Black Maria, M. A.: A Classic Crime Novel

by John Russell Fearn

  Maria moved slowly back to her desk to allow her long statement to penetrate. Then as the assembly looked at each other soberly she went on:

  “In regard to your two secret affiances—yours, Richard and Jean; and yours, Janet and Mr. Wade—I can understand partly your reasons for wishing to keep secrecy while my brother lived.... But after his death it struck me as insincere. Now I know why. You all kept as much separated as possible because you could not rely on yourselves to tell a straight story if you all assembled. That has been proven this afternoon.... You, Richard, must have told Jean on that fated afternoon that Janet was using her typewriter, but you did not say which. Jean would not think of a noiseless one, and you no doubt—being used to the fact that Janet usually used Patricia’s machine—never thought to mention it.... There is one example of the holes in your scheme. Had you all gathered together as you are now, anything might have happened!”

  “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” Dick asked after a long pause.

  “All! Maria agreed. “But there is still a more personal matter for me to clear up.... One of you tried to kill me last night—and so far as I can make out it was you—Mary!”

  Mary’s face was white. “Yes...yes, it was me, Miss Black. I heard all you said at the theater and I thought—well, I realized things were getting dangerous, and I didn’t want to be involved in a murder charge so.... I must have lost my head! When I saw you leave in a taxi behind Miss Black’s car I followed in another taxi and...I must have been crazy!”

  “Yes, I think you must,” Maria agreed, eyeing her grimly. Then she shrugged and asked quietly, “Well, what have all of you to say?”

  “What is there to say?” Alice asked, in a low voice. “You are right, Maria, absolutely right. There is nothing to be gained by denying it, that’s obvious. For one thing, most of us needed money for various things and Ralph wouldn’t part with any. But the main trouble was his vicious domination over us. Somehow, we felt, we had got to break it! It was when we saw what happened to Arthur Salter, that the red light went up for us. We had got to do some­thing....

  “About that time Mary came into the picture and we all learned how she too had suffered at Ralph’s hands. When Richard met Jean Conway and we realized that she also had a grievance, we realized it was time to act—time to take the law into our own hands. Jean had the method, culled originally from the book Electrical Reactions—not the one in the library here, but a copy of it. Janet had the voice. Dick said he had the courage to fix the device, knowing all about where Ralph sat and all that. Mary and Mr. Wade had nothing to offer materially but they agreed to support the plan we had worked out to confuse the trail if there should ever be a police enquiry. We felt that we were on safe ground so far as Ralph was concerned, for he had frequently said that if he ever was struck down it would be by business enemies. We relied on that to keep us out of suspicion. So it was arranged—in an effort to release ourselves from his control and avenge the merciless way he had treated Pat’s love affair.

  “Pat herself we kept out of it, thinking she had enough trouble for one thing, and because her forthright nature might prove the undoing of the lot of us. We were genuinely staggered when you discovered her efforts at helping her husband to escape. Up to the time of your coming, she had taken care to keep all newspapers referring to her husband’s escape out of sight.... The rest you know. We had no sooner done the job and had the verdict of suicide when we realized Mr. Johnson would probably tell you it was murder. Dick said he’d come into the open.... We had to find that spring. But search though we did, we couldn’t locate it....”

  Alice stopped. “That’s all there is, Maria. But I warn you, we will support each other if you carry this thing to law.”

  Maria gave a slow, grim smile and glanced across at Johnson. He was wiping his glasses and looking round rather dazedly.

  “Well, Mr. Johnson?” Maria asked calmly. “Have I conformed to the requirements of the will?”

  “Quite! Quite!” He replaced his glasses. “I never heard a more astounding story of a—a suicide in all my life!”

  Maria got to her feet. “You are satisfied that I have proven the form of murder and named the culprits?”

  “Entirely—though I would like a fuller demonstration of this gun fired by sound.”

  “You shall have it later, I assure you.... At the moment I must be certain that I am entitled now to my bequest.”

  “Definitely!” he nodded. “As to this affair, I am compelled to inform the police that—”

  “No!” Maria shook her head firmly.

  “No?”

  As the others looked at her in growing relief, she held her watch-chain firmly and looked round on them.

  “I have done my part,” she said quietly. “I have proven exactly what your plan was—I have shown you how you fully think it took place.... But perhaps it was a hand of Providence that saved you from committing this crime.... Ralph was his own slayer!”

  “What!”

  “That’s impossible!” Dick cried. “We arranged it and—”

  “A moment!” Maria said, raising her hand. “Let me finish. It is all a matter of timing—the difference being so slight that none of you noticed it. But I did, being especially concerned. On that fated night Janet was faded out at exactly nine o’clock on the radio, after the completion of her song.... Right, Janet?”

  “So Peter told me,” she acknowledged.

  “And yet,” Maria said quietly, “your father rang for his wine at ten minutes past nine! Walters is sure of it.”

  “Correct, madam,” Walters agreed, as she looked at him for con­firmation.

  “But....” Janet looked bewildered. “I— Then he was still alive after I had finished singing? But what could have none wrong? That gun should have gone off, and I know he would listen to me— He must have done because the radio was still on when Walters broke in.”

  “Not the radio—the gramophone!” Maria corrected. “In that cabinet, on the turntable, was the second of six of your records. This record had stopped in the middle with the needle still on it. That happened when Walters switched off. He in the confusion thought it was still the ordinary radio program playing. The record that had been played had been automatically put aside, and that one was your Alleluia, which did kill your father.”

  “But why should he play records of my voice when he had just listened to the original?” Janet demanded.

  “That,” Maria said, “is the vital point! When it came to it, Janet, your voice lacked its fire. You could not bring yourself to sing that death note on high C. Mr. Wade here remarked that your voice was not at all good on that night. You never reached the re­quired tone and purity in your last note that should have fired the gun, though you thought you had because of circumstances afterwards. Your father—as I see it—wanting to hear that note more than any­thing else played your record of that aria. So he rang for his wine and then set the radiogram playing your records, starting with Alleluia. In that record was the pure high C note. It snapped the wire, fired the gun, and your father died.... So, you never really succeeded in your intention. You murdered, it might be said, by proxy. It might also be said that your father killed himself.”

  There was a long stunned silence. It was Dick who broke it.

  “Then—then we didn’t murder him at all! Don’t you under­stand, all of you?”

  “It was attempted murder,” Maria said. “But how is one ever to prove it when the real method has been disclosed?”

  “Meaning what?” Alice asked, low-voiced.

  “It still looks like suicide. Doesn’t it, Mr. Johnson?”

  He reflected. “Tell me, why should Mr. Black ring for his wine and yet not unlock the library door for Walters to enter? Are we to assume that he went back to his armchair after putting on the radiogram?”

  “I believe so,” Maria nodded. “Knowing Walters would knock in any case, and not wishing to risk a disturbance until he came, he forgot all about the door
being locked. He sat down and listened to the record and...died.”

  “Then it was certainly very like suicide,” Johnson admitted, fetching a sigh.

  Janet said slowly, “You mean you are going to let it go at that, Aunt?”

  “I am something of a fatalist, Janet. If this plan failed because of lack of courage on the part of the originators—for your bad singing was really nervousness, Janet, and yet it succeeded because of the hand of the marked man himself, I— Well, so be it! Besides, it seems there was plenty of motive.... But Patricia must never know. When she and her husband are acquitted, as they will be soon, it must still be suicide.”

  Heads nodded slowly. Then Maria smiled a little.

  “What?” Dick asked quickly

  “Nothing, Richard. I was just thinking that the rest of my vacation is going to seem dreadfully quiet, and as for when I go back to my college.... Ah, well, there it is.”

  “One thing I do know,” Dick said, rising and gripping her arm. “I was certainly right when I called you my favorite Aunt. From now on that goes double....”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Worsley, England, in 1908, John Russell Fearn began his career as a fiction writer by writing science fiction novels for the then-leading American pulp magazine Amazing Stories. His first two novels, THE INTELLIGENCE GIGANTIC and LINERS OF TIME, had been serialized in the magazine in 1933 and 1935 respectively. Both these early classics were restored to print a few years ago by Wildside Press.

  After his debut in Amazing Stories, Fearn had continued to write magazine science fiction, but by 1937 the market had expanded—and changed. Amazing Stories had been overtaken by Astounding Stories as the leading sf magazine, and had been joined by Thrilling Wonder Stories. The magazine field was in a state of continuing flux.

  Fearn became a leading contributor to all three magazines, but had discovered that in order to continue to sell to constantly changing markets, he needed to be able to change his style, and to be versatile. With the encouragement of his American agent, Julius Schwartz, Fearn created several pseudonyms, which greatly facilitated his experimenting with different styles, and increased his sales chances.

  Then in July 1937, Fearn wrote to his friend Walter Gillings (editor of Britain’s first sf magazine Tales of Wonder, to which Fearn was also a contributor) to reveal that he was planning to switch from science fiction to the wider detective story market:

  “I’m turning my scientific angles to account in the production of a scientific detective for England. A book, by the way. Be two years in the making, I expect. Chief guy is a scientist, and solves all kinds of things that puzzle Scotland Yard. I’m trying to get out of the rut of Frenchman, Chinamen and what-have-you with this yarn. Guy will be something like Nero Wolfe, only he drinks tea, not beer.”

  In 1938, Fearn successfully introduced detective and mystery elements into science fiction, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Thornton Ayre’. The new technique (which Fearn called ‘webwork’) involved connecting seemingly unrelated elements together to unravel a complex mystery. The method was already known in the detective field, the leading exponent being U.S. writer Harry Stephen Keeler.

  By 1939, Fearn was expressing to friends his liking for crime mysteries, in preference to sf writing, but commercial exigencies dictated that, as a full-time writer, he had to continue to concentrate on science fiction during the early years of the war.

  However, the American sf magazine market continued to expand, and so Fearn—as a full-time professional writer with a widowed mother to support—was obliged to continue writing mainly science fiction, with only occasional forays into detective and crime short stories for the American pulp magazine Thrilling Mystery Stories (the best of which are to be found in another Wildside title, LIQUID DEATH AND OTHER STORIES). Fearn’s proposed book for English publishers, featuring his tea-drinking scientist detective, remained unwritten.

  In November 1939, Fearn sent a letter to one of his regular correspondents, tyro-author (and cinema buff) William F. Temple, in which he referred to Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer’s acceptance of his story, “The Man Who Saw Two Worlds.” Fearn wrote:

  “In this I introduce Brutus Lloyd, the first genuine criminologist who dabbles in scientific riddles, who is conceited, masterful and breezy. Palmer seems to like him immensely and requires more. I called him Alka Lloyd, but Palmer refused to be sold on it! The story is actually Wells’ “The Plattner Story” brought bang up to date, and Lloyd is based on Ernest Truex in the film Ambush (starring Lloyd Nolan).”

  Brutus Lloyd was popular with Amazing Stories readers, and so two further novelettes were published over the next couple of years. But by the mid 1940s, Fearn was beginning to raise his sights from the US pulp magazines, and he began to move into new book-length markets in England.

  Since Fearn was well-known as a science fiction author, he was obliged to adopt pseudonyms for his detective fiction, writing hardcover novels as ‘John Slate’ and ‘Hugo Blayn.’

  As John Slate, he created the brilliant female detective “Black Maria,” who debuted in BLACK MARIA. M.A. (1944) and as Hugo Blayn he created “Dr. Carruthers” whose first adventure, FLASHPOINT appeared in 1950. All of their books have been reprinted in the UK in recent years, and a few of them were also issued by Wildside Press, most notably FLASHPOINT.

  This was one of Fearn’s best-written, and most carefully plotted novels, and the character of Dr. Carruthers is brilliantly realized. This is not so surprising when one realizes that the book is one he had been working on for several years: Carruthers is, in fact, the very same character that Fearn had first conceived back in 1937, and who had been first developed as Brutus Lloyd.

  Writing an introduction to OTHER EYES WATCHING, a science fiction novel published in England by Pendulum Publications in 1946 (reprinted from the U.S. pulp Startling Stories) Fearn revealed that his favorite mystery and detective writer was John Dickson Carr, famous as the master the ‘locked room’ mystery.

  Fearn’s own detective novels are classics of the ‘locked room’ and ‘impossible crime’ genres, but because they were written under pseudonyms, he did not achieve in England the recognition in the detective field that he deserved.

  Fearn decided to try writing mysteries for the Toronto Star Weekly under his own name. He knew he faced terrific competition in this genre: regular contributors included Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner, Philip MacDonald, Ellery Queen, and Roy Vickers.

  During the war, Fearn had worked for three years as a cinema projectionist in his home town of Blackpool, and he continued to be an avid filmgoer. He had seen the many great ‘film noir’ crime thrillers that Hollywood produced in the 1940s, with their atmosphere of menace and mystery. So he felt equal to the task.

  His first ‘impossible crime’ novel for the Star Weekly was WITHIN THAT ROOM! (1946) published under his own name. However, so great was the success of his science fiction character “The Golden Amazon” in the same magazine, that Fearn again switched to pseudonyms for his next detective novels there, writing as ‘Thornton Ayre’ and ‘Frank Russell’.

  Over the next ten years, Fearn’s Star Weekly detective novels included WITHIN THAT ROOM! (1946), THE CRIMSON RAMBLER (1947; as Thornton Ayre), SHATTERING GLASS (1947), and THE FOURTH DOOR (1948) both as by Frank Russell, and under his own name ROBBERY WITHOUT VIOLENCE (1957) this latter novel having a distinctly science fictional flavour.

  Up until 1955, Fearn’s Toronto Star Weekly novels were also reprinted in various American newspapers near to the Canadian border, in the New York and Maine areas, including The Bangor News (later as Bangor Sunday Commercial), Newark Sunday Star Ledger, and Long Island Sunday Press. In recent years, all of Fearn’s Star Weekly mysteries have been reprinted in England and elsewhere, but no American book editions have ever been published. Until now!

  Borgo Press will be reprinting all of Fearn’s Star Weekly mysteries, along with several of his best detective novels, including
some posthumous works. This ambitious program was commenced with THE CRIMSON RAMBLER, written in the vein of John Dickson Carr.

  No discerning collector of locked room and ‘impossible crime’ stories can afford to miss them!