The Moving Toyshop. Edmund Crispin

      

      EDMUND CRISPIN

      The Moving Toyshop

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by

      Victor Gollancz 1946

      Copyright © Rights Limited,

      1946. All rights reserved

      Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

      Cover image © Shutterstock.com

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

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      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: 9780008124120

      Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124137

      Version: 2017-10-27

      For Philip Larkin in friendship and esteem

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Note

       Map

       Chapter 1: The Episode of the Prowling Poet

       Chapter 2: The Episode of the Dubious Don

       Chapter 3: The Episode of the Candid Solicitor

       Chapter 4: The Episode of the Indignant Janeite

      

       Chapter 5: The Episode of the Immaterial Witness

      

       Chapter 6: The Episode of the Worthy Carman

      

       Chapter 7: The Episode of the Nice Young Lady

      

       Chapter 8: The Episode of the Eccentric Millionairess

      

       Chapter 9: The Episode of the Malevolent Medium

      

       Chapter 10: The Episode of the Interrupted Seminar

      

       Chapter 11: The Episode of the Neurotic Physician

      

       Chapter 12: The Episode of the Missing Link

      

       Chapter 13: The Episode of the Rotating Professor

      

       Chapter 14: The Episode of the Prescient Satirist

      

       About the Author

      

       Also in This Series

      

       About the Publisher

      

       Footnotes

       Note

      None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits

      E.C.

      Key

       A. Toyshop (second position)

       B. St Christopher’s

       C. St John’s

       D. Balliol

       E. Trinity

       F. Lennox’s

       G. The Mace and Sceptre

       H. Sheldonian

       I. Rosseter’s office

       J. Market

       K. Police Station

       L. Toyshop (first position)