BLASTS FROM THE PAST
Who killed Charles Fort’s publisher?
Millions of Americans celebrated Thanksgiving in the comfort of their homes on 25 November 1937, but for one man fate reserved a different outcome. That same night, in a room on the eighth floor of a New York hotel, Claude Kendall was brutally beaten to death. At that time, he was a New York publisher of some repute. He had brought sensational books to the fore, like Octave Mirbeau’s Torture Garden and Twisted Clay, a controversial novel featuring a female psychopath on a rampage, including patricide, prostitution, drugs and suicide. The book was even banned in Australia and Canada. Today he is especially remembered as the man who published Charles Fort’s last two books, Lo! and Wild Talents.
Described at the time of his death as “a publisher of esoteric literature” and of moderately successful mystery thrillers, Kendall had also earned a less savoury reputation in some quarters: “Speaking of the late Claude Kendall, the publisher of books definitely more spicy and erotic, if you please, than exotic or esoteric… what kind of books was the late Mr Kendall most noted as publishing? Well, the Tiffany Thayer stripe, wasn’t he? – the sort which one reads avidly in private and hastily stuffs in the bureau drawer when little Johnny comes running in with his 10-year-old curiosity…” It was a view that persisted after his death. In his biography of Fort, Damon Knight calls him “a rather dubious publisher”, but he doesn’t explain why.
On the morning of 25 November, shortly before noon, a chambermaid going about her rounds in the Madison Hotel turned the key of room 820 and found Kendall’s lifeless body. He was sprawled on the floor with a bed sheet wrapped loosely around his neck. He was fully clothed, had his shoes on and his belongings were undisturbed. Strangely, when the police arrived at the scene, Police Inspector Michael FM Dermott was quick to decide that this was not a case of homicide. Kendall could have fallen from the bed or against a piece of furniture, he suggested.
The autopsy performed by the medical examiner proved otherwise. Someone had so savagely beaten and kicked Kendall’s face that he suffered from multiple hæmorrhages in the head. As a result, his larynx was so damaged that it had swelled and suffocated him. Someone had also beaten his legs and stomach and scratched his face. Who had done this? And why?
The police quickly established a timeline of what Kendall had been up to in the hours before he was murdered. He was known as a habitual drinker, and the night of his death was not unusual in that respect. He attended a Thanksgiving eve party in a room on another floor in the hotel, where he drank heavily. Around half past midnight, two friends carried him up to his room and left him there to sleep it off. But two hours later Kendall staggered out of the hotel for more drink. An elevator operator remembered how he returned with a “slightly built youthful white man” and went up to his room; he also recalled that he had not brought the young man back down from the eighth-floor murder room that night. Neither did the desk clerk see the stranger leave. But others remembered how, at half past four, sounds began to emanate from Kendall’s room. Fiction writer Richard Barry and his wife rented a room on the floor above Kendall’s. They heard “thumping noises” coming from his room. The noises continued, at intervals, for about 15 minutes.
Kendall’s death had become a murder investigation, and the mysterious young man who had been with him in his last moments was the prime suspect. But the suspect turned out to be not much of a stranger at all. The press certainly hinted as much, describing him as “a habitué of a restaurant below the slain man’s hotel room” and “a familiar figure in the Madison Square district where Kendall lived”. New York detectives even confidently predicted “an early arrest” of the man the press had baptised the “phantom-like slugger”. 7
Two days after the murder, police hauled in not one but two suspects. They were subjected to an intense interrogation that lasted all day. Who they were and what was said is curiously absent from the usually very nosy New York press reports. The suspects were released, though, 8 and when asked for an update the next day, the police shrugged that they had no new developments to report. 9
With that, the press dropped the case. The still unsolved murder mystery evaporated from the newspaper pages after only four days. To this date, Claude Kendall’s murder remains unsolved. One man claimed to hold the answer to the riddle, though, and he told his story on the anniversary of Kendall’s death. His name was Howard Stephenson, and he was said to have been a personal friend of Kendall. What he related is even more bizarre than the mystery of why Fort’s publisher was murdered.
According to Stephenson, Kendall’s behaviour became increasingly erratic after he published Fort’s third book, Lo!, and he claimed he was being plagued by strange telephone calls. Let Stephenson take us back:
“The time is 1932. In Kendall’s publishing office on Fifth Avenue an enormous aquarium occupies the entire sill of a wide window. The glass has been frosted and care is taken that the occupants of the aquarium do not get too much sun… He gestures towards the
Kendall’s behaviour became more erratic after he published Fort’s third book, and he claimed he was being plagued by strange telephone calls
aquarium.
‘My Martian fishes,’ he exclaims.
‘Oh, tropical fish?’ Kendall laughs uneasily. ‘Not tropical; fishes from Mars. You’ve read Lo! of course?’
‘Yes, I reviewed it for my paper. But surely – these are not – you mean, those rains of fish and strange larvæ the author discussed?’
Kendall’s eyes, blue and staring, are full on my face.
‘Do you know,’ he says abruptly, ‘I think I shall tell you about the sequel to Lo! which Charles Fort is preparing.’
The phone rings stridently. We are interrupted. There is a shadow on Kendall’s face when he comes again from his desk.
‘I am rung up so frequently,’ he says, with a trace of plaintiveness, ‘only to find nobody calling…’” 10
Then, discussing the books of Alexandra David-Neel, Stephenson makes a sceptical remark. “Kendall’s large eyes slowly turn toward me. ‘But some things are unexplainable,’ he says slowly. ‘You know, during my South American days, I fell and broke a leg under peculiar’ – His mouth snaps shut. He laughs uneasily, turns the conversation in a new direction.”
When Stephenson visited Kendall’s office a second time, the aquarium with the Martian fishes was gone. Kendall was preparing the publication of Stephenson’s novel, but from then on any progress in the matter was communicated only through letters. Stephenson got the impression that Kendall wanted to avoid him, because of something dark and sinister lurking in Fort’s background.
Stephenson suggested that Fort had dug up “occult secrets” and, as a consequence, had attracted the attention of “evil forces”. Now, “a ghostly doom” followed both Fort and Kendall like a curse. Fort’s death coincided with the publication of his Wild Talents Stephenson claimed, and the evil force had it in for Fort’s publisher as well: “Failure and disaster had dogged Claude Kendall. Was some unseen, malevolent power resentful of the weird disclosures of the occult which these men, author and publisher, had dared to make?”
Taking a cue from Fort, he suggested that Kendall’s murderer might not even be a living visitor at all. “Wild talents, retribution for revealing strange things which men may not discuss, death by malevolence of the unseen – a conjecture,” Stephenson writes. “Could that same force, materialised for a few moments to an elevator man, ‘pick from existence’ the author’s friend and publisher?” he wondered. 11
We’ll probably never know who killed Charles Fort’s publisher and Stephenson’s bizarre speculations certainly don’t help. But perhaps a motive can be found. I discussed Kendall’s mystery death with genealogist Robert Steingraber from Syracuse, New York. Conducting genealogical research on behalf of Kendall’s relatives, he learned of the murder and told me his theory:
“Being a gay man myself, I recognised some ‘clues’ in the story. Claude was unmarried. The alleged killer was ‘known’ to hotel staff. Probably he had been in the hotel before with other men. He also was a ‘familiar figure’ in the Madison Square district, so he may have been a ‘hustler’ looking for paid gay sex. He may not have intended to kill Kendall, but beat him up to get away and avoid arrest. The cause of death was asphyxia, so Kendall might still have been alive when the killer left. I think all this was covered up out of concern for the family.”
Why the hotel might have suppressed a gay murder on their premises was obvious, according to Steingraber: “It feared a bad press. The lack of any follow-up tells me it was likely purposefully withheld from the public. I think it was a hook-up gone bad, or perhaps the stranger was only playing gay to rob a smartly dressed man. It was the Depression era, after all. Perhaps they just drank together, and he figured Claude would fall asleep and he’d rob him, but Claude woke up and a fight started. In any case, there is a gay element to it. Definitely on Claude’s part. It’s just the stranger we don’t know.” 12
Kendall’s tragic and mysterious death may have been a terrible accident, or perhaps a hate crime; certainly, its subsequent cover-up would appear to have been caused by the intolerance of homosexuality that was widespread at the time.
Kendall’s brother travelled to New York and brought his body to Watertown for burial. The Madison Hotel still stands, but any traces of the murder have long since receded into the dim past and room 820 has kept its secrets. The unsolved mystery of Kendall’s murder became part of forteana – the very field he helped to create by publishing Fort’s last books.