“Cigarettes, Colonel,” said Duncan Maclain, “I never did get any. And maybe just a wee drop of scotch. I’m dryer inside than the ground under Walsh’s and Burzak’s car.”

THERE’S DEATH FOR REMEMBRANCE

Frances and Richard Lockridge

Detectives: Pamela and Jerry North

INARGUABLY THE most famous, charming, and successful crimefighting couple in all of detective fiction (skipping Nick and Nora Charles who, after all, appeared in only a single book), is Mr. and Mrs. North, the creations of Frances Louise Davis Lockridge (1896-1963) and her husband, Richard Orson Lockridge (1898-1982).

Richard Lockridge was a reporter in Kansas and then drama critic for the New York Sun. In the 1930s, he was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, his short stories and articles winning him praise as the archetypical writer for that magazine. His series of non-mystery stories about a publisher and his wife were collected in Mr. and Mrs. North (1938).

When Frances Lockridge decided to write a detective story, she became bogged down and he suggested that he use his creations as the main characters. She devised the plot, he did the actual writing, and the result was The Norths Meet Murder (1940), the first of a series of twenty-seven detective novels than ended with Murder by the Book (1963) when Frances died.

The series garnered a great deal of critical praise for its humor, the portrayal of the Greenwich Village neighborhood in which the authors and the Norths lived, but it fell into formulaic plots that disenchanted some critics. Pam’s penchant for fearlessly wandering into the villain’s path and needing to be rescued in the last chapter irked more than a few readers. Jerry spends most of his time reading manuscripts for his mystery magazine while Pam takes care of the cats and stumbles across bodies, then looking for murderers.

The Norths came to Broadway in Mr. and Mrs. North (1941), a comic play by Owen Davis, which served as the basis for a 1942 motion picture of the same title that starred Gracie Allen and William Post, Jr. In the same year, a charming radio series also titled Mr. and Mrs. North made its debut and became an instant and enduring success. Barbara Britton and Richard Denning starred in the television series that ran for fifty-seven half-hour episodes (1952-1954).

“There’s Death for Remembrance” was originally published in the November 16, 1955, issue of This Week; it has been frequently reprinted as “Pattern for Murder” and “Murder for Remembrance.”

There’s Death for Remembrance

By Frances & Richard Lockridge

FERN HARTLEY CAME TO NEW YORK to die, although that was far from her intention. She came from Centertown, in the Middle West, and died during a dinner party—given in her honor, at a reunion of schoolmates. She died at the bottom of a steep flight of stairs in a house on West Twelfth Street. She was a little woman and she wore a fluffy white dress. She stared at unexpected death through strangely bright blue eyes. . . .