Evans hasn’t returned to "his comfortable apartment in Paris." "[I]n
the interests of science... to complete the nearly finished work of the murdered Dutch
toxicologist" of the "Black Gardenia" case, he researches at the Arnold
Arboretum "on the fashionable outskirts of Boston" and frequents his favorite
city hotel, the Devonshire, on Commonwealth Avenue. One night in its Lantern Room his
party, including Finke Maguire, Mirak Mirakian (a Boston Herald feature writer),
Ephraim Poole (an accountant), Angus Ferguson (a wool importer), Leverett Bengay (a
Brahmin gentleman), and Elbridge ("Edgy") Gerry (a bank messenger) - who excuses
himself early - wagers whether Bengay, assisted by Mirakian can, like fictional private
detectives, "follow a perfect stranger for forty-eight hours, and make a report that
would satisfy" Evans. Evans will offer no help, his methods in any case being
"usually inductive or deductive, based on established or obtainable facts." The
male company is enhanced not by the still-unaccounted-for Miriam Leonard but by a solitary
"woman in black," Solange de Lassigny, a French-Canadian department store owner,
"who must have dropped from the starlit sky outside to the lonely bank of the Fenway,
like the heroine in the play The Unknown Woman by Alexander Block." The black
pianist, Morton (called "Jellyroll"), selects the unnamed and presumably unknown
stranger to be followed, who is christened "Pointed Face."1
Within moments, Bengay loses his man, only to have him turn up again. Now, on the eve
of a business trip to South America by ship, it is Ferguson’s turn to vanish, and
Evans soon finds evidence of an assault in the hotel washroom, perhaps on Ferguson. When
Pointed Face again disappears, Evans points Bengay to a house on nearby Newbury Street -
an intervention which is strictly against the rules. Rueful about having drawn the
sleuthing assignment, Bengay reflects that Homer had "proposed the bet... and
maneuvered the others," leaving him to do the work. Moreover, keen on Solange, he
suspects Maguire of cutting him out, with Homer’s connivance. ("Her heart
thumped off the beat when she thought of Homer. The great man, the Topside Joss of mayhem
and plot, had shown all too plainly that he was content to toss the Mademoiselle from
Montreal... to his leg man, Finke Maguire.") Bengay tracks the "suspect" to
his lodging and learns that he is Blaise Laneer, a Southerners quartered among a number of
persons of Basque and Spanish extraction, and he senses some connection between both the
pianist Morton and Laneer with one Erica Strella, a young Argentinian resident in the
hotel.2
Bengay traces Laneer to his employer, the Pequot National Bank, where he looks after
South American customers, and Mirakian follows Laneer to a medical clinic, establishing
that he often visits the South American doctors and other clientele, including Julio
Etchegaray, a La Prensa reporter. Joined by Finke and Solange, Mirakian sees one of
the doctors pass Laneer "a sheaf of small oblong-shaped papers which looked like
ordinary bank checks." Apparently co-incidentally, Ferguson has just left the clinic,
having been treated for a minor head injury, and he eventually resurfaces, remaining
close-mouthed over his recent history.3
Laneer is found dead in his room, "icepicked." Morton and Strella disappear
into Boston’s "Negro district." Evans’s detective nose is, however,
for the money, and he makes inquiries about Argentinian financial arrangements under the
regime of the dictator Juan Peron. Finke wonders if Evans is trying to "expose
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[Ferguson’s] business affairs"- though the Ferguson business remains a mere
red herring: "A few short hours ago," says Evans ambiguously, "we had no
profound interest in the late Blaise Laneer. Now... we can’t even be sure who, among
our friends and acquaintances, is safe." Poole discovers that while Laneer
hasn’t defrauded the Pequot, "the number of personal checks for small amounts
which passed over his window shelf seems disproportionately large... dated several months
back, too."4
Borrowing Edgy Gerry from the bank, ostensibly to help him with the toxicology
research, Evans appreciates Mrs Gerry’s "paella bubbling its last ounces
of liquid away, and an open casserole in which squid simmered in a sauce that was as black
as India ink, and as redolent as a sorcerer’s ambrosia," learning that the
recipe is her mother-in-law’s, a Basque. Dr Gonzalez from the clinic collapses and
dies under Finke’s nose - "we continue to be careless. I should have suspected
that Gonzalez was in danger," says Evans. The Boston police make difficulties,
suspecting Maguire, then Morton (whom they capture). Solange, under orders from Evans,
finds and takes Erica Strella to the Arboretum, where they are, however, kidnapped. Finke
discovers and frees Solange only to receive the same treatment himself.5
Evans’s place in the plot has so far only been glancing, checking in and out. By
way of partial exculpation, Paul notes that his "attention was divided, so that he
was not doing full justice, either to his scientific research or the best interest of his
friends." So the research must take a back seat. First, Evans rescues Finke, who
captures one of his two assailants, discovered to be Etchegaray the reporter. Threatened
with snakes, a common plot-element in Evans stories, Etchegaray reveals where Strella can
be found. Evans now gathers everyone together at the Pequot National Bank for the closing
revelations. Laneer had helped Strella, whose father was an opponent of Peron, to leave
Argentina. The check-cashing system is explained:
"visiting Americans... are encouraged... to pay for their purchases with checks on
United States banks.... The black-market exchange operators.... cash the... personal
checks... at such a generous rate in pesos that the Argentine dealers make a larger profit
than could be realized... at the legal ceiling for exchange. The black-market middlemen...
sell them, at a large discount, to prospective travelers....
"[E]very dollar that gets out of the country makes it harder for Peron to
continue, and eventually his farcical economy will defeat him.
Etchegaray confesses to the murders, but Evans knows it is his cousin who killed
Laneer, and the cousin is Edgy Gerry, an Etchegaray who had taken the "nearest"
New England name to his own: "I’m really ashamed.... When a man leads a life as
regular and restricted as mine, the least deviation leads to chaos and disruption."
So ends the weakest Evans story yet, deficient in wit and humor, plot, character, and
color. Even Homer Evans’s mind seems only half on the case. He had lost friends to
mayhem in the past by not coming up to his own high standards but never before to his
carelessness and inadvertence.6
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NOTES
1 Elliot Paul, Waylaid in Boston (New York: Random
House, 1953), 3, 14, 10, 14, 18.
2 Ibid., 54, 194.
3 Ibid., 97.
4 Ibid., 117, 194, 121, 149-50; also 200.
5 Ibid., 142, 171.
6 Ibid., 221, 261, 274. The most famous Elbridge Gerry
(1744-1814) was a Revolutionary War patriot and politician, Governor of Massachusetts
(1810-12) and Vice-President under James Madison (1813-1814). "Gerrymandering"
was named after his manipulation of Massachusetts voting districts to favor his party: a
contemporary cartoon of Essex County pictured it with the shape of a fabulous beast, the
"gerrymander."
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