The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  What an extraordinary psychological study Larned was. I believe he was a little mad. Mme Storey and I visited him in jail. Even in his downfall he played the great man, and displayed no rancor toward her.

  He still loved to air his theories on publicity. It was his theories which had led him into crime. He explained that having tasted all the possible successes of a regular business career, he craved a greater excitement; and finally yielded to the temptation of wielding this enormously powerful weapon in secret.

  Valentino’s Valediction

  AMY MYERS

  The film stars of the 1920s are still well known today – Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and, of course, Rudolph Valentino. Valentino’s death in 1926 saw huge crowds and mass hysteria. Amy Myers uses the magnetism of Valentino’s character as background in this following short tale. Amy is best known for her series featuring Anglo-French master chef and sleuth Auguste Didier, which began in the Victorian era with Murder in Pug’s Parlour (1986), but has since moved into the Edwardian age.

  Until the Sheikh galloped into her dreams, Ruby Smart had been happy enough with her husband Harold. After that, life at 12, The Cedars was never quite the same. A romp with Harold on Saturday night, however jolly, bore no comparison with Rudolph Valentino’s dark smouldering eyes as he threw her across his horse, grating out:

  “Lie still, you little fool.”

  She could tell his voice was deep and sensuous, even though all you saw at the pictures was his lips moving and the words flashing up afterwards on the screen. The very thought of his being near her, bare-chested, nostrils flaring, made her shiver in anticipation. His hypnotic eyes seared right through her, doing odd things to her body.

  She had been a little taken aback when she found out that they were doing the same odd things to Gladys Perkins, her chum at No. 16, but consoled herself that it was nice to have someone with whom she could pore over Picturegoer, dissect every sentence of Rudolph’s autobiography, wallow in his book of poetry, swap photographs and queue up at the Picturedrome when Harold refused to go. Which was all the time now. And he refused to wear sideboards like Rudolph, so how could he blame her for going with Gladys, even if it was three times a week?

  Last year she and Gladys had actually seen Rudolph, when he came to London for the first night of The Eagle. She and Gladys had taken the train to Charing Cross and walked all the way to the Marble Arch Pavilion – they’d had to, because the traffic was at a standstill. The newspaper next day said there were 5,000 people gathered outside, and she was one of them. She and Gladys had fought their way almost to the front, and Rudolph had looked right at her. Gladys said it was her he looked at, but Ruby knew differently. After all, Gladys was a blonde and it was obvious Rudolph preferred dark-haired women like Ruby. Ruby had fainted dead away, and when she got home Harold hadn’t been in the least sympathetic. It had been a comedown returning home to Harold with her fish and chips making her gloves all greasy, but in her soul she was still with Rudolph being rescued from her runaway carriage by the handsome Cossack lieutenant, and this comforted her a lot.

  “If only Harold had a chest like Rudolph instead of being all flabby and hairy,” Ruby had wailed to Gladys.

  “I’ll tell you someone who has,” Gladys giggled.

  “Frank?” Ruby couldn’t believe that of Gladys’s meek and mild husband. He was even plumper than Harold. He and Frank were chums in a way, because they were both commercial travellers. Harold reckoned he had more style than Frank owing to the fact that Frank only dealt in kitchen goods, but Harold travelled in ladies’ stockings. It sounded funny to Ruby, the way he put it, travelling in ladies’ stockings, but when Harold got red in the face she stopped laughing. He did not like his pride hurt.

  “No. Cyril Tucker,” Gladys said.

  “Who’s he?” Ruby asked blankly, not being able to remember any film stars of that name.

  “Keep a secret?”

  “Of course,” Ruby breathed, leaning closer.

  “Our milkman.”

  Ruby was an innocent in such matters. “How do you know, Glad?”

  “He obliges.”

  “Obliges what?”

  “When he comes for his money on a Friday, he – well, you know.”

  Ruby didn’t.

  “He doesn’t mind doing a Valentino for me,” Gladys amplified.

  “Glad!” Ruby was overawed. “You mean he takes off his shirt for you?”

  “More than that, Rube.”

  Ruby’s bow-shaped mouth opened wide in shock. “Oh, Glad!” And when Gladys sniggered, she continued with dignity, “I’m going right home now and pretend you never told me that.” She’d never taken much notice of their milkman. He wore the usual blue and white striped apron over his clothes and a cap, and she’d not looked at him much otherwise. When she began to think though, she supposed he was quite good-looking. How Gladys could, however. She decided not to see Glad for at least a day.

  And so it might have ended, had Harold not complained about having sardines on toast for his tea two days running. It put her in a bad mood, and she told him he was jolly lucky to get any tea at all, considering she’d only just got back from a reshowing of The Four Horsemen of the Apolocalyse. What did he expect? she hurled at him.

  “What I expect,” Harold said pathetically, “is a wife who doesn’t have Rudolph Valentino tucked up in our spare room.”

  “Oh, Harold.” Ruby was mortified at this unfair criticism. “You can’t deny me that. Here I am every day all alone.”

  The spare room was her temple – or, rather, her tent, her Room of Araby. It was swathed in yards and yards of white sheeting and curtain net from Woolwich Market, and below it was a divan with a pillow and cover almost exactly like in the film. From the walls Rudolph gazed down at her in adoration as the Sheikh, the Young Rajah, Monsieur Beaucaire (holding a lute in a way which Gladys said looked so naughty’), and as Julio, the sultry tango dancer. Words from the films adorned each wall, painstakingly typed out on their old typewriter, together with the sheet music of “The Sheikh of Araby”, which she thumped out on the piano wistfully when Harold was away. (He said it disturbed his digestion.)

  “I don’t know why you do it,” he said, perplexed.

  “I just like him.”

  “He looks like a pouf.”

  “A what?”

  Harold reddened. “Never you mind.”

  “I won’t have you being rude about Rudolph. You’re just jealous.”

  “I’m not,” Harold cried defiantly.

  “Oh, Harold.” Ruby relented, sighing deeply. “If only you were more masterful.”

  Ruby was never quite sure what had made her take the final step in providing herself with her own sheikh. She thought it was probably the waste.

  Looking round her Room of Araby the day after that conversation with Harold, it occurred to her that her body was crying out for the intimate attentions of a sheikh. Unfortunately Rudolph himself was far away and could not be counted upon for this task. He would never realize how desperately she needed him. She was forced to face the fact that meeting his eyes across the crowd was the nearest she would ever get to him. And Harold wasn’t sufficient replacement. When he rolled over, just grunting, “Goodnight, old girl,” she was left with a feeling that life must have more to offer her.

  She slept alone in the Room of Araby when he was away on his travels, imagining her sheikh by her side, and those eyes staring down at her. Longingly, desirously. In her heart, she was Lady Diana Mayo from the film, not Ruby Smart, and at last she had decided she could wait no longer.

  Cyril Tucker, or Rudolph as he was to her, had proved to be everything Gladys had said and more. It was a little hard the first time, as he took off that awful cap, she saw immediately that the sleeked-down dark hair was a considerable improvement. And those sideboards! She had self-consciously led the way upstairs, wondering if her stocking tops were showing under the scallops of her short skirt and trying to pull i
t down in case. Once his apron, waistcoat, shirt and vest went, magic had taken the place of doubts as to the wisdom of this venture. His manly chest flexed magnificently as he strode meaningfully towards her.

  Ecstatically, she had swooned in his arms, then felt herself lifted high in the air, then tossed mercilessly on to the divan. Her body ached for him, but she trembled with delicious fear, as had Lady Diana Mayo.

  “Why have you brought me here?” she uttered the famous words.

  Her eyes closed, then flew open again, so as not to miss a moment of this rapture. Slowly, silently, menacingly, he bent over her, eyes fixed desirously upon her person.

  “Are you not woman enough to know?” he grated on cue. Then his hands removed the white jumper Mum had knitted her last Christmas, he patted her feet, just as Rudolph had in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then slowly and sensuously drew off Harold’s best artificial silk stockings from her legs and invitingly stroked Lady Diana’s cami-knickers.

  “Oh, Rudolph,” she sighed, happy at last as she lay back to accept her fate.

  It had become a regular fixture. Gladys had already bagged Friday lunchtime, and even Rudolph could not manage more than one Lady Diana a morning so it was arranged that Tuesday afternoon after he finished his rounds would be a very nice time to call.

  When, at the beginning of August 1926, Harold announced he had to go to York, up north somewhere, for four weeks, Saturday afternoon was temporarily added to the itinerary. After all, she had several weeks to pass before the London release of Son of the Sheikh, and needed something to take her mind off the long hours of waiting.

  Ruby looked up with red-rimmed eyes as Gladys came through the back door. She too was clad all in black. They had been in mourning for several days now. It was lucky Harold was still away up north or he’d have kicked up such a fuss. Frank never said a word, according to Gladys. He understood. Frank always did, not like Harold, Ruby thought enviously. How could anyone not share their grief? Rudolph was dead. Gladys’s and her lives were over. Romance had ended. There would be no more films after Son of the Sheikh.

  The tragedy had come out of the blue. First came the shock that Rudolph was ill, and had to have an operation for gastric ulcer and appendicitis. Then the relief when it was successful and he was said to be recuperating well. Then came the terrible news that he was dead. It was unbelievable. How could they let him die? Each morning she seized the newspaper to read every tiny detail. She realized that she was not alone in her loss. Women, and men, too, had flocked to Campbell’s Funeral Parlour on Broadway, and mounted police had to be called in to prevent the crowds storming the parlour in their grief. Inside lay his – oh she could hardly bear to read it – poor body in a bronze coffin, his beautiful face and shoulders exposed.

  “Look, Ruby!” Gladys sniffled, thrusting yet another newspaper under Ruby’s nose. “Isn’t that Harold?”

  “Harold? Glad, don’t make jokes at a time like this.” Ruby glanced at the photograph of the queue waiting to enter the Parlour. And, yes, it did indeed look rather like Harold. But how could it be? She supposed that could have been his Homburg hat, and that certainly resembled his samples’ case of ladies’ stockings. Nevertheless Ruby was quite sure it could not have been Harold.

  “He’s up north somewhere, so it can’t be.”

  “Looks like him, Rube.” They agreed it was queer but they had a more pressing problem to consider: Cyril. Was it, or was it not, morally right to continue with Cyril’s services, when Rudolph himself was dead?

  Gladys was in no doubt that it was. After all, she explained: “It’s like his spirit come to bless us, isn’t it?”

  Ruby found that very consoling. Even so she thought it right to wear a black armband when she saw Cyril on Saturday, and insisted on keeping it on after he had ripped all her clothes off, even her rubber corsets, and had her shivering helplessly before him. Cyril had sniggered when he saw it, and she reproved him.

  “Don’t laugh, please.” Sometimes it occurred to her that Cyril was a little common.

  “Whatever you say, Ruby. You’re the boss.”

  “No, you are, Rudolph.”

  Cyril had belatedly remembered his role, picked her up and thrown her on the divan most satisfactorily. (On one terrible occasion he had missed and it had been most painful.) His eyes smouldered and if only she could ignore his flashy new combinations, the illusion would be complete. What did he think she had provided all the proper costumes for? She had given him Don Alonzo’s gaucho hat, his matador’s jacket, Monsieur Beaucaire’s wig, his Sheikh’s turban complete with tassel, and the Young Rajah outfit. Finally, the offending combinations were removed.

  “Lie still, you little fool,” he whispered, looking almost as handsome as Rudolph himself.

  Even though Rudolph was dead, it was a great comfort to Ruby to know that he lived on at 12, The Cedars.

  “Yes, it’s probably me.” Harold gave a cursory look at the newspaper picture on his return on the Monday evening.

  Ruby, who had assumed by now that the man in the photograph could not possibly have been her husband, was flabbergasted. “But you said you were going to York.”

  “New York, I said.”

  Ruby tried to take this in, and fastened on the one salient point. “But why go to the funeral parlour? You didn’t even like Rudolph.” Then a warm glow spread through her. “Oh, Harold, did you do it for me?”

  “No, Ruby. I killed him, you see. Then I thought I’d take a last look at my handiwork.”

  Ruby didn’t understand. “What do you mean, killed him?”

  “I murdered him.”

  With this pronouncement, Harold sat down with the Daily Mail as though he were asking for a cup of tea.

  “Who?” she shrieked.

  “Your precious Rudolph Valentino.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Harold.”

  “I’m not, Ruby. You said I should be more masterful, so I went out there and murdered him.”

  The room spun around her. “You’d never kill anyone.”

  “I never wanted to before.” There was a touch of complacency in Harold’s voice. He was smiling in a most peculiar way, and Ruby felt quite uneasy. The newspapers said Rudolph died of complications after the operation, so were they covering something up? If so, what was it? And if Harold had murdered him, what was her husband doing safely back home instead of being locked up in Sing Sing like in the films?

  Then she realised this was all nonsense. Harold was pulling her leg. “He died of complications after a gastric ulcer and appendicitis,” she said scornfully, “and anyway he was in hospital when he died.”

  “Recuperating on the ninth floor of the Polyclinic Hospital. Armed guards all around.”

  “There you are then. You couldn’t have murdered him.” Not that Ruby had really thought he had, but all the same it was a relief to know he couldn’t possibly have done so. But why was he still grinning at her?

  “Ah, but it wasn’t a gastric ulcer, was it? It was arsenic,” Harold informed her.

  “Arsenic?” she shrieked. “That’s poison.”

  “Yes and it doesn’t half do nasty things to your stomach.”

  “How could you get close enough to Rudolph to poison him?” Ruby hardly dared breathe his sacred name in company with such an outrage.

  “It was easy. He was taken ill at a party, and I was there.”

  “How did you get to a party with Rudolph?” She couldn’t believe it, no, she couldn’t.

  “I met this fellow in the hotel, who told me he was a chum of your precious Rudy. He said he was off to a party in an hour of two being given for him by a friend of his, Barclay something or other. So I told him my wife was a fan and she’d never forgive me if I let an opportunity to meet him slip by.” Harold giggled. “I got this rat poison easily enough, and poured it into this drink I handed him.” Ruby gave a faint cry. “When the party broke up, I followed the Great Lover back to his hotel and waited outside for a while. Sure enough,
an ambulance was called an hour or two later and off he went to hospital. I bet he didn’t look so handsome then.” He glanced at her stupefied face. “Shall I show you the tin? Would that convince you?”

  “Harold,” she moaned, backing away from him. She was already convinced. There was his picture in the newspaper and he knew details the papers hadn’t revealed. She, Ruby Smart of Blackheath (well, Woolwich really, only it was nearly Blackheath) was responsible for the death of Rudolph Valentino. There’d be a trial. She’d have to give evidence. She would call it Blackheath then. All these thoughts raced through her mind and then her brain clarified.

  ‘I’ll have to go to the police.”

  Harold looked serious. “Of course, Ruby. I’d expect you too. It’s only right. I’m ready to face the consequences like a man.”

  Feeling the whole weight of the world on her shoulders, Ruby put on her best dress next morning, and took the 11.18 train to Charing Cross. This was too serious a matter for the Woolwich police station. She had to go to the top. She walked self-consciously to Scotland Yard on the Embankment. She wasn’t even nervous. She was doing this for Rudolph, sacrificing her own husband for justice.

  The gentleman at the desk was very polite when she said she’d come to report a murder. Had it just happened, he asked? No, she explained, about two weeks ago in America. She was asked to wait and another gentleman came almost straightaway, though he wasn’t in uniform, which rather disappointed her.

  Ruby sat primly on the chair, smoothing her skirt down. It would never do to display too much thigh here. It would be letting Rudolph down.

  “You tell me about it, Mrs Smart,” the policeman said encouragingly. “Who’s dead?”

  And so she explained everything.

  “Rudolph Valentino, eh?” was all he commented.

  To her great indignation, she could see he was trying not to laugh.

  “Well, Mrs Smart, I think your husband is having you on, don’t you?”

  “No,” she replied said truthfully. “He wouldn’t do that.” But then she wondered whether perhaps he was right. After all, she had been so sure it was York Harold was going to. The policeman then sent for someone to make her a nice cup of tea, and assured her, as he ushered her out, that he would make enquiries with the FBI in America.