Bodies from the Library 3

by Tony Medawar

  BEATRICE: You’re quite a judge of character.

  ALLEYN: And on top of all this, a woman who is—or was—herself an artist?

  BEATRICE: ‘Is’ is right. I still do a bit.

  ALLEYN: Ah, I thought I smelt paint when I came in.

  BEATRICE: (abruptly) In fact, Mr Alleyn, I should like to try my hand on you now, do you mind? Are you sure?

  ALLEYN: By all means. (She takes paper and pen feverishly)

  (Bob Hemmings enters)

  BOB: (to Alleyn) What are you doing here?

  ALLEYN: Oh, gathering information—and you?

  BEATRICE: Bob often drops in, Mr Alleyn. This is open house to my friends.

  BOB: (seeing Beatrice sketching) What the hell do you think you’re doing, Beatrice?

  BEATRICE: A police portrait.

  BOB: For God’s sake! Look, I want to have a word with you. Dennis told me you’d been at the flat.

  ALLEYN: You hadn’t seen Miss Page since the opening this morning?

  BOB: So what?

  ALLEYN: Nothing at all.

  BOB: Beatrice’s a wonderful woman, Mr Alleyn. She’s done a hell of a lot for Dennis—and for me—

  ALLEYN: Yes, that sort of debt is hard to repay.

  BOB: Debt? What do you mean ‘debt’?

  BEATRICE: Bob!

  BOB: What does he mean, ‘debt’? Bloody policemen and their double talk. You’d better be careful, Alleyn. Making accusations like that.

  BEATRICE: Bob …!

  BOB: Okay. Okay. But you be careful what you say to him, Beatrice. I don’t trust policemen.

  BEATRICE: (to Alleyn) He’s very loyal.

  ALLEYN: Loyal enough to cover up a crime, Miss Page? Loyal enough to wipe the fingerprints off an important piece of evidence, do you think? Loyal enough to knock somebody senseless in the process?

  BOB: Shut up.

  ALLEYN: Somebody he knew very well—somebody he admired and loved?

  BOB: No, that’s not true!

  BEATRICE: Is he so sensitive? Yes, perhaps he is.

  ALLEYN: Yes, Miss Page, I think perhaps he is. (Bob sits, putting his head in his hands) As for the murder, it must have been quite easy to get into the gallery. Everyone seemed to know where the key was.

  BEATRICE: Behind the bricks near the door.

  ALLEYN: Slip in, wrap up the portrait, put it in the stack-room, substitute the cartoon, slip out again …

  BEATRICE: Yes.

  BOB: Beatrice, please—please—

  ALLEYN: But where would the murderer get cyanide from?

  BEATRICE: Rat poison would be quite appropriate, don’t you think? Shall we go, Mr Alleyn?

  ALLEYN: Mr Dawson will be here soon. (He collects sketches)

  BEATRICE: (looking at Dennis’s packet) I never was very good with knots. But I’ve no regrets, Mr Alleyn. A bitch like Ruby has a lot to offer a boy like Dennis. But she forgot me, Mr Alleyn. As you say, once I’ve taken hold I don’t easily let go. Your portrait, Mr Alleyn. There’s no need for me to sign it, is there?

  (We see the portrait in close up—its style is identical with the Tillet caricature. Under the end credits we mix to the Tillet cartoon to endorse the parallel)

  NGAIO MARSH

  Edith Ngaio Marsh is one of the Crime Queens of the Golden Age, the others acknowledged to be Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

  Born in New Zealand in 1895, Ngaio Marsh was a precocious child with a love of drama and history nurtured by her mother. She was educated at St Margaret’s College, Christchurch, where she excelled in the arts and academic subjects and began to develop her lifelong interest in the theatre. Her first play, Noel, was performed at the College in 1912 and others—The Moon Princess and Mrs ’Obson—were staged at a nearby school in 1913. After leaving St Margaret’s, she studied painting at the Canterbury College School of Art and in 1919 joined the Allan Wilkie Shakespeare Company on a tour of New Zealand, an experience she would draw on some time later for a crime novel. In 1920 she joined the Rosemary Rees English Comedy Company and, as well as acting, she continued to write plays, including So Much for Nothing (1921) and the curiously titled harlequinade Little House Bound (1924).

  In 1928, Marsh moved to London where she and a friend, Helen Rhodes, ran an interior decorating business in Knightsbridge. She stayed for four years and while there decided to write a crime novel. For this, her main inspiration was naturally enough something she had read—‘a Christie or a Sayers, I think’—but she was also influenced by the Murder Game, then a dinner party staple. The result, A Man Lay Dead (1934), introduced ‘’andsome Alleyn’ of Scotland Yard who would go on to appear in a total of thirty-two novels and some plays that Marsh adapted or co-adapted from them. Alleyn—pronounced ‘Allen’, like the English school—also investigates in five short stories, one of which remains unpublished. Another, ‘which would explain why he left the Diplomatic Service for the Police Force’, was never written.

  Whereas many mystery writers plan stories around plots or situations, Ngaio Marsh always began with characters. Like her great contemporary Agatha Christie, she was very much influenced by the theatre, but whereas Christie drew on her knowledge of theatrical tropes to deceive her readers, Marsh simply wrote like a playwright, structuring and pacing her novels like a play: the scene is set, the cast of characters introduced, and the plot is unravelled as carefully and methodically as it was constructed. Just as the audience at a play sees the plot unfold through the eyes of a protagonist, in a Ngaio Marsh novel the reader is guided for the most part by the investigator, seeing what he sees and hearing what he hears. Thus Marsh’s work adheres very strongly to the fair-play principle and the reader has every chance of beating the detective to the explanation of the crime.

  While she would write crime fiction for the rest of her life, Ngaio Marsh’s first love was always the theatre. Between 1943 and 1969, she produced more than half of Shakespeare’s plays and created the British Commonwealth Theatre Company, which toured in the early 1950s. Her understanding of Shakespeare’s works and technique led to appearances at numerous international conferences and, in 1966, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Through the 1970s, while Marsh’s energy and appetite for new challenges remained undimmed, her health was beginning to decline. Her final novel was the supremely theatrical Light Thickens (1982), which centres on a production of Macbeth, a play that Marsh had herself directed in 1946 and 1962.

  Ngaio Marsh died on 18 February 1982 at her home in the Cashmere Hills near Christchurch. Despite the passage of nearly forty years, her novels remain extremely popular, and in 2018 her many admirers were treated to a new Alleyn mystery: Money in the Morgue was written by Stella Duffy working from little more than three initial chapters by Marsh and, while many of the most famous characters of the Golden Age have been reincarnated in new continuation novels, Money in the Morgue is among the very best.

  ‘A Knotty Problem’ was first broadcast under the title ‘Slipknot’ on 19 September 1967 as part of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Television Workshop’ season. Sadly there are no extant recordings and this is its first publication.

  THE ORANGE PLOT MYSTERIES

  In the mid-1930s, many national newspapers in Britain published short stories and serials, with mysteries proving to be particularly fruitful. One of the most popular weeklies was the Sunday Dispatch which, in 1938, commissioned two series of stories from the Crime Club, a publishing imprint created by the publishers William Collins. In his definitive and lavishly illustrated history of Collins Crime Club, The Hooded Gunman (2019), John Curran recounts how it evolved out of the publishers’ earlier initiative, the Detective Story Club, to become the best-known and longest-lived brand in crime and mystery fiction. Between 1930 and 1994, a total of 2,012 Crime Club books were published, including titles by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and many of the biggest names of the genre.

  The first tranche of stories commissioned by the Sund
ay Dispatch, all six of which are included here, appeared weekly between 6 March and 10 April 1938. Each of the six writers, including the series ‘compère’ Peter Cheyney, who also wrote the first story, and William Collins himself, who wrote the last, was challenged to write a short story around the following plot:

  ‘One night a man picked up an orange in the street. This saved his life.’

  THE ORANGE KID

  Peter Cheyney

  Snevelski, Third Assistant in the District Attorney’s office, who trebled his official salary by ‘fixing’ for Parelli, the local big-shot, walked out of the elevator and along the passage. He had his coat collar turned up but he couldn’t disguise his bow legs, his thin shoulders, his peculiar walk.

  Lounging outside Parelli’s main door, Scanci and Fannigan, the mobster’s two gorillas, quickly recognised him.

  Scanci grinned.

  ‘Hey-hey, lookit,’ he mouthed. ‘Here comes the law. Howya, Snev? Haveya come for a cut or are you pinchin’ somebody today?’

  Fannigan raspberried. Both gorillas laughed.

  The Third Assistant D.A. shot them a venomous look. Pushed past, went through the first door along the passage, through the second into Moxy Parelli’s room.

  Parelli pushed the girl he was kissing back into her chair. He straightened up. His wide mouth eased into a grin when he saw Snevelsky.

  ‘Hey, where’s the fire?’ he said cheerfully. ‘What’s eatin’ you, Snev? Have they got wise to you around at the D.A.’s office an’ handed you a kick in the pants or have you come around here to say that you’re thinkin’ of raisin’ the ante? If so, come again. There’s nothing doin’. Not a thing.’

  Snevelski turned down his coat collar. There were beads of sweat across his forehead.

  ‘Send that moll outa here,’ he said. ‘This is business.’

  Parelli nodded at the girl. She got up and went out. She pulled a face at Snevelsky as she went. She was twenty-three, plump in the right places, with good legs and an impudent expression. She was expensively and somewhat flashily dressed with a skirt that was too tight round the hips. Snevelsky found himself thinking that he liked molls in tight skirts.

  ‘So what?’ said Parelli. He did not offer a drink. He didn’t like the Third Assistant. He despised him.

  ‘It’s bad, Moxy,’ said Snevelsky. ‘Here’s the set-up. We can’t cover up any longer for you on that downtown warehouse shootin’. The Feds are on the job. They got some tie-up that the shootin’ was connected with a Treasury bond grab. They’re makin’ it a Federal job, see? O.K. The D.A. had me in today an’ gave me a nasty one off the ice.

  ‘He says we gotta pull somebody in for that killin’. He don’t care who, but it’s gotta be somebody an’ it’s gotta be quick. If we don’t, that lousy “G” crowd will be around here puttin’ the heat on the town generally an’ we’ll all be sugared. Got that?’

  Parelli sat down. He ran a finger between a fat neck and a silk collar. He thought.

  ‘I got it,’ he said at last.

  He began to grin. He leaned forward as far as his gross stomach would let him. Then:

  ‘Get this, Snevelsky,’ he said, ‘an’ get it right. I’m goin’ to throw a party tomorrow out at the Grapevine Inn. O.K. The place will be full up an’ they’ll all be my boys, see? There won’t be strangers around.

  ‘Right. At eleven forty-five you concentrate a police cruiser out there. They can hide in among the trees on the other side of the highway. O.K. They just stick around, see? They wait there.

  ‘At ten minutes to twelve I’m goin’ to send a certain guy out of the inn by the front doorway. This guy will have an orange in his hand—you got that? That’s good enough for you. Directly the cruiser squad see this guy come out with the orange in his hand they let him have it plenty. They don’t arrest him. They just let him have it good in the guts an’ they’re goin’ to be justified, see? The reason they shoot right away like that is becos he’s got an orange in his hand, see?’

  Snevelsky looked across at Parelli with wide eyes.

  ‘You mean …’ he said. ‘You mean …’

  ‘I mean the guy with the orange will be the Orange Kid,’ said the mobster. ‘Ain’t that good enough?’ He grinned. ‘Everybody knows that when that bozo chucks a bomb it’s always inside an orange skin. So all the cops have gotta say is that he was just about to chuck one of his usual egg-bombs inside the usual orangeskin an’ they hadta shoot first.’

  ‘I got it,’ says Snevelsky. ‘But why the Kid? Why …?’

  ‘Don’t get curious,’ said Parelli. ‘You keep your nose clean an’ shut your trap. I got reasons.’ He grinned. ‘That was the Orange Kid’s doll in here just now,’ he went on. ‘See?’

  ‘I see,’ said Snevelsky. ‘O.K. I got it. We give it to the Kid for resistin’ arrest an’ attemptin’ to throw a bomb, an’ we discover afterwards that he was the guy who pulled the warehouse killin’.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Parelli. ‘Now scram becos you make me feel sick in the stomach.’

  It was eleven-thirty. The party at the Grapevine was tops. Everybody who was anybody was there. Most of them very high. When Parelli threw a party he threw one.

  Irma, who was dancing with the Kid downstairs, stopped when she saw Scanci giving her the eye-sign. She told the Kid she had broken a suspender, that she’d be back in a minute.

  Upstairs in the bedroom corridor Parelli was waiting for her. He gave her a big hug.

  ‘Now listen, kiddo,’ he said. ‘Here it is. In five minutes I’m goin’ to send for the Kid. I’m goin’ to send him out to pick up a guy on the other side of the highway.

  ‘Just as he’s goin’ outa my bedroom here you come along the passage an’ ask him to bring you back an orange with him.

  ‘I’ve fixed that the only place where there’s an orange is on the stand just inside the front entrance, an’ there’ll only be one orange there, see?

  ‘So the Kid will grab it off the fruit girl pronto becos it’s the only one an’ he’ll take it out at the front entrance with him so’s nobody else gets it, becos he loves you so much.’

  He grinned.

  ‘After which we’ll buy him a nice wreath of roses with “He was our dear pal” in silver wordin’ on it, an’ you can move over to me. Got that?’

  ‘l got it,’ she said. She put up her lips. ‘Gee, have you got brains, Moxy!’ she gurgled.

  Fannigan found the Orange Kid in the bar. ‘Hey, Kid,’ he said, ‘the Big Boy wants you—he’s up in his room—it’s business.’

  The Kid nodded. Finished his rye. Turned round and made for the stairs. He was five feet ten, slim, an elegant dresser. He’d got style. He moved like a professional dancer and he could twist a four-inch nail between his fingers. He had big blue eyes and an innocent expression. Women went for him.

  The Kid had played along with Parelli for five years. He knew where he was with Parelli. To him the mobster was the Big Boy—the real thing. To an East-Side wop kid, brought up to pinchin’ off barrows from the age of four, snatching bags in the street, and acting as look-out for ‘the Boys’ from the age of ten, and every sort of mayhem from the age of fifteen, Parelli looked like the real business.

  Parelli had made him what he was. And he was the finest shop-front blaster in the business. From the time the bombs were made down in McGarrow’s warehouse basement to the time when the Kid threw them concealed in the usual orange skin with unerring aim into the shops, offices, even bathrooms of such folk as were foolish enough not to consent to pay for ‘protection’.

  The Orange Kid saw the business through coolly and smilingly. And even if the blasting business was not so profitable since repeal, he was also a very good and useful guy with a gun.

  Life was O.K. The Orange Kid thought he was big-time in the mob, thought that Irma was the cutest doll ever. Everything was okey doke. So what the hell?

  He pushed open the door of the bedroom and sauntered in. Parelli was sitting at a desk in the corner. Scanci grinned
at the Kid and handed him a highball.

  ‘Sit down, Kid,’ said Parelli. ‘Here’s the way it is. Windy Pereira is coming down tonight from Wisconsin. He’s due to show up here right now. O.K. Well, I don’t want him to come in here.

  ‘I just come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be so good. There’s too many wise guys around here tonight who might put the wrong sorta construction on me havin’ a meetin’ with Pereira, see?

  ‘Scram downstairs, Kid, an’ go over the other side of the highway. Flag Pereira when you see that light blue sedan of his an’ tell him to lay off comin’ in here. Tell him to ease right along to the Honeysuckle Inn an’ that I’ll come along there an’ talk business to him at twelve o’clock. You got that?’

  ‘O.K.’ said the Kid.

  He swallowed the drink and went out of the room whistling. Outside down the passage he met Irma coming out of a bedroom.

  ‘You wanna dance, Kid?’ she said.

  He smiled at her.

  ‘Nope. I’m doin’ a little job. I’ll be seein’ you.’

  ‘I’m stayin’ right up here till you come back, Kid,’ she said. ‘I don’t want them monkeys downstairs man-handlin’ me on the dance floor. I’ll wait.’

  He lit a cigarette.

  ‘Sweet baby,’ he said.

  He gave her a hug.

  ‘An’ bring me back an orange, Kid, when you come,’ she said. ‘There’s some at the entrance. You better grab one as you go out becos they all got dry mouths downstairs an’ they’ll be fightin’ for ’em later on.’

  ‘O.K., honey,’ said the Kid.

  He walked towards the stairs.

  The orange basket in the front hall was empty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the fruit girl. ‘Some drunk grabbed the last one before I could stop him. I told the sap that Mr Parelli said it wasn’t to be touched, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Where’d he go?’ asked the Kid.

  ‘He went outa the side entrance,’ said the girl. ‘He was high all right!’

  The Kid walked back along the passage and out by the side entrance. Away across the lawn, leading to the side road, he could see the drunk lurching along precariously. The Kid went after him.