I managed to disentangle myself.
“But if only someone would tell us something, anything. For example: Why did Edwina hate the Roses?”
Madame Zelide gulped red wine and stared. “But they were so cruel to her—always. Edwina, she love Tito Forelli. The Roses hate him. Once they attack him, the two of them together, and Edwina went to his rescue. After that they hate her, too. Always they think out mean, cruel tricks to plague her. Edwina does not forget. No.”
“But why,” added Iris, in an attempt to get someone to stick to the point, “why did the Roses hate Tito Forelli?”
Emmanuel Catt rose majestically. We were obviously now entering his domain. “That,” he began, “is one of the most fascinating cases in criminal history. I have—ah—made a study of it in my book, Crimes of Our Times. I shall give you a copy. The murder of Tito Forelli shows the psychopathic jealousy motive coupled with the perfect crime and the relentless Nemesis as supremely as any…”
“But it is so easy to say,” broke in Zelide, who seemed in no mood to hand over the spotlight to a mere criminologist. “Ten years ago Forelli is the partner of the Roses in a trapeze act. He is the star, by far the best. And the Roses were madly jealous.”
“Professional jealousy at its—” began the Beard.
“And there was Eulalia Crawford, too,” Zelide dived in. “The girl who then makes the carnival figures for us. She is beautiful, attractive. And she loves Forelli. That makes the Roses even more madly jealous, because the Red Rose, too, loves Eulalia. The White Rose, he was never so bright in the head, just the—how do you say?—shadow of his brother, ready to do anything for the Red Rose, die for him, kill for him.”
“A typical moronic assistant, a gangster’s bodyguard.”
“And so, the Red Rose, his jealousy gets stronger and stronger and his hate. And, together with his brother, he thinks out a plan to kill Forelli so that the Red Rose can have Eulalia. The plan, it is perfect, they think. During the trapeze act they will drop Forelli, they will send him hurtling to his death. All the world will think it is an accident, yes—a simple accident. It happens often with aerialists. No one will suspect.”
Zelide paused for breath. The Beard charged in: “The perfect theoretical murder, no evidence, no clues.”
“Dmitri, more wine for Mr. Catt,” broke in Zelide torridly. “You see, Mr. Duluth, it worked, their plan—yes. And they were proud—proud as clever murderers who would never be discovered. In the papers, everything, it said—accident. Tito Forelli die by accident. Partners absolved. Eulalia then was to be for the Red Rose. But they were fools, stupid fools. For Eulalia hated Red Rose and suspected them.
“She was cunning, Eulalia. She know they are vain, boastful. She praises them, how clever they are, feeds their vanity. There is little Lina, she was with our ballet then, and she was Eulalia’s greatest friend. There was I, too. I then was only an unknown little aerialist, and I, too, am a friend of Eulalia’s. She comes to ask, makes us hide in a room, and she brings the Roses in. She praises them, so cunningly: ‘You are so clever and so smart, so much more clever than Forelli.’
“And they fall in the trap. When Lina and I are there as witnesses, we hear the Red Rose laugh and say boastfully to Eulalia, ‘Sure, we more clever than that Forelli. We fixed him. We got his number okay.’ ”
“So Eulalia,” broke in the Beard gravely, “tricked them through their vanity into a murder confession in front of witnesses. Although there was no shred of evidence, the three women went to the police. The police believed them. And, afterward, the jury believed them, too. The Rosa Brothers were sent to prison as murderers for ten years.”
“And they never forgive us,” said Zelide. “Oh, in time we forget. Until this afternoon everything was from my mind. But the Roses never forgot.”
So that was it! Sketchily, vaguely as it had been told in competitive duet, the story emerged plain as glass. Two mean, revengeful, small-time crooks who had planned what they thought was the perfect murder, only to be outwitted by three girls.
Two small-time crooks, brooding in prison, harping on their wounded pride and their hatred for the woman one of them had loved and her friends. Two crooks, distorted by their hate, living only for one thing—release and revenge, a second chance to prove themselves smarter than the women who had defeated them.
And the revenge of the Rosas had reaped terrible havoc—for themselves, for two of the women, for all of us. But it was over now, thanks to Edwina, whose slow, stubborn impulse to revenge had been even stronger than theirs.
Everyone, the ringmaster, the fluttering blonde “birds,” Mr. Annapopaulos, they had all been listening to that strange tale in rapt astonishment.
But the Beard was now the central figure. He stood in Jove-like splendor, twisting the glass of cheap red wine rather shudderingly. I could imagine how he felt about it after last night’s champagne.
“All along,” he said, “since my study of the case, I felt there would be great danger when the Rosa Brothers were released. I know their type—the little Caesars, the little men with the big egos and a vast capacity for hate and revenge. Yesterday I tried to warn the three women. I should have done much more. But last night I—was unfortunately not quite myself.”
He paused there and looked at Iris. The black beard twitched. Slowly, almost infinitesimally, an eyelid lowered in a wink. It was clear that Emmanuel Catt’s lamentable exuberance of the night before was to be our own particular little secret.
“I admit I was a failure, a tragic failure,” he said. “But now I drink to the two people who, knowing nothing at all about the issues at stake, managed, by their ingenuity and their courage, at least to save—Madame Zelide. I propose a toast. I toast the two most resourceful people I have ever encountered. I toast Mr. and Mrs. Duluth!”
Everyone grabbed glasses, even the respectful blonde aerialists. There were shouts, applause, confusion. Glasses were waved on high. Feather capes fluttered.
I turned to look at Iris. How did she manage to be so utterly beautiful after all we’d been through? I lifted my glass to her. She lifted hers to me. She smiled—that quick, dazzling smile which always catches the breath right out of me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Duluth,” she breathed. “Twelve months later, darling—and it still sounds voluptuous.”
I leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were so soft and warm, so very, very right.
“Mr. and Mrs. Duluth!” shouted the blonde “birds” with an abandon which almost certainly stemmed from the red wine. “Bravo, Mr. and Mrs. Duluth! Bravo!”
I hated taking my lips away from Iris’s. I could have done without the ecstatic aerialists, too, and Madame Zelide, and Mr. Annapopaulos, and the ringmaster, and the Beard.
But I didn’t really care. Because, suddenly, I was sure of one thing. Against all odds, it had turned out to be a good wedding anniversary, after all. It certainly had.
An honest-to-goodness, super-colossal wedding anniversary!
DETECTIVE: SISTER URSULA
VACANCY WITH CORPSE
H. H. Holmes
IT IS A LITTLE ODD to call H. H. Holmes a pseudonym of Anthony Boucher, since that itself is the pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White (1911–1968), who took the nom de plume when he realized there were seventy-five other authors named William White.
Born in Oakland, California, White received a B.A. from the University of Southern California and an M.A. in German from the University of California, Berkeley. He later became sufficiently proficient in French, Spanish, and Portuguese to translate mystery stories into English, becoming the first to translate Jorge Luis Borges into English.
As Anthony Boucher, he wrote five well-regarded fair-play detective novels, beginning with The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937). His novel Nine Times Nine (1940) was voted the ninth best locked-room mystery of all time
in a poll of fellow writers and critics; it was written under the pseudonym H. H. Holmes, taken from an infamous nineteenth-century serial killer.
Boucher wrote prolifically in the 1940s, producing at least three scripts a week for such popular radio programs as Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, and The Casebook of Gregory Hood. He served as the longtime mystery reviewer of The New York Times (1951–1968) and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1957–1968). He was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America in 1946. The annual World Mystery Convention is familiarly known as the Bouchercon in his honor, and the Anthony Awards are also named for him.
Sister Ursula, who appeared in only two novels and a handful of short stories, is a member of the (fictional) Order of Martha of Bethany, which engages in hospital work, teaching, and even cleaning. She is noted for her kindliness. As the daughter of a police captain, she had decided to become a policewoman until her health sabotaged her plans. It comes as no surprise, then, when she declares, “I am going to find the murderer…you see, I am not inexperienced in detection.”
“Vacancy with Corpse” was originally published in the February 1946 issue of Mystery Book Magazine.
Vacancy with Corpse
H. H. HOLMES
FELICITY CAIN’S HAIR had started out to be red. It had stayed red until halfway through her high school days. This was why she had come to be known as “Liz.” You can’t call a freckle-faced carrot-top Felicity. That suggests lace and dimity and demureness, and there was nothing demure about Liz, not even after her hair turned the brownish blond you’ve seen in her publicity pictures.
The freckles had vanished when the red hair changed color, but her eyes still had a greenish glint, and her spirit was still flamboyantly flame-crowned. Yet, here in the quiet, civilized atmosphere of the fashionable cocktail lounge, atop San Francisco’s most impressive skyscraper, with the clink of ice and glass to soothe the ear, she was more strikingly lovely than Ben Latimer ever remembered. It was a beauty that fascinated him, left him oddly breathless.
Out of the broad plate glass windows there was a noble view of the bay, bright with the afternoon sun. But he had no eyes for the view—not when Felicity was around. She had her arm in a sling, the result of an airplane accident—she was America’s most noted aviatrix—but the injury made no difference to Latimer. She still looked good to him.
He grinned as he set down his glass. “You’re like the bay, Liz,” he said. “Wonderful.”
She smiled back. “You really mean I’m an institution, like the Barbary Coast, the cable cars—and the Cains! See any guide book.”
Ben Latimer winced. “No. You’re wrong.” He waved his arm. “See that view. At first glance it’s perfect beauty. But look again and you notice a carrier and a couple of destroyers. There’s toughness under that beauty.”
“La, sir!” Liz said. “And likewise fie. Is that any way to speak of the woman you love? Don’t you know I’m all sweet femininity? At least as long as this damned arm keeps me grounded.”
Ben laughed. “It’s funny, Liz. When I think about you, it’s always with red hair. Even when I look at you I can’t get over being surprised.”
“And when I think of you I still see you back on campus in a letterman’s sweater. I just can’t get used to the idea that you’re now a policeman.”
“Detective-lieutenant, Liz, please,” he corrected her. “Can you imagine the society pages of the papers writing up the marriage of a Cain to a mere policeman?”
“I know.” Her green eyes sparkled with glee. “At our wedding, do we line up your squad, or whatever you call them, and march out of the church under an arch of crossed rubber hoses.”
Ben shook his head. “No rubber hoses in war time,” he said solemnly. “In fact, we haven’t had a single voluntary confession since the rubber shortage started.”
Liz fished in her glass, and said, “I like onions better than olives any time.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why? What should be?”
“Whenever you begin making irrelevant remarks like an Odets character, I know you’re shying away from something that bothers you. What is it?”
Liz hesitated. “I don’t know how to converse with a policeman.”
“That’s never bothered you before.”
“I’ve never done it before. I mean I’ve always just talked to Ben—my Ben!” A smile softened her face, a smile such as you never saw in any of the press photos. “Now I want to consult with Detective-lieutenant Latimer.”
Ben Latimer frowned. “What on earth kind of official business can you have on your mind? Remember I’m on Homicide.”
Liz vigorously nodded her brownish blond head. “Uh-huh.”
It wasn’t a gag. Her face was serious. She kept it averted as she carefully drew geometric patterns with the cocktail’s tooth-pick.
“All right,” Ben said. “I’ll try to look official even though I’m in plainclothes. What’s the trouble? Anybody I know? No, that doesn’t sound official. What, madam, is your complaint?”
“It isn’t mine. It’s Graffer’s.”
“Your grandfather? You mean there’s something sinister about his illness?”
“Of course not!” Liz smiled. “Graffer’s illness, God bless him, is just age and heart and things. You don’t think Dr. Frayne could be fooled, do you? This is something else. It’s—it’s funny. Ben, if you hated a man and he was going to—to die, wouldn’t you just say to yourself, ‘Goody, goody,’ and that’d be that?”
“No,” Ben said reflectively. “That’s not the way some minds work. You might say, ‘Damn it, he can’t die all of himself and do me out of the pleasure of killing him.’ Is that what you mean?”
“Uh-huh. Graffer’s been getting notes. Crazy notes. The Black Angel cannot claim you who belong to us. Strange things like that.”
Ben frowned. “It happens to every judge, I guess, if he’s been on the bench as long as your grandfather was. Half the time they’re from neurotic cranks. Are they signed, these notes?”
“With a rubber stamp of a pointing hand. You know, what printers call a fist. I don’t know what it means.”
“The Fist.” Ben nodded. “It’s an imitation Black Hand racket which sprang up in the Italian colony here. And your grandfather did send Almoneri and de Santis to the gallows.”
“But it’s so silly,” Liz insisted. “That was twenty years ago. And now, when maybe he’s dying, why should they suddenly write him threatening notes? Perhaps I shouldn’t take them seriously. It must be some screwy kind of a gag. But Graffer wanted me to tell you about it.”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s silly, at that. You remember Vitelli wasn’t hanged? He got paroled a few weeks ago. He managed to disappear somehow and he hasn’t been reporting either to parole or alien authorities. Does your grandfather want a police guard?”
“Uh-huh. Only quiet-like. You know Mother. You know what a policeman in the house would do to her. Especially at a time like this with my cousin, Sherry, coming and the servants changing all the time. Also, Graffer didn’t tell anybody but me. Not even Graffer’s secretary, Roger Garvey, knows. So could you arrange it somehow?”
“I’ll fix things.” Ben spoke in reassuring tones. “If it’s to be secret, I can’t do more than put a couple of men to watch the entrances to the house.” He groped in his pocket. “Here—give your grandfather this whistle. It may set his mind at ease.”
“Thanks, Ben. It seems so funny, talking to you official-like. You never did mention your work around me. Not even when you were on that suitcase murder and all the papers were full of it. Then, again, maybe I’d better not know too much. Just keep you for my Ben and not think of you that way.”
A bespectacled, studious looking young man at the next table rose, started out of the room, but detoured to halt beside them.
“Felicity!” The man was Roger Garvey, “Graffer’s” secretary. He grinned. “Headed home? Oh, hello, Latimer.”
“Hi, Garvey,” Ben grunted.
Liz smiled at the difference between the two men. They were equally tall, equally well-built, but made from different molds. Ben’s suit looked rather sloppy beside the sleek perfection of Roger Garvey’s well-tailored gray. Then, again, the detective’s broken nose—which had healed remarkably well from a wound inflicted by a three-time murderer—served to emphasize the pleasing profile of her grandfather’s handsome secretary. Even Ben’s easy casualness seemed rather crude when contrasted with Roger’s graceful suavity.
“Roger’s right, Ben,” she said. “I should be headed home. Mother’s got so much to do.”
“I’ll squire you on the cable car, Felicity,” Roger Garvey suggested. “Ridiculous nuisance, this having to leave one’s car home. And I’ve no doubt the street-car will be full of filthy workmen in oil-stained overalls. Oh, well! The Japanese war’ll be over soon. Until then, I suppose we have to put up with these things.”
Ben’s face turned brick red. He opened his mouth to make an angry retort, but Liz gave him a warning glance so he only said, “Take good care of her, Garvey.”
“That’s something I like to do, Latimer. I’ll never forgive you for getting the inside track. I suppose we’ll be seeing you at the great family dinner tonight?”
“Sorry. I’m on duty.”
The secretary looked wise. “Oh, you remember that Sherry’s to be there?”
Ben didn’t answer for a minute. There was no sound but the clinking of glasses and the babble of voices.
“Yes, I remember,” Ben said at last. “Tell her I’ll try and get around tomorrow.”
“I’m sure that even in her present state she’ll be anxious to see you, Latimer. Don’t you think so, Felicity?”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 126
