The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  “Miss Spookins?”

  A smoky voice called out, “If you’re a Stage Door Johnny, kindly get yourself lost.”

  “Detective,” I returned.

  “City or agency?”

  “The latter.”

  The door opened.

  Sans goggles, Spooky Spookins had the kind of eyes you hear about but never meet. They were a deep violet. I thought I detected silver specks, but that might have been the way the light hit them. Lines on her oval face told me she’d been around.

  I put the Kodak up to her retrousse nose. “The missing girl liked to hang out here. They say you might know her.”

  “I know everyone.”

  “They said that too,” I said.

  Spooky Spookins seemed to stare at the photo for a very long time. I couldn’t read her expression.

  Finally, she let me in. Taking a seat at an old deal table, she returned to what looked like a game of Solitaire.

  Carefully laying out cards, she said, “I think she ran off with a guy.”

  “Talk out there is she eloped.”

  “Yeah. That’s it. She eloped with a guy. Rags, they called him. Rags Raglan. A Brown boy. Son of a Texas cattleman.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  Spooky shrugged. She seemed more interested in her cards than in me. Her voice was thin and distant. “Burly. Thick hair. Had a big brush mustache. Made him look like an English lord.”

  “Tall or short?”

  “Short. Very short.”

  “Rags come equipped with a first legit name?”

  “Probably. Don’t all cowboys? He wasn’t a Rah-rah type, if you know what I mean. I think that’s why she fell for him.”

  “Either of them leave a forwarding address?”

  “Not with me. Helen didn’t run with our crowd much. A little prim and proper, but not so you couldn’t take her.”

  I handed her my card. “If you see or hear from her, there’s a reward.”

  “O.K. Thanks.”

  As I walked away, I waited for her to ask “How much?” When she didn’t, I knew she had been holding back a few cards. I also knew I’d be interviewing her again.

  Out on the sawdust floor, the sorority sisters and their dates had cleared out. The crowd was down to singles and doubles. I made the rounds anyway. Not much resulted.

  The barman wasn’t too friendly when I made his acquaintance.

  I opened with, “What’s the singer’s real name?”

  “What the hell’s wrong with Spooky Spookins?”

  “It’s what you’d name a pet, not a person,” I countered.

  “I only know her as Spooky. Are you thinking or drinking?”

  I slid a shiny Eagle coin across the bar. “Will that buy me her legal name?”

  “It would if I knew it.”

  I showed him my snap. “What can you tell me about her?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing to speak of.”

  I retrieved the coin and made my exit.

  The next day I took the train down to Providence and conferred with Brown University’s Dean of Students. He was to the point.

  “I have no student by the name of Raglan. Nor any student on my rolls who can claim Texas as his natal state.”

  That seemed definitive, so I took my leave. The local constabulary had nothing on Rags Raglan or Helen Reynolds, either.

  On the train back, I decided to look into Spooky Spookins. No one tells lies where they don’t have a personal interest in the truth.

  This time I slipped a Double Eagle gold coin to the barkeep.

  “Will this buy me Miss Spookins’ home address?”

  He didn’t have to think twice. “Sixty Woodlawn St. Jamaica Plain. You didn’t hear that from me.”

  Outside, red and gold Autumn leaves scraped and swirled along the gutters, propelled along by an unusually bitter October wind. Winter was early.

  I climbed the iron stairs of Green Street Station and grabbed a Forest Hills train, riding to the end of the line. A short hike down Hyde Park Avenue brought me to Woodlawn. It was a dead-end street, but otherwise presentable. On the right, three-deckers stood high on individual granite embankments. Over on the left, the houses were down at street level and less imposing.

  That’s where I found Number Sixty. It was a yellow two-story frame dwelling left over from the days before they built the Elevated and Jamaica Plain was a streetcar suburb of Boston. Two towering evergreens flanked the front porch and a clean gravel driveway let to a two-car garage that had once stabled horses. Probably built before Woodlawn Street had a name.

  It was dark enough for me to take a peek through the garage door windows. I saw a Jewett Brougham, model 1926. Fancy for a cellar speakeasy singer.

  The front door nameplate said “Diamond”. I rang the bell anyway. When I got no response, I walked away.

  Luck in my business is like iron filings. If you walk around thinking you’re a magnet, you’ll attract your share.

  I happened to spot an old pal getting out of a black Studebaker sedan. He wore blue and gave his nightstick an expert twirl when he heard my voice.

  “That you, Maclntyre, you old flatfoot?”

  “Norris! You visiting or peeping?”

  I jerked a thumb at the yellow dwelling. “Who lives yonder?”

  “Now how would I be knowin’ with the hours I keep? Let’s ask the Missus.”

  Mrs Maclntyre served tea instead of coffee. I made do.

  “A woman,” she was saying. “Lives alone. Keeps to herself. I haven’t made her acquaintance. I don’t know anyone who has.”

  “Anything unusual about the house or occupants?”

  “They have their visitors. Mostly during the day.”

  “What sort of visitors?” Maclntyre growled.

  “All sorts.”

  Maclntyre and I exchanged glances.

  “Couldn’t be a house of ill repute,” he muttered. “Not with those hours.”

  “Maybe drugs,” I suggested. “I’m looking into a missing Harvard girl. Donal Reynolds’ despoiled daughter.”

  “You’re welcome to the attic.”

  A minute later, Maclntyre was unlocking the door into the attic. It was a moonlight cavern. A few odd pieces of bric-a-brac crowded the rafters. An old Victrola sat gathering dust. The front window looked far down into the street. If I stood off to the left, I had a clear view of the yellow house on the low side of Woodlawn Street.

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “Starting now.”

  Maclntyre left me with an old pair of field glasses, a stack of ham sandwiches, and a thermos jug of tea. With only my camel-hair coat to keep me warm, I hunkered down to what promised to be a long and dusty night.

  A sedate sedan pulled into the driveway. It was a Hupmobile, a typical machine for the neighborhood. As it slipped into the garage, I wondered what it was doing keeping company with the Brougham.

  In the murk, I couldn’t tell if that was Spooky Spookins going in, but the house lights went on and then they went dark again. It was two p.m.

  I slept on the dusty floor that night and was back at the window again by the time the sun was up.

  I counted six visitors as the day lengthened. They stayed an average of 30 minutes. One came out after an hour. I was coming back from the corner lunch counter, my belly awash in coffee, when Number Seven was pulling out in a new Chevrolet convertable Cabriolet. The Jane behind the wheel looked like she would make sense if you talked to her, so I played a hunch.

  Doubling back, I tried not to look suspicious as I hailed a Yellow Cab.

  “Follow that rambler,” I told the driver.

  The driver stayed with the Cabriolet as it ducked under the Forest Hills Elevated and raced past the Jamaicaway where the homes went from wood to brick, the Fords and Essexes gave way to Willis Knights and Imperial Landaus, and the people looked to have come up in the world.

  The Cabriolet parked before a converted carriage house. I debarked from my cab.

>   She was unlocking the front door when I accosted her. She looked like the level-headed Bryn Mawr type so I took the polite route.

  “Excuse me, Miss. I need to speak with you. Norris. Weld Agency.” Her eyes looked surprised. There was no fear in them.

  “I’m investigating a disappearance. Helen Reynolds. Know her?”

  “No. Never.”

  “She’s connected with Miss Spookins.”

  Her “Who?” was so open and natural I took it for honesty. But I’ve been fooled before.

  “I followed you from that yellow house,” I said.

  Now fear detonated in her gray eyes.

  “What? Why?” She was more indignant than frightened.

  “We shouldn’t do this out here,” I suggested.

  She hesitated. I grabbed her elbow and escorted her into the vestibule and on through a large parlor with a nice bay window.

  A huge gray Persian cat met us at the door. He had a wide masculine face decorated with a big white blotch on his upper-lip. It made him look as if nature had modelled him after a mustachioed British officer.

  “Scat!” The cat scattered.

  We took substantial mohair chairs.

  Miss Bryn Mawr shook her marcelled head negatively at my picture of Helen Reynolds. “I don’t know her.”

  “What is your business at the yellow house?” I pressed.

  “That is entirely my affair.” Her voice was now a cool contralto.

  A small black Tuxedo cat with white paws minced in to lay out in front of the dormant fireplace.

  “That house is under police observation,” I said flatly. “Suspicion of dope peddling.”

  “What? It’s nothing of the kind. I go there for . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Her shoulders sagged in quiet defeat. “Spiritual counseling.”

  I’m sure I looked as blank as I felt.

  “Madame Diamond,” Miss Bryn Mawr clarified. “She counsels the . . . lovelorn.”

  “She’s a fortune teller?” I blurted.

  She winced. “Call it what you will. It is none of your concern.”

  Suddenly I understood the two cars. There was a fortune teller operating out of that yellow house. Probably Spooky Spookins’ mother.

  “Do you know a woman with violet eyes?” I inquired.

  “Yes. Madame Diamond.”

  “Must run in the family,” I muttered. “Do you know her daughter?”

  “No. I never met a daughter. We are not social.”

  I nodded. I was at a dead end. I rose to go.

  The gray tomcat was back. He was eying the black like it was a mouse. His tail twitched back and forth. The other cat slept on, blissfully unaware of the impending upset.

  I brushed past the Persian, muttering unacknowledged apologies.

  I was bowling down street when a not-unexpected snarling spitting cat-commotion reached my burning ears.

  The Bryn Mawr contralto ripped back. “Stop it! Stop right this instant!”

  I was deciding whether to hail a cab or walk to the Arborway streetcar line when a fresh cry arrested me in mid-stride.

  “Rags!”

  Doubling back, I flew through the door like a torpedo. Miss Bryn Mawr had the black cat tucked protectively under her arm.

  “Do you know a Rags Raglan?” I demanded. “Where is he?”

  She looked at me as if at her great-grandfather’s ghost. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That is he. Raglan. I call him Rags for short.” She was indicating the gray tomcat, now nonchalantly licking its disorderly fur.

  I stood staring at the big gray Persian like it might turn into a man-eating lion. It took a few moments for my brain to rearrange itself so that the world made sense. Short. Burly. Thick hair. Brush mustache. He fit the description to a T. Except that he probably never studied at Brown.

  “This Madame Diamond of yours,” I said. “How old a woman?”

  “I would judge 29 or 30 . . .”

  “Would her first name be Spooky?”

  “No . . . that is the name of her cat.”

  “Her cat?”

  “She fancies cats. We discussed our pets several times.”

  “I thought you two weren’t social.”

  “We are not. But we do converse.”

  “Thank you for your time,” I said, exiting.

  I caught a cab on the fly and found myself at the Boston Public Library. A City Directory gave me the name Dolly Diamond as the owner of Number Sixty Woodlawn Street. No occupation was listed.

  Because I needed to think, I walked to the Daily Record Building. I knew a reporter there. I know reporters on all the city papers, but if you want to hit paydirt, look to the tabloids first.

  Lowery was what passed for the Record’s theatre critic. He was wearing a champagne grin when I found him wandering the halls.

  “What’s new?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Lowery grinned. “Raymond Huntley as Dracula is scaring them so hard over at the Hollis, they have nurses in attendence to catch ’em as they faint. Over at Loew’s State, they’ve packin’ ’em in with their first talkie, Our Daring Daughters. Joan Crawford, you know. This old town is starting to hop. And we owe it all to to the new generation of Flaming Youth. May they dance the Charleston till their arches drop.”

  “Dolly Diamond. Know the name?”

  “What’s she done now?”

  “I gather she has a reputation,” I said dryly.

  Lowery took me down to the Record’s morgue, and handed me a sheaf of clippings.

  The most recent was dated less than a year ago. Torn from the front page, it showed a wraparound-skirted flapper in one of those cloche helmets that pass for a ladies hat these days. Under the picture was a legend:

  DOLLY DIAMOND IN HER HEYDAY

  I read the clipping with interest

  Dolly Diamond, Ex-Hub girl, given name, Mary McNulty, “a Roxbury girl who made good in the city”, is divorced. To the world, she is Mrs Carmine Novelli. In the cafés and night clubs and the late-lighted places of New York, Paris and London, however, she will never be known by any other name than Dolly Diamond. Announcement that she has obtained a Mexican divorce from Carmine Novelli, restaurateur, was made in New York by Eduardo Roldan, Mexican attorney.

  He said the woman who left her home beneath the Elevated station near Egleston Square a dozen years ago to marry wealth and fame, charged the Greenwich Village restaurateur with mental cruelty.

  It is only a bit more than seven years since Dolly Diamond, then Mary McNulty, daughter of a mail carrier living in Dimock Street, Roxbury, came to fame by eloping to Providence, Rhode Island, with Jack Diamond, Junior, Brown student and son of a wealthy Houston cattleman. Papa Diamond waxed exceedingly wroth over his son’s plunge into matrimony and cut his allowance from $500 a month to $5 a week. The romance ended 3 years later with a divorce. She married Carmine Novelli in 1925.

  “Where is she now?” I asked Lowery.

  “Search me and keep the change. Last known address was Jane Street, Greenwich Village.”

  I studied the photo. It resembled Spooky Spookins in a general way. I realized I had yet to glean the hue of her hair. “She have a sister or a daughter that you know about?”

  “Never heard that she did. But you know that set. Woman has a brat and it’s either with the nanny or foisted off on a boarding school.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Lowery. Watch that giggle water.”

  “I count every bubble as they go in,” Lowery quipped, patting the flask in his hip pocket.

  I was on the next train back to Providence. The Dean of Students was surprised to see me back, but he took it with aplomb.

  “Jack Diamond is an alumnus,” he reported. “Or I regret to say, was.”

  “Was?” I asked.

  The Dean consulted what appeared to be an obituary.

  “Deceased, according to our records. Mr Diamond died in Paris, the apparent victim of an Apache attack. The
year was 1924.”

  This was getting interesting. I jotted down the essential particulars, thanked him and left.

  At the Agency office, I burned up the trans-Atlantic cable wires. The Parisian gendarmes were kind enough to supply further details.

  While strolling along a disreputable part of the city, Mr Diamond was accosted by person or persons unknown. Cause of death was given as multiple stab wounds in the vicinity of the heart. The autopsy indicated that the weapon used was one favored by the notorious Apaches of Paris, an abbreviated folding knife called a lingue. Motive was believed to be robbery. His wallet was found beside the body, empty of everything except his identity papers. The murder took place some three years after Mary McNulty, the former Dolly Diamond, had divorced Mr Diamond, but before her second marriage to the restraurateur, Carmine Novelli.

  I spent a few minutes with the chief. He was kind enough to sketch from his vast experience a lingue. It resembled a pocket knife, but with a peculiar cat’s claw blade that folded into a matching handle. Exactly the kind of thing you’d use to slip between a man’s ribs – if that was your trade.

  A little more research brought out the fact that Mr Diamond had initiated the divorce, stating as his grounds the old dodge of mental cruelty. Evidently Dolly Diamond profitted from the experience in more ways than one, inasmuch as she used that excuse on her second husband.

  I would have liked to have known what Mr Diamond felt constituted mental cruelty from a wife. That charge was normally a woman’s prerogative.

  I had developed an interesting picture of the woman again calling herself Dolly Diamond, but it was only a house of cards if it didn’t lead me back to the missing Reynolds girl.

  I decided to revisit Patrolman Maclntyre’s attic. Spooky Spookins had deliberately sent me on a wild goose chase. It was high time I unearthed why.

  From my coign of vantage, one of Mrs Maclntyre’s warm egg salad sandwiches filling my mouth, I trained my field glasses on the yellow frame house.

  Lights were on all over the place. It was dusk. I wondered if Spooky Spookins was singing tonight. I wondered also who she really was. Most of all, I wondered where the Reynolds girl was keeping herself these days.

  Around seven, the front door opened. I trained my glasses on the wedge of yellowish light. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a parting kiss. Who kissed whom was beyond my present powers of observation. Then someone came skipping down the piazza steps.