Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 1. Whole No. 785, January 2007

Two more of Vin Packer’s remarkable novels, Whisper His Sin [and] The Evil Friendship (Stark House, $19.95), from 1954 and 1958 respectively, have been reprinted in a single volume with new introductions identifying their bases in true crime cases and my essay on Packer’s work from the 1989 collection Murder Off the Rack. The second fictionalizes the case of New Zealand teenagers Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, convicted of the 1954 bludgeoning murder of Parker’s mother. Hulme later emerged as bestselling mystery novelist Anne Perry.

Also in a handsome new trade-paperback edition is another minor classic of psychological suspense, Theodore Sturgeon’s 1961 documentary-style case study of a modern vampire, Some of Your Blood (Millipede Press, $12), with a new introduction by Steve Rasnic Tem and a related Sturgeon short story, “Bright Segment.”

Two early works of Cornell Woolrich are available in new editions, both introduced by biographer Francis M. Nevins. Manhattan Love Song (Pegasus, $13.95) is the haunting 1932 book that bridged the author’s F. Scott Fitzgerald and dark suspense periods. Even more obscure is the non-criminous autobiographical novel A Young Man’s Heart (Ramble House, $18), not reprinted since its unheralded 1930 debut.

Jim French Productions, prolific purveyors of old-time radio, have introduced another new 1920s character: Freddie Darnborough, British gentleman detective in the Wimsey/Campion mode created by John Hall, best-known for his Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Mr. Darnborough Investigates (CD, $10.95) features two cases, the second, longer, and better of which, “The Curse of Ozymandias,” is a new variation on the old Pharaoh’s Curse ploy featuring some Agatha Christie-like misdirection. The cast (headed by David Natale as Freddie and Gary Schwartz as his valet and assistant Cecil) and the production values are first-rate, as are Hall’s scripts.

Copyright © Jon L. Breen

Terence Faherty recently received a nomination for the Shamus Award for his 128-page novella In a Teapot, from his Scott Elliott series published in hardcover by The Mystery Company. The other four nominees for the award, for best hardcover of 2005, are all full-length novels. Hats off to Mr. Faherty for proving that short fiction can compete with popular novels! Scott Elliott also features in this new story.

I reached the offices of the Hollywood Security Agency a little before nine, as I usually did. A guy with two kids and a working wife hardly ever oversleeps. As I pulled up in front of the agency’s little building on Roe, I got a surprise. It turned out to be the first of a full day’s worth.

My boss, Patrick J. Maguire, no early riser, was up and waiting for me. He was pacing the front walk, to be exact, and using all of it, as he was also no scarecrow. At the sight of me, he tossed the cigar he’d been smoking at the nearest palm tree.

“Keep the motor running, Scotty,” Paddy called to me. “We’re late for an appointment.”

By then he was climbing into the gray and red Edsel Corsair I was driving that year.

“Where?” I asked.

“Grauman’s. Not the Chinese Theatre. Grauman’s warehouse. On Seward. That headstone you’ve been fussing over’s been stolen.”

“Gabrielle’s?”

“I thought that would get your attention. It got mine, too. I see a nice payday ahead for us. And maybe a chance to do a good turn for your old friend.”

That old friend was Gabrielle Nouveau, real name Annie Kovacs, a silent-movie star who’d befriended me when I’d landed in Hollywood in the thirties. Now, in 1959, she was long dead and nearly forgotten. Worse, her grave had been desecrated.

Not her real grave, which was safe and sound in Forest Lawn. The one that had been disturbed was the grave of her stardom. As everyone knows, Grauman’s Chinese has a unique collection of stars’ autographs. They reside in the cement of the theater’s forecourt, right up against Hollywood Boulevard. The practice started in 1927 when Norma Talmadge, an old rival of Gabrielle’s, accidentally stepped in wet cement while touring the new theater. She’d added her name, and a tradition had been born. Not every star did footprints. Some left handprints, some both, some were more creative. Groucho Marx, for example, had imprinted his cigar, and Sonja Henie her skates.

Gabrielle Nouveau had left the standard signature and footprints way back in 1929, when the future had looked rosy for her and just about everyone else. Her little slab had stayed put until 1956, when it and a second one had been “temporarily” removed as part of a renovation to the theater’s box office. The two slabs had never been replaced, despite letter-writing and petition campaigns organized by Gabrielle’s old friends, including my wife Ella and me. That hunk of concrete was the “headstone” Paddy had mentioned.

“Was the other slab taken too?” I asked.

“Yes, I think it was,” Paddy said, playing coy. He was silver-haired, now that he was pushing sixty. But he was still a flashy dresser. Today’s tie was a collection of red, green, and blue triangles. They were fluttering in the breeze from the Corsair’s open window like a string of pennants. A small-craft warning, I decided.

“How did anyone know the slabs were there to steal?” I asked. Then the answer came to me. “That television spot.”

A local station had recently done a piece on the Grauman’s warehouse that had included shots of the two displaced squares. I’d missed the story, but Ella hadn’t. It had inspired her to start another petition drive.

“If it was that TV piece,” Paddy said, “Grauman’s brought this on themselves, by going after a little free publicity. Now they want it hushed up. Hence their call to us.”

Hollywood Security had gotten more than its share of that kind of call. They were usually placed by vaguely titled studio executives who wanted us to put in a fix or twist an arm or closely examine a keyhole.

“Hushed up? Why?”

Paddy chuckled. “Ever played the tourist, Scotty? Ever gone to Grauman’s and compared your shoe size with William Powell’s? Sure you have. You probably did it within twenty-four hours of stepping off your train back in the ‘thirties, all star struck, with the hay still sticking out of your ears. Then when you signed with Paramount, I’ll bet you went back there and picked out the very square of concrete where your footprints were going to be someday.”

As Paddy knew all too well, I was an ex-actor, emphasis on the ex. And, as it happened, I had staked out a stretch of Grauman’s forecourt for my very own, once upon a time. That claim had since been jumped by Van Johnson, not that I held a grudge.

Paddy was breezing on. “And when you got out of the service after the war, I’ll bet the Chinese Theater was one of the first places you went. Hell, it was probably one of the things you’d been fighting for.”

“So what if it was?” I asked politely.

“So, in all those visits you made, real and imaginary, did you ever happen to see a slab belonging to the great Greta Garbo?”

“No,” I said. “There isn’t one. That kind of stunt was beneath Garbo’s dignity.”

Paddy beamed at me. “The guy who said a person’s education never really ends must have had your picture on his desk.”

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre looked like the MGM set department’s idea of a chop suey house, with its jade green pagoda roof, red pillars, and its dragons, large and small. Grauman’s warehouse, on the other hand, was strictly out of Omaha, Nebraska, its facade lacking any decorations whatsoever, unless you counted the oversize garage doors. The walls were poured concrete, naturally. Grauman’s used so much of the stuff, they probably got a discount. I wondered if the workmen who’d built the place had signed their names before it dried.