Le Cafe Singe Bleu Serving generous portions of history and mystery from our monthly menu
Volume 1, Issue 2: February 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEWS
Behind That Curtain
Earl Derr Biggers
1928
Detective: Charlie Chan Location: San Francisco Time: 1928 (Contemporary)
Should you read this book? Oui!
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Reviewed by Dot Emm
The Young Man
Barry Kirk - a wealthy young man about town, love and murder are what he gets when he hosts a party in his penthouse
The Young Woman
June Morrow - a deputy district attorney, she needs Chan's help to solve this case
The Victim
Sir Frederic Bruce - an ex-Scotland Yard official, he wishes to solve the case of a disappearance that has haunted him for fifteen years
The Press
Bill Rankin - little did he know that his plan to get Scotland Yard and the Honolulu Police Department together would lead to murder
The Women
Mrs. Dawson Kirk - Barry Kirk's grandmother, she aids and abets him in his quest for romance, and mystery
Eileen Enderby - is she Eve Durand?
Mrs. Tupper-Brock - is she Eve Durand?
Gloria Garland - an actress, but who was she before she started her career?
Miss Lila Barr - an elevator girl
and the rest of the suspects
Captain Eric Durand - always Bruce has called him to identify his vanished bride, always it isn't her.
Colonel John Beetham - the explorer. A cool head and a cold hand.
Paradise - Barry Kirk's butler. There's a secret he's hiding.
Carrick Enderby - employed in the San Francisco office of the travel agents Thomas Cook and Sons
The Policeman
Captain Flannery
Opening lines
Bill Rankin sat motionless before his typewriter, grimly seeking a lead for the interview he was about to write. A black shadow shot past his elbow and materialized with a soft thud on his desk. Bill's heart leaped into his throat and choked him.
But it was only Egbert, the office cat. Pretty lonesome around here, seemed to be Egbert's idea. How about a bit of play? Rankin glared at the cat with deep disgust. Absurd to be upset by a mere Egbert, but when one has been talking with a great man for over an hour and the subject of the talk has been murder, one is apt to be a trifle jumpy.
Sergeant Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police, who had traveled to San Francisco on a personal matter at the behest of his old employer Sally Jordan in The Chinese Parrot, ended up solving a murder. He's stopping in San Francisco for a few days until the next boat leaves for Hawaii.
Reporter Bill Rankin of the Globe gets the bright idea of having Chan and retired Scotland Yard official Sir Frederic Bruce get together to discuss criminology. Since Bruce is staying at the penthouse apartment of wealthy young Barry Kirk, and since Barry Kirk is a wealthy young man who always gets his way, the two men end up meeting over a lunch to which Assistant District Attorney June Morrow is also invited.
At the lunch, Bruce and Charlie Chan get along fine. Bruce tells the story of the first major case he was ever involved in, a case that was never solved - the murder of a prominent lawyer in London, the only clue being a pair of Chinese slippers placed on his feet. As a memento of his one failure Bruce even has those slippers now. But that's not the case that has haunted him for fifteen years.
''As a matter of fact, I have never found murder so fascinating as some other things...There is one mystery that to me has always been the most exciting in the world....The mystery of the missing. The man or woman who steps quietly out of the picture and is never seen again....For years I have been enthralled by thestories of the missing...Sometimes in the night I wake up and ask myself - what happened to Eve Durand?''
''That was her name. As a matter of fact, I had nothing to do with the case. It happened outside my bailiwick- very far outside. But I followed it with intense interest from the first.''
Sir Frederic gives a newspaper clipping to June Morrow, who reads it aloud. ''A gay crowd of Anglo-Indians gathered one night fifteen years ago on a hill outside Peshawar to watch the moon rise over that isolated frontier town. Among the company were Captain Eric Durand and his wife, just out 'from home.' Eve Durand was young, pretty and well-born, a Miss Mannering of Devonshire. Someone proposed a game of hide-and-seek before the ride back to Peshawar. The game was never finished. They are still looking for Eve Durand...''
Now that he has retired, Bruce intends to solve the mystery of her disappearance. Indeed, that very night he asks Kirk to hold a party at the penthouse, and invite certain people. Barry Kirk does so. Alas....Sir Frederic Bruce does not survive to the end of the party. He goes down to the small room which Kirk has allotted him for an office and there he is found, murdered, with the Chinese slippers placed on his feet.
Who murdered him and why? Assistant District Attorney June Morrow turns to Charlie Chan to discover the answers.
Behind That Curtain is a pleasant little mystery, if a tad formulaic and relying a bit too much on coincidence, as do most of Earl Derr Biggers' books. Nevertheless the characters, though 'stock', are likeable.
One of Biggers flaws is that he relies on stock characters - thus 'Mrs. Dawson Kirk' would be interchangeable with Miss Minerva Winterslip from The House Without A Key. Barry Kirk falls in love immediately with June Morrow and pursues her throughout the rest of the book, much as young Jim Egan had pursued the locations finder Paula Wendell in The Chinese Parrot.
Paula Wendell liked her job and was efficient at it. While June Morrow likes her job...one must wonder at her efficiency. True, she knows she needs help to solve the case and is not afraid to admit it. She believes that Captain Flannery is all at sea (a belief that is entirely correct) and so begs for help from Charlie Chan. Chan is anxious to return home to greet his eleventh child - it's a boy, after all. (In eleven tries he's only been disappointed three times). Finally Miss Morrow gets brutal: ''I wish you could have stayed, Mr. Chan. But of course I realize your point of view. The case was too difficult. For once, Charlie Chan is running away. I'm afraid the famous Sergant Chan of the Honolulu police has lost face today.'' This works. Charlie Chan decides to stay and help.
How many women were deputy district attorneys in the United States in 1928? [There were about 3,000 women lawyers. Today one in four lawyers is a woman.] How many of them would say of themselves, ''I'm just a poor, weak woman,'' when they realize they've overlooked a clue? The wealthy Mrs. Dawson Kirk (who obviously inherited her wealth and did not earn it) takes one look at the beautiful Miss Morrow and says, ''Lawyer fiddlesticks! She couldn't be - and look like this.'' The old woman continues, ''Youth and beauty. If I had those, my child, I wouldn't waste my time over musty law books.'' Biggers doesn't allow Miss Morrow to reply to that.
Mrs. Dawson Kirk subscribes to another stereotype: ''Miss Morrow is a very intelligent young woman,'' her nephew tells her. ''She couldn't be, she's too good looking,'' Mrs. Dawson Krik replies.
Despite this annoyingly stereotypical (but all too common) role in which Miss Morrow resides, Behind That Curtain is a good read. We learn more of the character of Charlie Chan - his detective activities are more in the forefront here than in the first two books - and more of the city and life of San Francisco in the late 1920s.
The Harvard Law School Bulletin, Spring, 1999 published an article called '1870-1950: Waiting for the Doors to Open', about women attempting to get into Harvard Law School. The title is really a misnomer - women weren't 'waiting' for HLS to let them in, they were actively trying to get in, but didn't succeed for eighty years.
The article provided a time line, and we present selected years from it. The timeline reveals that, while Harvard wasn't letting women into its classes, other colleges and universities obviously were graduating female lawyers:
1872 Susan B. Anthony is arrested and convicted by an all-male jury for voting in a presidential election.
1873 & 1874 The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to require Illinois to admit Myra Bradwell to the bar. The Court also rules that women have no right to vote under the Constitution. It also denies Belva Lockwood�s application to the Supreme Court bar.
1878 Another woman, her name now lost, applies to HLS. Once again the Corporation debates�and denies.
1880 The U.S. Survey counts 75 women attorneys.
1886 Seven women lawyers and law students at the University of Michigan form the Equity Club, the first national organization of women lawyers. It lasts
four years.
1899 Bryn Mawr graduate Frances A. Keay applies to HLS. She receives substantial Law Faculty support. Professor James Bradley Thayer reports that while he "would regret" the presence of women, he "could not deny the inherent justice of the claim." To circumvent the Corporation, the HLS faculty proposes that Keay attend law classes with the men and take the same exams but receive a Radcliffe College-issued LL.B. degree. But the Corporation foils this plan, stating: "The President and Fellows are not prepared to admit women to the instruction of the Law School."
1900 The U.S. Survey reports 1,010 women attorneys.
1909 Inez Milholland, Vassar graduate, applies to HLS. She submits a long letter to the dean and Faculty that strongly argues the case for her admission and persuades many faculty. Once again, the Corporation turns down a highly qualified woman applicant.
1915 Fifteen women petition Harvard to admit women to the Law School. Harvard rejects the petition; President Lowell claims co-education would have an "injurious" effect on the School. HLS Professor Joseph Henry Beale LL.B. 1887 is the father of one of the rejected women, Elizabeth Beale, who enlists his assistance. Beale opens the Cambridge Law School for Women in two rooms provided by Radcliffe. Nine dedicated students enroll, taught by HLS professors and graduate students. The School lasts for two years, but founders when few women apply.
1920 The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified; women may now vote in federal elections.
1930 Most major law schools in America � but not Harvard�now enroll women. There are 2,203 women law students and 3,385 active women practitioners in the country.
The explanation of the title:
''You learned nothing?'' inquired Barry Kirk.
''What could you expect? Fifteen years since that little picnic party rode back to Peshawar, back to the compound of the lonely garrison, leading behind them the riderless pony of Eve Durand. And fifteen years, I may tell you, makes a very heavy curtain on India's frontier.''
Chan gravely regarded the man from Scotland Yard. ''It is not to be amazed at, that you have felt such deep interest. Speaking humbly for myself, I desire with unlimited yearning to look behind that curtain of which you speak.''
''That is the curse of our business, Sargeant,'' Sir Fredric replied. ''No matter what our record of successes, there must always remain those curtains behind which we long with unlimited yearning to look - and never do.''
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