Table Of Content<code> MESSAGE FROM A CORPSE
An Amy Brewster Mystery
By
Sam Merwin, Jr.
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-098-0
All rights reserved
Special Contents Copyright (C) 2002 by Renaissance E Books
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written
permission.
For information contact:
[email protected]
PageTurner Editions/A Deerstalker Classic
</code>
<code> INTRODUCTON
With this novel, Deerstalker Classics brings to a close its reprinting, in e-book
form, of 1940s detective writer Sam Merwin, Jr.'s three Amy Brewster
mysteries. Sadly this trio of 'tec tales (_Message from a Corpse, A Matter of
Policy_ and A Knife in My Back) represents all the adventures of this most
unique of female private eyes that Merwin penned. Apparently the mystery
reading public's tastes were too conservative at the time to encompass a heroine
of less than delicate sensibilities, who chomped cigars, guzzled gin, swore like a
stevedore, and boasted both a Ph.D. and a frock size nearer 60 than 6. The result
was that after three books, Merwin laid his character aside and turned his hand to
works of suspense like Murder in Miniatures, The Creeping Shadow and Killer
to Come and science fiction like The House of Many Worlds, The Time Shifters
and The White Widows.
Alas, Merwin seems to have been one of those writers who are "born ahead of
their time." If he was writing and creating the Amy Brewster novels today, there
seems little likelihood they would meet the same indifferent reception. Instead,
each new title in the series would doubtless be awaited by a breathless horde of
readers, and automatically ride the top of the best-seller lists, the same way the
Kinsey Millhone and V. I. Warshawski mysteries do.
So, what's all the shouting about? Here is how author Merwin introduces the
inimitable Miss Brewster in Message from a Corpse:
"Across the room sat the most extraordinary female figure he had ever seen in
the Jamaica Inn or, for that matter, any other restaurant cafe from San Francisco
to pre-war Paris. She was sitting alone, all three hundred-odd pounds of her ...
encased in what looked more like a burlap sack dyed black than a dress. Her
stringy gray hair rested in an unkempt and archaic Dutch cut on the quadruple
folds of her neck. Yet over the back of her chair was flung carelessly a coat that
... was undoubtedly sable, and costly sable, too.... Before her was the most
monstrous slab of meat he had ever seen ... it appeared to be a planked steak and
must have stood six inches high and a foot square.... A bushel of julienne
potatoes, which stood on a cafe wagon beside the table ... was flanked by a huge
salad bowl from over whose top a veritable cornucopia-filling of chopped fruits
showed its head. As he looked, this female Gargantua emptied a tumbler of
water and set it down. But it apparently wasn't water. The waiter captain leaned
forward obsequiously and refilled it to the brim with the contents of one of two
bottles of gin that shared honors on the table with the fat lady's plate and steak.
'That,' said his girlfriend, 'is Auntie'!"
Although it may seem surprising (and to some, a pleasant surprise) that a male
writer would create a woman character as distinct and different as Amy
Brewster, it's par for the course for Sam Merwin, Jr. All his novels, mystery and
sci-fi, feature strong, well-characterized female leads. Even in the books told
from a male point of view, the man in question is likely to be several steps
behind the women in the story. In Murder in Miniatures, which features Sergeant
Lansing (from the Amy Brewster mysteries), it's bright young fashion model, Pat
McBride, not Lansing, who puts together the clues that reveal the murderer's
identity and motive. In The Dark Side of the Moon, the super-intelligent alien,
Greta, leads the hapless hero around by the nose. And, in his 1953 The White
Widows, men are slated for elimination as no longer necessary by a group of
women who have discovered the secret of parthenogenic reproduction. (This
latter would be considered a breakthrough concept for the time if it had issued
from the pen of a woman writer -- Alice Sheldon's "Houston, Houston, Do You
Read?, which transited similar territory thirteen years later, was considered so
visionary it received the Nebula and Hugo Awards -- that The White Widows
sprang, like Minerva, full-grown from the mind of a man makes it seem all the
more singular a feat.)
As for his most singular female character, the irrepressible Amy Brewster,
Merwin always said she was inspired by two real-life prototypes, a pair of
colorful, celebrated women he had met through his famous novelist father. One
was the stogie-puffing, multimillionaire blue-blood poet Amy Lowell. The other
was the equally unforgettable gossip columnist and international "hostess with
the mostess," Elsa Maxwell. In addition to their weight, both women shared a
number of qualities that apparently impressed the young Sam Merwin, Jr.: Both
were free-spirits, rebels against the social order who defied convention with a
gusto for life that proved rare in the 20th century.
Amy Brewster's creator also shared these qualities. Sam Merwin, Jr. lived life
to the fullest, married across racial lines in an era when such a move was
unthinkable, and championed minorities in his fiction long before it became
fashionable. A successful novelist, short story writer, magazine editor and author
of screenplays, his death in 1996 took something away from the field of
literature that will not soon be replaced.
Jean Marie Stine
4/5/02
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<code> CHAPTER ONE
THE OLD MAN was terribly tired -- so tired that it was a definite effort to sit
down on the little round seat in the public telephone booth. So tired that, once
seated, he had to rally his energies during a moment of repose, while his aged
heart hammered with frightening drumbeats at the brittle cage of his ribs, and the
impatient line of would-be telephoners glowered at him menacingly through the
glass of the door. It was hot and almost unbearably close in the booth, which did
not help him to regain control of his breathing.
He was, he reflected with more than a trace of nostalgia, getting too far along
in years for all this bustling about. Trams, trains, taxis, tickets and the
discomforts of even short trips in an era of overtaxed transportation drained him
of energy in frightful amounts. Four journeys to Manhattan from his comfortable
home in Montclair in less than a week had eaten over-heartily into his slim
remaining reserve of vitality.
His breathing -- if you could call it breathing in such a fetid and stuffy
atmosphere -- finally grew more normal. With a single last sigh, he fumbled for a
nickel in his small change pocket, removed the receiver, then worked the coin
into the slot and, after spinning the dial with unsteady, parchment-like fingers,
waited patiently for a response to his call.
"Hello?" he said finally to a series of squawks in the receiver. His voice, while
still deep and bearing the remnants of distinction, was ragged and had a senile
tendency to develop thin patches. It had lost the ringing timbre that, for many
years, could keep an entire courtroom hanging on his every word.
"Yes, this is Bryan O'Connell," he explained, paused, scowling a little as his
ear endured further squawks against its tympanum. "Yes, I am aware of
conditions ... But I am doing everything in my power ... Yes, I'm sure he has
been terribly busy. I'm on my way over to his office now to explain the entire
circumstances to him ... Yes, I'm sure I can impress their importance on him ...
No, I am in the Tubes terminal. I'll walk it. Walking is about the only exercise
that remains for me."
He hung up slowly, gathered his scanty physical resources about him, left the
booth and carefully climbed the long, steep flight of steps to the sidewalk above
him. The stairs conquered, he stood still for a full two minutes, regaining his
breath and gazing, like a callow country youth on his first trip to the city, at the
clean-cut three-dimensional vastness of Manhattan around him.
He was tall, though the stoop of seven decades and six had lopped a good two
inches from a formerly erect and impressive stature. Sparse white hair emerged
in an uneven fringe from beneath the narrow roll brim of his high-crown, almost
Churchillesque black derby. With the white, translucent skin drawn tightly across
the bones of his face, Bryan O'Connell was a ghostly survival of an era already
long buried in the pages of history.
His costly four-button black coat with its split skirt in back had long since
faded to a shiny brown. His trousers were of the sort clung to so stubbornly by
the late King George V of England, the kind that are pressed port and starboard
instead of fore and aft. Even the magnificent woven gold cable of the watch
chain looped through a buttonhole of his waistcoat, with its massive gold and
jade seal fob, was heavily and awkwardly obsolete.
How New York City had changed! Even though this was his fourth visit to the
metropolis in the last few days, he still found it a city of magical newness. Sixth
Avenue, once a loud, unsavory grotto, thanks to the elevated which had reduced
the sun to convict's stripes, was now a broad and cheerful boulevard. Instead of
the roar and clank of the overhead trains, the rolling subway caravans now
barely made the sidewalk shudder beneath his high-button shoes.
Why, Bryan O'Connell could actually remember when steam locomotives
trundled along the vanished trestle, tooting and belching black coal smoke
against the facades of long dead downtown department stores, as they bore
Harlem commuters on the long journey from residential heights to the marts of
daily commerce. For a moment he felt homesick for the New York that was.
Then, a mile or more uptown, he caught a glimpse of the lucent white masses of
Rockefeller Center outlined like the ramparts of some undreamed of Camelot
against the sky. No, the new New York was better -- a foretaste of the
incomparable magic of days to come.
Slowly, as befitted a man of his years and condition, Bryan O'Connell strolled
up the avenue. Behind him, on his right, the Empire State Building receded
slowly, regretfully foregoing its world-dominant place in the sky beneath its
burnished dirigible landing tower that gleamed with stainless steel brightness in
the late April afternoon sun. The sun would be reluctant to leave this monument
behind, would shine longer hours at twelve hundred-odd feet.
Past Herald Square he ambled, an aged figure who moved with the formal
dignity of a vanished day, remembering the theaters and restaurants and hotels
that had once made this double triangle the playspot of the Western Hemisphere
-- past Bryant Park, a study in green pastels made vivid by the heat of the
underground vaults of library, and the subway and city pipelines that put winter
frosts to early rout -- past the gaping cavity that had once been the Hippodrome,
famed for its Charlotte Russe ice ballets, its curtain that rose from the floor and
its brigades of stately chorus beauties who marched like West Pointers down the
steps of the great onstage pool, there to disappear magically beneath the water.
His faculties, however, ceased to be occupied with the idle memories recalled
so vividly by his immediate surroundings. They focused on the task before him
with a flash of the old power of concentration that had once made him the terror
of every young prosecutor employed by the district attorney's office.
The task that had lain so long before him -- dragging on for a full five years
beyond the time when he had considered himself retired -- commanded his full
attention. Even now, with its completion at hand, difficulties continued to crop
up, difficulties like the unforeseen trouble he had had in the past week in getting
the ear of Breckenridge Barnum. He consoled himself with the thought that
today he would be through, able to retire at last to the complete rest his years of
work entitled him to.
Breckenridge Barnum certainly shouldn't be difficult -- not if Bryan O'Connell
remembered that young man at all. He'd always rather liked Barnum, been more
than once amused by his sincerity and unafraid impetuosity. The young man had
been a bit too radical, perhaps -- but that in itself was not an unhealthy sign
when accompanied by youth. Probably, with increased years and responsibilities,
Barnum would have settled down a bit by now.
He had certainly seemed to be busy, if the old lawyer's inability to see him on
his three previous trips to the city meant anything. But he had been assured an
audience today -- he smiled faintly at the thought that he, Bryan O'Connell,
should have to make so many arduous trips to town to see Breckenridge Barnum.
The years, even five years, could account swiftly for many startling changes.
Just a few minutes of conversation should wind the case up, wind it up fairly
with all parties satisfied, including Bryan O'Connell, now that his trusteeship
was carried out in full. And for himself there would be peace and naps under a
garden sun in summer or before an open fire when the winter winds grew chill.
He paused, just off the lip of the sidewalk, peered cautiously in both directions
as he waited for the traffic light to turn in his favor before he crossed the avenue.
As he did so, a dark blue sedan, which had been following his progress slowly
for the past several blocks, picked up speed and, when he moved warily another
step into the street, it swerved across and bore directly down on him. He never
even saw it.
But suddenly and, to him, inexplicably, a Woman directly behind him gave
vent to a piercing shriek. The impact of harsh sound on his eardrums made him
start and, to his vast annoyance, lose dignity. He whirled toward the source of the
noise with unsuspected agility, and his move caused the car to whiz past him,
barely brushing his coattails with a mudguard he neither saw nor felt.
The woman, a plump creature wearing a foolish bright red hat and red shoes,
seemed to have fainted. At any rate, her mascaraed eyes were closed, revealing
ridiculous artificial eyelashes. A policeman and a cluster of other sidewalk
paraders appeared to be taking care of her. He shrugged his faded broadcloth
shoulders.
Silly creatures, women, screaming like that at nothing and then fainting. He
hadn't known women did faint any more. With another shrug, he turned again
and crossed the street with the cross-town green light. That she had saved his life
was something he was never to learn.
Dorothy Cochrane, wearing a black jersey dress that did no damage at all to
her softly if not flamboyantly seductive figure, came ambling into Breckenridge
Barnum's office. She tossed him a rather casual, end-of-the-day salute, lifted
herself not too gracefully onto a corner of his glass-topped desk.
The beige powder had been worked off the bridge of her rather short, straight
nose, was caked at the base of her nostrils in pink and sullen protest against an
honest highlight above. A medium shade of lipstick was slightly smeared in one
corner of her tight little mouth, where a cigarette burned. Her hazel eyes were
reduced to slits to keep them clear of smoke as she used both hands to fluff
feather-cut medium brown hair.
"Well, Breck," she said, paused to stretch, first with one arm, then with the
other, barely removing her cigarette from her mouth in time for an uncovered
yawn. "And so another week passes into the limbo of Lethe. What do you know?
Got anything?"
"Just a Sounds in the Night for Winchell," said Breck Barnum, yawning in
sympathy. He lifted a live cigarette from the ashtray in front of him, took a puff,
asked, "How do you like it?"
"Let's hear it first," she said dryly.
"Okay, don't get your drawers in an uproar," he said, picked up a piece of
paper. "'Overheard at the Jamaica Inn -- She has a heart like a steel trap and a
mind of gold.' How about it?"
"Stinks," said the girl impassively, added, "but it might do for filler on a quiet
night." She wrinkled her nose as she considered it. In a bright, oddly acquisitive
and strictly so-what way, she was a pretty girl. Her nylons boasted a run down
her left tibia, which seemed to bother her not at all.
"I could have done better, maybe," said Breck apologetically -- Dorothy
Cochrane had that effect on him with her well ordered, forward-march
personality-"if I hadn't had a silly gag running around in my dome."
"Oh, it's not that bad," said the girl, yawning again. "If you could come up
with one like it every day, you might rise to be one of Jack Benny's gagmen.
That would be terrific, wouldn't it?"
"Ouch!" said Breck, ducking and lifting his arms as if to fend off a blow.
"Can't you stop playing the female Horatio Alger or Little Elsie or whatever it is
once in a while!"
"All right," said Dorothy, her voice husky with sudden weariness. "To save
