Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense Read online

  NIGHT CALL

  and Other Stories of Suspense

  by Charlotte Armstrong

  Edited by Rick Cypert and Kirby McCauley

  Copyright © 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965,

  1966, 1967, 1969, 1986, 1988, 2014

  by The Jack and Charlotte Lewi Family Trust

  Cover artwork by Melanie Falk

  Lost Classics design by Deborah Miller

  Crippen & Landru logo by Eric D. Greene

  Lost Classics logo by Eric D. Greene, adapted from a drawing

  by Ike Morgan, ca 1895

  ISBN: 1-936363-05-6 (cloth edition)

  ISBN: 1-936363-06-3 (trade softcover edition)

  FIRST EDITION

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper

  Crippen & Landru Publishers

  P. O. Box 9315

  Norfolk, VA 23505

  USA

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Web: www.crippenlandru.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Younger Female Protagonists

  Mink Coat, Very Cheap

  From Out of the Garden

  Protector of Travelers

  The Other Shoe

  A Matter of Timing

  Other Female Protagonists

  The Splintered Monday

  The Case for Miss Peacock

  The Cool Ones

  Male Protagonists

  Night Call

  More Than One Kind of Luck

  St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning

  The Light Next Door

  The Vise

  Novellettes

  The Second Commandment

  Man in the Road

  A Select Bibliography of Short Stories, Serialized Novels, and Novels by Charlotte Armstrong

  Charlotte Armstrong

  INTRODUCTION

  Of Charlotte Armstrong’s work, Anthony Boucher (William Anthony Parker White) observed, “The method by which she achieves her magical effects defies critical analysis.” Boucher, a great fan of Armstrong, recognized that she brought a distinctive approach to the suspense genre, even if one could not exactly name it.

  That approach was formed by a Midwestern upbringing and an adult life lived on both the East and West coasts of the United States. Born in a mining town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1905, Charlotte Armstrong later attended boarding school in Lake Forest, Illinois and university, first in Wisconsin and later at Barnard College in New York City. A fun-loving, spirited, and incredibly bright girl, she presented her developing perspective on life in a series of journals written during her teenage years and captured life in a mining town in The Trouble in Thor, published in 1953 under the pen name Jo Valentine.

  Upon graduating from Barnard, Armstrong worked in the classified advertising department at The New York Times, where she met Jack Lewi, a future advertising executive, whom she would marry. Later she would work as a reporter for a New York fashion magazine. As a young wife and mother in the early 1930s, she devoted herself to the craft of writing plays, some of which were produced for summer stock theaters in Cape Cod and two of which appeared on Broadway in 1939 and in 1941. Ultimately, upon the advice of Bernice Baumgarten at the Brandt Literary Agency, Armstrong would shift her focus from playwright to mystery writer, penning and publishing three whodunits featuring as her detective, a prematurely retired college history professor MacDougal Duff. By the mid-1940s, however, changes were at hand.

  Along with her family’s cross-country move from New Rochelle, New York to Glendale, California, Charlotte Armstrong also shifted out of the crowded field of mystery writers, again at the advice of Bernice Baumgarten, into the genre of suspense. With the publication of The Unsuspected in 1946, Armstrong commenced a twenty-three year writing streak of short stories and novels, some made into films, notably, The Unsuspected (with Claude Rains) and Mischief (with Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark) that would enlarge the genre and what could be done within it. More recently French filmmaker Claude Chabrol brought Armstrong’s The Chocolate Cobweb and The Balloon Man to the big screen. Tragically, Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer in 1969 and died six months later. In addition to a loving family, Armstrong left behind dramatic works, essays, short stories, and novels, published all over the world and translated into a host of languages.

  There are many ways of exploring the magical quality of Armstrong’s writing that Anthony Boucher recognized. For our purposes in the present volume, let us mention the following: in an article for The Writer, Armstrong discussed the necessity of juggling hope, fear, and time when writing suspense. In addition to enjoying what may be a first encounter with the story, readers may wish to pay attention as “the balls” Armstrong juggles come around illustrating each of the three suspense factors. At another level of constructing plot, for Armstrong, the character of a character matters, and, to our reading, when Armstrong characters form a community, character can be transforming.

  In terms of our process in constructing this volume, we have placed the stories in this collection into three groups, based on the age and gender of the protagonist. The first section includes short stories with young, spirited women as the protagonist—the kind of young woman we know Charlotte Armstrong to have been. The second section includes short stories with older female protagonists—the kind of wise, life-loving woman that Charlotte Armstrong became. The third section contains short stories with male protagonists, who, excepting the one story in which the male lead is a criminal, reveal the kind of rational approach, quick wits and logical dexterity that Charlotte Armstrong exhibited in her carefully crafted stories. Finally, one of the novelettes that we include also features a male protagonist, a minister, who by his actions reveals the complexities of faith, as Armstrong understood it.

  All but two of these works appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine during the 1960s. Queen was quite fond of Armstrong’s work and published it, always with a brief editorial paragraph—a process we follow—about its distinctiveness, alerting readers that unconventional surprises were ahead.

  Nor did Armstrong disappoint with clues, the title of the story often, but not always, serving up the first clue. Her love of puzzles provides some provocative telephone conversations in a couple of stories. Clever switch-arounds occur in others. Murder is afoot in many but not all of these stories. Armstrong could ratchet up the tension with a simple kidnapping or burglary. In one story (“From Out of the Garden”) she nods to her literary ancestor Edgar Allen Poe.

  Frequently these stories echo elements within Armstrong’s novels, as a few examples suggest. The protagonist in “The Case for Miss Peacock” and the alphabetic clues in “The Cool Ones” call to mind The Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci. The protagonist in “The Splintered Monday” and the killer’s approach in the same story connect with The Protégé and The Chocolate Cobweb. The main female characters in “The Other Shoe” are not so different from those in Something Blue.

  Both to honor Armstrong and readers of “The Lost Classic Series” we have included two previously unpublished works—lost classics themselves. The short story, “The Vise” is a bit of a genre bender, part science fiction and part ghost story, written during Armstrong’s early years in New York. The novelette, “Man in the Road” was written much later and provides some trademark Armstrong suspense for a young woman who finds you can go home again. To locate these distinctive and unpublished works by Armstrong, we consulted with her children, who searched through stories in their files. We also searched the archives of The Howard Gotlieb Research and Archival Center at Boston University, whe
re Armstrong’s papers are housed.

  These fifteen stories, we hope, in addition to bringing delight, will lead readers to Armstrong’s previously published collections of short stories, The Albatross and I See You as well as her corpus of novels.

  RICK CYPERT AND KIRBY MCCAULEY

  Charlotte Armstrong and her husband Jack Lewi always hoped to develop a television series in which each episode centered on the events set into motion by a classified advertisement placed in a newspaper, an idea the two had generated in the workplace where they had met—The New York Times. What could happen, they wanted to show, when someone responded to a help-wanted ad or advertised for a roommate. Although the television series did not come to be, Charlotte Armstrong published a couple of stories based on the concept, one involving a wedding dress for sale. The present story first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM) in 1964.

  MINK COAT, VERY CHEAP

  Anabel said to her mother, “Listen to this!”

  Mrs. Simpson said, “I didn’t sleep all night. Not a wink. All that money in the house. It’s asking for trouble. Anabel.”

  “Mama, just listen.” Anabel had the morning paper, and she read:

  “ ‘For sale: Mink coat, new, full length, very cheap for cash, if early Friday. 8416 Wilson.’ ”

  “Oh, no,” said her mother.

  “Oh, Mama, you always say no.”

  “You have enough for a very nice stole and you know exactly where you’ve planned to buy it. You’ve even taken the money out.”

  “What harm can it do to go and look at this? On my way to work?”

  “That would be a very foolish thing to do,” said her mother. “It’s not a good neighborhood.”

  “Oh, Mama, you don’t know what kind of neighborhood—”

  “Neither do you,” said her mother tartly, “and you don’t know fur, either.”

  “Just the same,” said Anabel. She was twenty-one years old and her own mistress these days, what with her job and all.

  “You couldn’t possibly buy a new full-length mink coat for five hundred dollars,” cried her mother.

  “You never know,” said Anabel airily. She looked at the clock. It did seem fateful. Here she was with all that cash, and this was very early Friday.

  Peering for house numbers, Anabel pulled her little old car up at an unfamiliar curb. The neighborhood was neither good nor bad, just nondescript. The house had two numbers on it.

  Of course, this was silly.

  Just the same, Anabel got out of her car. The newspaper in her right hand was folded back to the Classified section, where she had marked in green ink, with squiggly brackets, the tiny ad.

  She stepped up two steps to the small porch. The door on her left was marked 8414. 8416 was upstairs—an arrow beside the number pointed up a flight of stairs. As she stood there hesitating, the door of the downstairs apartment cracked open. A morning paper was lying on the doormat, and a hand came forth and pulled the paper in.

  Anabel panicked. So many other people got the newspaper! Was she too late? She went quickly up the flight of stairs and pressed the bell-button on the door up there.

  She heard a thump of feet. The door opened to disclose a plump, short, blonde woman who said, “Yes?”

  “I’ve come about the ad?”

  “Oh, yes. Come in.”

  Anabel stepped in.

  “You are early,” the woman said, a little breathlessly. “Are you the only one?” She put her head out the door and looked downward.

  “Yes, I am—I hope. May I see the coat?”

  “Well, surely.” The blonde woman closed the door, tossed a blonde lock out of her eye, clutched at the pink robe, and trotted away.

  Anabel looked about her nervously, now that she was here. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe the coat was an old ratty thing, and how could Anabel tell? She had in the bag under her arm the $500 she had squirreled away bit by bit for a long time. Oh, this was silly! She had better go buy that stole. It was a bargain; the store was reputable.

  But the blonde woman was back with the coat. “I suppose you want to try it on,” she said.

  Anabel, in a trance, put down her purse and her newspaper, took the coat, and slid her arms into its deliciously slippery sleeves. Well, now either I’m crazy, thought Anabel or this is absolutely gorgeous. Slipping her palm over the fur, she said, “How much?”

  “How much will you give?” said the blonde woman. “I have to have cash. I mean, I said so.”

  “Five hundred dollars?” said Anabel hesitantly. “It’s all I have.”

  “Now?” said the blonde. “In cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” the blonde said.

  Anabel could hardly breathe. Her heart jumped and said, Grab! Her brain whirled. “It does look new,” she murmured.

  “Oh, it’s new,” said the blonde, “But I can’t wear it.” She sounded cross and in a hurry.

  Now Anabel realized, even in her daze, that the coat was just the right length for her, and this blonde woman was five inches shorter than she was. She said, “Isn’t it your coat?”

  “It wasn’t made for me. I guess you’d call it—well, a gift. It’s my sister-in-law’s size, and she’ll never wear it,” said the woman, with thinned lips. “I happen to need cash right away, this morning. If you don’t want it, there’ll be somebody else who will.”

  “Oh, I want it,” said Anabel quickly, feeling like the little pig who got up earlier than the wolf.

  “Then why don’t you take it?” The blonde woman’s face was pale and lumpy—she was, on the whole a lumpy and dumpy little woman. The atmosphere in this place was stifling suddenly. Anabel took up her purse. She said, “Five hundred dollars?” Her fingers were cold and stiff.

  The blonde woman said, “That’s right. Well, thank you.” Her pale, pudgy hand took the money, the hard-won money. Anabel stood shivering in the gorgeous fur. “It looks real good on you,” the blonde said heartily. “You don’t want me to wrap it up or anything, do you?” Her whole air said, I can’t be bothered.

  “Oh, no! I’ll wear it,” said Anabel.

  “Well then, goodbye, dearie.”

  “I—” Anabel reached for whirling reason, “shouldn’t I have a receipt or something.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” said the blonde petulantly. “Where’s a piece of paper?”

  Anabel tore a corner off the newspaper.

  “I haven’t got a pencil either.”

  “Here.” Anabel rummaged and handed over her own pen, the one filled with green ink.

  So the woman scribbled on the blank margin of the piece of newsprint. “Sold to—what’s your name, dear?”

  “Anabel Simpson.”

  “Anabel Simpson, one mink coat, for five hundred dollars. B. Baldwin. Okay?” She held out the pen and the paper.

  “Thank you so much, Miss . . . Mrs. Baldwin,” said Anabel, taking them.

  “Thank you,” said the blonde, rolling her eyeballs. “You can get down by yourself, huh? I got to get dressed.”

  So Anabel, with her purse under her fur-clad arm, went out the door and down the stairs and into the street and into her car. And she got her key into the ignition somehow and drove away.

  Whew!

  Anabel drove, crying to herself, What have I done? Oh, what a foolish thing to do! Am I crazy? No, I’m not crazy. What a bargain! Is it a bargain? Oh, what have I done?

  She drove, with as little wobbling as she could manage, into the parking lot convenient to her office. It was still early—barely eight forty. The office wouldn’t be open until nine. Anabel parked and she sat.

  She smoothed the fur. Now, in sunlight, she looked carefully at her purchase. But nothing was wrong with it. No signs of wear. The lining was perfectly beautiful, beige brocade, with two large blue embroidered initials, A. M. Which did not stand for B. Baldwin. But the coat had been made for her sister-in-law, the blonde had said. Well, A. M. did not stand for Anabel Si
mpson, either. Although the A could be an omen—a good omen.

  Anabel sat there a full five minutes. Then she got out and gorgeous and sweltering in her long mink coat, she walked down the Avenue. She saw a familiar sign: KIMBERLY. FURS. Oh, that was a place too rich for Anabel’s blood. How she had yearned into those windows! Wouldn’t be open this early, of course . . . But it was open. Anabel stopped. A light burned inside and she could see the figure of a person.

  Anabel thought, If this is rabbit or something and I’ve been cheated, all right, I did it. But I had better know.

  She tried the door, which was locked. So she tapped on the glass. The figure inside heard, turned, and opened the door.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Anabel breathlessly, “but I need some advice.”

  “Why, then, come in,” said the person, who was a young man.

  “I suppose you appraise furs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then would you please tell me what this is that I have on?”

  The young man smiled down at her. Anabel had black curly hair and cornflower blue eyes and skin like the petal of a rose. Many a young man had smiled at her. “If you’d take it off,” said this young man “maybe I could concentrate better—nothing here.”

  So Anabel took off the mink coat.

  The young man put the coat on a kind of counter. His fingers were reverent and knowledgeable. His eyes were knowledgeable.

  “Is it mink?” breathed Anabel.

  “Why, of course it’s mink,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh. Oh! I don’t dare tell you where I got it,” she babbled. “Is it good mink?”

  “I would be inclined to say so,” he answered gravely. “Just a minute. Excuse me?” He went behind a partition and Anabel could hear his voice murmuring. He came back and said, “Let me show you something about fur, Miss—?”

  “Simpson. Anabel Simpson.”

  “Miss Anabel Simpson.”

  So she hung over that counter in the cool quiet air faintly flavored with some anti-moth chemical, watching his knowledgeable fingertips and listening to his knowledgeable voice. The door was locked but she knew she was safe. This is a reputable place, and the young man was being most interesting and very kind to explain in such the detail how he knew that her beautiful coat was mink, well-made, and valuable.