Death on the Aisle (2 page)

After the move to New York City, Richard Lockridge worked as a reporter for the New York
Sun
and quickly gained a reputation as “the best rewrite man in the city”. In 1928 he became the
Sun
's drama critic, in which capacity he covered Clifford Odets's first play, as well as works by Sherwood Anderson and Eugene O'Neill. Meanwhile, Frances became the assistant secretary to the adoption and placement committee of the State Aid Charities Association (a private organization), a post she held from 1922 to 1942. In 1928 her book
How to Adopt a Child
was published. For several years she wrote the “Hundred Neediest” section of
The New York Times
.

Richard Lockridge began contributing to
The New Yorker
in 1931 and was later on its staff (while he continued as the
Sun
's drama critic), substituting at various times for regular contributors James Thurber and Robert Benchley. Lockridge's first book, published in 1932, was
Darling of Misfortune: Edwin Booth
, a biography.

During World War II he joined the Navy for the second time and spent the war as a public relations officer at Navy headquarters in Manhattan. After the war the Lockridges became full-time writers. Their usual quota was three novels a year: a Mr. and Mrs. North book, an entry in their series about Captain Merton Heimrich of the New York State Police, and a nonseries suspense novel of the “chase and girl-in-distress” variety. (The latter were done because of the lucrative magazine sales in addition to the book editions.) This continued until Frances's death on February 17, 1963. The final Mr. and Mrs. North novel,
Murder by the Book
, appeared that same year. Richard Lockridge later said that he could not write Mrs. North after Frances died, because in many ways Mrs. North
was
Frances. So the series was abandoned.

Richard Lockridge did continue the Heimrich series, as well as series featuring other detectives: Nathan Shapiro of the NYPD, Assistant D.A. Bernie Simmons, and others. He married novelist Hildegarde Dolson in 1965, and they subsequently moved from New York to North Carolina. In the 1970s Richard Lockridge suffered a stroke, and thereafter could get around only with the help of a wheelchair, but he continued to write. His last novel,
The Old Die Young
, was published in 1980. Hildegarde Dolson died in January 1981. Richard Lockridge died on June 19, 1982, three months before his eighty-fourth birthday.

The tally: Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote twenty-six Mr. and Mrs. North books, sixteen about Merton Heimrich (with another eight written by Richard Lockridge alone), twelve additional crime or suspense novels, and five books about cats (four of them juveniles). They also edited an anthology of short stories for the Mystery Writers of America, of which organization they were joint presidents in 1960. Under her own name, Frances Lockridge published one nonfiction book. Under his own name, Richard Lockridge published twenty-two additional books (not counting the eight Heimrich novels previously mentioned). All but five of these were mystery or suspense novels. (Before her marriage, Hildegarde Dolson had published six novels and six nonfiction books; after her marriage to Richard Lockridge she wrote five excellent crime novels.)

Now let us return to that earlier year when the Norths first meet murder—or rather, as will so often happen, Pamela North meets murder. The Norths are living on the second floor of a brick house near Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Pam has talked Jerry into giving a party for a miscellaneous group of friends and acquaintances, using the vacant apartment on the fourth floor of the building. While they are checking out the apartment one final time, Pam discovers the naked body of a dead man in the bathtub. The police detective who comes to investigate is Lieutenant William Weigand of the Homicide Bureau. He quickly becomes friendly with the Norths and has to keep reminding himself to treat them as witnesses and even potential suspects. One of the important facts about the Norths that we learn in this book is that they are cat fanciers, a characteristic inherited from their creators. Indeed, the Lockridges put their own cat, Pete, into the book, and he plays a significant role in the proceedings. Ultimately, Pam is allowed to give her party and, for the first of many times, finds herself alone in the dark with the murderer. She is rescued by Weigand's assistant, Sergeant Mullins. At the North apartment later, after the explanations, Pam is so pleased with the company that she says “We must do it again. Even without murders.”

The last chapter of the
New Yorker
collection of North vignettes is concerned with a tennis match at Lost Lake. This was also the name of the Lockridges' own country retreat, where Frances first tried to write a mystery novel. Both the setting (with the name slightly altered to Lone Lake) and the tennis match reappear in the second North novel,
Murder Out of Turn
(1941). The Norths are vacationing at Lone Lake and are joined for the weekend by Bill Weigand. The latter's attention is immediately caught by a graceful young woman named Dorian Hunt, who unfortunately has an antipathy to policemen. That evening, two of the Lone Lake residents are murdered, one of them in a particularly horrific fashion. (So much for the critics who think that the Lockridges deal only with “comfortable” or artificially antiseptic killings.) Weigand, of course, has no jurisdiction in Putnam County, but he is drafted to assist the New York State Police detective, Lieutenant Heimrich. (Heimrich, in this book, is rough-hewn and somewhat crude. He becomes considerably smoother and more civilized in his own series, starting with
Think of Death
(1947).) At the end, it is Dorian who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is kidnapped by the fleeing murderer. The denouement brings Weigand and Dorian closer together, with the implied promise that their acquaintanceship will continue.

As indeed it does. In the next book,
A Pinch of Poison
(1941), Dorian has joined the Norths' charmed circle, and she and Bill are having dinner at the Norths' apartment when he is called to investigate an apparently impossible poisoning at a rooftop nightclub. The victim is a young social worker currently involved with a puzzling adoption case. (Frances's work with the State Aid Charities Association provided the background here.) At the end of the book, Weigand and Dorian have decided to get married.

But, as you will shortly discover, they are going to have a little trouble getting to the church.…

R
OBERT
E. B
RINEY

Notes
: A lengthy and illuminating interview with Richard Lockridge and Hildegarde Dolson, conducted by Chris and Janie Filstrup, can be found in
The Armchair Detective
, vol. 11, no. 4 (October 1978), pp. 382–393.

Information on the early North vignettes in
The New Yorker
was compiled by Paul McCarthy and published in his limited-circulation journal
The Rubber Trumpet
, no. 8 (November 1984).

I

T
UESDAY
, O
CTOBER 28—2:20 P.M. TO 3:10 P.M.

This time, they assured each other, nothing was going to intervene. They agreed to this and nodded confidence over their coffee cups, with the gravity of children, and were for their purposes quite alone in the un-childlike atmosphere of Club 21.

“Absolutely nothing, this time,” William Weigand promised himself and her. “Right?”

“Right,” Dorian said. “Exactly right.”

They nodded again.

“And so,” Weigand said, “are we waiting for something?”

Dorian Hunt said she couldn't think what.

“Approved and ready,” she said. “That's what we are. Approved for matrimony by the Empire State.”

She finished her coffee and put the cup down and looked, turning a little to face him, at Weigand on the seat beside her.

“And who are we,” she wanted to know, “to disappoint the Empire State?”

“And ourselves,” Weigand said. “Do we want brandies or something?”

Dorian thought they didn't. She said she had no use for people who had to get drunk to get married. She said that Bill would have to marry her cold sober.

“Any time,” Bill said, firmly. “Now.”

“We'll go find a little minister,” Dorian said. “A very quiet little minister.”

Bill said, “Right.”

“Only,” he said, “don't you have to find a little dressmaker and a little milliner first? I thought that was a rule.”

Dorian didn't say anything for a moment. She looked at Bill through eyes which always seemed to him to have a glint of green in them, and which now looked darker than they usually did. That might, he thought, be the lighting in the upstairs room at “21.” For a moment they looked at each other, slowly, with a kind of care.

“We are right, aren't we, Bill?” Dorian said. Her voice was grave; the question was a real question.

“Yes,” Bill said. “For a long time, now. Didn't you know?”

She smiled a little then, quickly.

“Whose fault was it that it was such a long time?” she wanted to know.

“Well,” he said, “for a good while, yours. All that stuff about marrying a cop. And then, I'll grant you—”

“Then,” she said, “it was you being a cop, and too busy. What with men in cement. And men without teeth in condemned houses. And such charming incidents.”

Bill would, he realized, have risen to that not so long ago; have answered, worried and anxious, and tried to make her see that something had to be done about men who killed other men and, for reasons which rather slowly became apparent, pulled out all their teeth; about men who encased their fellows in cement, and lowered them into rivers. Lieutenant William Weigand of the Homicide Bureau had often argued such matters with Dorian Hunt since that first day, which came so quickly after their first meeting, when they had realized that they were going to have to explain themselves rather fully to each other.

The fact that Weigand was Lieut. Weigand of the police, and that it was his primary duty to pursue, had been the one thing most difficult to explain to Dorian. At first she had said only “why?” and then, which was even more difficult, “why
you
?” It had taken time to explain that last, and a good many words, and in the end, Weigand suspected, it was not really the words that had done it. Never, he somewhat suspected, had Dorian come to approve his occupation, because she felt strongly, and with a personal bias, on the subject of hunters. His profession had become, in the end, merely a somewhat unfortunate attribute of William Weigand, and Dorian had decided to overlook it. After that, she seemed quite light-hearted about it, and even interested in pursuit as an exercise in logic. But Weigand did not suppose that she had changed essentially on the matter, and, since he was logical and wanted everything thrashed out fully, this sometimes puzzled him. He looked at her now and decided it was not an important puzzlement.

“Well,” he said, “I'm off today, if nothing breaks. So why not today? Why not”—he looked at his watch—“three o'clock at some small, and convenient, clergyman's? The Little Church?”

“No,” Dorian said, firmly. “Not the Little Church. Just some little preacher's, where nobody's ever gone before—a
new
little minister's, without any tradition.”

“Right!” Weigand said, and raised eyebrows at a waiter. He looked at the check, managed not to wince, and laid bills on the tray. The waiter pulled out the table and they wriggled forth and Weigand held Dorian's fitted, furless gray coat. It looked military, he thought, and said “Damn” under his breath. Dorian's eyebrows went up.

“Things,” he said. “Your coat looks like part of a uniform.”

Her eyes darkened again and she waited until he came beside her. Then she took his arm, suddenly, almost angrily. It was not like Dorian, who seldom took arms.

“Come on,” she said. “We've got to hurry, Bill. We've got to hurry—so
fast!
They're taking all our time away, Bill.”

Urgency went with them down the stairs. Bill was abrupt, hurried, as he collected hat and coat. He was quick and casual with the doorman who opened the door of his car—parked prominently and conveniently, as became the car of a police lieutenant. Inside the car his fingers moved automatically, hurriedly. The radio switch clicked in response to one familiar gesture; the fingers of the other hand twisted the key in the ignition lock. The motor took hold and the radio said, harshly, indifferently:

“—call your office.”

“Bill—” Dorian said. Unconsciously he held up his hand, quieting her as he listened.

“Car 8 call your office,” the radio said. “That is all.”

It was enough.

“Damn!” Weigand said, not under his breath. “Damn it to hell!”

“Oh—Bill!” Dorian said. “
Again
?”

The motor died as Weigand cut the switch.

“Maybe it's nothing,” he said. He didn't believe it. It was one of those things—when the car radio spoke metallically; when the telephone demanded angrily in the middle of the night; when a police messenger appeared suddenly at his desk, it was always one of those things. A man with his teeth out. A man in cement. One of those things. People, Weigand thought angrily, picked the damnedest times to murder.

“Maybe it's nothing,” he repeated. “I'm supposed to be off today. But I'll have to see.”

“Of course,” Dorian said, in a small voice. “You'll have to see. Oh, Bill—why don't you sell ribbons?”

“Nobody buys ribbons any more,” he said, opening the door. “Didn't you know about ribbon clerks, Dor? Technological unemployment—dreadful thing.”

He was out, and leaned back in.

“We'll hope,” he said. “You wait and hope.”

But it was no use hoping. Weigand turned away from the telephone in “21” knowing that. It was murder again, and Bill cursed it. But there was excitement, still, in a new case starting, and excitement ran under his disappointment. And then, half pleased and half perturbed, he contemplated the message he had just received, relayed, as to instructions, from Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley and, as to information, from Detective Sergeant Aloysius Clarence Mullins.