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Authors: Edward D. Hoch

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BOOK: The Shattered Raven
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Susan Veldt looked dubious. “Are you turning
Manhattan
into a true-crime magazine, Chief?”

“I’m turning it into whatever this town of ours is, Sue. Some weeks it’s tragedy—other weeks it’s humour. This week we’ve got a murder, and I think it’s going to last us for a good many weeks. From what you’ve told me about this deadly little device, our killer was an amateur. In fact, he sounds like a mystery writer himself, to dream up an infernal machine like that.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m convinced. What do you want me to do?”

“What’s that guy’s name? The guy you were with last night?”

“Barney Hamet.”

“Tell me something about him.”

“It’s in my first article, resting in your
In
box, if you ever get around to looking at your
In
box.”

He shuffled through some papers until he found it “It’s too long to read now. Tell me about it anyway.”

“He’s a sometime writer. For a while he was a private detective. Now he’s executive vice-president of MWA.”

“What about his personal life? Married?”

“Single, now. I think he was divorced.”

“Good looking guy? Go for a girl like you?”

She ran a casual hand over her nylons. “I guess.”

“Fine. Stick to him. He’s going to be your meal ticket. I want to know everything that MWA does on this case. I want to know if they’re going to leave it in the police hands, if they’re going to try to find the killer themselves, if they’re going to just try and shovel it under the rug. Whatever they do, you go with them and find out, and keep that typewriter hot. We’re going to have the story of the year! This is the kind of thing
Manhattan
was made for!”

“Do you really think it’s fair to be satirical about a man’s murder? Don’t you think the public might object to us making fun of one more bit of violence?”

“We’re not making fun of the violence. We’re not making fun of Ross Craigthorn. We only might have a little fun at the expense of MWA. That is, if they decide to play detective and make a botch of it.”

“All right,” she sighed. “I guess you know best.”

“That’s why I’m the editor.”

“What about the rest of the series? We’ve got the Pulitzer awards coming up the first week in May.”

He thought for a moment, then snapped back, “Put someone else on it! You stay on this mystery writers’ thing!”

“Right, Chief.”

9
Barney Hamet

M
WA HEADQUARTERS WAS A
scene of saddened energy at three o’clock Saturday afternoon. It was the hour for the regular directors’ meeting, and though there had been some talk of cancelling or postponing it, Barney had finally decided that it must be held. There were just so many things to be gone over—statements to the press, letters to members, an article to be written for next month’s
Third Degree
, the MWA house organ.

“All right,” Barney said. “So we’ve got ourselves a murder. A front-page murder at that. You people have seen the
Times
and the
News.
The
Post
this afternoon plays it up big too. We’re on the spot. A famous person has been killed at our awards dinner and you know where that leaves us? Right behind the eight-ball! The whole thing makes us look foolish. It wasn’t as if he had just been shot or stabbed. He had to be killed with some crazy device that looks like it was dreamed up by a mystery writer.” He looked down the table to where Betty Rafferty sat making quick shorthand notes. “Betty, you were as close to him as I was. Did you see anything?”

“Not a thing, Barney … except how he took that Raven out of your hand and smashed it. We’ll have to get you a new one.”

“I’m not worried about that right now. I’m mainly worried about why he did it.”

“A dying message …” Max Winters said, giving words to the obvious.

“Sure. A dying message.” Barney sighed and looked down, scratching his head. “Don’t think I haven’t given it a lot of concentration. I even called Fred Dannay up in Larchmont this morning.” (Dannay was one half of the Ellery Queen writing combination, and a number of his plots, especially in the short-short length, had concerned dying messages.) “I called Fred and talked to him for half an hour. We discussed the thing up and down. He agrees it was a dying message of some sort, but he’s as puzzled by it as the rest of us. Raven—bird—maybe some other bird. Maybe the killer’s name has a bird in it. There was no other bird around except for the Raven’s statue, so he grabbed for the closest thing handy. There are a dozen explanations and we’ve got nothing to go on.”

Betty Rafferty spoke up from the end of the table. “I’ve gone through the entire guest list. There’s not a bird among them.”

Harry Fox was not formally part of the board of directors, but he often dropped in on meetings, and he sat near the makeshift bar now, voicing occasional comments. “I’m a Fox. That’s an animal. Does that help any?”

“Afraid not,” Barney said.

“What do we do?” Someone else asked. “Let’s cut the chatter and get down to business.”

What they did for the next half hour was listen to opinions—from Jim Reach and Chris Steinbrunner, Gloria Amoury and Aaron Marc Stein. The sum of it was that nobody knew exactly what to do. They all agreed that MWA had to come out of it looking good. There was too much at stake in the organisation’s prestige.

“The thing to do is check all the names on that seating list,” Harry Fox said. “Every one of them. Find out how much they knew about Craigthorn. Maybe we’ll turn up a bitter enemy first time out.”

Barney nodded in agreement. “I’m going to ask you all to work on this with me. I’m going to give you a few names each and start you digging.”

“One thing,” Max said. “Barney, you’re a detective. You were a licensed private eye for a good many years, and you’re known as such. I think MWA should hire you formally, or informally, to investigate Craigthorn’s murder.”

“I haven’t been a detective for years, Max. You know that.”

“But you can get back into the swing of things. Look, Barney, you’re the logical one. A lot of mystery writers running off half-cocked aren’t going to get anywhere. You know the sort of things that we need to find. If you don’t find them, okay, but nobody can criticise us if we have you looking for them.”

“What about that girl?” Betty Rafferty asked. “Is she going to make trouble? The writer from
Manhattan
magazine?”

Barney had forgotten Susan Veldt for the moment. “I don’t know. What do you want me to do with her? Take her to bed with me?”

Max Winters chuckled. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea. For the good of the organisation, and all that stuff. You might even enjoy yourself.”

“I don’t know.” Barney thought about it—about Susan Veldt a little, but mostly about what the directors were asking him to do. “There’s not a clue in it anywhere. We’ve got more than three hundred suspects—anyone in that room. We’ve even got twenty or so waiters. Besides which, just about anybody in the city could have walked in there without being noticed, the way people were shuffling around.”

“But we have a list of the prime suspects,” Max reminded him. “This guest list right here. With the seating arrangements and all. Maybe the police will be able to pin down that radio gadget a little better. Maybe they’ll say the killer had to be within twenty feet—or ten feet. If so, that would narrow down the suspects right away.”

Barney shook his head. “They’re not going to say that. We’re stuck with a murder that could have been committed by anybody in that room.”

“You’ll work on the case?” Harry Fox asked.

“I’ll look around for a day or two,” Barney agreed. “And I’ll try and get this gal off our necks. I’m not pretending to be any sort of detective, though. It’s for the police to find out who killed him. We can help a bit, that’s all.”

Harry had another idea. “How about this all-night radio show tomorrow? Are we going on with it as planned?”

Barney had forgotten Skinny Simon’s proposal in the rush of events. “What do you think?”

“We should do it,” Harry said. “It’s important to us now. We can get our message across to the people, maybe even appeal for some sort of help. But I think you should be on the show with the rest of us, Barney—especially if you’re undertaking the investigation. It would give us a peg for the whole discussion.”

Max Winters was far from certain. “What if Skinny Simon says something about violence being encouraged by mysteries?”

“Someone will say that anyway, and we might as well be there to defend ourselves. Right?” This came from Harry Fox.

Barney interrupted before things got too heated. “Okay. I’ll do it. You two guys are going on the show?”

“Right.”

“We still need two others.”

Max spoke up. “We’ve got two others. Dick McMullen will do it. I think he’s anxious to stay on my good side and get back to being an agent. Then I’ve got another one lined up too. I haven’t been sleeping all morning, you know. Frank Jesset—the confession magazine editor. That friend of Ross Craigthorn’s.”

“Friend?” Betty asked. “They weren’t looking too friendly when I saw them last night.”

“Okay,” Max said. “So maybe we’ll have the murderer right there with us. Craigthorn brought two people with him—his secretary, Miss Sweeney, and Frank Jesset. Maybe he’s been shacking up with Miss Sweeney all these years and Jesset wanted a piece of the action. Maybe Jesset rigged that thing up to kill him. Barney—I’ll bet if you play your cards right, you can get a confession out of him right on Skinny Simon’s show.”

“Sure, sure.” Barney said.

The awards dinner was traditionally followed by a cocktail party, and although they played it down after the previous night’s events, they hadn’t entirely cancelled it. Barney was standing by the front window looking out at the busy evening street when he saw Susan Veldt coming in the downstairs door. He put on his brightest smile as he walked to the door to greet her.

10
Susan Veldt

S
HE HAD NEVER SEEN
such a place—smoky and crowded and gloomily detached. It seemed different from the small, somewhat cheerless library she’d visited earlier in the week.

Barney Hamet was already pressing a cold drink into her hand. “Scotch and water. I hope it’s your brand,” he said.

“Thanks. I thought you might cancel the cocktails in view of last night’s events.”

“This is basically a pretty private affair and we’re just talking things over. We didn’t encourage any outsiders to come in. Could I interest you in dinner?”

She glanced at her watch. “Well, I was planning to wash my hair and write a few letters.”

“Hair washing and letter writing are for nights when there’s nothing else swinging. You want to stay a bachelor gal the rest of your life?”

She laughed a bit and gave in easily. “All right, dinner it is. But didn’t you promise to phone me today?”

“I was busy every minute. I’ll tell you about it.”

They left MWA headquarters around eight o’clock and decided to eat nearby. They crossed the street to the Absinthe House and ordered something there. She found herself relaxing and enjoying it, even though she couldn’t quite figure what Barney Hamet had in mind.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “You know—the real you.”

“The real me! What do you want me to tell you? About my old boy-friends? About how I’m a career girl?”

“I suppose. Where do you live, for instance?”

“Opposite Central Park—above the zoo. I can hear the lions every night.”

“And the wolves?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Those too. Sometimes I hear ambulances—and I always hear parades. It’s that sort of an apartment.”

“It’s that sort of a city,” he said.

“Tell me about this murder,” she asked finally, over dessert.

“What’s there to tell? The man is dead and I suppose somebody there killed him. I sure don’t know who, though.”

“No ideas?”

“No ideas.”

“It will be sort of funny if it was one of you mystery writers.”

“It wasn’t one of us mystery writers. I don’t think there was an MWA member in that room who would have committed a crime under those circumstances. I’d be willing to bet on it.”

They took a cab uptown and she was surprised to find that it was already ten-thirty when they reached her apartment.

“Come on up,” she said casually.

He glanced around the apartment, taking in the modern art reproductions and a few originals.

“This is a nice place. How many rooms?”

“This one. The bedroom. The bath. That’s all. It goes for a fancy figure, but I think it’s worth it for entertaining. A nice neighbourhood. Right in the next block is one of the most expensive co-op apartments in New York City.”

He grunted and downed his Scotch. “Come sit by me,” he suggested, and she took him up on the offer. “I haven’t necked with a girl since high school.”

11
Barney Hamet

“T
HIS IS YOUR PLACE
, mister,” the Taxi driver said.

“Yeah.” Barney gave him a big tip and went up. He switched on the one o’clock news, but there was nothing new on Ross Craigthorn—just the fact that funeral services would be held Monday. Monday seemed a long way off. Then he remembered the radio show the following night. He should sleep late in the morning—have at least a few of his wits about him for the thing.

When he woke, rolled over and looked at the clock, he saw that it was ten minutes to ten. Well, almost eight hours. He couldn’t expect any more than that, not with losing an hour to the start of Daylight Savings Time. He thought about calling Susan, decided against it, but then did it anyway after breakfast.

“Hello,” she said, all sweetness. Maybe she was expecting her boss, or her sister in Chicago.

“Hello.”

“Who is this?”

“A fellow named Barney Hamet. Spent a little time with you last night.”

“Oh, Barney! I really didn’t expect to hear from you—not this soon at least. You’re calling to tell me you’ve cracked the Craigthorn murder case!”

“No.” He had a sudden impulse. “I want you to spend tonight with me.”

“Tonight?” she asked a little uncertainly, not understanding what he meant.

BOOK: The Shattered Raven
8.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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