The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 1

The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits.

Ashley Mike.

My thanks to Robert Adey and Francis M. Nevins, Jr. for providing ideas and suggestions for the collection.

Foreword: The Crazy Age.

MIKE ASHLEY.

We do love to apply nicknames to things, even decades. The Swinging Sixties, the Gay Nineties (or was it the Naughty Nineties?) and, of course, the Roaring Twenties. And aren't those two words evocative. You need scarcely utter them than our mind's eye conjures up visions of the jazz age, the charleston, country-house parties, the first talkies and, of course, those "bright young things". A decade of excitement, energy, eccentricity, fun and freedom a complete release after the horrors of the Great War, and total gay abandon for the terrors yet to come.

Because, as we know, it wasn't all fun. The 1920s was a time of great hardship in Britain the Jarrow March, the General Strike, the fear of communism and revolution. In America there was prohibition and the rise of gangsterism.

It was a decade of extremes, and it's out of extremes that the stories emerge. The 1920s saw the start of the Golden Age of the detective story. In Britain it was during this decade that Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marple first appeared and, even more typical of the period, Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey. In America that role was taken by S.S. van Dine with his detective Philo Vance, but the 1920s also saw the rise of pulp fiction and the hard-boiled school led by Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett. The one was a rebellion against the other, showing that even in crime fiction, there were extremes.

In this anthology I wanted to encapsulate those extremes. I wanted a selection of stories that not only showed the fun, the froth and the frolics of the 1920s but also the hard, violent and vicious underbelly. Above all I wanted the stories to reflect that unreality of the decade: a period when, rather like the "swinging sixties", people threw caution to the wind and lived life to the full, regardless of what was round the corner.

I also wanted the stories to show the exciting "newness" of things in the twenties. The movies were all the rage, with film stars the new celebrities, and by the end of the 1920s you could hear them as well. There was the radio and the first communication revolution with the growth of the telephone. And there was a travel boom, with the growth in the motor car and commercial airlines. With the 1920s we entered the era of the gadget, with ma.s.s production and a booming economy.

That's what you'll find here. From Annette Meyers's Greenwich Village partygoers to Robert Randisi's beauty pageant, from Marilyn Todd's murder in the artworld to Gillian Linscott's death in Britain's first telephone booth, from Hulbert Footner's "Bright Young Things" in the world of crime to Mat Coward's murder before the Communist revolution, these stories cover every facet of life in that mad decade.

So, let's party . . .

Mike Ashley.

Timor Mortis.

ANNETTE MEYERS.

Annette Meyers is probably best known for her series about corporate headhunters Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon, set amongst the wheeling and dealing of Wall Street and Broadway. Annette is well qualified to talk of the theatrical world as she worked with Hal Prince on the Broadway Productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret and A Little Night Music. With her husband Martin, writing under the joint alias of Maan Meyers, she has produced a historical mystery series chronicling the Tonneman family down the generations in New York, starting with The Dutchman (1992). Annette introduced her poet-detective Olivia Brown in her 1999 novel Free Love, set amongst the arty set in Greenwich Village in the 1920s. The follow-up novel was Murder Me Now (2001). Here's the latest adventure.

Greenwich Village is our enclave, our village, and we rarely venture east of Washington Square Park, unless of course it is for one of our fancy dress b.a.l.l.s, which we hold at Webster Hall on Eleventh Street near Third Avenue.

The costume b.a.l.l.s were inaugurated before the Great War by The Ma.s.ses, an irreverent magazine to which everyone in the Village contributed short stories, poetry, drawings, essays and humor. The purpose of the b.a.l.l.s was to pay off the magazine's persistent debts with the admission charged. The focus of The Ma.s.ses was anti-war, and the government, in the midst of the Great War, had shut it down. Although The Ma.s.ses has not survived, costume b.a.l.l.s continue for the benefit of one or another of our Village inst.i.tutions.

It was said that when our own Floyd Dell, one of the editors of The Ma.s.ses, first approached the proprietor of Webster Hall about the cost for rental of the s.p.a.ce, the proprietor asked, "Is yours a drinking crowd?"

To which our Floyd replied, "h.e.l.l, yes."

And the proprietor said, "You can have it for nothing."

You might very well ask, "What of Prohibition?"

The truth is, things are hardly different now, even with Prohibition. The bar at the costume b.a.l.l.s is as crowded as before, perhaps even more so. The costume b.a.l.l.s are our playground, and play we do, dancing and drinking till we greet a new day in Washington Square Park.

There may be hundreds of ways to die, and certainly, I've seen more than a few in my curious life, but to come to a costume ball riding naked on a white horse and have one's breast pierced by a feathered arrow is more than anyone's imagination even mine could ever contemplate.

But let me not get ahead of my story.

If you were a stranger in Greenwich Village and chose to begin your acquaintance in front of my sliver of a house on Bedford Street, whether you turn to the right, or left, you would soon be lost among our crooked, winding streets, streets that cross one another and take new names, or just stop never to resume, or resume as if nothing has happened several blocks away.

In the hour just before dawn, when the sky begins to surrender darkness to threads of pink, my Village appears the painted set of a play about to begin. Innocent and pure. And all of us who make our home here are, for the moment, innocent and pure. In thought, if not in deed.

Corruptible? Well, of course. This is life, not a play. Perhaps we're naive to think we can live in art. And then again, what exactly does corruptible mean?

It began on one of those wicked March days when a person is seduced by the surprising silky air at midday, only to be viciously betrayed by afternoon. I was on my way home to Bedford Street wrapped in disagreeable thoughts, my head down against the wind, otherwise I might have seen her.

I'd come from a very unsatisfactory meeting with Mr Harper about my first book of poems, Embracing the Thorns, during which he, for all his promises, presented me with the most penurious of contracts. And he was, in fact, talking in terms of a year from now as, he said, they would prefer more from me than a slim volume of verses. Indeed. Indeed!

So I was hardly in fine fettle when, with some persistence, my friend Edward Hall eventually managed to get my attention. The taxi he was riding in pulled up beside me and he called, "Oliver!"

My determined stride suspended, out of the corner of my eye, I caught an odd flurry of color, blues on the wing, a human b.u.t.terfly, before the apparition faded into the entrance of a shop.

"I've been trying to get your attention for two blocks," Edward continued. "You look like a dark cloud."

"Dark cloud? My dear Edward, I'll have you know I'm a thunderstorm, a tornado cloaked in a hurricane, a "

"Enough, Cyrana!" He opened the door and pulled me into the cab, and with some aplomb, planted a tender kiss on my lips. "Come along and you can tell us all about it."

My artful abductor, I saw at once, was not alone in the taxi. On his other side sat a small, finely dressed gentleman, his exophthalmic eyes as bright and curious as a chimp's. His exquisite hands rested on the silver head of his walking stick.

"Oliver, may I present Michael Walling?"

I reached across Edward to shake hands with Michael Walling, whose name I'd recognized, Walling House being a well respected press. Edward is currently at Vogue, and when editors meet with publishers not their own, there's no telling what their meeting is about.

"Charmed," Michael Walling said, brushing my fingers with his little mustache.

"We're off to the Lafayette," Edward said. "Why don't you join us?"

"I wouldn't want to intrude," I said, modestly, but bestowing on publisher Walling my most brilliant smile.

"I should be delighted if you would join us, Miss Brown. I am a great admirer of your work."

The Hotel Lafayette and the Brevoort Hotel are the two best hotels in the Village, each insinuating its own continental flavor. They are situated almost back to back; the former, on University Place and Ninth Street, is where Gene O'Neill stays when he comes down from Provincetown. The Brevoort stands at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. In its bas.e.m.e.nt is an informal cafe, the perfect place for merrymaking. Both locations are patronized only when we are in the money, which sad to say, isn't often. So I was not going to turn down an invitation to one or the other.

I've known Edward Hall longer than anyone else in the Village. At Ainslee's, he was the first editor to buy my poems. And for a short time we were lovers. When Ainslee's, like The Ma.s.ses, went the way of other small magazines and journals, Edward moved on to Vogue, where lucky me he's continued to buy my poems. And although I knew that he'd like his early place back in my affections, for my part romantic pa.s.sion is fleeting. My pa.s.sion is for my work. But our friendship remains, and I treasure it.

As for Michael Walling, he could well have walked out of the previous century, an odd little man in a well-tailored suit and vest, not a wrinkle on him except around his eyes, where wrinkles lay like folds of draperies. His wide mouth was made wider yet by very prominent teeth and the thin mustache with waxed tips. He handed his spotless gray fedora and his silver headed walking stick to the doorman and suggested we take tea in the Game Room.

I'd been only once to the Lafayette's quaintly ornate Game Room, where after dining at the restaurant, a man, or nowadays a woman, could come for a cigar and cognac and French coffee. The ceiling is lofty, the room large yet somehow intimate, with tall windows facing the street. Mirrored walls reflect marble-topped tables lit by green shaded lamps. And of course French magazines and newspapers are available in a corner rack, and domino and chess players are encouraged by reserved tables. In style and grace, the Game Room was a perfect match for our host.

"So do tell us, Oliver, why you are a tornado cloaked in a hurricane," Edward said slyly. We'd settled in over little bread and b.u.t.ter squares, short bread and tea, rather churlishly delivered by an ancient waiter with a sibilant accent, more Balkan than French.

I shook my cigarette holder at Edward and told him in my most severe voice. "You are making fun of me, Edward."

"No, I swear "

"My dear Miss Brown," Mr Walling broke in, "I cannot speak for Edward here, but I for one would like to know what caused your unhappiness. And, if you'll allow me to be your champion, I shall try to make things right."

"Well, thank you, Mr Walling, sir." The short bread could not have melted more sweetly in my mouth. "You are a gentleman, as opposed to Edward-here." I leaned toward him so he could light my cigarette when he lit his.

Edward laughed. "Forgive me, Oliver. Do tell your story."

I related my disappointment with Mr Harper and the postponement of my book, growing more and more impa.s.sioned, my hands moving with my words. Edward captured my hand in his, terribly contrite, as well he should have been.

Mr Walling set down his teacup, which he'd been holding but not sipping from during my narration. "Miss Brown, I am shocked at the cavalier way you are being treated by one of my publishing colleagues, and I do hope you will not think all publishers are the same. Do you have a contract?"

I removed the thin envelope from my pocket. "I have not signed it, but I'm afraid I must." As I sighed, I caught Edward's eye. "What else is a poor writer to do?"

"You might," Mr Walling said, taking charge of my other hand, "consider allowing me to publish your first book of poetry. It would be an honor."

"Mr Walling!"

"Michael," said he.

"Michael, I am quite overwhelmed."

"You would have a fine presentation, Oliver." Edward's enthusiasm was contagious. "Do consider it."

"I see a slim volume bound in black cloth, the t.i.tle and your name in gold lettering. Deckle-edged paper, of course." Walling looked deep into my rather spectacular, if I do say so myself, green eyes. "We would be prepared to offer you an advance of five hundred dollars, and we can publish when you're ready. What do you say, Miss Brown?"

I could hardly believe my good fortune. A beautiful book from a respected publisher, and a five-hundred-dollar advance. What did I say? I said, "If you'll pardon me for a moment." I took Mr Harper's mean contract to the fireplace and threw it in. The fire flared around the paper for a moment and held, as if reluctant to consume it. Whether it was an aberration, or an omen, I couldn't have cared less. I turned my back on it and gave my new publisher my consent.

We shook hands and Michael's nod to our surly waiter produced clean teacups filled with mediocre champagne, but still champagne. As the afternoon faded, the well showed no sign of running dry, and I noticed the waiters begin to scowl and grumble as more and more tables came to be occupied by decorous people.

"Do you care for archery, Miss Brown Olivia if I may?" my host asked.

"Olivia, of course, Michael. And as for archery, I must confess I know very little about it, but I have been known to be arch." Edward's hand squeezed my right thigh.

"Well, that can be rectified." Michael smiled at me but took the subject no further, except to say, "You must meet Clara. Perhaps Edward can bring you round next week to one of Clara's evenings."

"Well, I " Now my left thigh got the squeeze, and I played with the wicked thought that I might press my thighs together and introduce my two suitors to one another. I rose instead and put an end to it. "I'd be delighted, Michael." Clara Walling is an artist of sorts, a woman with money who had prevailed upon her husband to buy one of the great white townhouses in Washington Square, so she could be closer to her quarry. She enjoys collecting young artists and writers and then showing them off to her Uptown friends. I'd heard about Clara Walling's evenings, and I am probably the only clever girl in Greenwich Village who's never been.

"I must be on my way," I said, "I have a costume to prepare."

"Costume?" Michael said.

"The Ball, tomorrow night," Edward said, becoming animated.

"Oh, yes, of course. That's what Clara's been working on all week. I'd quite forgotten."

"You must come, too, Michael," I said. "I'll save a dance for you."

"Then how could I not?" was Michael's gallant reply.

"We're trying to raise money to start a modern magazine," Edward said.

Edward had made the arrangements and we advertised our ball as a Feather Ball, the costume left to the attendees' imaginations.

I took my leave, but Edward followed me. I thought, oh, dear, I am going to have to be firm with him that there could be nothing between us.

"Oliver." He looked down at me with besotted eyes.

"Edward, dear, you know-" I was resigned that this was to be our eternal relationship. His devotion, my friendship. Still, his devotion was to be treasured. Some day I would be old and gray and there would always be Edward to tell me how much he loved me.

"Please pretend we are lovers," he said.

"Pretend? But Edward, you know we can only be dear friends."

"Oh, I know that, Oliver. But I'd like old Walling to think otherwise, because it's Clara and I who are lovers."

Well, I guess that told me.

I left Edward and Michael, surely two characters right out of Moliere, to discuss whatever it was I'd interrupted, and headed home, my feet fairly skimming the sidewalk, a.s.sisted by champagne and good news. The sun had receded, leaving behind a pale, mustardy twilight.

My Edward and Clara Walling. I had to laugh. You see, nothing is permanent. For all that, I couldn't wait to meet La Belle Clara in person.

As I approached Fifth Avenue, I saw someone among a fuzzy cl.u.s.ter wave to me. What was his name? Frank something or other. Calls himself Franz, wears a frayed cloak and a grimy crimson Byronesque tie. Claiming to be a writer, he's always on our fringe. I hardly knew him. And now didn't want to know him, as he has begun to conduct guided tours of Greenwich Village for tourists who want to view bohemians and visit our saloons and coffee houses. Our little enclave is being invaded. It's no wonder so many of us are sailing for Paris.

I pulled up short, changed direction and once again I caught a momentary glimpse of vivid color, blues, b.u.t.terfly wings aflutter. I turned back but the vision was gone.

By the time I reached 73 Bedford Street and home, the promise of spring was but a distant memory. The afternoon had turned chill and a punchy little wind flicked at my cloak with impudent disdain.

Home is the three-storey red brick house that had come to me from my great aunt Evangeline Brown, the black sheep of the Brown family. She'd chosen to live in Greenwich Village in a Boston marriage with Miss Alice. In fact, I never even knew of her existence until she died and left me her house. The duplex on the second and third floor was available for me, but as to the ground floor, a codicil to her will stated that the tenant in that flat was to live there rent free for the rest of his life. This tenant, I learned from the little bra.s.s plate next to his door, was one H. Melville, Private Investigations, Confidentiality a.s.sured.

This is how I met Harry Melville and learned that my mysterious great aunt Evangeline, or Vangie, as Harry called her, had run a private investigation business and that he had been her a.s.sistant. As I am of an inquisitive nature, I saw no reason not to carry on the family business. And I think Harry, though he will protest, secretly relies on my help, from time to time, on his cases.

I'd just reached the gate, thinking about a lovely martini, when the front door opened and there was Harry himself, and shockingly attired, by which I mean no soiled trousers, but a real suit, looking for all the world like a customer's man from Wall Street. That is, he would have were it not for his long hair, which he wears, pulled back with a rubber band into a ponytail.

"Perfect timing." He took hold of my arm, turned me about and walked me away from my lovely martini.

I confess I began whining, which is not my nature at all. "Where are we going? I was so looking forward to a lovely martini."

"You'll have your lovely martini if you come along with me."

"Aha! A bribe. Why would you have to bribe me? Is this a new client? I would love a new client."

"Not this one," he said.