Haining, Peter (Ed.) - London After Midnight (1996)
Book: LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT
Much ink has been spilled in praise of London; it is evidently one of the world's great cities. However, for every poet who found Londontown appealing there may have been an Eliot who saw it as an "Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn"; it is with that sombre outlook that most of the authors in Peter Haining's LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1996) seem to view London. If you have never been there and plan to go, you might want to think twice ... it's dangerous!
The book has twenty-two stories; slightly more than a third of the authors are not listed on the GADetection Wiki, while two thirds are:
Not on Wiki....8 (8/22 = 36%)
On Wiki.......14 (14/22 = 64%)
(with a duplication: John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson).
On Jon Jermey's Anthology Scorecard, LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT rates 11 out of 22 (11/22 = 50%), with exactly half of the stories qualifying as mysteries; however, the reader is invited to view this book for him/herself; some might beg to differ.
***********************************
LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1996)
Selected and Edited by Peter Haining (born 1940)
Barnes & Noble
Hardcover
Short Story Anthology: 22 Stories
342 Pages
CONTENTS
-Introduction (2 pages)
SECTION ONE: BLACK SPOTS (pages 3-126)
1. "The Knife" (1951)
(Adapted for radio's THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER: November 1951)
by Robert Arthur (1909-1969)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Spitalfields, adjacent to Whitechapel, specifically Dorset Street.
-As drains are being cleaned out, Herbert Smithers makes a find: a mud-encrusted knife of "'Indian workmanship ... sixteenth or seventeenth century'" (page 11) with a blood-red ruby in its hilt; Herbert and his pal Edward Dawes seem completely unaware of the real possibility that this knife may have been wielded by Jolly Jack himself. Soon two women are dead and a third is in imminent danger ....
Comment: Not a mystery; a better title would have been "The Haunted Knife."
2. "Fu Manchu and the Frightened Redhead" (1959)
(THIS WEEK newspaper: 1959; original unused title: "Secret of the Flying Saucer")
by Sax Rohmer (1883-1959)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Limehouse in the East End.
-Lovely Pat Merton awakes from a drug-induced sleep only to discover herself in the clutches of the greatest Chinese master-criminal of all time, Dr. Fu Manchu; normally for beautiful young women this would prove fatal, but the evil genius lets her go! Soon she's back in the arms of her beloved scientist boyfriend, Bruce Garfield, who, we learn, has "outlined his revolutionary theory of travel in outer space without rocket propulsion." (page 18) Knowing that such a development would prove as irresistible to Fu Manchu as lasagna to Garfield the Cat, Sir Denis Nayland Smith has arrived to protect one and all from the evil polymath's machinations. But bringing Fu Manchu to justice has always been an elusive goal for Nayland Smith ....
Comment: Not a mystery; and if it got any pulpier, the pages would disintegrate in your hands. At least we find out what UFOs are all about; what a relief!
3. "The Funspot-Street Affair" (1938)
(EVENING NEWS: 1938)
by Thomas Burke (1886-1945)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: "the night streets of north-east London." (page 26)
-Morton (no other name) is a wage slave like many of his compatriots, but one with an imagination: In going to work each day, he passes Funspot-Street; and in his mind's eye he conjures up the most ludicrous yet lurid fantasies about the place, as he begins to wish that something horrible would happen there, a crime that would stun the public and at the same time satisfy his submerged craving for sensation and recognition. And then one day, horrifyingly, thanks to a motor-bus, he gets his wish ....
Comment: Not a mystery; a short but effective cautionary tale on the drawbacks of wish fulfillment. Thomas Burke is most famous for "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole" (1931).
4. "The Girl Who Loved Graveyards" (n.d.)
by P. D. James (born 1920)
-Introduction (1 1/4 pages)
-Setting: "a typical East London suburb" (page 31)
-She had been brought to live with her aunt and uncle when, as she remembers it, her father and grandmother had died of influenza. Throughout her ten-year stay with her in-laws, who dutifully took care of her without ever really loving her, she had always enjoyed spending time in graveyards rather than with other children, none of whom were ever able to establish a friendship with her. Now she's grown; her aunt and uncle have emigrated to Australia, and she feels an overwhelming obligation to honor her father's memory by locating his grave, a fact that for some unknown reason has been withheld from her. But on the verge of reaching her goal, she must pretend an interest in buying her childhood home -- and it is here, in these familiar surroundings, that memories suppressed for over ten years come flooding back, memories of self-sacrifice and guilt and murder ....
Comment: Not a mystery, but extremely well-written; a crime story told in reverse, from the aftermath to the cause; Haining calls it "evocative and engrossing" (page 32), a fair assessment.
5. "The Most Hated Man in London" (n.d.)
by Patricia Moyes (1923-2000)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: "the financial heart of the city of London." (page 49)
-Max Scotland, moneylender and blackmailer on the side, is dead: "If ever a man asked to be killed," opines the Chief Inspector, "Max did." So whodunit? Office guard George Potts swears that three of Max's clients -- "Mr. Mars," "Mrs. Niobe," and "Mr. Hermes," as Max has code-named them -- were on time for their morning appointments, and according to the schedule Max died in that time frame. The solution lies in Max's "business practice," you could say: "Not all of his victims were rich. Max was democratic. He'd exploit even five bob's worth of human misery." (page 50) "It isn't often," says the Chief Inspector, "that you come across a case you can solve by pure logic ..." (page 50)
Comment: A mystery; a minor vignette, but at least it invites the reader to do some cogitating.
6. "Flight from Fleet Street" (1952)
(LONDON MAGAZINE: February/March 1952)
by Carter Dickson (1906-1977)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Fleet Street, "only just over half a mile from the City." (page 54)
-Bill Leslie, of the Diplomatic Service, has arrived in London on his way to a station assignment in Lisbon; with him is his young English wife, Brenda. Almost as soon as they've checked into Hampden's Hotel, they are visited by Chief Inspector Radford; the Inspector has noticed the uncanny resemblance between Bill and one Flash Morgan: "You're the dead spit of him -- as we say." (page 59) Flash has a few character flaws: "He's wanted for several murders. Also bank robbery. Also he's a ripper, if you know what that means. Uses a razor, and -- likes it." (page 58) Radford warns Bill not to leave the hotel, and of course he does just the opposite; he not only manages to track Morgan down but also encounters another man with another razor -- and a strong motivation to cut someone's throat ....
Comment: A mystery; this one seems to have been intended as a one-act play based on the legendary Sweeney Todd: Haining writes, "It is one of the most surprising and ingenious tales of the Demon Barber that I have ever read." (page 55)
7. "Dangerous Game" (n.d.)
by Michael Gilbert (1912-2006)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: "the huge and impressive buildings of the Royal Courts of Justice, the centre-point of London's legal world." (page 69)
-The charred body of Michael Finnegan, a multiple amputee, is found in a burned-out stolen car on Hampstead Heath; Michael has been found out, and the I.R.A. are ruthless with traitors in their midst. Just as ruthless, however, are Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, whom no one would suspect of being secret government agents; despite political pressure to stay away, the two elderly gents close in on I.R.A. conspirators who are grimly determined to murder a judge while he is presiding in court ....
Comment: Not a mystery; terrorists play for keeps, but so do Calder and Behrens -- you have been warned.
8. "Karmesin the Murderer" (n.d.)
by Gerald Kersh (1911-1968)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Soho, "one of the focal points of the London underworld." (page 90)
-To women, Skobeleff was irresistible, devastatingly handsome "with a flow of conversation that could make the unhappy laugh, or bring a heartthrob to the bosom of the most nonchalant woman that ever lived." (page 93) "He had," says Karmesin, "a genius for working his way into the affections of highly respectable women -- women with highly placed husbands." (page 93) -- all in the sevice of his true trade: "He was a criminal of the worst type, my friend: one who lives upon women. Skobeleff's specialty was blackmail." (page 93) But the law couldn't touch him, so subtle was he; so Karmesin decided that Skobeleff must die, and set about planning "the Perfect Murder," a murder that culminates in death, all right, but not exactly according to plan ....
Comment: Not a mystery; Haining writes that Ellery Queen considered Karmesin "either the greatest criminal or the greatest liar of our time!" (page 91)
9. "The Day Lucky's Luck Ran Out" (1981)
(DAILY MAIL: November 1981)
by Allan Prior (born 1922)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Belgravia, "one of the most fashionable residential areas of the capital." (page 99)
-Lucky's on the run; he now finds himself in a small room attended perfunctorily by complete strangers whose only interest in him is money. A man known just as the Doctor attends to the stitches in his new face, until it's time to board Concorde for Rio -- and freedom. But freedom from what? He's a wanted man back home, it's true; but an awful feeling comes over him that he's heading for a prison of a different sort ....
Comment: Not a mystery; Haining explains the origin of this story: In 1974 Richard John Bingham, seventh Earl of Lucan, disappeared after killing the family's nanny; "the fugitive Earl has not been seen from that day to this, nor has anyone been able to discover any indication as to his ultimate fate." (page 99)
10. "A Little Place off the Edgware Road" (n.d.)
("Brilliantly adapted" for the SHADES OF GREENE TV series: 1975)
by Graham Greene (1904-1993)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Edgware Road, "that rather bleak and almost endless stretch of road which disappears into the northern suburbs of the capital." (page 105)
-Craven is his name; at night he prays that his body -- his loathsome body -- will never be resurrected when he comes to die -- and now here he is, in a darkened theatre as an old silent film unspools -- and now a curious little man, an argumentative little chap with a dripping beard and sticky hands, sits down beside him -- and now, as the film breaks and the little man leaves, Craven realizes with growing horror that the man's beard wasn't dripping raindrops from the soft summer shower outside and his hands weren't sticky from the rain, but from someone else's blood ....
Comment: Not a mystery, but "compulsively readable" (page 106), says Haining; in many ways this story is representative of Graham Greene's life-long concern with "the emotions and motivations of the law-breakers rather than their actions." (page 105)
11. "People Don't Do Such Things" (n.d.)
by Ruth Rendell (born 1930)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Bayswater Road, "London's 'Crimes of Passion' district." (page 113)
-The narrator (never named) is a tax accountant with a varied clientele; he lives a rather prosaic but comfortable life with his wife Gwendolyn, a sentimental woman who seems content with their conventional lifestyle. One of his customers is Reeve Baker, a novelist who goes through women like an influenza patient through a box of tissues; Reeve makes it plain that he will never submit to being controlled by any woman, ever. Their lives run along parallel but distinct paths for some time -- until a moment comes when they intersect; when the lines reconfigure themselves into a triangle; when one side of the triangle decides to erase another; when love turns into jealousy, and jealousy turns into hate, and hate leads to murder ....
Comment: Not a mystery; Haining says Ruth Rendell, in an interview, "admitted she had puzzled for a long time about why people committed murder, without being able to reach an answer .... 'Who knows what our unconscious is doing?'" (page 114)
SECTION TWO: CITY SLEUTHS (pages 127-342)
12. "The Elusive Bullet" (1936)
by John Rhode (1884-1964)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Paddington and "the home of one of the city's formidable group of private detectives who have dedicated their lives to solving crime." (page 129)
-It's as simple as one plus one. Inspector Hanslet is convinced he has caught the killer of Mr. Farquharson, found dead in a first-class carriage on the 3.20 train to Tilbury: Robert Halliday, the dead man's nephew. Robert certainly stands to benefit monetarily, inheriting business assets upon the death of his uncle. And hadn't the two quarreled that very day? And wasn't Robert seen on the same train, with a service rifle of the kind that fires the same type of bullet determined to have killed him? But to Dr. Lancelot Priestley it doesn't add up; and when that happens to a professor of mathematics, that's serious ....
Comment: A mystery; Dr. Priestley is "the armchair detective personified who devotes himself to solving crime problems which involve the use of mathematics, more particularly, pure logic." (page 129)
13. "The Adventure of the Worst Man in London" (1904)
(STRAND: 1904 as "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"; filmed for TV in 1992)
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
-Introduction (2 pages)
-Setting: 221B Baker Street and Hampstead.
-Sherlock Holmes matches wits with a master criminal, Charles Augustus Milverton: "He is the king of all the blackmailers," Holmes explains to Dr. Watson: "Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton. With a smiling face and a heart of marble he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry .... I've had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow." (page 151) But, as usual, Milverton is just beyond the clutches of the law; and Holmes is forced to take extreme measures to bring the bounder to justice -- measures like getting engaged to be married, and performing a little B & E, and even theft. But fate intervenes in the lithe and lovely form of Nemesis, with her delicately curved nose and blazing revolver ....
Comment: Not a mystery, despite all; Haining explains why he made the title change: "I have it on the authority of the Holmesian expert Edgar W. Smith who owns the original holograph manuscript: 'On page one of this MS, Dr. Doyle first wrote "The Adventure of the Worst Man in London" then (how much later I do not know) he crossed this out and substituted the title eventually used for publication. I think this was definitely a change for the worse!'" Haining agrees: "I have no hesitation in restoring the original title here." (page 140)
14. "The Bottle Party" (1940)
by H. C. Bailey (1878-1961)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Wimpole Street and environs.
-Carteret Place: Habitation of the nouveaux riches, people who have been known to live high but sink low; people who are sometimes known for their expensive but nasty habits -- and, on occasion, for murder. Carteret Place: "We don't like that street, sir," says Superintendent Bell; "We have nothing hard, but there is reason to believe it has snow falls. Cocaine, you know." (page 178) Carteret Place: Tony Cray gets into a scuffle with a policeman there, and his erstwhile actress girlfriend, Valerie Milburn ("She plays the blondes that gentlemen prefer" -- page 171), appeals to Mr. Reggie Fortune for help in clearing Tony's good name. Carteret Place: Found in a parked car there is the very dead body of Mrs. Arundel, erstwhile girlfriend of this selfsame Tony Cray and suspected by the police of being a dope dealer. Carteret Place: Habitation of well-meaning fools and ruthless killers ....
Comment: A mystery, but not fair-play; Haining writes: "... historian Otto Penzler declared that Reggie Fortune was 'probably the most popular sleuth in England between the two world wars.'" (pages 169-170)
15. "Aces High" (n.d.)
by Peter Cheney (1896-1951)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Berkeley Square and the West End.
-Private eye Slim Callaghan is hired by the aristocratic Lord Priorton -- who says, "Like most other people of my class, I've very little money" (page 194) -- to collect on a gambling debt, three thousand five hundred pounds. Callaghan, asking questions and making thinly-veiled threats, makes the rounds of the people who were at the card table: young Eustace Willhaven, still under his father's sway; Hubert Willhaven, for whom thirty-five hundred pounds is pocket lint; and Mrs. Melody Vazeley, who can prove the game was crooked by producing marked cards. Two of these three people are in a conspiracy together, and it's up to Callaghan to separate the sheep from the goats before somebody gets fleeced again ....
Comment: A mystery, just barely; despite its brevity, the story is needlessly repetitious -- and how many fictional detectives are willing to boast: "When I'm handling a case I never look for clues. I leave that to the detectives in fiction"? (page 201) He solves this one, apparently, purely on the basis of "a hunch." (page 203)
16. "Yellow Iris" ("mid-Thirties")
(Filmed for TV in 1993)
by Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Mayfair, specifically Whitehaven Mansions, "a modern block of flats near Park Lane." (page 294)
-Hercule Poirot is about to retire for the evening when he receives a phone call, one that urges him to go to a chic night club, the Jardin des Cygnes, where he finds -- not an unfolding tragedy as he expects -- but a party in full swing. "All this," he says, "is very strange." (page 211) The other party members seem oblivious to how strange things are -- until Barton Russell, the man who arranged this dinner, announces that he intends to catch his wife's killer at this very table; one of them, he insists, poisoned Iris four years ago in New York. Was it Tony Chapell, who's head-over-heels for Pauline Weatherby, Russell's sister-in-law; or was it Stephen Carter, tight-lipped and furtive member of the diplomatic service; or could it have been Senora Lola Valdez, "a dark and luscious creature" (page 208) born under South American skies; or, as Ellery Queen might say, was it somebody else? But the strangeness soon goes completely off the scale when, under identical circumstances to four years ago, Pauline is found face-down at the table, her champagne glass laced with cyanide ....
Comment: A mystery, most assuredly; the Queen of Bafflement in full flight: "Ah, the deductions -- they are not so easy in real life." (page 209) Haining adds: "Agatha Christie also re-wrote the basic idea into one of the most successful of all her novel-length Poirot cases, Sparkling Cyanide, published in 1945." (page 205)
17. "Trent and the Fool-proof Lift" (n.d.)
by E. C. Bentley (1875-1956)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: Cadogan Place, "the home of journalist, artist and amateur detective Philip Trent." (page 222)
-After a hard day at the office, no one really wants to make a discovery like the one M. Armand Binet-Gailly does: a "crumpled bundle of humanity" (page 224) that had been known in life as Stephen Havelock Hermon, lying at the bottom of a lift shaft with his neck broken and the fingernails of his right hand coated with chloroform, of all things. The police rapidly, and correctly, conclude that this apparent accident was murder; an expert in lift mechanisms confirms that, while the system is fool-proof, "it isn't tool-proof" (page 227), and declares the locks were forced. In other words, Hermon's murder was made to look like an accident. And there is no shortage of suspects, virtually all of whom have no corroborating alibis and some of whom have plausible motives. It falls to Philip Trent, in his capacity as reporter for the RECORD, to ferret out the culprit and solve a case that, thanks to his clear understanding of human ambition and a garrulous barber, gets pretty hairy ....
Comment: A mystery; Haining tells us that "Bentley confessed that he set out quite deliberately to write his first book as an exposure of what he saw as the 'sterility and artificiality of the contemporary detective story.'" (pages 222-223) The critic John Carter hailed Bentley as "the father of the contemporary detective story." (page 223)
18. "The Cave of Ali Baba" (n.d.; 1928?)
(Original title: "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba")
by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: 110 Piccadilly, "a flat believed by members of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society to be on the site of the Park Lane Hotel." (page 240)
-FADE IN: Lord Peter Wimsey is dead, killed while shooting big game in Tanganyika; the paper reports on the details of his will, amounting to half-a-million pounds, some of it going to various charities and his valet, and the bulk going to his mother. CUT TO: "a seedy-looking public-house in a low quarter" (page 243) where two men, one named Jukes and the other Rogers, discuss in quiet tones the steps Rogers must take to become a member of a group known only as the Society, an organization famous for such charitable activities as the Carruthers necklace theft, the Gorleston bank robbery, the Faversham burglary, and "the big Rubens that disappeared from the National Gallery." (page 245) LAPSE DISSOLVE: MONTAGE of two years of charitable work by the Society; then CUT TO Rogers reading an encoded message announcing an Extraordinary General Meeting that very evening, at long last his chance to meet the "top Moriarty" himself. (page 272) But like that super-villain, Number One is treacherous and ruthless and not unintelligent as he determines Rogers's real identity; and "Rogers" sees that his life is forfeit unless he can make use of those magic words used to open Ali Baba's cave; otherwise it will be for him a final -- and fatal -- FADE OUT ....
Comment: Not a mystery; a pulpish thriller, James Bond movie-style, but entertaining. Haining says that Dorothy Sayers "attempted to make her stories literary as well as exciting and is consequently regarded as a trend-setter in this particular aspect of the history of the detective story." (page 241)
19. "The Border-line Case" (1969)
by Margery Allingham (1904-1966)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: "not far from famous Piccadilly Circus -- in a little cul-de-sac called Bottle Street" (page 274)
-It's stiflingly hot in the city, so when a policeman sees a man collapse underneath a lamppost he naturally assumes it's heat prostration; but at the mortuary it's discovered that "death had been due to a bullet wound neatly placed between the shoulder-blades" (page 276); and since the deceased couldn't have taken more than three steps after being shot and since the policeman heard no untoward sound, the shooter undoubtedly used a silencer. Detective-Inspector Oates is certain he knows who did it -- a mobster named Donovan -- but there are two snags: one, Donovan's girl, Josephine, gives him an alibi; and two, it seems impossible for Donovan to have fired through the several-feet-thick concrete walls of a factory and hit the victim under that lamppost (Donovan's location being fixed by reputable witnesses as well as his unreliable girlfriend). Oates goes to Mr. Campion, who despite the heat solves an "impossible" crime that really only involves going from A to B ....
Comment: A mystery; Haining notes about Campion: "The detective himself has a well-developed skill at seeming a bit stupid in order to fool his criminal adversaries and is an expert at disguise -- solving one early case in drag!" (page 274)
20. "The Santa Claus Club" (1960)
by Julian Symons (1912-1994)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: the Soames Building in Trafalgar Square
-Francis Quarles -- "the most gentlemanly private eye of them all" (page 285) -- has been summoned by Lord Acrise; it seems he has been getting threatening letters from a dead man -- well, officially dead to the Argentinian police, who found a body that might have been James Gliddon's. Gliddon was Acrise's former business partner who had done time for embezzlement, moved to Argentina, and had run an import-export firm which, rumor had it, included among its imports the occasional Nazi. Quarles is unable to track Gliddon down, so he must arrive empty-handed at the Robert the Devil Restaurant where the annual Santa Claus Club, a charitable organization of wealthy men and women, is having a fete. Quarles soon has another problem on his hands when Santa Claus is murdered and he must decide who the killer is from among not only nine other Santa Clauses but also Scrooge, Marley, and the Ghost of Christmas Past ....
Comment: A mystery; Haining describes Francis Quarles as "a highly deceptive character, much tougher than he initially looks and with a formidable brain that law-breakers tangle with at their cost." (page 285)
21. "The Incautious Burglar" (n.d.)
by John Dickson Carr (1906-1977)
-Introduction (1 1/2 pages)
-Setting: "Charing Cross station and, just behind it, the stylish group of buildings which make up Adelphi Terrace" (page 298), and Cranleigh Court, "an otherwise commonplace country house." (page 299)
-For a burglar, it's the ideal set-up: Marcus Hunt owns three valuable paintings -- two Rembrandts and a Van Dyck; but he seems to have gone out of his way to leave them defenseless by moving them downstairs and removing the house's burglar alarms, even failing to insure them. Is it any wonder, then, that one chilly evening a burglar has a go at them? But the unexpected event isn't that a theft is attempted; no, the surprise is whose face is under the thief's black cloth mask: "He was an incautious burglar: he had no sixth sense which smelt murder." (page 305) Dr. Gideon Fell is called in to untangle this confusing knot, a knot of people and motives: the naive Marcus Hunt; Lewis Butler, who is not what he seems; Arthur Rolfe, an art dealer who just might stop at nothing; Derek Henderson, an art critic whose admiration for finer things could carry him overboard; and Harriet Davis, Marcus's niece. One of these people isn't merely a thief but also, as Dr. Fell knows full well, carries on his person, like Cain of old, the mark of a murderer ....
Comment: A mystery, of course; Haining characterizes Dr. Fell: "His obvious eccentricity is underlined by the fact that he much prefers tackling cases where there is some hint of the supernatural involved, and he will happily travel hundreds of miles to prove that there is a rational explanation for the events after all." (page 298)
22. "The Bones of the Case" (n.d.)
(PEARSON'S MAGAZINE: n.d.)
by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943)
-Introduction (2 pages)
-Setting: "number 5A Kings Bench Walk in the Inner Temple Gardens" (page 317) and environs.
-The resemblance between Mr. Percival Bland and his cousin Robert Lindsay is uncanny; if you stood them side-by-side you could almost swear they are the same man. One of them, however, decides the other must go; it's nothing personal, really, just a little matter of three thousand pounds in insurance that stands to be collected upon the coroner's determination of death by misadventure. So a cunning plan is set into motion, a plan that calls for a complete set of human osteology (bones, if you're so curious), a second-hand copy of GRAY'S ANATOMY, a rabbit skin, a large supply of glue, and about ten pounds of shin of beef -- and, we mustn't forget, the limitless patience required to thread loosely-glued-together bones through the arms and legs of a complete set of clothing. And so perishes this individual one cold, alcohol-soaked Christmas Eve in a major conflagration that destroys his boarding house. The carefully wrought plan seems to have succeeded -- that is, until Dr. John Thorndyke is called in by the insurance company, and then it all starts to unravel. By the time Dr. Thorndyke is finished applying his formidable medico-legal expertise to the case, the perpetrator doesn't stand a chance of collecting a farthing; in fact, he's on his way to prison. He would have done well to heed Walter Scott on tangled webs, or even the Good Book: "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost" ....
Comment: A mystery, if an inverted one; Haining says that "Thorndyke is always more concerned with examining the minutiae of crime -- the physical clues left at the scene -- rather than the people involved, and never allows personal emotions to cloud his judgement." (page 317)
-Michael
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.