Bodies from the Library 2 Read online

  BODIES FROM THE LIBRARY

  2

  Forgotten stories of mystery and suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of the Golden Age

  Selected and introduced by

  Tony Medawar

  Copyright

  COLLINS CRIME CLUB

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Published by Collins Crime Club 2019

  Selection, introduction and notes © Tony Medawar 2019

  For copyright acknowledgements, see Acknowledgements

  Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

  Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008318758

  Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008318765

  Version: 2019-06-13

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  NO FACE

  Christianna Brand

  BEFORE AND AFTER

  Peter Antony

  HOTEL EVIDENCE

  Helen Simpson

  EXIT BEFORE MIDNIGHT

  Q Patrick

  ROOM TO LET

  Margery Allingham

  A JOKE’S A JOKE

  Jonathan Latimer

  THE MAN WHO KNEW

  Agatha Christie

  THE ALMOST PERFECT MURDER CASE

  S. S. Van Dine

  THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

  Edmund Crispin

  CHANCE IS A GREAT THING

  E. C. R. Lorac

  THE MENTAL BROADCAST

  Clayton Rawson

  WHITE CAP

  Ethel Lina White

  SIXPENNYWORTH

  John Rhode

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE DORSET SQUIRE

  C. A. Alington

  THE LOCKED ROOM

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Acknowledgements

  Also available

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘A great many crime short stories continue to be written with nothing but entertainment in mind.’

  Julian Symons

  As with the first volume of Bodies from the Library (HarperCollins, 2018), the aim of this volume is to bring into the light more lost or previously unknown short fiction by some of the best-known writers active during the Golden Age of crime and detective fiction, a period that can be loosely defined as starting in 1913 and ending in 1937. These dates mark the publication of two major titles: Trent’s Last Case, in which the journalist E. C. Bentley provided an antidote to Sherlock Holmes; and Busman’s Honeymoon, described as ‘a love story with detective interruptions’ by its author Dorothy L. Sayers.

  For our purposes, there is also a loose definition of crime and detective fiction and in this volume, as well as stories that conform to S. S. Van Dine’s requirement that ‘there simply must be a corpse’, there is a story that sets out merely to deceive the reader by only appearing to be criminous, one that blurs the distinction between fact and fiction and another that was published after the end of the Golden Age but playfully tweaks its tail …

  Enjoy!

  Tony Medawar

  February 2019

  NO FACE

  Christianna Brand

  They sat in their silent ring in the darkened room and their touching fingers trembled and jerked apart and touched again … He was trying frantically to get through to them. ‘Listen to me! Listen! They were wrong, warn them, they’d got it all wrong!’ But they did not hear him; over his voice the sweet piping treble was burbling on of the peace and sunshine over here on the Other Side, and all the flowers. No ear for his soundless screaming: ‘It’s all going to begin again …’

  Ringing up the police—Miss Delphine Grey. ‘Mr Joseph Hawke to speak to Superintendent Tomm.’

  The weary voice. ‘Yes, Mr Hawke?’

  He was half hysterical, gibbering with excitement. ‘You know, Superintendent, Joseph Hawke, famed clairvoyant. I sent you that article I published after the last time. The man is a lunatic—’

  The murderer killed apparently at random, anyone, any time, any place. The swift incapacitating stab in the back, the body turned over and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again. A plastic sheet would be throw down, which had protected the killer from the spurting blood; and for the rest, no sign left, ever, no clue for a police force stretched to its limit, on the edge of desperation. And every crank in the country ringing up, writing in, with their crack-pot theories. ‘Well, so, Mr Hawke—’

  ‘—helpless, a psychotic, I showed that in my articles. Some childhood experience? Witnessed a killing? A stabbing? No face!—he told you that he had no face …’ (The ghastly, gobbling, whispering ’phone calls to the police, taunting them, daring them, and yet perhaps with an inherent cry for help. ‘You’ll never catch me. How would you know me?’ And the terrible choking cry, ‘I have no face.’) ‘Now, a man who says he has no face, Superintendent, he’s a psychopath, he looks in the mirror and he dares not see himself. A man who has no face—’

  ‘—is a man who wears a stocking-mask. Now, Mr Hawke—’

  ‘Yes, but one moment! This time I have something positive to tell you. I’ve seen him. In the crystal—scrying, we call it. A small man, five foot six or less, clerk type, regulation suit, knee-length mackintosh—’

  ‘Strikingly different from half the male population of this town. Including for example, yourself. Now, I’m frantically busy—’

  ‘But there’s more—’

  ‘—so goodbye and thank you.’ He could not forbear from adding: ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’

  He fell into one of his terrible rages, hunched like a monkey in the big séance room armchair, and for a moment lost consciousness, blacked out as of late he so often did, sometimes for hours at a time, coming to spent and exhausted, deeply troubled by forgotten dreams. But Delphine was with him now, gently dabbing with a damp cloth at the haggard, narrow white face. ‘What does it matter, Mr Hawke? A dumb policeman!’

  ‘I could have told them—the man has red hair. But they’ll never believe in me, in my Gift—’

  ‘I believe in you,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  Coming up to her in the crowded store, a total stranger. ‘Don’t be afraid, I only want to help you.’ But she had been afraid. Other shoppers had gathered protectively about her: was there not a mass murderer abroad? He introduced himself to them. ‘Joseph Hawke—famed clairvoyant, you’ll have heard of me. And I’ve had this vision, you see, in the crystal, I know that she’s in deep trouble.’ She had cried out—how could he possibly have known?—gone with him and confided, ashen-faced, ‘I’ve had a telephone call from him. From No Face, slopping and gobbling. It was terrifying. He said—he said, “You’re next!”’ But she was incredulous. ‘How could you know?’

  He knew because he had watched her an hour ago, praying in the church before the statue of St Jude, Refuge of the Despairing. He learned a good deal from watching in churches—the widow in her mourning dress at the foot of the crucifix, the woman before the altar of St Antony of Padua who would help you to find lost things.

  Horn-rimmed spectacles, mac turned inside out, a nylon wig, perhaps—he was adept at disguises, simple or elaborate: follow the victim to some busy spot where your revelations will attract potential clients for future séances. His current assistant would follow up the clues in old newspapers, parish registers, graveyards, even; and they would be duly astounded at how much he could tell them of themselves.

  Delphine, frightened, without family or friends, had fallen a natural prey and in time replaced the latest helper to have departed, faith eroded by so much of fraudulence; grateful and trusting, Delphine had accepted sensibly the need of any practitioner to pad out for the credulous, trivialities unworthy of the true psychic gift. Pretty, sweet and blessedly naïve Delphine!—he might have come to love her if he could ever have felt love for anyone, poor squinny little orphanage boy, looking only inward, unto himself; but he felt only that she was caring and kind. He had never known that either.

  Now she suggested: ‘Never mind the police. Tell the media.’

  The media seized with joy, as ever, upon anything hinting of the occult. And here was Joseph Hawke, famed clairvoyant, describing a vision of a small man, white-collar type, and with red hair …

  Two mornings later, the police issued a statement; the victim of last night’s murder had clutched, as though torn out in the struggle, a curl of black nylon: and mixed in with the nylon, two short red hairs.

  Mr Joseph Hawke was a famed clairvoyant indeed.

  The public were ripe for exploitation. Terror stalked in their midst. The authorities seemed helpless. But now—a Saviour! Queues formed to attend his scrying séances. He saw what they wanted him to see—
the chances, he said to Delphine, were high against any of them falling victim to No Face. And of course very often, it was a genuine vision.

  ‘You never see me in the crystal?’ she asked, wistfully.

  ‘I’d have told you, wouldn’t I?’ He knew that she longed to stay with him in safety, but with this upsurge of fame he must be circumspect and she was nightly packed off to creep back to her lonely flat at the other end of town. ‘Use different exits from here, keep him guessing. You’ll be all right.’ He was impatient to get on with the affairs of Joseph Hawke. His correspondence was growing enormously. ‘If only we dared bring in some secretarial help!’

  ‘There’s so much stuff in the flat.’ The wired-up séance room, the rolls of fine plastic for the ectoplasm during mediumistic trance; the disguises for the follow-ups, the painted gas balloons looking down from the ceiling with dear Father’s fine features or mother’s sweet smile—it was incredible what people would believe when, in grief and anxiety, they wanted to believe. He agreed: ‘No, it’s too dangerous. We’ll have to make do with tricks, the slates and all that, and meanwhile I’ll train you in the scrying.’ He said sharply: ‘Did you hear what I said? You seem very distrait today.’

  ‘Yes, well … I’ve been trying to pluck up courage to tell you. The police have been questioning me. They asked how you could have known that the man has red hair. If I thought you had ever dyed your hair.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ It had never occurred to him. ‘They think I know, because I’m No Face myself!’ His voice grew shrill, hysteria rose up in him like a scream. ‘They’d kill me—if such a rumour got around, the people would lynch me!’ And he began casting about, his head moving this way and that as though he might literally see a way out. ‘I’ll have to somehow prove … What proof can I show them …?’ And the darkness grew, and the swimminess, the build-up to unconsciousness; and sharply into the darkness and swimminess, a bell pealed. ‘Oh, Christ!’ he cried out. ‘They’ve come for me!’

  ‘It’s the people for the séance,’ she said.

  By the time she had led them in, awed and silent, he was sprawled back in the chair, his hands lying flaccid on the table-top, the crystal abandoned. ‘He’s already in trance. Very quietly—sit down, join your hands in a ring. His two neighbours—just put your hands on his hands.’ In the ordinary way there would be noise, music, spirit movements all over the darkened room; if he wanted to be free, he simply jerked his hands, let his neighbours, groping in the dark, find each other’s hands, leaving him outside the ring. But this time was going to be different. She stood quietly aside, looking, herself, a little frightened. And he began to speak.

  Or through him, someone began to speak. The police had published recordings, every soul in the room clearly recognised that voice—the horrible, gasping, half-whispering voice with its slurring of consonants, slobbering out the words. A woman shrieked, hands jumped apart, scrambled to re-form the circle; but the voice gabbled on. ‘Must have it! Must have it! Killed … The smell of their death … Must have it again …’ And the terrible cry: ‘They can’t stop me—they can’t find me: I have no face!’ An incomprehensible muttering and then: ‘But you know me! You described me! My name, tell them my name!’ The mumbling died away, glottic as the plops in a bubbling saucepan; died into silence …

  Broken at last by a different voice, the voice of the medium. Strangely quiet after the hubble-bubble of that terrible voice. Spelling out—letters. An F. A pause and then an O; and then without interval, C-A-N-E. His name, he had said: and his name was F. O. Cane.

  Into the stillness, Delphine said quietly: ‘Rearrange the letters and it spells—No Face.’

  He got rid of them all, rushed to the telephone. The wooden voice tinged with exasperation. ‘Yes, Mr Hawke?’

  ‘His name,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I can tell you his name. And it is not my name.’

  ‘Oh, that. I never very seriously thought it was.’

  His mind shook. To have offered this precious secret on a plate, which all the time might have been saved for some world-shattering revelation when the time was ripe!—and to find that after all, he needed no such proof of his innocence. But he had blurted it out already. ‘His name is F. O. Cane.’

  A moment’s silence, and then: ‘You’ve been playing at anagrams, Mr Hawke, you and that pretty young lady of yours. F. O. Cane—No Face. But why not A. F. Cone? or C. O. Fane? Or F. Ocean, that would be rather a jolly name, F. Ocean. The Red Sea, perhaps, considering his fondness for blood?’

  The narrow, hatchet face grew pinched with fury, he clung to the receiver with a juddering hand. ‘All right! You’ll be sorry! I’ll tell you nothing more, let him kill and kill and kill, you’ll get no more help from me!’ And to reclaim something at least from disaster, he broadcast widely that during a mediumistic trance, the murderer himself had come through and revealed his name. It would be safest not yet to make this public but he would deposit it in a sealed envelope, and one day the world would know that he had been right.

  And indeed that night, the voice called the police—they had arranged code words with him to save themselves from hoaxers—and his name was F. O. Cane.

  Delphine was uncertain about it, uneasy. ‘He’ll know that you know—and that probably I do too. Tonight; he may know tonight, if they get it on the nine o’clock news.’ She looked very pale and drawn. ‘I feel a bit scared going home. I suppose, just for once—?’

  But he was tired, exhausted. ‘You’ll be all right, he doesn’t know yet, get back and lock yourself in, you’ll be perfectly safe.’ After all, what else was there to do about it? Give her shelter here? But he simply could not risk scandal now. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m totally worn out by the séance. And then that fool of a policeman—’ At the thought of it his voice began to rise, he felt sick with it, physically sick with the rage and the despair. ‘Real—this time it was real. But they’ll never believe …’ And the darkness descending, and the blackness …

  But at four o’clock in the morning, he was wide awake and dialling her number. ‘Delphine—he’s rung me up!’

  ‘Oh, Mr Hawke—!’

  ‘About you! He says he’s going to … He says—tonight!’

  She gave a sort of scream, broke into terrified sobbing. ‘His voice came through again, Delphine. It was real, it was genuine, believe me! I came to and found myself by the telephone. Now, look—lock yourself in, bar the door, put something against it.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed, ‘I’m so frightened! He—he stabs them and stabs them. I can’t stay here, I can’t be alone—’

  ‘Don’t go, don’t leave your flat, I’ll call the police—’

  ‘Please come,’ she cried, imploring. ‘Please come, please come!’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t remember—Delphine! Your address?’ But her voice said, ‘I’m going to … Passing out …’ and there was the clatter of the dropped receiver. He called her name urgently, but there was no reply.

  When he got through to the police station, it was from a call-box. A night-duty officer this time. Cagily. ‘He rang you? Any code word?’

  ‘Code? I don’t know. I was in trance—’

  ‘Oh, in trance, sir, were you?’

  ‘Some word did keep coming through. Silver?—could it be—?’ All caginess vanished. The voice snapped: ‘Name and address?’

  Her name, yes. ‘But I can’t remember—’

  ‘Telephone?’

  ‘You can try but she seems to have fainted. And it’s a rented flat, the ’phone’s not in her name.’ And time passing, time passing. ‘Anyway, you find it, I can’t wait—I’ll have to try and remember the way. He could be there at this minute.’

  He allowed himself only the smallest delay but it was almost an hour before he appeared at her flat. The police were there, the Superintendent himself. He gasped out: ‘Delphine?’

  Superintendent Tomm in his level way. ‘The young lady’s not here.’

  ‘Oh, God, he hasn’t—?’

  ‘He’s been here. The window was forced, he’d got in over the roofs.’

  ‘But Delphine?’

  ‘She heard him at the window. Tore open the door and escaped. There’s a call-box just outside the flats, she rang us from there. We’ve got her safe. But meanwhile, of course, he’d been here and gone.’ He remarked coolly: ‘You took your time.’