Anthony Abbot: About the Murder of Geraldine Foster, 1930

Among the novels Charles Fulton Oursler alias Anthony Abbot wrote, About the Murder or Geraldine Foster, is the first.

It 's the first novel that imposed the characters by Anthony Abbot, as a major novelist of the early thirties, not very prolific (a bit as Charles Daly King) but developer of plots of the highest qualità, as one of the first great novel, in which we can say  4 major subjects in all history: Thatcher Colt, the investigator, Dr. Maskell, the prime suspect (but there are at least three other suspects); Geraldine Foster the victim, X, the murderer.

This is the plot.

Betty Caldwell, December 27, complains to the police the missing from the three days of her roommate, Geraldine Foster. Geraldine is the secretary of Dr. Maskell, known internist in New York. Has anyone heard a discussion for high voice between Maskell and her, before her missing.

Thatcher Colt, Police Commissioner of New York, is interested in the story. He, at the home of Caldwell and Foster, rummaging in the drawers, founds a fragment of the letter, in which Geraldine blackmails someone for a sum of $ 4000: the handwriting is recognized by Betty. However Colt realizes that the message is written in a different ink from that used in the house. Why is that? In addition, in a jacket in the closet, is found a large key that nobody knows what to open. Later we learn that Geraldine if she needed money she would have been able to easily get from his father, the well-off condition. The boyfriend is cut short because he and Geraldine would marry, after a short fight.

Thatcher Colt goes to the doctor's house, which makes him a revelation: at Christmas Eve, a mysterious woman, with the collar turned up, went to look at his studio Geraldine Foster, then with an apology had been in the store and then had run away by taxi. The thing is fishy to Colt who then finds in a closet, fur and handbag that Gerardine Foster had in the day of her missing. The doctor denies knowing that they were there as he denies knowing more about Geraldine.

The days go by and Geraldine Foster is not. It is revealed in the meantime by the family that the girl had, a year earlier, an association with a so-called Ephraim (which turns out to be a woman in disguise) had revealed the Geraldine’s noble origins.

Meanwhile, Betty, January 3rd, calls the police and announces that she has found other fragments of the letter blackmail, in which it speaks of a house in Peddler's Road. Thatcher instructs Abbot to go, but Abbot instead of going there alone he carries the beautiful Betty of which he has been infatuated: found the place, a small two-storey (thanks to the advice of a boy who is penetrated and says to have seen a ghost of a naked woman covered in blood), they notice how it looks abandoned; moreover, on the ground, are seven pigeons dead, for quite some time, whose feathers on the front look dirty with blood.

Seized with foreboding, Abbot realizes that the door is not locked, and when he enters witnesses a terrible spectacle: there is blood everywhere, on the ground, on walls, on furniture, on curtains, a puddle on the floor, even blood in the fireplace, but the body .. no trace. He finds instead Thatcher Colt and the police. Colt is furious because Abbot was put to flirt instead of following the track: he has already found upstairs other traces of blood, also in the bathroom, in which hangs a curious scent of pine, along with dirty towels in red (blood and lipstick), found in the tub a ladies watch, stopped at 5.10 P.M..

Thatcher says he found a broken window and there near a dead pigeon, and fingerprints of a child.

An agent founds in a small clearing nearby, the newly turned earth: in the light of torches, is found Geraldine Foster, literally to pieces and mutilated. Were noticed three strange things: the body is naked, wet and on is face was put a pillowcase. The body shows no signs of decomposition. The coroner shall determine the death to 36 hours and not more than 48, even if the pigeons seem dead for the longest time.

The same agent fills a bottle with a strange liquid that has collected around the body but that is not blood; two bottles similar to one found in the doctor's office Maskell are also found. Someone said they saw a woman leave with Geraldine, the study of Maskell, in the afternoon of 24 December, carrying two bottles, of three that had been delivered, even if the doctor has denied knowing about.

The key found at the home of Foster opens the door of the house, which they will know be owned by Dr. Maskell, and then it will be assumed that he was being blackmailed. In addition, the personal effects found in his study induce the prosecutors, including the District Attorney Merle Dougherty, to accuse the doctor of murder caused by a fit: the gun found in the house, a double-bladed ax covered in blood, ill-suited to a murder premeditated. However, this is the hypothesis is working Colt, but along another track.

In fact, the doctor to the time of death has an airtight alibi but it will crumble on the basis of a direct reconstruction made ​​by Colt, when the autopsy will reveal that the girl's death took place ten days before. In addition, it is found that the mysterious liquid is tannic acid, extracted from the bark of pine trees, which has the property of delaying the decomposition.

Little by little we understand that Maskell does not want a certain woman becomes involved in the investigation and for her he'll do anything, even to risk his life. Who is she? But more it will be and you will understand: because Geraldine was stripped after death; who was the woman that was touted as an expert on family background and because she had used a false name; who had purchased the tannic acid; what had happened to the other pillowcase unpaired; who had bought those pillowcases; and finally who had the motive, the opportunity and ability to commit the murder, woman or man that he/she was. The final will be overwhelming and unexpected.

The criticism commonly tells that Abbot was a vandinian writer: what evidence would show it?

Abbot as Van Dine (or Ellery Queen) is a fictional character and at the same time a writer of fiction; Abbot as well as being a character of the story, is (as in Philo Vance Van Dine is the) the loyal assistant of Thatcher Colt, Commissioner Police; in the novel there must be an amateur detective and in this novel the investigator is just Colt whose role should not mislead: in America, the Commissioner has not operational functions that instead are purely administrative and he is the connection between the Mayor and the Chief of Police. So Thatcher Colt, being a Commissioner should not have investigative functions of fact: the fact that he has them, marks him as a person who carries out operational functions improperly: he can be treated as an amateur detective.

Finally, if Abbot was vandinian, his investigator should, as Philo Vance have encyclopedic knowledge, and the Thatcher Colt has it, in several areas: scientific and technical (he recognizes at first glance what type it is an ink, and he knows bleaching a human hair; he applies various techniques of scientific investigation: as the examination of two different types of lipstick and the examination of the substances found under the victim's fingernails; the examination of different types of hair; the application of experimental techniques to possible suspects, as the polygraph, which records blood pressure and heart rate based on the emotional state of the subject ;or the truth serum based on scopolamine, which attenuates all of one's senses except the hearing), he is a student Literature and he writes poetry.

Beyond this, the Abbot of propensity to use often in his novels, scientific wizardry is the daughter of his time and is derived from the use which had made such authors as Cleveland L. Moffett, Crofts, Freeman or Connington; in several of his novels, the victims are women, but he is not a writer of the old school, which tends to eliminate "the fairer sex" as a suspect; his novels are typical Procedurals, where investigations are not carried out by a detective, but by the police.

What is peculiar, however, to the highest degree, in this novel, is that of a single crime is based around the castle for clues and evidence: he has no need of another crime to revitalize the attention and the voltage of the reader. Abbot does not hide nor even silent certain truths, then turned out  be important: the solution agrees with all the questions in the course of the novel. Abbot, in a way anticipates Carr and Rawson, diverting the reader's attention from the right direction and turning it in the wrong direction.

It is also to say the same quality as the investigation is of a type vandinian: Colt combines quality survey acutely psychological to techniques of examination purely circumstantial, type sherlockian: so for example explains why the body of Geraldine was completely naked after the child claims to have seen a ghost in the house of a woman covered in blood and naked and after finding fibers woven into the wounds.

The novel also lends itself to another kind of criticism, social criticism:

vandinian detectives are inherently leaders dell'intelleghentia Haute Bourgeoisie, and all the stories in which they are engaged, concerning crimes that accrue only in the most exclusive of the great metropolis, as if the murder more convoluted and more complex could not reside in degraded environment and low class, but instead in a very high.

In this novel, there is a number of examples of this: the High Commissioner is responsible for a crime that involves one of the most well-known professionals in the city, whose brother and sister in law are also among the most brilliant lawyers New York hole. One would expect, therefore, that Abbot parses the most peculiar aspects of this social area. Instead, he shows great disenchantment with the daily life and expectations of small and medium bourgeoisie, dreams shattered by the Great Depression of 1929 and the illusions of social redemption through unexpected inheritance or noble origins. The size of the fiction writer, in my opinion, is better represented than anything else, from the description of a detail of the corpse: "the diamond in an engagement ring around a little finger”. At the horror of the mutilated and buried human remains, what does the ring mean ? At least two things: the wickedness of someone who has denied a dream come true to a girl; the indifference of murderer for that object.

The indifference of the ring with a diamond could mean that social extraction by the murderer or murderess was greater than that of Geraldine Foster, and it means for that a small diamond ring of the type engagement represented a little thing. For this reason, it may have been scorned and left in the bare earth. Instead, if the murderer had been at the same or lower class than the girl , perhaps the value of the diamond would have taken on his/her greed.

The novel, as we see, is a real beauty: an unforgettable novel in its dramatic force, the fine texture of the plot, in the evocative power of writing, in the versatility of the situations, in the multiplicity of false trails that lead the reader to follow of the prerequisites whereas investigative action is directed towards another.

In this way, the ending is fantastic, by rare beauty: it is expected that the murderer is X and instead is Y.

Pietro De Palma

Anthony Abbot : About the Murder of A Startled Lady ,1935

In America, at the time of Van Dine, Abbot was one of his most important followers.
He wrote eight novels since 1930 :  About The Murder Of A Startled Lady, 1935, is the fifth.

Anthony Abbot (very name Charles Fulton Oursler ) was a knowed writer and pressman: with other writers, connected to S.S. Van Dine, he partecipated to a legendary mystery (legend, certainly not a masterpiece, but more like a curiosity): the novel was born from a bet, in 1935, during a dinner with the then U.S. President Franklin  Delano Roosevelt. The same Abbot was present, which with his real last name was  Director of the New York Newspaper "Liberty": He thought from the innocent subject of the U.S. President could have derived a novel, and then alerted a number of writers to write the chapters:  The first chapter was the turn of Rupert Hughes, Samuel  Hopkins Adam the second, then came the turn of the same Oursler; then succeeded the comedienne  Rita Weiman, and the famous S. S.Van Dine. Finally John Erskine.

The work was serialized in Oursler's Liberty Magazine in 1935, and the book was published in 1936. After thirty years Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) remembered the story and he wrote a final charter, an Appendix in which Perry Mason and Paul Drake pulled the threads of the story. The book was reprinted in 1967 and retitled The President's Mystery Plot.

But we go back to our novel, to About The Murder Of A Startled Lady .

The story begins with a seance: Mr and Mrs Lynn, self-styled spiritualist, refer to Professor Gilman, a scientist who converted himself to parapsychology, had learned from a spirit of a crime happened long before: a certain Madeline would have been killed, dissected and closed in a box thrown in the waters off a popular beach.
Thatcher Colt, High Commissioner and Chief of Police of New York, only for the sake, without believing all the mediums and the like, secretly sends his men and a diver to check the news, and to his astonishment, the case is found , and in it they find a totally decomposed corpse, a skeleton in short, at a lot of pieces: 200 or more bones.
In Colt's own house is reassembled the skeleton, but are not data that may be valid for identification: the clothes are almost completely destroyed, the case is cheap, the victim's teeth are perfect.
The victim was shot through the forehead, and in fact the skull is a rattling noise when you shake: is the bullet of a caliber 32. And since it does not appear to have been any complaints regarding disappearance of a young woman, Colt decides to rely to Imro Fitch, a failed sculptor but a genius at the same time that mixing anthropomorphic knowledge and sensibility of an artist basing on accurate anthropometric relationships, reconstructs the face as it presumably would have been.

Fitch makes a true work of art and life to the skeleton. Also, basing on the few remnants of clothing, he find any similar clothing, one that should have been wearing Madeline in his last days of life. From here begins the survey itself: you get to the victim's identification: Madeline Swift, 22 years.
Close relatives of the girl revealed a strongly suppressed family. Father and paternal grandfather fanatical religious: the grandfather, manufacturer of amulets; the father, a dealer in sheet music and records; her mother, a milliner, enslaved to his father; her sister, Verna, had been hospitalized for exhaustion nervous. In short, an environment that could not stand the exuberance of Madeline, girl described so old too modern for that environment (a reaction?): Smoked, drank and collected stories of love. Until .. until you fell in love with a certain Alfred Keplinger, a university student. And here was derived from a furious argument with his father, who did not want her daughter frequented such an individual .. Well .. the first motives emerge and the first suspect.
Apparently the girl was frightened by whom? It is not known. He said that a mysterious person followed her: policemans find a taxi driver who had brought the girl, but he does not know where she went but he knows from where he had taken her in the car: the house is that of an influential Democratic politician, Daniel O 'Toole, connected to the District Attorney, whose elections are short term.
Then, interrogating Keplinger, we learn that he was a medical student, who tells how her Madeline was misunderstood. But does not say everything. Colt finds out and put under surveillance, the switchboard of the building where home is here and confirmed his suspicion: the young man talks to his sister he did not say anything. Bottom line: Keplinger is stopped.

From the investigation you transpire that some of his entourage and even a politician, harbored resentment. And that the same seance had been rigged: Colt discovers that the voice had revealed to the medium where to find the chest with human bones, he had not felt in a trance nor had dreamed, but had a presence in her room . The strange thing is that when she heard these things she was alone: there was no one else, not even her husband, and the door was closed by a bolt inside. An inspection is done: if at first you think of a concealed microphone and connected to the antenna cable, it turns out that the branch was covered with a cobweb, a sign that was placed at the corner of the window at an earlier time 'arrival of Lynn. This leads to looking further at Colt's room, finding a removable panel and a hole in it that communicates with the adjacent apartment.
So as you can see, many suspects and little evidence.
Colt understands who the murderess, but has no evidence.
Then he tries going for broke: relying on improvisation. Who could he be?

Abbot begins this novel, the same way as “About the Murder of the Clergyman's Mistress” her second novel, in which a corpse is found not identified. Since the discovery begin the investigation: the atmosphere in both is left with the tips of "macabre" in “About the Murder of a Startled Lady” quite pronounced tones reach. However, if we could say that the beginning is much the same, from that moment on, the two novels differ considerably.
Let's say that the murderess is imagined long before those who may be: Abbot differs quite significantly from the earlier novels, where the revelation came in the final pages.
It’s common knowledge fact that the Abbos novels follow two distinct ways of conceiving: the first four novels (all written before 1932) are more or less all attributable to vandinian writing (plot very spectacular revelations in the last pages, detailed descriptions, investigations in well-defined structure of the novel in which you give a lot to the deduction of the subject and little scientific evidence): About the Murder of Geraldine Foster (1930), About the MUDER of the Clergyman's Mistress (1931), About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931), About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932). Those that are written after 1935, though they differ: plot less spectacular but more complex, the deduction is put into a corner in favor of a survey tighter, the style is less elaborate and more fluid, the scientific evidence are more and more police in the investigation: About the Murder of a Startled Lady (1935), About the Murder of a Man Afraid of Women (1937), The Creeps (1939), The shudders (1943).

The abandonment of Vandinian writing you can clearly also constructive abandonment of the formula of the title, which is typical of both novels greatly SS Van Dine, Ellery Queen both of those up in Halfway House, "The house of the metamorphoses" (whose first title was supposed to be The Mystery Swedish Match): if it is visible from 1937, it is equally true that even before Abbot that date had changed his style in the making of a detective story: the police investigation more space (formerly Abbot tends to differ from Queen and Van Dine, when he created his first novel, because the protagonist is not an amateur educated, snobbish, even as the Chief of Police: Van Dine if the Police were represented by the investigator who had shoulder if anything, true deus ex machina of the survey, the figure of the District Attorney Markham, Ellery Queen and the investigator father, an Inspector of Police, and if other authors, born in the wake of Vandinian writing, the first detective was still a detective from the wealthy, educated, and that helps the police (Rufus King, Stacey Bishop, Rex Stout , Rufus Gillmore), we must recognize that the Abbot had opened another branch which shall Vandinian conform other authors, for example, the Lord Lieutenant of King Charles Daly, whose first novel was in 1932, Obelists at Sea and 'curious experience, but clearly shows a change of taste from the abundant second half of the thirties, the fact that Abbot, both Ellery Queen, King C.Daly is the same, all authors born in the wake of Vandinian writing pure mutate the way to build title of the novel: in fact even C.Daly King, which we discuss in more detail one day, until 1935, the applicant shall repeat "Obelists" which follows the noun it identifies the novel, but dating from 1937, roughly the years when the other two change their way of naming their works, the change in naming: the fact that year Careless Corpse: A Thanatophony.

What emerges from About The Murder Of A Startled Lady, is the investigative action that is not exclusively the investigator on duty, what is the summation of a series of parallel investigations that can be misleading but also tangible results: Abbot opens in essence a kind of Procedural, which alleviates a lot of reading, as though not a Hard Boiled, approaches him greatly, as "acting" is unclear how this new genre in some writers tend to influence the creative outcomes: However, if the reading is much easier, it is equally true that the spectacle of the plot undergoes a decisive blow: the atmosphere is never the same criminal who can be expected and found in his first two novels, or even in the third.
The novel was nevertheless, as we said in the presentation, chosen by Roland Lacourbe for his “99 Novels for a Locked Room Library”: so there is a Locked Room? Yes, but although important for the solution to the developments that follow, however, is not closely related to the crime itself: if I have to express myself, in my opinion the choice of this closed chamber seems to have been a little 'forced as if it were another story for all of these could be fully inserted in the list. Moreover, the presence of a hole that communicates with the other room, hidden by a removable panel, inside a closet, it seems a particularly pretty laughable, because you can talk about Locked Room: it is as if they would introduce Also amble of the secret passages, ways to get himself between the hook!
However, the manifest impossibility is given by a bolt inside the door that closes, the absence of other people across the medium, that might connect any microphone to the radio antenna cable had not been found and that There was even a cobweb on copper cable outside the box to signify that no one had busy for a long time, long before they got to live there the Lynn. The presence of a web logically remember us a Paul Halter’s novel, that is clearly derived from this: La toile de Penelope in which a spider web on a window, however, is directly connected to the closed chamber.

If, however, I doubt that this closed chamber could in effect compete with all other submitted on that list, however, is primarily a psychological reasoning: Carr, although the U.S. was British by adoption, and the British were behind a whole literature supernatural (Fantasy literature, gothic ghost story) whereby the impossible situation of a Locked Room, if it is subsequently reduced to rational bounds of reason (except to propose a parallel solution Court in The Witches), initially with good reason may have a characterization of the supernatural: it is realized so that clash between opposing natures, which causes an interesting development of the action in the plot. Therefore even a development as that established by Abbot, if it was practiced by Carr, maybe, just maybe, however, could have an excuse. Instead, for Abbot, U.S., too, Thatcher Colt is a character too rationalistic and too contemptuously antispiritualist because a gimmick like "seance" might here, in this novel, could to have an influence on the reader, and on the novel's atmosphere. So if it occurs a seance in Christie or  Carr, the reader feels a certain uneasiness, if the same occurs in Abbot, at least in these early novels, the reader does not think the slightest possibility that the seance may have been true, it assumes that the voice heard was the product of some device hidden.
That's because being the same impossible situations, for me is much more interesting as a Locked Room, the one in About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931) which, although resulting from it found invented by Edgar Wallace The Four Just Men (1905 ), it differs a lot.

Pietro De Palma