Martin Fone's Blog, page 27

Fare-Dodger Of The Week

A 40-year-old man boarded an ICE train travelling to the northern German city of Lübeck at Munich station recently without a valid ticket. When the train arrived at Ingolstadt, he popped on to the station platform for a crafty fag, only to find that the carriage doors had closed and the train was about to set off again to Nuremburg.

Realising that his luggage was on board, he jumped on to a bracket between two carriages and held on to cables for dear life as the train reached speeds of 175mph. Witnesses alerted officials to what had happened and the train made an unscheduled stop at Kinding.

Despite travelling for twenty miles in such a precarious position at such speeds, the man was none the worse for his ordeal but is expected to face charges for an “act disruptive to operations”, an administrative offence.

That’s a journey he will not forget in a hurry.

Behold, Here’s Poison

A review of Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer – 241230

The second novel in Heyer’s Inspector Hannasyde series, originally published in 1936, follows a well-trodden path with a domineering patriarch and a set of relatives who have reason enough to despise him, echoing the basic premise of the first book in the series, Death in the Stocks. Indeed, to reinforce the point Kenneth Vereker gets more than a namecheck in the text.

Gregory, the head of the household, has forbidden his niece, Stella, to marry the local doctor, Deryck Fleming, who he deems unsuitable because of his father’s alcoholism, and proposes to send his nephew, Guy, who is trying to make a career as an internal designer, out to South America, against both his and his mother’s, Zoe’s, will.

Completing the menage is Gregory’s elder sister, Miss Harriet Matthews, to whom the responsibility of running the household with limited resources has fallen. Nearby lives Gregory’s married sister, the tyrannical Mrs Lupton, and her doormat of a husband. The heir to Gregory’s estate is Randall who lives in London, a rather supercilious character who takes great delight in riling his relatives.   

Gregory is found dead in bed and Fleming assumes that it is from natural causes, the patient having consumed a heavy meal the night before, including duck, as Harriet points out several times. Fleming is content to accept this until the arrival of the whirlwind that is Mrs Lupton who cannot accept the doctor’s conclusions and demands a post mortem. Of course, it is found that the victim had been poisoned using nicotine. Cue the arrival of Inspector Hannasyde, ably assisted by Sergeant Hemmingway, to investigate.

The will is a disappointment to all but Randall who scoops up the majority of the estate. Although he clearly has a strong motive to kill Gregory, he was nowhere near Poplars at the time of the murder and Stella and Fleming, who are now free to marry, and Guy, who escapes being rusticated to South America, are also principal suspects. Just as the story seems to be meandering towards determining which of the four suspects are responsible, Heyer cleverly throws in a couple of curve balls.

Firstly, Gregory has had significant financial dealings with a John Hyde, a mysterious character whom Hannasyde fails to track down. Is he a factor in the murder? And then Harriet succumbs to nicotine poisoning, pointing the finger of suspicion at one of Zoe, Stella, and Guy. Despite his rather supercilious attitude, in his own way Randall is keen to protect the reputation of his family and provides the rather baffled Inspector with the clues to crack the case.

Heyer has devised a plot which cleverly masks the whodunit and the motivation behind the crime until the end. There are enough twists and turns to satisfy even the most demanding of readers and the text is sprinkled with clues and hints that suggest that there is a very different solution to the one that seems to be emerging. Blackmail and a tube of toothpaste blow the case right open, widening the number of suspects and bringing into play a family friend who, on the face of it, seems to be a bit player.

It is a case of revenge being best served cold. The other key message is that you can take household economy a little too far. Harriet’s mania for avoiding waste seals her own demise. There is a bit of love interest and Heyer’s main characters come to life on the page. Hackneyed as the themes may be, this is very much a story that stands on its own merits and makes for an excellent read and a perplexing puzzle that tests the little grey cells.

The Man Who Bought Stonehenge

The Taj Mahal is rightly regarded as the iconic love token, a symbol of Shah Jahan’s devotion to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, but did you know, at least according to one theory, that one of Britain’s most significant monuments was bought by a barrister as a present for his wife. As she was expecting him to come home from the auction with a pair of curtains, the gift did not go down so well, just showing that you cannot win all of the time.

Consisting of eighty-three stones, forty sarsens and 43 bluestones, and standing on Salisbury Plain, two miles west of Amesbury, Stonehenge was constructed in several phases, beginning about 3100 BC and continuing until around 1600 BC, a phenomenal engineering feat. A UNESCO World Heritage site since 1986, it is now owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, although the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust. It attracted over 1.3 million visitors in 2023.

The Amesbury estate of around 200,000 acres which included the land upon which Stonehenge and Amesbury Abbey stood, was granted to Sir Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After several changes in ownership it passed to Sir Cosmo Antrobus in 1915, who decided to put it up for sale. The estate was carved up into lots by the auctioneers, Knight, Frank and Rutley, lot 15 comprising the twenty acres upon which Stonehenge stood.

The lead up to the auction created a lot of interest with much speculation that it would not only be snapped up by a rich American buyer but would be transported stone by stone across the Atlantic to be relocated as some tourist attraction, rather like the fate that was to befall London Bridge in 1968. The Daily Telegraph opined that the prospective sale of Stonehenge was “enough to rouse the envy of all American millionaires bitten by the craze for acquiring antiques.”

The auction was held at the Palace Theatre in Salisbury at 2pm on September 21, 1915 and when it was time for Lot 15, the auctioneer, Sir Howard Frank, invited an opening bid of £5,000. The bidding soon reached £6,000 and then rose by £100 increments to £6,500. It was at this point that Cecil Chubb made his strike, offering £6,600 which knocked local farmer, Isaac Crook, out of the running.

When Chubb was asked later why he had bought it at today’s equivalent price of £867,000, he said that he thought “a Salisbury man ought to buy it. If you have bought a ring of stones and your wife would have preferred some curtains, what do you do with it? We will find out next time.

Tea On Sunday

A review of Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper – 241228

One of the many delights of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series is that it throws up the occasional oddity and Lettice Cooper’s Tea on Sunday certainly fits into that category. An accomplished and established novelist and critic, Cooper, at the grand old age of seventy-six, suddenly had a fit in her head to write a murder mystery. Originally published in 1973 it was her only attempt at the genre and it is easy to see why.

The murder victim is Alberta Mansbridge, a woman of fixed views and with a philanthropic streak, willing to take under her wings old lags in the hopes that they will go straight, an up and coming Italian engineer, and to continue the legacy of her father, the industrialist Albert Mansbridge in whose thrall she lives, by maintaining an orphanage. She invites eight guests to tea on one Sunday, but before all the guests arrive someone arrives early, is let in and strangles her.

The guests, assembled on the doorstep, try to arouse Alberta’s attention but then decide to call the police, at which point Sadler, the ex-criminal, legs it, and entry is forced and the gruesome discovery of their putative host’s body is made. The rather genial and amiable Inspector Corby is given the task of reconstructing Alberta’s last moments and discovering the culprit. His working assumption is that as there was no sign of forcible entry the murderer was known to Alberta and was, like as not, one of the invitees to the soiree. Alberta seemed to be in the process of writing a cheque when she was strangled.

Although a bit of a leap of faith, Corby’s assumption is not unreasonable as his investigations reveal that there are several of the guests who had reason to fear, if not actively dislike their host. A bitter quarrel between two old friends, a spot of peculation with the funds of a cause Alberta holds dear to fund a mistress, a touch of bigamy, a stumbling block to a welcome takeover, a protégé who is not who he claims to be, an allegedly reformed criminal who is going back to his old ways and, inevitably, an impecunious heir who would benefit from his aunt’s death give motive enough. Some of the guests fall by the wayside not all.

To the surprise of his colleagues Corby decides to visit to Alberta’s home town Hithamroyd, convinced that the truth lies somewhere there. Of course, he is not mistaken. While the culprit is fairly obvious and Cooper resists the temptation to throw a curve ball by introducing an outsider to the closed group of suspects, there is much to enjoy in the novel. Cooper takes care in her characterisations. The guests are more than ciphers, just there to aid the plot. We get the opportunity to understand them, particularly the nephew, Anthony Seldon, unwilling to join the family firm to his aunt’s dismay and trapped in a difficult marriage to Lisa, whom Alberta despises. Cooper also draws on her knowledge of the ways of Yorkshire and its countryside to good effect.

By no means a classic in the conventional sense, it is nonetheless an interesting, satisfying, and enjoyable read. It also demonstrates that writing compelling and convincing detective fiction requires a little more than the skillset of a mainstream novelist. It reads as if Cooper had set herself a challenge to write a murder mystery and once completed, she went back to her bread and butter. British Library Crime Classics at least have rescued it from obscurity and we should be grateful for that.

Coal Posts (2)

With the expansion of the railway network offering coal merchants new routes into London, a more complex system of marking the boundary where coal duty became liable was required. In 1845 the area was established as a twenty mile radius from the General Post Office in St Martin’s Le Grand, stretching from Langley in the west to Gravesend in the east, and from Ware in the north to Redhill in the south. About fifty markers, bearing references to the Act, were installed around the circumference of the area in 1851.

In 1861 the area was altered to match that of the Metropolitan Police District and the City of London, and now ran from Colnbrook in the west to Crayford Ness, at the mouth of the River Darent, in the east, and from Wormley in Hertfordshire in the north to Banstead Heath in Surrey in the south. As the enabling bill was passing through Parliament, the City Architect ordered fifty new markers to be commissioned but as the Act’s number was not certain, they were just inscribed with the sovereign’s regnal year, 24 VICT, and dated 1861.

Once the Act became law, subsequent plates were inscribed with the regnal year and the specific chapter of the Act, viz 24 & 25 Vict, Cap 42. In all around 280 markers were positioned around the boundary along the major transport routes used to transport coal. Their position was chosen to maximise their visibility on the routes, becoming, rather like ULEZ cameras, a physical and legal reminder of the points at which coal tax became payable.

In all there were five types of coal posts. Granite obelisks standing about 4 feet tall were generally erected alongside canals and navigable rivers whilst the most common were cast iron posts positioned alongside roads, again about four feet tall, painted white with the a shield containing the shield of the City of London coat of arms painted in red. These were cast by Henry Grissell at his Regents canal iron works. Sometimes, nine inch-square plates were built into parapets of bridges. Along railway tracks the coal posts stood larger structures, initially stone or cast iron obelisks about fifteen feet tall but after 1865 six-foot tall cast iron obelisks became the norm.  

However, with the exception of the Grand Junction canal, where a permanent residence for the collector was erected at Stockers Lock near Rickmansworth and the Queens Head public house in Colney Heath where “a canted front bay was used for the collection of coal tax”, duties were not paid at the boundary posts. Instead railway and canal companies and coal merchants would calculate the amount due and submit the fees directly to the Corporation of London.

As we shall see though, within thirty years of their erection, the tax had been abolished.

Malice Domestic

A review of Malice Domestic by Sara Woods – 241220

The second book in Sara Woods’ Antony Maitland, originally published in 1962 and part of the welcome batch of reissues from Dean Street Press, takes its title from Macbeth (Act 3, scene 2). It is apt because the extended family of Ambrose Cassell, the head of a firm of vintners, is a nest of vipers. As with her debut, Bloody Instructions, the set up seems straightforward enough, but, of course, things turn out to be more complicated than meets the eye.

William Cassell, Ambrose’s brother and chief buyer, has just returned to the family home in Wimbledon from Portugal after an absence of eighteen years. His return is celebrated with a family but in the evening he is fatally shot and to make matters worse Paul Herron, his great nephew and Ambrose’s grandson, is found on the scene with a dazed look in his eyes and, more importantly, with the literal smoking gun in his hand. He is heard to murmur that he thought that his grandfather had been killed, a mistake caused by the similarities between the two brothers and the great uncle having been absent for most of Paul’s life.

Paul is arrested and charged with murder. There are rumours of a touch of madness in the family and, as a child Paul had episodes of somnambulism. A plea of insanity seems to be the only way out of avoiding a capital sentence, one that Ambrose is keen to pursue, while Pual, overwhelmed by his dilemma, unsure whether he did it or not, believes he was sleepwalking at the time.

Antony Maitland is intrigued by the case and commits his uncle, the formidable barrister, Sir Nicholas Harding, to representing Paul. Sir Nicholas grudgingly agrees, provided that Antony can come up with a better case than insanity and somnambulism, bot arguments he will not condescend to use. The stage is set for Antony to do some digging.

There is a bewildering array of characters representing the Cassell and Herron branches of the family, stretching across three generations and it is easy to lose sight of who is who and where they fit into the jigsaw, not helped by the presence of two different sets of twins. Fortunately, there is a dramatis personae, to which I found I was constantly referring, a tricky juggling act using an e-reader.

However, it becomes strikingly clear that there is more than a little coincidence that William went abroad immediately after the family was rocked by the murder of Ambrose’s daughter and Paul’s mother, Ruth and Mark Herron, attributed to her husband and his twin brother, Matthew, who then killed himself, and that when he returns, he is murdered and an attempt is made to poison the only other person around at the time of the tragedy, Marian Cassell, Ambrose’s unmarried daughter.  

An opal ring and the discovery of a letter that William wrote at the time of the departure leads Maitland to an altogether different solution, one involving the attempt to cover up an attempt to defraud some investors and a disastrous fire which had lethal consequences. Through a series of deductions there can only be one culprit, a serial killer who is a member of the extended Herron family.

The case against Paul falls away and we lose the opportunity of seeing Sir Nicholas lock horns with his forensic opponent, Holloway. Instead, we have a Poirot-like reveal. In truth, the pace of the book is a bit one-dimensional but at least we have the fractious working relationship between Sir Nicholas and Maitland to enjoy, with more than a little echo of Travers and Wharton, and Jenny soothing their fevered brows. It is a fascinating puzzle which Maitland pieces together with no little aplomb but lacks the vigour of her earlier novel.  

Spoilsports Of The Week (3)

It is heartening to see that the spirit of puritanism is alive and well north of the border. In a drive to reduce the levels of unhealthy foods children consume and to tackle obesity in children, culminating in the Setting The Table report, the Scottish government have announced a series of measures that will come into effect at the start of the 2025/26 academic year.

Children attending nurseries will find that juice, certain types of bread, and cakes and other forms of sugary treats have been removed from their diet. Included in the restriction is the birthday cake with a recommendation that children’s birthdays should be celebrated with activities not involving food.

I wonder how that will go down.

Pizza Of The Week (4)

It is a pizza topping combination that divides the nation – pineapple with ham. A YouGov poll conducted in 2017 found that while 84% of Britons liked pizza and 82% pineapple, only 53% liked pineapple on pizza.

Now a pizza restaurant in Norwich, Lupa Pizza, is taking positive action to deter its customers from ordering this flavour combination by charging £100 for a Hawaiian. While reluctantly adding it to their takeaway menu in response to customer requests, the co-owner, Francis Woolf, claims that adding pineapple is tantamount to sullying their pizzas while the head chef, Quin Jianoran, said he would rather stick a strawberry on top.

Sam Panopoulos, a restaurateur in Ontario, is credited with the starting the craze for adding pineapple to a pizza in the 1960, calling it a Hawaiian after the brand of tinned pineapple that he used.

I am with the restaurant; the Hawaiian is an abomination.

The Santa Klaus Murder

A review of The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay

Continuing the theme of Christmas-based murder mysteries, Doriel Hay’s The Santa Klaus Murder, originally published in 1936 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, is an interesting example of a fair play murder. The text is littered with clues that enable the reader to get a good idea of the identity of the murderer and even provides a list of the telling clues in the postscript just in case some of them passed you by. There is also a bewildering number of characters, some of whom are known by two names to add to the confusion, and I did find I had to keep the helpful dramatis personae readily available to keep track of who precisely was who.

Structurally, the book is interesting, the first five chapters providing an explanation of what happened at Flaxmere, the home of Sir Osmond Melbury, where various members of the Melbury family gather to celebrate Christmas. After an introduction to the family an eye witness account of what happened from the Saturday to Christmas Day and the aftermath of the murder are told from the perspective of four different witnesses. We learn subsequently that these are the reconstructions prepared later to assist with the investigations.

The rest of the book than deals with the investigations, told mainly, but not exclusively, from the perspective of Colonel Halstock, the Chief Constable of Haulmshire who leads the hunt for the murderer with the assistance of Inspector Rousdon and an amateur sleuth, the actor Kenneth Stour. The change of perspective keeps the reader on their toes, although the decision to put the eye witness accounts at the start of the book does give the book a slight sense of lack of direction and some of them are, frankly, hard going. Some perseverance and Christmas charitable spirit is needed to get through them but it becomes worthwhile when you get through to the other end.

The murder victim is the host and paterfamilias, Sir Osmond, who is found shot dead in his study where he was waiting either for a phone call or a visit. Sir Osmond has not endeared himself to some of the family, especially Jennifer, his youngest daughter, whose ambitions to marry the impoverished Philip Cheriton rather than Oliver Witcombe, whom her father prefers. Sir Osmond’s secretary, Grace Portisham, known to the family as the Portent, has successfully wormed herself into his favour. Fatally, Sir Osmond lets it be known that he is about to change his will and some of the Melburys fear that their portion of the estate will be diluted by the addition of Grace to the beneficiaries. Sir Osmond’s new chauffeur, Henry Bingham, seems to be paying especial attention to Grace.

Several of the characters have motive enough to kill Sir Osmond before the will is changed or in the case of Jennifer to remove a stumbling block to their romantic aspirations. It is one of those stories where the witness accounts are not entirely truthful, where some of the characters seem to be protecting each other without being absolutely clear whodunit. The obvious suspect is Witcombe who plays the role of Santa Klaus, Sir Osmond preferring the Germanic version of the Big Man’s name, but as the witnesses continually change their stories to get somewhere nearer the truth, another explanation comes into view.

It is a tale of greed, two Father Christmas costumes, a pair of false eyebrows, Christmas crackers, an erroneous understanding of the state of Sir Osmond’s will, and an egregious attempt to frame a defenceless innocent. The characterization might be sketchy, the start a bit slow and the personae bewildering at times, but there is an enjoyable puzzle buried deep within.

Gin Accessories

The ginaissance has sparked off a secondary market of gadgets and gizmos which are designed to enhance the gin drinking experience. Most tend to be flash in the pans, here today gone tomorrow, just trying to cash in. However, amongst the detritus there are a few gems that are worth more than a moment’s consideration.

The first are gin stones. Ever gone to the freezer to put some ice cubes into your carefully chosen and constructed G&T and found that you have run out? Ever worried that by loading your favourite drink with ice, all you are doing is diluting the strength of the spirit? Granite or marble gin stones eradicate these concerns.

Simply put the stones in the freezer and when you have prepared your drink, use them as you would ice. Made from granite or marble they do not melt, are not porous and do not add any extraneous flavours. They retain their coolness for the duration of most drinking sessions and after use, can be washed, and put back in the freezer in readiness for the next time. They really do work.

Preparing a G&T can be an art form ensuring that you have the right ingredients to concoct the perfect garnish for your chosen brand of gin. Most of us neither have the time for all this faffing around nor a stock of garnishes that are appropriate, especially if you have an extensive gin collection.

Attached to a recently purchased bottle of Silent Pool Gin was a mist liquid garnish with a bergamot orange flavour. All that is needed is a couple of squirts over the top of the drink et voila, the sensation of a garnish which enhances the flavour of the botanicals without the hassle of putting it together. Genius!