Ellery Queen. The Scarlet Letters. Little Brown, 1953.
I happened to come across The Scarlet Letters in the local library and thought it looked interesting. Ellery Queen was the pen name of two cousins who were prolific mystery writers. For many years they also edited the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which my father subscribed to back in the 1950s or 1960s. As a kid, I recall reading an “Ellery Queen, Jr.,” mystery from the Scholastic Book Club. This was, then, an impulse in nostalgia to see whether Ellery Queen still made the grade.
It does. The Scarlet Letters is a clever mystery, very much in the vein of Agatha Christie. When Billy Wilder was directing Witness for the Prosecution, he did not pass out the last ten pages of the script to the cast until right before it was shot because there was such a surprise ending. If I were directing a film of the The Scarlet Letters, I would do the same thing. There is wild and clever ending. Nevertheless, an alert reader might have picked up a few clues along the way.
Ellery Queen is the main character in this novel, as well as the author. While the story is told in the third person, it is told from his point of view. He is a mystery writer and editor—we are told more than once that he has been working on an issue of the Ellery Queen magazine. He is single and lives with his widower father who is an inspector for the New York City Police. He also does occasional private detective work with his father as a helpful ally.
Queen’s secretary is Nikki Porter, an attractive redhead. Queen and Porter appear sweet on each other, but in this story they are both too caught up in the mystery to act on any personal matters. Nikki’s good friend Martha Lawrence has become increasingly afraid of her husband, Dirk. They have been married five years, and the honeymoon has worn off. Dirk has even gotten violent and says he suspects her of being unfaithful. Martha goes to Nikki for help, knowing her connection with Ellery Queen.
Martha has inherited a sizeable sum of money and has been using some of her inheritance to produce and direct plays. The first one only lasted a week, but she is trying again. This means that she is working much of the day with others, especially the playwright, and then with the actors and stage manager. Dirk works at home as a writer, so her absences seem to fuel his jealousy. He will call the various people and places she says she is visiting to check up on her. The novel soon establishes that Mr. Lawrence is what today we would call a control freak.
For Martha’s safety and perhaps to see if there is any truth to Dirk’s suspicions, Nikki moves in with the Lawrences to keep an eye on things and report back to Ellery. (They have a spare bedroom in their New York apartment.) Soon she discovers what become known as the scarlet letters. She finds a brief note, fallen out of a much larger envelope, that said “Thursday, 4 P.M., A.” The note is typed in red ink. Typewriters often used ribbon that was half black and half red. The typist could toggle between the two colors.
After much more sleuthing and some tailing of Martha, Nikki and Ellery figure out that “A” is not a person, but a place. Then they find a guidebook to the city in Martha’s apartment that has different locations circled in red ink. They realize that a different letter stands for each place in the book, and they make an alphabetical list. It appears that these short notes that come in the mail each simply have a day, a time, and the next letter in the alphabet. So A turns out to be the A—— Hotel, B the Bowery Follies, C the Chinese Rathskeller, and so on all the way through Xochitl (a Mexican restaurant), Yankee Stadium, and the Bronx Zoo.
Ellery trails Martha or waits for her at the different places and observes that she is meeting up with Van Harrison, a former matinee idol, now in his fifties but still retaining some good looks and charm. It does appear that the classic scarlet letter is involved, that she is meeting this actor for an extramarital affair.
D is a popular night club. Ellery gets a table there and sees Harrison enter. Martha never shows up, but at one point a well-known gossip columnist comes to Harrison’s table and talks to him. The conversation gets heated, and the two men step outside to start a fight. Ellery tries to break it up and all three get beaten somewhat. Ellery manages to leave the scene before the police show up, but his father recognizes him from a photo on the front page of the newspaper the next day showing Harrison and two other men going at it in an alley next to the club. Ellery is otherwise unidentified; his father seems to be the only one who recognizes him.
Before Ellery has a chance to talk to him, the gossip columnist leaves town for over a month. If I go much further, I am giving up too much of the tale. Needless to say, the gossip columnist has some helpful information about Van Harrison. However, Ellery spends quite a bit of time putting pressure on Harrison and some others connected with him with no luck to either stop things or expose the truth. Naturally, Nikki and Ellery fear that if Dirk discovers the affair he may get really violent…
Nikki has known Martha for some time and cannot believe she would be unfaithful. She was already in her thirties when she married, and Dirk was her one and only. Still, the evidence clearly tells us that there is something going on between Martha and the once-handsome actor.
The various events and various rendezvous are coming to an inevitable head. There is not just the scarlet letter associated with adultery, the letters circled in red in the guide book, and the red ink used in the typed notes. There is blood.
A few years ago I directed Witness for the Prosecution at my school. The ending was such a surprise that an audience member told me that she felt like she had to take notes to keep all the drama straight. Readers may feel that way after reading The Scarlet Letters, but they will have fun. Ellery Queen, the detective, was one bright guy. Ellery Queen, the writers, were two bright guys.