As Dark as Christmas Gets

  AS DARK AS CHRISTMAS GETS

  Lawrence Block

  It was 9:54 in the morning when I got to the little bookshop on West 56th Street. Before I went to work for Leo Haig I probably wouldn't have bothered to look at my watch, if I was even wearing one in the first place, and the best I'd have been able to say was it was around ten o'clock. But Haig wanted me to be his legs and eyes, and sometimes his ears, nose and throat, and if he was going to play in Nero Wolfe's league, that meant I had to turn into Archie Goodwin, for Pete's sake, noticing everything and getting the details right and reporting conversations verbatim.

  Well, forget that last part. My memory's getting better—Haig's right about that part—but what follows won't be word for word, because all I am is a human being. If you want a tape recorder, buy one.

  There was a lot of fake snow in the window, and a Santa Claus doll in handcuffs, and some toy guns and knives, and a lot of mysteries with a Christmas theme, including the one by Fredric Brown where the murderer dresses up as a department store Santa. (Someone pulled that a year ago, put on a red suit and a white beard and shot a man at the corner of Broadway and 37th, and I told Haig how ingenious I thought it was. He gave me a look, left the room, and came back with a book. I read it—that's what I do when Haig hands me a book—and found out Brown had had the idea fifty years earlier. Which doesn't mean that's where the killer got the idea. The book's long out of print—the one I read was a paperback, and falling apart, not like the handsome hardcover copy in the window. And how many killers get their ideas out of old books?)

  Now if you're a detective yourself you'll have figured out two things by now—the bookshop specialized in mysteries, and it was the Christmas season. And if you'd noticed the sign in the window you'd have made one more deduction, i.e., that they were closed.

  I went down the half flight of steps and poked the buzzer. When nothing happened I poked it again, and eventually the door was opened by a little man with white hair and a white beard—all he needed was padding and a red suit, and someone to teach him to be jolly. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, "but I'm afraid we're closed. It's Christmas morning, and it's not even ten o'clock."

  "You called us," I said, "and it wasn't even nine o'clock."

  He took a good look at me, and light dawned. "You're Harrison," he said. "And I know your first name, but I can't—"

  "Chip," I supplied.

  "Of course. But where's Haig? I know he thinks he's Nero Wolfe, but he's not gone housebound, has he? He's been here often enough in the past."

  "Haig gets out and about," I agreed, "but Wolfe went all the way to Montana once, as far as that goes. What Wolfe refused to do was leave the house on business, and Haig's with him on that one. Besides, he just spawned some unspawnable cichlids from Lake Chad, and you'd think the aquarium was a television set and they were showing Midnight Blue."

  "Fish." He sounded more reflective than contemptuous. "Well, at least you're here. That's something." He locked the door and led me up a spiral staircase to a room full of books, and full as well with the residue of a party. There were empty glasses here and there, hors d'oeuvres trays that held nothing but crumbs, and a cut-glass dish with a sole remaining cashew.

  "Christmas," he said, and shuddered. "I had a houseful of people here last night. All of them eating, all of them drinking, and many of them actually singing." He made a face. "I didn't sing," he said, "but I certainly ate and drank. And eventually they all went home and I went upstairs to bed. I must have, because that's where I was when I woke up two hours ago."

  "But you don't remember."

  "Well, no," he said, "but then what would there be to remember? The guests leave and you're alone with vague feelings of sadness." His gaze turned inward. "If she'd stayed," he said, "I'd have remembered."

  "She?"

  "Never mind. I awoke this morning, alone in my own bed. I swallowed some aspirin and came downstairs. I went into the library."

  "You mean this room?"

  "This is the salesroom. These books are for sale."

  "Well, I figured. I mean, this is a bookshop."

  "You've never seen the library?" He didn't wait for an answer but turned to open a door and lead me down a hallway to another room twice the size of the first. It was lined with floor-to-ceiling hardwood shelves, and the shelves were filled with double rows of hardcover books. It was hard to identify the books, though, because all but one section was wrapped in plastic sheeting.

  "This is my collection," he announced. "These books are not for sale. I'll only part with one if I've replaced it with a finer copy. Your employer doesn't collect, does he?"

  "Haig? He's got thousands of books."

  "Yes, and he's bought some of them from me. But he doesn't give a damn about first editions. He doesn't care what kind of shape a book is in, or even if it's got a dust jacket. He'd as soon have a Grosset reprint or a bookclub edition or even a paperback."

  "He just wants to read them."

  "It takes all kinds, doesn't it?" He shook his head in wonder. "Last night's party filled this room as well as the salesroom. I put up plastic to keep the books from getting handled and possibly damaged. Or—how shall I put this?"

  Any way you want, I thought. You're the client.

  "Some of these books are extremely valuable," he said. "And my guests were all extremely reputable people, but many of them are good customers, and that means they're collectors. Ardent, even rabid collectors."

  "And you didn't want them stealing the books."

  "You're very direct," he said. "I suppose that's a useful quality in your line of work. But no, I didn't want to tempt anyone, especially when alcoholic indulgence might make temptation particularly difficult to resist."

  "So you hung up plastic sheets."

  "And came downstairs this morning to remove the plastic, and pick up some dirty glasses and clear some of the debris. I puttered around. I took down the plastic from this one section, as you can see. I did a bit of tidying. And then I saw it."

  "Saw what?"

  He pointed to a set of glassed-in shelves, on top of which stood a three-foot row of leather-bound volumes. "There," he said. "What do you see?"

  "Leather-bound books, but—"

  "Boxes," he corrected. "Wrapped in leather and stamped in gold, and each one holding a manuscript. They're fashioned to look like finely-bound books, but they're original manuscripts."

  "Very nice," I said. "I suppose they must be very rare."

  "They're unique."

  "That too."

  He made a face. "One of a kind. The author's original manuscript, with corrections in his own hand. Most are typed, but the Elmore Leonard is handwritten. The Westlake, of course, is typed on that famous Smith-Corona manual portable of his. The Paul Kavanagh is the author's first novel. He only wrote three, you know."

  I didn't, but Haig would.

  "They're very nice," I said politely. "And I don't suppose they're for sale."

  "Of course not. They're in the library. They're part of the collection."

  "Right," I said, and paused for him to continue. When he didn't I said, "Uh, I was thinking. Maybe you could tell me ..."

  "Why I summoned you here." He sighed. "Look at the boxed manuscript between the Westlake and the Kavanagh."

  "Between them?"

  "Yes."

  "The Kavanagh is Such Men are Dangerous," I said, "and the Westlake is Drowned Hopes. But there's nothing at all between them but a three-inch gap."

  "Exactly," he said.

  "As Dark as It Gets," I said. "By Cornell Woolrich." Haig frowned. "I don't know the book," he said. "Not under that title, not with Woolrich's name on it, nor William Irish or George Hopley. Those were his pen names."
/>
  "I know," I said. "You don't know the book because it was never published. The manuscript was found among Woolrich's effects after his death."

  "There was a posthumous book, Chip."

  "Into the Night," I said. "Another writer completed it, writing replacement scenes for some that had gone missing in the original. It wound up being publishable."

  "It wound up being published," Haig said. "That's not necessarily the same thing. But this manuscript, As Dark—"

  "As It Gets. It wasn't publishable, according to our client. Woolrich evidently worked on it over the years, and what survived him incorporated unresolved portions of several drafts. There are characters who die early on and then reappear with no explanation. There's supposed to be some great writing and plenty of Woolrich's trademark paranoid suspense, but it doesn't add up to a book, or even something that could be edited into a book. But to a collector—"

  "Collectors," Haig said heavily.

  "Yes, sir. I asked what the manuscript was worth. He said, 'Well, I paid five thousand dollars for it.' That's verbatim, but don't ask me if the thing's worth more or less than that, because I don't know if he was bragging that he was a big spender or a slick trader."

  "It doesn't matter," Haig said. "The money's the least of it. He added it to his collection and he wants it back."

  "And the person who stole it," I said, "is either a friend or a customer or both."

  "And so he called us and not the police. The manuscript was there when the party started?"

  "Yes."

  "And gone this morning?"

  "Yes."

  "And there were how many in attendance?"

  "Forty or fifty," I said, "including the caterer and her staff."

  "If the party was catered," he mused, "why was the room a mess when you saw it? Wouldn't the catering staff have cleaned up at the party's end?"

  "I asked him that question myself. The party lasted longer than the caterer had signed on for. She hung around herself for a while after her employees packed it in, but she stopped working and became a guest. Our client was hoping she would stay."

  "But you just said she did."

  "After everybody else went home. He lives upstairs from the bookshop, and he was hoping for a chance to show her his living quarters."

  Haig shrugged. He's not quite the misogynist his idol is, but he hasn't been at it as long. Give him time. He said, "Chip, it's hopeless. Fifty suspects?"

  "Six."

  "How so?"

  "By two o'clock," I said, "just about everybody had called it a night. The ones remaining got a reward."

  "And what was that?"

  "Some fifty-year-old Armagnac, served in Waterford pony glasses. We counted the glasses, and there were seven of them. Six guests and the host."

  "And the manuscript?"

  "Was still there at the time, and still sheathed in plastic. See, he'd covered all the boxed manuscripts, same as the books on the shelves. But the cut-glass ship's decanter was serving as a sort of bookend to the manuscript section, and he took off the plastic to get at it. And while he was at it he took out one of the manuscripts and showed it off to his guests."

  "Not the Woolrich, I don't suppose."

  "No, it was a Peter Straub novel, elegantly handwritten in a leather-bound journal. Straub collects Chandler, and our client had traded a couple of Chandler firsts for the manuscript, and he was proud of himself."

  "I shouldn't wonder."

  "But the Woolrich was present and accounted for when he took off the plastic wrap, and it may have been there when he put the Straub back. He didn't notice."

  "And this morning it was gone."

  "Yes."

  "Six suspects," he said. "Name them."

  I took out my notebook. "Jon and Jayne Corn-Wallace," I said. "He's a retired stockbroker, she's an actress in a daytime drama. That's a soap opera."

  "Piffle."

  "Yes, sir. They've been friends of our client for years, and customers for about as long. They were mystery fans, and he got them started on first editions."

  "Including Woolrich?"

  "He's a favorite of Jayne's. I gather Jon can take him or leave him."

  "I wonder which he did last night. Do the Corn-Wallaces collect manuscripts?"

  "Just books. First editions, though they're starting to get interested in fancy bindings and limited editions. The one with a special interest in manuscripts is Zoltan Mihalyi."

  "The violinist?"

  Trust Haig to know that. I'd never heard of him myself. "A big mystery fan," I said. "I guess reading passes the time on those long concert tours."

  "I don't suppose a man can spend all his free hours with other men's wives," Haig said. "And who's to say that all the stories are true? He collects manuscripts, does he?"

  "He was begging for a chance to buy the Straub, but our friend wouldn't sell."

  "Which would make him a likely suspect. Who else?"

  "Philip Perigord."

  "The writer?"

  "Right, and I didn't even know he was still alive. He hasn't written anything in years."

  "Almost twenty years. More Than Murder was published in 1980."

  Trust him to know that, too. "Anyway," I said, "he didn't die. He didn't even stop writing. He just quit writing books. He went to Hollywood and became a screenwriter."

  "That's the same as stopping writing," Haig reflected. "It's very nearly the same as being dead. Does he collect books?"

  "No."

  "Manuscripts?"

  "No."

  "Perhaps he wanted the manuscripts for scrap paper," Haig said. "He could turn the pages over and write on their backs. Who else was present?"

  "Edward Everett Stokes."

  "The small-press publisher. Bought out his partner, Geoffrey Poges, to became sole owner of Stokes-Poges Press."

  "They do limited editions, according to our client. Leather bindings, small runs, special tip-in sheets."

  "All well and good," he said, "but what's useful about Stokes-Poges is that they issue a reasonably priced trade edition of each title as well, and publish works otherwise unavailable, including collections of short fiction from otherwise uncollected writers."

  "Do they publish Woolrich?"

  "All his work has been published by mainstream publishers, and all his stories collected. Is Stokes a collector himself?"

  "Our client didn't say."

  "No matter. How many is that? The Corn-Wallaces, Zoltan Mihalyi, Philip Perigord, E. E. Stokes. And the sixth is—"

  "Harriet Quinlan."

  He looked puzzled, then nodded in recognition. "The literary agent."

  "She represents Perigord," I said, "or at least she would, if he ever went back to novel-writing. She's placed books with Stokes-Poges. And she may have left the party with Zoltan Mihalyi."

  "I don't suppose her client list includes the Woolrich estate. Or that she's a rabid collector of books and manuscripts."

  "He didn't say."

  "No matter. You said six suspects, Chip. I count seven."

  I ticked them off. "Jon Corn-Wallace. Jayne Corn-Wallace. Zoltan Mihalyi. Philip Perigord. Edward Everett Stokes. Harriet Quinlan. Isn't that six? Or do you want to include our client, the little man with the palindromic first name? That seems farfetched to me, but—"

  "The caterer, Chip."

  "Oh. Well, he says she was just there to do a job. No interest in books, no interest in manuscripts, no real interest in the world of mysteries. Certainly no interest in Cornell Woolrich."

  "And she stayed when her staff went home."

  "To have a drink and be sociable. He had hopes she'd spend the night, but it didn't happen. I suppose technically she's a suspect, but—"

  "At the very least she's a witness," he said. "Bring her."

  "Bring her?"

  He nodded. "Bring them all."

  It's a shame this is a short story. If it were a novel, now would be the time for me to give you a full description of the off-street carr
iage house on West Twentieth Street, which Leo Haig owns and where he occupies the top two floors, having rented out the lower two stories to Madam Juana and her All-Girl Enterprise. You'd hear how Haig had lived for years in two rooms in the Bronx, breeding tropical fish and reading detective stories, until a modest inheritance allowed him to set up shop as a poor man's Nero Wolfe.

  He's quirky, God knows, and I could fill a few pleasant pages recounting his quirks, including his having hired me as much for my writing ability as for my potential value as a detective. I'm expected to write up his cases the same way Archie Goodwin writes up Wolfe's, and this case was a slam-dunk, really, and he says it wouldn't stretch into a novel, but that it should work nicely as a short story.

  So all I'll say is this. Haig's best quirk is his unshakable belief that Nero Wolfe exists. Under another name, of course, to protect his inviolable privacy. And the legendary brownstone, with all its different fictitious street numbers, isn't on West 35 th Street at all but in another part of town entirely.

  And someday, if Leo Haig performs with sufficient brilliance as a private investigator, he hopes to get the ultimate reward—an invitation to dinner at Nero Wolfe's table.

  Well, that gives you an idea. If you want more in the way of background, I can only refer you to my previous writings on the subject. There have been two novels so far, Make Out With Muider and The Topless Tulip Caper, and they're full of inside stuff about Leo Haig. (There were two earlier books from before I met Haig, No Score and Chip Harrison Scores Again, but they're not mysteries and Haig's not in them. All they do, really, is tell you more than you'd probably care to know about me.)

  Well, end of commercial. Haig said I should put it in, and I generally do what he tells me. After all, the man pays my salary.

  And, in his own quiet way, he's a genius. As you'll see.

  "They'll never come here," I told him. "Not today. I know it will always live in your memory as The Day the Cichlids Spawned, but to everybody else it's Christmas, and they'll want to spend it in the bosoms of their families, and—"

  "Not everyone has a family," he pointed out, "and not every family has a bosom."

  "The Corn-Wallaces have a family. Zoltan Mihalyi doesn't, but he's probably got somebody with a bosom lined up to spend the day with. I don't know about the others, but—"