Джеффри Дивер - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

Finally there were enough partisans on both sides convinced of their positions. Sherry Kendall was the first to take Phil up on his wager. Aaron insisted for a while he wasn’t betting but finally put in a token amount against Phil. Jeremy Glass came in on Aaron’s side. Gus threw his lot in with Phil, whether because he believed the magazine would collapse or because he wouldn’t feel right on the same side as Sherry. Max gave his support to Aaron. Three or four more joined on each side, and the pot grew to several hundred dollars.

I hadn’t taken sides, and people tend to find me reliable, so I was charged with holding the stakes and getting together with those involved at the end of the war (surely by late 1942 or early 1943, I thought) to hand out the winnings. If any of the bettors didn’t survive the war, possible but not too likely at most of our ages, those remaining on the winning side would divide the pot. Sort of like a tontine, that last-survivor-takes-all arrangement beloved of mystery writers. I decided to put the money in a separate interest-bearing account so it could grow as the war dragged on, which turned out to be a good idea.

Now, you ask, what about this unsolved murder that might have equaled the William Desmond Taylor case? It was all over the afternoon papers on the Wednesday after the pool party. The victim was a prominent and well-liked producer of motion pictures named Max Ferguson, found shot to death late Tuesday night in his Beverly Hills home. His wife Alice reported she was visiting friends in Palm Springs, said the servants had the night off, meaning Ferguson would normally have been alone. He had been shot with a World War I pistol from his own collection. Police ruled out suicide, based on the angle of the shot, but no strangers had been seen in the neighborhood, and there was no sign Max had received any visitors. Oh yes, and the article mentioned Ferguson had been decorated for his distinguished army service in the war. What wasn’t mentioned in the article was a possible clue found by the body that I learned about from a police friend: a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine open to the first page of the first story in that first issue. The title of the story had been circled.

The next day’s paper reported the death of the British character actor Gordon Maltravers, at his home, of apparent natural causes. His distinguished military service in the British Army was also referenced.

As the case faded from view, a fade-out ironically helped by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the papers offered vague references to a burglary gone wrong and failed efforts to identify the killer. Of course, the investigation would remain officially open, but with no solid leads in the first few days, the chance of its being definitively solved were slim.

Actually, the case was not unsolved at all. For me, that magazine issue, not so much dying message as pre-suicide confession, just the sort of clue that would appeal to the Ellery Queen team, pointed the finger at the person who shot Max Ferguson. And I happen to know the police reached the same conclusion I did, though they never broadcast it. Remember two things: 1) Law enforcement in Los Angeles had a long history of covering up scandal for the movie studios, and 2) The last thing the governments of the United States and Great Britain would want revealed as America teetered on the brink of entry into World War II was the revelation that a British subject working in the film industry had shot to death an alleged American war hero.

Gordon had given me another clue. I knew the first person he’d laid eyes on at the party was me. How could he be so sure his suspect would turn up at that pool party if the suspect were not his host?

As for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I read it periodically (no pun intended) through the war years, saw its paper quality and page size decrease with the wartime strictures, saw it widen its net to introduce new stories alongside the reprints, and yes, it survived World War II and would survive the Cold War and Korea and Vietnam and other hot wars to this very day.

When the war was definitively finished in August 1945, the surviving parties to that bet (even including most of the losers) met for lunch at Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, where I distributed the winnings. It was a happy occasion. Phil Devine and Aaron Wimbush were both doing well as solo screenwriters and finally getting along fine as ex-partners. Everybody had helped the war effort (and/or profited from it) one way or another. Jeremy Glass, he of the alleged nearsightedness and effeminate manner, had hit Normandy Beach in the second wave and lived to tell about it. Of those who had placed a bet, only Max Ferguson had not lived through the war, and Alice didn’t turn up to claim his share. She never seemed overly devastated by the death of her husband — I guess she knew him better than the rest of us — but her hero’s-widow status gave her a new prominence selling war bonds, entertaining the troops, and even reviving her screen career briefly until she married even richer after the war.

What, you may ask, was the significance of that Dashiell Hammett story that led off that first issue of EQMM? You could look it up, and maybe some of you have. It had a title that meant something to Gordon Maltravers, mourning the needless dead and deploring the treacherous survivors: “Too Many Have Lived.”

International best-selling author (and former journalist and lawyer) Jeffery Deaver has a long and celebrated history with EQMM, having won our Readers Award three times and been nominated twice from EQMM for the Edgar Allan Poe Award (out of a total of seven times for his fiction). Among his thirty-seven novels are A Maiden’s Grave, which was made into an HBO movie; The Bone Collector, which became a feature film with Denzel Washington; and The Devil’s Teardrop, which was adapted for Lifetime TV.

“If I come up with a story lead...” The woman was speaking softly, leaning forward across the unsteady bar table. Her heavily made-up face caught a shaft of glaring sunlight, and her hair, normally dull, glowed momentarily.

Trevor Powers tilted his head.

“... will you let me write it?”

He gave a laugh. “I thought you were going to say pay you.”

She squinted in the light and leaned back, out of the flare. “I wondered why the shocked expression.”

“Was I shocked?” Powers didn’t think he had been.

“More, concerned.”

When Nicole Samson had come to him a month ago, reporting she was an avid fan of The Power(s) Lunch and asking about a job, he’d been impressed. She was studying journalism part-time, working nights, but wanted some on-the-job experience. He’d read her sample stories — they were very good — but he’d told her, “I can’t afford an assistant. I don’t monetize the blog. There’s no advertising. I operate at a loss.”

Expecting her to say thanks and leave.

But she hadn’t. She’d said, “A stint here for a few months? That’d look real nice on the résumé. Do you think a forty-three-year-old divorcée can be an intern?”

“As in ‘for free’?”

“As in ‘for the experience of it.’”

“As in,” he’d said coyly, drawing out his words, “... okay, I agree.”

Nicole had turned out to be an excellent research assistant and editor. Her notes were pithy and well-written. And he’d heard her on the phone, digging for information and not letting subjects weasel away. But there’d never been any talk about her writing articles, certainly not under her name. The Power(s) Lunch blog was his exclusively — all eight or so weekly stories scribed by him alone. He felt an odd twinge at the thought of giving up a byline.