Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

NOTE: This collection contains a long introduction by Francis M. Nevins, Jr., and a comprehensive bibliography of Woolrich’s writings.

1. Phantom Lady (Lippincott, 1942). Expanded from DFW 39; serialized as DFW 48.

2. I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (Lippincott, 1943). Contents: I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (DFW 32); Last Night (DS 5); Three O’Clock (DFW 36); Nightmare (A 20); Papa Benjamin (DM 1).

NOTE: Almost all reprint editions of this collection are incomplete. Thus, only stories 1 and 2 from the first edition appear in I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (Mercury Mystery — 82, c1945); only stories 3, 4 and 5 in And So to Death (Jonathan Press Mystery — J31, c1945); and only stories 4, 3 and 1 in Nightmare (Reader’s Choice Library — 12, c1950).

3. Deadline at Dawn (Lippincott, 1944). Expanded from DFW 45.

4. After-Dinner Story (Lippincott, 1944). Contents: After-Dinner Story (BM 9); The Night Reveals (Story 1); An Apple a Day (new); Marihuana (DFW 46); Rear Window (DD 23); Murder-Story (DFW 27).

NOTE: This collection was reprinted both under its original title and as Six Times Death (Popular Library Book — 137, c1947).

5. If I Should Die Before I Wake (Avon Murder Mystery Monthly — 31, 1945). Contents: If I Should Die Before I Wake (DFW 24); I’ll Never Play Detective Again (BM 3); Change of Murder (DFW 6); A Death Is Caused (DD 28); Two Murders, One Crime (BM 20); The Man Upstairs (MBM 2).

6. The Dancing Detective (Lippincott, 1946). Contents: The Dancing Detective (BM 10); Two Fellows in a Furnished Room (DFW 44); The Light in the Window (MBM 4); Silent As the Grave (MBM 3); The Detective’s Dilemma (DFW 42); Fur Jacket (DD 31); Leg Man (DD 29); The Fingernail (DT 1).

7. Borrowed Crime (Avon Murder Mystery Monthly — 42, 1946). Contents: Borrowed Crime (BM 11); The Cape Triangular (DFW 33); Detective William Brown (DFW 35); Chance (BM 19).

8. Waltz into Darkness (Lippincott, 1947).

9. Dead Man Blues (Lippincott, 1948). Contents: Guillotine (BM 12); The Earring (DFW 50); If the Dead Could Talk (BM 21); Fire Escape (MBM 5); Fountain Pen (DS 6); You Take Ballistics (Doub D 2); Funeral (A 9).

NOTE: The third story from the original edition is omitted from the reprint Dead Man Blues (Mercury Mystery — 135, c1950).

10. I Married a Dead Man (Lippincott, 1948). Expanded from TW 1.

11. The Blue Ribbon (Lippincott, 1949). Contents: The Blue Ribbon (new); The Dog with the Wooden Leg (DS 1); The Lie (DFW 29); Hot Towel (Doub D 4); Wardrobe Trunk (DFW 22); Wild Bill Hiccup (A 15); Subway (A 4); Husband (new).

NOTE: The sixth and the last stories from the original edition are omitted from the reprint Dilemma of the Dead Lady (Graphic Book — 20, 1950).

12. Somebody on the Phone (Lippincott, 1950). Contents: Johnny on the Spot (DFW 9); Somebody on the Phone (DFW 26); Collared (BM 14); The Night I Died (DFW 13); Momentum (DFW 43); Boy with Body (DD 6); Death Sits in the Dentist’s Chair (DFW 1); The Room with Something Wrong (DFW 34).

NOTE: The third and fourth stories from the original edition are omitted from the reprint Deadly Night Call (Graphic Book — 31, 1951, and — 81, 1954).

13. Six Nights of Mystery (Popular Library Book — 258, 1950). Contents: One Night in New York (BM 6); One Night in Chicago (BM 14); One Night in Hollywood (BM 22); One Night in Montreal (A 2); One Night in Paris (A 3); One Night in Zacamoras (A 17).

14. Strangler’s Serenade (Rinehart, 1951). Expanded from MBM 1.

15. Eyes That Watch You (Rinehart, 1952). Contents: Eyes That Watch You (DD 15); Stuck (DD 11); Charlie Won’t Be Home Tonight (DD 14); Murder with a U (DD 19); All at Once, No Alice (A 18); Damned Clever, These Americans (A 10); Flat Tire (DD 12).

16. Bluebeard’s Seventh Wife (Popular Library Book — 473, 1952). Contents: Bluebeard’s Seventh Wife (DFW 15); Morning After Murder (DFW 14); Silhouette (DFW 37); The Hat (DFW 38); Humming Bird Comes Home (PD 2); Through a Dead Man’s Eye (BM 15).

17. The Best of William Irish (Lippincott, 1960).

NOTE: This attractive triple-decker, containing the complete texts of WI 1, WI 3, and WI 4, is the best introduction to Woolrich extant.

1. Night Has a Thousand Eyes (Farrar & Rinehart, 1945). Expanded from A 8.

2. Fright (Rinehart, 1950).

At the time of his death, Woolrich was working on four projects: two novels, a book of short fiction, and his autobiography. That none of these were finished is a loss that every perceptive reader of Woolrich will feel in his bones.

This is my title for an untitled novel on which Woolrich apparently worked for a long time. Although pages 1—22 of the manuscript are missing, the major event in them is clear from the context: Madeline Chalmers, the protagonist, has accidentally killed a girl named Starr Bartlett. Guilt-obsessed, she steps into Starr’s life, goes to Starr’s home town, becomes acquainted with Starr’s widowed mother, and learns that Starr’s life had been mangled by two people: her estranged husband, Vick Herrick, and Vick’s ex-wife, the singer Adelaide Nelson. Madeline returns to New York City, locates Adelaide, and insinuates herself into the singer’s life with the intent of destroying her (a procedure not unlike that of Julie in The Bride Wore Black). But events take the reins out of Madeline’s hands, and a homicide cop named John F. X. Smith comes very close to the truth about her. When the danger passes, she goes after Vick Herrick, and after several poignant blind-alley encounters reminiscent of Deadline at Dawn, she finds him. Again she begins to insinuate herself into her victim’s life, but this time she finds herself, against her will, falling in love with her intended quarry, just as Starr had. The evocation of the last hours before she carries out her plan to kill him is one of the most haunting and terrifying things Woolrich wrote in the last twenty years of his life. The manuscript trails off before we learn what happened to Madeline and Vick, and by the cutoff point both they and the other tortured people in this novel have become so achingly real that the sense of loss is unimaginable.

In pages 1—17 of this manuscript the narrator, Cleve Evans, kills an unnamed woman (the motive, as always in late Woolrich, has to do with the death of love), stops in at a bar afterward for a drink, and inadvertently winds up with a perfect alibi. This chapter appears in the present book under the title “Life Is Weird Sometimes.” In pages 18–35 there is a flashback to the first meeting of Cleve Evans and Janet Bartlett, who at once begin to fall in love. At the end of the chapter Janet is about to tell Cleve some incident out of her past. Unfortunately Cleve already has a wife, a bitchy singer named Adelaide. In pages 38–56 Cleve returns to Adelaide’s apartment, packs his things, and tells her he is in love with another woman. She refuses to give him up: he is her possession. He leaves her as she swears revenge on him and his new woman. Cleve and Janet motor to Mexico for divorce and remarriage, return to New York City to live, and are supremely happy. At the end of this chapter comes the first hint that their happiness is menaced.

Next comes a five-page fragment entitled “The Death of Love, The Love of Death,” narrated in the third person, and describing a time when Adelaide was in love with her manager D’Angelo. How this was intended to fit in with the rest of the book is not clear.