The Oxford Book of American Det (69 page)

“I want you to meet me pronto at Roy Cromwell’s wikiup. The killer will be there.”

“Meaning yourself, huh?”

“No,” I said patiently. “Meaning the character who pitched a baseball at my conk in an attempt to knock me off, but missed me and chilled the Murdock gazelle instead. The same one who fired a slug at me in my apartment dump, missed me again and nicked a notch in your noggin.”

“When did you dream that up?”

“A while ago. Good-bye now. I’m on my way to Cromwell’s. Be seeing you there.” I disconnected and barged back to my cab.

The hacker said: “You look happy. What’s brewin’?”

“An explosion,” I told him. “Know how you make gunpowder?”

“No. I buy mine ready-made.”

I said: “You pour in all the ingredients and stir them. If you stir long enough—“

“Oh-oh. You been stirrin’ the ingredients, hunh?”

I nodded; gave him the Cromwell bozo’s address. “Let’s ramble. The kettle is starting to boil.”

Cromwell’s rambling Spanish hacienda was pasted against the side of a hill north of Hollywood Boulevard, just off one of the canyon drives.

We parked a block away and I hoofed the rest of the distance; reached the director’s driveway just as a sedan slid to a halt at the curb. Dave Donaldson erupted from the sedan with a bandage around his cranium and two plainclothes minions flanking him.

The plainclothes minions had their roscoes out. Dave spotted me in the shadows.

“There he is! Grab him! I didn’t think he’d have nerve enough to show up. Freeze, Hawkshaw. This time we take no chances with you.”

“You don’t have to,” I said softly, and allowed the flatties to fan me for my rod. When they took it, I added: “Be careful how you handle that heater, chums. It’s the one that creased your superior officer.”

Dave snatched it. “So this is what you shot me with.”

“No.”

“Well, then, whose gat is it?”

“Mine.”

“Aha. So you confess.”

I said: “It’s the one those Venice coppers made me drop down on the amusement pier when they tried to collar me. Later the actual killer glommed it, brought it back to Hollywood and blasted from my doorway.”

“Still sticking to that malarkey, eh?”

“Sure, because it’s the truth. Are you going to stand jawing at me all night or can we go indoors for the payoff?”

Dave lifted a lip. “This is the payoff. Handcuff him, men.” They nippered me, and this time I stood still for it. It was the third time I’d been taken in custody that day and I was much too weary to argue. I merely said: “Don’t blame me when the case blows up in your kisser. The next kill will be your fault. Think it over.”

“What next kill?” Donaldson demanded suspiciously.

“Right here in Cromwell’s shanty. I sicced Bernie Ballantyne onto him a while ago, by phone. Judging by the lights in the igloo and that chariot parked across the street, Cromwell’s got a visitor this instant.”

Dave cleared his throat and spat. “Listen, wisenheimer. If you’re pulling a swift one—“

“Use your own judgment,” I said indifferently. “I’ve done my part. It’s your picnic now.”

He hesitated; seemed to realise I was levelling. “Come along with me,” he growled.

“But the bracelets stay on you.” He turned to his underlings. “You guys wait here.”

“But, lieutenant—“

He snarled: “Quiet,” and tugged me toward the director’s portal. “Shall I ring?” he whispered to me.

“No. Try the knob.”

He did. “It’s locked.”

“I’ve got master keys in my pocket. Fish them out and get to work with them. I can’t with these manacles.”

He frisked me for the keys, found one that operated the doorlatch. “Now what?”

“Inside, fast. And no noise.” I took the lead, moving silently. We came to an inside door that stood slightly ajar. Dim light glowed around it and low voices sounded in the room.

Roy Cromwell was panting: “All right. I admit I was the blackmailer. I needed cash.

Desperately. I—“

You could have maced me senseless with an ostrich feather as I heard the guy’s confession. My phoney accusations against him had turned out to be straight goods; he really was the extortionist! I’d fired a blind shot in the dark and scored the screwiest bull’s-eye of my crazy career.

Another voice husked hysterically: “You scum. You pulled an unspeakable trick like that and caused me to commit murder. But you’re going to pay.”

“No—please—don’t point that g - gun at me—“

This was my cue for action. I slugged the door wide open so hard it nearly came loose from its moorings; went leaping across the threshold with Dave Donaldson roaring in my wake. I yodeled:
“Drop it, Vala Du-Valle.”

The diminutive brunette cupcake had been aiming a tiny heater at Roy Cromwell, who cowered in a far corner like a weasel in a trap. But now she swung around, hung the glassy focus on me, tabbed Donaldson’s cannon making faces at her.

“Oh-h-h...” she whimpered faintly, and let her roscoe clatter on the floor. “You...

you...”

“Yeah,” I said regretfully, remembering the kiss she’d slipped me not long ago. “Me, hon. Just in time to keep you from another croaking; and to hear you confess the Maizie Murdock bump. I’m sorry, baby. I mean that.” Her map was like a mask made of putty. “How... did you... how did you... suspect...?”

“Your arms,” I said. “They gave you away.”

Donaldson yipped: “Hey, wait a minute. What’s this about her arms? They look okay to me. Only they aren’t hefty enough to uncork a baseball pitch that could brain a Jane.”

“I know it,” I said.

“Then how—“

I stared moodily at Vala. “You thought I was the blackmailer, didn’t you, kitten?”

“Y
—
yes.”

“I’d made a crack in Bernie Ballantyne’s ante-room; something about carrying tales to him if it paid me enough dividends. Since you were already being shaken down, that made you think I was the mug who was putting the bite on you.”

“Y
—
yes,” her voice was dull, lifeless.

I said: “You decided to croak me. You tried to with that baseball, but cooled Maizie Murdock by mistake. When everybody called me guilty you let it ride, thereby keeping your own skirts clean while still putting me in a coffin. Correct?”

“Y
—
yes.” She didn’t seem to know any other word.

“Then I escaped,” I said. “You picked up my automatic; tried to blast me with it, later, at my apartment drop. Again your aim was lousy. You nicked Lieutenant Donaldson.”

“Y
—
yes,” she sounded like a victrola with a busted record.

I said: “Well, that’s about all of it. Except your arms.”

“Wh
—
what about them?”

“I called on you, hoping to get the deadwood on Bernie Ballantyne. At that time I had him tabbed as the guilty guy. But suddenly I noticed the bruises and scrapes on your elbows. I tumbled to the truth.”

“How?” she whispered.

“I’ve got the same brand of bruises myself,” I told her. “And I remembered where I’d collected them. The rest was easy. I spoke of Roy Cromwell being the blackmailer, figuring you would try to cream him the same as you’d tried to bump me. Which you did; and we caught you.”

She blinked at me foggily. “The bruises...?”

“From the giant slide,” I said. “Whamming down the spiral tunnel was where you got your arms hurt. Just before the murder, you rode the escalator to the observation tower on top of that amusement pier contraption.

“The view platform looked directly down on the baseball concession. You threw a ball at me from up there and gravity gave it murder-speed.”

“Y
—
yes,” she was back at that again.

I said: “As soon as you pitched the pill, you slid down through the spiral dragon. This landed you on the pier in plenty of time to establish an apparent alibi. You said you had just come out of your dressing room. Nobody doubted you.” From behind me, a new voice spoke: high, piping, reedy. It belonged to Bernie Ballantyne, who’d arrived to hear the payoff. Now he took Vala in his arms.

“I’ll hire the best lawyers in the world to defend you, darling,” he said. Then he glared at Cromwell. “You’re fired, you chiseling rat. If you ever work in Hollywood again, it’ll be over my dead body.”

He was a good prophet. The DuValle cutie got off with a life sentence and Roy Cromwell got blackballed out of the galloping snapshots.

And Dave Donaldson actually paid dough out of his own pocket to have my jalopy brought back to me from where I’d ditched it in Ocean Park.

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962)

When William Faulkner, a Nobel laureate in literature, turned his hand to writing
An
Error in Chemistry,
it was in response to the First Short-Story Contest, held by
Ellery
Queen’s Mystery Magazine
in 1946. Faulkner wrote his story with the prize money in mind. The pool of contestants was particularly talented. Faulkner tied with six others for second prize.

That Faulkner went on to write five more stories, collected in the anthology
Knight’s
Gambit,
and a novel,
Intruder in the Dust,
featuring series character Uncle Gavin Stevens proves that the detective form has long attracted first-rate writers. In the introduction to
An Error in Chemistry
in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
Queen compares Faulkner’s strong moral sense with that of Melville Davisson Post. Whether or not Faulkner was acquainted with Post’s work is uncertain, but Queen is on the mark in pointing out the similarities between the two.

Born William Falkner (he was to change the spelling of his name as a young man) in New Albany, Mississippi, he was the great-grandson of a colourful character, William Clark Falkner, who was a lawyer, planter, railroad builder, novelist, poet, playwright, and travel writer. Faulkner himself studied for two years at the University of Mississippi, served in World War I in both the Canadian Flying Corps and the British Royal Air Force, worked at a number of jobs including postmaster, and launched his literary career in 1924 with
The Marble faun,
a book of poetry. He then began his long list of unforgettable novels about the corruption and decadence of southern values and southern families.

An Error in Chemistry
offers a fascinating look at what a writer of Faulkner’s calibre can do with a form that—when Faulkner tried his hand at it—was still dominated by the depiction of ‘ratiocination.’ There is little doubt that Faulkner had learned from earlier writers of detective fiction. For example, his use of Uncle Gavin Stevens as a foil for the sheriff’s thinking brings to mind Dr. John H. Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

The story begins with a puzzle, focuses on it throughout, and uses a clue that any reader can see to provide the solution. But it is a superlative story because of its Faulknerian qualities—the dark and twisted pride motivating the criminal, the pathos, the authentic sound of the dialogue, the local colour, and the provincial stage on which Faulkner plays out his little drama.

From its thought-provoking title to the biblical references at its close,
An Error in
Chemistry
demonstrates that a tale of detection can rise to the level of true tragedy featuring, as Faulkner puts it, “that triumvirate of murderer, victim, and bereaved.” In Faulkner’s hands, murder is not merely the occasion to determine whodunit; violent death gives substance to the victim.

An Error in Chemistry

It was Joel Flint himself who telephoned the sheriff that he had killed his wife. And when the sheriff and his deputy reached the scene, drove the twenty-odd miles into the remote back-country region where old Wesley Pritchel lived, Joel Flint himself met them at the door and asked them in. He was the foreigner, the outlander, the Yankee who had come into our county two years ago as the operator of a pitch—a lighted booth where a roulette wheel spun against a bank of nickel-plated pistols and razors and watches and harmonicas> in a travelling street carnival—and who when the carnival departed had remained, and two months later was married to Pritchel’s only living child: the dim-witted spinster of almost forty who until then had shared her irascible and violent-tempered father’s almost hermit-existence on the good though small farm which he owned.

But even after the marriage, old Pritchel still seemed to draw the line against his sonin-law. He built a new small house for them two miles from his own, where the daughter was presently raising chickens for the market. According to rumour old Pritchel, who hardly ever went anywhere anyway, had never once entered the new house, so that he saw even this last remaining child only once a week. This would be when she and her husband would drive each Sunday in the secondhand truck in which the son-in-law marketed the chickens, to take Sunday dinner with old Pritchel in the old house where Pritchel now did his own cooking and housework. In fact, the neighbours said the only reason he allowed the son-in-law to enter his house even then was so that his daughter could prepare him a decent hot meal once a week.

So for the next two years, occasionally in Jefferson, the county seat, but more frequently in the little cross-roads hamlet near his home, the son-in-law would be seen and heard too. He was a man in the middle forties, neither short nor tall nor thin nor stout (in fact, he and his father-in-law could easily have cast that same shadow which later for a short time they did), with a cold, contemptuous intelligent face and a voice lazy with anecdotes of the teeming outland which his listeners had never seen—a dweller among the cities, though never from his own accounting long resident in any one of them, who within the first three months of his residence among them had impressed upon the people whose way of life he had assumed, one definite personal habit by which he presently became known throughout the whole county, even by men who had never seen him. This was a harsh and contemptuous derogation, sometimes without even provocation or reason or opportunity, of our local southern custom of drinking whiskey by mixing sugar and water with it. He called it effeminacy, a pap for children, himself drinking even our harsh, violent, illicit and unaged homemade corn whiskey without even a sip of water to follow it.