Put Out that Star - Harry Carmichael

THE STORY: Movie actress Madeleine Grey leaves the set of her film in progress up in Scotland to travel to London where she plans to meet with her insurance agent John Piper. Shortly before the meeting she appears to have vanished from the hotel. No one saw her leave: not Quinn, Piper's reporter friend waiting in the lobby; not the receptionist; not even the elevator operator. Where did she go? And how did she get out unseen? This apparent impossible mystery is soon complicated by two deaths, one a questionable accident and the other a definite murder.

THE CHARACTERS: Put Out That Star (1957) first attracted my attention because it was listed in Adey's Locked Room Murders as being an impossible mystery.  But the ostensible mystery surrounding Madeleine's disappearance is easily figured out.  Not just because there were multiple ways to leave the hotel (an emergency exit door leading to a fire escape, and a stairwell that leads to the ground floor right near the brasserie and cocktail bar) but because of the rather obvious way anyone can leave unnoticed. And I figured that part out instantly. But the story is a gripping one for the way Piper approaches the problem, for the intriguing friendship between Quinn, the nosy and often intrusive reporter who is friends with Piper, and the way Carmichael handles the supporting players who all seem to be acting a little too suspiciously or too indifferently regarding the disappearance of a celebrity guest in the hotel.

The oddest of the suspects is Sydney Noble, the hotel assistant manager who first treats Madeleine's disappearance aloofly.  She'll turn up, he says repeatedly to Piper. But when days pass with no sign of the actress he gets nervous and worries about the hotel's reputation being damaged. That's on the surface. In reality he's more worried about himself and his job. He manages to convince Piper to turn private agent to try and locate the movie star before the press gets hold of the news and before he may be forced to call the police. Piper reluctantly agrees more because he wants his own curiosity satisfied.

Piper also interviews Mrs. Airey. the hotel housekeeper for the third floor where Madeleine was staying, and learns about the flawed fire escape door that cannot be properly closed from the inside of the hotel. He also deals with Benny Seagar, talent agent, who has a couple of secrets he'd rather be left buried. But Piper digs them up all the same. Then there's Roy Mitchell, Madeleine's husband and the scriptwriter on her film. When his wife does not call him at 9 pm as they agreed he calls the hotel and learns that his wife is not there. He insists on driving down to the hotel and plans to do so in a single night.

INNOVATIONS: It's a shame the impossibility of sorts is so unimaginative. With the introduction of a single character at the story's midpoint it's fairly simple to solve the problem of how Madeleine left the hotel. Much of the mystery involves the recurring discussion of Madeleine and her fur coat which made her distinctively noticeable for anyone who a wasn't a film buff and could recognize her by her face. The fur coat is missing from her hotel room, though all of her luggage and clothing was left behind. Some bloodstains on one of her suitcases and the used washcloth in the bathroom are two major clues that bother Piper for the entirety of the story. They are also clues to figuring out what happened to Madeleine.

Carmichael has a neat way in rendering cinematic action sequences. The story opens on February 27 and play outs over the following three days. The winter season plays a major part in the story and a severe winter gale acts as a menacing minor character endangering Piper's life as he pursues a lead involving a missing movie magazine. The outdoor sequences are handled sinisterly with the threatening weather conditions becoming almost a persona of villainy itself. These lent a noirish feel to the novel.

THE AUTHOR: "Harry Carmichael" was a pseudonym used by Leopold Ognall (1908-1979) who was born in Montreal then emigrated with his family to Scotland. In his early adulthood Ognall moved to Leeds where he married in 1932 and remained there for the rest of his life. He worked as a goods manager, a warehouse employee and was an ARP warden during the war years. He began his writing career as a journalist for a Scottish newspaper and apparently later gave up it to become a full time novelist. He wrote at least 84 novels using two different pseudonyms. As "Harry Carmichael" his mystery novels feature either John Piper or Quinn or both and follow the dictates of traditional whodunit style mysteries while as "Hartley Howard" he created Glenn Bowman, a private eye, and Philip Scott, a British Intelligence agent.

EASY TO FIND? There are a handful of the paperback reprint (Fontana Books #286, 1959) editions offered for sale from online booksellers. The UK 1st edition is rather scarce and I turned up only one copy with the equally scarce DJ from a well known vintage crime fiction seller on eBay. Five copies of the US edition retitled Into thin Air (Doubleday/Crime Club, 1958) are available for purchase, all with the DJ.

FIRST BOOKS: Murder in Make-Up - Charles Ashton

THE STORY:  During the filming of Tempest, a crime movie about a gentleman thief, the actor playing the thief is found stabbed behind a bit of scenery. The movie crew insists that the police remove the actor's make-up prior to carting away the corpse to spare him the indignity of the false beard and greasepaint.  The police remove the make-up and reveal the man is a completely different actor -- Lancelot Weston, the young romantic lead in the movie. Why did Weston pretend to be William Harvey for that one scene? Was Harvey actually the intended victim? Inspector Bob Saunders investigates assisted by his police consultant Major Jack Atherley.

THE CHARACTERS: Murder in Make-Up (1934) is the first detective novel by former silent film actor Charles Ashton.  The novel introduces his series characters Jack Atherley and Inspector Saunders.  Atherley is the true sleuth in Ashton's series of detective novels and he's a breath of fresh air. Saunders is a by-the-book copper while Atherley is his witty, carefree aide with a talent for seeing things "out of the box".  He reminds me of Philip "Spike" Tracy, the playboy amateur detective created by Harriette Ashbrook. Saunders and Atherley are perfect foils for one another and I enjoyed how Atherley routinely exasperated Saunders, often for the sheer joy of annoying his policeman colleague.

The rest of the cast is made up of Saunders' homicide squad headed by Sgt. Davis, another serious policeman who is more tolerant of Atherley's lightheartedness and often anticipates when the Major is about to pull one over on Saunders.  And of course because the murder takes place in the world of cinema we have a  supporting cast of suspects in the movie biz.  They are:

William Harvey - the character actor who plays the gentleman thief and was supposed to be in the scene being filmed when Weston was killed.  As the story progresses several more attempts are made on Harvey's life.  The police do their best to protect him, but the killer always manages to penetrate the police protecting Harvey

Lettise Moore - the ingenue lead in Tempest. She has a secret related to Harvey that the police soon uncover. This makes her a prime suspect but she is protected by...

Mrs. Moxon - a dresser on the set for Miss Moore, and a servant/confidante in Moore's private life.  Maternal, overprotective and somewhat of a termagant. Moxon is a thorn in Saunders' side.  Atherley is the only who can tame this shrew. She is actually on his list of suspects because after stabbing Weston the killer needed to be able to silently lower his athletic body behind the flats while the scene was being filmed. Atherley is certain the killer is one of a similar build and with enough upper body strength to carry out the silent disposal of the corpse. Besides three of the male suspects, Mrs. Moxon is the only woman who could also to do everything as he thought it out.

Ralph Lastor - the producer (in the US we'd call him the director) of the movie. His mind is only on the movie, its delays and the possible scrapping of the production due to the criminal investigation and the loss of his leading man. Why would he kill one of his actors and sabotage his own production?  Does he have a secret too?

Dick Howard - assistant director, man of all work. Suspicious, shifty, mistrustful. He draws the attention of Saunders when his police team while following Howard as directed see him sneaking around off the set making visits to Miss Moore's home and conversing confidentially with... 

Miss Laurie - the script girl (continuity in modern movie talk) who is always on set. We learn fairly quickly that she talks in a fake American accent, flirts with nearly all the men, and had the hots for handsome Weston. But she was rejected by him. If Weston was the true intended target then Miss Laurie is definitely suspect #1 thinks Atherley. But was she strong enough to commit the murder as he envisioned it. Or was Weston somehow stabbed in some other manner?

INNOVATIONS: For a novice effort at detective novel Ashton does some admirable work here.  It is almost a purely fair play novel. Unfortunately, he does hold back a bit and does more suggesting what happened which forces the reader to fill in some unexplained events.  For instance, late in the book Atherley finds some supplies left behind by workmen who were doing plumbing repairs in his flat.  Atherley is described as picking up a bucket of paint and stepping onto the fire escape.  He then exclaims with a smile, "What a fine night!" and the chapter ends.  But why was he out there with a bucket of paint?  It's all explained in the final chapter. The reader has to figure it out on his own prior to being told what Atherley did.  This kind of "sneaky" clueing is perhaps forgivable in a novice mystery writer.  But! I know that Ashton continued to do this sort of thing in his later books. Here Comes Murder was written nearly ten years later and includes similar scenes only partially explained when first presented to the reader.

Really the best part of the book is the insider information on how an early “talkie” is produced.  Ashton, a former silent film actor, offers up not only the glamorous part of movie making but the complicated work of the non-actors consisting of the lighting crew, cameramen, make-up and wardrobe staff, as well as the hassles of keeping track of all the changes from shot to shot carried out by the continuity person -- in the early days of moviemaking usually called "the script girl" and almost always (as in the novel) a woman. The script girl is really nothing more than a secretary who spends all day taking copious notes, later typing them up in a daily report, on what everyone is wearing, which props are held in which hand, and all the rest of the minutiae of a movie scene.

Charles Ashton as Dick Alward
in Pillars of Society (1920)

THINGS I LEARNED:  One of the first scenes explains exactly why a clapper board was necessary in making early sound movies.  The sound of the clap was used to synchronize all sound in the scene that followed.  A clapper was used to end the scene as well.  I'm unsure if this is why they still use a clapper.  Maybe with all the digital technology used in moviemaking it's used more to label all the scenes for the editing team.

Atherley uses an odd abbreviation in a single line of dialogue: "And it's got the archives of the famous Yard l.b.w." He says this after looking up one of the suspects in Who's Who on the Screen. I spent nearly an hour using various search terms in trying to find what those three letters meant. Turns out it's the cricket term "Leg Before Wicket" which I think means a foul that can get a batter dismissed. If it had been made clear early in the novel that Atherley was also a cricket player and often uses cricket terms I'd been able to figure this out faster. By the midpoint long after the use of that abbreviation we learn that Atherley is an avid cricket player and has played in tournaments. Apparently on a professional team because a taxi driver recognizes him from a past game. Why he uses "l.b.w." in reference to the Who's Who listing still eludes me.  

EASY TO FIND?  You can have my copy (it's the "Cherry Tree Book" copy pictured at the top) if you're lucky enough to place the highest bid. (SOLD!) Good luck finding a copy anywhere else. Like all of Ashton's detective novels it's as rare as finding a silver nitrate copy of one of Charles Ashton's movies from the silent era.