Windows To The World

Death Before Bedtime


by Edgar Box

Georgetown

Gore Vidal writing as Edgar Box did a short series of mysteries in the early 1950's featuring dashing P. R. man Peter Sargeant.   In Death Before Bedtime Peter has just been hired by Senator Leander Rhodes. In early December  Peter has been invited to the Senator's Washington home to meet with him. There was to  be several other guests there at the same times as his visit because the senator is a busy man. Peter suspects that the Senator is planning to announce a run for the presidency.


On the way down Peter shares a sleeper car with Ellen the Senator's daughter to whom Peter was engaged for about one month several years ago. She is a spirited girl in many ways. They arrive in Washington in the morning and Peter meets with the Senator's secretary, Rufus Hollister.

Senate Building

Before the night is over the Senator is dead, killed by a bomb laid cleverly in his fire place so that he would inadvertently set it off himself. The person who set the bomb had to be someone who knew the habits of the Senator well, and to be someone who had had access to the senators fire that day.


Peter finds himself out of a job, but with a scoop on his hands. 


'I was disagreeably struck, as I often am, with my elected role in life; official liar to our society. My lifework is making people who are one thing seem like something very different... manufacturers are jailed for adulterating products but press agents make a fortune doing the same thing to public characters.'


The best part of this story is some of the anachronisms. Peter and Ellen are concerned for a porter in the train to see them together in the sleeper car. My question of course is whether this was a stage coach sleeper since it took all night to get from New York to DC and I am confident it was just a few hours trip even in the fifties. It would been unlikely these days for a presidential hopeful to hire  small one man PR firm run by a 29 year old to get his name out, and he would definitely give himself more than the  seven or eight months that Rhodes had  on his agenda.  Boy, we could easily  approve of a much shorter TV blah blah time during election year.


Also quite nice is the sharp little rapier that Box(Gore) uses to skewer those political figures.  Gore himself grew up in the world of politics. His mother married Hugh Auchincloss, a wealthy man , and the lived in Potomac, Maryland for a while.Auchincloss latter Married Jackie Kennedy's mother He was the grandson of Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma.