Brett Halliday - She Woke to Darkness

In each of the twenty-four published adventures of Michael Shayne, the stories have necessarily come to you second-hand-written in third person by me from Mike’s notes and from talks with him after the case was ended.

Thus, all descriptions of people involved, all the dialogue, incidents and bits of action, were channelled to my readers through me from Shayne’s memory after the case was closed.

This may have been all for the best. I think it is quite true that later events do affect one’s precise memory of what has gone before, causing one’s subconscious to suppress certain things that may have been misinterpreted at the time, and to twist the memory of one’s thoughts and actions to make them appear a little more prescient than they may have actually been.

As I say, this may have been all for the best. By going back and retelling a case to me after it was ended, Michael Shayne may well have subconsciously interpolated story values that were not actually inherent in the events as they progressed. True objectivity and absolute honesty of detail do not always make for good storytelling.

This case is different. This story happened to me, Brett Halliday. For once, the truth was no stranger than fiction.

I’ve enjoyed putting it down on paper, now that it’s all over and I’m still alive to do the telling, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as the previous cases in which I was a mere onlooker.

It all began Thursday evening, April 23rd, 1953. I was spending a week in New York, seeing publishers and meeting old friends, and I had timed my visit to coincide with the annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards Dinner given by the Mystery Writers of America, of which I have been a member for many years.

The dinner is held each year in the grand ballroom of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York, bringing together several hundred mystery writers from all over the country who meet with distinguished fans and guests to honor the Father of the modern Detective Story. Ceramic busts of Poe (known as “Edgars”) are presented to winners of awards in the various mystery fields for the preceding year, and everyone has a few drinks and there’s much shop-talk.

The bar was already well-crowded when I went in. Since I had been away from New York for many years, most of the people were strangers, with here and there the familiar face of a friend I had known in MWA from years ago. There were Ed Radin, Bruno Fischer, Clayton Rawson and Veronica Parker Johns, also Helen Reilly, the Grande Dame of the mystery field, who had just been elected the president of the Mystery Writers, and her four charming daughters (two already successful mystery authors on their own); there were editors like Frank Taylor of Dell, Cecil Goldbeck of Coward-McCann, Harry Maule of Random House, and many others, none of whom are important to this story.

I went up to the bar for a brandy, and looked down the seating list for my own name. I had been placed at table Seven, with my old friend David Raffelock from Denver, Robert Arthur, who was slated to receive an Edgar for his radio program, and Dorothy Cecil, whose novels I had long admired and whom I had always wished to meet.

When I reached the dining room, they and their wives were all circulating around the table, introducing themselves to each other. I said, “Hi,” to the Raffelocks, congratulated Bob Arthur on the Edgar he was receiving, and then began looking around for Dorothy Cecil.

She had already seated herself quietly at the table.

As soon as I saw her sitting alone, with her head slightly tilted and a faint smile on her lips, I knew she had to be the author of SERGEANT DEATH and TREASON FOR TWO-both favorites of mine. She had intelligent gray eyes, a wide, smooth forehead and soft brown hair brushed down over the temples. I suppose she was in her early thirties but there was a glint of gray in the brown hair, and it pleased me greatly to notice that she made no effort at all to brush it so the gray would be concealed.

All this is unimportant except that it leads up inevitably to what happened later. I might not have gone out with Elsie Murray later if I had not sat beside Dorothy Cecil at dinner.

I don’t know. That’s probably beclouding the issue. I did sit beside Miss Cecil, and I did go out with Elsie.

Dorothy Cecil was looking at me as I stood there. I went to her at once. “I’m Brett Halliday. Do you mind if I sit here?”

She smiled and said, “I recognized that black eye-patch from pictures I’ve seen. I’d love to have you sit beside me.”

She had a low, vibrant voice. I looked at her squarely and said, “My, God! SERGEANT DEATH! Soporific candles made from the rendered fat of newborn babies.”

Her face lit up and her eyes twinkled happily. “Don’t tell me you’ve actually read my books?”

“Every one I could get hold of. Which I’ll bet is more than you can say of mine.”

She cupped her chin in her left palm and looked thoughtful. “THE PRIVATE PRACTICE OF MICHAEL SHAYNE. Was that the first?”

So, then we were off. On the favorite topic of all authors-our own books. She had read most of the Shaynes, and discussed them intelligently. But Bob Arthur sat on her right and he talked to her for a time while dinner was being served. I discussed old Denver friends with Raffelock. But all the time I was acutely conscious of Dorothy Cecil on the other side of me. I was alone in New York, and the night lay ahead. So far as I could judge she was alone at the Poe dinner also.

There was no more than that. Just the delightful possibility of further acquaintance with a charming woman. Nothing one would try to force. Something that might happen if the Gods were good.

The conversation became general and we were waiting for dessert when I was able to talk with Dorothy privately again. I saw waiters serving drinks to diners at other tables and tried to catch the eye of one, but failed. Somehow I never have achieved the technique of catching a busy waiter’s eye. So I pushed back my chair and told Dorothy I was going out to the bar to fetch a drink and would she like one?

She said, “Bring me a cognac in honor of Mike,” and my hunch grew stronger that the Gods were going to be kind.

But by the time I returned with my drinks, table-hopping had begun. Dorothy’s seat was vacant when I set her glass down, and I’d hardly seated myself when Dick Carroll of Gold Medal came by and dragged me over to his table to meet a couple of girls in the editorial department. While I was there I saw Dorothy come back to her chair and take one sip of the cognac I’d brought her, and then she was up enthusiastically talking to some man I didn’t know and going away with him to meet someone at his table. And that’s the way it went on for the next couple of hours while the Edgar winners got their trophies.

Dorothy Cecil, I realized dismally as I tried to keep track of her in the crowd, was simply too popular a person for an outsider like myself to hope to get much of her time. One of the finest craftsmen in the mystery field, she was being passed from one table to another whenever I saw her. So, I gave up trying.

Again, I’m afraid I’m saying all this badly. Making a great deal more out of it than it deserves. But it is what I recall most vividly of the evening. I still think Dorothy Cecil and I might well have had a pleasant evening together if so many other people hadn’t intervened. As it was, I felt a rather galling sense of disappointment when the stage show was over and I drifted out to the bar again with two or three hundred others. It was only a little past eleven o’clock, and a lonely hotel room waited for me. I knew I could attach myself without too much trouble to many of the small groups that were congregating and planning where to go for further drinks, but somehow I was not in the mood for that.