Then, for EQMM’s Second Annual Contest, Mr. Vickers submitted another D.D.E. story — “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder.” Perhaps this new story also falls short of “The Rubber Trumpet”; but if it does, it falls short by the narrowest of margins. In your Editor’s opinion “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder” is the closest Mr. Vickers has yet come to performing a literary miracle — making lethal lightning strike twice in the same place. Like all the other stories in the series, “The House-in-Your-Hand Murder” projects a kind of realism unmatched in its field. That realism, however, is not drab or prosaic. It is shot through with the credible fantasy which occurs repeatedly in real life — that peculiar touch of the unreal which somehow stamps all works of genuine imagination with the very trademark °f reality. You know what we mean — you’ve read the story...
Asphodel
by Edwin Lanham
The author of “Asphodel” the curiously disturbing tale we now present, was born in Texas on October 11, 1904. He graduated from Williams College, then studied art in New York and Paris. In 1930 he became a newspaperman, and still belongs to that wondrous tribe of legend-making scribblers. His best-known serious novel is THUNDER IN THE EARTH, which he wrote on a Guggenheim scholarship. In past years Edwin Lanham has been a steady contributor to “Collier’s” — in 1946 his serial, IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A DOG, was filmed by Twentieth Century-Fox under the same title and emerged from the Hollywood assembly line as an extremely amusing picture starring Carole Landis and Allyn Joslyn.
Also last year Mr. Lanham published his first detective novel — SLUG IT SLAY. Howard Haycraft ranked it as one of the best mystery books of the year, and nearly every other critic agreed. It is interesting to note that Mr. Lanham wisely uses his own experience as the background of his stories. SLUG IT SLAY (provocative title!) is a newspaper story, authentically peopled with real newspapermen and newspaperwomen. And in “Asphodel” Mr. Lanham draws on his intimate knowledge of art (in this instance, sculpturing) to produce, in our opinion, one of the ten finest crime stories published during 1944.
Perhaps we should warn you: “Asphodel” — where souls unbodied dwell — will positively haunt you...
From Collier’s magazine, copyright 1944, by Edwin Lanham
Edward Peters sat rigid in his chair, with his arms folded across his chest, his head bent slightly, and his eyes fixed on the point of high light on the bronze figurine of a faun. By looking at the faun he could hold the pose, and also he could avoid his wife’s eyes.
Usually it was Elaine who avoided meeting his eyes. She had a habit of turning her head away, ever so slightly, so that her vision was out of line with his, so that her face was almost profile, and until recently he had thought it a trick of coquetry.
But as she worked, her eyes moved boldly because she was not looking at him at all. Her sure hands pressed the clay with precision and her eyes studied him with the curious, impersonal concentration of the artist. It was not this impersonal quality that disturbed him, but a strange intensity that was new, that had not been apparent in the first six months of marriage. He sighed, moving one leg nervously.
Instantly she asked, “Tired, darling?”
“Head still aches.” He realized that he had said it plaintively.
“One more sitting and I’ll be finished,” Elaine said. Her tone was formal, as if he were one of those who paid a thousand dollars for a bust by Elaine Peters. But their conversations had always been either formal or evasive, markedly so in the past few days, since he had found the letter in her handbag.
If he had been able to break through this impersonal barrier, this defense in depth she had developed, they might have talked about the letter and reached an understanding, but now it was impossible.
Before he married her he had known her nature was secretive, but he had thought it due to recent widowhood and to the engaging vagueness that artists seemed to have when not in the consuming concentration of their work. Now he knew that he had never understood this restrained, silent woman, nor the secret melancholy in her eyes that had first attracted him.
The first six months of marriage were, of course, the months and days and hours of knowing each other, of exploring character and emotion, and naturally there was a certain holding back, particularly in a woman who had suffered emotional shock.
But hers was such an instinctive, feminine manner of evasion that Edward had thought it entirely natural until that day in the small bar off Fifth Avenue when she had told him that she had been married twice — not once — before. It was an odd thing, he thought, that the only frank conversations he had with his wife were in public, over a cocktail.
That day he had said stiffly. “I wonder you didn’t tell me before. Not that it makes any difference, darling. But, still!”
Her cheeks had been pink and her eyes bright as needles. “Do you mind very much, Edward?”
“I don’t mind. But, darling, after all.” He had turned his glass in a little puddle of spilled drink. “Who was he? What was his name?”
“George Partland. He was rather stuffy.” Her laughter had been quick and so high that the noise seemed to make the glasses rattle on the bar. “Let’s don’t talk about poor George.”
He had said bitterly, “So you’re Mrs. Partland Rice Peters?”
It was unkind, and he remembered how abruptly the laughter had ceased, how the gray eyes had darkened as she said, “I shouldn’t have told you.”
He had tried to say that a man in love must know everything, every small experience and major suffering. A man in love had a relentless desire to know these things, he’d wanted to say, even if they hurt him. Instead he’d called the waiter and paid the check.
Edward had resolved to confine George Partland to the pigeonhole reserved in his ordered lawyer’s mind for the things he wanted to know but had no answer for.
Her age, for instance. She had told him she was thirty-one. Not that he cared, but she was young to have two marriages behind her and a successful career as a sculptor assured. And there were other things he wanted to know: her background, her schooling. She was an orphan, she had said. He did not even know the name of the town where she was born.
“Edward, please!” Elaine said sharply. “Your head is drooping.”
He straightened, fixed his eyes again on the high light of the bronze faun. His head ached steadily, and the crispness of her tone annoyed him and made him remember the day when he had asked her about her first husband, in spite of his resolve.
“Edward, you have no right to be jealous of my past,” she had said firmly. “Least of all of Larry.”
“But it isn’t jealousy,” he had protested. “What was that? Larry! I thought you said his name was George.”
For an instant she had actually met his eyes that day, and in their gray depths he’d seen a somber sadness. Her underlip had trembled noticeably.
“Good Lord,” he had said. “How many husbands have you had, Elaine?”
Her eyes downcast again, she had waited a long moment, as if pondering whether to give him an answer at all. Then her voice had come, low but steady, “If you must know, four.”