Puzzle for Fiends
Page 23
An image of Selena came into my mind. Not one image but a dozen images merged together. I thought of my first staggering glimpse of her. I thought of her bending over me in the moonlight. I thought of her as she had been tonight, her honey-brown arms twined around me, her dark blue eyes looking deep into mine with those unlikely tears smudging her lashes.
“I love you. I really think I do. This is different. This time it hurts. It must he love when it hurts, mustn't it, baby?”
I had thought of her as a murderess then, a black-hearted, lying murderess. Now, with a queer pang, I thought:
Maybe she meant it. Maybe for the first time she was on the level.
I wanted to run up the stairs, to see her once more, to slip my arms around her and feel the velvet warmth of her skin against mine.
But I knew that it wasn’t to be. If I saw her again, how could I leave her?
And I had to go.
I crossed back to the desk and opened the drawer where Mrs. Friend kept her cache of money. I couldn’t go out into the world penniless. I took fifty dollars. When Mrs. Friend realized what I was doing for her, she would think it cheap at the price.
I turned out the light. There was a bathroom across the hall. I was grimy and disheveled and there was blood—only a little, luckily—on my sleeve. I washed up. I stuffed the towel in my pocket to be destroyed along with Marny’s fake suicide-note. I hurried back to the garage. I got into Gordy’s car. I drove away.
I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t care.
Just so long as it was—away…
Epilogue
I was in the drab lobby of a cheap little Los Angeles hotel when I read the newspaper. I had been there a week because a cheap hotel in a big city was a good place to hide.
Not that I had much reason to hide any longer. I had read the papers avidly since the sensational murder case at Lona Beach had broken, and things were turning out exactly as I had hoped. Sargent was satisfied that Marny had murdered her father and, although the farmhouse had been so completely destroyed that it was almost impossible to reconstruct what had happened there, fragments of the cast had been found which convinced Sargent that Gordy’s body was mine. Mimsey and Selena, who had put on a magnificent show, were almost completely free from suspicion. Even Mr. Moffat, in a press interview seething with frustrated fury, had indicated his intention of waiving all claims to the Friend fortune.
My link with Mimsey and Selena through the papers was the only thing that made me feel alive. As my fifty dollars dwindled almost to the vanishing point, my mind remained as blank as ever as to my own identity.
A thousand times a day, I said to myself: Peter. Iris. A plane. Seeing someone off on a plane.
But those words that had at once seemed so full of meaning now had association only with the Friends. Selena carrying the black spaniel out of the grey and gold room. Selena bending over the vase of irises, her fair hair shimmering, her red lips parted in a smile.
The future was blank and featureless as a drowned man’s face.
It was evening when I bought that particular newspaper. I sat down gloomily in one of the lobby’s worn red leather chairs and glanced at the front page for any new Friend story. The photograph of a man at the head of a column of print caught my eye. Wasn’t there something dimly familiar about that young, narrow face with the close-set eyes and the flopping mane of black hair? Under the photograph was the caption:
ADMITS TO ASSAULT AND ROBBERY OF MOVIE STAR’S MATE
Halfheartedly at first, I started to read that the boy, whose name was Louis Crivelli, had been arrested in San Diego for a car hold-up and, under police questioning, had admitted to having bummed a ride from a certain Peter Duluth, slugged him and stolen his car one month before. This, the paper said, only deepened the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Peter Duluth, recently discharged from the Navy and married to the famous movie actress, Iris Duluth. A month ago, having said good-bye to his wife, who had flown with the USO morale unit to entertain the American Army of Occupation in Tokyo, Mr. Duluth had left Burbank Airfield and had never been seen again. The police were going to take Crivelli to the spot where he claimed to have abandoned Mr. Duluth and were going to start a new search from there. It was believed now that Duluth was probably suffering from amnesia caused by a blow on the head stuck by Crivelli.
At that point I was told to see Column 7, page 3. Halfhearted no longer, I leafed through the paper to page three. Above the continuation of the story on Crivelli, was a photograph, captioned:
LAST PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN OF PETER DULUTH
An army bomber, its propellers whirring, stood on a huge airfield. In front of it, staring at each other rather foolishly, were a beautiful dark girl and a man.
To me, of course, they weren’t just a beautiful girl and a man. Nor was the plane just a plane.
I remembered the plane. I knew the girl. And the man’s face was as familiar as my own—for a very good reason.
It was my own.
The sense of relief that rushed through me was indescribable. It wasn’t that memory of my whole life came tumbling back in one instant. It wasn’t as wholesale as that. It was just that every detail of that moment, caught in the photograph, sprang into life for me. Seeing someone off on a plane… Peter… Iris… The way the wind from the propellers tugged at Iris’s skirt. The feel of the sunshine. Iris’s voice: Peter, darling, miss me.
I remembered it all as if I had left the airport only ten minutes ago.
“Iris. “I said her name out loud. It was wonderful.
There was more in the paper. At the end of the column I read:
Iris Duluth, who only learned of her husband’s disappearance last week, flew back from Japan immediately and arrived at her Beverly Hills home yesterday morning.
That’s all I waited for. A phone booth stood in a dreary corner of the lobby. I ran to it. My hands had quite a time getting a nickel into the right slot. The operator looked up Iris Duluth’s number and got it. A girl’s voice said:
“Hello.”
I was going to ask: Is this Iris Duluth? But there was no need. That voice was as much part of me as my own fingers.
“Hiyah, baby,” I said. “Thought I’d let you know I’ll be home in the hour.”
“Peter. “There was a catch in her voice that made my heart turn over. “Peter, I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I.”
“Darling, I’ve been half out of my mind. Where are you?”
“Downtown L.A. A cheesy hotel.”
“But what happened?”
“I got conked on the head, I guess.”
“I know that. Of course I know that. And I told you to be careful. I might have known. But none of that matters now. Peter, darling, half of California’s been after you. Where on earth have you been?”
Where had I been? I thought of Selena. Matched up against that voice, her glamour dissolved like a mist. Suddenly Selena seemed sleazy.
“Peter, tell me. Please tell me. Where have you been?”
“Oh, that,” I said.
“I’ve got to know, darling. There are dozens of reporters plaguing me.”
“Get rid of them—quick.”
“I’ll try. But I’ve got to feed them a sop first—like Cerberus.”
“Who’s Cerberus?”
“Something that someone had to feed a sop to.”
I thought of telling her to say I’d been visiting friends. That made a neat half-truth. But I had learned from the Friend family what gaping pitfalls awaited the half-truth monger. For Selena’s sake as much as mine I had to lie. The he had better be simple.
“Tell them,” I said, “that I don’t remember. Suddenly I was wandering about the streets of L.A. That’s all I know.”
“All?”
“All. You know. Everything went black.”
“Ah right. I’ll tell them that.” She paused and then added with a trace of anxiety: “Am I supposed to believe it too?” I was wondering if I
had the price of a taxi or whether I’d have to bum it from her when I got home.
“Try, baby,” I said. “If it’s too much for you, I’ll think up something else.”
“Like, maybe, the truth?”
“You never know,” I said. “If my back’s slap up against the wall, I may even tell you the truth.”
FIN
PATRICK QUENTIN
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelley (30 April 1906 – 2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
In 1931 Richard Wilson Webb (born in 1901 in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, an Englishman working for a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia) and Martha Mott Kelley collaborated on the detective novel Cottage Sinister. Kelley was known as Patsy (Patsy Kelly was a well-known character actress of that era) and Webb as Rick, so they created the pseudonym Q. Patrick by combining their nicknames—adding the Q "because it was unusual".
Webb's and Kelley's literary partnership ended with Kelley's marriage to Stephen Wilson. Webb continued to write under the Q. Patrick name, while looking for a new writing partner. Although he wrote two novels with the journalist and Harper's Bazaar editor Mary Louise Aswell, he would find his permanent collaborator in Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934.
Wheeler's and Webb's first collaboration was published in 1936. That same year, they introduced two new pseudonyms: Murder Gone to Earth, the first novel featuring Dr. Westlake, was credited to Jonathan Stagge, a name they would continue to use for the rest of the Westlake series. A Puzzle for Fools introduced Peter Duluth and was signed Patrick Quentin. This would become their primary and most famous pen name, even though they also continued to use Q. Patrick until the end of their collaboration (particularly for Inspector Trant stories).
In the late 1940s, Webb's contributions gradually decreased due to health problems. From the 1950s and on, Wheeler continued writing as Patrick Quentin on his own, and also had one book published under his own name. In the 1960s and '70s, Wheeler achieved success as a playwright and librettist, and his output as Quentin Patrick slowed and then ceased altogether after 1965. However, Wheeler did write the book for the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd about a fictional London mass murderer, showing he had not altogether abandoned the genre.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
As Patrick Quentin
A Puzzle For Fools (1936)
Puzzle For Players (1938)
Puzzle For Puppets (1944)
Puzzle For Wantons (1945) aka Slay the Loose Ladies
Puzzle For Fiends (1946) aka Love Is a Deadly Weapon
Puzzle For Pilgrims (1947) aka The Fate of the Immodest Blonde
Run To Death (1948)
The Follower (1950)
Black Widow (1952) aka Fatal Woman
My Son, the Murderer (1954) aka the Wife of Ronald Sheldon
The Man With Two Wives (1955)
The Man in the Net (1956)
Suspicious Circumstances (1957)
Shadow of Guilt (1959)
The Green-Eyed Monster (1960)
The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow (1961), short stories
Family Skeletons (1965)
As Q Patrick
Cottage Sinister (1931)
Murder at the Women's City Club (1932) aka Death in the Dovecote
SS Murder (1933)
Murder at the 'Varsity (1933) aka Murder at Cambridge
The Grindle Nightmare (1935) aka Darker Grows the Valley
Death Goes To School (1936)
Death For Dear Clara (1937)
The File on Fenton and Farr (1938)
The File on Claudia Cragge (1938)
Death and the Maiden (1939)
Return To the Scene (1941) aka Death in Bermuda
Danger Next Door (1952)
As Jonathan Stagge
The Dogs Do Bark (1936) aka Murder Gone To Earth
Murder by Prescription (1938) aka Murder or Mercy?
The Stars Spell Death (1939) aka Murder in the Stars
Turn of the Table (1940) aka Funeral For Five
The Yellow Taxi (1942) aka Call a Hearse
The Scarlet Circle (1943) aka Light From a Lantern
Death, My Darling Daughters (1945) aka Death and the Dear Girls
Death's Old Sweet Song (1946)
The Three Fears (1949)
As Hugh Wheeler
The Crippled Muse (1951)