FIRST BOOKS: The Corpse in the Corner Saloon - Hampton Stone

Jeremiah X. Gibson, Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, is accompanied by his colleague from the D.A.'s office known only as "Mac" who also serves as the narrator in their debut which deals with the murder of a promiscuous barfly and sometime entertainer as well as the apparent suicide by poisoning of the man who supposedly killed her. But it's a lot more complicated than a tawdry sex crime --she was strangled, her clothing was carefully cut from her back and the word "Bitch" was written in lipstick on her bare skin-- and suicide. The first complication is that there are multiple witnesses who saw the man, night club dancer Hubert von Mund, in the woman's apartment. He has a very distinctive garish plaid coat he wears everywhere. And a man wearing that coat was seen in the window of Fleurette Val's home. It wasn't just his coat that make the witnesses remember him --  he was doing something rather lewd with his pants down. Gibby doesn't buy that someone would go to the trouble of such an elaborate crime, perform a sex act, and then come to a bar wearing the same coat and knock back a beer with a cyanide chaser. He starts an intensive investigation that takes him from tenement apartments to bars to small businesses meeting up with a collector of erotic photographs and dirty books, an odd husband and wife who seem to spend a lot of time playing voyeur on their neighbors, Hubert's ex-dancing partner who was abandoned when he broke his contract leaving her without a job, and a coiuple of hunky tattooed bartenders who have attracted quite a following from the regular female bar patrons.

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon (1948) is a forerunner to the sex-and-crime murder mysteries that would flood the popular fiction marketplace in the 1950s.  For the year of publication this book is incredibly racy, just shy of salacious. You get a veritable cornucopia of transgressive topics and incidents: exhibitionism, , erotic drawings, pornographic books, and sex in bedooms with draperies open. Naked people and voyeurs are everywhere. The reviewer for The Saturday Review in November 1948 said "Well enough done, but definitely not for queasy palates." Understatement! Stone manages to raise several sexual topics with wiseacre dialogue and well placed innuendo avoiding vulgarity with ironic humor.  The characters themselves are mostly a sleazy bunch (I counted only two suspects who weren't sex obsessed or window lurkers), no need to make it raunchier by going into great detail. Besides, I think the editors must've thought they were risking too much by including the murderer fondling himself in a window. They had to tone down all the rest of it somehow.

As for the mystery elements Gibby (as he is referred to by our narrator) is keen on the "Clue of the Coat", as it were. In fact, clothing and the world of tailoring play an extremely important part in the solution to the two crimes. A tailoring business owned by Marlowe Trutt features prominently in the story. Arnold Carroll is Trutt's longtime associate and friend.  For a long time the story seems to be implicating Carroll as the murderer with a motive of over-protectiveness of Trutt and revenge. Trutt has a surprise connection to Fleurette Val that turns the case on its head. And when an unusual order for a fabric that matches the strange yellow and blue plaid of Hubert's distinctive coat is trace back to Trutt's business Mac becomes highly suspicious of Carroll.

One of the more interesting clues is the word neatly written on Fleurette's back. Of great interest to Gibby is the "t" which is not fully crossed. This turns out to be the trademark of someone's signature and is well known to anyone who uses Trutt as their tailor.  His signature with partially crossed T's (see the illustration on the Dell paperback) is well known because his name is the company logo. His flourishing signature appears on labels in clothes as well as the ornate business cards he hands out to clients. Someone is trying to frame Marlowe Trutt. Gibby sees through this transparent ploy immediately.

Despite the tawdry nature of the crimes and the prurient interests of the window spies in the various apartments that face the murder scene this is a well plotted mystery with deft twists and several excellent red herrings that fooled me and led me away from the real unexpected villain of the book. I'd classify it as a fair play detective novel that mixes up noirish subject matter found in typical private eye novels of this era with traditional mystery novel plotting. One particular clothing related clue mentioned exactly once in the early part of the book is a clincher to the identity of the killer. I completely missed that clothing remark. It was placed nonchalantly with the expertise of Carr or Christie. Kudos to the writer for that one. 

THE AUTHOR:  "Hampton Stone" is one of the many pseudonyms used by Aaron Marc Stein (1902-1985) who began his mystery writing career as early as 1935 when as "George Bagby" he wrote a long series of detective novels inspired by the growing popularity of police procedurals. They all feature Inspector Schmidt and the narrator George Bagby who, like S. S. Van Dine, "authors" the books as if the cases were real. Under his own name Stein created the archaeologist sleuthing team of Timm Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, and the engineer Matt Herridge. The "Hampton Stone" detective novels all feature Gibby and Mac and lasted into the early 1970s with a total of 18 books.

THINGS I LEARNED: The art of tailoring and the business of being a tailor is a highlight of the novel.  Even supporting characters turn out to have tailoring and sewing skills. Clothing aficionados take note!  You will learn all about the snobbery of high end tailors and their tastes in fabric, the commercial aspect of clothing industry disdained by true tailors, the "ghetto" of Manhattan's garment district, and even the intricacies of inserting a zipper into a pair of pants. It was all sort of fascinating. The many crime movies I've seen featuring tailors as protagonists from The Tailor in Panama to The Outfit don't offer anywhere near the depth of understanding nor give as much insight into tailoring as in this book.

EASY TO FIND? Dozens of copies of the two vintage paperback editions are out there for sale. Pries for the vintag e paperbacks range from $3 - $15. You can choose from the nifty Dell Mapback shown above, or a Paperback Library edition from 1971 with cover art that makes Gibby look like long gone, action movie star Steve McQueen. Hilarious! A few copies of the US 1st edition shown at the top of this post are also available for sale ranging from $15 to $54, with and without DJs. I read my copy from the Chicago Public Library. Don't have one to sell you. Sorry.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Sinister House - Leland Hall

The most uncanny thing about my reading Sinister House (1919) is not so much the content of this fine tale of a haunted house and malevolent ghosts but my timing.  A few days after I started the book I attended a performance of the new stage thriller Paranormal Activity (conceived and directed by Felix Barrett, written by Levi Holloway) based on the series of horror movies of the same name. The play deserves a post all to itself and I will have to refrain from talking about it here. But the eerie coincidences between a supernatural novel written more than a century ago and a play only written one year ago are seriously unreal. They both begin as commentary on routine living then morph slowly into tales of malign presences infecting the living. There is even a manifestation that takes place in the novel that is exactly the same as a fleeting moment in the play I saw.  That's chillingly coincidental and mindbogglingly uncanny as far as I concerned!

Leland Hall's novel starts out so utterly mundane that he includes lectures on the real estate business, building concerns and one of the characters' disdain for developmental communities which were already a blight on American neighborhoods in 1919, at least according to Leland Hall. Then the routine of everyday life gives way to disturbing and unsettling events. The first major shift in the story happens when the narrator Pierre is visited -- during a torrential thunderstorm, no less -- by his neighbor Eric Grier who has recently moved into a ramshackle home on the outskirts of the cookie cutter development known as Forsby. He has returned from a business trip in Buffalo, walked from the train station as there were no cabs at that late hour and when he saw the light on in Pierre's house hoped to gain entry and shelter from the storm. Eric is eager to get home to his new bride Julia who he could not stop thinking of while he was away.

Immediately, there is a discussion of the difference between the two homes in the novel. Pierre's house in Forsby is wholly modern made of cement with a "granolithic walkway" leading up to the front door, equipped with modern plumbing including turn-of-the-century fad of exposed pipes and, of course, electricity. Eric's 19th century home is still trapped in the past made almost entirely of wood and stone and no modern conveniences. Gaslight and fireplaces providing heat and illumination, water is fetched from a well. Eric is beginning to behave differently and Pierre and his wife Annette notice that Julia is especially happy in the gloomy house when her husband is absent. At first Pierre cannot understand why the two young newlyweds have moved into such an eyesore of a house. Annette finds nothing at all attractive about the place neither outside nor in. But Julia seems happy and finds comfort in its old-fashioned atmosphere. Pierre, however, finds that atmosphere chilling -- literally and figuratively.

Frontispiece from the US 1st edition,
illustrations all by Haydon Jones

 

It seems a malign influence has permeated the house and is infecting Eric. One night when Pierre, his wife and three year-old son Bobbie are traveling home their car breaks down with not one but two flat tires. They are forced to seek out help and shelter from the Griers. Little Bobbie is terrified of setting foot in the house having had his fertile young imagination stimulated by some strange fairy tales his mother has told him, notably one about the Loreley. In her version the siren sings tempting songs in order to lure men to the death and she eventually eats them! Bobbie calls the Grier home the "Singing House" and does not want to go in. His mother manages to calm him until he sees Eric. Bobbie has a fit of hysterical screaming crying out: "No, mama! Get him away, get him away! Don't let him touch me. He's going to eat me!"

Annette's cousin Giles is the primary skeptic in this cast. He is certain that Eric did not just stumble upon the house in Stanton by accident as he claims. Pierre learned that the house belonged to Morgan Snart, "an eccentric old man, very religious," and his  homely daughter Huldah "who had taken to religion even more entirely than her father." Giles digs into the Snart's past and uncovers secrets about the two that belie their supposed good character and surface religious demeanor. He also finds out a bit more about Eric but is circumspect in relaying that news to everyone.  Compounding this mystery is a forbidden room that Julia insists Eric never open. It remains locked for the majority of the novel. When it is opened out of necessity terror reigns down upon everyone.

Sinister House is clearly a precursor to Shirley Jackson's pioneering haunted house novel The Haunting of Hill House published five decades later in its depiction of a malign presence in an evil house that affects one single person. Hall's novel is both prophetic and iconoclastic in that he defies the traditions of Gothic literature by making the man the object of the haunting and not the woman. In fact, both Julia and Annette are the voices of reason throughout the entire book. It is the men who suffer the most -- from fear, susceptibility, and rash judgment -- when the evil presences finally manifest themselves and carry out their wicked plans. True Julia is targeted in a frightening scene (see illustration plate at right) but it is Eric, Pierre and even Giles who are the sorriest victims suffering both physical and psychological injury more than either of the women.

QUOTES:   I say it walked; but really it moved in some half-human, half-fiendish gait, slowly yet in springs. It was the shape of a tall woman. ...as this thing passed along the wall, its insubstantial head was turned to me, so that I was subjected to a lidless stare of incredibly sinister malice.

Books which teach etiquette of the drawing room had better put in a special clause to warn students against behaving before their hosts as if they were seeing the hideous family specter pass along the wall of the dwelling in which they are being entertained.

There's nothing like a familiar unpleasant job to keep the mind from brooding. 

Giles: "Dead men rise up never --read even your poets.  Ghosts breed in the living. That's where we'll catch them."

Truly I believe that the past was dead to [Eric]. By force of his will to live he had made it as if it had never been. He denied it to himself. And if he denied it to himself, it was no lie for him to deny it to others.

It doesn't do any good at all to say "Boo!" at the past if you're afraid of it.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Pierre talks about his intolerance for lack of modern utilities at the Grier house. He mentions one of his pet peeves is the presence of cannel coal in so many country homes and how he much prefers gaslight. Cannel coal, also called  candle coal and oil shale, was used in the 19th century for its bright and steady flame. Because it burned longer than wood it was a preferred choice for home fireplaces. Its compact dense structure also made it an easily carved material for sculpture, ornaments and jewelry.

Pierre comforts an injured Giles in the finale and describes himself as "kneeling like a Mussulman beside him in the gloom." He's not talking about an apple sauce brand or a misspelling of a he-man here. Mussulman is an archaic term for anyone of the Islam faith. We use the word Muslim now.

THE AUTHOR:  Leland Hall (1883-1957) was born and raised in Massachusetts. I was unable to locate a newspaper obituary online to share other biographical info. According to his gravestone shown in a photo at Find A Grave he was born in Malden and was laid to rest there alongside one of his relatives. Based on the dates this is most likely his father. Anyone with info on Hall is welcome to email more info or comment below. I can't even verify any other books he may have written. I'm curious about his work, if any more exists.

EASY TO FIND? Copies of the original edition are few and far between.  I found only two copies, priced rather steeply, of the US edition (Houghton & Mifflin, 1919) offered for sale online. It was first reprinted in hardcover in the 1970s by the private publisher Bookfinger in a limited edition of about 500 copies. Some if those turn up frequently for sale at affordable prices. Finally, there is a comparatively cheaper reprint in a paperback omnibus (Hippocampus Press, 2008) that is still out there in the used book market and available brand new from the publisher. In addition to Sinister House you get another classic haunted house novel in that two-fer reprint:  Cold Harbor by Francis Brett Young.