The Crime of My Life Read online

  The Crime of My Life

  A Mystery Writers of America Classic Anthology

  Robert Bloch

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Stanley Ellin

  Brian Garfield

  Edward D. Hoch

  John D. MacDonald

  Harold Q. Masur

  Helen McCloy

  Georges Simenon

  Richard Martin Stern

  Lillian de la Torre

  Lawrence Treat

  Hilary Waugh

  Edited by

  Brian Garfield

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  A CHOICE OF MURDERS

  Copyright © 1984, 2019 by Mystery Writers of America.

  A Mystery Writers of America Classic anthology published by arrangement with the authors.

  Cover art image by MyImages - Micha

  Cover design by David Allan Kerber

  Editorial and layout by Stonehenge Editorial

  * * *

  PRINTING HISTORY

  A Mystery Writers of America Classic anthology edition / February 2019

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.

  Mystery Writers of America gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyrighted material in this book.

  Every effort has been made to locate the copyright holders or their heirs and assigns and to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material, and MWA would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

  For information contact: Mystery Writers of America, 1140 Broadway, Suite 1507, New York, NY 10001

  Contents

  A Message from Mystery Writers of America

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chinoiserie by Helen McCloy

  Present for Minna by Richard Martin Stern

  Hangover by John D. MacDonald

  The Leopold Locked Room by Edward D. Hoch

  Give the Devil His Due by Lawrence Treat

  Framed for Murder by Harold Q. Masur

  The Man Who Knew Women by Robert Bloch

  The Question by Stanley Ellin

  Galton and the Yelling Boys by Hillary Waugh

  Milady Bigamy by Lillian de la Torre

  Scrimshaw by Brian Garfield

  Blessed Are the Meek by Georges Simenon

  The Purple Is Everything by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Afterword

  The Mystery Writers of America Classic Anthology Series

  Story Copyrights

  A Message from Mystery Writers of America

  The stories in this collection are products of their specific time and place, namely, the USA in the middle decades of the 20th century. Some of the writing contains dated attitudes and offensive ideas. That certain thoughtless slurs were commonplace—and among writers, whose prime task is to inhabit the skin of all their characters—can be both troubling and cause for thought.

  We decided to publish these stories as they originally appeared, rather than sanitize the objectionable bits with a modern editorial pencil. These stories should be seen as historical mysteries, reflective of their age. If their lingering prejudices make us uncomfortable, well, perhaps history’s mirror is accurate, and the attitudes are not so distant as we might have hoped.

  Foreword

  “Membership has its privileges,” or so that ad campaign from the ’80s claimed. And in many cases, they were right. One such instance turned into the anthology you’re reading right now.

  Back in the early 1980s, Mystery Writers of America came up with the idea to assemble an anthology of stories from the past presidents of the organization. While normally the editor of an anthology (in this case, recent MWA president and bestselling writer Brian Garfield) selects the stories from the submissions received, this volume was assembled a bit differently. Each invitee was requested to select one of their own published short stories that was a personal favorite, and write a brief essay about why that story held a special place in their heart. The resulting book collects an abundance of fantastic mystery short stories that span the previous fifty years of mystery writing.

  The authors brought together for this anthology, including Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Edward D, Hoch, Lillian de la Torre, John D. MacDonald, Helen McCloy, Robert Bloch, Georges Simenon, Hilary Waugh, and Stanley Ellin, among others, represented the very best in the mystery field. Their selected stories are notable not only the breadth of style and approach, but for the wide range of sub-genres that already existed throughout the decades, from amateur sleuth to historical mystery to police procedural to crime of opportunity to locked room mystery to paranormal crime. One of the most intriguing stories in this anthology falls into the category of a social commentary mystery story, complete with an stunning last line that changes the reader’s view of everything that came before it.

  The authors’ essays, while brief, also serve as fascinating glimpses into the minds of each writer, often pulling back the curtain on their thought processes to reveal exactly how the general concept of a story came to them, or why they chose to write about a particular theme. Each one is as enlightening as their selected story is engrossing.

  We at MWA hope you enjoy this very special volume of mystery stories chosen by the people who knew them best—the authors that wrote them.

  —John Helfers

  Introduction

  All the contributors to this anthology have been presidents of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc., an organization whose age (and sometimes even wit) equals that of the late but perennial Jack Benny: MWA celebrates the 39th anniversary of its founding at the time of this book’s publication. And each contributor was asked to pick a favorite story from his or her own body of work.

  MWA presidency is a coveted honor rather than an administrative position. It is one of the three recognitions by which MWA publicly applauds a peer. (The other two are the Grand Master Award, bestowed once in a lifetime on a writer for his or her body of work, and MWA’s well-known Edgar Allan Poe Award—the annual “Edgar,” the mystery’s equivalent of the Oscar.) Election to the presidency is the equivalent of a salute from one’s colleagues for one’s work. It is without price, and I, like the 38 previous occupants of the office, am moved by the great compliment.

  The tales herein represent a wide range of crime and suspense storytelling; the mystery is not a monolithic or formulaic genre. There are stories of clever detection by Edward D. Hoch (the only writer I know who makes a living by writing short stories), Harold Q. Masur (who writes so persuasively about lawyers because he is one) and Hillary Waugh (who virtually invented the police-procedural detective story). We are guided through an exotic place and time by Helen McCloy (who may put scholar
s to shame with her knowledge of nineteenth-century China) and through an exotic mind by Stanley Ellin (who is the reigning master of the mystery short story). We are enthralled by the trick ending of a con-game story by Robert Bloch (whose Psycho is still the touchstone of mad-killer thrillers) and we are held in suspense by John D. MacDonald (who is, I think, one of the best living American writers) and by the others represented in this collection.

  To have included stories by all the past presidents of MWA would have been prohibitive—the printing costs alone for such a large volume would have put its price far beyond most readers’ means. We decided therefore to limit the contents of this book to stories written by MWA presidents who are still alive and working. And the list of contributors was further shortened by the fact that some of the former presidents—the novelist Phyllis A. Whitney, for example—have never written mystery short stories.

  This book contains stories by all the living MWA presidents who were able to provide them. But the volume would be incomplete without acknowledgment of and a salute to all the presidents.

  * * *

  Chronologically, here is the honor roll:

  Baynard Kendrick

  Ross Macdonald

  Ellery Queen

  John Creasey

  Hugh Pentecost

  Herbert Brean

  Lawrence G. Blochman

  James Reach

  John Dickson Carr

  Stanley Ellin

  Helen McCloy

  Robert Bloch

  Anthony Boucher

  Richard Martin Stem

  George Harmon Coxe

  Hillary Waugh

  Helen Reilly

  Harold Q. Masur

  Stuart Palmer

  Aaron Marc Stein

  Georges Simenon

  Phyllis A. Whitney

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Lawrence Treat

  Margaret Millar

  Mignon G. Eberhart

  Rex Stout

  Robert L. Fish

  Raymond Chandler

  Lillian de la Torre

  Frances & Richard Lockridge

  William P. McGivern

  Vincent Starrett

  Thomas Walsh

  John D. MacDonald

  Edward D. Hoch

  Howard Haycraft

  Brian Garfield

  Edward D. Radin

  —Brian Garfield

  Chinoiserie

  Helen McCloy

  “Chinoiserie” was written in 1935 when I came across a book about the first journey of the Siberian Railway. I was so fascinated by Victorian China that I went on to read every book about it that I could find in the Oriental Room of the New York Public Library. After that the story just wrote itself.

  For more than thirty years “Chinoiserie” has been republished all over the world in many languages, just before World War II it was heard as a radio play in Singapore where there is a large Chinese colony. Just after the Vietnam War it was shown as a television play in the city I still think of as Hanoi, where there are also many Chinese. These two incidents pleased me more than anything else in the history of the story because they suggested that the Chinese themselves felt it was an accurate and sympathetic portrayal of Victorian China.

  —Helen McCloy

  This is the story of Olga Kyrilovna and how she disappeared in the heart of Old Pekin.

  Not Peiping, with its American drugstore on Hatamen Street. Pekin, capital of the Manchu Empire. Didn’t you know that I used to be language clerk at the legation there? Long ago. Long before the Boxer Uprising. Oh, yes. I was young. So young I was in love with Olga Kyrilovna... Will you pour the brandy for me? My hand’s grown shaky the last few years...

  When the nine great gates of the Tartar City swung to at sunset, we were locked for the night inside a walled, medieval citadel, reached by camel over the Gobi or by boat up the Pei-ho, defended by bow and arrow and a painted representation of cannon. An Arabian Nights city where the nine gate towers on the forty-foot walls were just ninety-nine feet high so they would not impede the flight of air spirits. Where palace eunuchs kept harems of their own to “save face.” Where musicians were blinded because the use of the eye destroys the subtlety of the ear. Where physicians prescribed powered jade and tigers’ claws for anemia brought on by malnutrition. Where mining operations were dangerous because they opened the veins of the Earth Dragon. Where felons were slowly sliced to death and beggars were found frozen to death in the streets every morning in the winter.

  It was into this world of fantasy and fear that Olga Kyrilovna vanished as completely as if she had dissolved into one of the air spirits or ridden away on one of the invisible dragons that our Chinese servants saw in the atmosphere all around us.

  It happened the night of a New Year’s Eve ball at the Japanese Legation.

  When I reached the Russian Legation for dinner, a Cossack of the Escort took me into a room that was once a Tartar general’s audience hall. Two dozen candle flames hardly pierced the bleak dusk. The fire in the brick stove barely dulled the cutting edge of a North China winter. I chafed my hands, thinking myself alone. Someone stirred and sighed in the shadows. It was she.

  Olga Kyrilovna... How can I make you see her as I saw her that evening? She was pale in her white dress against walls of tarnished gilt and rusted vermilion. Two smooth, shining wings of light brown hair. An oval face, pure in line, delicate in color. And, of course, unspoiled by modern cosmetics. Her eyes were blue. Dreaming eyes. She seemed to live and move in a waking dream, remote from the enforced intimacies of our narrow society. More than one man had tried vainly to wake her from that dream. The piquancy of her situation provoked men like Lucien de l’Orges, the French charge.

  She was just seventeen, fresh from the convent of Smolny. Volgorughi had been Russian minister in China for many years. After his last trip to Petersburg, he had brought Olga back to Pekin as his bride, and...well, he was three times her age.

  That evening she spoke first. “Monsieur Charley...”

  Even at official meetings the American minister called me “Charley.” Most Europeans assumed it was my last name.

  “I’m glad you are here,” she went on in French, our only common language. “I was beginning to feel lonely. And afraid.”

  “Afraid?” I repeated stupidly. “Of what?”

  A door opened. Candle flames shied and the startled shadows leaped up the walls. Volgorughi spoke from the doorway, coolly. “Olga, we are having sherry in the study... Oh!” His voice warmed. “Monsieur Charley, I didn’t see you. Good evening.”

  I followed Olga’s filmy skirts into the study, conscious of Volgorughi’s sharp glance as he stood aside to let me pass. He always seemed rather formidable. In spite of his grizzled hair, he had the leanness of a young man and the carriage of a soldier. But he had the weary eyes of an old man. And the dry, shriveled hands, always cold to the touch, even in summer. A young man’s imagination shrank from any mental image of those hands caressing Olga...

  In the smaller room it was warmer and brighter. Glasses of sherry and vodka had been pushed aside to make space on the table for a painting on silk. Brown, frail, desiccated as a dead leaf, the silk looked hundreds of years old. Yet the ponies painted on its fragile surface in faded pigments were the same lively Mongol ponies we still used for race meetings outside the city walls.

  “The Chinese have no understanding of art,” drawled Luden de l’Orges. “Chinese porcelain is beginning to enjoy a certain vogue in Europe, but Chinese painters are impossible. In landscape they show objects on a flat surface, without perspective, as if the artist were looking down on the earth from a balloon. In portraits they draw the human face without shadows or thickness as untutored children do. The Chinese artist hasn’t enough skill to imitate nature accurately.”

  Lucien was baiting Volgorughi. “Pekin temper” was as much a feature of our lives as “Pekin throat.” We got on each other’s nerves like a storm-stayed house party. An unbalanced party whe
re men outnumbered women six to one.

  Volgorughi kept his temper. “The Chinese artist doesn’t care to ‘imitate’ nature. He prefers to suggest or symbolize what he sees.”

  “But Chinese art is heathen!” This was Sybil Carstairs, wife of the English inspector general of Maritime Customs. “How can heathen art equal art inspired by Christian morals?”

  Her husband’s objection was more practical: “You’re wastin’ money, Volgorughi. Two hundred Shanghai taels for a daub that will never fetch sixpence in any European market!”

  Incredible? No. This was before Hirth and Fenollosa made Chinese painting fashionable in the West. Years later I saw a fragment from Volgorughi’s collection sold in the famous Salle Six of the Hotel Drouot. While the commissaire-priseur was bawling, “On demande quatre cent mille francs,” I was seeing Olga again, pale in a white dress against a wall of gilt and vermilion in the light of shivering candle flames...

  Volgorughi turned to her just then. “Olga, my dear, you haven’t any sherry.” He smiled as he held out a glass. The brown wine turned to gold in the candlelight as she lifted it to her lips with an almost childish obedience.

  I had not noticed little Kiada, the Japanese minister, bending over the painting. Now he turned sleepy slant-eyes on Volgorughi and spoke blandly. “This is the work of Han Kan, greatest of horse painters. It must be the finest painting of the T’ang Dynasty now in existence.”