Great American Detective Stories (1945) by Anthony Boucher (ed.)

Author:Anthony Boucher (ed.) [Boucher, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_classic, detective
Publisher: The World Publishing Company
Published: 1945-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Black Murder

by Anthony Boucher

We are happy to announce that, as the result of many months of pressure on our part, backed up by the protests of Ellery Queen, Vincent Starrett and other aficionados, we have finally prevailed upon Mr Boucher to include in this anthology one of his own detective stories. (Before we turned on the pressure, he was going to include two.)

THE EDITORS OF TOWER BOOKS

*

In peacetime the whole Shaw case could never have happened. As Officer Mulroon said later: the first attack would have been passed off as natural illness, and besides there never would have been a first attack.

But police work in the spring of 1943 was full of cases that could never have happened in peacetime. Detective Lieutenant Donald MacDonald (Homicide, L.A.P.D.) was slowly becoming reconciled to the recruiting officer who had dissuaded him from joining the Navy. He was necessary here on his job, even though he sometimes wished that he were back in a patrolman’s uniform. His plain clothes did draw occasional sardonic stares.

Even the stripe and a half of Lieutenant (j.g.) Warren Humphreys made him uniform-conscious and reminded him of his frustrated enlistment. But the slight bitterness was effaced by the knowledge that in this case the Navy had had to turn to him because he was a trained specialist who knew about murderers.

“We don’t believe in coincidence in the Navy,” Lieutenant Humphreys had barked over the phone. “When I’m sent out here to pick up specifications on a sub detector, and find the inventor’s suddenly come down with an attack having all the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, I want police action. And quick.”

Lieutenant MacDonald remembered when Warren Humphreys had been his favorite political commentator, and hoped that he diagnosed poisonings more accurately than he had the strength of the Red Army.

Apparently he did. At least the police doctor made the same snap diagnosis after an examination of the comatose inventor, and commended the naval officer for his prompt administration of a mustard emetic followed by milk of magnesia.

“Best I could do with what’s in an ordinary house,” Lieutenant Humphreys said with gruff modesty. “Got to know a thing or two about poison treatment in Naval Intelligence. You never know...”

“You’ve made a good start; he ought to pull through. Keep him quiet and give him lots of milk. I’ll send out a male nurse. You can call the lab about six, MacDonald. I’ll try to have a full report on these specimens by then.”

It was now one forty-five. Humphreys had arrived at one and phoned the police almost immediately. The attack, which the household had taken for ordinary digestive trouble, had struck Harrison Shaw at twelve-thirty, after his usual lunch: a tartar sandwich and a bottle of beer.

“The dietetics boys’d say he had it coming to him,” MacDonald observed.

“But it was what he always ate, Lieutenant,” the blind man said. “And it seemed to sustain his energy admirably — enough at least to interest the Navy, if not to bring in any marked practical rewards.

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