Bodies from the Library 5, page 1
BODIES FROM THE LIBRARY 5
Forgotten stories of mystery and suspense
by the Queens of Crime
and other Masters of the Golden Age
Selected and introduced by
Tony Medawar
Copyright
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022
Selection, introduction and notes © Tony Medawar 2022
For copyright acknowledgments, see the Acknowledgments section.
Jacket design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022
Jacket illustrations: Shutterstock.com
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
These stories were mostly written in the first half of the twentieth century and characters sometimes use offensive language or otherwise are described or behave in ways that reflect the prejudices and insensitivities of the period.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008514761
eBook Edition © June 2022 ISBN: 9780008514778
Version: 2022-04-14
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
THE PREDESTINED
Q Patrick
VILLA FOR SALE
Ellis Peters
THE GINGER KING
A. E. W. Mason
SUGAR-PLUM KILLER
Michael Gilbert
VACANCY WITH CORPSE
Anthony Boucher
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Dorothy L. Sayers
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Anthony Berkeley
SCANDAL OF THE LOUVRE
S. S. Van Dine
THE PRESSURE OF CIRCUMSTANCE
J. J. Connington
THE RIDDLE OF THE CABIN CRUISER
John Dickson Carr
SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD
Ianthe Jerrold
THE YEAR AND THE DAY
Edmund Crispin
MURDER IN MONTPARNASSE
John Bude
THE THISTLE DOWN
H. C. Bailey
THE MAGNIFYING GLASS
Cyril Hare
THE ‘WHAT’S MY LINE?’ MURDER
Julian Symons
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
Also available
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
‘The detective story is written purely to entertain.’
Cyril Hare
Welcome to Bodies from the Library, the series that aims to unearth the unknown, to find the forgotten and to locate the lost.
As with the first four volumes, this fifth edition comprises stories from across the genre and includes some that stretch the definition of a detective story. All have one thing in common: none, as far as we are aware, has ever appeared in a dedicated collection of stories by the author concerned.
Here you will find uncollected and hopefully unfamiliar cases featuring H. C. Bailey’s Dr Reginald Fortune and A. E. W. Mason’s Inspector Hanaud, as well as early stories by Michael Gilbert and S. S. Van Dine, and a late one by Cyril Hare. There is another previously unpublished story by Edmund Crispin and a little-known short novel by John Bude, together with radio plays by Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr. And much more besides.
The principal tropes of the detective story were established by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, published in Graham’s Magazine in April 1841. However, the earliest example is probably ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi’ (1819), a novella by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman, who was born in Russia and is best known for his ghastly creation The Sandman.
Today, at a little more than 200 years old, the detective story is in rude health, especially on screen. Television series like Robert Thorogood’s Death in Paradise and the evergreen Midsomer Murders continue to pull in audiences, as do adaptations from the work of Robert Galbraith and Harlan Coben, and new films, such as the forthcoming sequels to Rian Johnson’s extravaganza Knives Out (2019) and Anthony Horowitz’s own adaptation of his extraordinarily clever Magpie Murders (2016). Doubtless Sir Kenneth Branagh’s new interpretation of Death on the Nile (1937) won’t be the last cinematic outing for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and Christie is far from being the only classic author of crime and mystery fiction coming to the screen and streaming services—new incarnations are expected of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, Georges Simenon’s Maigret and Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French.
The genre remains enduringly popular too on paper, or e-reader or audiobook, if you prefer. Having defied Christopher Fowler’s original intention, the crime-solving team of ‘Bryant and May’ continue to find mystery and mayhem in London, while 2022 sees the long-awaited return of Miss Marple in a volume of new mysteries by twelve crime writers who have been influenced by Agatha Christie in their own careers. Might this lead to a series of full-length ‘Marple’ novels, in the vein of Sophie Hannah’s Hercule Poirot continuations? The sleuthing team of Dalziel and Pascoe will be appearing in new collections of the work of Reginald Hill and we can expect more cases featuring some of the many new and exciting new twenty-first century detectives, among them the group of pensioners that are Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, Val McDermid’s Allie Burns, Ann Cleeves’ Matthew Venn, Kate Ellis’s Wesley Peterson and Elly Griffiths’ Dr Ruth Wainwright, as well as John Tyler in D. L. Marshall’s series of thrillers, the sinister protagonist of Jim Noy’s The Red Death Murders (2022) and many, many, more.
Two hundred years … and counting.
Tony Medawar
February 2022
THE PREDESTINED
Q Patrick
It was Jasper’s tenth birthday. There had been strawberries and cream for tea on the lawn, and a party of nice-mannered boys and girls had solemnly presented him with gifts and wished him many happy returns.
But Jasper, an ungracious host, had shown more interest in the strawberries and the gifts than in his guests’ comfort. In fact, there had been a scuffle with a diminutive female guest, whose pigtails he had so continually tweaked that she had rounded upon him in a sudden burst of impolite ferocity.
Now that the avenger had departed along with the other guests, Jasper seemed the prey to the listlessness of bored repletion. His grandmother was watching him anxiously.
‘Is your new collar too tight?’ she asked solicitously, as Jasper unloosened his birthday tie and was unbuttoning his first really ‘grown-up’ shirt. ‘Come here, my dear, and let me look.’
Jasper, a handsome, heavy boy, moved sulkily towards her.
‘Why, good gracious, your poor neck is all black and blue! Did that horrid little Richards girl scratch you, darling?’ Grandmother shook her grey curls as she examined the ugly reddish-blue weal on Jasper’s throat. ‘It can’t be the shirt. I bought it large on purpose to allow for growth. Does it hurt you, my pet?’
Jasper gave a non-committal groan. An orphan child, living alone with a doting grandmother, he knew that slight indispositions often had their concomitant advantages; such as pleasant pamperings, tempting food and freedom from school. On the other hand …
‘Or perhaps it’s strawberry rash. Your poor father always used to break out after strawberries. It’s just struck eight, and if we hurry we’ll be in time to catch Dr Barnes. He usually stays late in his surgery Saturday nights.’
Jasper was not so pleased at this. Dr Barnes was apt to pooh-pooh childish malingerings and to prescribe nasty medicines. But this time his neck really did hurt him quite badly—a sort of chokey feeling. Perhaps he was going to be ill after all.
A few minutes later Dr Barnes was casting a professional eye over Jasper.
‘Where did you say the rash was, Mrs Dogarty? I can’t see anything.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a rash; it was a sort of mark—more like a bruise.’ She moved nearer, peering through thick spectacles. ‘Well, bless me, it’s gone completely. It must have been a trick of light. My eyes are not what they were.’
‘But it hurt,’ put in Jasper.
‘Well it doesn’t hurt any more.’ Dr Barnes gave him a playful pinch. ‘Tummy’s a bit fat, but—all’s well that ends well.’
He might have added: ‘And all’s bad that begins badly.’
On the last Saturday of the Summer Term, Dr Hodson, headmaster of St Ewold’s School, made a habit of inviting the ten senior boys to a buffet supper at his home. From among these he would choose the prefects for the coming year, to supplant those who were leaving. And, being a wise man, he valued the opinion of his wife and daughters in making his selections.
Like soldiers on parade the boys had lined up outside the headmaster’s door, sleek and shiny as soap, shoe-polish and brilliantine could make them. Jasper, third in line of seniority, longed for (and fully expected) the honour of prefecture, with its privileges, comforts, and potentialities of dominance. He had, perhaps, thought too little of its responsibilities.
On the stroke of eight, the senior boy knocked at the headmaster’s door. As he did so there was a choking sound, and he turned to see Dogarty staggering out of line, clutching feverishly at his collar and pulling at the neat knot of his tie.
‘Fall out, Dogarty,’ hissed the senior boy.
The Mesdames Hodson were extremely polite in accepting Jasper’s apologies for being late. But their eagle eyes had taken note of the unbuttoned collar, barely hidden by the crooked tie. Nor did his hair have that guardsman ‘spit-and-polish’ to which these critical ladies were accustomed on such near-formal occasions.
‘I don’t think so much of your Dogarty,’ said Mrs Hodson, after the boys had bowed themselves politely out at ten o’clock.
‘Not mine, my dear,’ said the headmaster, with his famous whimsical smile, ‘but St Ewold’s. A good scholar and a good athlete, handsome, but—’
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ put in the youngest and most tactless of the girls. ‘And Handsome didn’t offer me any of that trifle, though he took two helpings himself.’
‘His eyes are too close together,’ said the eldest daughter, ‘and his mouth is too red for a boy’s. Besides—if he can’t tie his own tie properly, how can he make other boys do it? Jones Minor told me he was a bully; and he’s not a bit popular …’
Here the headmaster held up his hand with his oft-repeated adjuration against telling tales either in or out of school. Then he added: ‘Well, I think Dogarty may go a long way—a very long way.’ But he did not say in which direction.
However, it came to pass that, despite his fine athletic record and a brilliant scholarship to Cambridge, Jasper Dogarty never had his name inscribed amongst those who had been prefects at St Ewold’s.
May-week at Cambridge, with examinations over and dreamy, sunny days—punting along the Cam—moonlit nights with their gay college dances—the announcement of optimistic engagements—with Youth having a final, carefree fling before stepping out from the sheltered groves of Academe into the cold, withering realities of everyday life.
And to Jasper these realities might well prove withering and cold. His grandmother’s legacy—aided by his scholarship—had barely seen him through Cambridge. A double first and the glamour surrounding a ‘rugger blue’ are valuable in their way. But their value so often dies with the shouting and the tumult of graduation, and they are no guarantees of a safe, remunerative job later on. Unless, of course, they have enabled one to find the right connections.
And here Jasper had been lucky, or perhaps clever. Though not generally popular, he had managed to secure the friendship of Douglas Mervyn, who had good-naturedly invited him to share his suite of rooms in Trumpington Street and, more good-naturedly, had invited him to his home during the long vacations. Here Jasper had made good ground with Sir Montague Mervyn, the great industrialist, and also with his only daughter, Eunice. Jasper had managed to convince himself that he would have been genuinely in love with Eunice, even if her father had not been in a position to find a good job for any worthy young man she fancied and, of course, an even better situation for a son-in-law. Jasper felt sure that Eunice, for all her Puritanical upbringing and her ice-clear, grey eyes, was not indifferent to him. For now that the too-red mouth with its petulant lower lip had been brought under control, his perfect physique and regular features were enough to cause a flutter in an even more sternly disciplined heart than Eunice’s.
He would have brought matters to a head that last Saturday afternoon in May-week, as they punted down to Byron’s Pool between the daisied banks of the Cam. But Eunice—wise girl—had brought along her Pekinese, Snap, who had a knack of creating some diversion whenever relations threatened to become too intimate.
But he would have his chance with Eunice that night at the Trinity Ball. Jasper had hired ‘tails’ for the occasion, and their perfect fit had given him much satisfaction when he had tried them on that morning.
Before the dance they were invited to dine with the Dean of Trinity, and Douglas had assembled his party of men and maidens a little before eight. Eunice was there with Snap, who was to be left in the charge of the landlady. In the adjoining bedroom Jasper was putting the finishing touches to his appearance. He was nervous and somewhat afraid. He had learned by now that nervous strain—especially in the evening—was apt to bring on that queer constriction of the throat, followed by a short emotional spasm when he was hardly responsible for his actions.
The college clock struck eight.
‘We’ll be late, and the dean’s a stickler for punctuality,’ said Douglas, moving towards the bedroom door.
His sister restrained him, laughingly. ‘Let’s send little Snappy boy in to hurry him up.’ Eunice opened the door just wide enough for the Pekinese to enter.
There was a sound of playful yapping and then a howl of pain. The door was flung wide open and the dog hurtled across the room with Jasper’s foot behind it.
‘Damn that blasted dog! And damn, triple damn this cursed collar!’
Jasper’s eyes were wild and there was an ugly weal on his neck and throat. Oblivious of the ladies, he stood like the mad Hercules pouring his oaths out to heaven and hell.
Then there was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by the whimpering of the dog.
Finally Douglas stammered: ‘Look here, old man, this won’t—er do, you know—’
But Jasper did not listen. He had gone back into the bedroom.
He never saw Eunice Mervyn again.
At thirty-four Jasper Dogarty could hardly be called a success. His latest job of selling on commission for a large perfume company barely paid for the single Bloomsbury room and the commonest necessities of life. It did not cover the rich foods, the pink gins and the double whiskies to which he had become increasingly addicted. But it had one advantage. It brought him into contact with rich—usually older—women who could supply many such little luxuries. But suddenly, it seemed, women had become more sensible, or less sensitive, to Jasper’s attractions. Invitations were falling off. His bathroom mirror finally told him the reason. He was getting fat—yes, F-A-T, fat.
He must, he told himself, perpetrate the only dishonesty that he had not as yet tried with the opposite sex. He must get married—and fast.
Quickly, almost feverishly, he reviewed his list of matrimonial prospects.
A few weeks later he was the husband of Sophie Cain, a widow ten years his senior, who enjoyed comfortable ill-health, a more than comfortable income and a magnificent Mayfair flat.
Other appurtenances of wealth included an almost new Rolls-Royce and a nearby doctor who, cheerfully and unashamedly, pandered to her hypochondria.
Such things were, however, mere baubles of a temporal nature. Sophie Cain, now Dogarty, had spiritual wealth, too—a sincere, if rather narrow, religious creed, and the services of a more devout, far narrower female companion—Miss Grace Goodman.
Jasper’s bathroom mirror had driven him to matrimony so precipitously that he had had no time to find out that he would be obliged to take on not only the assets but also the liabilities of his beloved. Both her income and her capital were untouchable during her lifetime and, though she consented to make a will largely in his favour, she insisted that Miss Goodman should continue to run the household and hold tight upon the purse-strings.
Jasper, shorter of pocket money than ever, found what solace he could in flaunting the Rolls-Royce before his former ‘customers’, and in the convivial atmosphere of Dr Belk’s flat, which was immediately below his own. The latter, his wife’s physician, was a cheerful old rascal, who soon showed that he was more than ready to enter with Jasper into a defensive alliance against Miss Grace Goodman.
‘What your wife really needs is cheering up a bit,’ said Dr Belk, as he and Jasper sipped their drinks one evening. ‘But old goody-goody Goodman is always reminding her of her mortality and scaring the living daylights out of her.’
