Jane Carter Historical Cozies: Omnibus Edition (Six Mystery Novels)

by Alice Simpson

  “That’s just my point,” I insisted. “I yearn to be fully self-sufficient, but how can I ever become self-sufficient on the pittance I’m paid for writing serials for other people. No, I intend to cut out the middle-men and publish directly to the masses. That’s why I want to start my own magazine, but how can I launch Carter’s All-Story Weekly without capital?”

  “You’re really determined to try it?”

  “Of course.”

  Dad reached for his check book.

  “How much will you need?”

  “Oh, just sign your name at the bottom and leave the amount blank.”

  “Sorry, I prefer not to financially cripple myself for life. One hundred dollars is my limit. I’m throwing it down a sink-hole, but the lessons you’ll learn may be worth the cost.”

  “I can do a lot with a hundred dollars,” I said. “Thanks, Dad.”

  I picked up the check before the ink was dry and, dropping a kiss lightly on my father’s cheek, was gone.

  I telephoned Florence from the corner drugstore and told her the news. I asked her to come downtown at once. Fifteen minutes later Flo met me at the entrance to the Morning Press building.

  “Just think, Flo!” I said as I unlocked the front door. “This huge plant is all mine! I’m a publisher at last.”

  “You’re completely insane if you ask me. This place is a dreadful mess. You’ll never be able to clean it up, let alone get out an issue of a story magazine. Do you honestly intend to write all the stories yourself?”

  “I do not,” I said, “but I do have almost enough material laid by—previously rejected by Pittman and other editors of old-fashioned and narrowminded inclinations—to make up the bulk of the serials for months to come. Where I have a bit of a deficit is short stories, but haven’t you heard the saying that every educated woman of taste and intelligence has a secret ambition to be a lady novelist?”

  “Whose saying is that?”

  “Mine.”

  “Supposing you succeed in locating this group of educated women of taste and intelligence, all yearning to become lady novelists, how do you propose to pay them? Every penny of that hundred dollars your father gave you will have to go to plant expenses.”

  “I know that,” I said. “Perhaps, you’ve heard this saying: ‘Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for’.”

  “Don’t tell me that’s yours, too?”

  “No, I borrowed it from Mark Twain. My point is, if I can just get through the first year, later on, I can begin to pay out handsomely and will richly reward all those loyal would-be lady novelists I plan to enlist as cadets in the service of Carter’s All-story Weekly.”

  “I think,” said Flo. “Any educated woman of taste and intelligence might be better advised to going straight to sawing wood.”

  We had passed through the vestibule to the lower floor room which once had served as the Press’ circulation department. Behind the high service counter, desks and chairs remained untouched, covered by a thick layer of dust. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling light fixtures and festooned the walls.

  We climbed the stairs, glanced briefly into the newsroom and then wandered on to the composing room. My gaze roved over long rows of linotype machines and steel trucks which were used to hold page forms. There were bins of type, Cheltenham, Goudy, Century—more varieties than I had ever seen before.

  Passing by the stereotyping department, we entered the press room where slumbered ten giant double-decked rotary presses. Lying on the roller of one was a torn strip of newspaper, the last issue of the Morning Press ever printed.

  “It gives one an odd feeling to see all this,” said Florence. “Why do you suppose Roberts closed the plant when it was prosperous?”

  “No one seems to know the answer,” I replied, stooping to peer into an empty ink pot. “But it doesn’t seem possible a man would give up his business and throw so many people out of work without a good reason.”

  “His bad luck seems to be your good fortune,” Florence said. “Well, since you’ve fallen heir to all this, what will you do with it? It will take a sizeable chunk of your hundred dollars just to get the place cleaned.”

  “Not according to my calculations,” I said. “Let’s choose our offices, and then we’ll discuss business.”

  “Our offices?” echoed Florence. “I’m not in on this brainstorm of yours. I may be an educated woman of taste and intelligence, but I assure you that I’ve never yearned to become a lady novelist.”

  “Don’t worry, Flo. You won’t have to write any stories yourself. You’ll be the editor.”

  “But I thought you were the editor!”

  “I’ll be the managing editor,” I explained. “You’ll have your office and oodles of authority. Of course, you’ll have to work hard keeping our staff in line.”

  “What staff?”

  “Oh, they don’t know it yet, but the ladies of the League of Women Voters have found a solution for their advertising problems.”

  “But what does that have to do with your nonexistent staff?” Flo asked.

  “The LWV is undoubtedly rife with educated women of taste and intelligence. Who would be better fitting to staff a story magazine dedicated to the portrayal of strong, capable heroines than the ladies of the League of Women Voters?” I asked.

  “You’ve not met Mrs. Dunst, have you?”

  “No, but I fully intend to. This afternoon, if possible,” I said. “Would you happen to know what Mrs. Dunst is in the habit of doing on a Friday afternoon?”

  “No, but I do know she’ll be at the Greenville Garden Circle’s annual tea tomorrow,” said Flo. “I’m supposed to accompany Mother there and help hand round the sandwiches while listening politely to the old dears’ sundry medical complaints.”

  “I’m a veritable expert at dispensing noodle-juice,” I said. “And you know I always bend a sympathetic ear when any person brings up their ailments.”

  “Is that your way of asking to come along?” Flo said. “Well, alright. But it won’t do you any good. There’s no denying that you have a way with words, but I think you’ll find Mrs. Dunst is a force to be reckoned with.”

  “I’ll shall look forward to it,” I said. “I’ll even get gussied up in my most respectable frock and find a pair of stockings without a single hole in them.”

  “See that you do,” said Flo. “And don’t you dare do anything that might embarrass mother.”

  Florence glanced around at the dusty machinery.

  “I don’t see how you expect to get these presses running.”

  “We’ll only need one.”

  “True, but you can’t recruit pressmen or linotype operators from the Greenville Examiner. They’re all union.”

  “Unfortunately, no. The first issue of Carter’s All-Story Weekly Magazine will be printed at the Examiner plant. Dad doesn’t know it, yet. After that—well, I’ll think of something.”

  “How do you propose to get this place cleaned?”

  “Every person who works on our paper must wield a broom.”

  Returning to the second floor, we inspected the offices adjoining the newsroom. I selected for myself the one which previously had been occupied by Marcus Roberts. His name was still on the frosted-glass door, and the walls were hung with etchings and paintings of considerable value.

  An assortment of pens, erasers, thumbtacks, and small articles remained in the top drawer of the flat-top desk. All letters and personal papers appeared to have been removed.

  “Mr. Roberts apparently left here in a great hurry,” I said to Flo. “For some reason, he never returned for the paintings.”

  Florence chose an office adjoining my new quarters. We both were admiring the view from the window when I stiffened and grabbed Flo by the hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Flo demanded.

  “I thought I heard someone moving about,” I whispered.
/>   We remained motionless and listened. A board creaked.

  I darted to the door and flung it open. The newsroom was deserted, but I heard footsteps retreating swiftly down the hall.

  “Flo, we’re not alone in this building!”

  “I thought I heard someone, too.”

  We ran through the newsroom to the hall and down the stairway. Three steps from the bottom, I halted. A man’s grimy felt hat lay on the service counter of the advertising department.

  “Look at that,” I said to Flo. “Someone was upstairs!”

  “He may still be here, too. Jane, did you leave the entrance door unlocked?”

  “I guess so. I don’t remember.”

  “A loiterer may have wandered into the building, and then left when we gave chase.”

  “Without his hat?”

  “Probably, he forgot it.”

  “I intend to look carefully about,” I said. “After all, I am responsible for this place now.”

  I immediately went down and locked the entrance, then Flo and I wandered warily from room to room. We even ventured into the basement where a battalion of rats had taken refuge, but the building appeared deserted.

  “We’re only wasting precious time,” I said at last. “Whoever the intruder was, he’s gone now.”

  Retracing our way to the advertising department, we stopped short. The hat, which had been laying on the counter only a few minutes before, had vanished.

  Chapter Seven

  Flo and I stared at the counter. I knew that we had not touched the hat. It must have been removed by the man who had abandoned it there.

  “The hat’s gone,” whispered Florence nervously. “That means someone is still inside the building!”

  “He could have slipped out the front door while we were in the basement.”

  Once more, we made a complete tour of the building, entering every room. We found no one and finally decided to give up the futile search.

  “After this, I’ll take more care to lock the entrance door,” I said as we prepared to leave the building.

  Saturday afternoon I put on a quietly-respectable flowered frock, a pair of stockings in pristine condition—I had to borrow those from Mrs. Timms—and a pair of shoes which were only slightly run down at the heel.

  I spent the first half hour of the Gardening Circle Tea listening to Mrs. McCall, one of Reverend Radcliff’s most elderly parishioners, catalog the progress of her lumbago. Periodically, I scanned the room, alert for the arrival of Mrs. Dunst.

  When she finally arrived, I detached myself from Mrs. McCall, who had forsaken her lecture on lumbago and had gone on to describe in exquisite detail the trouble she’d been having with her glass eye. I suggested that perhaps Florence might pop round and give her eye a good scrubbing, before slipping away. It was a mean trick to play on old Flo, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Reverend Radcliff’s daughter had been recruited to launder a parishioner’s accessory parts.

  “How do you do,” I said to Mrs. Dunst and stuck out my hand. “I’m Jane Carter.”

  Mrs. Dunst slowly extended the gloved hand not containing the plate loaded with an assortment of shortbread, scones and pimento cheese tea sandwiches.

  “You’re Anthony Fielding’s daughter, aren’t you?” Her voice was a trifle frosty.

  “I am,” I said. Since she already knew who I was, I decided on a frontal assault. “I heard my father has been less than receptive to your requests to place advertisements on behalf of the LWV in his newspaper.”

  “He has been less than receptive,” Mrs. Dunst replied with only a trifle less frost in her voice. “As has every other reputable news establishment in Greenville. I confess I never expected to encounter such a unified resistance to the cause of the LWV.”

  “I have very little influence with my father,” I said—this was more or less a lie, but it was the unvarnished truth when it came to putting pressure to bear on his choice of advertisers. “Hounding him to accept your account would be fruitless, but I may have a unique solution to your problem which would be mutually beneficial to us both.”

  I spent the next ten minutes regaling Mrs. Dunst with my successes as Miss Hortencia Higgins—my nom de plume—authoress of such well-received serials as “Under Sentence of Marriage: What Came of Miss Amhurst’s Trip to New York,” and “Marcia Makes Good: A Vamp Finds Her Soul”. I left out “Evangeline: The Horse Thief’s Unwilling Fiancée”. I did not think Mr. Pittman’s butchered ending would please her—had Mrs. Dunst chanced to read it—it certainly had not pleased me.

  I then moved on to my proposal: The League of Women Voters would serve as interim staff members for my newly-minted magazine, and Carter’s All-story Weekly would print large and copious advertisements on behalf of the LWV. Not only that, I told Mrs. Dunst, but her members would have the opportunity to write popular fiction sympathetic to the cause of equal rights for women.

  “Women have the vote,” I concluded my appeal, “but there is yet a great work to be done before the American woman possesses full equality with the American man. What better way to enlighten and emancipate the female sex than through the vehicle of entertaining and uplifting works of fiction?”

  I was pleased with my little speech. If that did not move Mrs. Dunst, nothing would.

  Mrs. Dunst again extended her gloved hand. This time around her face was wreathed with smiles.

  “I shall report to your offices bright and early Monday morning,” she said, “accompanied by such like-minded members as are willing to join me.”

  At breakfast the next morning I ate with such a preoccupied air that my father commented upon my sober countenance.

  “I hope you haven’t encountered knotty problems so soon in your literary venture,” he said.

  “None which you can’t solve for me,” I said.

  “Indeed? And when does the first issue appear?”

  “I’ll print three weeks from today.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “It’s the only day your presses wouldn’t be busy.”

  “My presses?”

  “Yes, I haven’t hired my pressroom force yet. I plan to make up the magazine, set the type and lock it in the page forms. Then I’ll haul it over to your plant for stereotyping and the press run.”

  “And if I object?”

  “You won’t, will you, Dad? I’m such a pathetic little rag. I’m not even a competitor since you deal strictly in the news of the day and wouldn’t think of touching anything as frivolous as sensational and sentimental works of fiction.”

  “I’ll run off the first edition for you,” Dad promised. “But mind, only the first. How many issues will you want? About five hundred? I know you’re calling yourself a magazine, but my presses are configured to print newspapers.”

  “Oh, I won’t let that stop me. A newspaper format is perfectly ducky. It’ll make Carter’s All-Story Weekly stand out from the crowd. For the first printing, I was figuring on roughly six thousand. That should take care of my street sales. Of course, when my national subscription scheme takes off, who knows how big a print run I’ll need.”

  Dad’s fork clattered against his plate.

  “Six thousand! Street sales? Where, may I ask, did you acquire your distribution organization?”

  “Oh, I have plans,” I said. “Running an all-story magazine is really very simple. Just a lot of hard work.”

  “Young lady, you’re riding for a heartbreaking fall,” warned my father. “Six thousand copies! You’ll be lucky to dispose of three hundred.”

  “Wait and see,” I said.

  During the week which followed there were no idle moments for the staff of the newly-organized Carter’s All-Story Weekly.

  As promised, Mrs. Dunst showed up at nine o’clock on Monday morning with ten Women Voters prepared to lend their aid to the cause of creating quality fiction for the modern female. Six of Mrs. Dunst’s henchwomen showed literary aspirations, so I set them to the task of creating the needed short s
tories. I advised them in advance that I reserved the prerogative to heavily edit their efforts, emphasizing their amateur status and my professional expertise.

  The only things I required of them were that their heroines must not be lily-livered shrinking violets and that their romantic heroes—should they choose to write romance at all—must treat their heroines not with addled and idealistic admiration but clear-eyed respect.

  Leaving Florence in charge of supervising the aspiring lady-novelists, and Mrs. Dunst in charge of seeing that cleanliness and order were restored to the facility, I focused most of my attention on the problem of winning advertisers.

  One of Mrs. Dunst’s confederates, Mrs. Ruby Applebee, was the wife of a prominent local businessman, James Applebee of Applebee and Applebee Glass and Lumber. I immediately identified Mrs. Applebee as an asset to our enterprise. When I explained to her the inherent difficulties of gaining advertisers for the inaugural issue of a brand-new story paper, Mrs. Applebee said she understood completely and was fully prepared to exert her influence, which was considerable, in helping Carter’s All-Story Weekly round out it’s stable of advertisers. She promised to tackle her husband that very evening.

  I then spent the entire following day going around to every local business and inviting them to buy ad space—at cut-rate prices—in Carter’s All-Story Weekly. The novelty of the enterprise intrigued some businessmen, while others took space because they were friends of the Applebees. Money continued to pour into the till of Carter’s All-Story Weekly.

  Yet, when everything should have been sailing along smoothly, Florence complained that it was becoming difficult to keep her staff of writers satisfied. One by one they were falling away.

  One of those remaining, Mrs. Pritchett, turned in a short mystery, “The Black Heart of Malcolm McGrew,” which, while painting the female sex as strong and highly-capable, was a bit more melodramatically forceful than even my open mind could tolerate.

  “Was it quite necessary,” I asked Flo, as I placed the pages of Mrs. Pritchett’s story back on Florence’s desk, “for the black-hearted Mr. McGrew to come to quite such a violent end? I could have stood the heroine stabbing him to death, but did she have to lock him up in a dank dungeon and let his arms and legs be gnawed off by rats before avenging her sister’s suicide?”