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Автор Бретт Холлидей
Brett Halliday
Author’s Foreword
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Postscript
Brett Halliday
She Woke to Darkness
Author’s Foreword
In each of the twenty-four published adventures of Michael Shayne, the stories have necessarily come to you second-hand-written in third person by me from Mike’s notes and from talks with him after the case was ended.
Thus, all descriptions of people involved, all the dialogue, incidents and bits of action, were channelled to my readers through me from Shayne’s memory after the case was closed.
This may have been all for the best. I think it is quite true that later events do affect one’s precise memory of what has gone before, causing one’s subconscious to suppress certain things that may have been misinterpreted at the time, and to twist the memory of one’s thoughts and actions to make them appear a little more prescient than they may have actually been.
As I say, this may have been all for the best. By going back and retelling a case to me after it was ended, Michael Shayne may well have subconsciously interpolated story values that were not actually inherent in the events as they progressed. True objectivity and absolute honesty of detail do not always make for good storytelling.
This case is different. This story happened to me, Brett Halliday. For once, the truth was no stranger than fiction.
I’ve enjoyed putting it down on paper, now that it’s all over and I’m still alive to do the telling, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as the previous cases in which I was a mere onlooker.
1
It all began Thursday evening, April 23rd, 1953. I was spending a week in New York, seeing publishers and meeting old friends, and I had timed my visit to coincide with the annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards Dinner given by the Mystery Writers of America, of which I have been a member for many years.
The dinner is held each year in the grand ballroom of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York, bringing together several hundred mystery writers from all over the country who meet with distinguished fans and guests to honor the Father of the modern Detective Story. Ceramic busts of Poe (known as “Edgars”) are presented to winners of awards in the various mystery fields for the preceding year, and everyone has a few drinks and there’s much shop-talk.
The bar was already well-crowded when I went in. Since I had been away from New York for many years, most of the people were strangers, with here and there the familiar face of a friend I had known in MWA from years ago. There were Ed Radin, Bruno Fischer, Clayton Rawson and Veronica Parker Johns, also Helen Reilly, the Grande Dame of the mystery field, who had just been elected the president of the Mystery Writers, and her four charming daughters (two already successful mystery authors on their own); there were editors like Frank Taylor of Dell, Cecil Goldbeck of Coward-McCann, Harry Maule of Random House, and many others, none of whom are important to this story.
I went up to the bar for a brandy, and looked down the seating list for my own name. I had been placed at table Seven, with my old friend David Raffelock from Denver, Robert Arthur, who was slated to receive an Edgar for his radio program, and Dorothy Cecil, whose novels I had long admired and whom I had always wished to meet.
