The chauffeur was acquitted.
All in all, Hollywood’s contribution to murder mysteries at a time when the silent film was at the zenith of its popularity, is fully in keeping with what one might expect — a murder mystery which is “super-colossal.”
At this late date it is impossible to “solve” the William Desmond Taylor murder case from the facts as presented by the press. It is, however, interesting to speculate upon lines which the police inquiry could have taken some years ago. In the first place, it seems to me that the police theory of a “stick-up” has several very big holes in it.
Let us suppose a man did slip through the door and commanded Taylor to raise his hands. The movie director complied — then why shoot him? If a man is perpetrating a robbery and the victim raises his hands, the next move is for the robber to go through his clothes and take his personal possessions. The use of firearms is resorted to when the victim refuses to comply with the order to stick up his hands. Moreover, apparently robbery was not the motive because of the money and jewelry found on the director’s body.
It occurs to me that the police have either overlooked or deliberately failed to emphasize a far more logical theory than this stick-up hypothesis.
There was a checkbook on the desk, a fountain pen, also the income-tax statement. When a person is writing, if he is right-handed, he rests his left elbow on the desk and slightly turns his body. That would have the effect of raising the coat just about the amount that would be required to match up the bullet holes in Taylor’s coat and vest.
Let us assume, therefore, that Taylor was writing at the time he was shot.
What was he writing?
Obviously it was not a check. He may have offered to write a check, but the person who shot him didn’t want a check. He wanted something else in writing.
If William Desmond Taylor had refused to write a check, the checkbook wouldn’t have been there on the desk with the fountain pen nearby. If he had written a check, then it was to the interest of the person receiving that check to see that Taylor lived long enough for the check to be cashed. A man’s checking account is frozen by his bank immediately upon notification of his death.
It seems to me, therefore, that some person wanted, and quite probably obtained, a written statement from Taylor. Once that statement had been properly written out and signed, the person had no further use for Taylor and probably through a desire for vengeance, or else with the idea of sealing his lips, pulled the trigger of a gun which had been surreptitiously placed against the side of the director’s body.
It is interesting to speculate whether some woman may not have been concealed in the upstairs portion of the house at the time the shot was fired. The presence of a pink silk nightgown indicates that at some time previously women, or at any rate one woman, had been there.
Notice the manner in which the body had been “laid out.”
If the person in an upstairs bedroom had heard voices below, followed by the sound of a shot, and then the noise made by a body falling to the floor, then the opening and closing of a door... Perhaps, after ten or fifteen minutes of agonized waiting this person tiptoed down the stairs and found the body of the director sprawled on the floor. It is quite possible that this woman, before slipping out into the concealment of the night, would have bent over the lifeless body, wept a few tears, and arranged the clothing as neatly as possible.
The most interesting lead of all was offered by Mabel Normand in her comments about the telephone conversation. Quite obviously she was trying to impress upon the police that in her opinion this telephone conversation had some probable bearing upon the death of the director. It is almost certain that this was no mere casual conversation and that Taylor discussed it with her while they were talking together. How else could Mabel Normand have known that the person had called Taylor, not vice versa? How did she know that the person at the other end of the wire was very interested in what Taylor was saying? And why was her subsequent recollection of the telephone conversation so widely at variance with her original statements to the press?
Is it possible the police failed to appreciate the significance of Miss Normand’s statement, or did Miss Normand, after thinking things over, decide that she had gone too far and that it would be better to forget all she might have been told about that telephone conversation?
It is to be borne in mind that the police were undoubtedly subjected to great pressure at the time. They were also confused by confessions which were arriving at the rate of ten a day for a period of thirty days. That’s an average of better than one an hour for each hour of the working day.
One thing is certain, no dyed-in-the-wool mystery fan would have let Miss Normand’s significant statement about the telephone conversation pass unnoticed. And I think most really intelligent mystery readers would have given an interpretation other than the stick-up hypothesis to the fact that the course of the bullet indicated the left shoulder had been raised at the time of death.
As time passes, it becomes less possible that the case will ever be solved by the police. Yet there is an interesting field for speculation in the fact that police have fingerprints of Edward Sands. It is becoming more and more common nowadays for all classes of people to be fingerprinted and the prints passed on to the F.B.I. Imagine what a furor there will be if some day the F.B.I., making a routine check of some fingerprint, comes upon that of the missing secretary of the murdered motion-picture director. That is a very distinct possibility, one which may once more bring the case into the limelight. So one can hardly write the murder of William Desmond Taylor off the books — not yet.
Brett Halliday
Brett Halliday — who was really David Dresser — is best known as the creator of one of the most famous fictional private eyes, the two-fisted, tough-talking redhead from Miami, Michael Shayne. Rivaling only Hammett’s Sam Spade and Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in popularity, Halliday’s Shayne made his debut in 1939 in Dividend on Death. In the years that followed, he appeared in 12 movies, with Lloyd Nolan and later Hugh Beaumont in the title role, on radio starring Jeff Chandler, and on television with Richard Denning. Despite the favor Shayne won with fans, as a literary stylist Halliday was no match for his predecessors. Both Hammett and Chandler were capable of dazzling turns of phrase, lavish description and detail, and pitch-perfect dialogue. Stylistically understated, what distinguished Halliday’s writing over the course of more than sixty Shayne novels was his ability to tell a good story. Not a talent that makes critics gush with praise, but an undervalued talent to be sure. Underappreciated, too, is the fact that Halliday was also a top-notch true crime reporter. See for yourself in this story about a grisly slaying in a small Colorado town, one of many compelling tales Halliday published in Master Detective during the mid-1940s.
Murder with Music
It was ten o’clock at night. Sheriff John Martin, of Sandhill, Colorado, leaned back with a wide yawn on his ruddy, good-humored face, stretched his long arms, then turned off the radio beside his desk. He and Deputy Sheriff Lem Whitaker had lingered late in the Sheriff's office listening to the hour-long newscast over Denver’s Mutual outlet.
The Sheriff tugged the wide brim of a soiled white Stetson down on his forehead, and said, “Ready to call it a night, Lem?”
Whitaker was a lean man with a body as tough and stringy as whipcord. His face was burned the color of old leather by the Colorado sun, and his legs were permanently bowed from many years in the saddle. He nodded and thumped his chair forward to get up. “Might as well get to bed,” he agreed.