Rufus Gillmore is an author shrouded in a cloud of mystery. It is known that he was a journalist, but very little is known about his life. So little, that some historians of crime literature such as Anthony Boucher or Howard Haycraft, had never read his works and were unaware of who he was. All this, however, has a certain reason: in fact Gillmore, despite having started writing novels at 33 years old - wrote three in two years: The Mystery of the Second Shot (1912), The Opal Pin (1914) and above all The Alster Case (1914 ) which seems to be a parody of The Leavenworth Case (1878) by Anna Katherine Green – she soon stopped writing and for twenty years did something else, to start again, and deliver her fourth and final work, The Ebony Bed Mystery, to the history of the genre, in 1932. Three years later he died.
WARNING: SPOILERS !!!
The Ebony
Bed Mystery tells of a famous crime, from which others derive. The location of
the crime is the home of a much talked about New York woman, first dancer, then
social climber, Helen Brill Kent: in her bedroom, locked from the inside, she
was found killed by a gunshot in the mouth. It would seem like a blatant
suicide, if it weren't actually murder, she was killed on the carpet and then
placed on the bed from there. An Ebony Bed with black silk sheets.
Prosecutor Hutchinson is in charge of the murder, assisted by Sergeant Mullens. Both initially lean towards suicide, but after the amateur detective Griffin Scott, already an established publicist, proves it was murder, they change the object of their insistence, accusing Dotothy Vroom, the victim's half-sister, of murder. Griffin is assisted in turn by the journalist Rufus Gillmore, who has earned his trust, having managed to trace his true identity and having discovered his New York refuge.
Living in the victim's house until Helen's death were her mother Mrs. Vroom and her half-sister Dorothy Vroom, as well as Helen's only daughter, Ethel Cushing. 4 women. And the servants were made up of women. But on the evening in which the tragedy occurred, a furious argument had occurred with members of the family: Jesse Brill, father of the deceased; Cleveland Brill older brother and Napoleon Brill younger brother. Especially with Jesse and Napoleon, two parasites of the worst kind. Cleveland seems to be different: more fanatical than his family, so attached to Christian values that he became captain of the Salvation Army, he despises his corrupt deceased sister's money and would, if anything, like to use it for charity. And as it turns out, both Jesse and Napoleon had copies of the keys to the room, and both, having created false wills of the deceased, will try to accredit themselves as the sole heirs of the fortune.
But in the meantime, Dorothy has recklessly grabbed the gun in the dead woman's room, which fell on the floor leaving her fingerprints on it, and for this reason she becomes the main suspect by Hutchinson and Mullens, and subsequently someone takes possession of the victim's very rich jewels and then kills Detective Haff , in charge of the surveillance of the Brill Kent house.
Central is the mystery of the 6 double keys, six keys that open two different doors: the door of the house, and the door of Helen's room. One key belongs to the landlady, the mother has another and is also used by the stepsister, the three maids have three, and the last one... we don't know who has it. In the end we understand that a character who is not part of the family and who should have married Helen has it: it is his that Dorothy heard the evening of the murder, coming from Helen's room and which she does not recognize as the one of any of the half-siblings?
Then there is the mystery of a skein of cotton, found in the victim's room, whose length Scott tests, which is subsequently stolen from the room. Scott then understands, unrolling it from one of the windows of the victim's room, that a garment falls two floors below at the window of an unsuspecting condominium owner, a big fish in politics. It is he who Helen Brill Kent should have married for the umpteenth time. But he is not the murderer.
In an attempt to save Dorothy Vroom from the electric chair, Scott Griffin, having understood how the murderer killed, using a gun, an electric wire and a radio antenna, thanks to a stratagem, will be able to frame the diabolical murderer, who will then attempt an unlikely escape, ending up on the pavement of the sidewalk, a few floors below.
The End of Spoilers
Gillmore is certainly a clone of van Dine, indeed, let me tell you, his novel is the triumph and excess of the genre derived from Van Dine.
In fact, there are many references to Van Dine's novels (and also to the first Ellery Queen):
Gillmore (Scott's author and Watson), the prosecutor Hutchinson and the police sergeant Mullens, model the better known Van Dine, Markham and Heath;
Scott Griffin, who is a well-known advertising man, embodies the amateur detective possessing uncommon analytical skills, and pairs with Philo Vance;
the crime takes place in the home of a person belonging to the (albeit improperly) New York jet set;
as in Van Dine, here too the Handbuch fur Unlersuchungerichter, by Hans Gross, the sacred text of Forensic Criminal Science, is consulted: the volume is consulted by Philo Vance in The Greene Murder Case.
The victim is a former dancer, as in The Canary Murder Case;
As in Greene, the crime matures within a family.
As in Greene, the crime is committed by means of a device connected to a gun.
The figure and nature itself of both the victim and the murderer are connected to Greene.
The assassin who dies during an unlikely escape, and his very nature, can be traced back to The Tragedy of Y by Ellery Queen. In this regard, unless Gillmore had the same idea as E.Queen, which is rather singular given that they are two followers of van Dine, one would think that one of the two was derived from the other, which is also rather difficult to verify as both novels from 1932.
In short, a novel closely derived from those of Van Dine. Unlike van Dine, however, reading is not always enthralling, and there are various moments of tiredness, which the author makes up for by transforming the Mystery into a Thriller (such as when he must at all costs enter Sullivan's house and unmask him and everything that follows) to increase the pace of the narrative. As a character, Griffin Scott seemed to me at times even more unbearable than Philo Vance, and what's more the novel itself, brazenly following many different references to Van Dine, instead of following its own path (although referring to Van Dine, as in Ellery Queen for example or in Abbot), chooses to create a novel that derives step by step (except for some small differences) from The Greene Murder Case, perhaps proving attractive for the public of the time, but for us instead very obvious, and sometimes tiring to read.
Pietro De Palma
