of Dr. Carmichael, his fictional scholar-detective, he removed his black-ribboned glasses and began polishing them. This meant that a lecture was about to commence.
“You know the various tricks for shooting a man and making it look like suicide. Chief difficulty is getting the angle of the shot exactly right. Another easy way of slipping up is to shoot from so far off that you don’t leave powder burns. But even if you avoid both those traps, you’re left with the problem of fingerprints. If you wipe the gun after using it and press the corpse’s hand on it, the odds are at least a hundred to one against your getting an absolutely normal arrangement of the fingers. Besides, there’ll be too few prints, which will make the authorities suspicious. On the other hand, if you take a gun which the victim has been handling and wear gloves yourself, you leave smudges over his prints. But with this little jewel—I thought of it last evening and spent most of the night in the workshop constructing it.”
Markham did not say, “So that’s where you were.” Such a remark might have indicated too clearly where he and the young and neglected Mrs. Bennington had been, and why they had wondered. Instead he asked, “How does it work?”
Bennington explained with almost childish enthusiasm. Next to his writing, mechanical ingenuity was what he loved most in such life as was left to him; and when, as now, the two passions fused, his joy was perfect.
The gadget was a wooden frame designed to hold a revolver. But no portion of the frame touched the weapon itself save two rubber-tipped metal clamps which held the barrel in a tight clasp. The pressure of the finger on another strip of rubber-coated metal pulled the trigger without fleshly contact.
“You see,” Bennington expounded eagerly, “you get your victim to hold the gun—go target shooting with him—anything. You have exact and natural fingerprints. Then you slip the gun into this frame, wearing gloves to do so and never touching anything but the tip of the barrel. When you have shot the victim, you open the frame—so—and drop the gun where it might have fallen from his hand. Prints in natural position—no smudges—absolute proof of suicide.”
“But how do you render your victim unconscious? He won’t just sit there while you rig up the apparatus.”
“Some mild narcotic. We’ll pick one out of the materia medica.”
“But wouldn’t an autopsy reveal that?”
“There wouldn’t even be an autopsy—surely not a stomach analysis.”
“But why take the chance? It does rather spoil the perfection. Suppose …” Markham thought aloud, “suppose the victim were old and weak—like yourself, sir. Suppose he were subject, as you are, to sudden attacks of sleepiness, to which he sometimes gave in, falling sound asleep in the middle of a conversation. The murderer could wait his chance, and as soon as the victim was unconscious—”
“Splendid! Splendid, my boy! I think you’ve hit it. The only trouble is, have we created too perfect a crime? After all, Carmichael has to solve this.”
“It certainly seems perfect,” said Markham with quiet satisfaction.
They did all the spadework together—murderer and victim in happy creative collab
oration. Firing actual shots into a wooden model of the human head, they worked out the exact angle that would be easiest to use and still consonant with suicide. They determined, by careful experimentation, how close the murderer could come to leave satisfactory powder bums without waking the sleeper. And still neither could find any flaw by which Dr. Carmichael might break the case.
On the morning of the seventh Markham judged that the time was ripe. Today he would bring it off. Take the printed pistol after Bennington had fired a shot into the wooden head, slip the weapon into the gadget, wait for one of the writer’s involuntary naps, and then—Then independence and Mrs. Bennington and comfort and perhaps even fame from those projected novels, known only to their author and himself, of which he could so easily abstract and use the outlines.
When Markham came into the study, Bennington was too excited even to say, “Ah, there you are.” Instead he cried, “Got it, my boy! Got it!”
“Got what, sir?”
“The trick. The clue. The turning-point. Paraffin test!”
“I don’t think I know about that.”
“Should have thought of it before. It’s perfect. Modern police method of testing a hand to see if it has recently discharged a firearm. The victim’s prints are on the gun; that satisfies the police. But Carmichael insists on paraffin test—finds victim’s hand hasn’t fired a gun within whatever the time limit is—make a note to check that—and there we are. Perfect!”
Markham stood very still. “Is it completely reliable, sir?”
“Completely. I was playing with it in the workshop last night. Give you a demonstration if you like.” The old man threw the crimson-lined cape back over his right shoulder, picked up the revolver, and fired a shot into the head model. “Now to the naked eye my hand looks the same as ever; but there are minute particles in the skin which can be removed by paraffin. Come along to the workshop and—”
He broke off and sat down heavily. “I get so tired,” he said. “I’d give every book I ever wrote—yes, and even the royalties from them—to be your age, Markham.”
Exeunt Murderers Page 20