And they both stood an instant uncovered, while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.
Recipe for Murder
VINCENT STARRETT
THE STORY
Original publication: Redbook Magazine, November 1934; first collected in The Case Book of Jimmie Lavender (Chicago, Gold Label, 1944)
CHARLES VINCENT EMERSON STARRETT (1886–1974) was one of America’s greatest bookmen, producing countless essays, biographical works, critical studies, and bibliographical pieces on a wide range of authors and bookish subjects, all while writing the “Books Alive” column for the Chicago Tribune for many years. His autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), should be required reading for booklovers of all ages.
The daughter of the distinguished bibliophile offered the best tombstone inscription—“The Last Bookman”—for anyone who is a Dofab, Eugene Field’s useful acronym for a “damned old fool about books.” Once, when a friend called at his home, Starrett’s daughter answered the door and told the visitor that her father was “upstairs, playing with his books.”
It cannot be argued—Starrett’s most outstanding achievements were his writings about Sherlock Holmes, most notably The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) and “The Unique ‘Hamlet,’ ” described by Sherlockians for decades as the best pastiche ever written. It was selected for Queen’s Quorum, Ellery Queen’s selection of the one hundred six most important volumes of detective fiction ever written.
Starrett wrote numerous mystery short stories and several detective novels, including Murder on “B” Deck (1929), Dead Man Inside (1931), and The End of Mr. Garment (1932). His short story, “Recipe for Murder,” was expanded to the full-length novel, The Great Hotel Murder (1935), which was the basis for a film of the same title.
THE FILM
Title: The Great Hotel Murder, 1935
Studio: Fox Film Corporation
Director: Eugene Forde
Screenwriter: Arthur Kober
Producer: John Stone
THE CAST
• Edmund Lowe (Roger Blackwood)
• Victor McLaglen (Andrew W. “Andy” McCabe)
• Rosemary Ames (Eleanor Blake)
• Mary Carlisle (Olive Temple)
The film was based on this short story, “Recipe for Murder,” which was the working title for the motion picture while it was in production. Starrett had liked the plot of his story so much that he expanded it into a novel titled The Great Hotel Murder (1935). The motion picture follows the novel’s plot moderately closely, though Jimmie Lavender, the gentleman detective of the story, does not appear in the film.
In one of San Francisco’s most elegant hotels, house detective Andy McCabe flirts with women on the staff as well as guests but is rejected regularly as they all seem to have their sights on the debonaire mystery writer Roger Blackwood. When a guest is murdered, McCabe figures he can solve the mystery better than the writer can because, he reasons, anyone can solve a crime if they provide their own answers.
As was true of so many mystery films of the era, as much emphasis is placed on comedy as on crime-solving which, to be fair, is a good thing because both the motive for the murder and the method in this movie were a bit murky.
RECIPE FOR MURDER
Vincent Starrett
I
“I’m through with men,” said Barbara Allardyce. There was finality in her tone. “No marriage bed for me, thanks! I’ve seen enough of it in the case of Sue and Peter.”
She was just twenty, an age when youth is very sure of itself. But there was no doubt that her disgust at Peter Vallance had for the moment coloured her attitude towards the entire race of men.
Jimmie Lavender nodded. “Of course,” he agreed.
“But some of us have our uses,” I ventured fatuously. She was immorally attractive; and I am somewhat susceptible.
“I don’t mean men like you and Mr. Lavender,” retorted Barbara Allardyce. “I mean—”
“Mr. Gilruth knows what you mean,” said Lavender. “He’s just trying to be coy. Pay no attention to him.”
“Even you were late in getting here,” she accused, answering his smile. “I thought you never would come.”
“I’m here,” said Jimmie Lavender.
“So is Peter,” she murmured, glancing at a table a little removed from ours. “He came in just before you did.” She leaned towards him. “Mr. Lavender, do you think I’m—silly—in thinking something terrible is going to happen?”
Jimmie Lavender turned his eyes to the florid spectacle that was backgrounding our conversation. The notorious night club was a riot of barbaric colour. In the centre of the floor, a girl in a man’s evening suit, with cane and topper, was singing an incongruous sort of ballad about her lover’s desertion—and occasionally choking on the smoke that filled the wide chamber. A roar of applause followed her as she left the floor, although previously nobody had appeared to be paying much attention.
The clatter and tinkle of cutlery and glasses continued as she sang her second song. The jackdaws and the peacocks, the diners and the drunkards, were ready only to applaud her exits; they would not be really interested until Shalimar appeared. It was Shalimar for whom they waited. It was for Shalimar—and possibly the Zambesi Dancers—that they packed the place.
“A hard life,” said Jimmie Lavender. “That child was happier in Fountain City, Indiana, if she had been given wisdom to realize it.” He returned his glance to Barbara Allardyce. “Terrible? Silly? I don’t know! I understand that your sister is very unhappy; and you said something about a note—”
“I have it here,” she interrupted, opening her purse. “Sue didn’t want to give it to me, at first. You can see for yourself.”
Lavender took the sheet of perfumed paper from her hand. After a moment he raised one eyebrow, characteristically, and passed the note to me. I read the stark communication with a little sense of shock.
“ ‘So it’s the Russian bitch now! You can’t treat me like that. They say the Russians aren’t so pretty when they’re dead.’ ”
“She’s frank enough,” said Jimmie Lavender. “Almost too frank, perhaps. Angry, of course, when she dashed it off. But as a rule one doesn’t advertise an intention to commit murder.” After a moment he asked: “There’s no doubt that this is her handwriting?”
Miss Allardyce shrugged. “I’ve seen enough of it, and so has Sue, to recognize it. There have been others, in a more affectionate strain. She wrote it—Shalimar!”
“A Negro dancer,” murmured Lavender, with a little smile. “One can’t admire his taste!”
“You haven’t seen her yet,” said Barbara Allardyce. “She’s attractive, there’s no denying that. And she’s only about a quarter Negro, anyway. Her appearance is really—startling!”
Jimmie Lavender read the message for a second time, then put the piece of paper in his pocket. “That’s Peter over there, I think?”
She nodded. “That’s Peter.”
“Who are the people with him?”
I turned my head. The table at which young Vallance sat as host was not far distant from ours, as a result of Miss Allardyce’s machinations. There were six around the board, three women and three men; and one of the women was rather obviously Olga Marinoff, the Russian ballerina—although Shalimar, I gathered, had another word for her.
Barbara Allardyce pointed her out first. “She’s really very charming,” she told us. “The others are members of her troupe, except Howard Andrews—he’s the dark young man with his back to us. Howard Andrews is a friend of Peter’s. Like Peter he has more money than is good for him.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh, yes! But—again like Peter—he doesn’t let it interfere with his amusement.”
“The possibilities f
or trouble are fairly numerous,” said Jimmie Lavender. “Your sister isn’t here?”
“No, I made her promise to stay at home.”
“He doesn’t look particularly vicious,” said Lavender, his eyes on Vallance. “There is even a curious, blond wholesomeness about him.”
Miss Allardyce agreed. “Peter was once a very decent person.” The twist of her lips suggested that that time, however, was long past.
A cork popped at the table we were watching, and the waiter who had popped it was now pouring a fizzing liquid into the party’s glasses. Peter Vallance was laughing happily; he was whispering in the ballerina’s ear. He looked like almost any blond young man on almost any magazine cover. One saw him with a tennis racket or a mashie, or holding the bridle of a spirited horse. One saw him behind the wheel of an expensive car, smoking a popular cigarette. And always with a girl, of course.
A team of male dancers was hoofing it merrily, now, in the white light of the calcium; the swift patter of their soles on the boards suggested the sounds of a gymnasium. They vanished, grinning; and the lights changed to a baleful red.
Quite suddenly, a young woman was standing in the glare. Her arrival was like that of Mephistopheles, in the first act of Faust. At one moment the stage was empty, and in the next moment she was there—a young woman in a golden gown, with dusky-pale skin and lacquered toenails showing between the straps of her sandals. Her sheathlike garment, split almost to the hip, revealed a flash of tawny thigh.
Miss Allardyce made an unnecessary remark. “Shalimar!” she whispered.
“The cue for trouble,” said Jimmie Lavender. “Your previous brother-in-law has seen the lady’s threat, I take it?”
“The letter? Good Heavens, yes! Sue found it in his pocket. It wouldn’t bother him. But he’s insufferable; he ought to be given a jolt! Give me the letter, Mr. Lavender.”
She crossed the space between the tables in a few swift strides and dropped the perfumed sheet before the astonished eyes of Peter Vallance. Then, without a word, she wheeled and came back to us.
A slow grin appeared on Vallance’s lips, as he realized what it was. He calmly folded the sheet and slipped it into his pocket; then turned and waved an insolent hand at Barbara Allardyce. His smile was at once taunting and reassuring. “Don’t worry about me,” it seemed to say; “I can take care of myself.” With deliberate bravado, he raised his glass to the Russian ballerina, at his side, and they drank to each other.
It was impossible to say whether the Negro dancer had seen the defiant gesture. Her eyes were turned in Vallance’s direction; but his table was well outside the ring of light in which she moved. She was swaying slowly to the flagrant fiddles, weaving from light to shadow and back again into the light. Her movements were less vulgar than they were sophisticated; but there was no question as to the inspiration of her dance. I looked at Peter Vallance and the Russian ballerina. Vallance was watching idly, as if faintly bored; but the Russian’s eyes were alight with passionate interest.
The dance became more violent, more orgiastic, and the drums added themselves to the transgression; their throbbing became the intolerable throbbing of human blood that had turned to fire and honey in the veins. The dancer’s little cries of ecstasy were timed to the intervals of that primitive drumbeat. They were almost a statutory misdemeanour.
Then the Zambesi Warriors swept in like a warcloud and capered round her in a fantastic chorus. Their cries were savage challenges; they were the short, sharp yelpings of dogs upon the scent. Their leopard skins were genuine and probably expensive; and their dully gleaming spears appeared quite genuine too. The black bodies perspired and gleamed in the changing flow of colour from the calciums.
They retired, and again the single dancer swayed and coiled in a red mist; then shuddered to a close as the triumphant orchestra completed her seduction, with a crash of sound, and dropped its instruments.
The applause was terrific, and I turned again towards Peter Vallance and his Russian. Olga Marinoff was tapping her fingertips together in dainty recognition of a fellow artist; she was speaking with animation to her escort. And Peter Vallance was bending his lips above the bare shoulder of the ballerina.
Lavender, too, was watching them, I noted. Suddenly Barbara Allardyce gasped and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“My sister!” she exclaimed, and stared into the shadows beyond the tables, across the heads of Peter Vallance and his party.
What followed was like a troubled dream. A shot rang out, and somewhere close at hand a woman screamed. But the sounds were all but lost in the thunders of applause that still swept the chamber, following the Negro dancer towards her dressing room.
Then Lavender was on his feet, pushing furiously towards the Vallance table; and Barbara Allardyce, in sudden panic, had upset her glass of water on my knees. She stood, now, clinging wildly to her chairback, still staring into the shadowy background of the sudden tragedy.
A group of waiters was crowding in upon the other table; excited voices sounded; and men and women were rising to their feet.
The first thought that flashed through my mind was shocking. Somehow—I could not imagine how—the incredible Shalimar had fulfilled her threat. She had shot and killed the Russian ballerina!
Then the group about the Vallance table shifted, and I saw that Peter Vallance—bending forward, it appeared, to kiss the shoulder of his companion—had fallen across a corner of the table, his curly head in a confusion of dinner plates and toppled glasses….
II
Lavender came swiftly back to us. He stood beside us almost before I would have had time to join him. Miss Allardyce looked up, the horror still in her eyes.
“You saw what happened?” he asked abruptly.
She nodded. “She stood back there—in the shadows—near that farthest post. I saw her hand go up. She had a gun! I tried to scream—but it was too late.”
“You saw the weapon?”
“I saw the gleam of it.” She asked the question that had been terrifying her. “Is Peter dead?”
“I’m afraid he is.” Lavender’s eyes were puzzled. Something was troubling him, I was certain. “What did she do, after she fired the shot?” he asked.
“She vanished,” said Barbara Allardyce bleakly. “Just turned and disappeared in the shadows.”
He stroked his jaw, and now his eyes were anxious. “Is there any danger that she may—do herself an injury?”
Miss Allardyce stared, then clutched his arm as the significance of the words got past her stupor. “My God!” she cried. “I hadn’t thought of it. It’s possible, of course! We’ve got to go to her.”
“Very well,” said Lavender. “The police will be here shortly; there’s no need for me to stay. The management will be stopping anyone who tries to leave, as soon as it occurs to them.”
He grasped her arm and began to propel her through the twisting aisles, now crowded with curious, apprehensive patrons, half of whom had as yet no clear idea of what had happened.
His car was parked conveniently around a corner. We piled Miss Allardyce into it.
“You think she would go home?” The detective’s foot was on the starter.
“It’s all I can think of. Oh, hurry, Mr. Lavender!”
But there was no need for hurry. We found the widow of Peter Vallance waiting for us. Her eyes were stony and her hand was firm as she opened her bag and handed Lavender the little revolver.
“Sue!” said Barbara Allardyce, in a choking whisper.
“Don’t touch me,” said her sister. “I’m not sorry, Barbara! I know I promised you I wouldn’t go.” She sat down heavily in a leather chair. “Negroes—Russians—” she muttered. “A Chinese woman would have been next, perhaps!”
Jimmie Lavender was examining the small revolver; it seemed to me a little thing to have made so gr
eat a difference in several lives—so great a scandal as I knew this case would create. The detective was still puzzled.
“If I understand you correctly, Mrs. Vallance,” he said, “you are confessing that you shot your husband?”
She turned her eyes on him without emotion. “I shot him,” she replied. “Barbara saw me do it. He had it coming to him. You can’t imagine what my life has been!”
“I think I can,” said Jimmie Lavender. He put the little revolver to his nose and sniffed it; then he tried his little finger in the barrel. “There is no other weapon in the house?”
“My husband’s,” she answered. “I didn’t use it, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s an army pistol, so heavy I can scarcely hold it.”
Her sister nodded in reply to Lavender’s glance. “I never heard of any other,” she told him breathlessly.
“What are you thinking?”
But Lavender was not yet through with Susan Vallance.
“Tell me,” he said, “when you put this weapon up to fire at Mr. Vallance, did anything curious happen?” There was an odd note of expectancy in his voice.
“I don’t think I understand,” she answered. “Oh, yes! You mean—I had forgotten—my first chamber must have been empty? It’s true. I pulled the trigger hard, and there was just a click. Then I shot again. Is that what you mean?”
“Precisely,” smiled Jimmie Lavender relieved. “That is the way I thought it must have happened.”
He seemed to me strangely triumphant about something; but I could not imagine what it was. It didn’t make much difference, that I could see, whether Mrs. Peter Vallance had killed her husband with her first shot or her second.
Lavender wrapped his handkerchief around the little revolver and dropped it into his pocket. “I think it might be wise for you to go to bed now,” he told her. “There’ll probably be a great deal of trouble for you, tomorrow—possibly even tonight, although I hope I may be able to keep the police away from you for a few hours.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 202
