The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

Two blocks away from the burlesque theater the trial still dragged on and on, becoming less and less newsworthy. And then, in the middle of a dull afternoon, with almost no reporters at hand, the prosecution suddenly called Aloha Wanderwell to the stand. She was, of course, the most interesting, exciting, glamorous figure in the entire case—she was front-page stuff. But everybody thought she would be held in reserve for another day or so, and her appearance in the witness chair at that time was a surprise.

  Her testimony, delivered in a faint, cautious voice, was nothing unexpected. She told of the scene in the Wilshire Boulevard apartment house when Curley Guy and his friend and employer DeLarm had come visiting Wanderwell, who had been flanked by two associates but still had felt it necessary to smash a window and holler for help.

  From her own separate apartment next door she had heard the appeal and come running, whereupon she smoothed things over between the five men and got Guy and DeLarm to leave after her harried husband had promised to square the financial thing at a restaurant that night. It is not recorded that he ever kept the date.

  The witness was perhaps a little disappointing to the two bright young assistant district attorneys, for her testimony—while it matched what she had said at the preliminary hearing and before the grand jury—was not too strong against the prisoner at the bar. But all the same, that was a tense half hour in the courtroom—an hour which I am sorry to have missed.

  His honor, Judge Kenny, had been a newspaper reporter before he took up the study of law and rose to his present eminence. Realizing that Aloha’s testimony was the high spot of the trial, and also realizing that her appearance would give a big break to the morning newspapers and leave the afternoon sheets out in the cold, he reverted to type. Once a newspaperman, always a newspaperman. His Honor quietly recessed the session for ten minutes on the grounds that he had to make a long distance telephone call.

  This fact has never previously been made public, but with Bob Kenny’s permission I can now let out the secret that his call was to the offices of the Herald-Express (the Los Angeles newspaper on which he had once years ago been a cub-reporter) and that he gave the city editor of his old paper enough of the story on Aloha’s testimony so that instead of being scooped, we had an exclusive front-page story.

  Not, of course, to intimate that Judge Kenny wasn’t impeccably fair in his handling of the Wanderwell murder trial. Most of his rulings, as the transcript shows, were in favor of the People. Messrs. Brayton and Hunt had a certain amount of evidence, mainly circumstantial, on their side.

  The case finally went to the jury at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Before 6 the twelve were back—with the expected verdict of Not Guilty. It was a verdict which surprised nobody and one which I think was concurred with by His Honor and by the press and public.

  Which brings us inevitably to the gaps in the story; faces us with the certain question of who actually did put a .38 bullet through Captain Walter Wanderwell’s back? Your guess may be as good as mine. I am not able to answer that question, any more than can the police even at this late date.

  There were some interesting questions which I raised at the time, and still raise.

  Was it likely that Curley Guy, a two-fisted forthright aviator and navigator, even with a grievance against Captain Wanderwell, would have shot the man in the back over a matter of a few hundred dollars? To me, from a psychological standpoint, it seems out of character. Guy had already faced Wanderwell and had scared the much-bigger and heavier heroic adventurer into spasms—and into smashing a window and calling for help.

  Then too, what were the reassuring words that the fair Aloha whispered to Curley Guy at the preliminary hearing, and why did she and certain other members of the group smile and nod at him in such a fraternal manner?

  Then, too, Wanderwell was found to have been killed by a bullet from a .38 pistol. No evidence was ever brought forward to show that Curley Guy ever owned or possessed such a weapon. But the evidence does show that Wanderwell had—in addition to a heavy stock of rifles and carbines—a .38 pistol; It disappeared about the time of the murder.

  And why was he found dying in the dark? The murderer, knowing that people were in the next cabin, waited on the scene for an extra second to turn out the light. Why?

  At the time the jury and the press made an inspection of the Carma, we discovered that in the cabin where Wanderwell died, concealed by a rug, there was a hatch leading down into the hold and the bilges, easily raised from above or below.

  From the hold there were half a dozen other hatches opening into the cabins, the mess-hall, and out on deck. It is within the bounds of possibility that someone who hated Wanderwell and who knew the ins and outs of the schooner could have crept through the hold, raised the hatch, and shot the man, then escaped the way he came.

  One cannot sensibly accept the theory that Wanderwell was killed by a visitor who showed his face at the porthole to at least four people. Wanderwell was a nervous jittery character. He would never have turned his back on Curley Guy or any of his enemies. Yet he had obviously turned his back and had been leaning over-backwards at the moment he was shot—the bullet entered his neck and ranged down to the heart. Was he, perhaps—at the request of someone he knew and trusted—engaged in reaching up toward his collection of scrap-books on a shelf when the shot was fired?

  Various other interesting theories have been put forward. It has been seriously suggested that Wanderwell, realizing that he had sunk $22,000 in a useless hulk of a vessel and that he was at the end of his rope, had taken his own life with his .38 pistol but changing the suicide into the semblance of murder by previously tying the gun to a weight and dangling the weight out of the porthole, so that when in death he released his grip the gun would disappear forever into the muddy bottom of the harbor. This ingenious theory still does not explain why he should have shot himself in the back at such an angle, but one cannot say it was absolutely impossible.

  It has also been seriously suggested that one of the Wanderwell children, inspired by seeing movies of some two-gun shooting hero of the time, had come upon their father’s loaded pistol and had pulled the trigger. But in the light of the extensive grilling given the Wanderwell children it seems unlikely that they could have kept quiet.

  In my own opinion the true solution would have come from a study of the situation on board Carma. With no less than eight attractive young women aboard, with Captain Wanderwell a handsome, dashing figure, there could have been conflicts and frictions, romances and jealousies and broken hearts and revenges unguessed at by the thumb-fingered authorities. The Wanderwells were not close at the time—Aloha had months before made her own apartment next door to her husband’s in the place on Wilshire. And she had had no compunctions about leaving him on the ship, with all the pretty crew members, while she went up to Los Angeles to stay with her sister. Was it not within the realm of possibility that Wanderwell had tired of the pretty blonde wife and was carrying on with one or more of his charming feminine Argonauts? Could not that have led to disastrous results?

  It is of course within the bounds of possibility that Curley Guy, or some other vengeful former voyager, did come down to the P. and O. docks that night, did appear at the Carma’s porthole, and ask for Wanderwell. If so, that person may not have come armed, and may not have fired the shot. It seems, from this perspective, unlikely that a would-be killer would show himself so openly, even through a porthole—or that he would be seen some hours after the murder wandering around the waterfront area.

  These questions will never be answered now. The Los Angeles police force—and particularly its homicide squad—have in recent years been completely rebuilt. Many of the old-timers still remain in uniform, however, and at least two of them have admitted to me, off the record, that they have finally come to the conclusion that Wanderwell wasn’t killed by Curley Guy at all, but by—

  Guy himself, when released, put up a stout fight to resist being transported back to Australia—the boy wanted most desperatel
y a chance to become an American citizen. The odds were against him, though he even paid a call on Judge Kenny, and asked the jurist’s help. Kenny was friendly but dubious.

  The young man kept in touch with the judge through letters and postcards, even after he was deported. He popped up a few years later, as a fighter pilot for Haile Selassie in Abyssinia. He reported in again at the beginning of World War Two—he had a job ferrying Hudson bombers from the U.S.A. to Britain. On his fifth trip he got into trouble off Newfoundland, and had only time to radio back “Ditching, tanks all empty, cheerio” before he went down into the cold bitter waves of the North Atlantic—not a bad end for a true soldier of fortune.

  But most of the questions are still unanswered. Carlton Williams, now a veteran newspaperman on the staff of the Times, remembers the Wanderwell case perfectly. He has just now stated to me that in his opinion there was never any doubt about the murder at all; Curly Guy pulled the trigger and Wanderwell probably had it coming to him. It may be so.

  But it is also important to remember that a man may be an enemy of society in a small way and not in a big way. A man may have something to hide—when confronted with the police and the press—and yet not be guilty of the major crime of which he is accused. Curley Guy had been cutting corners all over the lot since he jumped ship—there were half a dozen possible charges against him. He had a lot to cover up, if not a murder.

  Anyway, Curley Guy is dead. When his plane crashed into the sea, the story of the murder on board the schooner Carma was ended.

  For some time after the trial the fair Aloha haunted the Hollywood casting offices, then, after a few weeks she disappeared—perhaps she retired to that incredible French convent where only English is spoken.

  As for the schooner Carma, a few weeks after the end of the Wanderwell trial she was officially condemned and was towed out to sea and sunk. Her secrets are now and for all time secure in Davy Jones’s locker.

  THE STEPS TO MURDER, by Rufus King

  Originally published in The Steps to Murder (1960).

  There would be no sense to this scene unless one were to know the people and the past, the variety of steps that led up to it with their inevitable, slow advance toward murder.

  The setting was Broadlands, the fabulous estate, on the Potomac outside of Washington, belonging to Mabel and Lewis Gervais. More specifically, the scene took place in the living room of Mabel’s suite. The year was now.

  Toward ten o’clock that night Lewis walked in.

  At the right moments Mabel had that rare ability of saying nothing, of selecting silence in preference to any trite locutions such as so-you’re-back, or whys. While Lewis closed the door and came toward her Mabel studied him with an unwavering fixity, in a manner that a major artist will criticize his crowning creation.

  He was everything that she had hoped for during the winter’s evening at the Adirondack chalet in the long gone past. He had aged magnificently. His carriage, his manner and appearance were the Crichton of what an about-to-be-appointed ambassador should resemble. And the human touch had remained. You could feel it sifting from him, beyond mere courtesy or correctness: a sincere feeling for and interest in the rights and dignity of others.

  No, Mabel decided, there were no flaws. Her job had been well done and nothing was left but to cash in on it, the coveted prize being the Belgian Embassy with an ultimate eye toward the Court of St. James’s.

  Lewis sank heavily into a chair near her and for a moment closed his eyes.

  “I’ve seen her, Mabel.”

  “Seen whom, Lewis?”

  “Anna Moljinski.”

  The name stirred. And then it mushroomed in Mabel’s memory from the distant years, from that night of Long Island fog in the Jaguar, and the woman who had been struck. It mushroomed with a cloud of strange suffocation, like an extraordinary pillow which appeared from nowhere and pressed as a stopper on her breathing.

  She said stupidly, “How?”

  “Your devoted chauffeur and slave told me. Harris was listening outside a kitchen window that night when you talked with her.”

  Mabel’s breath continued clotting.

  “You say you saw her?”

  “Yes. It was very easy. She started a business under her own name with the ten thousand you gave her. Catering. Fine pastries—take-home casserole dishes—you know. She’s very successful. She opened in Oyster Bay and then established the main shop in New York. Harris has been keeping track.”

  “Why should he? What on earth for?”

  “Just out of curiosity, he said. Not about her, Mabel. About you. He wondered for years why you had done it, before he puzzled it out.” Lewis added quietly, “My bondage. The chains you shackled me with.”

  The peculiar constriction of her lungs was dissipating and Mabel recovered control over her thinking. She knew this about Lewis: he was a docile man but not a stupid one, nor an insensitive one. There was where the danger would lie, in this sensitivity with all of the word’s associations (which were just so much finical prudery to Mabel) such as a delicate sense of moral values and a tiresome punctilio of honor. These were the bread and water that had sustained him throughout the years of her prisoning.

  Her frosty look took in the maturity of his body and it baffled her that so much strong, animal maleness could embrace the soggy weakness of so easily being touched to the quick. Like a silly girl. That under some milksop provocation this sturdy being might even—the phrase popped from heaven knew what dusty cabinet of memory—“die of a rose in aromatic pain.”

  The deadliest sort of danger to her plans lay in all of those things and Mabel knew it.

  “Lewis—”

  “Yes?”

  “When one is young—”

  “Mabel, that just won’t wash. You were never young.”

  “You’ve always hated me. Admit it, Lewis.”

  “Hate? No, never. Not even now.”

  “Have you ever tried to consider, seriously consider, how a woman feels when she’s big like me? Freakishly big and ugly? How a girl like that must feel?”

  “I suppose,” he said, not looking at her, “that it depends a good deal on what she does about it.”

  “As for that little trick—surely it’s so trivial when we look back on it as adults? A thing from the days of impulse, Lewis.”

  “That trick with the false news item about Anna Moljinski’s hit-run death wasn’t so trivial, and I guess it would be useless to try and make you realize what it did to me. Do you know that I’ve always kept the clipping? That it’s in my wallet right now? Sort of a hair shirt, I suppose you could call it.”

  “Lewis—listen to me—you’ll get over this. In the morning you’ll be able to see it in its proper perspective. I know so, Lewis, because I know you.”

  He looked at her now, almost with a kindly fascination. “Mabel, I honestly believe that you think you do.”

  Then the suddenness, the cheery helplessness of his laughter was a more horrible shock to Mabel than if he had hauled off and smashed her in the face. There was nothing in her experience to contend with it and during the frightening moment while it lasted she wondered whether he had gone stark-staringly mad.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes. Sorry, but I couldn’t help it. Mabel, it’s very simple. It’s just that I’m rid of ever having to be within the feel of you again.”

  Now that was odd. Harris also had said something like that only yesterday when he had quit his job, something about just wanting to get away from her. Not in the same words but the flavor was of a part. She shoved aside any speculation on it and brought every power of her will to bear on the immediate steps which Lewis unquestionably must be planning to take. She felt no special doubts about her ability to circumvent them once they were exposed, because he was here with her again, right under her eye and thumb and the crushing power of her influence and wealth.

  “I wish you’d be clearer, Lewis. I wish you’d say exactly what you are driving at
.”

  “A divorce, Mabel.”

  The word held a death-knell tone, a fracturing with its simple tinkle to the very ambition of life as Mabel knew it, an embassy squashed dead. A flare of rage choked her in its terrible grip but there was no reflection of it in the calmness with which she said, “I would never divorce you.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. I’ve thought it out, Mabel. I am going to divorce you.”

  “That’s silly. You couldn’t.”

  “You mean there would be no grounds? You have forgotten the farm, Mabel. That it is located in Vermont.”

  Well, that was true enough. For heaven knew how many years she hadn’t thought about it: the old Gervais homestead, the miserable fields and the petty stone house, and the fact that Lewis owned it. His sole heritage at the time when she had so cleverly bought him. His sole heritage now.

  “But what of it, Lewis?”

  “In Vermont the divorce laws recognize desertion as a ground. Would you be willing to live there with me? Cooped up for the rest of your life? Give up your position as the social and, to an extent, the political arbiter of Washington? Could you stand it? Or would you desert me, Mabel?”

  “Lewis, you’re insane.”

  “Possibly. Or else no longer so.”

  “Cruel.”

  “I?”

  “I suppose you mean by that that I’ve been. Doesn’t everything I’ve done for you, what I’ve made of you, stand for something? Did my kindness to your mother in her moment of dire need—in your moment of helpless despair for her life—does that mean nothing to you any longer, Lewis?”

  “Mabel, I’m tired. Let’s leave it for now at this. I haven’t forgotten, and for some things I’m deeply grateful. We will finish things decently. Things here in Washington, I mean. But I’m through. The ambassadorship is out. You’ll have to eliminate me from your plans from now on. I guess that means you will just have to give them up. Not necessarily abruptly, but a tapering off. I’ll string along while you are doing it. I’ll do my best to help you so that your pride won’t be hurt. Those gestures I do owe you. Then I’ll go. Good night, Mabel.”