Martin Fone's Blog, page 93

Lost Word Of The Day (17)

As with all prejudices, heightism is something to avoid. However, in descriptive prose it is sometimes necessary to describe the height of something. For the imaginative writer the rather prosaic “short” does not really cut it. An alternative, used in the mid-17th century but quickly falling into obscurity, is improcerous. Its origin is straight from the Latin lexicon, the prefix im- indicating a negative and procerus being an adjective meaning tall or long.

Perhaps it is due a renaissance.

Death And The Pleasant Voices

A review of Death and the Pleasant Voices by Mary Fitt – 230217

Originally published in 1946 and now reissued by Moonstone Press, Death and the Pleasant Voices is the tenth in Mary Fitt’s Inspector Mallett series. Fitt, the nom de plume of Classics scholar and lecturer, Kathleen Freeman, has written a book that is an outlier in the detective fiction genre, one that barely concerns with the mechanics of murder and constructing a labyrinthine plot but one that seeks to explore the reactions of individuals who are placed in an unexpected and potentially life-changing situation. There is more than a touch of Sophocles running through the story, of humans who seemingly exercise free will but who are really playing their part in an overarching master plan set by forces beyond their ken and control.

I have observed before that the curious Tichborne Claimant case which both scandalised and entertained Victorian society in the mid-19th century involving a claimant to a large fortune who suddenly turned up out of the blue has provided a source of inspiration for writers for a century or more after. This book is Fitt’s interpretation of the consequences of the emergence of an unexpected heir à la the Tichborne case.

Mr Ullstone has just died and the twins, Jim and Ursula, from his marriage expect to inherit the house and his estate. However, it emerges that Ullstone had an earlier marriage, whilst serving out in India, and there was a child, an Anglo-Indian named Hugo, from that relationship. Increasingly exasperated by the behaviour of the twins, Ullstone leaves his fortune to Hugo, cutting his second family out. The family, anxious and angry that what they had thought was rightfully theirs was being handed on a plate to someone they do not know, congregate in Ullstone Hall to meet the new heir.

It is into this cesspit of seething emotions that our narrator, Jake Seaborne, enters unwittingly. His car has broken down in the middle of a storm and he knocks on the door seeking shelter. He is surprised that his hosts seem to be expecting him. A friend of Seacombe’s family, Sir Frederick Lawton, happens to be there, explains the misunderstanding and asks Jake Seacombe to represent in smoothing the way for Hugo’s introduction to the family. Jake agrees.

Hugo does not make his entrance, sending, perhaps, his representative Marcel to find out the lie of the land. Indeed, we never meet Hugo who is murdered in the grounds of the house. Fitt is less concerned about the who and the why of the murder, concentrating rather on the release of emotions that results from the death and the hopes of the family that the twins will inherit once more, only to be dashed when they are told that Hugo had made a will bequeathing it all to Marcel who, in turn, suggests that he will leave everything to Jake. Jake, the innocent bystander, finds he is enveloped in the intrigues, jealousies and avarice of the household and even Evelyn Ross, the housekeeper with whom he falls in love, is not who she seems to be.

The subject of the offspring of miscegenation looms large in this story. Hugo, we learn, feels that his position means that he can never marry, let alone have children, and he is gloomy about his prospects. It strikes the modern reader as a rather churlish and cold-hearted treatment of a sensitive subject, but the curiosity and disapproval of mixed marriages lingers on, as evidenced by the speculation about the skin pigment of a former working Royal.

The mystery of who killed Hugo is only solved thanks to a pre-suicide letter sent to Jake by Dr Parmoor. Inspector Mallett and Dr Fitzbrown only appear on the fringes, gathering evidence for the inquests, and barely getting to grips with the murder. It takes Jake’s leaking of Parmoor’s letter to put them on the right track and even then they are two late to prevent another death.

This is not your normal murder mystery, but it is an engrossing, thought provoking study into the psychology of disappointment and greed and well worth a read. And the title? When Jake passes by Ullstone Hall later he notices the group of three monkeys, seeing, hearing and speaking no evil, on the gates, a leitmotif throughout the book, who, he believes, are listening to what he might say. “Bit I had nothing to say”, the book ends. “It was all just the past to me: a murmur of pleasant voices”.    

Red Faces Of The Week (10)

It is always good to hear of countries finding the cash to invest in public infrastructure projects. A total of 31 commuter and medium distance trains were ordered for the Spanish regions of Asturias and Calabria. That is the good news.

The bad news is that it was revealed a few weeks ago, albeit, allegedly, before the trains were built, that the original designs of the trains would not have fitted in the tunnels along the lines. You would have thought that was one of the first thing to have been checked and, not surprisingly, heads have rolled including that of Spain’s Secretary of State for Transport, Isabel Pardo de Vera.     

Discovery of the embarrassing error has meant that the regions will have to wait another two or three years before the redesigned trains are delivered. On the positive side, travel on the Asturian and Cantabrian networks affected by the delays will be free until early 2026, the government announced.

The Case Of The Faithful Heart

In memoriam, Rupert Heath – the man who helped ignite my love for Golden Age Detective Fiction.

Exegit monumentum aere perennius

Requiescat in pacem.

A review of The Case of the Faithful Heart by Brian Flynn – 230213

There are some fascinating themes in The Case of the Faithful Heart, originally published in 1939 and now reissued by Dean Street Press. It must be a tad disconcerting to open the papers and find that your death has been reported. At least, if you are a public figure, you have the opportunity to see what people really thought of you. This is what happened to novelist, Keith Annesley, on the fateful day of June 8th. He shared his name with an American politician and due to a mix-up on the editorial floor was to have serious and tragic consequences for Annesley and others.

Authors can be tricky characters, always prone to reinventing themselves to cover up a backstory. Flynn, exploring a theme used by ECR Lorac in Death of an Author where two writers assume different personae, gives his representative of the writing community a backstory that goes to the nub of Anthony Bathurst’s twenty-fourth case.

Alfred Lord Tennyson has rather gone out of fashion these days, but a feature of Golden Age detective fiction is how often his poetry comes up, whether it be Miss Silver who quotes the poet at the drop of a stitch or, here, where the knowledge of Aylmer’s Field provides Bathurst with a clue to the psychology of the person he is seeking. At least the reference is directly relevant here, in that Aylmer is also the surname of the vicar and the strewing of one grave with violets and another with yellow roses mimics the actions in the poem.

It is another case of an amateur sleuth having a busman’s holiday, Bathurst taking a well-deserved break in the Glebeshire village of Lanrebel. However, disaster follows him as does his reputation and it is not long before he is engaged by Ann Hillier to investigate the tragedies that have beset her family at Hillearys. Firstly, her mother, Jacqueline, returns in the car, bloodied and bruised, clothing ripped and grass-stained, only to expire from an overdose of chloral hydrate. She mutters “The Mile Cliff. Two” before she dies. The day after her funeral her grave is strewn with violets.

Then Ann’s brother, Neill, is found dead on a stormy night with his head stoved in – his grave is subsequently strewn with yellow roses – and then father, Paul, is found in his study, strangled, although he had a revolver with him. Bathurst investigates as a private citizen rather than as an adjunct to the police, although his calling card with its reference to Scotland Yard opens a few doors and he avails himself of his relationship with Sir Austin Kemble, Commissioner of Police, to find some valuable information about a photographic studio. The bumptious attitude of the local Inspector, Rockingham, makes it less likely that Bathurst will cooperate with the official investigation.

Acting as Bathurst’s Watson is Annesley who has also come down to Lanrebel for a holiday and, initially, it is a baffling set of circumstances, with precious little in the way of clues or motive. However, Bathurst begins to see some light when the family physic, Pakenham, indicates that Jacqueline seemed to hold a candle for someone, and when Ann brings him her mother’s personal diaries which offer some clues about a long-lost love. A trip to an eminent public school in Trinket which, coupled with the reference made by the Reverend Septimus Aylmer to the Tennysn poem, provides him with the proof that he needs.

Annesley returns to Lanrebel to see the conclusion of the case and the duo wait in the graveyard at midnight to see whether the culprit will take Bathurst’s bait. No one turns up and there is a very good reason for that.

The story is fairly clued and I realised what was going on as soon as Bathurst found a vital piece of evidence amongst Jacqueline’s effects. The final resolution, though, left a few too many loose ends for my liking, the explanation of Jacqueline’s state of dress a little unconvincing and the explanation of Neill’s death too improbable. There was a feeling of a shaggy dog tale to the book, and the style smacks of a pastiche, but it is entertaining enough and the twist at the end makes it all worthwhile.

So Many Doors

A review of So Many Doors by E R Punshon -230212

One of life’s many little mysteries is why a Golden Age detective crime writer of the quality of E R Punshon fell so spectacularly out of fashion. Considerable credit must go to Dean Street Press for their sterling effort in reviving his fortunes and those of others. Perhaps what did not help his cause is his choice of titles (or was it his publisher)? Take the title of the 26th in Punshon’s Bobby Owen series, originally published in 1949.

Those expecting a murder mystery story written in a Whitehall farce style a la Brian Rix will be sorely disappointed. Instead it is part of a quotation from a play, The Custom of the Country, written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in the early 1620s – death hath so many doors to let out life. Bobby Owen quotes the passage late in in the book although he does not attribute the quotation. It also echoes a phrase in John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (1623); “I know death hath ten thousand doors/ for men to take their exits”. The addition of “Death Hath” to the book’s title might have planted it more firmly in the genre and ensured its longevity. Who knows?

If the reader has understood the reference in the title, they might, perhaps, a series of unusual deaths, as inventive as those to be found in Ngaio Marsh at her best. While the murders are brutal in their own way, there is nothing out of the ordinary about them. Instead, what we have here is a tale of two women driven by their own furies and the consequential fall out when a woman with an irresistible attraction to me meets a man with an irresistible attraction to women. We never meet the two principal characters who drive the action and the tragic consequences of their mutual attraction, but their marks are all over the story.

With a wife like Olive who is a magnet for trouble, Bobby Owen, now promoted to the distinguished rank of Commander at the Yard, albeit without portfolio, is never short of something to get his teeth into. Olive tells him of the concerns of a couple who live nearby whose daughter, a seemingly bashful, demure, quiet girl by the name of Bella Winlock, has gone missing, last seen in the company of Mark Monk, who under a different name had been acquitted for the murder of his wife and who had been linked with the disappearance of another girl. Despite his initial reluctance to get involved, Bobby’s nose for a case and his finely tuned nose for danger takes him to Bexley House, where he discovers that one of the girls there, Margaret Kerr, has taken Bea’s handbag, there is a profusion of blood in the room and that a vehicle had driven off at high speed.

Bobby quickly discovers a world of illicit gambling, black market trading, dishonour amongst thieves, but is mystified as to who was murdered at Bexley House and by whom and how Bea was involved, if at all. We meet some wonderful characters, not least the tubercular and vindictive, drop earring wearing Vea Burden and an old-school racketeer, Joey George.

After what is an admittedly slow start, the action moves to Cornwall where the pace of the plot and the resolution of the mystery hots up. The ending, with all its tragedy, is dramatic as, despite the woefully inadequate but well-meaning endeavours of the local police, prove inadequate against the furies that are driving the two women.         

There are plenty of red herrings, some intriguing characters, some moments of comedy, a glimpse of the reality of London immediately post war, and while the culprit and the victim are reasonably easy to identify, Punshon has served up a thrilling and entertaining story which demonstrates what an underrated crime writer he was.

An added highlight of this edition is a collection of crime reviews Punshon wrote during his stint as a literary reviewer at the Manchester Guardian. He was certainly a man who knew what he wanted from the genre.

The Sound Of The Northern Lights

The ominous red presence of the Northern Lights in the skies of continental Europe was seen as a harbinger of war. In the weeks before the French Revolution a bright red Aurora was seen over Scotland and England with reports of the sound of mighty battles being heard, intriguingly raising the question of whether the Northern Lights made a noise.

One who took the subject seriously was the first man to photograph them in October 1882, Danish astrophysicist, Sophus Tromhult, doubtless inspired by his father, Johan, who claimed to have heard them three times between 1838 and 1843. He likened their sound to the quiet but rapid rubbing together of two pieces of paper. Despite a career spent observing the lights, Sophus never heard them.

In the 1930s The Shetland News was inundated with reports, some contemporary, others historic, of sounds emanating from the Northern Lights. One such, published on May 20, 1933, from Peter Hutchison claimed that “on clear and frosty nights about thirty years ago the “pretty dancers”…would flit and fro, making a noise as if two planks had met flat ways – not a sharp crack but a dull sound, loud enough for anyone to hear. We boys got so used to this that we never heeded the noise when the pretty dancers came out to clap their hands”. These reports were corroborated by other witnesses in Canada and Norway.

Persistent reports of noises emanating from aurorae were discounted by the scientific community, the witnesses having no rigorous scientific training and the altitude at which they occurred being beyond the range of human hearing. This scepticism began to change when the eminent auroral scientist, Carl Størmer, published the experiences of two of his assistants who described hearing “a very curious faint whistling sound, distinctly undulatory, which seemed to follow exactly the vibrations of the aurora” and a sound like “burning grass or spray”.

A hundred years ago a paper published by Clarence Chant in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada[1] (September 1923) provided the now accepted explanation behind the sounds produced by aurorae, although there is still some debate as to how the mechanism that produces the sound operates. The motion of the Northern Lights, he argued, altered the Earth’s magnetic fields, inducing a change in the electrification of the atmosphere which, in turn, generated a crackling sound much closer to the Earth’s surface when it met objects on the ground, much like static. Chant’s theory lay neglected until the 1970s.

The chances of hearing an aurora were thought to be considerably lower than seeing one, some experts suggesting that the aural phenomenon only presents itself in five per cent of violent auroral displays. However, some recent research by Professor Emeritus Laine of Aalto University suggests that they might be more common than originally thought, citing a remarkable correlation between geomagnetic fluctuations and auroral sounds. Even more astonishingly he claims that that many of what he termed as possible auroral sounds occur even in the absence of visible Northern Lights, in other words that it is possible to hear them even if you cannot see them, and that absent a visual accompaniment the sounds made by the Northern Lights might easily be passed off as something more mundane.

To hear a version of them, check out a Radio 3 programme[2] in the Between The Ears series, first aired on Boxing Day, 2020, which remapped very low frequency radio recordings of aurorae to levels audible to the human ear. Although not quite the same as the real thing, it shows that the Northern Lights should be reclassified as one of nature’s finest Son et Lumiere shows.

[1] https://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1923JRASC..17..273C

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qhj3

Lost Word Of The Day (16)

One of the more bizarre proposals from a government that is becoming ever more delusional was the reintroduction of the imperial weights and measures systems instead of the metric system which has the distinct taint of Europe about it. There is, however, something fascinating about the terms used to denote measurements in days of yore.

One that piqued my interest, not least because it pertained to beer, is homerkin, a term that was used in the 17th century. There is some dispute as to precise measurement. Some think that it was the equivalent to ten bath tubs (around 75 to 100 gallons) although others point out that this was the volume to which the old Hebrew word “Homer” referred to. The presence of the diminutive -kin, some argue, suggest that it was a considerably smaller amount of beer, perhaps no more than half a homer. Either way, it was a large amount of beer, but how large was a Jacobean bath tub?

Sometimes a word raises more questions than it answers.

Lost Word Of The Day (15)

There are very few words in the English language that describe someone with a very loud voice. We must resort to similes such as his voice was like a foghorn. However, in the 17th century, albeit briefly, there came into currency the noun hirquitalliency which, derived from the Latin verb hirquitilare meaning to acquire a strong voice, was used to denote full-throated cries of delight.

There are very few recorded examples, the most famous (or, dare I say, prominent) featuring in Sir Thomas Urqhart’s The Jewel (1652). In an erotic passage he wrote, “to speak of her hirquitalliency at the elevation of the pole of his microcosme, or of his luxuriousness to erect a gnomon on her horizontal dyale, will perhaps be held by some to be expressions full of obscoeness and offensive to the purity of chaste ears”.   

Its usage disappeared as quickly as his monumental erection.

Miss Silver Comes To Stay

A review of Miss Silver Comes To Stay by Patricia Wentworth – 230211

I have always found Camberley’s finest, Patricia Wentworth, a bit hit or miss, a writer, though, who even with an indifferent storyline is able to produce a page turner. Miss Silver Comes To Stay, the sixteenth in Wentworth’s Miss Silver series and originally published in 1949, is definitely one of her better ones. There are all the hallmarks of a classic murder mystery – a story set in the English countryside, a vindictive murder victim, whose body found in the study with their head smashed in with a poker, several suspects, some of whom are more likely than others, a few red herrings and a twist at the end. Oh, and as it is Wentworth, the obligatory love interest, although by her standards it is rather muted.

One of the keys to being a successful sleuth is the ability to attract trouble, a character trait that Maud Silver has in spades. Her visit to a quiet English country village to stay with an old schoolfriend seems innocent enough, but her return coincides with the return of the Lord of the Manor, James Lessiter, who after twenty years’ absence has decided to return, to sort out his affairs and to put the house and estate, known as Melling, on the market.

There is reason enough for some of the villagers to be disturbed by James’ sudden return. Rietta Cray was once engaged to James, but the relationship was broken off. Her nephew, Carr Robertson, also has just cause. He realises that James is the man with whom his first wife eloped only to be abandoned penniless and to return desperately ill, to be nursed until her death by her cuckolded husband.

And then there is Catherine Welby who returned in penury from India after her husband had died and was allowed to live at the gate house at Melling for a peppercorn rent by James’ aunt. She had also accumulated some of the furniture from the main house – she claims they were lent to her but James insists that she not only stole them but also sold some to fund her lifestyle. His threats to not only evict her but to take her through the courts for theft and embezzlement push Catherine to the edge.

On the night of the murder, all three principal suspects visit Melling. On his discovery that James is the man who ran off with his first wife, Carr rushes out of the house threatening revenge. Fearing that he will do something rash, Rietta rushes to Melling through the woods, picking up the first coat she can lay her hands on and scratching her hand en route. James tells her that he has left her everything in his will, but the couple have a violent argument and in her rush to leave the house, Rietta leaves her coat behind. Catherine, who in an earlier phone call had revealed to Rietta she was desperate, was also lurking in the grounds. By the time Carr arrived, James was already dead and the coat that Rietta had been wearing was soaked with blood.

The police make their enquiries, while Miss Silver, in her inimitable style, having been engaged by Rietta to help her, busies herself in the background, using her unobtrusive presence to ferret out information that is beyond the grasp of the official investigators. There are some eavesdroppers whose information helps set a timetable of events and embolden the police, headed by Miss Silver’s former charge in her governess days, Randall March, to consider an arrest but she is not convinced they are on the right track. With her assistance the culprit is revealed, a surprise to almost all but the most diligent reader, although the clues are all there.

Lessiter was an unpleasant man who deliberately set out to upset the apple cart. Whether he deserved to be murdered is a moot point but Wentworth’s sympathies, at least in her narrative, are with his victims. Her deft narrative and character portrayals elicit sympathy for the predicaments that Rietta and Carr find themselves in. It is a tragedy bit there is one solace in that first loves wins out.

This is one of the better books by Wentworth I have read and is thoroughly recommended.       

Art Critic Of The Week (9)

Jeff Koons is famous, at least in art circles, for his “balloon dog” series of sculptures, which look like those creations that entertainers make for children’s parties. Nevertheless, they seem to sell and command prices into the tens of thousands of dollars.

A small, blue version of his famous “balloon dog” series was on display at the Art Wynwood gallery in Miami and was a centrepiece for a VIP reception. One of the guests, intrigued by Koons’ creation, began tapping its exterior shell. While she was doing that, the sphere moved and toppled on to the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces. Other members at the reception initially thought it was a piece of performance art until they spotted the look of horror on the organisers’ faces.

It was not the first time this has happened to Koons. In 2018 his reflective “Gazing Balls” was reduced to a pile of fragments when a curious onlooker touched it when it was on display at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.

Never mind, the insurance will always pay up.