The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

R_ was one of those admired persons who remain mysterious even to old friends. By degrees, imperceptibly as it seemed to him, he became an elder, and respected, perhaps because his appearance inspired confidence. He had fair, fine, sand-colored hair that floated about his head, a high forehead and startlingly frank blue eyes; he was well over six feet tall and lean as a knife blade, with long loose limbs and a boyish energy. He seemed never to grow older, nor even mature, but to retain a dreamy Nordic youthfulness with a glisten of something chill and soulless in his eyes, as if, inwardly, he gazed upon a tundra of terrifying, featureless white and the utterly blank, vacuous Arctic sky above. One of the prevailing mysteries about R_ was his marriage, for none of us had ever glimpsed his wife of four decades, let alone been introduced to her; it was assumed that her name began with “B,” for each of R_’s eleven novels was dedicated, simply and tersely, to “B,” and it was believed that R_ had married, very young, a girl who’d been his high school sweetheart in a small town in northern Michigan, that she wasn’t at all literary or even interested in his career, and that they had no children.

In one of his reluctant interviews R_ once admitted, enigmatically, that, no, he and his wife had no children. “That, I haven’t committed.”

How proud we were of R_, as one of the heralded patricians in the field! When he spoke to you, smiled and shook hands, like a big animated doll, you felt privileged, if only just slightly uneasy at the remote, arctic glisten in those blue, blue eyes.

R_ was often nominated to run for office in professional organizations to which he belonged, yet always he declined out of modesty, or self-doubt: “R_ isn’t the man you want, truly!” But finally, at the age of sixty, he gave in and was elected by a large majority as president of the American Mystery Writers, a fact that seemed to both deeply move him and fill him with apprehension. Repeatedly he called members of the executive board to ask if truly R_ was the man we wanted; repeatedly we assured him, yes, certainly, R_ was.

On the occasion of his induction as president, R_ meant to entertain us, he promised, with a new story written especially for that evening, not a lengthy, rambling speech interlarded with lame jokes, like certain of his predecessors. (Of course there was immediate laughter at this remark. For our outgoing president, an old friend of R_’s and of most of us in the audience, was a well-liked but garrulous gentleman not known for brevity.)

Almost shyly, however, R_ took the podium and stood before an audience of perhaps five hundred mystery writers and their guests, straight-backed and handsome in his detached, pale, Nordic way, a fine figure of a man in an elegant tuxedo, white silk shirt, and gleaming gold cuff links. R_’s hair was more silvery than we recalled but floated airily about his head; his forehead appeared higher, a prominent ridge of bone at the hairline. Well back into the audience, you could see those remarkable blue eyes. In a beautifully modulated, rather musical voice. R_ thanked us for the honor of electing him president, thanked outgoing officers of the organization, and alluded with regret to the fact that “unforeseen circumstances” had prevented his wife from attending that evening. “As you know, my friends, I did not campaign to be elected your president. It’s an honor, as the saving goes, that has been thrust upon me. But I do feel that I am a kinsman of all of you, and I hope I will be worthy of your confidence. I hope you will like the story I’ve written for you!” Almost, R_’s voice quavered when he said these words, and he had to pause for a moment before beginning to read, in a dramatic voice, from what appeared to be a handwritten manuscript of about fifteen pages.