Greenmask!

Book 0: An Ivor Maddox Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'This is a mystery readers' mystery novel, and a beauty' Anthony Boucher Walt McLean, the proprietor of Walt's Malt Shop, had been found dead by his niece. The attack did not appear to be motivated by robbery, but who would want to murder such a harmless and popular man? And what could the message in green really mean? A detective story delectably tied up with one of the greatest of detective classics-Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

“YOU’VE SURE GOT A LOT OF BOOKS, SERGEANT MADDOX,” said
Diane Clinton respectfully.

Maddox agreed that he sure had. It looked like double the number of books it really was, out of the bookshelves and standing around in cartons. He wondered if he’d possibly be able to get
them all shelved today; it was ten o’clock already.

“Why d’you have so many books, Sergeant Maddox?”

“Well, I like books,” said Maddox. All the same, this many— He hadn’t realized just how many he’d accumulated; this was the first time he’d moved in thirteen
years; and all his father’s as well as his own. Somehow he never could resist secondhand bookshops. Everything else had got moved on his day off last week, and was all in place; but the books
were going to occupy him for more than one day, he could see that now. And the number of books, of course, had also made some difficulty in finding a new place; no apartment he’d seen had
anywhere near enough space, and about the only reason he’d taken this little house on the rear of the lot behind the Clintons’ house, on Gregory Avenue, was that there’d be room
for all the books.

He straightened from the nearest carton ruefully and lit a cigarette. Take time for it anyway, couldn’t just shove them in haphazard. At least he’d got all the shelves up and dusted,
ready.

“You used to live ’way out in the valley, didn’t you?” asked Diane interestedly. “I heard Mother say to Daddy. And then you got to be a sergeant and got
transferred.”

Maddox looked down at her resignedly. Nice little girl, ten-year-old Diane, but females—! “So I did,” he agreed. He’d been slightly annoyed about it at first;
there’d been quite a shakeup, several senior officers retiring at more or less the same time. While it was gratifying to achieve promotion at last—he’d passed the sergeant’s
exam three years back—the prospect of getting acquainted with a new station—the Wilcox Avenue station in Hollywood—and an entire new bunch of underlings and superiors hadn’t
been so good. He’d worked out of the Van Nuys station since he’d made rank, seven years ago. But it hadn’t been so bad as he’d thought it might be: Lieutenant Eden a nice
fellow, and his own bunch of detectives friendly too, pretty sharp except for that O’Brien. They’d shaken down to work together by now; he’d been at Wilcox Avenue six months. It
was only after he’d had three months of the long drive back and forth to Van Nuys that he’d started looking for a place in Hollywood; and, owing to all the books, it had taken some
while to find this place.

“I saw your initials on the check you gave Mother,” said Diane. “They’re I. G. What’s your first name, Sergeant Maddox?”

“Ivor.”

“That’s a funny kind of name, isn’t it? I never heard it before. It’s pretty.”

“It’s a Welsh name.”

“Oh. Maddox is a kind of—of unusual name too. What’s that?”

“That’s Welsh too.”

“Oh. What’s the G. for?”

“That,” said Maddox truthfully, “is something I never tell anybody any more.” The last time he’d confided it to anyone, it had been that blonde he’d rather
fancied, Frances something, and she’d laughed so hard she’d nearly choked.

“Oh. Is it very awful?”

“Very,” said Maddox. And where to start? He’d labeled the cartons, of course, but it was still going to be a hell of a job, sorting them out.

“Oh,” said Diane. “Do you carry a gun, Sergeant Maddox? Even if you don’t wear a uniform?”

“We’re encouraged to,” said Maddox. Start on the rear wall of shelves with Archaeology, ought to be getting to Language somewhere around the end of the side wall, and start the
fiction opposite. As good an arrangement as any.

“This is going to be kind of like a library, isn’t it?” said Diane. “Like millionaires’ houses have.”

“Well, so it is,” said Maddox. This was the second little bedroom of the house; there were other shelves in the first bedroom and the living room, but most of them were in here:
plain pine adjustable shelves, some built long ago to his father’s order, some to his. He smiled down at blonde, pretty Diane. “Only resemblance between me and a millionaire.” She
giggled.

“Can I help you put them on the shelves?”

“No, I’m afraid that’s a job for one person,” said Maddox regretfully. “I’d never know where anything was if I didn’t put them all up myself.”

Mrs. Clinton knocked perfunctorily at the open front door and came in. “I thought I’d find you here,” she said to Diane. “Now don’t annoy Sergeant Maddox, dear.
He’s got quite enough to do without listening to you—”

“I’m not annoying him!”

“Quite all right,” said Maddox. Mrs. Clinton was pretty and blonde too.

“Well, even so, you’ve put up with her long enough,” she said, smiling. “Come along, honey, it’s nearly time for your appointment with Dr. Roberts.”

“Oh, Mother!” Diane was urged out reluctantly, flashing him a farewell smile.

Maddox put out his cigarette and wandered across to his bedroom. He studied his reflection in the mirror over the bureau; not for the first time he thought that it was a very peculiar
circumstance indeed, because nobody would call him handsome. He’d just scraped past the minimum-height requirements at five-nine-and-a-half, and he was usually a few pounds underweight for
that. Thin dark face completely undistinguished, black hair, straight nose, ordinary blue eyes, you could call it a lantern jaw, and he usually looked as if he needed a shave. Thick mat of chest
hair growing up to his throat, visible as his shirt was unbuttoned.

He shook his head at himself. It remained a mystery, as it had for eighteen-odd years since he’d first begun to discover it at the age of thirteen. Why females found Ivor Maddox so
fascinating he’d never know, and it was sometimes very damned awkward. In fact, very probably it was one reason he hadn’t got promoted to sergeant until three years after he’d
been eligible. The L.A.P.D. had a lot of puritanical rules and regulations about that kind of thing; the only black marks on his record, over his ten years’ service, had all got there because
of those females. It wasn’t as if he was a wolf, deliberately out hunting them; it wasn’t really fair. All he wanted was a nice quiet life outside hours, time to read; but they
would come hanging around, and after all—

Maddox sighed. He’d overheard Captain Samuels that day, talking to Lieutenant Eden on the phone—just after the transfer had come through. Captain Samuels had sounded a little uneasy.
“If you’ll just keep it in mind and make allowances, that’s all. He’s a damn good man, if he does have his own way of going at things—sharp as they come, see.
Only—and it sounds like a hell of a funny thing to say, but I don’t think the guy can help it—he’s always getting mixed up with some woman. They chase the hell out of him. I
can’t see that it affects his work any, and he’s perfectly honest and trustworthy, nothing like that, see. So if you’d just close an eye occasionally—”

Maddox sighed again. He appreciated Captain Samuels’ well-meant effort; maybe it had made some difference. . . . He went back to the other room. Just the cross he had to bear, he thought:
everybody had some liability to live with. And this last six months he’d managed to avoid any actual chewing-out up at Internal Affairs—the lieutenant had just lectured him over that
girl from Texas, and later on that redhead—

He found the carton labeled A-1 and took out the first book on top. Meeting Prehistoric Man, Von Koenigswald. But better start out with Velikovsky; then he’d always know where to
lay hands on him. Though Oedipus and Akhnaton would have to go elsewhere, of course. . . .

Half an hour later he’d got as far as A World History of Art, when the phone rang. Resignedly he went to answer it, with a premonition of what it would be.

It was Detective César Rodriguez. “Pity to spoil your day off,” he said. “The lieutenant tried to get Anderson first, but he’s not home.”

“No, he wouldn’t be,” said Maddox. “Something’s come up?”

“What a Sherlock,” said Rodriguez. “Something’s come up. An assault—and it may turn into a homicide. Somebody’s got to look at it.”

Maddox looked at the cartons of books and said, “Oh, hell. All right, where?”

“Out on Fountain Avenue,” and Rodriguez gave him the address. “Guy ran a little hole-in-the-wall malt shop. Assaulted probably last night about the time he closed up.
It’s a very offbeat one, very intriguing. Which is about all we have as of now. D’Arcy and I’ll meet you there.”

“O.K.,” said Maddox. He went into the bedroom, chose a tie at random, buttoned the two top shirt buttons and tied the tie. He put on his gray suit jacket and found his rather
battered felt hat, checked his pockets for keys and went out. A little curving paved walk led around the larger Clinton house to the street; he’d left the scarlet Frazer Nash in the
street.

As he slid under the wheel, he reflected again that maybe it was partly the cars he drove that attracted the females. If he had, maybe, just a common ordinary Olds or Buick— But he liked
exotic cars; and he knew that wasn’t the whole answer. He’d had the Frazer Nash for nearly two years, having traded the gull-wing Mercedes on her; and he liked her very well. He
didn’t get the twenty-four to the gallon they claimed for her, but with an eight-cylinder engine you couldn’t expect it. On the whole, a very nice one to handle.

He drove up to Fountain and turned left, looking at addresses. A few blocks this side of Fairfax—short business block—he spotted D’Arcy’s car and found a slot for the
Frazer Nash across the street.

It was a small shop, one of a line of about a dozen, all in one one-story building. Above the door, a sign: WALT’S MALT SHOP. The door was
open; he went in.

D’Arcy and Rodriguez were there, just standing around talking while a couple of boys from Prints were busy behind the counter. D’Arcy and Rodriguez were the two detectives Maddox
usually worked with, and they all got along fine. He and D’Arcy had found a bond right away in both having funny names; nobody called D’Arcy by his first name unless they were asking
for a fight; and César Rodriguez got along with everybody. Maddox grinned at them there, they looked so typical of themselves—D’Arcy nudging six-four, lanky and dark, Rodriguez
six inches under him, dapper and mustached; as usual, it was D’Arcy who was talking, gesturing with Latin dramatics, while Rodriguez looked bored and cynical.

“So what’s the story?” he asked, coming up.

“Talk about offbeat,” said D’Arcy. “I’ve got a hunch this won’t be the last we’ll hear of this boy, Ivor. Maybe a real nut. Take it from the
start—this Walt, Walt McLean, fellow in his sixties or around there, he’s run this place about twenty years. This we get from his niece—only relative, he’s a widower. He
makes a decent living, nothing spectacular, you know. Well, he lives in a run-down little court over on Kingsley, lived there for years, and the manager and his wife are friends of his, see? So
they notice it when he doesn’t come home the usual time last night. He usually stays open until about nine, gets home around nine thirty.”

“All alone in the place?” asked Maddox, looking around. Four small booths, ten stools at the counter. A meager menu posted up above the sink and griddles behind the counter:
hamburgers, a few different kinds of sandwiches obtainable, malts, sundaes, sodas, the usual soft drinks.

“He had a woman who came in to help him,” said Rodriguez in his usual precise tone, “from noon until six o’clock. After six he’d be alone. I don’t suppose he
had such a spate of customers.”

“No. And?”

“Well, the manager’s apartment is right next to McLean’s,” went on D’Arcy, “and he hadn’t come in by the time they went to bed. So this morning they
felt a little worried about it, you know—McLean being an old fellow of very regular habits, I gather—and called here, got no answer. So they called his niece—one Marcia
Dwight—and told her. And she got worried, and asked her boss for time off—she’s a secretary down at Dean Witter’s—and came up here. Finds the front door locked, goes
around to the back—there’s a little alley runs behind all these stores—and sees McLean on the floor of the back room, through the glass panel of that door. So she calls us. The
ambulance boys say the poor old guy’d probably been lying there since about nine last night. He’s not dead, or wasn’t then, but they didn’t sound very hopeful about his
chances. Head bashed in with something like a two-by-four. Traces of wood splinters in the wounds.”

“Yes,” said Maddox. “He’d evidently just locked up for the night. Our boy slipping in by the alley, waiting for him to come into the back room. He’d go out the back
door as a rule?”

“I’d guess so. The store owners mostly park back there. His car’s still there—old Dodge.”

“How much was missing?” asked Maddox. “Doesn’t look very offbeat to me.”

Rodriguez gave him a happy smile. Rodriguez liked the offbeat ones; routine bored him. “By inference, not a dime taken, amigo,” he said. “We’ve talked to the
niece. She’s at the hospital now. She was quite close to her uncle—only relative, after all—and familiar with the business. She told us how he managed his take. Every night he
took home what was in the cash register, and next day, as soon as this Mrs. Oliver arrived to take over the counter, he went to the bank on Santa Monica Boulevard two blocks down and deposited it.
She said an average day’s take might be around thirty-five bucks.”

“Yes?” said Maddox.

Rodriguez contemplated his cigarette. “McLean had thirty-seven dollars and forty-three cents on him. Also his almost-new Longines watch that his niece gave him for his birthday, and a ruby
ring he always wore.”

“Oh,” said Maddox. “I see.”

“Come and see something else,” invited Rodriguez.

Maddox followed them to the rear of the counter. There was a narrow doorway—this was an old building—into a very small rear storeroom. It was L-shaped: a slice had been cut out of it
to make a tiny lavatory. There were shelves for storage, a second refrigerator, a door leading out to the alley. “That’s where he was,” said D’Arcy. “Right in the
middle of the floor, face down. You can see the bloodstains. Head toward the door into the shop. Saying maybe that X came in the back door as he had his back turned? But the point is—that.
They had to move it off him to get him onto the stretcher, but the squad-car boys are fairly smart these days, they saw to it, it wasn’t touched. That’s where it was, right on top of
the body— Well, that is, hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Hasn’t been printed yet,” said Rodriguez enjoyably.

“You don’t tell me,” said Maddox. He squatted down and looked.

The first item was a Thomas Brothers Los Angeles County Guide. A fairly thick softcover book, this year’s edition, it would contain approximately a hundred and ten maps of different county
areas, and a street guide at the back. Tied neatly around its middle was a strip of bright green satin ribbon, knotted in a bow. And tucked under the ribbon was a roughly torn half sheet of
typewriter-size paper with a rudely printed message on it in green ink, obviously done with a ballpoint pen: This is Number One! Greenmask.

“Oh, no,” said Maddox. “I don’t believe this. Are you playing a practical joke, César? Kind of thing you’d dream up.”

Rodriguez laughed. “Not me, hermano. There it was. So help me.”

“So help me!” said D’Arcy. “Craziest damn thing— That’s why I said, a nut. You see what I mean. I mean, I ask you, who’d do such a lunatic
thing?”

“Except anybody,” said Maddox sadly, “who’s ever read any one of about a thousand bad detective novels, circa approximately nineteen twenty.” He stood up
and groped for cigarettes. And then, in the act of lighting one, he let the match die and stared down at that melodramatic little display. “Now what in hell— That’s trying to say
something to me. . . . No, it’s gone, I can’t pin it down. Of all the weird setups. My God.”

“I told you,” said Rodriguez. “Offbeat. I like it. There won’t be any useful prints, you know. This is going to be quite a thing, I’ve got a hunch. All get our
names in the papers on this one.”

“Just a little ray of sunshine,” said Maddox.

“Well, it is a funny one,” said D’Arcy. “You can see. The niece said she was sure McLean didn’t have one of those county guides. Doesn’t do much
driving. And the way it was left, right on top of—”

“And the message. That message!” said Rodriguez. “Number One. The experts won’t be able to tell us anything from printing, you know. One of these schizos, with a
persecution complex, it’ll be. Like that Roland last year.” He was all but rubbing his hands together pleasedly. “I wonder—will Number Two be another malt-shop owner, or
just an old man in the sixties, or—”

“For the love of God!” said Maddox. “Let’s not go so fast. Greenmask. I ask you. This is ridiculous. . . . He could have cleaned out the register. The thirty-seven bucks
on McLean needn’t have been in the register—maybe he just missed that.”

“You don’t really think so,” said Rodriguez. “The niece says McLean never carried more on him than five or six bucks—except for the day’s take before he went
to the bank. And,” he added almost pleasurably, “no leads at all, you notice—on the surface. There won’t be any prints.” At which juncture the men from Prints came in
and chased them out temporarily.

“For God’s sake!” said Maddox. “Greenmask. Shades of Farjeon . . . Somebody being clever. I wonder why. I do wonder.” He was silent, rocking a little meditatively,
back and forth; and then he said, “Yes. Make it look like that—the lunatic. Something outside. Something impersonal. Because it really wasn’t? Because it really was something very
personal? Somebody being detective-story smart?”

“No,” said Rodriguez. “Your besetting sin—making it too complicated. It’s the typical schizo.”

“The niece says he didn’t have many friends,” said D’Arcy. “Lived very quiet. Doesn’t look as if it could be like that, any personal reason. Ordinary harmless
old guy, you know. No money. No relatives except the niece. And she’s quite a dish, by the way—about twenty-six, brunette, movie-star figure—”

“Oh, hell and damnation,” said Maddox unhappily. Right from the start, he didn’t like this case; such a hell of a funny case, and with a female like that in it, so probably
he’d wind up getting into trouble again with I.A. All so damned unfair—

Greenmask, he thought. My God. What the hell? A bad 1920 crime novel.

“WELL,” HE SAID, “WE HAVE TO WORK IT. LET’S HAVE a look at that alley. Or have you looked?”

They hadn’t. They’d questioned the niece until she’d asked if she could go to the hospital, and then just waited for Maddox, talking it over.

“Reason you haven’t made sergeant,” said Maddox. “He might have dropped the weapon on the run, and the sooner we locate it—” They edged past the boys from
Prints, who yelped at them for God’s sake not to touch that qualified door. “Oh,” said Maddox a little blankly. “No, I suppose not, sorry.”

“Such a smart sergeant,” said D’Arcy. They went back through the shop, out the front door and down to the corner, counting shop fronts. The alley began about thirty feet up, to
the left. It was wide enough so that several cars were parked on the rear side; it was bounded there by the back yards of the houses on the next street—a middle-class street of old frame
bungalows mostly. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people kept their yards up too well—only a few of those yards showed any attempt at a lawn, a few flower beds, and a couple of
them were evidently let to run wild: dry brown grass in patches, bare earth, long-untrimmed ivy straggling up over the roof of a ramshackle garage. But the yard one lot down from the rear door of
McLean’s shop showed some evidence of care: a watered, trimmed lawn, some weeded beds around the back of the house, and the house had been repainted recently.

“I thought we were looking for the weapon,” said D’Arcy.

“Yes. We will. You two will then knock on some doors on that block, first on that one, and ask if anybody heard any noises in the alley last night.”

“You deduce,” said Rodriguez, “that that householder, who is something of a gardener, might have been out in his yard gardening?. . .