The Wonderful World of Mortimer Tombs

Basil Hayden, Publisher

RIP

Following Thursday's post on I Hate You to Death...

I envy Mortimer Tombs. His is a world in which writers make very good money. Just look at his betrothed, blonde and beautiful Audrey Allen – she lives off Central Park in a spacious apartment that is made small by her crazy collection of Victorian antiques. Audrey is able to afford such luxury, along with housekeeper and cook, by dashing off the occasional love story for Basil Hayden's Passionate Love magazine. Fellow Hayden wordsmiths Monica and Gordon MacGregor – she writes romances, he adventure tales – live in a grand house close to the park. Then there's Augustus Hamilton, who is lured from his position as a tenured university professor by the lucre of literature.

Keith's Edgar's writers write, but don't think that they devote their days to the craft. Audrey, dressed in diaphanous negligee, moves about her apartment between pump organ and boudoir, playing the girly girl. Gordon spends his days reclining, awaiting inspiration dressed in silk dressing gown. Monica takes her cues from Audrey, breezing into rooms in "flame-colored negligee." Meanwhile, humorist Isaac Grimm lies reading wrapped in a blanket (he has the sniffles).

Their complaints against publisher Basil Hayden have only to do with rejection. The doomed man refused one – and only one – work by each of the seven writers suspected of his murder. All evidence indicates that when it came to his writers Hayden was very generous indeed. Mort received a $5000 advance for one of his crummy potboilers* – $67,000 today.

Such is the luxury contained in Mort's Manhattan flat that even dim bulb Detective Haggerty can't help but notice:

   "Do yourself pretty well, I see. Didn't know they paid out heavy dough for drivel."
   "Oh, come, now," I protested. "Genius must be recognized. We artists don't live in garrets in this day and age."

Another day, another age... an alternate universe.

* Edgar gives a glimpse of Mort's prose with the beginning of Blood on the Ceiling: "The wind was howling down the brick canyons, howling past the deserted corners, driving swirling snow against lamp posts into sinister doorways..."

Related post:

'Publisher Dies in Orgy of Hate'

'Publisher Dies in Orgy of Hate'

I Hate You to Death
Keith Edgar
Toronto: F.E. Howard, 1944

Seven writers lure hated publisher Basil Hayden to a private dining room on the fourteenth storey of a swanky New York hotel. The plan is to hold him captive and read aloud their rejected works until he pays up. In the darkened room, under hooded reading light, mystery writer Mortimer Tombs (né Smith), is first in line. Before beginning, he advises:

"Remember, Mister Basil Hayden, that while I am reading this you will be feeling the concentrated HATE of seven people. Seven people in this room are hating you. Feel their hate!"

Our narrator, Mort is fifteen or so minutes into his "thrilling mystery" Blood on the Ceiling when it is discovered that Hayden is dead. "Heart attack," pronounces one of Mort's fellow frustrated writers. The group of seven are about to call for the hotel doctor when one of their number, humorist Isaac Grimm, suggests the police. And so, a new plan is born in which the frustrated writers will cry "Murder!" – then mine the  scandal.

Grimm's gamble works. Headlines like the one borrowed for the title of this post pepper newspapers, Hollywood comes calling and the agents move in. Blood on the Ceiling is sold to a publisher sight unseen, while others try to sign up the mystery writer for further work.

Then comes the news that Hayden really was murdered. Brian Haggerty, the detective assigned to the case, fingers Mort as prime suspect, and we're off... rather, they're off. For no other reason than he is a mystery writer, Haggerty has Mort tag along as he visits and revisits the six other writers.Though nothing furthers the plot, the reader is treated to several encounters with the blonde, the beautiful Audrey Allen, a contributor to the dead publisher's Passionate Love monthly. It's in the first of these that we're afforded the opportunity to rethink narrator Mort's status as hero of I Hate You to Death. Consider, if you will, the man's reaction when Audrey suggests that he wants to marry her for her money:

   I jumped to my feet, spilling chicken sandwiches on the floor and breaking the plate. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her until her lovely teeth rattled.
   You – know – damn – well," I panted, "that – I – make – a – damn sight – more money – than you!"
   I shoved her back in the chair and snarled, "One of these days I'm going to beat the living bejesus out of you and knock some sense into your head!" I returned to my chair and sat down again.
   Haggerty hadn't moved.

Haggerty doesn't move much in this novel, though he is as a man adrift. A mystery himself, the detective's speech alternates between hayseed and a metropolitan sophisticate. Haggerty's ineffective interrogations invariably include a feeble request for the murderer's name. "If only I could pin down the underlying motive", he whines to Mort, before making a bold pronouncement:

   "Why was Basil Hayden killed? When I know that I'll know he murder. I must have the answer here somewhere, and damn me if I don't get it tonight."
   "I hope you do," I answered him. "I'm fed up with the whole thing."

I concur.

The exchange between Haggerty and Mort takes place on 114 of the novel's 127 pages. The detective does indeed "get it" that night... but not through his own work. Ultimately, the murderer reveals himself through a suicide note – printed in full on pages 124 and 125 – in which he hints at his motivation. Author Keith Edgar cheats here, by sliding all sorts of new stuff under a slowly closing door, and by having Haggerty quickly announce, "The case is closed."

The last words are left to Audrey and Mort::

   "Murders are fun," mused Audrey, "if you don't happen to be a friend of the murderer."
   I guess that summed up the situation neatly.

I do not concur.

Object: A digest-size paperback numbering 127 pages in length, the cheap paper and flimsy wraps have held up well these past sixty-eight years. The keen-eyed will have noticed that only six of the seven hate-filled writers are depicted on the cover – one of the two women is missing. I'll add that not one of the five men depicted fits the description of "stout and baldish" Gus Hamilton, writer of "pseudo-scientific thrillers".

Access: A rare book, of all our libraries only those of the City of Toronto and the University of Toronto have it in their holdings. Four copies are listed for sale online – all from American booksellers, they range in price from US$22 to US$54.

Cheap, I'd say.

Related post:

The Wonderful World of Mortimer Tombs

POD Cover of the Month: The Backwoods of Canada

BiblioBazaar takes Catharine Parr Traill's cheery account of her life in our backwoods and turns it into Stalag 17. I much prefer Tutis Classics' sunny cover:

First edition:

London: Charles Knight, 1836

Runner up:

Another proud BiblioBazaar offering.

Related posts:

POD Cover of the Month: Rila of Ingelside

POD Cover of the Month: The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

POD Cover of the Month: Romany of the Snows

A Millar Mystery and the Art of Deception

Following last Wednesday's post on Margaret Millar's An Air that Kills:

One man dies in this novel; here's how the discovery of his body is described:

Two barges, sent down from Meaford with winches and dredging equipment, located the car in twenty feet of water just below the cliff where Lehman had found the tire tracks. The car was barely damaged. the windows and windshield were unbroken and Ron Galloway was still inside, fastened snugly to the driver's seat by his safety belt.

So, who's that above on the cover of the 1985 International Polygonics edition?

The 2000 British edition from Allison & Busby (again, no relation), does the reader a similar disservice by falling back on that tired cliché of the clutching hand.

Who exactly is drowning here? It can't be poor Ron Galloway, who enters the drink in a comatose state, courtesy of best friend and pill pushing pharmaceutical salesman Harry Bream.

Though Ron's staged suicide by car crash is a key event, it's never described by Millar. We learn of the tragedy many days after the fact when tire tracks leading off the edge of a cliff are discovered. The author makes much of the fact that Ron was behind the wheel of a submerged Cadillac convertible when he died, yet all German editions feature an image of a sedan that has hit a wall.

It's understandable that readers of Die Süßholzraspler might expect someone at some point to drive into a wall, just as folks with the International Polygonics edition would've been keeping an eye out for a floating body. I expect those who read the Allison & Busby edition braced themselves for Mrs Millar's description of a struggling, drowning man.

Readers of the 1976 Penguin edition may have found some satisfaction; the cross-scarred wrists depicted on the cover feature in the novel, appearing fleetingly on page 243 of the 247-page book.

They're of no importance to the plot.

Forget those covers – they're bland and boring. The best, the steamiest, the sexiest is the 1960 Bantam edition:

It too has problems. The flying Caddie is great, but that can't be fair-haired, chunky Thelma Bream. And while its true that An Air that Kills is a "novel of subtle evil", it's not until the final chapter that the hidden "savage lust for revenge" is revealed. Consider that a spoiler.

Four years later, unmourned publisher Lancer got Thelma's hair right, but little else. While acknowledging that this ugly edition was published when Twiggy was at her height, I must ask: Can the femme fatale in blue bra be considered plump?

Or am I being just too damn picky?

The least colourful cover I've yet to find comes from Tokyo publisher Sogensha. It's also the most accurate. The small lake on its cover could very well be located outside Meaford, Ontario; I see nothing to indicate otherwise, except for the fact that the area is blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. This doesn't do it justice:

The most beautiful feature on the cover belong's to A.E. Housman, who provided the novel's epigraph:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those? 

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Published in 1995, Sogensha's is the fourth – yes, fourth – Japanese edition. We Canadians are still awaiting our first.