Death on the Aisle Read online

  Death on the Aisle

  A Mr. and Mrs. North Mystery

  Frances and Richard Lockridge

  With an Introduction by Robert E. Briney

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  AND THE PAGES ON WHICH THEY FIRST APPEAR

  WILLIAM WEIGAND, professional detective, amateur martini-drinker

  DORIAN HUNT, Weigand’s fiancée, who wants to get married—murder or no murder

  ALOYSIUS CLARENCE MULLINS, assistant to Weigand

  PAMELA NORTH, amateur detective, professional martini-drinker, who almost becomes a victim of her own enthusiasm

  GERALD NORTH, Pam’s husband, publisher, and mixer of martinis

  DR. CARNEY BOLTON, Broadway “angel,” man of “affairs,” and corpse

  ALBERTA JAMES, actress, in love with Humphrey Kirk

  HUMPHREY KIRK, director of “Two in the Bush”

  PENFIELD SMITH, author of “Two in the Bush,” who had reason to hate Bolton

  JOHN HUBBARD, actor, whose cue supplies a clue

  ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER, an impatient scenery designer

  MAX AHLBERG, producer of the play, who has no love for his “angel”

  MARY FOWLER, a costume designer with pop-eyes

  F. LAWRENCE TILFORD, actor

  ELLEN GRADY, brilliant and beautiful leading lady of “Two in the Bush”

  RUTHMARY JONES, actress, colored maid in the play

  EVANS, custodian of the theatre who seemed to be deaf at the wrong moments

  INTRODUCTION

  There have been many husband-and-wife detective teams in mystery fiction, going back at least to Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (The Secret Adversary, 1922). In his final novel, The Thin Man (1934), Dashiell Hammett introduced Nick and Nora Charles, who went on to appear in six very popular films, a long-running radio series, and a TV series in the late 1950s. But in the print medium there was no competition for the husband-and-wife team of Pam and Jerry North, the protagonists of Death on the Aisle. The charm and sparkle of the characters and the longevity of the series—twenty-six novels over a period of twenty-four years—set the Norths apart. They also had stage and film incarnations, as well as successful radio and TV series.

  Mr. and Mrs. North first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker in a series of brief stories (some little more than amusing anecdotes) by Richard Lockridge, starting with “Domestic Setback” in the issue for September 19, 1931. Over the next ten years, nearly fifty of these stories appeared. In 1936 forty-one of them were gathered together and published in book form as Mr. and Mrs. North. Some of these were written especially for the book and did not appear in The New Yorker. In these vignettes, slight and charming but sharply observed, the characters of the Norths were developed. Mrs. North is kindhearted, giddy, but stops short of being outright scatterbrained, and is often more sensible and acute than a first impression might indicate. Mr. North is more settled, the often bemused observer of his wife’s behavior and thought processes, but not immune to impulsive acts himself. (In one story he suddenly decides to climb up onto the roof of their weekend cabin to look at the full moon and is then made to feel embarrassed when no one else understands the impulse.) They have a comfortable marriage. Mrs. North often communicates in an elliptical conversational style that Mr. North understands but which takes some effort for new acquaintances to follow. (In some of the mystery novels this is carried to an extreme for humorous effect, to the annoyance of some readers. For many others, it is part of the charm of the books.) The Norths are firm believers in the cocktail hour, especially when it manifests itself in the form of very dry martinis, and they enjoy good food, though they are not obtrusive about it. They often spend weekends or vacations in the country, usually in the area around Brewster in Putnam County, north of New York City.

  In 1939 Frances Lockridge decided to write a detective novel. She was unable to resolve some plot difficulties and called on Richard for help. The trouble was never satisfactorily cured, but Richard now succumbed to the mystery-writing urge. He kept many of Frances’s plot elements, and decided to use Pam and Jerry North as the main characters. The result was The Norths Meet Murder (1940). This and the twenty-five subsequent North books carried the joint byline of Frances and Richard Lockridge. (For the later series about Captain Heimrich of the New York State Police, the first names were switched and the byline was Richard and Frances Lockridge. To make things more interesting, all of the British editions of the Lockridges’ books have been published as being by “Francis Richards.”) All of the Lockridges’ collaborations began with a story conference, out of which came a four- or five-page summary of the book. Frances contributed plot elements, bits of action, dialogue, and characterization, but the actual writing was, by agreement, done by Richard.

  While the first Mr. and Mrs. North mystery was still enjoying popular success in the bookstores, Richard Lockridge collaborated with Owen Davis on a stage adaptation. Mr. and Mrs. North, with Peggy Conklin and Albert Hackett in the title roles, ran for 163 performances at the Belasco Theater, from January 12 to May 31, 1941. It might well have run longer, but it had the misfortune to open on Broadway one day after Arsenic and Old Lace, and the undoubted virtues of the North play were overshadowed by the success of its more flamboyant competitor. The North play subsequently went on tour and was for many years a favorite in summer stock. It was quickly turned into a film by MGM, starring Gracie Allen as Mrs. North. (Lockridge considered this a bad case of miscasting, and indeed the script and performance emphasized Mrs. North’s scatterbrained aspect over her nicer qualities.) Shortly after the appearance of the movie, the Norths were presented for the first time on radio. The first series was a domestic comedy, with little or no mystery element. Mrs. North was played by Peggy Conklin, who had played the role on stage. This series disappeared quickly. The “Mr. and Mrs. North” mystery series, with Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin in the title roles, debuted on NBC on December 30, 1942. Within a year it was rated one of the most popular mystery shows on the air. The half-hour program was broadcast on Wednesday nights (sponsored by Woodbury Soap and Jergens Lotion) until 1947, when it switched to Tuesday nights on CBS (sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive). In the early 1950s the show changed to a fifteen-minute nightly serial, with the leading roles played by Barbara Britton and Richard Denning, who would shortly assume the same roles in a successful television series.

  There had been a short-lived and not very successful TV adaptation of the Norths on NBC in 1949. The much more successful series, starring Barbara Britton and Richard Denning, was introduced on the CBS network on October 3, 1952; it transferred to NBC in January 1954 and then went into syndication later that year. A total of fifty-seven half-hour episodes were filmed.

  It is undeniable that many more people encountered the Norths on radio or TV than ever read one of the North books. But the books, averaging one a year, continued to find a receptive audience. They sold well in the original hardcover editions, had consistent book club sales, and appeared in a variety of paperbound reprint editions. Some reviewers objected to the relatively slight plots and to Pam North’s perennial habit of walking blithely into the villain’s clutches and having to be rescued. Her intuitive leaps to the culprit’s identity were also disparaged. But to a large number of readers these were forgivable faults. Much of the pleasure to be derived from the books lies in following the lives of the appealing characters: not only Pam and Jerry North but their police lieutenant friend Bill Weigand, his wife Dorian, and Sergeant Aloysius Mullins. Repeated visits to familiar settings are also part of the appeal: Charles Restaurant (a real place), the Algonquin Hotel lobby, the Greenwich Village neighborhood, the Broadway theater distr
ict. In addition to the recurring characters and locales, there are a wide variety of other settings (nightclubs, theaters, country cabins, publishing houses, museums, radio studios, cruise ships) and an assortment of murder methods, weapons, and motives. (The weapons range from a common ice pick to a prehistoric ax and an unusual but not obscure poison.)

  Although some of the North books are primarily domestic comedies, many others, including the early ones, are structured as detective novels in the classic pattern. There are timetables and checklists of evidence and motives, and even an occasional gathering of the principals in a climactic session where the murderer’s identity is revealed. Another aspect of the early North novels is a touch of the police procedural element, some years before that particular subgenre of crime fiction was identified and perfected by such writers as Lawrence Treat and Hillary Waugh. There are sections giving detailed descriptions of Weigand’s investigations—careful analysis of physical evidence, descriptions of autopsies, accounts of the tedious legwork performed by Mullins and other police detectives, and Weigand’s sifting of the results. This detailed police evidence often leads Weigand to the murderer’s identity while Pam North’s distinctive mode of reasoning is leading her in a similar (but not necessarily identical) direction. She is frequently right, but not always for the right reasons.…

  Richard Orson Lockridge was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on September 25, 1898. He studied journalism at Kansas City Junior College for one term and spent a year at Missouri College (University of Missouri). He joined the Navy in 1918 and, except for one shakedown cruise, spent the term of his enlistment on board the North Dakota at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He worked as a reporter on the Kansas City Kansan during 1921 and 1922 and on the Star in the same city in 1922. During this time he met a young reporter named Frances Davis. They were married in 1922 and moved to New York City.

  Frances Louise Davis had been born in Kansas City, Missouri, on January 10, 1896. She attended the University of Kansas but did not graduate. From 1918 to 1922 she was a star reporter and music critic for the Kansas City Post.

  After the move to New York City, Richard Lockridge worked as a reporter for the New York Sun and quickly gained a reputation as “the best rewrite man in the city”. In 1928 he became the Sun’s drama critic, in which capacity he covered Clifford Odets’s first play, as well as works by Sherwood Anderson and Eugene O’Neill. Meanwhile, Frances became the assistant secretary to the adoption and placement committee of the State Aid Charities Association (a private organization), a post she held from 1922 to 1942. In 1928 her book How to Adopt a Child was published. For several years she wrote the “Hundred Neediest” section of The New York Times.

  Richard Lockridge began contributing to The New Yorker in 1931 and was later on its staff (while he continued as the Sun’s drama critic), substituting at various times for regular contributors James Thurber and Robert Benchley. Lockridge’s first book, published in 1932, was Darling of Misfortune: Edwin Booth, a biography.

  During World War II he joined the Navy for the second time and spent the war as a public relations officer at Navy headquarters in Manhattan. After the war the Lockridges became full-time writers. Their usual quota was three novels a year: a Mr. and Mrs. North book, an entry in their series about Captain Merton Heimrich of the New York State Police, and a nonseries suspense novel of the “chase and girl-in-distress” variety. (The latter were done because of the lucrative magazine sales in addition to the book editions.) This continued until Frances’s death on February 17, 1963. The final Mr. and Mrs. North novel, Murder by the Book, appeared that same year. Richard Lockridge later said that he could not write Mrs. North after Frances died, because in many ways Mrs. North was Frances. So the series was abandoned.

  Richard Lockridge did continue the Heimrich series, as well as series featuring other detectives: Nathan Shapiro of the NYPD, Assistant D.A. Bernie Simmons, and others. He married novelist Hildegarde Dolson in 1965, and they subsequently moved from New York to North Carolina. In the 1970s Richard Lockridge suffered a stroke, and thereafter could get around only with the help of a wheelchair, but he continued to write. His last novel, The Old Die Young, was published in 1980. Hildegarde Dolson died in January 1981. Richard Lockridge died on June 19, 1982, three months before his eighty-fourth birthday.

  The tally: Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote twenty-six Mr. and Mrs. North books, sixteen about Merton Heimrich (with another eight written by Richard Lockridge alone), twelve additional crime or suspense novels, and five books about cats (four of them juveniles). They also edited an anthology of short stories for the Mystery Writers of America, of which organization they were joint presidents in 1960. Under her own name, Frances Lockridge published one nonfiction book. Under his own name, Richard Lockridge published twenty-two additional books (not counting the eight Heimrich novels previously mentioned). All but five of these were mystery or suspense novels. (Before her marriage, Hildegarde Dolson had published six novels and six nonfiction books; after her marriage to Richard Lockridge she wrote five excellent crime novels.)

  Now let us return to that earlier year when the Norths first meet murder—or rather, as will so often happen, Pamela North meets murder. The Norths are living on the second floor of a brick house near Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Pam has talked Jerry into giving a party for a miscellaneous group of friends and acquaintances, using the vacant apartment on the fourth floor of the building. While they are checking out the apartment one final time, Pam discovers the naked body of a dead man in the bathtub. The police detective who comes to investigate is Lieutenant William Weigand of the Homicide Bureau. He quickly becomes friendly with the Norths and has to keep reminding himself to treat them as witnesses and even potential suspects. One of the important facts about the Norths that we learn in this book is that they are cat fanciers, a characteristic inherited from their creators. Indeed, the Lockridges put their own cat, Pete, into the book, and he plays a significant role in the proceedings. Ultimately, Pam is allowed to give her party and, for the first of many times, finds herself alone in the dark with the murderer. She is rescued by Weigand’s assistant, Sergeant Mullins. At the North apartment later, after the explanations, Pam is so pleased with the company that she says “We must do it again. Even without murders.”

  The last chapter of the New Yorker collection of North vignettes is concerned with a tennis match at Lost Lake. This was also the name of the Lockridges’ own country retreat, where Frances first tried to write a mystery novel. Both the setting (with the name slightly altered to Lone Lake) and the tennis match reappear in the second North novel, Murder Out of Turn (1941). The Norths are vacationing at Lone Lake and are joined for the weekend by Bill Weigand. The latter’s attention is immediately caught by a graceful young woman named Dorian Hunt, who unfortunately has an antipathy to policemen. That evening, two of the Lone Lake residents are murdered, one of them in a particularly horrific fashion. (So much for the critics who think that the Lockridges deal only with “comfortable” or artificially antiseptic killings.) Weigand, of course, has no jurisdiction in Putnam County, but he is drafted to assist the New York State Police detective, Lieutenant Heimrich. (Heimrich, in this book, is rough-hewn and somewhat crude. He becomes considerably smoother and more civilized in his own series, starting with Think of Death (1947).) At the end, it is Dorian who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is kidnapped by the fleeing murderer. The denouement brings Weigand and Dorian closer together, with the implied promise that their acquaintanceship will continue.

  As indeed it does. In the next book, A Pinch of Poison (1941), Dorian has joined the Norths’ charmed circle, and she and Bill are having dinner at the Norths’ apartment when he is called to investigate an apparently impossible poisoning at a rooftop nightclub. The victim is a young social worker currently involved with a puzzling adoption case. (Frances’s work with the State Aid Charities Association provided the background here.) At the end of the book, Weigand and Dorian have decide
d to get married.

  But, as you will shortly discover, they are going to have a little trouble getting to the church.…

  ROBERT E. BRINEY

  Notes: A lengthy and illuminating interview with Richard Lockridge and Hildegarde Dolson, conducted by Chris and Janie Filstrup, can be found in The Armchair Detective, vol. 11, no. 4 (October 1978), pp. 382–393.

  Information on the early North vignettes in The New Yorker was compiled by Paul McCarthy and published in his limited-circulation journal The Rubber Trumpet, no. 8 (November 1984).

  I

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28—2:20 P.M. TO 3:10 P.M.

  This time, they assured each other, nothing was going to intervene. They agreed to this and nodded confidence over their coffee cups, with the gravity of children, and were for their purposes quite alone in the un-childlike atmosphere of Club 21.

  “Absolutely nothing, this time,” William Weigand promised himself and her. “Right?”

  “Right,” Dorian said. “Exactly right.”

  They nodded again.

  “And so,” Weigand said, “are we waiting for something?”

  Dorian Hunt said she couldn’t think what.

  “Approved and ready,” she said. “That’s what we are. Approved for matrimony by the Empire State.”

  She finished her coffee and put the cup down and looked, turning a little to face him, at Weigand on the seat beside her.

  “And who are we,” she wanted to know, “to disappoint the Empire State?”

  “And ourselves,” Weigand said. “Do we want brandies or something?”

  Dorian thought they didn’t. She said she had no use for people who had to get drunk to get married. She said that Bill would have to marry her cold sober.

  “Any time,” Bill said, firmly. “Now.”

  “We’ll go find a little minister,” Dorian said. “A very quiet little minister.”