Stop Press (The Inspector Appleby Mysteries Book 4)

by Michael Innes

His imagination was of the refrigerating sort from which the fantasies of boyhood can step with convincing freshness; and it was this quality, no doubt, that made the stories the instant and almost embarrassing success that they were.

‘I’ve just explained on what, in your abominable jargon, you cash in. William of Chalfont and Richard à Lys. Who so arranged things that for a quite inconsiderable outlay you are enjoying comfortable quarters, tolerably polite society, the run of two or three million books, and a highly evolved system of individual education the stamp of which — heaven help me — you will carry to the grave. And now perhaps you will tell me a little more about the Spider.’

There must be a simple psychological explanation. And the best suggestion is, I believe, Havelock Ellis’. The mind is like a two-storey house; above, the sense-impressions of the moment; below, memory. Only sometimes sense-impressions tumble straight downstairs without our being aware of their reception. They tumble straight into the memory. And a moment later — while virtually the same sense-impressions are being received in the normal way — they rise up with the quality of memories and jostle with what is actually happening about us. The result is the uncanny feeling that what is confronting us now has confronted us before.’