SUBJECT: Report on the Chandler Case
TO: The Inspector General
A month’s investigation proved almost fruitless. I talked with many people, including Chandler, but was unable to find the slightest clue as to why Chandler may have wanted to kill Graham.
Among other people I talked to was the battalion chaplain. He was very reluctant to talk, so much so that it was apparent to me that he knew something of importance about the affair. Finally, I persuaded him to give me the enclosed letter which he had shown me in the greatest confidence.
I think you will agree with me that this letter, found among Graham’s personal effects, may change the whole aspect of the case.
Xxxxx X. Xxxxxxxx
Colonel IGD
28 Oct 45
Enclosure:
1412 Lukens Blvd.
Oakland, Calif.
May 31, 1945
Lt. Lee Graham O-xxxxxxxx
APO #xx, c/o Postmaster
Dearest Lee—
My darling, I feel as though I can’t stand not seeing you — how is it possible to love anyone as much as I love you and live apart? If anything happened to you I couldn’t go on.
My dear, I’m going crazy if something doesn’t happen soon. How could our plans for the mission have misfired?
Dearest, don’t worry about what we’re doing. It isn’t easy for me either. But the one fine and beautiful thing in my life is you, and once this is all over nothing can keep us apart. Nothing is as big or as sure as my love for you, and nothing so important as yours for me. What else is there in this crazy world?
Do you think Bob could be suspicious? His mother may know something, and he believes everything she say s. He doesn’t seem to want to give me the money. He mustn’t find out about us. Can’t you send him on another mission — or think of some other way?
It isn’t wrong, my darling, believe me. It’s right and inevitable. You must have courage — you must act soon!
I love you always,
Verne
Condemned!
by Francis Beeding[5]
In 1920 John Leslie Palmer, dramatic critic and editor, joined the Permanent Secretariat of the League of Nations, at Geneva. The Secretariat, unhappily, proved far from Permanent. But Mr. Palmer met another member of the Secretariat, a famous man-about-continent bearing one of the most distinguished English-sounding names we have ever heard outside a “serious” novel — Hilary Aidan St. George Saunders. (And that reminds us, quite irrelevantly, that Robert Louis Stevenson, who had an exceptional flair for le nom juste, once wrote to Sir James M. Barrie that Stevenson’s uncle “has simply the finest name in the world, Ramsay Traquair.”) Anyway, Messrs. Palmer and Saunders discovered that they had many things in common, besides wording for the League of Nations: they were both Oxford men; they both had literary leanings; and they both had a particular weakness for “full-blooded, high-sounding and richly melodramatic carryings-on.”
In a phrase, they both lilted detective stories. Thus was born the pseudonym of “Francis Feeding,” and under that name Messrs. Saunders and Palmer have produced “many superior mystery novels” — including DEATH WALKS IN EASTREPPS (which Vincent Starrett has ranked as “one of the ten greatest detective novels”), THE HOUSE OF DR. EDWARDES (which has more than once been the basis of a moving picture), and that series of books with the most ambitious of all continuity-titles, THE ONE SANE MAN, THE TWO UNDERTAKERS, THE THREE FISHERS, THE FOUR ARMOURERS, THE FIVE FLAMBOYS, THE SIX PROUD WALKERS, THE SEVEN SLEEPERS, and ad (we fervently hope) infinitum.
And now we give you Francis Feeding s finest performance in the short story field — the pathetic tale of Bert Higgins, an innocent man, waiting in the death house for a last-minute reprieve. You will find an Ambrose Bierce quality in the story, too; indeed, though we do not know what English prison Francis Beeding had in mind, the story might have been called “An Occurrence at Pentonville.”
Bert Higgins pulled on his trousers and looked round for his collar and tie.
It was quite comfortable in the condemned cell, but dark. There was a fire in the grate and that, in itself, was a luxury to which Bert Higgins was not accustomed.
These were his own clothes — the double-breasted blue serge suit in which he had been tried. They had taken it away from him after sentence and given him prison — clothes. But today they had given it back to him.
This meant, of course, that the reprieve had come at last. It must have arrived during the night. But he could not go out into the street, reprieve or no reprieve, without a collar and tie.
“Collar,” he said, “where’s my collar, Joe?”
Joe was a nice fellow — nicer than the other warder, Mike.
Joe turned away, a little awkwardly, and stared at the window which, since it was of frosted glass, was not of much use as a peep-show.
“You won’t be needin’ them,” he said.
“Not needin’ them?” Bert began to protest.
Then he stopped and smiled.
Joe, of course, was under a false impression. Joe believed that he, Bert Higgins, was going to be hanged. That, however, was absurd. It simply wasn’t done. Only criminals were hanged. He was not a criminal. He was innocent. He hadn’t done it and a man was never hanged if he hadn’t done it.
“Anything you fancy for breakfast, Bert?”
It was Joe speaking. He had a face as long as a yard measure. Bert, in his superior knowledge of English justice, smiled at him reassuringly.
“Breakfast,” he said. “I don’t mind ownin’ I feel a bit peckish. Could they run to a steak and chips, d’ye think?”
Joe looked at him a moment.
“I’ll see what we can do, mate,” he answered and went to the little trap in the door which he slid back, saying a word to someone outside.
“It will be along in ten minutes,” he announced, turning away from the door.
“That’s prime,” said Bert. “Got a fag about you, Joe?”
Warder Joe silently produced a packet of Gold Flakes. Bert lit up, and bent to lace his boots.
Why didn’t they hurry up with that reprieve? It was cruel to keep a fellow waiting. Suppose, for example, he had been one of those nervous chaps. He would be carrying on something dreadful now, imagining things. It was past eight o’clock already — not quite another hour to run.
Bert smiled again. He hadn’t done it. They couldn’t hang him because he hadn’t done it. The reprieve was bound to come.
Mechanically he put on his vest. What would he do first, on leaving the prison? It was no use going home. Amy was dead. That was the only thing that had really troubled him at all through the business of the trial — a much worse thing than anything that had happened since his arrest, much worse than when the old geezer in the wig and red robes had put that silly bit of black cloth on his nap-per and told him he was going to be hanged by the neck.
There was no getting over it. He loved Amy. Always had. And he would miss her cruel. It wasn’t her fault if she was a bit flighty. She could not help being flighty any more than he could help having his pint and then some more at the Goat and Compasses. Besides, there had never been anything wrong, really. Not what you would call wrong. And naturally, with her that pretty, she had her temptations.
Pretty, indeed. Amy was lovely, like a rose from Coven t Garden, a whole bunch of roses. That parson chap who had married them had said he had never seen a ’andsomer couple, and as this thought passed through his mind, Bert stopped in front of the mirror and began, with great care and a comb wetted in the basin, to arrange his hair.