The Lethal Sex Read online

  The Lethal Sex

  A Mystery Writers of America Classic Anthology

  Christianna Brand

  Ursula Curtis

  Margaret Millar

  Bernice Carey

  Margaret Manners

  Anthony Gilbert

  Jean Potts

  Miriam Allen deFord

  Gladys Cluff

  Carolyn Thomas

  Nedra Tyre

  D. Jenkins Smith

  Veronica Parker Johns

  Juanita Sheridan

  Edited by

  John D. MacDonald

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  THE LETHAL SEX

  Copyright © 1959 by Mystery Writers of America.

  A Mystery Writers of America Presents: MWA Classics Book published by arrangement with the authors

  Cover art image by Mr. Nikon

  Cover design by David Allan Kerber

  Editorial and layout by Stonehenge Editorial

  * * *

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Mystery Writers of America Presents: MWA Classics edition / June 2018

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.

  Mystery Writers of America gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyrighted material in this book.

  Every effort has been made to locate the copyright holders or their heirs and assigns and to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material, and MWA would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

  For information contact: Mystery Writers of America, 1140 Broadway, Suite 1507, New York, NY 10001

  Contents

  A Message from Mystery Writers of America

  A Matronizing Preface

  A Word to the Men

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Postscript

  Dear Mr. MacDonald by Christianna Brand

  Snowball by Ursula Curtis

  McGowney’s Miracle by Margaret Millar

  He Got What He Deserved by Bernice Carey

  Two for Tea by Margaret Manners

  You’ll Be the Death of Me by Anthony Gilbert

  The Withered Heart by Jean Potts

  To Be Found and Read by Miriam Allen deFord

  Sleeping Dogs or Now You Know by Gladys Cluff

  A Matter of Ethics by Carolyn Thomas

  What Is Going to Happen? by Nedra Tyre

  Thirty-Nine by D. Jenkins Smith

  No Trace by Veronica Parker Johns

  There Are No Snakes in Hawaii by Juanita Sheridan

  Afterword

  A Message from Mystery Writers of America

  The stories in this collection are products of their specific time and place, namely, the USA in 1959. Some of the writing contains dated attitudes and offensive ideas. That certain thoughtless slurs were commonplace—and among writers, whose prime task is to inhabit the skin of all their characters—can be both troubling and cause for thought.

  We decided to publish these stories as they originally appeared, rather than sanitize the objectionable bits with a modern editorial pencil. These stories should be seen as historical mysteries, reflective of their age. If their lingering prejudices make us uncomfortable, well, perhaps history’s mirror is accurate, and the attitudes are not so distant as we might have hoped.

  A Matronizing Preface

  Let me start by saying that in the twenty-first century, no all-women collection would be edited by a man. Its publishers would be assaulted—if not physically, then by howls of derision.

  And the notes that Mr. MacDonald tacked onto the stories? His series of introductions-plus-a-postscript that declare his hearty masculine humor at having been put in charge of all these flighty and (chuckle!) formidable women?

  Even when a reader sweeps aside the “gals”, “girls”, and requisite thanks to the patient wife, the presence of no fewer than five comments to the reader makes one suspect a degree of unease, a vague niggling awareness that Edgar-winner Margaret Millar or international bestseller Christianna Brand might have been a better choice than a pulp writer of manly men. (And this was in 1959, years before MacDonald’s Travis McGee came on the scene with his long series of wounded women in need of rescue.)

  “I like women,” MacDonald writes in his fourth of those notes. “I am in that male minority which is perfectly willing to concede that they are people, and treat them as such.”

  John D. MacDonald: woke guy of the 1950s. But one wonders if the gentleman doth protest a bit much. His assertion of approval feels uncomfortably close to, “Some of my best friends are ___ (fill in the blank).”

  Why is there is no feminist equivalent of the word patronizing? Is it because women don’t need a loud reassurance of superiority? Because in our bones we know that true power lies in the Y chromosome? Because the bluster and muscle-flexing of even post-adolescent males causes us quiet (one might say, motherly) amusement, rather than a dad’s back-slapping humor?

  So why didn’t MWA ask a woman crime writer to head this collection back in 1959? Indeed, why didn’t we, the modern MWA, just edit away MacDonald’s protestations of egalitarian camaraderie in our Classics re-issue?

  Perhaps because allowing a hearty male to belittle a group of his equals as “girls” only serves to point out that none of these writers needed his approval to do their job.

  No, we chose to publish this collection of gems with an acknowledgment of the flaws in their setting, and a complacent smile at the befuddled jest of MacDonald’s alternative title: The Modern Man’s Guide and Handbook for Understanding a Creative Woman.

  Millar, Brand, and the rest of them don’t need us to lodge a protest on their behalf, six decades later.

  They would merely ask us to give Mr. MacDonald a matronizing pat on the head, and get on with the job of being competent, creative…and yes: lethal.

  Laurie R. King

  MWA Publications

  Committee Chair

  A Word to the Men

  This is an exotic banquet I set before you. Every story was written by a female, and their brilliance, their shrewdness, their capacity for horror may surprise those of you still foolish enough to think of woman as the weaker sex. I personally prefer to call this book The Modern Man’s Guide and Handbook for Understanding a Creative Woman.

  JOHN D. MACDONALD

  To all those unsung heroes of modern letters, those harassed, unraveled, ink-stained wretches, the professional editors. At last I understand their problems.

  Acknowledgments

  I acknowledge fervent thanks to my wife, Dorothy, for accepting my rationalizations as to why I took on this particular chore, and for responding with but the irreducible minimum of skepticism
; to Dr. Samuel R. Warson, my friend and neighbor, for graciously consenting to give us his wise, clinical opinion of the creative female; to Hillary Waugh and Stephen Marlowe, fellow serfs in this crazy vineyard, for bolstering my often shaky judgment in the final selection; to Knox Burger, the editor who helped conceive this project, for his help and for not laughing out loud too often at this, my virginal editorial experience; to Catherine Barth of the MWA home office for keeping procedures tidy and even cheerful; and to all the gals who came through with stories for the book, not only for their co-operation, but for their understanding that I would have been happier could I have used every single one.

  Introduction

  All the stories in this book were written by women. A significant number of the villainous types in the stories are women. This is the first editing chore I have ever done. The way I feel at the moment, it will be the last.

  Yet, even though the time consumed has cost me a book of my own and there has been a special remorse and heartbreak in having to throw out so many good stories because there just wasn’t room for them, I am glad I did it.

  I wrote imploring letters to the eighty-odd female members of the Mystery Writers of America. I had to go with my hat in my hand because all monies from this anthology go into the MWA treasury. They responded, and, when you have read the book you will know how handsomely. Should any man care to give his life a flavor of vivid unreality I suggest he engage in a simultaneous correspondence with eighty women. Eighty female writers! I will say, without critical intent, that a certain percentage of all women are neurotic. A certain percentage of all writers are flamboyantly neurotic. In those cases where the personal and professional neuroses overlap, you can find yourself opening mail that makes your knees buckle.

  Naturally, all the contributors to this collection are splendid, stable types, beautifully adjusted to both their femininity and their talent. All? Read the stories and make your own guesses.

  I like women. I am in that male minority which is perfectly willing to concede that they are people, and treat them as such. But I do not understand them. Out of unguessable motivations and indefinable applications of inexplicable instinct, they can always produce the irrational act. And then justify it.

  Had I, in my coward heart, ever felt the sneaky yen to emulate the career of a Casanova, this boyish dream has been cruelly obliterated. If it takes only an inundation of spirited professional correspondence with women to make me highly nervous, I can not help but wonder how catastrophic would be the results of an equal number of personal associations. I can now see that the modem occupation known as International Playboy requires much more than suavity, money and social charm. It requires, primarily, nerves of tungsten steel.

  It is traditional, I am told, for anthologists to explain in an introduction the rules they used for selection. I asked for bite and violence and atmosphere. I did not want any of those tidy, cozy, hemstitched little formula jobs. If you just adore those comfy little predictable puzzles, you’ve bought the wrong book.

  I am fond of every one of these stories. They have a high level of excellence. Many of them are by familiar names. Some have been previously published, some not. Some do not fall into any category. They all have freshness.

  I make one special request of you. I have arranged these stories in a special order. As you read each one, keep in mind that a woman wrote it, and try to imagine what special qualities inhabit the mind and heart and soul of that woman. And after you are through, take all of those qualities and form of them a composite woman.

  She will be magic and mystery, sensitive, earthy, compelling, wry, humorous, humble, arrogant, diligent, lazy, neat, careless, spiritual, and bawdy. I guess this is a love note to that woman. She is a very special gal. And she is, of course, any woman, anywhere.

  When, in my original ignorance, I planned this anthology I had intended to write a little introductory note for each story. Some biographical jazz, and an applause bit. Now I know better. Honestly, girls, I’m not really terrified of you, en masse. This nervous twitch comes from weaving baskets. I have not even touched your titles! Even though some of them are not what I would call apt. In fact, it took supernatural courage to correct a few mistakes in spelling.

  This is an exotic banquet I set before you. We have called it The Lethal Sex. I would prefer to think of it as The Modern Man’s Guide and Handbook for Understanding a Creative Woman. Here they are, with their buttons and bows, their silks and scents . . . and their savage little minds.

  John D. MacDonald

  Postscript

  To the eleven hundred and three indignant readers whose sense of tidiness is going to be offended by discovering that several of these stories are not mystery stories, I send a message. Save your stamps. Don’t write.

  I could not have omitted the gentle, chillingly determined Mr. McGowney. Nor Bernice Carey’s macabre comedy of self-justification. Nor that delicate and special bit of horror by Gladys Cluff. Nor Carolyn Thomas’s tale of exotic and compulsive revenge. Nor the disturbing sensuousness of the prose of D. Jenkins Smith. And it was a special compulsion to end it with the magic of Juanita Sheridan.

  There are very few puzzles herein. Here is the marvelous awareness and sensitivity and craftsmanship of Brand, Curtiss, Manners, Gilbert, Potts, deFord, Tyre, and Johns operating within the more accepted framework of the mystery story—but always with surprise, never with triteness.

  Some of these stories are going to stay with you a long, long time.

  I am proud of the book.

  J.D.M.

  Dear Mr. MacDonald

  Christianna Brand

  I’m so sorry, but your letter asking me to write something for the MWA Anthology was delivered to the wrong address—as you’ll see by the enclosed; and I’ve only just found out about it, too late to send you a story, I’m afraid.

  I thought, however, that you personally might be interested in this document (though I hope you won’t blame yourself—you can see that the poor thing was quite mad). It is only a copy, of course. The original, which the dead woman was clutching, is in handwriting, very illegible and blotchy and what the trick psychs call, “disturbed.” The police have it now. This has been very much tidied up and made readable—as it stood it really was hardly sense.

  Don’t bother to return it.

  * * *

  Yours sincerely,

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND

  DEAR MR. MACDONALD:

  I am writing this in the kitchen while I wait for the kettle to boil and also of course because of the gas in the sitting room. And anyway Helen’s in the sitting room and making dreadful noises, sort of snoring. She’s lying all hunched up and queer and her face is scarlet. Last time she was as white as a fish but drowning’s different, not that she was drowned because they interfered and got her out. Now I’ve got to kill her all over again, this time with the gas, because of the story.

  This time it’s because of you, writing and asking me to do a short story for this magazine. I found the letter on the table in the hall this morning, half out of the envelope—I don’t know what’s become of the envelope. There was another bit of paper there too, I didn’t notice what that was about, a small slip of green paper. Was it something to do with the story? The letter starts “Dear Girl” so it couldn’t be for Helen, she’s nearly forty although she’s still quite pretty. (I see now that you say it’s sort of a joke starting the letter “Dear Girl,” so perhaps it was for Helen, but it’s too late now.) Anyway, you say you want a nice creepy sort of story full of color and horror and all the rest. I don’t know why you should ask me to write a story or Helen either if it was meant for Helen; unless of course you know about that other time, about the drowning? Naturally I immediately thought of the drowning, because that was creepy and horrible enough, Helen and me alone out there in the mist on the edge of the canal; and Helen’s face when she saw the little gun in my hand. But on the other hand, I thought it might not do for the story because she was saved so it wasn’t
a proper murder.

  And then I thought suddenly: you can’t be punished twice for the same crime—can you?

  And I’ve already been punished once for killing Helen, I’ve done my sentence, I’ve been in prison, and I didn’t even kill her, really. So I thought I might as well kill her again, for the story.

  So after breakfast I got the little gun.

  Helen was terribly frightened when she saw the little gun. In fact I think she was frightened before she saw it, just when she saw my face. She cried out, “Oh, darling, oh, Minna, no, no! Oh, God, not again, it hasn’t begun again!” It was like a kind of prayer. It was after that that she saw the gun. Then the fear changed; at first I think it had been more for me, in some strange way; now it was for me but for herself as well. But she was angry too. She said, “Where did you get that gun?”

  I said, “I had it all the time.”

  She said, “You told me it had fallen into the canal. I didn’t tell them about it because you said it was in the canal.”

  “I hid it,” I said.

  “You promised me,” she said. “You swore to me. And all this time you’ve been deceiving me. I didn’t tell the police, in case it should make things even worse for you; and all this time—”