And So To Murder

AND SO TO MURDER

Born in 1906, John Dickson Carr was an American author of Golden Age ‘British-style’ detective stories. He published his first novel,
It Walks by Night
, in 1930 while studying in Paris to become a barrister. Shortly thereafter he settled in his wife’s native England where he wrote prolifically, averaging four novels per year until the end of WWII. Well known as a master of the locked-room mystery, Carr created eccentric sleuths to solve apparently impossible crimes. His two most popular series detectives were Dr. Fell, who debuted in
Hag’s Nook
in 1933, and barrister Sir Henry Merrivale (published under the pseudonym of Carter Dickson), who first appeared in
The Plague Court Murders
(1934). Eventually, Carr left England and moved to South Carolina where he continued to write, publishing several more novels and contributing a regular column to
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
. In his lifetime, Carr received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of only two Americans ever admitted into the prestigious – but almost exclusively British – Detection Club. He died in 1977.

AND SO TO
MURDER

JOHN DICKSON CARR

Originally Published Under Pseudonym

Carter Dickson

THE LANGTAIL PRESS
L
ONDON

This edition published 2010 by

The Langtail Press

www.langtailpress.com

First published 1940

And So To Murder © 1940 Estate of Clarice M Carr,

Richard H McNiven, Executor

ISBN 978-1-78002-004-4

1

I
N
spite of herself she was excited. She had resolved that she would not allow this to show. She had pictured herself as being poised, airy, and at ease, unimpressed by the studios of Albion Films. But, now that she was actually in the office of Mr Thomas Hackett, who was to produce
Desire
, Monica found her heart thumping and her speech a trifle slurred.

It annoyed her.

Not that there was anything about the producer to alarm her. On the contrary. From all she had heard and read, Monica had expected to find the film-studio a kind of Bedlam, full of fat men with cigars shouting lunatic orders into telephones. Nor had she actually expected to find Mr Hackett sticking straws in his hair. But, at the same time, she was surprised and put a little off balance by the man who faced her from the other side of the desk.

The whole place – grounds, buildings, offices – struck her as being too quiet. Pineham Studios, some three-quarters of an hour by train from London, spread over many green acres behind a tall wire fence fronting the road. The main buildings, long and low like a pavilion, of dazzling white concrete with little orange awnings at the windows, were backed by the great grey shapes of the sound-stages. The very sight of them brought a lump of excitement to Monica’s throat. But they seemed deserted, dozing under the blaze of the late August sunlight; a little sinister.

Of course, she was not taken to the main building. The gate-keeper made this clear when her car – which she had hired at the station – pulled up before his lodge.

‘Mr H-Hackett!’ Monica shouted from the back of the car.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Mr H-Hackett!’

‘Mr
Tom
Hackett?’ inquired the gate-keeper craftily; though there was, in fact, only one Hackett at Pineham.

‘That’s r-right. My name is Monica Stanton. I have an appointment.’

The gate-keeper took pity on her. ‘Old Building,’ he told the driver, who seemed to understand.

It was intolerably hot. The green lawns, the gravel drive, the cars parked in the drive, all winked with high-lights under the sun. They drove along a gravel road past the main buildings, down a hill beneath thick-arched trees, and emerged (surprisingly) beside what resembled a small, picturesque red-brick manor-house with a cupola. Ivy climbed the face of the house. A miniature river, with ducks, flowed shallow and glittering in a little valley near the windows. It was idyllic. It was Arcadian. It made you want to go to sleep. And upstairs, in a sunny office overlooking the stream, Monica was taken to Mr Thomas Hackett.

Mr Hackett was quiet, curt, and masterful – like the hero in
Desire
.

‘We’re happy to have you here, Miss Stanton,’ he said. ‘Happy. Please sit down.’

He nodded towards a chair. With a curt, masterful gesture he yanked a box of cigars out of his desk, and thrust it at her. Then, becoming sensible of the impropriety, he returned the box to the desk and slammed the drawer with the same business-like air.

‘But you’ll have a cigarette? Good! I never touch tobacco myself,’ he explained, with an air of virtuous austerity. ‘Miss Owlsey! Cigarettes, please.’

He plumped down in his chair and eyed her keenly. Mr Hackett (a personality) worked for a mysterious personage named Marshlake, the head of Albion Films, who put up the money but whom nobody ever saw except dodging round corners. Mr Hackett bristled with practicality. His age was an alert thirty-five. He was short, stocky, and dark of complexion, with a broad face, a toothbrush moustache, and a radiant dental smile which nevertheless had an austere no-nonsense touch about it.

‘Of course,’ said Monica, determined to be fair, ‘I’m terribly happy to be here – to have this opportunity –’

Mr Hackett’s tolerant smile acknowledged the justice of this.

‘– and yet I don’t want to be here under false pretences. My agent told you, didn’t he, that I’ve never had any experience with writing film-scripts?’

Mr Hackett seemed startled. His eyes narrowed.

‘
No
experience?’ he demanded.

‘None.’

‘You’re sure of that?’ Mr Hackett persisted craftily, as though he refused to fall into any such trap as believing this.

‘Of course I’m sure!’

‘Ah, I didn’t know that,’ murmured the producer in a soft, sinister voice; and Monica’s heart sank.

Mr Hackett considered. Then he jumped up, and strode with curt steps up and down the office. He seemed sunk in brooding thoughts.

‘That’s bad. That’s very bad. That’s not so good – I’m just thinking aloud, you understand,’ he explained, suddenly looking at her and then relapsing into the same trance. ‘On the other hand, we don’t ask you to produce a shooting-script. Howard Fisk, who will direct
Desire
, never uses a shooting-script. I’m telling you. Never!’

(Monica conquered an impulse to say that it was very clever of him. But, having no idea of what a shooting-script might be, she remained discreetly silent.)

‘Can you write dialogue?’ demanded Mr Hackett, stopping abruptly.

‘Oh, yes! I wrote a play once.’

‘This is different,’ said Mr Hackett.

‘How?’

‘Very different,’ said Mr Hackett, shaking his head mysteriously. ‘But the point is (now listen to this): you can write dialogue. Good, bright, snappy dialogue?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll try.’

‘Then you’re hired,’ said Mr Hackett handsomely. ‘Not too much dialogue, mind,’ he warned. ‘Keep it visual. Keep it to the minimum. In fact’ – he thrust out his hands, defining the situation – ‘practically no dialogue at all. But you’ll learn. (I’m just thinking aloud, you understand.) Miss Stanton, I make my decisions and I stick to ’em. You’re hired.’

Since Monica had already been hired, after a bitter battle on the part of her literary agent, this decision may sound superfluous. But it was not. In the film business, all things are with Allah.

For her part, Monica was so happy that she almost stuttered. It was a delirious kind of happiness, which sang in her veins and made her feel slightly drunk. She wanted to get up and say to a mirror: I, Monica Stanton, of St Jude’s vicarage, East Roystead, Herts, am actually sitting in the offices of Albion Films, talking to the producer who made
Dark Sunshine
and
My Lady’s Divorce
. I, Monica Stanton, who have so often sat in the picture palace and seen other people’s names glorified, am now to see my own name among the credit-titles and my own characters come to life on the screen. I, Monica Stanton, am to be a part of this vast, dazzling world –

And here it was.

2

Now Mr Thomas Hackett, for reasons that will be indicated, was the most worried man on the Pineham lot. But, even so, he was astounded to meet Monica Stanton in the flesh. For he had gone so far as to read
Desire
; and he wondered, privately, how most of it had got past the censor.

It was not that he expected Monica to resemble the voluptuous and world-weary Eve D’Aubray, the heroine of
Desire
. Just the opposite. In Mr Hackett’s experience, the ladies who wrote passionate love-stories were usually either tense business-women or acidulated spinsters who petrified every male in the vicinity. He was prepared for any sort of Gorgon. What he was not prepared for was the eager, well-rounded, modest-looking girl who sat opposite him and regarded him with intelligent but innocent eyes. Without being a striking beauty, Monica was nevertheless one of those pretty, hearty, fresh-complexioned girls who radiate innocence.

In the depths of his soul, Mr Hackett was perhaps a little shocked. He felt that she ought not to know about that kind of thing. He wondered that her mother had allowed her to write the damned book.

Monica’s mother was not living. But she had an aunt – and the aunt wondered, too.

Everybody now knows the history of that best-selling novel by Monica Stanton, aged twenty-two, only child of the Rev. Canon Stanton, a country clergyman; and that Monica had seldom in her life been allowed to venture beyond the confines of East Roystead, Herts. What everybody does not know is the uproar it caused in her own home.

When the manuscript was first submitted, a certain publisher said:

‘Champagne by the bucket. Diamonds by the hatful. Nobody goes about in anything less than a Rolls-Royce. And love-affairs – suffering Moses! This Captain Royce, the hero, is a devil of a fellow; though I think the author should be cautioned about letting him go tiger-shooting in Africa. But –’

‘But?’ asked his partner.

‘In the first place, the girl can write. She’ll get over this. In the second place, we don’t want her to get over it. This book is a winner. It’s everybody’s day-dream. The lending libraries will yell for it, or I never hope to back another.’

He was right.

Monica had written it, passionately, out of every day-dream she had ever dreamed. It was not that she disliked East Roystead or even the million small duties of a parson’s daughter. But sometimes she was bored to literal tears by them. Sometimes she looked at her life, lifted her fists impotently, and cried: ‘Grr!’ This feeling was not sweetened by the presence of her aunt, Miss Flossie Stanton, one of those jolly, ‘sensible’ women who cause more mutinies than any tyrant. So, under the lamp, Monica’s imagination bloomed. In Eve D’Aubray, the heroine, she created a
grande amoureuse
whose prowess would have been looked on with respect by a combination of Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Lucrezia Borgia.

Monica (let this be understood) tried to keep the thing a secret. The book was ultimately published under a pen-name. Nobody at home would even have known she was driving away at the story, if her aunt, in the usual course of turning over all Monica’s belongings once every fortnight or so, had not come across a sheaf of manuscript in the dressing-table drawer.

Even then the family remained serene, because nobody bothered to find out what it was all about. Monica, between hot humiliation and defiant pride, announced that she was writing a book. The announcement fell flat. Her aunt smiled vaguely and said: ‘Are you, my dear?’ – immediately changing the subject, in a somewhat pained way, to inquire whether Monica had found time in the midst of her tremendous literary labours to give the day’s order to the greengrocer.