Martin Fone's Blog, page 88

Lost Word Of The Day (31)

The United States is limbering up for the long haul of its primary election process to select candidates who will ultimately run for election in 2024 for the quadrimular office of President. Quadrimular, an adjective from the 17th century, meant lasting for four years.

I expect there will be hemerine updates of progress in our news bulletins, an adjective used primarily in a medical sense to mean daily or belonging to a day, used especially in the context of a fever. It seems strangely appropriate.

Fire In The Thatch

A review of Fire in the Thatch by ECR Lorac – 230411

Edith Caroline Rivett, who wrote under the nom de plume of E C R Lorac, is one of my favourite Golden Age detective writers. More of her works are being rescued from obscurity, although some of the versions that are available on Kindle are often full of annoying typos. Fortunately, the inestimable British Library Crime Classics series is doing its bit to revive her fortunes and their editions can be relied upon to provide the reader with an almost error-free experience. Fire in the Thatch, set in 1944, the dog days of the Second World War, and originally published in 1946, the twenty-seventh in her Robert Macdonald series, is an excellent example of her style and craftsmanship.

One of the features of Lorac’s writing that appeals to me is her wonderful sense of place and her ability to communicate her deep knowledge of and love of the countryside to her readers. This story is set in Devon, where she was evacuated during the war. Country ways, the deep distrust amongst the locals of outsiders, the attitude to evacuees bringing their London ways to the countryside all form part of the warp and weft of this intriguing and oddly affecting tale of murder.

There are two slightly unusual features to this story. Firstly, the principal murder victim, Nicholas Vaughan, is portrayed sympathetically by Lorac. He has been invalided out of the services and wants to settle in the countryside by taking on a smallholding and working the land. He rents a run-down thatched cottage with potential, as the estate agents say, from Colonel St Cyres in the village of Mallory Fitzjohn and sets about making it habitable and working the land so that it can become productive.

Although he can be prickly at times, he is single-minded in his determination to make good the property and fulfil his dreams. He is an unlikely murder victim. The Colonel’s daughter-in-law, June, whose husband is held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war, has moved down to the village, but misses her London life. Her presence lures several of the London society set to the area, including Tommy Gressingham, whom Vaughan beat to the lease on the cottage.

Having spent the opening chapters setting up the story, Lorac plunges us straight in to the start of Macdonald’s investigation. The tragic fire has happened starting in the thatch, and a body, presumed to be Vaughan’s, has been found in the charred remains of the house. The coroner’s verdict is accidental death but Vaughan’s old naval friend, Commander Wilton, demands that the case be reopened. As the excellent introduction points out it is rare for a fire to be the cause of the first death in crime fiction, more usually being deployed to destroy evidence and, occasionally, witnesses afterwards.

Macdonald’s approach is diligent, empathetic, and after immersing himself into the village and its ways, he begins to see that there are a number of features in Vaughan’s death that do not sit easy with the verdict of accidental death. The ducks were not put away, an experienced seaman who had seen war service would not sleep through a fire, an evacuee, a young boy from Shoreditch, who could recognise the sound of individual cars, heard Gressingham’s car moving around. And why was Vaughan receiving strange telephone messages, and where did he go to on the fateful night?

Macdonald’s patient digging reveals that there is a more complex story involving Vaughan and his relationship with Gressingham’s cronies. While I was fairly certain of the identity of the murderer, although as the story went on I began to consider seriously another suspect, the whydunit was more opaque.

The denouement was a tad melodramatic and while not the most complicated of plots, there was much to be enjoyed in a good story told in an engaging style. My take away is never drive a swanky London car down narrow Devon lanes.              

Ale Of The Week

For some reason my thoughts have been wandering towards a coronation that never happened, that of Edward VIII who had the good grace to abdicate before he was anointed with the holy oil. The event still went ahead in May 1937 as the spare stepped in to claim the crown.

The Suffolk brewers, Greene King, brewed a special Coronation Ale to mark Edward’s coronation but their plans were thrown into disarray by the events of December 11, 1936. The ale, with an ABV of 12% and a strong fruity flavour, was made from barley and English hops, had already been bottled and was kept in the brewery’s cellars and forgotten about. It only came to light when the cellars were renovated in 2011.   

Several crates of the beer are now being auctioned off ahead of May 6th with the proceeds going to The Prince’s Trust.

Cheers!

At The Sign Of The Clove And Hoof

A review of At The Sign of the Clove and Hoof by Zo ë Johnson

And now for something completely different. If you like your crime fiction somewhat leftfield and laced with humour then At The Sign of the Clove and Hoof, originally published in 1937 and recently reissued by Moonstone Press is one you should definitely seek out. Zoë Johnson is a new author to me, and it is probably not surprising as she seems to have only published two books, this and Mourning After which came out in 1938 and is as rare as hen’s teeth.

This book is patchy and as is often the way it starts off well and then sags a little bit in the middle before recovering its joie de vivre for an astonishing ending, which I did not see coming. The action is set in Larcombe, an out of the way village in coastal Devon, populated by a wide range of eccentric characters who congregate at the local pub by the name of The Clove and Hoof to swap stories or, when he is in port, listen to the yarns of the local seafarer, Captain John Thomas Ridd, a larger-than-life character complete with obligatory wooden leg. Johnson is in her element lacing her introductions to the village and the assortment of oddballs with much humour and although they are stereotypical, they long remain in the memory.  

For such a quiet village, there is an astonishingly high body count as first the vicar is found shot dead at the bottom of a cliff near where his car is parked and then the decapitated body of a stranger, claiming to be a detective from Scotland Yard, is found. His head surfaces in front of a couple of lovers canoodling by the village pond. Next to go is the eccentric, unhinged recluse, Gedling, who has been the victim of a series of practical jokes including finding a dead fish put in his bed and being plagued by a metronome. Then the good Captain Ridd disappears, presumed dead, and mine host of The Clove and Hoof, Yeo, is poisoned by gas, presumed to be suicide as he has been spooked by the recent goings-on in the village. The sixth death sand then the bluff antiquarian and jack-of-all-trades all meet their maker inside 200 pages. Not all are murders but all are connected.

The police investigations are led by two officers with widely differing characters and approaches. The local officer, Inspector Blutton, is officious and his abrupt manner gets the backs up of the locals. He is quick to infer that Ridd, the only one-legged man in the village, is the culprit from the footprints of a large hobnailed boot and the tip of a wooden leg found near the vicar’s car.

Blutton is irked by the arrival of the ridiculously moustachioed Sergeant Plumper of the Yard. Younger and with a more sympathetic approach, he strikes up liaisons with Peascod, an artist and newcomer to the village whose metronome was found in Gedling’s house and handkerchief in the rifled study of the vicar’s home, and an eager newshound who pens features for the wonderfully named Sunday Emetic.

Plumper violently disagrees with Blutton’s analysis of the events, especially as it does not fit with all the known movements of the suspects, and looks for a more subtle motivation, hitting on blackmail consequent upon the drunken romantic liaisons of the vicar and Gedling. His investigations leads him to some amusing encounters with a gin-sodden landlady in London who has more than a tale or two to tell.

However, both are off beam and the real story behind the crime spree only emerges when the culprit gives a long and detail confession while holding Plumper hostage in a cave. Purists will shake their heads in dismay that Johnson has resorted to this mechanism to bring her tale to a conclusion, but I feel that would be misinterpreting the book.

I see it not as a piece of crime fiction but as a satire of the genre, poking fun at suspects by exaggerating their ridiculous characteristics and the investigators by ridiculing their quickness to grasp a theory and their reluctance to let go. That the truth behind the deaths was missed by all and that the reader had little chance of gaining the satisfaction of getting there before the sleuths is all part of her send up of the conventions of the genre. Even the dearth of female characters, the few that there are all assume menial roles, is not a weakness but a reflection of the male domination of crime fiction.

Seen in the that light it is a minor masterpiece.

The Big Four

A review of The Big Four by Agatha Christie – 230404

Sometimes I wonder if I am missing something with Agatha Christie. OK, I understand that she is the best selling novelist of all time and regarded as the doyenne of crime fiction and that if popularity is any judge she is the bee’s knees, but if I had known that this book had been written by anyone other than her, I would have given into my desire to delete it from my Kindle after the opening couple of questions. Because of her reputation, I persevered, expecting that it would get better, but the only moment of relief came when I reached the end and moved on to another book.

Originally published in 1927, The Big Four is the fifth outing for Hercule Poirot and sees him reunited with his faithful Watson-like Hawkins, who narrates the madcap adventure, having returned, temporarily, from his sojourn in the Argentine, where he has picked up a wife. However, he is happy to leave her behind and only gives her a thought when he hears that she has been kidnapped when, ludicrously, he is prepared to lay down his life to save her. His role in this novel is to be Poirot’s foil, his bumbling nature, his impetuousness, and his unerring knack of picking up a vital clue but failing to realise its significance a counterpoint to the brilliance and incisive of the Belgian’s little grey cells.

Crime fiction can be so much more than a murder in a locked country house room, and I am all very much in favour of a writer who is prepared to challenge its conventions and experiment with form and content. Veering off the tried and tested is a risk for writers, increasing the chance of failure, but the rewards can be great. In this book Christie is not content with confronting Poirot with a baffling set of circumstances, challenging him to make sense out of a series of events that mystify the police. Here his mission is to save the world.

In what can best be described as a thriller, Poirot’s foes are the Big Four, a group of evil individuals, who, rather like the shady Illuminati, have only one objective – to dominate the world and subvert its institutions for their evil designs. We know the identity of one, Li chang Yen, a Chinese mastermind and that the second is probably an American and the third a French woman. The fourth is even more mysterious but is the group’s enforcer with an amazing knack to change his appearance convincingly to ensure that he can dispose of foes without detection.

In what is little more than a series of adventures, held together loosely by the overriding theme of hunting the Big Four – it came as no surprise to learn that each, initially, was a short story on its own – Poirot slowly but surely comes closer to establishing the identity of the fiends. The American is the fabulously wealthy financier Abe Ryland while the French woman turns out to be a world-famous scientist, said to be greater than the Curies, Madame Olivier. The fourth is a bit-part actor, Claude Darrell, a master of disguise and the group’s muscle. Although he can play his parts to perfection, he cannot disguise a tic, a compulsion to play with a piece of bread while at the dining table. This tic, of course, gives him away.

Poirot slowly gets closer to understanding who the group are and their motivations, but in every encounter the Big Four, to Hawkins’ growing frustration, seem to come off best. Hawkins is kidnapped a couple of times and in one incident Poirot appears to be killed. No such luck, but the stratagem of faking his death lulls the group into a false sense of security and they are lulled into the Belgian’s trap.

It is all nonsense, of course, and Christie, having built up the character of Poirot in her earlier books as a preening, eccentric, social gadfly with a keen and annoying eye for detail, fails to convince that he is a superman in whom the world can entrust its safety. One interesting snippet was that part of the threat to the world was a weapon harnessing nuclear fusion, an illuminating and prescient pointer to the fear that has stalked the world since the end of the Second World War.

The best I can say for this book is that Christie tried but failed.

The Bluebell

The emergence of a swathe of densely packed bluebells, forming a vivid electric-blue carpet underneath the canopy of a newly leafed woodland, heads nodding in the breeze, is one of the British countryside’s most eagerly anticipated sights, a sure sign that spring is here, and that summer is on its way.

Regularly voted as Britain’s favourite wildflower, Anne Brontë echoed the sentiments of many when she wrote “there is a silent eloquence/ in every wild bluebell/ that fills my softened heart with bliss/ that words could never tell” (The Bluebell, (1839)). A quintessentially British sight with nearly half of the world’s population of bluebells found on these shores, they usually flower from around mid-April to late May.

Looking at a glade packed with thousands of individual plants, it is hard to believe that the common bluebell is classified as an endangered species, one of the few native British flowers to be protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Their protection was strengthened in 1998 when the trade in bulbs and seeds was criminalised, carrying fines of up to £5,000 per bulb.

It can take between five and seven years for a seed to grow into a bulb and then flower. Flourishing in areas where the soil is unlikely to be disturbed, such as along shady hedgerows, in churchyards, and especially in woodlands, they are perennial and after flowering, their long leaves remain above ground until late into autumn. The bluebell then disappears, allowing its bulb to reenergise itself in readiness for the following spring. Their presence is an indicator that the woodland is ancient.

Apart from the loss of its natural habitat, the bluebell’s biggest existential threat is from its invasive rival, the Spanish bluebell, introduced by the Victorians in the mid-19th century as they were easier to cultivate. The two are relatively easy to distinguish.

The native bluebell, (Hyancinthoides non-scripta), has slender, tubular bells of a deep, purple-blue colour, occasionally pink or white, with a deeper central stripe on each petal. It has a long slender stem or scape tapering gradually to the tip which holds up to eight flowers on one side only, causing it to overbalance gracefully like a shepherd’s crook. The petals turn backwards in a curl, giving a dainty effect. Its pollen is creamy coloured.

The Spanish bluebell (Hyancinthoides hispanica), is taller with broader leaves and produces considerably more flowers which appear on either side of the scape, giving it a more upright appearance. The flowers, pale blue in colour, are shaped like an open bell and the petals, which have a deeper blue stripe down the centre, have a gentler curl. Its pollen is blue or pale green.

The common bluebell has featured heavily in folklore. For the Victorians, keen students of floriography, the bluebell symbolised constancy, humility, and everlasting love. The truth would always be told if a wreath of bluebells was worn, while turning the flower inside out would win the heart of a true love. According to the Encyclopaedia of Folklore and the Occult Sciences (1852), good fortune was assured by picking a bluebell, chanting “bluebell, bluebell, bring me some luck before tomorrow night”, and slipping it into your shoe.

Lost Word Of The Day (30)

With local elections on the horizon, we should be on the lookout for plebicolar politicians, an adjective used between the 17th and 19th centuries to describe a politician who actively courts the favour of the common people. I am sure we will find some!

Lost Word Of The Day (29)

Words of encouragement to someone of a lazy disposition to pull themselves together often are like water off a duck’s back. Perhaps it is time to get inventive in your description of their slothfulness. One noun that could be usefully revived to add a bit of variety to your torrent of invective is pigritude, used in the 17th century to describe laziness.

The word might have gone out of fashion, but the condition certainly has not.

The Case Of The Painted Ladies

A review of The Case of the Painted Ladies by Brian Flynn – 230401

Originally published in 1940 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, The Case of the Painted Ladies is the 25th outing for Brian Flynn’s amateur sleuth, Anthony Bathurst. One of the things that attracts me so much to Brian Flynn is his willingness to experiment with the genre of detective fiction, an approach that can produce variable results but with this story he delivers an entertaining story, as much a thriller as a conventional murder mystery, with a fascinating, if somewhat implausible, denouement.

The set up to the novel is intriguing, introducing us to Aubrey Coventry, whose final day before he is murdered involves three remarkable things, each of which ultimately have a role to play in understanding the motivation behind and the identity of the culprit but at the time seem bewildering and disparate events, rather in the manner of an early Christopher Bush.

He receives a lucrative business proposition from an American financier, Silas Montgomery, who insists on meeting him at 2am, he visits a clairvoyante who tells him he has no future and has an encounter with a man with a vicious snarl. Most murder victims are unsympathetic characters, who have earned the enmity of all and sundry and are asking to be killed, but Coventry is portrayed sympathetically, which makes his murder seem all the more surprising and motiveless.

There are some curious features about the murder. Coventry was restrained before being strangled, he and his guest, presumably the murderer, were communicating by notepad while they were together, and nothing appeared to have been taken from the room. Andrew MacMorran of the Yard leads the investigation and as the crime seems baffling brings in Bathurst to add some deductive heft to the case. The pair work well together, bouncing off one another to good effect and not without a little wit, but Flynn uses MacMorran’s lack of observation and slowness to grasp the importance of clues to show how clever Bathurst is, a slightly irritating and unnecessary trait.

A couple of scraps of paper found in a discarded painter’s hat found along with the blue overalls on a train provides the detective duo with their major breakthrough and leads them to the art world where the prognostications of the clairvoyante about two painted ladies being the reason for Coventry’s death begin to make sense. As to the identity of the murderer, while I had some suspicions, Flynn cleverly kept that part under wraps while he made his investigators concentrate on the motivation behind the murder, as if the whydunit was more interesting than the whodunit, as ultimately it proved to be.

Bathurst went through the wars in his pursuit for the truth, having been attacked on his return to his flat, his maid having been trussed up, and then shot at while watching a film in a cinema, the pistol shot choreographed with a volley of fire on the film’s soundtrack. Fortunately, Bathurst turned to light a cigarette at just the right moment.

Unusually, and perhaps uniquely in detective fiction, the denouement takes the form of a BBC radio panel game involving a team of BBC writers and a team of sleuths, so designed to trap the villain into revealing themselves. Conceptually it scores highly for invention, but, in execution, it did not seem to me to deliver the killer blow that would move the culprit psychologically to give the game away. I was more taken by the realisation that Bathurst’s team of sleuths was made up of far from obscure individuals created by the crime writing fraternity. Flynn is nothing if not inventive.

True to form, Flynn has delivered an entertaining, inventive, and intriguing tale, which compounds the mystery as to why he ever fell into obscurity. It might be that his choice of idiomatic language, cockney rhyming and public school slang and his use of British sporting heroes made the text less American friendly. Who knows? All credit to the Puzzle Doctor and the much-mourned Rupert Heath for bringing him back.

Vending Machine Of The Week (2)

In 1867 Simeon Denham was awarded a British patent (no 706) for creating the first fully-automatic vending machine. It dispensed stamps. The range of goods that are now available from vending machines is gradually increasing. In 2019 I reported on German sausage vending machines and recently Penguin have announced the reintroduction of book vending machines, starting at Exeter station.

In November 2022 a vending machine with a difference was installed at Tazawako Station in Semboku, Japan, offering bear meat. The machine dispenses meat from wild bears “locally captured” in the mountains, thanks to the efforts of a local hunting club, and then processed in an abattoir. To secure a chunk weighing 250 grammes will cost 2,200 yen, about £13, and is proving popular with travellers alighting at the station, selling between ten and fifteen packs a week. Supplies often run out as the restaurant behind the idea, Soba Goro, struggles to meat demand.

Bear meat consumption is highest in northern Japan, where it is sold in cans and even as instant curry. It has a slightly gamey flavour that some have likened to venison, and is often served in stew. “Bear meat tastes clean, and it doesn’t get tough,” a Soba Goro spokesperson said.  

Think I will give that one a miss.