The Mysterious Suspect

A review of The Mysterious Suspect by John Rhode – 251130

Originally published in 1952, the fifty-sixth novel in John Rhode’s Dr Priestley series was issued in Britain under the slightly less prosaic title of By Registered Post, but the American edition bore the title of The Mysterious Suspect. As the Kindle e-book adopts the American title, I have chosen to follow suit. As is the case with Priestley books it is another exercise in a clever, logical and forensically minded amateur, the doctor himself, outdoing the bumbling professional sleuth, dear old Jimmy Waghorn, in what is a complicated and well-crafted puzzle with a twist in its tail.

Peter Horningtoft, a successful industrialist who values efficiency, performance, and achievement above family loyalties, has one off quirk, a penchant for quack medicines designed to alleviate, if not remedy, rheumatism. On the day of his death he has just received, by registered post, a bottle containing a concoction produced by a Sylford-based herbalist, Mervyn Blaybury. He retires to his study after dinner, as his wont, and following the typed instructions takes a dose and dies. The bottle, far from containing a harmless medicine, was filled with poison. A second innocuous bottle arrives from Blaybury the following day.

Horningtoft was married twice, the son from his first marriage, Hilary, manager of Peter’s principal business, was assumed by both himself and the rest of the family to be the heir in waiting, Hilary getting increasingly frustrated by his father’s reluctance to let go of the reins and give him his head. Robin, the eldest son from the second marriage, runs the business in Leeds but we learn that just before his death Peter was going to relieve him of his position as he was frustrated by his lack of application. The daughter from the second marriage, Jennifer, is also frustrated by her father’s reluctance to countenance her marriage with Arthur Gretton, an old friend of the family, who was also I the house on the night of Peter’s death.

There is motive enough to commit murder most foul but the will, when it is finally revealed, is a shock to the family, a carefully crafted, complex document that effectively constrains Hilary’s ability to shape the business as he wants. Hilary is furious and visibly affected by this turn of events. Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn of the Metropolitan Police focuses in on Hilary and at the regular Saturday evening soiree Dr Priestley hosts with friends ex-Superintendent Hanslet and retired medical practitioner Dr Oldland, Waghorn regales the company with his progress so far on the case of the moment.

Dr Priestley, though, is far from impressed and cautions Jimmy to concentrate on answering three questions and to extend his purview beyond the Horningtoft family and its immediate entourage, while giving a credible explanation of how the bottles were switched before arriving at Firlands. Re-energised Waghorn still focuses on Hilary, challenging him to explain his whereabouts on the early Monday morning when the fatal package was posted. Hilary gives an unconvincing story but before Waghorn can do anything else, Hilary is found in the bathroom of his flat, having apparently shot himself with a gun which lands in the toilet pan.

At a second soiree Dr Priestley takes a more active part, arguing that far from Hilary’s death from suicide being an admission of guilt and concluding the case, he was in fact the victim of murder. Even the stubborn Waghorn has to accept the force of his arguments and the recollection of the troubled acquisition of Leeds-based Sigma Fabrics Ltd finally puts him on the right track.

It is a tale of revenge with Peter Horningtoft not being the pillar of rectitude and worthy endeavour that he liked to project. The murder methods are ingenious, although the latter seems improbable in practice – in this age of the throwaway society it is fascinating to learn that engineers were employed to service and repair wireless sets – and the seeds of the origin of the Horningtofts’ fate are sprinkled in the narrative, even if the identity of the culprit is not made clear. Curiously, once the culprit evades the British legal system and takes his chance with his Maker, Waghorn chooses to sweep the new development under the carpet, a case of letting sleeping dogs lie with dubious moral connotations.

Rhode, as usual, writes in an easy and comfortable style and while Dr Priestly is not to everyone’s taste, it is an enjoyable read.

A Sliding Door Moment

Step into a large shop or office block and the door will open for you, no struggling with a door handle required. In an age of convenience we take it for granted but it was not until June 19, 1931 that the first modern automatic door was installed, at Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in West Haven in Connecticut, courtesy of the Stanley Works company.

The great Greek engineer, Heron of Alexandria, was credited with inventing the first self-opening door, powered by heat from a fire, which caused atmospheric pressure to build up in a brass vessel which then pumped water into adjacent holding containers which acted as weights. Using a series of ropes and pulleys the doors of the temple could be opened when worshippers arrived for prayer. H G Wells described in When The Sleeper Wakes (1910) how two men walked up to an “apparently solid wall” that “rolled up with a snap” to allow them access before it closed again.

It took another twenty one years before Wells’ pipe dream became a reality. Placed between the kitchen and the dining room, the doors sprang open as soon as a photoelectric eye detected the approach of a person. “Through the invention”, reported the Hartford Courant, “there is no longer need for waitresses to kick open doors or use their hands for anything other than carrying in the trays.” The restaurant’s president wrote enthusiastically that “they are one of the most satisfactory pieces of equipment which we have ever installed … and have certainly speeded up the service of our waitresses.”

Automatic doors became more common in the 1960s using electric floor mat activation while the 1970s saw the development of motion detectors and the 1980s infrared presence sensors. The first automatic folding doors were invented in the 1990s and active infrared sensors were commonplace on all types of automatic doors.

They have come a long way since the waitress first walked through one at Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant.

The No Nose Club

Thomas Wedders might have had an enormous nose, but a much more common sight in the 18^th century was someone with no nose or a collapsed nose. As early as 1676 Thomas Sydenham had observed in Observationes Medicae that syphilis could lead to the destruction of the nasal cartilage, leading to the nose to collapse into the face, a condition known as “saddle nose” and indicative of late-stage syphilis.

Mr Crumpton, an eccentric bon viveur, noticed an “abundance of both Sexes had sacrificed to the God Priapus and had unluckily fallen into the Fashion of Flat-Faces“.  According to Edward Ward in his The History of the London Clubs (1709), he strolled around the streets of London”to pick acquaintance with all such stigmatiz’d Strumpets & Fornicators… appointing every one apart to meet him at the Dog Tavern in Drury Lane”. upon a Certain Day, a little before Dinner-Time, that they might Eat a bit together, & he would then acquaint them with the Secret.”

As the appointed hour approached, quite a crowd had gathered at the tavern and as they looked at each other, they realised that they had one thing in common, none of them had a nose to speak of. In fact, as Ward drolly observes, it was “as if every Sinner beheld their own Iniquities in the Faces of their Companions.”    

Crumpton hosted a dinner and the chefs got into the spirit of things by cutting off the snouts of the pigs being served. Instead of appreciating the joke, the diners were outraged, summoning the cook to explain his actions. “He had cut off their Snouts, he said, to put the Pigs in the Fashion; for he thought it not fit for two such squeamish Creatures, to run their unmannerly Noses into such good Company that had but one amongst them”. This faux pas did not spoil proceedings, much alcohol was consumed and for once in their lives the diners could pretend that “their Sins were their Pride and their Sufferings their glory.”  

Whether he had set the club up out of kind-hearted pity or whether he was amused by the sight of so many without noses gathered together, the club did not last long as within a year or so Crumpton had died. Whatever his motive the members remembered him fondly, leaving this poignant elegy which was read at his funeral:

“Mourn for the loss of such a generous friend,
Whose lofty Nose no humble snout disdain’d;
But tho’ of Roman height, could stoop so low
As to soothe those who ne’er a Nose could show.

Ah! sure no noseless club could ever find
One single Nose so bountiful and kind.
But now, alas! he’s sunk into the deep,
Where neither kings or slaves a Nose shall keep.

But where proud Beauties, strutting Beaux, and all,
Must soon into the noseless fashion fall,

Thither your friend in complaisance is gone,
To have Nose, like yours, reduced to none.”

Conjurer’s Coffin

A review of Conjurer’s Coffin by Guy Cullingford – 251127

Originally published in 1954 this is a tale of two triangles and legerdemain set in a seedy Soho hotel, the Bellevue, in the weeks leading up to and immediately after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Is it just me or does anyone else have to stop and realise that references to the Queen these days mean Camilla and not Elizabeth, so embedded into the framework of our lives did she become?

The first triangle consists of a trio of performers, the world weary conjurer, Gene Gorman aka Gene the Genie and his wife Stella and their attractive assistant, Gay Shelley. Gay is in love with Gene and is annoyed that he married the less attractive Stella for the pittance of her savings while Stella is keen not to part with what is left of her savings and Gene seems to be indifferent to them both. The tensions between the trio ebb and flow as the story unfolds, the atmosphere heightened when first Gay disappears in strange circumstances and then the dead body of Stella is found in a bag across the road from the hotel.

The other triangle, in truth a much looser affair, consists of those who make it their business to make sense of what has gone on at the Bellevue, a chain of events that begin to unfold with the arrival of the Gorman entourage at the hotel, the disappearance of Lulu, the dog belonging to the establishment’s owner, Madame Lefevre, and the disappearance of Gorman’s two female companions in circumstances where they could not really have evaded notice.

Jessie Milk, a middle-aged spinster, has just come up to London after the death of her parents and is as unlikely a person to be found as the receptionist in an establishment like the Bellevue as you could imagine. Somewhat naïve, innocent and trusting, the archetypal country mouse in an urban setting, she is mystified how the dog and the two women could have evaded her attention immediately prior to their disappearance. Determined to find the answer and at the same time vindicate herself from any suggestion of being neglectful of her duties, she is aided and abetted, although he too is guilty of his own form of legerdemain, by a store detective, Captain Homes, who is a resident at the hotel. Completing the trio is Detective Inspector Court of the CID.

This is no ordinary piece of crime fiction and while the focus of the book becomes the murder of Stella Gorman, there is a leisurely path to be trodden to get to the denouement. Cullingford, the pen name of Constance Taylor née Dowdy chosen because the surname was her maternal grandmother’s maiden name, takes her time in setting the scene, bringing to life the dowdiness of the hotel with its casket shaped corridor and Jessie’s discovery of London life.

The episode where she and Miss Watkins visit a Chinese restaurant for the first time is delightful, a gentle satire of the British with their stiff upper lip trying to make sense of a strange situation and failing miserably. Irrelevant to the plot it is very funny and memorable and reinforces the impression that Jessie is an ingenue, an attribute which is essential to reinforce for the disappearing trick to work. On the other hand, on ground upon which she is firm she is as sharp as a tack, reminding the writer Crabbe that his suggested titles for a forthcoming book have been already taken by a soap powder and Agatha Christie. And then there is the slow, gentle, affectionate telling of the her burgeoning romance with the solid Captain.

What is also of great interest is the build up and excitement towards the Coronation, the dreadful weather and the discomforts that the tourists endured to catch a glimpse of newly crowned monarch. I cannot help thinking that Cullingford is gently satirizing this outburst of royalist fervour.

As for the denouement, while the method deployed and the means of removing the body is ingenious, it is a tad melodramatic and too dependent upon coincidence – what are the odds of finding someone in the coronation crowds not once but twice? – for my taste, and left me wondering whether the upright Jessie would really have played fast and loose with what she knew at the end. That said, it did not spoil my enjoyment of another accomplished novel from a vastly underrated and almost forgotten writer and left me hoping that Jessie enjoyed her new life running a country pub.

Cocking A Snook At Death

For many of us cocking a snook can be a genuinely cathartic experience, the liberation of some long suppressed frustrations. Usually it sufficient to press the tip of your nose with your thumb and spread your fingers but for some only some grand statement will suffice. Take this example culled from the pages of the Illustrated Police News volume 11, 1871, which ran as its headline “A Quebec Woman Creates a Sensation, Riding Through St. John Street in a Hearse, Reclining on the Coffin-Bed, and Smoking a Pipe”.

At the time it was customary for a widow to go into what was known as full mourning for a year. During this time she would wear a veil, the widow’s weed, derived from the Old English word “waed” meaning garment, over her face, was not permitted to attend social functions, or generally seen out in public. Then for between a further six months to a year, she would go into half-mourning, attending some social occasions and adding more texture to her black wardrobe. During her last six months of mourning, the widow could start adding more colour to her clothes including white, grey and light purples.   

The Quebec woman’s actions could only be interpreted as a dramatic statement against the elaborate protocols and conventions that surrounded death and its aftermath. Indeed, the Illustrated Police News could barely contain its sense of outrage. “What will women do next to distinguish themselves, we wonder!”, it thundered. “A female in Quebec, the other day, perpetrated a ghastly joke, mocking death in his own domain, by lying down in a hearse and smoking a pipe in a funeral chariot was driven through the street. If this exhibition had been made in the United States, our neighbours at the North would have made it the subject of very strong animadversions”.

As wonderfully graphic as this statement pouring scorn on the fear of death and all its trappings as this was, there are some problems with the story. The woman is unnamed and surely such a cause célèbre would have elicited sufficient interest to persuade a member of the press to unearth her identity. Au contraire, the Quebec Historical Society confirming that no mention of the incident appeared in any contemporary Canadian newspaper, whether French or English-speaking.

The Illustrated Police News, which ran in weekly format from 1864 to 1938, even receiving an early namecheck in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, was one of the earliest British tabloids, specializing in sensational and melodramatic reports and illustrations of murders and hangings for the edification of the masses such as Mrs Higden. It is almost certainly the figment of the imagination of someone desperate to fill a blank space as the deadline approaches, knowing full well that it would not be checked and would elicit tuts over the looseness of foreign ways.

A shame but since the cutting has resurfaced, the image has captured the imagination, even prompting one blogger to speculate on the legality (seat belt laws and smoking regulations to name but two obstacles) and the cost of re-enacting the stunt!