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". . . every minute of life is education,
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Elizabeth Daniels Squire

CBS comments on THE LIZ READER: A Collection of the Shorter Works of Elizabeth Daniels Squire:

Still another piece by Liz celebrates the aging process. It's in the form of a dialog between Peaches and Liz. While she was mulling this idea over in her head, Liz asked me what I thought, saying "It's not falling together just right-I guess because I can't decide whether to tell this in Peaches' voice or my own." "What if," I suggested, "you try doing a dialog?" Here is the result, as published in Deadly Women, edited by Jan Grape, Dean James and Ellen Nehr. A quotation, "respect the real deep down differences in the way people's minds work, including your own. And if some folks think that's outrageous, so be it" from this piece is on the tombstone that marks where Liz's ashes are buried in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

The Older They Get . . .

Characters of all ages tend to talk to their authors. And, because characters live inside our heads, they have access to everything we know. On top of which they know even more than we do about themselves. Which makes them uppity or else helpful, as the mood suits them. Or even philosophic.

So I wasn't surprised when Peaches Dann, my 58-plus absent-minded sleuth looked me straight in my mind's eye and said: "You don't know how lucky you are to write about a well-seasoned wiser sleuth like me."

Now, I knew Peaches's on-off, on-off memory had nothing to do with age. She made it quite clear back when she first appeared in Who Killed What's-Her-Name? Furthermore, with the passage of time she's learned the memory tricks that help solve murders. So she says.

"Every age is interesting," I said, not wanting this older-wiser thing to go to her head.

"Exactly," she said. "And it's great to have lived through all the earlier ages plus the present. You are all of yourselves rolled into one - the young, the middle-aged, the well matured. I mean, look at Henrie O. She tells Carolyn Hart all sorts of ways that her earlier experience as a newspaper woman can help her solve crime, right?

"Or take Mrs. Pargeter," Peaches said, switching to the British detecting scene a la Simon Brett. "Mrs. P. admires the fact that her late crime-lord husband believed in honor among thieves. She knows how to use his underworld connections to solve crimes-without-honor and actually make the world a better place. So even experience of a very dubious sort can be used with wisdom. And sometimes compassion."

Peaches had a point. "What I like about an older sleuth," I said, "is the same thing I like about being older myself. You reach an age where you're willing to do what works best for you even if it looks eccentric to other people. Where you respect the real deep down differences in the way people's minds work, including your own. And if some folks think that's outrageous, so be it."

"I, myself, am not outrageous," Peaches said firmly. "I'm a pragmatist, pure and simple in every book."

"Except perhaps the time your dinner guests found an upside-down bowl with two toilet paper rolls on it and at the very top a half-eaten apple, all on the kitchen counter," I said. "You know folks always come in the kitchen."

"Temporary Found Sculpture!" Peaches cried. "Made of what came to hand, to remind me to take the rolls out of the oven at eight-thirty. Because my timer broke. And soon as I explained that the apple half eaten meant half after eight as in a-t-e, they all reminded me when the time came. Temporary Found Sculpture works. So it's not eccentric."

To spare Peaches' feelings, I talked about her peers. "Well, how about Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax. She's sixty?something, and she outwits Bulgarian terrorists, African assassins, Albanian thugs, and other dangerous types with totally unconventional ploys. Like the time she substituted a can of peaches for a can of uranium and thus prevented mayhem."

"Don't give away plots," Peaches said. "It's not fair."

"And how about Father Brown," I said, to get more classical. "He was a Roman Catholic priest, and yet he solved crimes by stepping in the killer's shoes. What was it he said? Something like 'When I'm quite sure I feel like the murderer, I know who he is.' What would the Vatican think of that?

"And how about Miss Seeton, who has already outlived her senior status?" I asked. "Miss Seeton doesn't even bother to find out why her sketches contain clues that help other more- law-enforcement-minded folks solve murders. She just draws cartoons and there the clues are. Now how is that for odd?"

Peaches retorted. "It's wise. You do what you can to be useful. And by the time you are fifty or sixty or seventy, you have learned all sorts of surprising things because you've had to. And anything you've learned can be helpful if you can just figure out how. That's the mystery. How to use it."

But Peaches isn't like Henrie O, who covered murders and wars and other disasters as a reporter. She's not even like Stefanie Matteson's Charlotte Graham, an older Oscar-winning actress turned sleuth with all sorts of fancy connections to help her out. When Peaches worked, she helped her first husband run a mountain craft shop--hardly apprenticeship to find killers.

"Of course you collect memory tricks," I said, "but aside from that. . ."

She felt my skepticism. "My experience," she said, "is partly in figuring out what makes people tick. Back in my craft shop days, I could tell--just by the blouses they wore--a customer who would want cute little carved wooden mice from one who wanted lovely traditional pottery. Mice go with ruffles. Men rarely buy cute mice, except when kids demand it.

"And," Peaches continued, "since I forget things, like who I put aside the toby jug for, or who I should know by name because they came in last week, I have more know-how in getting around what I don't know--in figuring it out. What else do detectives do? I have learned how to get folks to tell me what I need to know without letting them find out I don't already know it. Older sleuths have had to learn all kinds of things like that."

"You mean," I said, "that just as Miss Marple could solve any crime by comparing the killer's motive with some point of psychology in an English village, every older sleuth has the equivalent of a village. A community of experience he or she can draw on."

"Of course," Peaches said. "You might say I draw upon the confederation of the absent-minded." (Peaches knows how to make even foolishness sound good.) "Because since my experiences as an absent-minded sleuth have been written up in books, everybody sends me their memory tricks. Did you know that 83 percent of Americans believe they have bad memories for names? A scientific study showed that. And over 60 percent believe they have trouble finding things like their keys or their glasses. But that's Americans of all ages. And I, being older, have collected and developed more memory coping devices over the years. I am an expert!"

Good grief! Peaches is getting as full of herself as senior-citizen Hercule Poirot with his little gray cells! Can getting around spacey gray cells be something to crow about? That takes nerve!

Amazing what kinds of experience older sleuths draw on. Of course, ex-police-chiefs like Susanna Hofmann McShea's Forrest Haggarty can detect, especially with the help of other small-town-Connecticut seniors. How about D.B. Borton's Cat Calaban saying she's a better sleuth because she's been a mother! I guess lots of mothers would agree.

"O. K., O. K.!" I said. "But you older sleuths have limits. Admit that, Peaches! You can't have a convincing fistfight or sword-battle or get seriously beaten up and be back at work in two hours."

"Poo!" said Peaches. "Some of us are in great shape. Fannie Zindel, who's so full of energy she needs two authors, is a five-times tennis champion. And anybody who lives in the mountains like me has to walk up and down hills." (Peaches is rather proud of still being a size twelve.)

"But I'll admit," she said, "that mostly we are forced to battle with our wits - right? Give me an older sleuth any day for surprise twists and unexpected insight. Take Nero Wolfe. He hardly moved out of his chair, but he solved all sorts of exotic crimes with snakes and poison and I forget what else. He was a great detective, with his mind.

"But I'm not jealous of him," Peaches went on. "I'm jealous of the senior sleuths who get to travel. Such as Dottie and Joe Loudermilk in their RV van. Since they're retired, author Gar Haywood takes them to the Grand Canyon to solve murders. Why can't you take me there? There's one advantage of an older sleuth that you've ignored," she accused. "We aren't tied down. Or not as much. We can go places! Any place we like. We're ready!"

"So what's the drawback with being an older sleuth?" I asked. "It can't all be perfect."

"The drawback," Peaches said, "is for you, not for me. With every book, I get older. Suppose I get so old I can't detect anymore? Then what will you do?"

I just laughed. "You forget - I get older, too. And in the meantime I'll just follow the motto I learned from Mrs. Pollifax: 'Adapt, adjust and catch your breath later.'"

Long silence from Peaches. "I don't suppose," she said, "that you'd consider getting your motto from me?"

* * *