A Harlequin Valentine from Day Keene

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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.

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