Martin Fone's Blog, page 141

The Ponson Case

A review of The Ponson Case by Freeman Wills Crofts

It is often with a sense of foreboding that I pick up one of Freeman Wills Crofts’ novels as no matter how expertly the plot is constructed and how intricate the mystery, there will be periods where the narrative gets bogged down and the reader will wonder whether it is worth persevering with. However, The Ponson Case, published in 1921 and the second of four novels Crofts wrote before introducing his signature police sleuth, Inspector French, seems to navigate around more of the aggravating features of the later works of his that I have read.

To give him his due, Crofts is a good storyteller, and he has an unerring knack of constructing seemingly bullet-proof alibis which will withstand even the most painstaking investigation, the timing of journeys by motor car and by foot and the inevitable consultation of Bradshaw’s railway timetables. In a bow to modernity, Inspector tanner, the ‘tec in charge of investigations, even flies to Paris from Croydon Airport, seconds a fast car and with minutes to spare makes his train connection which takes him to Lisbon.

Crofts also plays fair with the reader, one of the advantages of being meticulous in his description of the investigations is that the reader has available to them all the clues that enable to work out whodunit, if not why it was done. He also takes time to delineate his principal characters and they are believable, not the stereotypes that populate many novels of this genre and time. I particularly enjoyed the tobacconist, who certainly knew his tobaccos and filters.  

Inspector Tanner is certainly an honest, hard-working detective for whom no minutiae that the case throws up should go ignored. The storyline centres around the discovery of Sir William Ponson’s body in a river near his home. Ponson is a rich, self-made industrialist. At first glance, it looks as though it was either suicide or a tragic accident in which Ponson lost control of his craft and was swept away by the tricky current in the area, but the discovery of a savage blow to the back of his head, leads Tanner to suspect that he was murdered.

Tanner’s problem is that the principal suspects who stand to gain most from the death of Ponson, son Austin and playboy nephew Cosgrove, both with money problems and both wanting to marry women the pater familias disapproves of, have rock solid alibis, which Tanner spends the first half of the book scrupulously investigating and testing, even travelling up to Montrose to check a single point. For all the signs of the dawning of modern age that appear in the book, the use of a telephone as a means of interrogating a suspect does not appear to be one.

Tanner is struggling to make progress, even if there are only three plausible suspects, the third being a mysterious stranger who left footprints at the boathouse. Satisfied that he can at least make a case against Austin, Tanner arrests him, an action which provokes a change of perspective in the second part of the novel, with the introduction of Austin’s fiancée, Lois Drew and her solicitor cousin, Jimmy Daunt. They try to prove Austin’s innocence and do their own investigations into the pair’s alibis and discover that for all of Tanner’s meticulous work, he has missed a trick.

This together with the discovery of the identity of the mysterious stranger, necessitating a visit by Tanner to Portugal to collar him and affording Crofts to engage in a bit of xenophobia, moves the story along to its denouement. Along the way we discover blackmail and unwitting bigamy. The actions of Ponson and his two relatives all make some sort of sense as the resolution of the mystery is revealed, leaving no loose ends, but the climax is more than a tad disappointing after such an exhaustive investigation.   

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but it could easily have been much shorter.

The Ebony Stag

A review of The Ebony Stag by Brian Flynn

Two bits of good news. First, Dean Street Press have just reissued books 21 to 30 in the Anthony Bathurst, for which any Brian Flynn fan is truly grateful. Secondly, they were kind enough to send me a review copy of the twenty-second in the series, The Ebony Stag, originally published in 1938, for which I am truly grateful. I had been following the series in order but decided to leap in time to read it, to fulfil my part of the Faustian agreement. I had some reservations as you miss the development of character and the author’s style by leaping about and some references to earlier cases such as The Sussex Cuckoo flew over my head. Still, one of Flynn’s hallmarks is that he was never content with following one style or template and was a master of experimentation.

With The Ebony Stag the days of Anthony Bathurst being a rather Wodehousian character are long behind us and here we find his amateur sleuth playing a more conventional role, almost Holmesian, but without the flashes of intuition. Bathurst is still remarkably well connected with the police, his association with Police Commissioner Sir Austin Kemble opening doors which would have been steadfastly closed to others. It is through this connection that he is introduced to the local Chief Constable, Major Merriman, whose principal two detectives are engaged on other cases. Naturally, Bathurst is invited to lead the investigation, which he does under the rather feeble guise of Mr Lotherington, his middle name.

The body of a retired rate collector, Robert Forsyth, has been found in his house, stabbed in the chest with a powerful weapon and his face smashed in with such force that one of his teeth was left hanging from his gum. The tooth proves important as Forsyth’s former colleague, Hatherley, reveals that Forsyth did not have a tooth in his head, but wore dentures. Whose was the body and why had the victim’s supposed niece disappeared?

The other important clue at the murder scene is a figurine of a stag made of ebony which was smashed to smithereens by the intruder as if they were hoping to find something hidden inside. Bathurst suspects that this was not the real ebony stag and when he finds it in an outhouse, he discovers it contains a piece of paper upon which is written some verse containing a riddle. The key to unravelling the mystery lies within the verse.

Bathurst sets up his operations at the local pub, The Tracy Arms, and the locals, especially Forsyth’s cronies, soon attract his suspicions. He is befriended by a Swede and Mr Hatherley and his rather eccentric and priggish boss. Bathurst receives warnings to keep his nose out of something that does not concern him and is attacked, although the Swede helps him out of that difficulty. Discovering a marriage certificate leads Bathurst to the identity of the victim and the riddle, once solved, reveals some buried treasure in the vicinity.

There is another victim, Mrs Bryant who helped out at the pub. Clearly, she knew something that the culprit wanted kept hidden, and this puts Bathurst on the right track. There are red herrings galore and the rather languid pace of the book hots up as we head to the denouement in which Bathurst almost meets his maker, culminating in a clever reveal. Whilst I am not sure that Flynn plays fair with the reader, my theory that the least obvious is the obvious assists enormously here if you want to play sleuth.

This is an entertaining and enjoyable book , even if it does not reach the heights of some of the others that I have read. There is also a pub name to add to the list of Flynn’s exotic establishments, the Lion and Lizard. Great fun!     

Petrichor

“Scent of earth, sweet with the evening rain”, wrote Edith and Saretta Nesbit in All Round The Year (1888). A spell of fine, dry weather was suddenly punctuated by a short, sharp burst of rain. As I walked in the garden, I was conscious of an intensely earthy, fresh, almost sweet aroma, as if the shower had woken the earth and the plants from their slumbers and they were rejoicing by giving off this distinctive fragrance. It is one of the most evocative and invigorating smells of summer and so alluring is it that you can even buy it in a bottle.

For several generations enterprising perfumiers in Kannauj in India’s Uttar Pradesh have captured and absorbed the scent in sandalwood oil in a process which takes around fifteen days to complete. Having baked clay in a kiln, they immerse it in water held in copper cauldrons called degs, sealed with earth. A cow dung fire is lit under the cauldron and the resultant vapour travels through bamboo pipes to condense in receivers, over a base of oil, to form what they call matti ka attar or “earth perfume”, an essence released by the interaction between earth and water. It is used as a perfume, in air fresheners and, because of its soothing properties, in aromatherapy.

Although James Joyce did not seem the sort of chap who would splash a bit of perfume behind his ears, he too recognised that the fresh smell after a shower of rain was due to some reaction with the earth. In 1916, he wrote in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, how “the trees in Stephen’s Green were fragrant of rain and the rain-sodden earth gave forth its mortal odour, a faint incense rising upward through the mould from many hearts”. Curiously though, it took scientists until 1964 to understand quite what was going on.

That many dry clays and soils gave off a peculiar and characteristic odour when moistened with water was a phenomenon recognised in all standard mineralogy textbooks at the time, but Joy Bear and Richard Thomas, working for the CSIRO Division of Mineral Chemistry in Melbourne, were intrigued to understand why and how. They set about steam distilling rocks that had been exposed to warm, dry conditions.

What they found, and documented in their ground-breaking paper, Nature of Argillaceous Odour (Nature, March 7, 1964)[1], was a yellowish oil trapped in the rocks. It took an interaction with moisture to release it. For want of a better word, they called the oil petrichor, a compound word made from two Greek words, petra, meaning rock, and ichor, which, in mythology, was used to describe the ethereal fluid which flowed through the veins of the gods instead of blood. 

Even a modest increase in humidity is sufficient to fill the pores in rocks and soil with tiny amounts of water, which flush out the oil and release the petrichor into the air. When it begins to rain, the process is accelerated, and the wind helps to disperse the aroma.

Bear and Thomas may have explained why petrichor is produced, but it not until 2015 that two scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Young Soo Joung and Cullen Buie, explained the mechanics of the process in a paper published in Nature Communications[2] . Using high-speed cameras to film what happened when raindrops hit the ground, they discovered that on impact they started to flatten, trapping tiny air bubbles. These bubbles then shot upwards, rather like in a glass of champagne, pushing through the surface of the droplet, before bursting out into the air in a fizz of aerosols.        

The number of aerosol droplets generated was dependent upon not only the speed at which the droplets hit the surface and on the properties of the surface itself but also the intensity of the rainfall. Perhaps counter-intuitively, they found that light and moderate rain showers generated more aerosol droplets than did prolonged, heavy downpours.

If you enjoyed this, check out More Curious Questions by following the link below:

[1][1] https://www.nature.com/articles/201993a0

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7083

Bird Of The Week (3)

Never one to fight shy of the odd existential question, I was intrigued by this piece of taxonomic slippage from New Zealand.

The conservationists, Forest and Bird, hold an annual poll to discover which is New Zealand’s most popular bird, a contest which has seen feathers fly over the years. For the 2021 competition, they decided to take a broader approach to the concept of a bird by including one of the island’s few native land mammals, Pekapeka-tou-roa or the long-tailed bat amongst the runners and riders.

After all, if Australia can be included in the Eurovision contest, why not broaden the definition of a bird to something that flies?

Democracy being what it is, this well-meaning attempt to raise awareness of the perils facing the bat backfired in spectacular fashion. Inevitably, the rather cute bat as bats go, the size of a thumb with a wingspan no larger than a hand, swept aside all-comers to win the accolade with a majority in excess of 3,000 votes.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a Pekapeka-tou-roa!

Potato Of The Week

In 2011 Peter Glazebrook, a gardener from Hallam, near Newark in Nottinghamshire, grew a potato that tipped the scales at a whopping 4.99 kilograms, or just under eleven pounds in old money, making it the world’s heaviest and a place in Guinness World Records. However, his claim to fame is under serious threat from a whopper from New Zealand.

Colin and Donna Craig-Brown from Ngahinapouri in the Waikato region of the country discovered an enormous tuber growing in their garden, when they were preparing it for spring planting. Dubbed Doug, the spud tipped the scales at a gargantuan 7.9 kilograms or 17.4 pounds. They are awaiting official verification from the folk at Guinness World Records that it is the world’s heaviest.

They had better act quickly as, stored in a freezer, it has already lost a kilo. If it doesn’t get the record, at least it will keep them in chips for a few weeks.

Four Of The Gang

For a three-lettered word all is a big one, suggesting completeness. As I grow older, all I ask for is that I will have all my buttons on, a phrase that was popular in the 1880s to denote someone, usually elderly, who was sharp, active, alive, and not to be deceived. All-a-cock meant vanquished or overthrown, possibly a version of knocked into a cocked hat.

All my eye and Betty Martin was an expression of disbelief with the implication that the other party was a liar. St Martin was the patron saint of beggars and the opening line of the prayer associated with him went “O, mihi beate Martine”. Our phrase was a corruption of the Latin and, according to Ware’s Passing English of the Victorian Era, was used by beggars when asking for alms. Its usage broadened to become an expression of doubt.

All over grumble was obvious while all over red was dangerous. Alls, meanwhile, was slang for the waste pot at a public house. On the pewter counters of pubs were a number of holes, down which the slops and spillage of the servings went. It was popularly believed, and probably rightly so, that these alls went back into the beer and so the expression it must be alls was used to denote a pint of bad beer.

An ally was a go-between, a term almost certainly derived from the French verb aller, while an Ally sloper was a dissipated-looking old man with a red and swollen nose. Perhaps he was an animal, a jocund term given to habitues of pubs that bore zoological names such as The Bear, Bull, Lion, Dragon and the like. He may, though, just have suffered an ‘Apenny-lot day, a term used by costers to describe a bad day’s trading when everything had to be sold off.

As long as he had all his buttons on, though.

Death Among The Sunbathers

A review of Death Among The Sunbathers by E R Punshon

Bobby Owen, Bobby Owen, wherefore art thou, Bobby Owen? The reader of this rather odd book, the second in Punshon’s Bobby Owen series, published originally in 1934 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, may well be driven to quoting Juliet’s famous line, as the key character is nowhere to be seen. His presence is psychological, he is lurking in the background, ever watchful and making the suspects uneasy. There’s always Bobby Owen. It does strike me as a rather bold, if not reckless step, to make a character around whom you are building a series so invisible.

It is also strange that a lowly Detective Constable, for that is what Owen is, could have such a hold on the potential culprits and impact upon their thoughts and deeds. It is also odd, even though he is taken under Superintendent Mitchell’s wing, that he should be allowed such latitude. It is what comes of having a Varsity education, even if it is Oxford. Inspector Ferris still thinks of him as a whippersnapper, who has been promoted too quickly for his and the force’s own good.

What we have instead, is a character called Bob’s-the-Boy, a former convict who worms his way into the trust of the suspects and ostensibly helps them out of their fix. Punshon clearly had some fun in drawing this character and much of the interest and humour in what is otherwise a rather pedestrian story revolves around this picaresque character. Is he, though, what he purports to be?

Naturism or sunbathing in puris naturalibus, as the proprietors of Leadeane Grange coyly call it, was another obsession of the late 1920s and 30s and is used as a theme in several crime novels of the time. It allows the writer to put together a collection of eccentric characters and to poke fun at their rather harmless pastime. It leaves the writer nowhere to hide, though, and rarely are the novels successful. This can certainly be said of Punshon’s effort.

A young journalist, Jo Frankland, is murdered as she is leaving the naturist colony. As a journalist who specialised in scoops and as the activities at Leadeane Grange had already been done to death, her editor was surprised that her investigations had taken her there. Naturism, in fact, has nothing to do with a tale which boils down to the insurance underwriter’s stuff of nightmares, arson and fraud to relieve money problems. The reader of the story is left to think that the setting of the story is irrelevant and just an attempt at a little sensationalism. Punshon is better than that as his later novels show.

Structurally, the book also seems a little odd with a significant shift in emphasis midway through. When you reach the denouement, you realise why this is necessary, but it does jar on the reader. I am being unduly harsh about this book because I am a fan of Punshon and am disappointed when one of his books fails to reach his usual high standards.

The book is entertaining enough, although more of a whydunit than a whodunit and an excursion in discovering just who the ubiquitous Bob’s-the-Boy really is. There are moments of humour and Punshon’s characterisation is sharp. The mystery element is fairly mundane, but despite this there is a germ of a good story here. It bears looking into.

Grim Vengeance

A review of Grim Vengeance by J J Connington

The fifth novel in Connington’s Sir Clinton Driffield series was published in 1929 and goes by the alternative title of Nemesis at Raynham Parva. This is the title that it goes by in the Orion Murder Room series now available for e-book readers. It is an odd book and one I found somewhat unsatisfying.

Much of my unease with the book centres around the role of Connington’s central character, Driffield. The erstwhile Chief Constable has surrendered his truncheon and is now working for the Government on top secret missions, although this has little bearing on the tale. Much of the book revolves around Driffield’s crisis of conscience around the dilemma in which he finds himself.

On a visit to his sister’s house in Raynham Parva, Driffield discovers that his favourite niece, Elsie, has somewhat surprisingly and swiftly got herself married. Her hubby is not the expected candidate, Rex Brandon, but a dodgy Argentinian or Argentiner, as my edition described him, Francia. For a sleepy little village in the heart of the English countryside, Raynham Parva seems to be a magnet for Argentinians, three of whom, including Francia, are murdered.

Driffield recognises one of the Argentinians as a member of a secret service, who operated under the code name of DH-7, and was involved in one of those preoccupations of sensational novels of the 1920s, the white slave trade, where innocent young women were lured abroad to satisfy the lust and peccadilloes of foreign gentlemen. His suspicions were heightened when he learned that Fancia was proposing to take Elsie and three other young women over to the Argentine. Should Driffield accompany them to ensure that no evil fate befell them?

DH-7 is murdered and it is clear that Fancia had used Driffield’s car to go to the murder scene. In all probability Fancia was a murderer and when he breaks into Fancia’s bedroom and rifles through his papers, Driffield’s worst suspicions are confirmed. Should he report his suspicions to the authorities and let justice take its course? That would mean that his niece was married to a murderer and a white slave trader and would be socially ostracised. Should he allow events to follow their natural course but be prepared to upset his own plans to act as Elsie’s chaperone or should he encourage a hastening of Fancia’s own demise?

An urgent telegram summoning him abroad on top secret, urgent government business forces Driffield’s hand. Fancia is murdered at Driffield’s sister’s house. Rex Brandon, whom Driffield has encouraged to continue to see Elsie, is found in the room with the murder weapon in his hand and, worse still, Elsie, who by now has discovered her husband’s dark secrets, is seen directly outside the window of the room.

Driffield convinces the suspicious Sergeant Ledbury that neither could have committed the crime, but then who did and how was it pulled off? The denouement is in some ways unexpected and the murder method ingenious, although I would have thought almost impossible to pull off successfully at the first attempt.

Connington’s resolution of Driffield’s crisis of conscience is unconvincing, having replaced the possible social disgrace of his niece with condemning his sister to live in a house where a murder took place. As a stalwart member of society and a former Chief Constable, surely his natural reaction would have been to report the affair to the authorities.

One of the highlights of the book is the relationship between Sergeant Ledbury and Driffield. While in awe of the former policeman, Ledbury cannot get over the fact that Driffield seems to be connected with and in the vicinity of all the murder victims. Ledbury is quick to jump to conclusions and Driffield lends a helping hand in getting him back on track, but his motives are not necessarily aligned with the police.

It would not be a Connington book if he did not allow his alter ego, the Chemistry professor Alfred Stewart, a moment in the sun. A rare and effective emetic is used to get Elsie temporarily out of the way.

An entertaining enough read but, as a book, it did not work for me.

The Longer Bodies

A review of The Longer Bodies by Gladys Mitchell

Published in 1930, this is the third in Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley series of novels and if you are looking for a straightforward murder mystery, you will be sorely disappointed. The plot, which could charitably be described as eccentric, veers on the side of bonkers without toppling over into full farce. Whilst it is meticulously plotted, the resolution of the initial murder and the motivation for crime is novel and difficult to second guess. It is as if Mitchell recognises the limitations of the conventions of fair play and takes great delight at poking fun at them and pushing them to, and beyond, their limits.

You need to approach this book less as a murder mystery and more as a comedic novel that gathers a motley collection of eccentric characters and entertains the reader with the resolution of an intriguing puzzle. What stands out is Mitchell’s profound sense of character and her ability to draw a picture of each of her main characters with a few, well chosen phrases. There are a lot of characters, but Mitchell’s skill is to make each one memorable and the reader can immediately recall where they fit in the jigsaw.

The book’s most memorable character is the ninety-year-old cantankerous Great Aunt Matilda Puddequet, whose eccentric idea, after watching England’s demise in an athletics competition, is to construct an athletics stadium at her home and challenge her grandnephews to compete in a mini-Olympics, the one to impress her most with their sporting prowess scooping her considerable inheritance. The families with some reluctance accept the challenge and go down to her country pile to train, under the watchful eye of a professional trainer.

Having served its purpose to get all the characters in one place at the same time, the athletics contest rather drops off the radar screen to be replaced by some rum goings on including the theft of rabbits, blood-tipped javelins, bath chairs whizzing around the grounds at the dead of night, a missing piece of sculpture, unexpected visitors in bedrooms and on staircases and much more.

Of course, the whole story is spiced up with a couple of murders, the first of a ne’er do well villager whose body ends up in the house’s lake and then of the self-confessed family joker and Puddequet’s grandson, Timon Anthony. Are the deaths connected and who is responsible?

It falls upon Inspector Bloxham to make sense of it all and spends a lot of time establishing and testing the alibis of all and sundry. The pace of the book does drop at this point and I could not help but think that Mitchell could have reduced the number of characters and suspects or truncated this section. The cavalry does arrive, though, to assist both Bloxham and the reader midway through the book in the form of the saurian-like and famous psychoanalyst, Mrs Beatrice Bradley.

Bradley’s method is to get under the skin and understand the possible suspects, to point interesting facts out and to suggest at further areas of enquiry rather than take over the investigation directly. However, she is always in the background observing and putting the pieces of the complex jigsaw together. The denouement is a little underwhelming and comes in the form of a written confession which may not be all that it seems.

Whatever I thought of the book as a murder mystery, it was a highly entertaining read with a rich vein of humour running through it and a gallery of entertaining characters. Mitchell takes a swipe at the mores of the time and the suspicions that foreigners per se can be up to no good. What wins the gold medal in this book, though, is her characterisation of the Great Aunt, waspish, eccentric, playful and always ready to offer her advice freely if not her money.

Dunmow Flitch Trials

An analysis of all marriages between 1964 and 2019 in England and Wales shows that a third end in divorce, lasting on average 12.3 years with over 45s three and a half times more likely to dissolve their union than those aged between 25 and 34. In the Middle Ages, and possibly as early as Saxon times, when marriages were commercial or dynastic arrangements rather than love matches, wedded bliss may have been a rarity, but ceremonies sprang up around the country where couples were invited to declare publicly their fidelity to each other.

The reward for a couple who could convince the crowd was a flitch of bacon, half a pig cut lengthwise. The most famous such event was held in Dunmow, supposedly instituted in 1244 by Robert Fitz-Walter, and merited a mention by both Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale (lines 223 – 4), and by William Langland, in Piers Plowman, “though they go to Dunmow/ they never fetch the Flitch”.

Kneeling on sharp stones in a churchyard, a couple who had been married a year were invited to swear an oath that “neither of them in a year and a day, neither sleeping or waking, repented of their marriage”. If they were successful in their claim, the winning couple, together with their side of bacon and an entourage of musicians, were paraded around the town. The judges were hard taskmasters, bearing out Langland’s comments, as records held in Little Dunmow Priory show the flitch was awarded only six times. The last of the original prizes was given on June 20, 1751. Artist, David Ogborne, was on hand to make sketches which he later turned into engravings.

Attempts over the next century to revive the tradition met with manorial opposition, the Lord of the Manor thwarting John and Susan Gilder’s attempt to hold the ceremony on June 12, 1772, by nailing the Priory’s doors shut. In 1832 Josiah Vine and his wife travelled all the way from Reading to stake their claim only to be refused entrance by the steward of the manor. The same fate befell a couple from Felstead in 1851, but the residents of Dunmow took pity on them and paid for a flitch of bacon for them.

This story piqued the interest of novelist, William Ainsworth, who used it as the basis for his 1854 novel, The Flitch of Bacon. The book’s success led to a revival of the tradition in 1855, the author himself donating two filches to help things along.

The ceremony is now held under the auspices of the Dunmow Fitch Trials Committee every four years on a leap year at Talbert’s Ley Park in Great Dunmow. Couples appear in front of a judge and a jury made up of six single men and six single women, their case pleaded by two barristers while two act as devil’s advocates.

If a couple is successful in pleading their case, are carried aloft in the Flitch Chair in a procession to the Town Hall, preceded by a ceremonial flitch of bacon bedecked with mock orange blossoms and ribbons. This flitch is eaten by the organising committee the following day, while the winners have to make do with a voucher to the value of the flitch which they can present to a butcher, ensuring no pigs are unnecessarily slaughtered in the event that no couple is successful. Unsuccessful couples walk away with a joint of gammon.

The 2020 Trial has been cancelled twice because of Covid restrictions, but the organisers have planned a ceremony for July 9, 2022. I hope a lucky couple bring home the bacon.

If you enjoyed this, check out More Curious Questions by following the link below: