Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

A Week Without War by Jon L. Breen

Jon L. Breen’s contributions to EQMM began in 1967 when he debuted in our Department of First Stories. In 1977, he took over as EQMM’s regular book reviewer — a position he occupied for thirty-some years. For his fiction, the California author has been short-listed for the CWA best-novel Dagger and won Macavity and Barry awards in the short-story category. For his critical work and reviews he’s won the Edgar, Anthony, and Ellen Nehr awards. His vast knowledge of the mystery comes into play in this story revolving around EQMM’s first issue.

Speaking as one who lived through the entirety of the twentieth century and can remember most of it — Sebastian Grady is my name — I have a lot of stories to tell. In fact, I’ve been jotting them down for years. The time most people want to hear about for some reason is World War II. Not hard to understand, I guess. For anybody who lived through it conscious and aware, whether in battle or looking for battle or trying to avoid battle, on the home front or in foreign parts, retired or a child in school, it was in some way a defining event. But the story I’m going to tell is not about World War II. It’s about a pool party I went to in Beverly Hills on Sunday, November 30, 1941, one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and a murder that took place in the days between. An officially unsolved murder that apart from its propinquity to Pearl Harbor might have become as notorious as the William Desmond Taylor case.

What should I say to give you a context for our last week without war? To begin with, for a country without war, we sure acted like we were at war. The military draft was in effect for young men, though forty-plus fellows like myself felt safe. The news we heard on the radio and read in our papers was dominated by what was happening on the European and Asian battlefronts. Plenty of Americans were already in it, including some American pilots helping Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese government protect the Burma Road from Japanese attack. The great football player Byron “Whizzer” White played his last pro game and announced he’d enter the armed forces. It seemed inevitable we’d be in the war eventually — President Roosevelt was even quoted as predicting we’d be in it by the following Thanksgiving — and people were already speaking in terms of what would happen and what could be accomplished after the war was over.

So was Southern California at war that Sunday morning, November 30? Hardly. We were looking forward to the big USC-UCLA game next Saturday at the Coliseum, though it didn’t mean any more than crosstown bragging rights that year, and after that the opening of the races at Santa Anita. And, of course, we were planning for Christmas, buying our presents, maybe making plans to trek down to Huntington Beach to see the seasonal decorations on the oil derricks later in the month. Then, as now, the merchants were whipping us into a frenzy of pre-yuletide excitement with their ads. Each night second-line celebrities accompanied Santa Claus in his ride down Santa Claus Lane, known the rest of the year as Hollywood Boulevard — come see the parade and a dollar purchase from a Boulevard merchant would get you three hours of free parking. We had all the Christmas accoutrements but the snow.

As I walked the flagstone path through a neatly barbered lawn to the front door of producer Max Ferguson’s house, palatial by any reasonable standard but just average for Beverly Hills, I certainly wasn’t thinking about the war. I was thinking about champagne, a lavish brunch buffet, and good talk. Literate as producers go, Max usually invited a lot of writers to his parties, and they always had the best stories.

Mrs. Ferguson, the former Alice Whitney, who’d screamed her way through a score of B Westerns and horror pictures before retiring to a more rewarding life at age thirty, greeted me at the door.

“Seb, darling, so pleased you could come! Greta said you and she had a lovely time at the Brown Derby the other night.” No, not Greta Garbo. The Greta who would become my second wife was a close friend of Alice’s, but I won’t hold that against her. “You know, there may be rain later, so we moved half the party indoors. You can sit around the pool or join some of the other guests in the library. Drinks available at both locations.”

A voice from behind her said, “I’d opt for the library, Seb.” Max Ferguson, who was older than he looked, maybe early fifties, had a Johnny Weissmuller physique, just right for pool parties but all wrong for the Hollywood-producer stereotype. Offering me a large hand to shake, he said conspiratorially, “Consensus is the talent around the pool is below average.”

“You men are terrible,” Alice said. “If Max had his way, we’d be hosting orgies.”

“But only for a moral purpose, dear, like in DeMille’s old pictures,” Max replied. The smirk she gave appeared not entirely good-natured.

I followed my host and my nose to the smoke-filled library. Most rooms were smoke-filled in those days. Fortunately, the books were protected on floor-toceiling glassed-in shelves. There were no matched sets chosen for pretty but all sorts of books on all sorts of subjects, most nonfiction but including virtually complete works of Ellery Queen, S.S. Van Dine, and a few other detective writers.

As I entered, I saw a couple of screenwriters of my acquaintance at the center of a circle of their colleagues. Sherry Kendall and Gus Fischburn were apparently inseparable best friends who kept up a sometimes entertaining and sometimes wearisome crosstalk, as if they were a frustrated vaudeville act. Sheridan Blessington Kendall, to give him his full byline both on screenplays and slick-magazine stories about a small-town mayor, was red-faced and portly. Gus Fischburn was smaller and skeletally thin, a comedy writer who claimed he once worked for the Marx Brothers. Gus and Sherry were both in their late forties, and they’d known each other for years. Sherry waved me over. On the way, a jacketed on-the-ball servant handed me a glass of champagne.

“Did you hear about this, Seb?” Sherry said. “A.P. Windsor is no more. Just like that, they split up the team. I don’t know how those two guys worked together all those years anyway.”

“Total mismatch,” said Gus Fischburn. “Phil Devine’ll do better on his own. I always figured he was the talent of the pair.”

Sherry agreed. “Can you imagine having to work day after day with Aaron Wimbush, that preening, conceited jackass?”

“And those are his good points,” said Gus.

“Hope I didn’t make a mistake,” said Max Ferguson with a sly expression.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I invited them both here today. I’d hate to have an ugly scene.”

“Nonsense, I’ve seen your pictures, you love ugly scenes,” said Gus. “But Phil won’t make one. Rumor hath it he’s got a new deal, finally out from under Wimbush’s thumb, a happy man. He just says to himself, to Aaron is human, to forgive Devine.”

“You never wrote for the Marx Brothers,” said Sherry.

“And you couldn’t write cough-drop copy for the Smith Brothers.” I wondered if they rehearsed this stuff.

The conversation veered in different directions, mostly Hollywood gossip. But inevitably, they got around to the impending war. A younger scripter named Jeremy Glass expressed nervousness about the draft, and several of his colleagues assured him his nearsightedness, unhealthy pallor, and slightly effeminate manner would assure his escape. For these guys, insults served many functions, even giving comfort. On a more serious note, some seemed to be worried about air attacks on the West Coast, though not half so worried as they’d be a week later.

Tiring of the war talk, I took the opportunity to sneak out to the pool, where I sat down in a deck chair, determined to enjoy a few would-be starlets swimming, diving, and (mostly) sunning themselves. A wooden side gate between the pool area and the front lawn was presumably used mostly by gardeners, deliverymen, and other inconspicuous workers. But now a nattily dressed old fellow who looked like none of these came through the gate rather surreptitiously, spotted a familiar face belonging to me, gave a friendly wave, and raised a finger to his lips in the classic “keep my secret” gesture. It was an English actor named Gordon Maltravers, whom I knew from the Classic Pictures lot where we were both working at the time. He was a character type and one-time silent-picture leading man, with a beautifully trimmed gray moustache, sartorial splendor even arriving at a pool party, and the mellifluous voice of a classically trained thespian. He drank prodigiously, even while he was working, it was said, but never seemed to show it. In the large Hollywood British colony he ranked somewhere in the wide range between C. Aubrey Smith and E.E. Clive.

Having located a drink, apparently straight whiskey, at the makeshift bar situated at poolside, he came in my direction, sat down in the deck chair next to mine, and said conspiratorially, “I like to pretend I’m a party crasher. Alice Ferguson doesn’t like me much, but I really was invited, believe me. I’ve spent hours at parties I was invited to and never even seen the host, but probably this is a smaller affair.”

“Why doesn’t Alice like you?”

“Once in the course of complimenting her beauty, I was a little too honest in my appraisal of her thespian ability.”

He fell silent for a few moments, staring into his drink. For all his hearty manner, he seemed to be in a depressed mood. I had been doing my best to put the war out of my mind, but when he asked me, “Were you in the last one, Seb?” I knew just what he meant.

“Not really,” I replied. “Joined up when I turned eighteen but it was over before I had a chance to see any action.”

“Did you want to see action, my boy?” he said, a distant and somewhat sad look in his eye.

“I sure told people I did. Don’t know why I’d have wanted them to think I was that stupid.”

Maltravers nodded approvingly. “I understand just what you mean. Nobody who was in it ever wanted to see another. But here we are again, aren’t we? Remember what a pacifist lot we were in Hollywood just a few years ago, Seb? Most of the war pictures were at least honest about what it was like. Remember those air-war pictures?”

“Sure. Wings, Hell’s Angels.”

“I thought The Dawn Patrol was the best of the lot, damned realistic, sending the pilots up younger and younger and less prepared, but of course they had to remake it with a more jingoistic slant only a few years later.”

“And how about All Quiet on the Western Front?” I offered.

“Wonderful picture. I’d have worked for free for a part in that. Old Uncle Carl Laemmle thought it would go over big in his native Germany, since all the characters were German and treated sympathetically. The Nazis couldn’t stand it, though. Germany lost the war. Sticky wicket, that.”

I smiled at the expression. Maltravers said, “I’m talking too much. Don’t listen to me.” But after a pause, he added, “I sometimes feel I should go back home to England. My people at war, and here am I debasing my art in dreadful cinematographs while they suffer. But what good could I do? You know, some of the lads inquired of the British Embassy and, to their great relief I imagine, were told they could do more good staying here.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me confidentially. “Some have said that Hollywood is an ideal place for British spies to be at work, influencing this nominally neutral nation to get into the game, but I don’t really believe that, do you?”

It didn’t seem likely. I said, “Didn’t I hear that David Niven, as soon as he finished Raffles, was off to go home and join up?”

“Ah yes, but he’s young. Most of us here were in the last one, and not all came out in the best of shape. Did you know that five well-known actors now plying their trade and playing their cricket and polo on this side of the water served together in the London Scottish regiment?”

I confessed I didn’t know.

“Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Ronald Colman, Cedric Hardwicke, and Herbert Marshall. Rathbone was decorated for valor.”

“And didn’t Marshall lose a leg?”

“He did. Ronald Colman kept his but still walks with a limp. Rains was gassed and lost most of the sight in one eye. Charles Laughton was gassed too, but came out of it all right. And what about Leslie Howard, badly shellshocked and invalided out early.”

“Maybe the experience helped his acting.”

“Probably not, but I venture acting saved his life.”

“What about you, Gordon?”

He shrugged. “I heard plenty of noise, saw a few chums blown to bits, went through some scary battles the last year of the war, but survived without a scratch.” He shook his head sadly, a faraway look in his eyes. “Too many of our lads lost their lives, Seb, a generation decimated. And the ones that perished weren’t always the right ones, if you know what I mean. Good men died, while the undeserving lived on. I don’t only mean mere cowards either. I’m far too old and beaten down to make a big thing of cowardice, because we’re all cowards one time or another, aren’t we? But I saw greater evil than that, Seb, active evil, not passive evil.”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“I once knew an American officer who deserted his troops, left them to die, and in the confusion of the battlefield got away with it, probably got decorated for valor, the bloody bastard.” Then he looked at me as if I might take it the wrong way. “Mind you, your lot did a great deal of good for us, and don’t think we don’t appreciate it. Too many died, but more would have if you lot had stayed home. Still, what that officer did was a crime of the worst sort, and one that went unpunished.” Maltravers lowered his voice conspiratorially, though there was no one else near enough to hear him. “And I’ll tell you something else, Seb. That bastard is here among us. In Hollywood, the big happy family of cinema makers. No danger he’d ever recognize me. I wasn’t an officer, you see, not worthy of notice, invisible as Chesterton’s postman.”

By that time, I was thinking the old actor a little unbalanced, or maybe kidding me. He was known for tall tales. I was half joking when I asked him if that evil character might turn up at the pool party.

“Oh yes. In fact, I’ll guarantee it.” He shook his head after a moment. “There I go again. I mustn’t babble on about the horrors of war when I should be urging you chaps to join the fight and send your own youth off to die...”

What could I say to that? It was a relief that our host chose that moment to come by and introduce a couple of recently arrived guests. But first Max Ferguson greeted Maltravers with a show of facetious surprise. “Didn’t know you were here, Gordon,” he said, adding with a smile, “He doesn’t believe in doorbells or announcing himself, but why should he? This man is welcome anywhere in Hollywood.”

Max towered over the couple he’d brought with him, a little guy in his mid forties who resembled a jockey no longer able to make the weight and an unobtrusively attractive brunette ten or so years younger who had about two inches on him. “You fellows know Phil and Sophie Devine, don’t you?”

I knew Phil, had never met his wife before. They were apparently both new to Maltravers. As we both rose to our feet with the courtesy practiced at that time, the actor said, “Delighted, Mrs. Devine.”

“It’s Sophie. I must say I’ve always enjoyed your work on the screen.” She said it like she meant it.

“You are very kind.” He kissed her hand, being of the age and elegant manner that could get away with that, then turned to her husband. “Young man, you’re vaguely familiar, and I’m sure I should recognize your name, but my memory is not what it was.”

“Maybe you know the name A.P. Windsor,” I said helpfully.

“I do indeed,” the actor said. “I devour detective novels, and yours are some of the best.”

“That’s gratifying,” said Devine, “but I’m afraid A.P. Windsor is retiring. My partner and I had what they call an amicable parting of the ways.”

“Phil got a nice contract to write scripts on his own, and not just mysteries,” Sophie said with some pride. She added under her breath, “And don’t tell anybody, but it wasn’t all that amicable.”

“Sure it was. Nobody doubts Aaron Wimbush will land on his feet. But I think it’s a great opportunity for me. You’ve heard of Boulevard Pictures?”

The phrase “Poverty Row” immediately came to mind.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Phil said, and he didn’t have to be a mind reader. “Ben Weintraub wants to raise it up to major status, and he has the money to do it.”

“That’s what they say,” Max agreed.

Sophie mentioned to Maltravers a part she’d seen him in, one of his better ones as a Barbary Coast pirate, and the two fell into intense conversation. Hoping she could keep the old fellow off the war, past or future, I offered her my chair and drifted away with her husband and our host.

“Aaron is coming today,” Max said to Phil in a low voice. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Devine said with slightly unconvincing casualness. “Why should I?”

“Sophie seems to think you guys are mad at each other.”

“There may have been a few harsh words. But now that we’ve officially split, the pressure is off, right? We’ll both do better on our own. Two-man collaborations never work over time.”

Unable to resist stirring the pot, I said, “What about Ellery Queen?”

Phil seemed to find the reference irritating. “Yeah, I know all about them, but they’re a special case, not to mention a burr under my saddle. Aaron always held those guys up to me as an example of what we could be doing, but he was overestimating our abilities. Aaron’s talents and mine are too similar. If we’d had a real puzzle-spinner’s brain between us, we could have been Ellery Queen, but we didn’t and so we weren’t. We did our best, but let’s face it, A.P. Windsor will never sit on the upper shelf of detective fiction.”

“What’s Aaron doing these days?” I asked.

Before Devine could say anything, the question answered itself. Aaron was making a racket while making an entrance, and all he was doing was greeting his friends. At the edge of the producer’s large back garden, Aaron Wimbush’s powerful voice boomed out over all other sound. Though not much taller than his writing partner, he had the looks and presence of a matinee idol. I never saw him without musing that he’d missed his calling, should have been an actor. He was as against type as a writer as Max Ferguson was as a producer. Adding to the effect was the gorgeous young woman on his arm. I think I’d seen her in a bit part in a Universal horror pic. Aaron was always seen with beautiful women and seemed to have the world by the tail, but I always thought he was a bit insecure under the bombastic manner. An Adonis like that shouldn’t have to try too hard.

Phil Devine looked briefly annoyed at his former partner’s loud entrance. Then he appeared to decide there had to be a gesture to show everyone present that the A.P. Windsor team were still the best of friends. He walked past the pool and across to where Wimbush had entered, stuck out his hand with a cry of “Aaron!” The two embraced in best show-biz fashion. Aaron introduced his date, giving Phil what was probably a more enjoyable hug. To me it looked patently insincere on both their parts, but maybe some were fooled. Ferguson and I had followed, and Wimbush shook Ferguson’s hand vigorously. “Delighted to be invited, Max. Your parties are the best.” He introduced us to his date, the “future star” Bernice Gail. “I hate to show up empty-handed, so I brought a gift, not just for the host but for everybody here. If that’s okay.”

“I don’t know what you’ve got, Aaron,” Ferguson said, “but if it’s legal and safe and not disgusting, bring it on.”

“No, quite harmless and really worthwhile. You’ll be interested in this, Phil,” he said to his erstwhile partner. “And our fellow wordsmiths will be as well.”

“There’s a mob of them hanging out in the library,” said Max. “Maybe I better ask them to come out before you unveil your surprise.”

As Max and Aaron went off to bring the whole party outdoors, Phil asked Bernice casually, “What’s he up to?”

She shook her head. “I got no more idea what’s in that box than you do.”

When the party was complete, Wimbush signaled to a white-coated servant stationed unobtrusively by a tree at the edge of the house. The servant with some ceremony carried over a large cardboard box. Wimbush raised his arms and, somewhat unnecessarily, his already dominant voice. “Can I have everybody’s attention for a moment. Gather around, right over here. I brought plenty of these. But first a few words of introduction. Can everybody hear me?”

“How could they help it?” Devine muttered. “Didn’t know my old partner was the guest of honor.”

I glanced at Ferguson. The look I got in return told me he had no idea what Wimbush was up to.

“Everybody knows how important it is to diversify,” Aaron began. “Have more than one string to your bow, am I right? That’s why I have so admired a couple of men you’ve all heard of, though maybe not under their real names, who worked in this town and this industry for a time, who have become synonymous with professional and artistic success, who have spread their wings in fresh directions, and have kept to their agreement with each other. I’m talking about the Ellery Queen team.”

Everybody seemed to have something to say then, mostly admiration for their work. But Bernice Gail said, “Hey, one of them got killed in a car accident.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Sherry Kendall asked. “It’s not true.”

“But I heard it on Walter Winchell,” she said.

“Fred did have an awful accident,” Gus Fischburn said, “but he recovered.”

“And I have evidence of that,” Wimbush said, trying to win back his audience. “I want to show you the latest example of what such a successful collaboration can do.” Now he nodded to the well-prepared servant, who reached into the box and handed him a small digest-sized magazine. “The team of Fred Dannay and Manny Lee, a fine pair of first-rate gentlemen, have conquered the book market with novels and anthologies, the magazine market with brilliant short stories, the radio market with inventive and original programs both quiz and dramatic, the motion-picture market with films based on their books, and now have achieved what may be their greatest achievement, one I predict will glow with brilliance for many years to come. Please accept as a gift from me the first issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.”

The servant started handing them out, and it appeared the supply would take care of everybody present. The stricken expression on Phil Devine’s pale face suggested he did not see this as a harmless gesture. He’d always seemed a mild and even person, but now he looked angry.

The periodical we all received had a reddish-brown cover marked at a reasonable twenty cents, presumably a promotional price for the first issue since the subscription information inside said it would cost a quarter for each quarterly issue, a dollar for one year. The cover illustration showed a man wearing a brimmed hat, his hand to his face, wearing glasses that reflected a newspaper headline with the word KILLER prominent. The paper seemed to me high quality, not pulp. The contributors included some major names — Dashiell Hammett leading off, Margery Allingham, Cornell Woolrich, the Queen team themselves — but all the stories were reprints. It was a handsome production, to be sure, and suggested the possibility of good things to come.

I noticed Gordon Maltravers on the edge of the group, peering at the copy he’d been handed. He appeared to have it open to the table of contents or maybe the first story, and he had an odd expression on his face. Pondering or plotting or darkly amused? I was reminded of his unlikely claim.

Was the old actor nuts, or just a drunken fabulist, or had he really seen what he said? Certainly there had been battles in the last year of the so-called Great War that involved both British and American troops. And it was quite likely that an American officer would not remember an anonymous British enlisted man. So could it be true? And if it was, was one of the men in this crowd that American officer who’d deserted his troops? There were plenty of guys here in their middle forties or older who might very well have been officers in World War I.

“Aaron, I know you did this just to embarrass me,” Phil Devine said, kiddingly but possibly on the square.

Wimbush looked genuinely surprised and puzzled. “What do you mean?” Several of the other writers in attendance moved closer to the feuding pair, maybe to be peacemakers or maybe looking forward to fireworks.

“Could be Aaron had purer motives, Phil,” said Sherry Kendall. “Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“In the event you have any doubt,” Gus Fischburn chimed in.

“I, for one, see this new magazine as a good reprint market,” Sherry said. “Some of my stories about Mayor Fiffleton are really mysteries, you know.”

“Except they got no crime and no detection,” Gus said.

“Many of my millions of readers find them very amusing,” Sherry said, feigning hurt.

“The only funny thing I see is that they pay you for them.”

“If you knew how much they pay me, you’d gaze at your own checkbook and cry instead of laugh.”

While these two guys played out their usual routine, I tried to picture them as World War I officers. They were the right age for it, that’s for sure. Come to think of it, so were the two A.P. Windsor collaborators, and our host, for that matter.

Jeremy Glass, definitely not old enough to have been in World War I, apparently thought the mock feud of Sherry and Gus was not nearly as interesting as the possibly real one of Phil and Aaron. “Come on, Phil. Seriously, why are these Ellery Queen guys such a sore point with you?”

Phil drew a deep breath before he said, “Our whole career, our whole collaboration, Aaron’s been throwing that Ellery Queen team at me. Every move they make is great, terrific. And we can never duplicate what they do, but what he doesn’t realize is that we aren’t like them. Not at all. For one thing, we used to fight so much, it’s amazing we got anything done. Those Queen guys are cousins, and really more like brothers. They probably get along great.”

“Not what I hear,” said Max. “One of their jobs they had an office right under the mimeograph room, machines running all day long. You know how deafening an operation that is. But the people who worked there complained about the noise the two Queens made yelling at each other.”

“Good story,” said Sherry. “Was that at Columbia, Paramount, or Metro?”

“Who cares?” said Gus.

“Nobody, I hope,” Max said, “because I don’t know.”

“May I say something?” Aaron said. Odd he should ask permission, but he didn’t wait for it. “I didn’t come here to embarrass Phil, and yes, we had our differences, but everything I suggested was meant for the good of the team. I did think maybe the anthology market would be a beneficial sideline for us, but Phil never went for it, and that was okay.”

“The anthology market is a hell of a lot of work and it isn’t all that lucrative,” Phil said. “One of those two Queen cousins built the greatest collection of mystery short stories known to man, so he can put together an anthology of great obscure stuff standing on his head. But did anybody here see their first one, Challenge to the Reader?”

“I remember that,” said Sherry. “The idea was they’d hide the author’s byline, change the names of the detective and other continuing characters, and ask the reader to guess who they were. A great gimmick, you gotta admit.”

“Oh, sure, a great gimmick,” said Gus. “If you knew the writers and characters, it was too easy; if you didn’t, it was impossible.”

Wimbush said, “Maybe you haven’t seen the new one, 101 Years’ Entertainment, best mystery anthology I ever saw. And they’ve done better in pictures than us, Phil. You gotta admit that.”

“No, Aaron, I don’t admit that. We’re still working here, and they aren’t. Did they ever even get a screen credit?”

“Maybe not screenplay credit, but some of their books got made into movies,” Wimbush said.

“And those movies of the Ellery Queen novels have all been lousy, so they’re not exactly a silver-screen success story. Oh yeah, and radio. They had some kind of a quiz show that got nowhere.”

“It was called Author, Author, and it was darned clever,” Wimbush said. “Of course, thinking up plot ideas on your feet is a rare talent. The Queen lads appeared on that show together. And earlier they did a lecture tour together, wearing masks, one playing Ellery Queen debating the other playing Barnaby Ross. They really knew how to seize the spotlight, turn their byline and their detective into household words. A.P. Windsor could have done the same, but you were never open to it.”

“And how, I ask, could you and I ever appear together on a radio show or a lecture circuit? Know the real difference between Ellery Queen and A.P. Windsor? Those two guys obviously get along like two halves of the same person. I don’t care if they drowned out the mimeograph machines.”

Sherry Kendall raised a conciliatory hand. “Guys, your personal row is a lot of fun to eavesdrop on, but let’s talk a little more about the magazine. Say, from the viewpoint of a guy like me who’d like to see his stories reach a new audience. Is this mag going to last or is it a pipe dream?”

“Or is them buying anything of yours the pipe dream?” Gus said. “Seriously, though, didn’t Ellery Queen have a magazine before?”

Phil was ready to pounce on that. “Yeah, they edited Mystery League back in the early thirties, rejected a short story from us, as I remember. And that big ambitious pulp died after four issues.”

“Deep in the Depression,” Aaron pointed out.

“Sure, lousy time to start a magazine,” Phil agreed. “But what about now, Aaron? There’s war all over Europe and Asia, and we’ll be in it any day. The war may be short once we get in it. I hope it will. But short or long, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine hasn’t a prayer of surviving the war. And I’ll put money on that. I’ll bet anyone here who will agree to get together after the war to settle up that the Queen team’s great ambitious experiment will end before the war does.”

There were no takers right away, but it did stimulate some more discussion pro and con. A few thought wartime was the perfect time for anything that would entertain, take people’s minds off things. And since the defense buildup had already overcome some of the effects of the Depression, unemployment would be rare and people would have more income to spend. On the other hand, once we got in it, would there be privations? Wouldn’t paper be in short supply, perhaps rationed for more vital defense purposes? Certainly, the kind of classy paper they used on the first issue wouldn’t be readily available. They’d be in competition with pulps for paper, not to mention for readers. And in a time of war, how could some pretentious digest compete for readers with those same pulps with their bright color covers and fast-action stories?

Finally there were enough partisans on both sides convinced of their positions. Sherry Kendall was the first to take Phil up on his wager. Aaron insisted for a while he wasn’t betting but finally put in a token amount against Phil. Jeremy Glass came in on Aaron’s side. Gus threw his lot in with Phil, whether because he believed the magazine would collapse or because he wouldn’t feel right on the same side as Sherry. Max gave his support to Aaron. Three or four more joined on each side, and the pot grew to several hundred dollars.

I hadn’t taken sides, and people tend to find me reliable, so I was charged with holding the stakes and getting together with those involved at the end of the war (surely by late 1942 or early 1943, I thought) to hand out the winnings. If any of the bettors didn’t survive the war, possible but not too likely at most of our ages, those remaining on the winning side would divide the pot. Sort of like a tontine, that last-survivor-takes-all arrangement beloved of mystery writers. I decided to put the money in a separate interest-bearing account so it could grow as the war dragged on, which turned out to be a good idea.

Now, you ask, what about this unsolved murder that might have equaled the William Desmond Taylor case? It was all over the afternoon papers on the Wednesday after the pool party. The victim was a prominent and well-liked producer of motion pictures named Max Ferguson, found shot to death late Tuesday night in his Beverly Hills home. His wife Alice reported she was visiting friends in Palm Springs, said the servants had the night off, meaning Ferguson would normally have been alone. He had been shot with a World War I pistol from his own collection. Police ruled out suicide, based on the angle of the shot, but no strangers had been seen in the neighborhood, and there was no sign Max had received any visitors. Oh yes, and the article mentioned Ferguson had been decorated for his distinguished army service in the war. What wasn’t mentioned in the article was a possible clue found by the body that I learned about from a police friend: a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine open to the first page of the first story in that first issue. The title of the story had been circled.

The next day’s paper reported the death of the British character actor Gordon Maltravers, at his home, of apparent natural causes. His distinguished military service in the British Army was also referenced.

As the case faded from view, a fade-out ironically helped by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the papers offered vague references to a burglary gone wrong and failed efforts to identify the killer. Of course, the investigation would remain officially open, but with no solid leads in the first few days, the chance of its being definitively solved were slim.

Actually, the case was not unsolved at all. For me, that magazine issue, not so much dying message as pre-suicide confession, just the sort of clue that would appeal to the Ellery Queen team, pointed the finger at the person who shot Max Ferguson. And I happen to know the police reached the same conclusion I did, though they never broadcast it. Remember two things: 1) Law enforcement in Los Angeles had a long history of covering up scandal for the movie studios, and 2) The last thing the governments of the United States and Great Britain would want revealed as America teetered on the brink of entry into World War II was the revelation that a British subject working in the film industry had shot to death an alleged American war hero.

Gordon had given me another clue. I knew the first person he’d laid eyes on at the party was me. How could he be so sure his suspect would turn up at that pool party if the suspect were not his host?

As for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I read it periodically (no pun intended) through the war years, saw its paper quality and page size decrease with the wartime strictures, saw it widen its net to introduce new stories alongside the reprints, and yes, it survived World War II and would survive the Cold War and Korea and Vietnam and other hot wars to this very day.

When the war was definitively finished in August 1945, the surviving parties to that bet (even including most of the losers) met for lunch at Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, where I distributed the winnings. It was a happy occasion. Phil Devine and Aaron Wimbush were both doing well as solo screenwriters and finally getting along fine as ex-partners. Everybody had helped the war effort (and/or profited from it) one way or another. Jeremy Glass, he of the alleged nearsightedness and effeminate manner, had hit Normandy Beach in the second wave and lived to tell about it. Of those who had placed a bet, only Max Ferguson had not lived through the war, and Alice didn’t turn up to claim his share. She never seemed overly devastated by the death of her husband — I guess she knew him better than the rest of us — but her hero’s-widow status gave her a new prominence selling war bonds, entertaining the troops, and even reviving her screen career briefly until she married even richer after the war.

What, you may ask, was the significance of that Dashiell Hammett story that led off that first issue of EQMM? You could look it up, and maybe some of you have. It had a title that meant something to Gordon Maltravers, mourning the needless dead and deploring the treacherous survivors: “Too Many Have Lived.”