Alias Basil Willing

by Helen McCloy

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing is in a tobacconist's in Manhattan when another customer follows him into the shop, buys cigarettes, and leaves in a hurry. The man hails a taxi to take him to 51st street with the instruction: 'Come back and call for me; I am Dr Basil Willing.'

Intrigued, the real Basil Willing hails a second taxi and finds himself at a formal dinner party given by a psychiatrist for his patients, who do not really seem at ease there - and later he discovers the horrifying reason why ...

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

IT wasn’t a routine case that came to Basil Willing’s desk in the District Attorney’s office through channels. It was a personal
adventure that he walked into blindly one cold, wet evening in early April.

A lamp glowed softly through the fog on Third Avenue, spotlighting a small shop window. Behind its misted pane stood two humidors japanned in black with Gothic letters in gilt that read
‘Latakia’ and ‘Burley’. Basil opened the door and four Swiss cowbells tinkled in a tremulous chord.

A film of dust coated the miniature showcase. The shop was empty. The sudden roar of an elevated train exploded and diminished, emphasizing the stillness within. Through curtains at the back
shuffled an old man wearing a black skullcap. Only his eyes were dark and lively in a blanched face with white brows and lashes.

Basil asked for two packets of his favourite cigarettes. ‘If you have them.’

‘Oh, yes. I keep a small stock of commercial brands for chance customers like yourself.’

‘But you prefer customers who are more discriminating?’

‘I have a few patrons who pay well for their private blends. Without them, I should starve. Naturally I prefer them.’

Again the bells tinkled as the door opened. The newcomer did not look like a stubbornly individualistic amateur of tobaccos. He looked just the opposite – the Eternal Sucker who will buy
anything or vote for anybody with trancelike obedience to the hypnotic pressure of a strident advertising campaign. He was small and plump in a slack, middle-aged way. Brow and chin receded from a
jutting nose and prominent eyes. The lips, tightly closed, pulled the mouth out of shape, petulantly. Weakness? Worry? Or merely a bad bone structure?

His voice was high and breathless as he asked for the popular cigarette of the moment.

‘Sorry, sir, I’m out of those.’

The little man was annoyed. ‘What do you have?’

The tobacconist named the brand he had sold Basil.

‘Too expensive, but they’ll have to do.’

The glazed white of an evening shirt gleamed between shabby lapels as he reached inside his coat for his wallet and slapped a dollar bill on the counter. ‘Two packets.’

‘Shall I wrap them up?’

‘Don’t bother!’ He stuffed the cigarettes in his coat pocket and hurried towards the door.

‘Your change, sir?’

‘Never mind!’ The bells jangled as the door slammed behind him.

The tobacconist looked at Basil. ‘Odd. First he says too expensive. Then he doesn’t stop to pick up his change.’

‘One of your regular customers?’

‘I never saw him before.’

Basil went out into the street. The hackstand nearby was deserted. The little man stood at the kerb, signalling a private car that looked like a taxi. As it flashed by, he caught sight of a real
taxi across the street. He shouted and stepped off the kerb. A truck, roaring between two elevated pillars, missed him by inches. Basil looked at him curiously. He was not merely hurried or
flustered – he was panicky. The sort of man who would be afraid to cross a street against the lights if he weren’t more afraid of something else . . .

A yellow taxi with rainbow lights rolled through the mist to the hackstand and stopped. Basil wanted a cab himself, but he had not the heart to hail this one when he saw the little man sprinting
towards it.

‘West Eleventh Street!’ He stammered a number, his voice still high and breathless. ‘Can you make it in ten minutes?’

‘Maybe.’ The driver looked at him stolidly, one hand on the flag, ready to pull it down.

‘I want you to come back and call for me there at nine-thirty.’

‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

‘You’ve got to!’ The high voice quavered. ‘There’s twenty bucks in it for you.’ He thrust a bill at the driver.

‘O.K. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. Will you be at the door?’

‘Oh, no! Someone else will answer the bell. You’ll have to ask for me.’

‘What name?’

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ The little man was almost dancing with impatience. His voice was loud and distinct as he said: ‘I am Dr Basil Willing.’

The tail lights of the cab twitched round a corner and vanished. Basil stood at the kerb, numb with astonishment.

Another cab pulled up to the kerb. ‘Taxi, mister?’

Basil felt as if some divine prompter were giving him a cue.

He sprang into the cab. ‘West Eleventh Street.’

As they slowed for a sharp turn, the driver apologized. ‘This is a blind curve.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Basil. ‘There’s no knowing what lies beyond. . . .’

THE little man stammered so much when he gave the house number that Basil couldn’t hear it. But he had noticed the licence number of the taxi as
it swerved around the corner. If he could overtake it before the little man vanished through a doorway . . .

The cab turned off Fifth Avenue into West Eleventh Street.

‘Go slowly here,’ said Basil. ‘I’ll tell you when to stop.’

His heart sank. There was no other taxi in this quiet street of old houses. Across a thoroughfare running north and south, the neon lights of a supermarket stabbed the darkness. Its rear was a
tall, blind wall that shielded a row of houses in the street beyond from the light and noise of the thoroughfare.

These houses drew Basil’s eye because they were different from the others around them – a solid row of identical brick houses, three storeys high, set back from the street, each
storey with its own roofed porch or gallery. Pillars and railings of wrought iron united the galleries in a continuous filigree pattern. At first glance, he seemed to be looking at a single
mansion. Then he saw side railings that divided each narrow front garden from its neighbours. The house numbers were in three digits. So was the house number the little man had stammered. Was it to
one of these he had gone? Which one?

All were tall, shabby, and melancholy, all were withdrawn from the street, all had windows masked by a triple tier of galleries. But, at the kerb before one stood four cars, parked in a row, and
it was the only house where a glimmer of curtained light showed at the windows on the first floor. A starched, white evening shirt – that must mean a party. Luckily Basil himself was dressed
for the evening. He wouldn’t be conspicuous.

‘Let me out here, please,’ he said quietly.

There was a gate in the garden fence. He climbed steep iron steps to the gallery and rang the bell.

The spirit of old New Orleans was pathetically lost in this time and place. The gallery designed for ladies in hoop skirts to take the sun in privacy was empty, dark, and dank. Each inverted
point of filigree fringing the roof gathered moisture from the fog and dripped monotonously as a leaky faucet. There were no leaves on the shrubs below – only a little ivy to cover the naked
ground. Whatever their past, these buildings were probably rooming houses now, as bleak and forlorn inside as out.

The door opened. Nothing had prepared Basil for the sudden glow of warmth, light, and luxury within. It was all on a small scale, but perfectly proportioned, and contrast made it more impressive
here than it might have been elsewhere. A chess-board floor of white and black marble. A fluent, white curve of stair that spiralled up into shadows. An old mirror in a gilt frame hanging against a
wall of pale primrose. Branches of velvety yellow buds accounted for a faint fragrance – mimosa. They were in a Chinese vase, famille noire, glazed with white plum blossom that stood
on a teakwood table.

Through curtains on the right came a low ripple of talk and laughter.

A man took Basil’s hat and coat. He was slight, wiry, agile, more like a jockey than a butler. But he spoke in a butler’s traditionally colourless voice. ‘Name, sir?’

‘Don’t bother to announce me. I want to surprise them.’

Basil stepped through the curtains.

It was a long room with windows at either end. Those in front were curtained. Those at the back stood open to the night and another garden. Above it, the rear windows of houses facing the other
side of this block looked like lighted squares cut out of black paper.

No one looked up. The thick carpet silenced Basil’s step, and, for a moment, he felt invisible. He did not see the little man. Was this the wrong house, after all?

‘Good evening.’

Basil turned. A man stood nearby, tall, muscular, and hardy. His rather full lips were smiling. His blue eyes were alert and amused. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for a
long time,’ he said cordially.

‘You know me?’

‘By a simple process of elimination: all the others are here.’ The man was still smiling. ‘Of course, I know you by reputation and . . . Will you excuse me a moment? I see my
sister is growing impatient.’

‘But . . .’ Basil was left alone.

A woman’s voice spoke at his elbow imperiously. ‘I’ve been expecting you for the last half-hour.’

She sat in a wing chair close to the smouldering fire. Her hair was white; her eyes, deep-set in discoloured sockets; her mouth, drawn. Only the eyes themselves – large, dark, lustrous
– hinted at what she might have been in her youth. She wore violet with a foam of Brussels lace at throat and wrist. One hand held an ebony stick with an ivory handle.

‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ began Basil. ‘I . . .’

‘Mistake?’ She was displeased. Veins as violet as her dress stood out like earthworms coiled under the skin of the hand that clenched the stick. ‘Your voice is different
to-night. Not at all the way it usually sounds.’

‘And I’m sure I look different, too,’ said Basil. ‘You see . . .’

Again she interrupted. ‘Are you laughing at me, sir? You know that I am blind.’

Basil looked at her eyes. For the first time he saw that the pupils were grey with cataract. ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize.’

‘That I’m totally blind? It doesn’t matter. And now . . .’ Her voice sank almost to a whisper. ‘Is anyone standing near enough to overhear us?’

‘No, but . . .’

‘Don’t waste time!’

Basil tried again. ‘If you would let me explain . . .’

‘Not now!’ Suddenly her voice was more pleading than imperious. ‘I hear someone coming. They’re always watching. Leave me at once, please!’

It was impossible to resist the desperate urgency in her voice. Basil moved toward the other end of the room and lit a cigarette, looking about for the little man with the air of someone
searching for an ash tray.

‘Why, Basil Willing! To think of meeting you here!’

An undertone caught his attention. Mockery? Challenge? Or something more subtle?

He turned. The face was pure eighteenth century – arching brows, provoking eyes, flaring nostrils, and demure mouth, all fashioned on such a fine scale and with such a flawless texture
that it was porcelain to the earthenware of the other faces. Her hair was the ripe, dark gold of autumnal wheat. She wore it longer than current fashion, brushed away from brow and ear, free and
floating. Her shoulders were dazzling white above the dense black of a sleeveless gown. ‘You don’t remember me? No matter!’ Soft laughter underlined her next words. ‘We are
all supposed to know each other!’

Again the tone implied a double meaning that escaped him. Something seemed to stir in that part of memory below the threshold of consciousness, but he couldn’t bring it to the surface.
‘Why shouldn’t I be here?’

‘Well, I’ve always associated you with the other side of the fence.’

‘What fence, Rosamund?’

‘Oh!’ She was serious now. ‘So you do remember me?’

‘Who could forget Rosamund Finlay?’

‘Yet we met only a few times. Before the war, wasn’t it? So much has happened since. For one thing, I’m no longer Rosamund Finlay.’

‘You’re married?’ He was surprised. At eighteen Rosamund Finlay had taken the small world of fashion by storm. Newspapers and magazines carried her fame outside that world
until she became a popular symbol of beauty, gaiety, and elegance. But where could this generation find a husband to match the last of the professional beauties?

‘Yes, I’m married.’ Rosamund hesitated. ‘There’s my husband. You know him? Thereon Yorke.’ She looked toward the other end of the room, at a stout,
grey-haired man twice her age who stood before the fire with one hand on the white marble mantelpiece.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Basil.

‘Who hasn’t?’ Was there a touch of disdain in her voice?

‘He’s very fortunate.’

‘Thank you.’ Again a hint of mockery.

Thereon Yorke belonged to another world. During the twenties he had owned the most discreet speakeasy in Manhattan. He was wise in the ways of his own world. No trouble with police. No hint of
the sordid or brutal. His artless young patrons had never believed the stories about his relations with the underworld. He kept those patrons after Repeal. The speakeasy became a night club –
the sort where there is no floor show and the food is as good as the wine. Men who used to come down from Harvard to the speakeasy now brought middle-aged wives and débutante daughters to
the night club, priding themselves on long acquaintance with ‘good old Thereon’. He must have set the final seal on this new respectability by marrying Rosamund Finlay. But why had
Rosamund Finlay married Thereon Yorke?

‘I’ve just remembered,’ Rosamund was saying. ‘You’re married, too. Won’t you bring your wife to see me?’ Her full skirt flared as she turned to look up
at him. In a hollow between two folds there was a flash of light.

‘A spark from my cigarette, I’m afraid,’ began Basil. ‘I . . .’

‘Could a spark do that?’ She turned again more swiftly. This time each hollow rippled with light and the hem lifted to show a lining that glittered like gold. ‘This velvet was
made three hundred years ago in Persia for the cloak of a Seleucid prince. The backing is woven of pure gold thread – the traditional cloth of gold. The pile is fine black silk, so densely
packed that the surface looks black when it’s no. . .