Murder by the Book, page 49
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Books. Change. Lives.
Introduction, selection, and notes © 2021, 2022 by Martin Edwards
Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Front cover image © 2022 by Mary Evans Picture Library
“Trent and the Ministering Angel” © 1938 by E. C. Bentley. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Estate of E. C. Bentley.
“A Slice of Bad Luck” by Nicholas Blake reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of The Estate of C. Day-Lewis.
“A Lesson in Crime” © 1933 by G. D. H. and M. Cole. Reprinted with the permission of David Higham Associates on behalf of The Estate of G. D. H. and Margaret Cole.
“Chapter and Verse” © 1973 by Ngaio Marsh. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
“A Savage Game” © 1950 by The Estate of the Late Lesley Milne Limited.
“The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts” reproduced by permission of The Estate of S. C. Roberts.
“Dear Mr. Editor…” © 1968 by Christianna Brand. Reproduced by permission of A M Heath & Co. Ltd. Authors’ Agents.
“A Question of Character” © 1970 by Victor Canning. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Beneficiaries of The Estate of Victor Canning.
“The Book of Honour” by John Creasey reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop
(www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of The Estate of John Creasey.
“The Clue in the Book” © 1952 by Julian Symons. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Beneficiaries of The Estate of Julian Symons.
“A Man and His Mother-in-Law” © 1954 by Roy Vickers. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Estate of Roy Vickers.
“The Manuscript” © 1953 by Gladys Mitchell. Reprinted with the permission of David Higham Associates on behalf of The Estate of Gladys Mitchell.
“We Know You’re Busy Writing…” from Fen Country by Edmund Crispin reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of The Estate of Edmund Crispin.
“Grey’s Ghost” by Michael Innes reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of The Estate of Michael Innes.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be pleased to be notified of any corrections to be incorporated in reprints or future editions.
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the British Library
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
A Note from the Publisher
A Lesson in Crime
Trent and the Ministering Angel
A Slice of Bad Luck
The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts
Malice Domestic
A Savage Game
The Clue in the Book
The Manuscript
A Man and His Mother-in-Law
Grey’s Ghost
Dear Mr. Editor…
Murder in Advance
A Question of Character
The Book of Honour
We Know You’re Busy Writing
Chapter and Verse
Back Cover
Introduction
What could be more appropriate than a British Library Crime Classics anthology of short stories concerned with the world of books? This collection gathers together an assortment of mysteries linked by a literary theme of one kind or another.
Both readers and authors of crime fiction are likely to be drawn towards “bibliomysteries,” a word which is unlikely to be found in a dictionary, despite supplying the title for a fascinating monograph by the legendary American editor, publisher, bookseller, and bibliophile Otto Penzler. Penzler readily accepted that the term is apt to be defined in a subjective way, and said: “If much of the action is set in a bookshop or a library, it is a bibliomystery, just as it is if a major character is a bookseller or a librarian. A collector of rare books…may be included. Publishers? Yes, if their jobs are integral to the plot. Authors? Tricky… If the nature of their work brings them into a mystery, or their books are a vital clue in the solution, they probably make the cut.”
The uncertainties of definition make it difficult to identify the “first” bibliomystery. One candidate, favoured by Penzler, is the little-known Scrope, or, The Lost Library, which was published as long ago as 1874 by Frederic Beecher Perkins, in his day a prominent editor and librarian from a well-known American family, but which is long forgotten by crime aficionados. Much of the action of the story takes place in a secondhand bookshop and at book auctions.
Another early example of this type of story was “The First Customer and the Florentine Dante,” by Fergus Hume, which was included in Hagar of the Pawn-Shop (1898), a collection of puzzles investigated by a female detective, Hagar Stanley. Hagar is confronted by a riddle concerning a second edition of Dante’s La Divina Commedia.
During the twentieth century, the bibliomystery became increasingly popular, particularly (but by no means exclusively) in the United States. Just after the end of the First World War, Christopher Morley published The Haunted Bookshop, a popular light thriller crammed with book lore. As the critics Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor pointed out in their monumental reference book A Catalogue of Crime, at the end of the story “the hero characteristically remarks: ‘Thanks to that set of Trollope, I think I’m all right.’”
On the other side of the Atlantic, Helen Simpson and Clemence Dane collaborated on Printer’s Devil (1930), in which a publisher called Horrie Pedler is found dead at the foot of the twisted staircase leading to her London flat. (It has to be said that, over the years, many crime writers have succumbed to the temptation to kill off publishers in their fiction; I leave it to readers to deduce why that may be.) In the story, a manuscript goes missing, and there are rumours that it contained many secrets known only to Horrie and the author. This is an unorthodox novel, which features the authors’ actor-detective Sir John Saumarez, but is as much a comedy as a mystery.
In E. C. R. Lorac’s These Names Make Clues (1937; to be reissued by Poisoned Pen Press in November 2022 as a British Library Crime Classic), Chief Inspector Macdonald is invited to a treasure hunt party by a publisher called Graham Coombe; the fun is cut short when the body of thriller novelist Andrew Gardien is discovered. The same year saw the publication of Clifford Witting’s debut novel Murder in Blue, a whodunit about the killing of a policeman, set in a thinly veiled version of Sussex and narrated by a likeable bookseller, John Rutherford.
The publishing business in Britain has supplied the background to a good many crime novels, several of them written by authors who, like Simpson, Dane, Lorac, and Witting, were members of the Detection Club. Examples include Nicholas Blake’s End of Chapter (1957), a case for Blake’s regular detective Nigel Strangeways, and P. D. James’s Original Sin (1994), in which Adam Dalgliesh investigates the murder of Gerard Etienne, head of the Peverell Press.
Bookshops make a delightful background for detective puzzles. The little-known Death of Mr. Dodsley (1937) by the Scottish author John Ferguson concerns the murder of a bookseller in his shop on Charing Cross Road, a case investigated by the private detective Francis MacNab as well as Scotland Yard. The poet Ruthven Todd produced a series of detective novels under the name R. T. Campbell in the 1940s, including Bodies in a Bookshop (1946), in which two corpses are discovered in the back room of a bookstore in central London; the amateur criminologist Professor John Stubbs helps Chief Inspector Bishop of the Yard to unravel the mystery. Bernard J. Farmer, a former policeman, published Death of a Bookseller in 1956. The crime is solved by the dogged bibliophile Sergeant Jack Wigan, and the text is crammed with book-collecting lore.
One of the most intriguing premises for a
Bardin’s focus was on psychological suspense, and the same is true of Renee Knight’s recent bestseller Disclaimer (2015). The terrifying flavour of the opening is captured by the tagline on the cover: “Imagine if the next thriller you opened was all about you.” Catherine Ravenscroft, a middle-aged woman who has pursued a highly successful career in TV, finds a novel called The Perfect Stranger on her bedside table; she doesn’t know where it has come from, but starts reading, and finds to her horror that it tells a story about the most horrific experience of her own life, one she had believed was safely buried in the past. We soon discover that the author of the mysterious book is a man called Stephen, a retired teacher whose wife has died recently, and who is pursuing an agenda as a result. Stephen’s obsessiveness and mental disintegration is revealed gradually, while Catherine’s own seemingly perfect life begins to fall apart.
A number of authors have developed a specialism in various forms of bibliomystery. Examples among American crime writers include Elizabeth Daly, whose series detective was the bibliophile Henry Gamadge; the academic Amanda Cross, a pen-name for Carolyn G. Heilbrun; and John Dunning, while their British counterparts include the Oxford don J.I.M. Stewart, who wrote detective fiction as Michael Innes; Bruce Graeme, who wrote a series featuring bookseller-detective Theodore Terhune; and Robert Barnard, who takes aim at authors of romance in Death in Purple Prose aka The Cherry Blossom Corpse (1987). George Sims, two of whose novels have appeared in the British Library’s Classic Thrillers series, was a professional bookman whose expertise in the field is evident throughout his work in the field of crime fiction.
Murder by the Book brings together examples of the book-related mystery from a variety of notable practitioners, including E. C. Bentley, famous as the author of the legendary country house puzzle Trent’s Last Case; A.A. Milne, who in addition to creating Winnie-the-Pooh was a founder member of the Detection Club; that highly accomplished plotsmith Christianna Brand; Michael Innes; Julian Symons, several of whose postwar crime novels have been published as British Library Crime Classics; and the highly prolific John Creasey, who founded the Crime Writers’ Association in 1953.
Anyone who enjoys books in general and crime fiction in particular will find rich variety and entertainment in this sub-branch of the genre. As a lifelong fan of bibliomysteries, I’ve derived a good deal of pleasure from researching this anthology and I hope the range of stories and information supplied here will encourage readers to make further discoveries of their own.
—Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
A Note from the Publisher
The original novels and short stories reprinted in the British Library Crime Classics series were written and published in a period ranging, for the most part, from the 1890s to the 1960s. There are many elements of these stories which continue to entertain modern readers, however in some cases there are also uses of language, instances of stereotyping, and some attitudes expressed by narrators or characters which may not be endorsed by the publishing standards of today. We acknowledge therefore that some elements in the stories selected for reprinting may continue to make uncomfortable reading for some of our audience. With this series British Library Publishing and Poisoned Pen Press aim to offer a new readership a chance to read some of the rare books of the British Library’s collections in an affordable paperback format, to enjoy their merits, and to look back into the world of the twentieth century as portrayed by its writers. It is not possible to separate these stories from the history of their writing and as such the following stories are presented as they were originally published with minor edits only, made for consistency of style and sense. We welcome feedback from our readers, which can be sent to the following address:
Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, 1935 Brookdale Road, Ste. 139, Naperville, IL 60563
A Lesson in Crime
G. D. H. and M. Cole
George Douglas Howard Cole (1889–1959) and his wife Margaret (1893–1980) were prominent socialists who wrote detective fiction as a money-making sideline. They married in 1918 and worked together for the Fabian Society for several years thereafter. Douglas Cole’s nonfiction included such racy titles as Trade Unionism and Munitions and The Intelligent Man’s Guide through World Chaos. After his death, Margaret wrote his biography, as well as her own memoirs.
In 1923, Douglas published a detective novel, The Brooklyn Murders, which introduced a diligent cop called Henry Wilson. Thereafter, Douglas and Margaret collaborated on more than two dozen novels, many of them featuring Wilson. Their books include a pleasing “inverted mystery,” End of an Ancient Mariner (1933), as well as a number of neat plots. Increasingly, however, the authors’ weariness with writing fiction became evident; perhaps they felt it got in the way of worthier endeavours, but in any event, their collaboration as novelists fizzled out in the 1940s. “A Lesson in Crime,” an example of the Coles in their sharpest form, was the title story in a collection published in 1933.
***
Joseph Newton settled himself comfortably in his corner of a first-class compartment on the Cornish Riviera express. So far, he had the compartment to himself; and if, by strewing rugs, bags, books, and papers about he could make himself look numerous enough to drive fellow-travellers away, there was hope he might remain undisturbed—for the long train was far from full. Let us take a look at him, and learn a little about him before his adventures begin—and end.
Age? Forty-five would not be a bad guess, though, in fact, he is rather less. As for his physical condition, “well-nourished” is a polite description; and we, who desire to have no illusions, can safely call him paunchy, and, without positive grossness, flabby with good living. His face is puffy, and whitish under the eyes; his mouth is loose, and inclined to leer.
His fair hair, which is rapidly growing thin, is immaculately brushed, and his clothes are admirably cut and well-tended, though he has not the art of wearing them well. Altogether he looks a prosperous, thoroughly self-satisfied, and somewhat self-indulgent member of the British middle class; and that is precisely what he is.
His walk in life? You would put him down as a businessman, possibly a merchant or a middle-sized employer, not a professional man. There you would be both right and wrong. He is a professional man, in a sense; and he is certainly in business.
In fact, he is Joseph Newton, the bestseller, whose crime stories and shockers were plastered all over the bookstall he has just left with his burden of newspapers under his arm. He has sold—heaven knows how many million copies of his stories, and his serial rights, first, second, and third, cost fabulous sums to secure.
But why describe him further? All the world knows him. And now he is on his way to Cornwall, where he has a pleasant little seaside cottage with twenty-seven bedrooms.
The train starts, and Newton’s carriage still remains empty save for himself. He heaves a fat sigh of relief and picks up a magazine, in which he turns instinctively to a story by himself. For the moment he cannot remember who wrote it. Poor stuff, he thinks. He must find out which “ghost” was responsible, and sack him.
Joseph Newton was interrupted in his reflections at this point by the consciousness that someone was looking at him. He glanced up and saw the figure of a man who was standing in the corridor and staring fixedly at him, with a curious air of abstraction. Newton stared back, trying to look as unwelcoming as possible. It would be really bad luck, he felt, if someone were to invade his compartment now.
