A Cast of Killers by Sidney Kirkpatrick

of Chandler’s characters, worn and haggard, as if the book tour had been marked by constant travel and no sleep. Vidor shook Dalmas’s hand and was about to suggest they postpone their meeting until after Dalmas had had a good night’s rest, when suddenly Dalmas seemed to come alive.
    “I think I’ve come up with something very interesting,” he said as he led Vidor outside into the snow. He flagged down a Checker cab and instructed the driver to take them to the public library.
    On the way, Vidor gave Dalmas a vague progress report, referring to his pocket notebook and listing the areas requiring further investigation.
    Dalmas listened carefully and agreed that Vidor could never be too thorough in his research.
    “The more I read, the more I understand why Chandler once said the only reason the Taylor mystery was a mystery was because no one had ever taken the time to do an adequate investigation. All anyone seemed interested in were the scandals surrounding the murder. The crime itself was almost secondary.”
    At the library, Vidor found a pair of empty seats at a long wooden reading table populated mostly by transients driven inside by the snow. He waited nearly twenty minutes, memorizing the graffiti carved into the tabletop, until Dalmas emerged from the next room carrying a stack of bound magazines and a dust-covered blue book. He set them in front of Vidor and opened one of the thick volumes to the cracked cover page of a 1919 issue of a Hollywood trade magazine.
    “I think I threw them for a loop in the stacks. No one’s checked these out in years.”
    “It’s no wonder,” Vidor said, carefully turning the brittle pages. “You can’t believe a word of this stuff. It’s all just publicity blather.”
    “Exactly.” Dalmas commandeered the volume, quickly flipping for specific pages. “The studios used these rags to print whatever they wanted printed. They put these stories in here for reasons, and if you read between the lines, you can pretty well guess what the reasons were.”
    He found a six-page photo spread announcing the birth of Realart, a motion picture corporation formed after the First World War by Paramount Studios to feature the combined talents of their top director and newest star, the “priceless” and “profound” William Desmond Taylor and the “dainty, delicious, and delectable” Mary Miles Minter.
    “Did you ever wonder,” Dalmas asked, “why this Taylor thing ended the careers of Mary Miles Minter and Mabel Normand, but didn’t affect other people who were close to Taylor at all? I mean, we read a lot about monogrammed panties in Taylor’s bedroom, but M.M.M.’s the only monogram anyone ever singles out. I think there’s a reason for that.
    “After the war, Paramount’s biggest star, Mary Pickford, quit, eventually forming United Artists with her husband, Doug Fairbanks; Chaplin; and Griffith. Paramount desperately needed a replacement, and who could have been better than Minter? I mean, she looked just like Pickford, and she was younger. So they started the old publicity ball rolling, giving her her own company and everything, trying to make her seem like the greatest thing that ever happened to movies. But what happened?”
    Dalmas flipped through more pages, illustrating with articles and reviews what had happened.
    Realart’s first production under Taylor was Anne of Green Gables. It was a hit, with Taylor receiving praise as the director, but Minter was being compared unfavorably with Mary Pickford. The movie was followed by Judy of Rogues Harbor, Nurse Marjorie, and Jenny Be Good. With each picture, Taylor was praised and Minter panned.
    Then, with no public explanation for her sudden disappearance, Taylor made ten films without Minter, including Huckleberry Finn, The Soul of Youth, The Furnace, The Top of New York, and The Green Temptation.
    “You see,” Dalmas said, “by the time Taylor was murdered, he was on top of the world, but Minter was just an