The Dark Mirror (A Mike Faraday Mystery Book 1) Read online

  THE DARK MIRROR

  Basil Copper

  © Basil Copper 1966

  Basil Copper has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  First Published in 1966 by Robert Hale Limited

  This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For my wife,

  Annie

  With gratitude for her encouragement

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  1 – Mr. Horvis

  2 - Dan Tucker

  3 - Mrs. Standish

  4 - Sherry Johnson

  5 - Captain Jacoby

  6 - Mandy Mellow

  7 - Carol Channing

  8 - Paul Mellow

  9 - Bert Dexter

  10 - Uncle Tom

  11 - Gregory

  12 - Mr. Stich

  FOREWORD by Laurence Henderson

  Basil Copper trained as a journalist and for the last fourteen years of his career held the position of News Editor. It was not until his career as a journalist came to an end that he turned to freelance authorship and proved himself to be a prolific writer of diverse range.

  His first reputation was achieved in the field of the macabre, where he is now an acknowledged master; the titles of his works — Necropolis, From Evil’s Pillow and Here Be Daemons — speak for themselves. His interest in the macabre also embraces non-fiction and he has published scholarly studies of the historical evidence for both the vampire and the werewolf.

  His general interest in fantasy also extends to classic detective fiction, and this resulted in his being chosen to continue the Solar Pons series of the late August Derleth which, in his own words, ‘combine the traditional detective form with the atmospheric and macabre’.

  Together, these two bodies of work would make up a satisfactory writing career for most authors, but Copper has a third and completely separate strand of his work in his invention of the detective Mike Faraday, who has now appeared in fifty-two crime novels.

  Faraday is a private detective in downtown Los Angeles, with a shabby integrity, a head for hard liquor, a constant need for money, and a compliant blonde secretary/girl friend. Collectively the Faraday novels are a work of open homage to the hard-boiled wise-cracking school of Southern Californian writers, exemplified by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and the dozens of lesser writers who produced the American detective fiction of the 1940s.

  The first Faraday novel, The Dark Mirror, was originally published in 1966 and it contains all the ingredients of the classic private eye story. It opens with Mike Faraday being employed by an up-market antique dealer to recover an unidentified objet d’art, which was in the possession of a man who has now been murdered. Before Faraday can even leave the house, the antique dealer himself is murdered and from then on the pace never slackens as Copper unravels a Byzantine plot of gunmen, greed, beautiful women and policemen, both honest and corrupt, in all their various double and triple crossings.

  For a British author to succeed in this specialised and predominantly American field is exceptional, but Basil Copper does have not only an astonishing knowledge of the nuances and interplay of the 1940s’ cinema noir and the literature on which it was based, but also the ear to recreate its tone of voice and social attitudes, if not always its wisecracks to Chandler’s level.

  1 – Mr. Horvis

  It was hot in Jinty’s Bar, a damned sight too hot for comfort. Even the ice in my drink looked too tired to compete any more by the time it reached me. The bartender, a middle-aged ex-baseball player with cropped hair, wearing a crumpled white jacket that looked as though he’d slept in it, was visibly wilting.

  “Hot,” he said impassively as he put my drink down on a hexagonal fibre mat. A comic. He moved away, wiping invisible moisture from the bar, the way they all do. The long room was empty except for me and a fat old guy over in the corner in a pale green suit flecked with mauve, wearing a Harvard tie. He kept mopping his brilliantly polished forehead with a limp white handkerchief. He looked like a stranded fish.

  The fan in the ceiling seemed almost to warm the torpid air and its shrill squeak served only to accentuate the heat. Sweat ran down inside my shirt band as I finished my drink. I sighed heavily and thought over my day so far.

  Not an auspicious start. Three bills and an insulting letter sat sourly on the mat inside the large office I shared with the operative from Gimpel’s Agency. They dealt mostly with insurance, bad debts, minor bouncing jobs. Bert Dexter, whose desk was opposite mine, was a tall, gangling Texan who seemed to hate his job. I thought most agency men looked down on my sort of work, but he had an admiring respect that not only made the shared office bearable, but allowed me to think I was in a worthwhile line of business. When he had clients I walked the block, and he reciprocated. What the hell, it halved the rent and it seemed to work.

  That morning Bert hadn’t showed up for one reason or other. I’d soon read the bills and even killing flies was beginning to lose its charm. I sat back in my old swivel chair, added to the scratch marks on my broadtop desk and counted the stains on the ceiling. Stella only came in every other day when things were slack and this wasn’t her day. It wasn’t my day either. It was Monday and the morning had that stale, worn look that Mondays often have in L.A., especially in office blocks that have old and poor air-conditioning, worn carpets and elderly lift boys.

  So I wasn’t too unhappy when the phone buzzed softly round about 11 a.m. I was just about to brew myself up some coffee on the small range in the annexe back of the main office and I made the desk in three seconds flat. It had been almost a month since I had my last definite assignment and I was running short of cigarette money.

  “Hullo.” The voice was low and oily but with an undertone of rocks in it. “Faraday Investigations?”

  I assented smoothly, seating myself in the chair and getting out my scratch pad. Somewhere I could hear milk frying on the range in back but this was no time to attend to it.

  “I wish to be connected to the principal,” the voice went on unctuously.

  I jiggled the phone and made with the sound effects. “Faraday speaking,” I said crisply with what I hoped was a note of authority in my voice, mentally blowing myself a raspberry for my snobbery.

  “Mr. Michael Faraday?” the voice went on. This was getting monotonous. We should be on come Thanksgiving at this rate. He was off the bumf at last.

  “My name is Adrian Horvis. I wish to engage your services in a somewhat delicate matter.”

  “How delicate?” I queried, my mind adjusting itself to the prospect of eating full-time.

  There was a moment of long hesitation. I could smell the folding money clear across from where he was phoning.

  “Shall we say, too delicate to discuss fully on the phone, Mr. Faraday.”

  His voice had a definite edge to it. I sat back and waited for him to speak again. I scratched my instep with my pencil where it itched beneath my thin sock and watched a spider tracing fancy patterns on the edge of the sun blind. From the street a car back-fired and a motor scooter, like an agitated gnat, went fretting down the boulevard. My caller was speaking again.

  “Might I know what your fees would be, Mr. Faraday? Full-time, that is.”

  I told him. The name was beginning to click with me now and I upped the rate by twenty-five percent. As we talked I leafed through the L.A. Business Directory. There was a short puff of indrawn breath when I named the fee and another silence. I was beginning to get irritated and the conversation was boring me.

  “Your fees come high, Mr. Fa
raday.”

  “No one’s twisting your arm,” I told him. “I work on results. No joy, no fee, other than nominal out-of-pocket expenses.”

  Horvis brightened, as far as a voice like his could.

  “Eminently reasonable, Mr. Faraday. I think we can take it as settled, then.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “Let’s quit horsing around. I haven’t said I’ll take the job yet. I shall have to know quite a bit more than I know now, and I’m told the city phone rates are going up in the fall. It’s going to be pretty cold in this office with all that snow around.”

  He almost laughed at this. “Tut-tut, Mr. Faraday. Please don’t be impatient. I would like you to meet me to discuss the nature of my business. But I can say that it is connected with the Braganza affair …”

  The rest of his sentence fell with a thud into the air. I took a moment or two to register, then I had it.

  “You mean the guy that got his ass all shot to pieces over on Sunset Canyon?” I asked.

  “Picturesquely put, Mr. Faraday,” Horvis said dryly. “But substantially correct in outline. My interest in this matter is most intimate, I can assure you. And the pay would be good — on results, of course.”

  “It would have to be on this caper,” I said.

  “Would five hundred suit you as a small retainer? And there would be more to follow.”

  It would and it was. I made up my mind on the spot.

  “Why did you contact me in particular?”

  A dry chuckle. “I got your name from Charlie Snagge. He said you were a good man.”

  Things began to add up. I had worked with Charlie Snagge out of the County Sheriff’s Office a half dozen years before and he was a good man too.

  “All right, Mr. Horvis,” I said more cheerfully. “I’ll be by around half past three this afternoon, if that will suit you.”

  “Admirable,” he said. “This is in strictest confidence, of course.”

  I took down his address on my pad, thanked him and hung up. When I had mopped up the mess in the annexe I put some fresh coffee on to brew and considered just what I knew. That didn’t take long so I rang Charlie Snagge. He knew Horvis, mainly as a witness in the Braganza shooting. He seemed reliable enough; solid, respectable, wealthy. It appeared he had a business appointment with the dead man, but he never showed up.

  When I had thanked Charlie and gone back to my coffee, the room seemed twice as bright, the pile on the carpet fresh and unworn and even the spider seemed to be benevolent as he jiggled in the dusty sunlight. It was now around noon and I had a little checking to do. I read Horvis’s address again; 2168 Avocado Boulevard. It appeared to be over to the north of town, about a twelve-mile drive into the hills. I turned back to the commercial directory; Horvis, Adrian. Fine art dealer and antiquarian. It gave a swank address on one of the smartest boulevards in the business section.

  I decided to have a look over there on my way to lunch. I had an idea Horvis had phoned from home and I wanted to see what sort of layout he had. I put in a call to Stella and asked her to drop by around six. It looked like being a busy day, what with one thing and another. I found myself whistling as I went down the hall.

  *

  My five-year-old powder blue Buick with the tan hide upholstery positively sparkled in the sun, despite the thick white dust which coated it and the negro attendant on the parking lot risked a heavy rupture as he rushed to fling open the door for me. I drove west into the swanky section of town, along 23rd and Maple and presently found a hole in the traffic and sneaked in to park, risking my bumpers.

  I fumigated my upholstery with a Camel and waited. The place looked pretty good. There was a red and white striped sun-blind over the top of the window, copper-bronze grille work and fluting and plenty of cream and white stucco. Inside, the shop was dim and cool-looking with lots of Chippendale and that sort of stuff lying about.

  I went in and a bell started to play Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. A blonde woman of about forty-five materialized with a soft swishing sound. She had on steel-rimmed glasses and her bust would have graced a windjammer.

  “Yes?” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Mr. Horvis?”

  I was taking a chance here but I was pretty sure he wasn’t in.

  “I’m sorry.” The frost in the voice helped to lower the temperature. “He doesn’t come in on Mondays. Can I help?”

  “Not unless you play pool,” I said. “But you haven’t the waistline for one thing and your assets might interfere with your shooting angles.”

  I couldn’t help it. Her snooty manner had me riled up. She flushed and her face cracked abruptly.

  “Suit yourself.” She turned away disdainfully as the bell began to play the opening fanfare from Parsifal. I kept watch as she fussed around an elderly couple with Palm Beach tans. They evidently wanted a Sheraton dining set and the blonde figurehead was trying to shake them down for about three times its real value.

  I could see she was winning hands down so I went on out and drove across town. The bell played what sounded like the 1812. Whatever it was, it was derisive. At the Central Library I settled myself into one of their institutional bum-creasers and prepared for a smooth half hour with the Examiner. It took me some little while and I didn’t find much at that.

  It appeared that Cesare Braganza — an unlikely name if ever I heard one — had been shot full of holes and his breath stopped in a lonely spot in Sunset Canyon about two miles off the State Highway. The shooting was close range stuff, from the front, and Braganza, who was forty-nine and described as a dealer in precious stones, had died instantly.

  The body might never have been discovered but that a courting couple had chanced that way a couple of nights later. Captain Dan Tucker of the County Police had been assigned, but neither then nor at the hearing which followed had anything ever emerged to identify the killer or killers. Little was known of Braganza or where he came from and no relatives ever came forward.

  I sat smoking for a few minutes, puzzling this out. A pert little librarian with a high, tip-tilted bust clip-clopped out, made a moue and pointed energetically to a “No Smoking” sign. I flashed her the old charm smile, putting all I could into it and she went out grinning. I carried on smoking.

  I went on through the files. There didn’t seem to be much else. Adrian Horvis had been called early in the hearing. He said Braganza had called at the shop two days before the shooting and explained he had a pair of jade figurines he wanted to sell. He was able to prove ownership through documents he carried but these were never found, neither was the brown leather valise in which he had the figures. Horvis was to have met him for a further talk but he didn’t return. I was still frowning as I went out and my concentration must have been terrific because I drew a startled look from the little librarian.

  I made her a courtly bow and went on through the swing doors. In the booth outside I got Stella at the first ring. No one had called her at home and she was going to look in at the office around five. I sat in the car and ruminated on. The sun threw back a blinding heat from the windshield and even in the open-top the air was stifling, tasting of gasoline and foliage, the way it often does in L.A.

  After ten minutes a smog started coming on and I drove over to Jinty’s. It was after two when I got outside with a sandwich and about twenty to three when I left the bar. I had allowed myself nearly an hour, mainly in order to tool quietly along and get the pieces in place. Trouble was there were few pieces and those wouldn’t fit.

  I drifted off Highway 44 and turned in over the dirt road up through the brushwood hills that led to Avocado Boulevard. It wasn’t the regular way but I wanted to take in the countryside. After twenty minutes I hit the metalled road again. The garish neon of the Jazz Inn, ablaze even in the hot sunshine of early afternoon swung by and then the Buick took the corner with a crunch at the intersection of Avocado and Peartree. I was looking for something pretty high-living but I had to whistle to myself when I saw it.

  Th
ere was about three miles of patio-style whitewash wall and something like a wing of Buckingham Palace sticking up beyond a fringe of catalpa trees. Next door, in an open-style lot modelled on an English garden with closely manicured lawns, an old guy stood in a tennis court set against one of Horvis’s inner walls. He wore pink linen slacks, white sneakers and a canary yellow open-neck shirt. He evidently thought himself hot stuff.

  He was playing tennis with himself against the high wall, despite the heat and not making a bad job of it. I drove on round the block and when I passed again, he missed a shot. He threw the racket on the ground and danced a gopak. The Buick drifted up the drive and stopped in front of a twenty feet flight of marble steps. I was sweating when I got to the top. Below me, the drive curved round a shoulder of hill and I could see a negro chauffeur hosing down one of two cars. I was impressed despite myself. Horvis himself answered my ring.

  “Lot of money in the junk business,” I said. He didn’t flinch. He was a shortish man, stoop-shouldered, wearing a white tropical suit with a pale blue polka-dot tie. He showed a lot of expensive bridgework when he smiled. It was about five millimetres wide.

  “Ha! Mr. Faraday.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You have a great sense of humour. Come along in.”

  He waved a hand expansively and I followed him across a hall the size of a small aerodrome. Grey marble, black and white tiles, a cedarwood patio with plants which gave off a sickly perfume; there was even a small fountain playing in the middle. The carpet in the lounge which opened up off the patio was of mustard yellow. It stretched for several acres and the pile almost caught me behind the knees.

  “Quite a lay-out,” I said reluctantly, instantly regretting my heavy praise.

  Mr. Horvis’s lips opened deprecatingly and he gave a slight shrug. A snap of the fingers produced a Filipino houseboy in a white coat who glided noiselessly across the carpet as though on castors. He probably was at that.