Bodies from the Library 2. Группа авторов

      

      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 2020

      Cover illustration © 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: 2020-10-23

      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