The Odor of Violets

By Baynard Kendrick and Otto Penzler

A blind private detective and his dogs star in this thrilling World War II mystery with “enough action and surprises to keep the pages turning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
 
Meet Captain Duncan Maclain. Blinded during his service in the first World War, Maclain made up for his lack of vision by sharpening his other senses, achieving a mastery of the subtle unseen clues often missed by those who see only with their eyes. Aided by his dogs Schnucke and Driest, the Captain puts the intelligence-gathering techniques he learned in the Army to work, making a name for himself as New York City’s most sought-after private detective. Now it’s 1940, there’s a second World War breaking out, and Maclain is pulled into a case unlike any he’s investigated before. 
 
The murder of an actor in his Greenwich Village apartment would cause a stir no matter the circumstances but, when the actor happens to possess secret government plans, and when those plans go missing along with the young woman with whom he was last seen, it’s sensational enough to interest not only the local police, but the American government as well. 
 
Maclain suspects a German spy plot at work and, in a world where treasonous men and patriots are indistinguishable to the naked eye, it will take his special skills to sniff out the solution.
 
Reissued for the first time in over a half-century, Odor of Violets is the most well-known installment in the long-running Duncan Maclain series, which featured one of crime fiction’s earliest disabled detectives. The novel, filmed in 1942 as Eyes in the Night, is a classic hybrid of mystery and espionage fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781613162057

Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick (1894–1977) was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, later named a Grand Master by the organization. After returning from military service in World War I, Kendrick wrote for pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine under various pseudonyms before creating the Duncan Maclain character for which he is now known. The blind detective appeared in twelve novels, several short stories, and three films. 

Book preview

CHAPTER I

THE CRAGS was built high up on an eminence above the little town of Tredwill Village, west of Hartford, in the Connecticut hills. Ordinarily, the tall buildings of the city could be seen from the Tredwill home. Now, even the few scattered houses in the village below were hidden from view.

Norma Tredwill (Mrs. Thaddeus Tredwill, number four) sat down at the top of the stairs on a broad window seat and looked out through the mullioned panes. Her warm red lips, always ready to part in humor or sympathy, were pensively set. She stared through the frost-marked glass at the swirling snow, oblivious of the storm.

She was thinking of Paul Gerente. Ten years before, she had put him out of her life completely, determined to forget a year of marriage to him which had been nothing more than a short, unhappy episode in her career.

A step sounded down the hall. Norma stood up just as her stepdaughter, Barbara, came out of her room. Babs was wearing a trim tailor-made suit and carrying a mink coat over her arm. She was the only one of the Tredwill family who had never quite accepted Norma into the Tredwill home. For three years, Norma had vainly tried to break down the barrier between them, a barrier which was never apparent on the surface, but which Babs, in a thousand small ways, managed to make smartingly real.

You’re up early, darling, Babs said with a smile.

The politeness was always there, deference even, but it came through too readily to be genuine. Babs’s tenderness was as apt as some adroit line of an author’s spotted in a play.

Norma said: —

You’re up early yourself, Babs.

The weather, probably. Are you coming down? It’s a filthy day.

I certainly agree. Norma looked at the coat on Babs’s arm. Don’t tell me you’re planning on going out! The wind will blow you away.

New York, said Babs. It’s Stacy’s idea. Christmas is on Monday. If we don’t get in today, there’ll be no presents for our darling father and you.

Norma refused to be piqued by Babs’s tone. Why not Hartford, if you simply must? It’s not so far away.

Stacy has something special picked out for Thad—and Cheli Scott too, I suppose. Leave it to my fifteen-year-old brother. Babs spoke with all the languid disparagement of an eighteen-year-old for one three years her junior. It’s New York, I’m afraid. She started down the stairs.

Inwardly, Norma sighed. Another conversation with Babs was ending in the usual way, bright and friendly up to a point. Beyond that they never seemed to go.

Run along if you’ve a train to catch, said Norma. Are you taking the coupé?

Babs turned on the stairs and nodded absently. Stacy’s driving us into Hartford. We’ll leave it at a garage near the station. We’re going to spend the night in New York with the Ritters and be back tomorrow. I don’t think this snow can last another day.

Norma watched Babs descend the stairs. The girl’s youthful beauty was almost too perfect, like a picture done in tints too bright,—gold and white, rose and blue,—which time might fade. Such coloring needed vivacity behind it, but Babs smoldered almost sulkily.

The Tredwill men have all the temperament, Norma thought. Thad’s two sons, Gilbert, twenty-eight, and Stacy, fifteen, though separated widely in years, were much alike. They were quick to laugh, constantly enthusiastic about something, although their cause might change in a day. Thaddeus himself had all the ingrained egoism of a genius. He ruled his house and his family capriciously, and sometimes noisily, but back of his heated displays of temper he looked at life with a humorous glint in his eye.

Norma heard Cheli Scott greet Babs downstairs. Cheli was a playwright, and Thad’s protégée. She was working on a new play which Thad wanted to try out in his own small theater, an integral part of The Crags. The house always seemed more pleasant and alive when Cheli was a visitor. Norma liked gaiety and laughter, and Cheli was friendly and amusing—a delightful, considerate girl.

For a moment Norma listened, then she left her post at the head of the stairs and started slowly toward her own apartment at the end of the hall. In front of Babs’s open door, she paused and stood indecisively looking in upon the disordered scene.

Babs depended on servants to keep the material articles of living in their proper places. Fastidious about her own appearance, she left behind her a limp trail of dresses, underwear, and stockings. The three-mirror dressing table was a jumble of make-up jars and glittering crystal bottles. Norma stepped inside and closed the door with a feeling of guilty intrusion.

At the back of the dressing table was a crystal bottle of unusual design. It was larger than the rest, and obviously new. The stopper of black, cunningly wrought glass was so skillfully made that it gave an illusion of an exotic black flower, slightly evil, thrust into the bottle by its stem. Colored cellophane had been rolled down to encircle the base of the bottle. The slim flacon rose out of it with an appearance of naked beauty, as though it were some tiny woman of glass who had dropped her dress to the floor.

Norma felt a slight touch of faintness, and sat down on the rose-cushioned bench in front of the dressing table. The triple mirror showed her piquant face pale above the blue satin of her house coat. The tiny freckle over the dimple in her left cheek glowed brightly, as it always did when she was perturbed.

Automatically she took her vanity case from the pocket of her house coat and touched her cheeks with rouge. She snapped the jeweled case shut and returned it to her pocket. The perfume bottle was possessed with magnetism of memories. Twice she reached out to touch it, but forced herself to keep her hands away.

She suddenly knew what had brought Paul Gerente back to mind. Ten minutes earlier, on her interrupted trip to breakfast, she had glimpsed that seventy-five-dollar bottle of Black Orchid through Babs’s partly opened door.

That single glimpse had swept ten years away. The gift of a similar bottle had begun Paul’s courtship. Norma smiled a trifle bitterly. A bottle of the same Black Orchid had ended her marriage to Paul. She had seen it in the bedroom of another woman, and there had been others, too. Paul Gerente had distributed his Black Orchid tokens of affection as liberally as his charm.

Norma made a slight moue of distaste at her reflection in the mirror, then stood up and left the room. She did not intend to allow a fantastically incredible idea to run away with her natural good judgment. Paul Gerente, once a famous stage name, had dropped out of sight after she divorced him. There had been various unsubstantiated rumors that he had lost his money in the market and taken to drink. Past association was flimsy evidence on which to base an assumption; just because Babs had an unusual bottle of expensive perfume was no indication that she was seeing Paul.

The house was very silent. Norma stopped again at the top of the stairway. From below she heard Cheli Scott say good-bye. Cheli’s words were followed by the opening and closing of the front door and the whine of the starter as Stacy started the coupé. Norma waited until the clank of chains in gravel and snow told her that the car was gone before she went downstairs.

Cheli, brilliant in a suit of red velvet pajamas, was curled up in the depths of a great armchair in front of the blazing log fire in the living room. She looked up from the pages of a manuscript, brushed back thick brown curls to disclose a smile in her blue-gray eyes, and said, Cheerio, sleepy-head! How do you like the snow?

I think it makes me hungry, Norma told her. Have you and the rest raided the larder completely, or is there anything left for me?

Sausage and scrambled eggs in the hot plate, said Cheli. Coffee in the Silex, and cornbread and rolls in the warmer.

It’s probably far too much. Norma walked in toward the silver-laden sideboard visible through the open folding doors and added from the adjoining room, At my age, I have to keep a checkrein on my waistline. Thad has a producer’s eye for bulges in the wrong place. I want to keep that ‘You ought to be on the stage, my dear!’ expression on his face when he looks at me.

At your age! Cheli laughed softly and rustled a page of her manuscript. The sight of that skin of yours and your figure simply infuriates me. You’re the irritating type that makes aging debutantes sore. You’ll never look more than twenty-two.

Norma served herself, poured a cup of coffee, and carried her breakfast into the living room, where she settled herself at Cheli’s feet on a bearskin rug. Christmas compliments! she told Cheli. They always crop up around the theater about the twentieth of December, but they’re still good, I suppose. You make me feel ready to buy you a new fur coat or a Buick sedan.

She sipped her coffee. Have you seen Gil this morning?

The blazing fire touched spots of color on the cheeks of the girl in the chair. He had to go into New York, said Cheli, reading intently. He took an early train. Helena and Thaddeus went with him. How come they didn’t take you?

Norma placed her cup and saucer and plate on the hearth. Maybe my ears are deceiving me, she exclaimed lightly. I knew Gil and Helena were going—but Thad! Big things must be brewing when my late-sleeping husband hauls himself out into the early morning snow. She tried the sausage and eggs and found them good. I’m glad he didn’t want me to go. He’s a bear before eleven. I’m afraid the combination of an early train trip with Thad and Helena— She ended on a vague note, feeling that she might have said too much already.

Pierce, the butler, gray in Thaddeus’s service, came in and said apologetically, Good morning, madam. I didn’t know you had come down. Mr. Tredwill left a note for you.

He stepped soft-footed into the hall and returned with the note on a silver tray. Norma smiled. Under Thaddeus’s training, Pierce could have fitted unchanged into any butler’s role in movie or play.

I’m a bad hostess, Pierce. She opened the note and read it as the butler cleared her breakfast things away.

Late sleeping is to be excused on such a day, said Pierce with his slow, half-quizzical smile. More coffee, madam?

Norma shook her head. Thad’s typical note had left her with a glow. "I love you, my dear! You are life to me and all its possessions—yet today I must go! Forgive me if I do not return until tomorrow. You can reach me at the Waldorf-Astoria. Thad."

Cheli resumed the conversation as Pierce went into the dining room. Sometimes her frankness was disconcerting. You don’t like Gilbert’s wife, do you?

Helena? Norma gave an embarrassed laugh. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth if you said she doesn’t like me.

I wonder if she likes anyone except herself. Cheli spread the manuscript over the arm of her chair. "That includes Gil. What nationality is she, Norma? She’s a mystery to

Reviews for The Odor of Violets

[MrsD47 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best yet! Intriguing and swiftly moving plot which I enjoyed immensely.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was fun. I have never heard of this golden age detective before. A little silly, of course, and over the top, but a good read nonetheless.