Martin Fone's Blog, page 115

Coroner’s Pidgin

A review if Coroner’s Pidgin by Margery Allingham

It must be very disconcerting to come back home after three years’ service overseas and find the body of a dead woman whom you do not recognise in your bed. This is what happens to Allingham’s sleuth, Albert Campion, at the start of this, his twelfth adventure, originally published in 1945 and which goes by the alternative title, Pearls before Swine in the States. All Campion wants to do is have a bath, change his clothes and catch a train to Nidd for reasons which are revealed in a touching, if somewhat sentimental, finale which must resonated with many of Allingham’s contemporary readers. Instead, Campion is drawn unwillingly into a mystery which involves traitors and the theft of the nation’s precious artefacts.

There is a very modern feel to the book as it can be read as a meditation on whether certain people are above the law simply because of who they are. Lady Carados, who has moved the body from her son’s flat with the assistance of the wonderful Magersfontein Lugg, who has gone all Lord Emsworth-like, is portrayed as a force of nature who believes she has the right to do whatever she wants and is oblivious to the requirements of the police or the fact that her actions are only serving to incriminate her. Johnny, her son, also seems to be above the law. When he inadvertently poisons an old friend, his friends are more concerned about protecting him than the fact that he may have committed attempted manslaughter. Our Prime Minister – this review was written in mid-May – is just the latest in a long line of such people.

Campion’s role in this story is rather ancillary to the plot rather than one that drives it forward. He has the unerring knack of being in the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) place at the right time, is fed information, overhears conversations, is able to put two and two together, but it is the police, principally his old mucker Stanislaus Oates assisted by Holly and Yeo, who put in the leg work to solve the mystery.

Characters drift in and out of the story, there are twists and turns in the plot lines, some red herrings, some cases of a rare wine, and an American GI who, unwittingly, is key to the unravelling of the plot to rob the nation of its prize treasures. The start of the war had seen the mass evacuation of treasures from London and other likely targets for German air raids but the hauliers, under the direction of a shadowy eminence grise, are not necessarily working in the nation’s best interests. All roads seem to lead to one of the characters in society’s gilded cage, but the rare wine convinces Campion otherwise.

Allingham is a superb writer, setting the scene and sketching her characters with aplomb, and maximising the opportunities for humour that her scenes offer. I particularly enjoyed her portrayal of Campion trying to come to terms with the altered state of London, the wrecked buildings, the damaged roads, making it all very disorientating and difficult to move around the capital. Campion’s experience must have been familiar to her contemporary readers, many of whom had to make major adjustments to their lives and recognise that their old comfortable, familiar world was a thing of the past.

It is not a complicated plot, by the standards of the Golden Age, and the culprit is, with a bit of thought, relatively easy to spot, but it is a thoroughly good read, one that I would highly recommend.

House With Crooked Walls

A review of House with Crooked Walls by Bruce Graeme

In writing these book reviews I try to find something good to say about even those books which try my patience to the extreme, but House with Crooked Walls, the second of Bruce Graeme’s Theodore Terhune series, originally published in 1942 and reissued by Moonstone Press, presents an almost insurmountable challenge. It is one of those books that you persevere with in the vain hope that it might improve. The best I can say about it is that it bends and twists the genre of crime fiction to the ultimate degree so that it is barely recognisable.

In a sense it is a history of a house, unimaginatively called the House-on-the-Hill, which, whilst commanding stupendous panoramic views of the Kent countryside, the locals will not touch with a barge pole, believing it to be cursed. It has lain vacant, unsold for some years and the local community is all of a twitter when a Panamanian, Dr Vincente Salvaterra, buys it. Salvaterra commissions bibliophile, local bookseller and amateur sleuth, Theodore Terhune, to unearth the history of the house and discover why the locals are so apprehensive about the building. Terhune accepts the commission.

Despite being a bookish fellow with an acute sense of history, Terhune misses an obvious feature that you would expect to find in a house of this vintage. It takes Inspector Sampson, who appears late into the book, to open his eyes to the fact that you might find secret passages and priest holes. If this lack of perspicacity is unbelievable enough, it takes Julia MacMunn, the classic air head of a girl who barely knew one end of a book from the other the start, to carry out a detailed bit of research at the British Museum and uncover a rare book, printed in Boston, which reveals some of the secrets of the house.

With these two bits of information, Terhune and Sampson, acting in an unofficial capacity, make considerable progress in uncovering the gory details of the house’s history, why it was perceived as being cursed, and why at least three individuals, more are discovered later, have disappeared into the bowels of the house, never to be seen again.

One of the disappearances is very recent, Salvaterra’s son, Andres, who later turns out to be his stepson – the difference is crucial – and Sampson expounds a theory about why Salvaterra was so keen to have Terhune investigate the house’s past and to give credulity to the story of the house’s cursed and troubled past. Salvaterra even went to the trouble of having Terhune’s narrative published privately and released to the national press when the story of Andres’ disappearance broke. Was Terhune a naïve patsy in a larger, more malevolent scheme. What Salvaterra’s prime interest in the house is only touched upon and the reader has had no opportunity, other than hoping something might happen, to work out his motives. When they are revealed, they are mundane enough.

The ending is a tad melodramatic for my taste, a fitting end to a book that is truly disappointing. Graeme does his best to wring out as much from the gothic atmosphere he has created but this reader was left with the distinct impression that an interesting experiment had fallen flat on its face, one that might have worked better in a short story or novella format. I will not give up on Terhune as the next one has to be better!

Goethe, Dr Poison, And Decaf Coffee

Until recently those eschewing alcohol, meat or gluten had a pretty thin time of it, the options available limited and distinctly ersatz in quality and calibre. Now, though, the market for no-lo (no or low alcohol) drinks and free-from (meat, gluten, and wheat) foodstuffs is one of the hottest in the UK’s food and beverage sector as manufacturers recognise that consumers looking for alternatives demand the same quality and choice as offered by more traditional products. A case of the sector waking up and smelling the coffee, you might say, and it could quite easily be decaf(feinated).

Unsurprisingly, decaf is also riding a high, with as many as one in five regular coffee drinkers opting for it, according to Mintel, often as a way of limiting their caffeine intake. Caffeine is fine in moderation, around three to four mugs is most people’s limit, but for those wanting to continue to enjoy coffee’s taste and flavour without the buzz, decaf is the obvious choice. Not that it is entirely free of caffeine; 99.9% must be removed to be classified as decaf in the EU and UK, while the bar is set lower in the US, at 97%.

Most specialist coffee providers now offer a bewildering variety of strengths, aromas, and flavours, with a decaf to suit most coffee drinkers. This is made possible by the way it is produced, by isolating and flushing caffeine from the bean before roasting, as there is no natural caffeine-free bean. This means, as Andy Cross, head roaster of Oakham-based Two Chimps Coffee[1], points out, any bean that is used to make caffeinated coffee can be used to produce decaf and the better the bean, the better the quality of the decaf.

Coffee had made its way from the Near East to Europe by the start of the 17th century, but was met with suspicion, condemned as “the bitter invention of Satan” and banned by the priests of Venice in 1615. It was only when Pope Clement VIII had given the papal thumbs-up after drinking a cup and pronouncing it satisfying that the beverage was taken up with gusto. In Protestant England, by the mid 17th century, there were over three hundred coffee houses in London alone, known as “penny universities” where for the cost of a cup patrons could read the latest journals, engage in lively debate, and transact business with those of a like mind.

So stimulating and energising did regular drinkers find coffee that it began to replace the regular breakfast beverages of the time, wine and beer. Getting a natural high in the morning is all well and good but at night time it can disturb sleep patterns as the German poet and playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, discovered. A heavy coffee drinker, he was intrigued to discover what was in it that prevented him from getting a good night’s sleep. Who better to help him than the German chemist, Friedlib Ferdinand Runge, whose penchant for dabbling with deadly substances had earned him the sobriquet of “Doktor Gift” (Doctor Poison).

In 1819, after seeing his demonstration of the effect of atropine, a chemical extracted from deadly nightshade, on a cat’s pupils – it dilated them – Goethe showed his appreciation of the scientist’s skills, as Runge described later in Hauswirtschaftlichen Briefen (1866), by handing him “a carton of coffee beans, which a Greek had sent him as a delicacy. “You can also use these in your investigations”, said Goethe. He was right; for soon thereafter I discovered therein caffeine”.

Watch out for a second cup next week.

[1] https://twochimpscoffee.com/

Mastication Advice Of The Week

Ever since I was a small child, I had it drummed into me that I should eat with my mouth closed and, indeed, there is nothing more off-putting at the dining table than seeing someone move a bolus around their mouth. However, according to a team of researchers at Oxford University led by Charles Spence, in being sensitive to the sensibilities of others we have been depriving ourselves of some of the pleasures to be derived from our meal.  

Chewing with your mouth open, he claims, allows the volatile organic compounds that create aromas and contribute to the taste of the food to reach the back of the nose which stimulates cells responsible for our sense of smell. An enhanced flavour profile adds to our enjoyment of our food as does improving its sound profile. The satisfying crunch of an apple can be enhanced by eating with our mouths open and attacking food with our hands also allows us to appreciate the tactile qualities of foods and to heighten our anticipation of what they will sound and taste like, Spence claims.

There may be something in it, but, as far as I am concerned, it is advice to be followed when dining solo. I wonder just how many dinner invitations Spence has lost since the report came out.

Trip Of The Week (3)

It seems to be increasingly difficult to get anywhere these days what with long queues at ports, a Brexit dividend, cancellations, strikes, and transport infrastructures unable to cope with excessive temperatures. However, perhaps the most bizarre recent travel experience was that endured by Jim Metcalfe and his fellow passengers who boarded the Caledonian Sleeper on the night of 19th July in the expectation that by the time they woke up the following morning they would be in London.

Metcalfe, who has used the service for 15 years and struggles to get to sleep when the train is moving, boarded early and was sound asleep by 11.00pm. At 5.00am he was woken up by a steward who presented him with a roll, a sausage, a cup of coffee and the astonishing news that they were still in Glasgow as the service had been cancelled due to a fault on the line. As the platform on which the train had been sitting was now needed to run other services, Jim and his fellow passengers had to troop off the train.   

Managing Director for Caledonian Sleeper, Kathryn Darbandi, explained “we made all efforts to support guests impacted, including providing overnight accommodation on board and options for travel on alternative rail services the next day. All guests will receive a full refund”.

Her choice of terminology is fascinating and, presumably, intended. A passenger has the expectation of going from A to B while a guest just anticipates using static facilities. At least Jim had a good sleep and was not disturbed by the movement of the train.

I think I will just stay at home.

Thirty-Seven Of The Gang

According to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, to see the elephant was to see something out to its conclusion. This colourful phrase owes its origin to the world of the circus where the final and most thrilling act, designed to send the spectators home happy and begging for more, involved an elephant.

Rail travel boomed in the mid-19th century and new lines and stations sprang up, especially around the metropolis. One such was Walworth Road Station on the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway which opened in May 1863, originally as Camberwell Gate but changed its name in in January 1865. It was built on a viaduct over three roads.

Even by 1868 it had earned a bad reputation, known as Shoot “because of the immense number of persons “shot” out there”. Its poor reputation persisted through the years. The South London Press in November 1882 wrote, “a recent writer on the condition of Italy adduces the wretched character of most of the railway stations as evidence of the poverty of the country. I would give something to know his opinion of Walworth, as evidenced by the condition of the Shoot!” The station closed for good on April 3, 1916, and nothing remains of it today.

As a station, Walworth Road may have said to have shot into the brown, a figurative expression for failure. It came from rifle practice, a poor shot missing the black and white target altogether and landing in the brown butt, the earth.

Gin D’Azur

A discernible trend spawned by the ginaissance is the entry of long-established spirits producers, who see the burgeoning popularity of gin as an opportunity to extend their product range with something takes less time to produce and bring to market than their traditional products. Another is for distillers to attempt to capture the spirit and essence of a region through the gin they produce and, particularly, through the botanicals they choose. Gin d’Azur, launched in 2019, encapsulates both trends.

The French family-run Distillerie Merlot et Fil, based in Saint-Sauvant in the south-west of the country, which has been operating since 1850, is famous for the quality of their cognacs. Gin d’Azur is the new filly in their stable and, they claim, draws its inspiration from the sunsets over Gigaro Beach in La Croix Valmer in St Tropez. It is the moment when the sand and sea take on a golden glow, the perfect time for a cocktail or three, their blurb states.  

To paint this alluring picture, the distillers have selected botanicals which come from and are typical of Provence, including thyme, rosemary, lavender, marjoram, mountain savory, star anise, and Menton lemon peel. Each is harvested at the optimal moment to ensure that they are at peak ripeness and at their aromatic best. The production process sees each of the principal botanicals distilled separately in an alembic pot still over an open flame to maximise their flavour. before being mixed with the juniper to the distiller’s recipe and enhanced with a touch of Camargue salt.

The result is a fresh, vibrant gin with an ABV of 43%, intensely aromatic on the nose, a complex melange of juniper, thyme, lemon, and lavender in the mouth, before finishing off with a hint of liquorice and a slightly salty trace on the lips. Adding a good quality tonic enhances the floral notes, drawing out the natural oils and causing the spirit to louche slightly.

The bottle, too, provides a welcome splash of sun and cheer, bold and vibrant, to match the spirit inside. It is cylindrical in shape with the glass slightly tinted to give a pale blue, maritime feel, has a wide, flat shoulder, and a moderately sized neck leading on to an artificial stopper. The imagery on the bottle is bright and bold with a golden sun nestling just above the brilliant blue sea, illuminating the headland and its vivid green botanicals.

I am always sceptical about claims made by distillers that they can recreate the essence of a place or an area with their spirit, and not having been to St Tropez, I cannot confirm that it meets its self-proclaimed brief. What I can say, though, is that it is an impressively classy and complex gin which is a delight as well as refreshing to drink.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Case Of The Missing Minutes

A review of The Case of the Missing Minutes by Christopher Bush

There is a distinct change of mood in this, the sixteenth in Bush’s Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1937 and now reissued by Dean Street Press. It has rather dark undertones, tackling a difficult issue which is as relevant today as it was at the time Bush wrote the book, and paints a more human picture of the amateur sleuth who, hitherto, had been a bit of a cold fish. Whilst it has all the elements of a classic murder mystery, Bush is more interested in the motivation behind the crime than the whodunit.

The murder victim is Quentin Trowte, an old man who lives in a big house with a child, his young ward, Jeanne. At the behest of his sister, Helen, Travers looks into the mysterious goings on at the Trowte household. Her former maid and her husband are now employed there but have to leave the premises before eight o’clock in the evening. On occasions during the evening and night, they hear shrieks. Travers is about to confront Trowte but when he gets there at eight minutes to eight, the door is ajar and he finds the master of the house slumped on the floor, having been stabbed in the back.

The likely suspects all have cast-iron alibis for the time of the murder, and it looks as though it is going to be one of those stories where much time and effort is spent in examining and dissecting the movements of all involved. At one level it is, the clue being in the book’s title, although Bush is not above playing a trick on the reader by introducing another favourite trope of alibi-based mysteries, the sound of music being heard coming from the window of one of the suspects at the key moment. The resolution of the mystery of the missing minutes is not revealed until the end and is almost a throwaway, its importance overtaken by the horror of the situation.

Child neglect and abuse are grim subjects, and it emerges that Trowte has been subjecting Jeanne to a reign of terror. Travers and Helen are touched by the girl’s plight and arrange for her to be taken to a safe haven. Travers discovers that the rooms have been bugged, that the electrics have been arranged so that lights in the child’s bedroom can be turned on and off remotely to heighten her sense of terror, and that he has a viewing gallery to watch her every movement. He even went to the trouble of buying a snake and a rodent. It is little wonder that the child was emotionally scarred and was prone to shrieking during the night.

As the truth is revealed and the girl’s backstory emerges, Travers is less and less concerned to get to the bottom of who killed Trowte, believing, as the reader does, that the evil man deserved what he got. Despite the best efforts of “The General”, Wharton of the Yard, who appears towards the end of the story, to see that the letter of the law is adhered to and Trowte’s killer dances the hemp jig, Travers is never going to let this happen. By the letter of the law, Travers may have obstructed the course of justice, but in this instance natural justice is a more noble thing.  

I was surprised by this book. Bush had always struck me as a writer who operated within the constraints of the genre of murder mystery, producing complex, well-clued mysteries that both baffle and entertain the reader. What is missing in this book in terms of complexity of plot is more than made up for the humanity and warmth of feeling that pervades the narrative. For all his foibles, Travers has a heart, and he behaves in this case as we would all wish to, given the circumstances. There is no better endorsement.

Bleeding Hooks

A review of Bleeding Hooks by Harriet Rutland

Originally published in 1940 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, Bleeding Hooks, which went by the alternative title of The Poison Fly Murder, is the second of Harriet Rutland’s three crime fiction novels involving her slightly unusual Scotland Yard sleuth, Mr Winkley. It takes us into the world of the fly-fishing enthusiast and is another example of a story where a sleuth takes a well-earned rest only to find it turned into a busman’s holiday.

Winkley, as usual, has returned to the Fisherman’s Arms, adjacent to the best lake for trout fishing in Wales, and meets up with several of the regulars. They enjoy talking about fishing, their catches, the ones that got away, and each evening their catch is rather morbidly displayed in the hall of the pub. This set up allows us to be introduced to a range of eccentric characters, mostly comedic in some aspect, and to begin to understand some of the petty jealousies and niggles that exist in such a group.

One of the guests, a long-term resident, Mrs Mumsby, with a reputation of being more interested in men than fishing, is found dead at the spot where the fishing party stop for lunch. Known to have a weak heart it is thought that she died of a heart attack or stroke, but, curiously, she has a salmon fly in her hand. What fishing she did do was for trout, not salmon, and Winkley immediately suspecting foul play believes that the fly was used to introduce poison into her body. Who would have been motivated enough to kill a silly, slightly annoying woman?

Winkley cannot help but investigate and he is aided, abetted, and hindered in equal measure by two of the guests who go by the nicknames of Piggy and Pussy. Pussy is not the brightest, has a penchant for asking the wrong question at the wrong time while Piggy, the sounder of the two, has a rather condescending attitude to his girlfriend that many modern readers might find alarming. Inevitably, the duo’s blunderings lead them into danger and an attempt is made on one of their lives.

There are suspects galore, twists and turns as the focus of suspicion turns on one guest and then another. Along the way we learn a lot about flies, not least that each manufacturer of a fly has their own distinctive autograph in the way that they tie the knots and that some have blood curdling names such as Avenging Murderer, Blinkin’ Bastard, and The Bloody Butcher. Among the prime suspects is a young man, who has been cared for by his father since he was six months old, aspires to make a career on the stage as a magician and has a pet marmoset which goes missing, was near the scene of the crime, and is presumed dead.

Winkley’s trip to the theatre in London and an understanding of the backstory of Mrs Mumsby leads to the sleuth unravelling the mystery. However, there is an air of ambiguity about the ending, whether the right end of the stick (or fishing rod) has been grasped, and whether justice, even the muted form in which it takes, has been done. Rutland, the nom de plume of Olive Shimwell, invests more sympathy in the perpetrator than the victim. For the purists there just too many loose ends left dangling to make it an ultimately satisfying mystery.

That said, and although it is not as good as Knock, Murderer, Knock, this is an entertaining enough caper and one for those of us who like our crime laced with humour. There is not too much fishing lore to make it a turn-off for those who do not catch fish and rather like a wise salmon the reader can admire the flies for their attractiveness and ingenuity and move on without missing too much. For me, though, it added to the charm and colour of the book.

Crinkle-Crankle Walls

The crinkle-crankle wall at Frimhurst, Frimley Green. Picture courtesy of Pauline Robertson

Nikolaus Pevsner defined in his Architectural Glossary (2010) a crinkle-crankle wall as “a garden wall undulating in a series of serpentine curves”. Crinkle-crankle is one of those wonderfully euphonious reduplicatives that appear willy-nilly in the English language, constructed from the word “crink” which was used in the 16th century to mean twisting or tricky.

Pevsner associated this type of wall particularly with the county of Suffolk. In his website[1] Ed Broom has undertaken to identify, visit, and photograph all the county’s surviving crinkle-crankle walls. To date he has documented 105, with a further five to be confirmed, of which thirty-two have been listed to at least Grade II standard.

However, crinkle-crankle walls are not peculiar to Suffolk. There is a particularly fine example near where I live in the grounds of Frimhurst in Frimley Green in Surrey, once the home of the suffragette and composer, Ethel Smyth. Another is to be found on the corner of Branksome Park Road and Crawley Ridge in Camberley, sadly a shadow of its former self, partially demolished to make way for a housing development and what is left obscured by vegetation and estate agents’ signs.

The crinkle-crankle wall at the corner of Branksome Park Road and Crawley Ridge, Camberley

The view of the crinkle-crankle wall from Crawley Ridge

Elsewhere around the country, there are examples to be found in Whitechurch Canonicorum in Dorset, Neston in Cheshire, and Egginton and Hopton in Derbyshire. Lymington in Hampshire boasts several, built thanks to the availability of cheap labour in the form of French prisoners, captured in the Napoleonic Wars, including one in Church Lane, marking the boundary between the lane and the garden of Elm Grove House,

Building continuous, wavy walls was a technique known to the Egyptians some four thousand years ago, archaeological records show, but it was probably only introduced to England in the 17th century. Dutch engineers were hired to assist in the draining of the Fens to transform the marshes into farmland. As well as laying drainage and irrigation systems, they built brick walls, but to a very different design from that to which the locals were accustomed. Instead of a straight wall two bricks thick, the Dutch walls were only one brick thick and wavy. They were called slange muur, snake walls.

With their shallower foundations, the Dutch designed walls proved more adaptable to the conditions and with their series of alternate convex and concave curves, offered less of an exposed target to the winds that blew across the Fens than a straight wall did. An added advantage was that it took fewer bricks to build a wavy wall than a straight one.

A curvy wall gains all the support it needs from its sinuous shape, while a straight wall needs to be strengthened using buttresses in the form of a wide footing or supporting posts positioned every few metres. John D Cook explored the mathematics behind this phenomenon[2], but in essence, depending upon the amplitude of the curve, while the length of the curvy wall will be longer than a straight wall covering the same stretch of land, the quantity of bricks used in its construction will be reduced by anywhere between twenty and fifty per cent.

The number of bricks used to build a wall became increasingly important after 1784 and the introduction of the Brick Tax. Initially set at half a crown per thousand bricks, the rate rose to four shillings in 1794, then five shillings in 1797, before settling at 5s 10d a thousand from 1805 until its abolition in 1850. One way to mitigate the effect of the tax was to use a design requiring fewer bricks. The first half of the 19th century when the Brick Tax was in force was the heyday of the crinkle-crankle wall, most of the surviving examples dating to this period.

In the days before greenhouses were common, crinkle-crankle walls offered horticultural benefits. Those built to run from east to west so that one side of the wall faced south to catch the sun, as well as increasing the area available for cultivation, provided by way of the alcoves created by the curves a sun trap and a windbreak. Known as forcing walls, they made it easier to cultivate more exotic and fragile fruits, such as grapes and peaches, while the northern side offered a cool place for storage.

Curvy walls, though, took longer to build and demanded greater skill of the bricklayer, two factors which meant that when the balance between the cost of materials and labour tilted in favour of the worker, the days of the crinkle-crankle wall were numbered.

Walls need not be bland and utilitarian. Perhaps it is time for a crinkle-crankle renaissance.

[1] http://www.freston.net/blog/?y=2016&m=01&d=04

[2] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-calculus/