Capital Crimes: London Mysteries Read online

  Capital Crimes

  London Mysteries

  Edited and Introduced

  by Martin Edwards

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Introduction and notes copyright © 2015 Martin Edwards

  ‘The Unseen Door’ from The Allingham Minibus by Margery Allingham reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Margery Allingham. ‘The Avenging Chance’ reprinted courtesy of The Marsh Agency Ltd on behalf of the Society of Authors. ‘You Can’t Hang Twice’ reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Anthony Gilbert. Copyright © Anthony Gilbert 1946. ‘Wind in the East’ reprinted courtesy of the Estate of Henry Wade.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library

  First E-book Edition 2015

  ISBN: 9781464203787 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Capital Crimes

  Copyright

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Case of Lady Sannox

  A Mystery of the Underground

  The Finchley Puzzle

  The Magic Casket

  The Holloway Flat Tragedy

  The Magician of Cannon Street

  The Stealer of Marble

  The Tea Leaf

  The Hands of Mr Ottermole

  The Little House

  The Silver Mask

  Wind in the East

  The Avenging Chance

  They Don’t Wear Labels

  The Unseen Door

  Cheese

  You Can’t Hang Twice

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Introduction

  London has been the home to many of fiction’s finest detectives, and the setting for mystery novels and short stories of the highest quality, throughout the genre’s history. The very first detective fiction, written by Edgar Allan Poe, may have been set in Paris, but the book usually described as the first detective novel was Charles Warren Adams’s The Notting Hill Mystery, republished recently by the British Library. As this collection of vintage London crime stories demonstrates, the city has inspired many of the genre’s stellar names.

  In the first chapter of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet in 1887, Dr Watson conveyed the allure of the capital in vivid if unflattering fashion:

  I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

  While in search of suitable lodgings, Watson meets his old friend Stamford at the Criterion Bar, and is duly introduced to Sherlock Holmes, who has his eye ‘on a suite in Baker Street’. Before long, 221B Baker Street would become as famous an address as Scotland Yard. The way in which Conan Doyle conjures up the foggy and often menacing atmosphere of the gas-lit London streets contributes to the power of the Holmes stories, and set the bar for his successors.

  The city soon became home to several of Sherlock’s rivals, including Martin Hewitt, a private detective created by Arthur Morrison, an East Ender from Poplar, whose evocative Tales of the Mean Streets and The Hole in the Wall drew on his inside knowledge of the capital’s darker places. Baroness Orczy’s ‘armchair detective’ the Old Man in the Corner took up residence in an ABC teashop, and his early cases included ‘The Fenchurch Street Mystery’ and a murder on the London Underground, which has been a popular haunt for fictional crime for many years—think of the James Bond film Skyfall. This anthology contains a marvellously sensational Victorian serial-killer thriller set on the Underground, while a Tube station murder is at the centre of Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay, whose three whodunits from the 1930s have been republished as British Library Crime Classics.

  Hay was at work during the ‘Golden Age of Murder’, which introduced readers to a new generation of detectives, many with homes or offices in London. It helped to be handy for Scotland Yard, whose hapless senior officers regularly needed to pick the brains of gifted outsiders to solve the knottiest murder mysteries. Lord Peter Wimsey, whose brother-in-law was a chief inspector, lived in luxurious surroundings at 110A Piccadilly. In Murder Must Advertise he takes a job under an assumed name at Pym’s Publicity, the scene of a recent unexplained death. Pym’s was modelled on Benson’s, an advertising agency in Kingsway where Wimsey’s creator Dorothy L. Sayers worked during the 1920s. Albert Campion, Margery Allingham’s enigmatic sleuth, lived not far from Wimsey, in Bottle Street. Several of Campion’s cases, most notably the post-war classic The Tiger in the Smoke, make fine use of a sinister metropolitan background. ‘The Smoke’, of course, is London.

  Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot shared rooms with Captain Hastings at 14 Farraway Street before moving to Whitehaven Mansions, ‘one of the newest type of service flats in London.…[He admitted] having chosen this building entirely on account of its strictly geometrical appearance and proportions’. This sounds rather like the Isokon Building in Hampstead, also known as the Lawn Road Flats, where Christie herself lived during the Second World War. Among Poirot’s most notable investigations in the capital is Lord Edgware Dies, which opens at a West End theatre.

  Sayers, Christie, and Allingham were among the members of the world’s first social network of crime writers, founded by Anthony Berkeley. The Detection Club had a meeting room in Gerrard Street, Soho, and it says something for the bias of detective fiction in the first half of the twentieth century that the club was frequently called the London Detection Club. In 1939, its membership consisted, with very few exceptions, of men and women who had a home either in London or within easy reach of it. Nine of them are represented in this collection.

  With its fascinating mix of people, rich and poor, British and foreign, worthy and suspicious, London is a city where anything can happen. The possibilities for criminals and for the crime writer are endless. In real life, Whitechapel witnessed the Ripper killings in the late nineteenth century, and the unsolved crimes inspired Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Lodger, which became an early film directed by Leytonstone-born Alfred Hitchcock. The first two British serial killer whodunits of any significance, Anthony Berkeley’s The Silk Stockings Murder and John Rhode’s The Murders in Praed Street, were set in the capital. In terms of short stories, Thomas Burke’s contribution to this anthology is the outstanding work of short fiction inspired by the Ripper killings.

  Increasingly, the fictional exploits of gifted amateur sleuths were superseded by more realistic accounts of detective work, and senior figures from Scotland Yard did their bit to help the process. Sir Basil Thomson, who wrote novels in the 1930s recounting the rise through the ranks of a police officer named Richardson, was a former head of the CID. Sir Norman Kendal, an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Pol
ice, became an honorary member of the Detection Club in 1935, and a year later, ex-Superintendent G. W. Cornish collaborated with Detection Club members including Sayers and Allingham to produce Six against the Yard.

  Henry Wade, another Detection Club member, was responsible for a ground-breaking novel of police procedure, Lonely Magdalen, which is set mainly in London, and opens with the discovery of a prostitute’s body on Hampstead Heath. This remarkable book, which did not flinch from the reality of brutal police interrogation techniques, featured Inspector John Poole, a forerunner of the more credible crime solvers found in modern detective fiction.

  Capital Crimes is an eclectic collection of London-based crime stories, blending the familiar with the unexpected in a way that I hope reflects the personality of the city. We have classics by Berkeley and Burke as well as almost unknown, and excellent, stories by three fine women writers, E. M. Delafield, Ethel Lina White and Anthony Gilbert (yes, Gilbert’s real name was Lucy Malleson). The stories appear roughly, although not precisely, in chronological order, to give a flavour of how writers have tackled crime in London over the span of more than half a century. Their contributions range from thrillers and horrific vignettes to cerebral whodunits. What they have in common is a nonpareil setting for crime fiction, and enduring value as entertainment.

  Martin Edwards

  www.martinedwardsbooks.com

  The Case of Lady Sannox

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) created, in Sherlock Holmes, the most famous of all fictional detectives, but the colossal success of the Holmes and Watson stories frustrated him, because he took more pride in some of his other work, especially his historical fiction. Authors may not be the best judges of their own achievements, but it is certainly true that some of Conan Doyle’s tales of terror, such as ‘Lot No. 249’ and ‘The Leather Funnel’ are masterly.

  This short, snappy story of a horrifying crime is another example of the power and economy of his best writing. Note how skilfully the key revelation is clued. The eponymous Lady Sannox is the loveliest woman in the capital, and the city’s cosmopolitan nature, even at the time of publication in 1893, was such that it is entirely credible that Douglas Stone should receive an urgent summons from Hamil Ali from Smyrna. What happens next is unforgettable.

  ***

  The relations between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox were very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him among their most illustrious confrères. There was naturally, therefore, a very widespread interest when it was announced one morning that the lady had absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the world would see her no more. When, at the very tail of this rumour, there came the assurance that the celebrated operating surgeon, the man of steel nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet, seated on one side of his bed, smiling pleasantly upon the universe, with both legs jammed into one side of his breeches, and his great brain about as valuable as a cup full of porridge, the matter was strong enough to give quite a little thrill of interest to folk who had never hoped that their jaded nerves were capable of such a sensation.

  Douglas Stone in his prime was one of the most remarkable men in England. Indeed, he could hardly be said to have ever reached his prime, for he was but nine-and-thirty at the time of this little incident. Those who knew him best were aware that, famous as he was as a surgeon, he might have succeeded with even greater rapidity in any of a dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to fame as a soldier, struggled to it as an explorer, bullied for it in the courts, or built it out of stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be great, for he could plan what another man dare not do, and he could do what another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence—does not the memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and the north of Oxford Street?

  And his vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the ear, the touch, the palate, all were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest potteries of Europe, it was to these that the quick-running stream of gold was transformed. And then there came his sudden mad passion for Lady Sannox, when a single interview with two challenging glances and a whispered word set him ablaze. She was the loveliest woman in London, and the only one to him. He was one of the handsomest men in London, but not the only one to her. She had a liking for new experiences, and was gracious to most men who wooed her. It may have been cause or it may have been effect that Lord Sannox looked fifty, though he was but six-and-thirty.

  He was a quiet, silent, neutral-tinted man, with thin lips and heavy eyelids, much given to gardening, and full of quiet, home-like habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among his orchids and chrysanthemums.

  It was quite an interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady’s ways and condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms, or with the aid of a cigar in the bow windows of clubs. Bitter and plain were the comments among the men upon his conduct. There was but one who had a good word to say for him, and he was the most silent member in the smoking-room. He had seen him break in a horse at the University, and it seemed to have left an impression upon his mind.

  But when Douglas Stone became the favourite, all doubts as to Lord Sannox’s knowledge or ignorance were set for ever at rest. There was no subterfuge about Stone. In his high-handed, impetuous fashion, he set all caution and discretion at defiance. The scandal became notorious. A learned body intimated that his name had been struck from the list of its vice-presidents. Two friends implored him to consider his professional credit. He cursed them all three, and spent forty guineas on a bangle to take with him to the lady. He was at her house every evening, and she drove in his carriage in the afternoons. There was not an attempt on either side to conceal their relations; but there came at last a little incident to interrupt them.

  It was a dismal winter’s night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys, and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eaves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As he raised it to his lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of beeswing which floated in its rich ruby depths. The fire, as it spurted up, threw fitful lights upon his bold, clear-cut face, with its widely-opened grey eyes, its thick and yet firm lips, and the deep square jaw, which had something Roman in its strength and its animalism. He smiled from time to time as he nestled back in his luxurious chair. Indeed, he had a right to feel well pleased, for against the advice of six colleagues, he had performed an operation that day of which only two cases were on record, and the result had been brilliant beyond all expectation. No other man in London would have had the
daring to plan, or the skill to execute, such a heroic measure.

  But he had promised Lady Sannox to see her that evening, and it was already half-past eight. His hand was outstretched to the bell to order the carriage when he heard the dull thud of the knocker. An instant later there was the shuffling of feet in the hall, and the sharp closing of a door.

  ‘A patient to see you, sir, in the consulting room,’ said the butler.

  ‘About himself?’

  ‘No, sir, I think he wants you to go out.’

  ‘It is too late,’ cried Douglas Stone peevishly, ‘I won’t go.’

  ‘This is his card, sir.’ The butler presented it upon the gold salver which had been given to his master by the wife of a Prime Minister.

  ‘“Hamil Ali, Smyrna.” Hum! The fellow is a Turk, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, sir. He seems as if he came from abroad, sir. And he’s in a terrible way.’

  ‘Tut, tut! I have an engagement. I must go somewhere else. But I’ll see him. Show him in here, Pim.’

  A few moments later the butler swung open the door and ushered in a small and decrepid man, who walked with a bent back and with the forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme short sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white muslin striped with red, in the other a small chamois leather bag.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Douglas Stone, when the butler had closed the door. ‘You speak English, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I am from Asia Minor, but I speak English when I speak slow.’

  ‘You wanted me to go out, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I wanted very much that you should see my wife.’

  ‘I could come in the morning, but I have an engagement which prevents me from seeing your wife to-night.’

  The Turk’s answer was a singular one. He pulled the string which closed the mouth of the chamois leather bag, and poured a flood of gold on to the table.