SUSPENSE: SUSPICION (AUGUST 12, 1942)

"Suspicion" is one of the most reprinted short stories by author and   scholar Dorothy L. Sayers, who was perhaps best known for the Lor Peter Wimsey mysteries.  It was first published in the premiere issue of Mystery League magazine (October 1933), edited by Ellery Queen and an ill-fated precursor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and was reprinted in Sayers' 1939 collection In the Teeth of Evidence.  Since then, it has been reprinted at least thirty times, including in anthologies edited by the likes of Queen, Will Cuppy, Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Fraser, Bennett Cerf, Raymond T. Bond, Lee Wright, John Welcome, Mary Danby, and Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini -- more than any other story penned by Sayers.  The story has been adapted at least four time for television, and aired twice on the Suspense, first in 1949 featuring Charles Ruggles, and again on April 3, 1948 with Sam Jaffee in the lead role; in 1949 the story also transitioned to the Suspense television program as the second ever offering in that series.

Real estate agent Harold Mummery (Ruggles) fears for his ailing wife as police are searching for a cook suspected of poisoning several of her employers.  It happened that, as the suspected poisoner disappear, Mummery had hired a new cook...and now Mummery himself has been suffering from stomach problems and begins to suspect their cook of plotting to do them in.  He then discovered that someone has been tampering with a bottle of arsenic-based weed killer in his shed.  He managed to get a sample of some hot chocolate the cook had prepared and brought it to be analyzed.  When the results came back that the sample contained arsenic, he hurried home in a panic...

A tale of misdirection with a not-so-ambiguous ending as the poisoner appears to be revealed.

Enjoy this tale calculated to keep you in...SUSPENSE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNUqfEf5vI

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE RETURN OF THE SPECKLED BAND

"The Return of the Speckled Band" by Edward D. Hoch  (from the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited  by Martin H. Greenberg & Carol-Lynn Rossel Waugh, 1987 [the expanded edition of 1999 adds Jon L. Lellenberg as an editor]; reprinted in The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch, 2008)

Five months after the strange events involving "the speckled band", Holmes and Watson ae once again called to Stoke Morton in Surrey.  Henry Dade 'recently gave up the wandering life of a gypsy to become a blacksmith" in Stoke Morton and to marry Sarah Tinsley, a young village girl.  This did not sit well with his younger brother Ramon, who has been urging Henry to leave the village and his wife and go back to the gypsy tribe.  (The fact that Henry, the elder son, spent his inheritance to buy the smithery and marry Sarah might have something to with it.)  The gypsy are encamped on the property of the late Grimsby Roylett, now owned   by his niece, Helen Stoner.  The property holds bad memories for Helen who has placed the estate up for sale and is now traveling Europe; once the property is sold, the gypsy tribe will be force to move out of the county and Ramon wants his brother to join them; Ramon feels the tribe -- the family -- is more important than Henry's marriage to an outsider.  Besides having kept the deadly swamp adder that was the speckled band of the previous story, he also kept several wild animals, including a baboon and a cheetah, which Helen sold to Ramon, telling him he could also have any other animals he found on the estate.  What Ramon did find, in an old shed and in a wire cage, was another swamp adder, identical to the first.  Ramon took the snake and, for unknown reasons, regularly milked the snake's venom, because (I guess) that's what gypsies did back in 1883.   Now Ramon has been taking the caged snake and using it to threaten Sarah and Henry wants Ramon stopped.  Sherlock takes the case because he wants to protect Helen Stoner and because he realizes that, if there actually were another serpent, it would be the even more deadly than its close cousin the krait.

Ramon declares that he has used the snake to threaten Sarah, only to scare her.  He feels that she only married his brother because of his inheritance.  Sherlock tries to convince Ramon to leave Henry and Sarah alone, but is not sure if his words have any effect.  He has a private word with Sarah later that evening, while Henry is resting upstairs after a hard day at the forge.  Before he leaves, Henry is found dead with a snake bite on his neck.  The room is locked and the windows are shut and there is no way the snake could have escaped the room.  A through search shows no sign of the snake.  There is some talk about Aaron's Rod, a biblical tale about a staff that became a serpent; there was an umbrella stand in the room containing a number of walking sticks about the same length as the missing snake.  And there is a mentally deficient gypsy who keeps popping up.

Holmes has to solve the who and how and why of the murder in order for Watson and him to leave Stoke Morton, hopefully never to return to that accursed village.

Not the greatest locked room murder Hoch has ever given us  but it is always interesting to read one of Hoch's stories about the world's first consulting detective.

Read it if you ever have the chance.

OVERLOOKED FILM: BEHIND THAT CURTAIN (1929)

 Charlie Chan was a fictional Honolulu detective created by Earl Derr Bigger in a series of six novels beginning with 1924's The House Without a Key -- a work he had been planning since 1919.  Chan, based loosely on real-life Honolulu detectives Chang Arpana and Lee Fook, was an instant success, spawning a movie franchise that eventually totaled 50 English language films; additional Charlie Chan films were produced in Cuba, Mexico, and China (with six films).  Chan was also featured on the radio with several different adaptations and on NBC's The Adventures of Charlie Chan; on Broadway in 1933 with an adaptation of Keeper of the Keys (written by Valentine Davies of Miracle on 34th Street fame); on television with The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1956-57, starring J. Carrol Naish), the made for television movie The Return of Charlie Chan (shot in 1971  but not aired until 1977, with Ross Martin in the title role), and the animated series The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (featuring former Number 1 Son Keye Luke as Charlie Chan -- making him not-quite the first actual Chinese actor to portray Charlie Chan [see below]).  A Charlie Chan comic strip, running from October 24, 1938 to May 30, 1942, and at least seven different Charlie Chan comic books have been issued  by various publishers over the years.  A Charlie Chan board game came our in 1937, followed two years later by a Charlie Chan card game.  A Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine lasted for four issue in 1973-74; each issue featured a novella about the detective signed under the house pseudonym "Robert Hart Davis," a pseudonym also used for the lead novellas in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine); the four Chan stories were written by Bill Pronzini & Jeffrey Wallman, and Dennis Lynds -- it has not been confirmed who penned the remaining two stories.  Lynds also published a paperback original novel, Charlie Chan Returns 1980).  Michael Avallone novelized the Chan film  Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen in 1981.  Recently, John L. Swann has published two novels about Chan -- Death, I Said (2023) and A Tangles String (2024).  Charlie was also featured in pulp writer Edward Churchill's "Charlie Chan on Broadway" (Popular Detective, November 1937), and in Jon L. Breen's more recent "The Fortune Cookie" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1971).

Almost without exception, Charlie Chan has been played by white actors, the exceptions being Keye Luke in the animated series and the first two films featuring Chan, The House Without a Key, a 1926 silent serial in which Chan appeared as a minor character portrayed by Japanese actor George Kuwa, and 1927's silent film The Chinese Parrot, with Chan being portrayed by a different Japanese actor, billed as Sojin -- both films are lost to the dust of history, and the tbird film.  The third English language film, Behind That Curtain, was released in 1929 and was the first sound Charlie Chan film; it featured E. L. Park (an actual Chinese actor) as Chan; Park's role (and Chan's was very brief -- one mention early in the film and several short appearances beginning about 75 minutes into the 90-minute movie.

The heavy lifting in the film fell to Warner Baxter, who played Col. John Beetham, a family friend of Sir George Mannering (Claude King), who asks for Beetham's help after a solicitor hired to investigate fortune hunter Eric Durant (Philip Strange) is  murdered.  Beetham takes Mannering's niece and the object of Durant's plan, Eve (Lois Moran) to British India.  Eve later leaves Mannering and travels to San Francisco, where she is followed  by Scotland Yard Inspector Sir Frederick Bruce (Gilbert Emery), who is on the trail of Durant.  Boris Karloff plays Beetham's manservant.  

And where does Charlie Chan fit into all of this?  Good question.  Let's see if you can answer it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqvlJQhlTkg

WHERE'S AIMEE?

One hundred years ago today, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished.  Sister Aimee (1890-1944) was a Pentecostal preacher, evangelist, and founder of the Foursquare Church who pioneered the use of radio to broaden her reach (and her donations) through her weekly sermons from Angelus Temple, an early megachurch.  She was the most publicized Protestant evangelist of her time, surpassing even Billy Sunday; her faith healing demonstrations drew tens of thousands.  "McPherson's preaching style, extensive charity work, and ecumenical contributions were major influences on 20th century Charismatic Christianity."  She promulgated the idea that the United States was a nation was a nation guided and sustained by divine intervention.

Her vanishing after a swim at Venice Beach caused a media frenzy, fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner.  Many assumed she had drowned, and, in fact, two people actually drowned trying to locate her body.  Aimee's mother, who preached in her stead that day, told the congregation that "Sister is with Jesus."  Others were not so quick to judge.  Kenneth Ormiston, a radio station engineer, had left his job with Aimee's temple six months before, and there were stories that Ormiston and Aimee were seen driving up the coast, and some people thought that the two had run off together.  On just one day, Aimee was reported seen in sixteen different cities.  Because no body had been found, some believed her to have been kidnapped.  Her mother offered a $25,000 reward for her safe return.  Reports that she had been found in a cabin in Canada on June 5 turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.  A number of fraudulent ransom demands were received.  The whole country wondered, where was Aimee?  What had happened to her?

Then on June 23, Aimee stumbled out of the desert in Sonora, Mexico, collapsing in front of a Mexican couple who had approached her.  She appeared emaciated; her shoes were covered with desert and, her hands were filthy, there were cactus spines in her legs, and her toe was blistered.  She claimed to have been kidnapped, tortured, drugged, and held for ransom  by three people -- "Steve", "Rose", and an unnamed man.  She said her kidnappers also had plans to kidnap Mary Pickford and other prominent people.  When Aimee finally returned to Los Angeles after her ordeal, an estimated 30-50,000 people were on hand to greet her.

But not everyone believed Aimee's story.  A Grand Jury was convened but could not determine whether Aimee's story was true.  A second Grand Jury inquiry, relying on newly developed evidence suggested that Aimee was in fact in a love tryst with Kenneth Ormiston in a cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea, but this investigation stalled.  Then a co-conspirator came forward and a third Grand Jury was convened.  This led to criminal charges being files against Aimee, Ormiston, and several others, with a trial scheduled for January 1927.  But then the prosecution decided that their star witness was not as credible as they had once thought.  Despite much circumstantial evidence against Aimee and Ormiston, the trial went nowhere.  The damage to Aimee's reputation was done, however; Aimee had spent over $100,000 trying to defend herself.

Re-examining the case in 1990, the presiding judge of the San Francisco Municipal Court found that "there was never any substantial evidence to show that [Aimee's] story was untrue."

Whatever the truth, Aimee's escapade lives on in this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZS5aN6s_2c

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISTINA!

I am constantly amazed at the woman my daughter Christina has grown up to be, yet I am forever remembering her as a child -- all giggles, all caring, all kindness, all determination, sharp as a tack and (sometimes) pricky as a pear, and a never-ending fount of hugs and kisses.  I remember my father -- a great judge of character -- turning to me when Christina was three, and saying, "Don't ever bet against her."   She was Christy until the first grade; then she came home and informed us that her name was Christina...and so it was.  As she got older, she developed the nickname Bink, for reasons that still elude me.  And so it came to be:  she was Christina to the world and Bink to the family.

Christina is somewhat shy.  She took piano lessons for a year and had to play at an annual recital with her teacher.  As she left the stage, she turned to Kitty and said in a loud and disdaining voice, "Don't you ever do that to me gain!"  So we didn't.  Yet music stayed with her.  She played clarinet in her high school and college bands.  She played the fife in what we have been told was the only all-girl's fife and drum corps in the country.  Kitty gave her my 60-year old banjo and Christina had it refurbished and will begin learning to play it as soon as she finds the time.

Finding the time to do things has always been difficult because she has always had a lot on her plate.  When she married Walt, he had only a high school degree.  She urged him to get a college degree and also to get computer train, which led him to ever-increasing positions of responsibility and management.  The majority of her efforts, though, went to raising Mark and Erin, who have become two of the most accomplished human beings I have ever known; Christina always stepped up to give them every possible opportunity to reach their full natural potential.  Fourteen years ago, she and Walt fostered Jack when he was just six weeks old, who was born to a drug-addicted mother and spent the first six weeks of his life in rehab at Washington Children's.  It took nearly two years for the state of Maryland to sever the legal ties of Jack's mother, who had many arrests for various charges, came from a criminal family, and had three other children from three other (sometimes unknown) fathers, allowing Christina and Walt to adopt him and for us to officially welcome him into the family.  Patience and love and more patience were needed to raise Jack:  he was on a feeding tube for more than eight years, had a number of emotional problems, and is still a few years socially behind his peers.  But Jack has become a loving, kind soul with a quick wit and vivid imagination, and while there are still difficulties, Jack has become an amazing human being and we could not be any prouder of him or love him any more.

Christina's determination has always been one of her main strengths.  While attending George Washington University as a freshman, she accompanied a friend who was interested to a meeting of the university's Tae Kwon Do club, and became interested herself.  As she studies and practiced the art, she would often hit plateaus, which would often last for months until she overcame them and advanced to the next step.  In this manner of advancing through fits and jerks, she eventually became a Black Belt and was elected president of the club -- the first non-graduate student to hold that office.  After graduation, she got a job driving for an ambulance company, which led to becoming first an emergency medical technician, then a paramedic, running rescue for the county for a decade.  She doesn't brag about the lives she saved, nor the extreme danger she occasionally faced in that job.  She started working as an emergency room technician at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia; the ER doctors there were happy when Christina was working their shifts because they knew that with Christina there, things would wok smoothly (other ER techs were evidently no where near as organized as she was).  she was on duty on 9-11 when every hospital and emergency room in the greater-DC area was placed on high alert; it was only when the day went on and no victims appeared that the staff realized how devastating the attack on the Pentagon was.  One day we got a call and Christina asked us calmly to watch her kids because her ER was now in quarantine.  A passenger who spoke no English was admitted after arriving on an international flight; the only words she could speak in English were "hemorhagic fever";  this was at a time when Ebola was wiping out African villages, and many other hemorhagic fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Yellow Fever) could be just as bad.  Christina and the rest of the staff continued working calmly, trying not to let this affect them adversely, while Kitty's hair grew gray from worry.  After twelve hours, it was determined to be Denge Fever and a shout of joy went out throughout the ER -- still dangerous, but far less serious and less communicable than many of the other options.  Christina is our duck -- floating gently and gracefully on the water while below the surface, the feet are paddling like crazy.

She switched careers and qualified to be an echocardiogram technician for many years, lugging a five hundred pound machine through hospital corridors.  This was another job she was amazingly good at, often discovering abnormalities that some doctors overlooked.  (But some doctors are poopy-heads, something that Christina learned early on and the one thing that made decide not pursue that as a career.)  During this time, she also taught classes in cardio stenography at George Washington University.  She made a complete switch about a dozen years ago when she trained to become a sign language interpreter; for the past decade she worked at local schools one-on-one with deaf students and being an extra hand assisting the classroom teachers.  Budget cuts earlier this year found her out of a job,  but she rebounded quickly and is now a newly-minted police dispatcher for a local community.  Throughout her adult life, Christina has work in positions that have helped people in ways large and small.

Christina's sense of responsibility also extends to her animals.  when she married Walt, she never expected to house and care for so many animals -- at one time eighteen, from dogs and cats to pigmy goats, a Russian tortoise, several bearded dragons, a south american tegu, and various snakes and a black widow spider.  With the passage of time, some of these have moved on to animal heaven and some have moved out with Mark and Erin, but she still has two dogs, two cats, the tortoise, and a bearded dragon.  Earlier this hear, she and Walt trained for and were qualified as official Animal Rescuers; thus far they have only been called to rescue a baby armadillo but they stand ever-ready for the next call.

All in all, Christina is one of the most amazing persons it has been my privilege to know.  I wear my pride for her as a badge of honor.

Oh, and she really likes kimchi and Thai food.

As I look back, I cannot help but remember her as a child, full of wonder and promise.  I guess that's why this song always brings a tear to my eye.  And I know that Kitty and I did a good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urq8m_XBxzA

\

Happy Birthday, Pretty One.

HYMN TIME (AND A BIRTHDAY NOD TO CHRISTINA)

 Martina McBride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45kyH1ABy-8

MIKE STRONG -- ACE PRIVATE EYE (COMIC BOOK COMPILATION)

"Mike Strong is a renamed version of the Saint (Simon Templat), used by Avon Comics in the early 1950s to republish stories after their Saint series (1947-1952) went on hiatus."

This compilation collects stories from:

• Police Line-Up #1 & 2
• Prison Break! #1 & 2
• Captain Steve Savage #2
• Hooded Menace [no number]
• Gangsters and Gunmolls #2
• The Unknown Man [no number]
• Parole Breakers #2
• Famous Gangsters #2; and 
• Boy Detective #4

Included in this hodge-podge is a two-page text story, signed by Mike Strong himself.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=98219&comicpage=&b=i