REVIEW: Murder in the Maze by J. J. Connington (1927)

by Mary

Being particularly fond of mazes, this title naturally leapt out at me and indeed a maze plays a major part in the plot given at one time or another almost every character spends time in or near it for various reasons.

The reader first meets the Shandon brothers, an unlikely trio. There's King’s Counsel Neville, currently prosecuting an important breach of contract case, and his twin Roger, who's rich enough to own Whistlefield with its maze and tennis court. The source of his wealth is obscure and a man from his past is attempting to blackmail him. And then there's their younger brother, Ernest, basically a parasite living at Whistlefield on an income composed of an allowance from Roger plus a bit of betting on the side.

Also in residence: the brothers' niece Sylvia and nephew Arthur Hawkhurst. The latter is recuperating from encephalitis and spends much of his time playing the piano. Very badly. Roger's private secretary Ivor Stenness lives in Whistlefield as well and on this particular day there are a couple of visitors -- Vera Forrest, a friend of Sylvia's, and Howard Torrance, a decent young fellow fond of Vera.

As the novel opens Roger expresses fears Hackleton, the defendant in the case mentioned, will have Neville attacked but his brother dismisses the possibility. Meantime Arthur's dreadful piano-playing is so annoying Neville decides to go over his notes on the case by seeking solitude in the maze. Unusually, by the way, it has two centres. Later Roger decides to make his way to the other centre as he is sleepy and, given the distance of the maze from the house, it will be quiet and out of ear shot of that awful piano playing.

Much of the action takes place in or near the maze, described as covering about half an acre with thick twelve feet high hedges, more than one entrance, and a complex layout said to far exceed those at Hatfield House and Hampton Court. Then Howard and Vera make a bet on who would reach one of the centres first. As they blunder around the labyrinth out of sight of each other, ominous sounds are heard and Howard suddenly shouts "Murder!". Since he cannot reach Vera he instructs her to leave the maze as soon as possible.

There follows a tense sequence describing Vera's attempt to escape while expecting to turn a corner and meet a murderer any minute. Instead she finds Roger Shandon's body. Howard, meantime, cannot find his way out but by sheer chance Vera manages it and races off to the house to get people to rescue him, search for the intruder, and call the police.

Once rescued, Howard, accompanied by secretary Stenness and a gardener -- both armed and familiar with the layout of the maze -- return to it to guard the body until the police arrive. In the course of navigating their way to the dead man, they capture a suspicious stranger. The corpse they reach is identified by Stenness as Roger and they realise the first body was actually Neville's.

Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield soon arrives to investigate the matter and the reader is off to the races.

My verdict: Murder In The Maze rattles along well. I particularly enjoyed the description of Vera's terrified escape from the maze. The murder weapon is a novel pairing of two fairly common methods -- in detective fiction at least. All in all, an engaging read I award a B plus. Next on my TBR: Mr Connington's The Case With Nine Solutions, another tempting title!

E-text Murder in the Maze

A Trio of Teas

by Mary

During the last couple of weeks my eye was drawn to three stories with a common though unlikely element linking crime, WWII, and funeral catering.

Tea.

Last month I read about a scam whereby victims were tricked into purchasing Scottish-grown tea. The culprit made over £500,000 by selling foreign-grown tea under such names as Highland Green and Scottish Antlers plus other blends supposedly grown on the Wee Tea Plantation, located on a former sheep farm in Perthshire. As a sideline he also sold tea plants said to have been grown in Scotland to entrepreneurs who fancied trying their hands at growing materials for the cup that cheers but does not inebriate.

Scotland's Food Crime Unit brought him to justice last month. I'm now wondering if before too long we'll see an investigator from a similar unit as the protagonist in a mystery series. After all, with the current raging popularity of mysteries involving shops offering various kinds of comestibles it would seem a natural pairing, like a cuppa with a ginger bikky to dunk in it, Especially if it turned out the edibles were poisoned. We could call it Tart Noir.

Not long afterwards I stumbled over an unusual story from 1941. In occupied Holland RAF planes arrived one night and dropped hundreds of miniature parachutes carrying unexpected but most welcome cargoes -- small bags of tea. 75,000 of them, each containing an ounce of tea, a gift to the populace from unoccupied plantations in the Dutch East Indies. The message on their labels: "The Netherlands will rise again. Greetings from the free Dutch East Indies. Have courage." *

The third leaf of my tea-related trio of articles is my discovery of the what appears to be the newish custom -- at least to me -- of giving teabags in decorative envelopes to mourners at post-funeral gatherings. The minions of the Maywrite Research Bureau tell me traditional blends such as Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe are popular choices for these occasions, while special blends or herbal teas are also available if preferred. We'd have liked to include such remembrances for the funeral tea in Ruined Stones, had such offerings been practised at the time. However, even if it had, it would have been difficult to mention in that particular chapter due to wartime rationing. The novel is set in 1941 and the adult allowance per week at the time was two ounces, reckoned to be enough for 30 cuppas.

Speaking as a long time javaphile I was happy to subsequently learn that coffee, though sometimes difficult to obtain, was one of the few items not rationed in the UK at one time or another during the war.

* Photo of a parachute with a (presumably empty) teabag at https://x.com/PotteriesMuseum/status/962667786999910401

Author as History

by Eric

A generally accepted rule of thumb is that a novel can be considered historical if it is set at least fifty years in the past.  That seems quite recent.  I've always felt that "history" was what happened before I was born.  On the other hand, in the news these days I read about things I can't imagine happening even twenty or thirty years ago. We are indeed, by some measures, living in a different era.

Mary and I have never had a problem classifying our fiction.  The Eastern Roman Empire during the sixth century when John tackles murders amidst the intrigues of Justinian's court is far removed from the present day and our two Grace Baxter books take place during World War II which while fairly recent is commonly accepted as historical.

But fifty years ago? I have T-shirts that old. Well. almost. You think I'm kidding?  Mary recently dug out from some deep geological strata of clothing, my Entertainment Law T-shirt dating back to the late seventies. At the end of his course each year -- which focused on recording artist contracts -- our professor gave out the equivalent of the traditional tour T-shirt. The highlight of that course was a visit from Debbie Harry, one of the prof's clients, who railed against the iniquities of the music industry. Is she a historical figure now like Empress Theodora?

I can remember the 1950s and they are well into accepted historical novel territory. What I remember best, though, are not for the most part earthshaking events but little ways in which everyday life and my state of mind differed. For example, as a child who gorged on Tom Swift Jr books and science fiction juveniles by Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein, a moon landing was a dream of the future to look forward to, not something that happened a long time ago, and didn't lead to moon colonies or change the world as the books I read imagined.

Okay, so a dream of the future that is now obsolete is sort of tenuous, but there were plenty more concrete things that have vanished from our lives since then. Important things. Fizzies. Don't laugh, being able to drop a tablet into a glass of water and have instant bubbly soda was magic, or like something from a science fiction novel.  As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sure, Fizzies tasted like flavored Alka-Seltzer but I kind of liked Alka-Seltzer.

Then there was chewing gum. This may be personal to me. As far as I know, people still chew gum but I don't notice it as much as I used to.  When I was a kid it was a big part of my life. My friends and I all chewed gum all the time.  We wouldn't be without a pack of gum in our pockets any more than adults would be without a pack of cigarettes. There were flavors that aren't generally available today: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans, Teaberry. You weren't supposed to chew gum in school but funnily enough the undersides of our desks were covered with fossilized gum. And this isn't even mentioning Bazooka bubble gum, which came wrapped up with a Bazooka Joe comic execrably printed and never slightly funny even if you could decipher it. And why did Joe have a patch over his eye? Had that bubble he was blowing burst violently? Still worse were the hard sticks of gum packed with baseball and other trading cards. Now you can just buy the cards. You don't have to endure that gum. Kids today have it so easy.

There are many more important changes of course: instantaneous communication between all parts of the earth, the home computer, the Internet. It is a wonderful thing to have the largest library in history available on your desk top. When my computer crashes the loss of knowledge is magnitudes greater than happened when the Library at Alexandria burned but luckily it can all be restored again by reconnecting to the Internet. No longer does answering a question require a hike to the local library to consult its Encyclopedia Britannica. Unfortunately modern technology comes with a price. The Internet has spawned mobs of angry loudmouths who spread hatred and divisiveness. Would society be better and kinder without the Internet?

So, I'm not sure the world has changed enough in fifty years for 1975 to be considered historical. But the fifties...yes, that was another world.

Paper and Ink to Bits and Bytes

by Eric

Years ago I gave up printed books for e-books. As a legal editor, I worked all day in front of a monitor years before home computers became available to non-geeks like me so I was never averse to reading off a screen. Besides, a story isn't a physical entity. Books -- paper and ink and glue -- are only a means of transmitting the ideas from an author's mind to a reader's mind.

Today you can grab digital files from the Internet any place you happen to be but when books were all real objects instead of electronic bits and bytes you had to go to real places like libraries and bookstores to find them. I recall hiking to the library over the highway and through town, past the drug store, the barber shop and the five and dime and staggering home weighted down with Dr. Seuss titles. You don't get that kind of exercise clicking the download button.

That was nothing compared to lugging huge tote bags of books along endless New York City blocks, like trekking through Death Valley in summer or the Donner Pass in winter. Catching a bus in the cavernous maze of the Port Authority was an adventure in itself.

These day-long expeditions into the city were, in large part, to hunt books that weren't native to small, local stores. There were trade paperbacks, an exotic species back in the day, reserved mostly for literary and foreign authors I'd barely heard of -- Alain Robbe-Grillet, Arthur Rimbaud, Max Frisch. On the lighter side, city stores carried British editions of science fiction novels with bright glossy covers that made American paperbacks look like country cousins.

Amazon was still only the name of a river but you could order books via snail mail directly from publishers. Along with your order the publisher would send a sheet listing all their titles, which made for exciting reading. More excitement was to be had at school where once a month everyone had the option to order from the offerings of Scholastic. Well, it was exciting for me but then I was always a reader.

There's no doubt that a thick stack of pristine paperbacks newly unboxed gives one more of a frisson than a "download complete" message on a computer screen.

I grew up with physical books but by the time I was born they had become less of an art form, as evidenced by my grandparents' bookshelves. There I found volumes with marbled endsheets, gilt edging, and slick frontispieces. As a very young child I thought it strange and wonderful to see colored pictures printed right on the covers rather than the jackets.

Books themselves were something new and magical, My grandmother sat with me in her living room rocking chair and read Heidi, The Wind in the Willows and the Old Mother West Wind stories by Thornton W. Burgess featuring such characters as Reddy Fox, Unc' Billy Possum, Danny Meadow Mouse and Grandfather Frog. I remember the meadows and forests they lived in but I also recall their habitat as being the oddly small books with two color pictures on the cover and humorous illustrations tipped in amongst the pages.

I can't help thinking about the law books I wrote and edited. I was writing with a computer almost forty years ago but the legal tomes to which I contributed were still printed, stuck between covers, and ended up on law office shelves. These days attorneys don't have to rummage through hundreds of bound volumes and enormous specialized indexes. They search electronic databases with a few keystrokes.

Most legal books are just decoration. The next time you're watching a show and the scene moves to a lawyer's office check out the books on the shelves. Chances are you see some beige volumes with a red band toward the top of the spine and a black band below. These are mostly part of the National Reporter System, which began back in 1879 and contains decisions of the federal courts and state appellate courts. You often see them -- inappropriately -- in the offices of doctors, business tycoons, apparently any place the set designers want official looking volumes.

I wouldn't be surprised if today more National Reporters weren't sold for scenery than for legal research -- a good example of the declining importance of books as we knew them.

The Bride Wore Black

by Mary

Readers may be interested to hear the most popular period for marriages runs from May to October. When I read this tidbit I thought it must also be a busy time for choosing bridesmaids.

At this point I should confess I had but a short career as a bridesmaid.

My younger sister and I were bridesmaids when my older sister got married. The day was grey and brought wind as cold as gold off the Tyne. We wore chaplets of artificial flowers and shivered in ankle-length taffeta dresses featuring wide scalloped collars. At least our matching muffs kept our hands warm. Unfortunately, given the role we played we were unable to roam surrounding streets as we often did looking for a bride and her relatives leaving for her wedding. It was the local custom for such parties to toss pennies from the taxi as it left for the ceremony, forming a nice supplement to our pocket money. We always knew where to take up position by a front door because the wedding taxis were immediately recognisable by white ribbons stretched from roof to bonnet.

My next spell of bridesmaid duty was for the afore-mentioned younger sister's nuptials. My dress was probably purchased, unlike the home-sewn duds we'd worn as children, inasmuch as it resembled the type of dress that might have been worn at, say, a cocktail party, had such things existed round our way. It had full skirts and its main feature was a boat-shaped neckline not quite off the shoulder, so suitable for a church wedding. I'm sorry to say my thoughts drifted a bit during the ceremony -- it will be no surprise my school report cards were occasionally marked "must pay more attention" -- but when my sister turned to hand me her bouquet, I fortunately was able to snap immediately out of whatever daydream I was wandering in and take it as it was offered.

On another occasion I was with three others, all of us strangers to the town where mutual friends were getting married. Thus it took longer than anticipated to find the registry office where the ceremony was to take place. Our journey to the venue was notable not only for its awful weather but also for featuring an incident when a large lorry got far too close to us as we passed it. Looking out from my back seat I could see the huge hubs on its wheels spinning almost, it seemed at the time, a hand's width away and suddenly enormous as they approached ever closer.

We were strangers to the town where the wedding was to take place and it took us longer than anticipated to find the registry office. When we finally found the building its door appeared to be locked. So we walked around the back and found a window. Looking in, we could see the registrar's back and the happy couple and their guests facing us. We stood outside in sleety rain, present at the wedding and yet not present, a Schrödinger's quartet watching the proceedings through the glass and doubtless looking like the orphans of the storm to those within. Especially since I was holding a baby while his mother was soothing a fretful toddler.

Mr Maywrite and I married late in the year in one of the less popular months. In honour of the occasion he wore a tie. Meantime, in the interests of historical accuracy, I shall reveal my dress was black with a mille-fleur pattern. Yes, the bride wore black. Judge Valentino from down the street presided over the proceedings. Feel free to make jokes about it -- everyone else has!

Was It A Click Or A Clunk?

by Mary

A significant portion of the last couple of weeks of January was devoted to sleeping, eating, and working in shifts to cover flushing the loo 24/7 to prevent our water line freezing. We'll be on patrol again this coming Monday and Tuesday nights, when lows are predicted to fall to single digits.

We have long since concluded whoever was responsible for the layout of Maywrite Towers did not completely consider the effect of winter weather on the structure as demonstrated by the fact they routed not only the water line and drains but also the hydronic heating pipes through a north-facing crawl space.

When frigid weather comes down the pike as it inevitably will at this time of year, and especially when accompanied by high winds, kitchen and bathroom taps left dripping overnight and a water line lagged and fitted with heat tape come into their own.

But sometimes those precautions are not sufficient. Proverbially we are warned to beware of a silent dog and still water. During our first winter in residence we found out the hard way this aqueous advice was right, for there came a night below zero with unbelievable wind chill values when we suddenly realised the well pump was no longer making its sharp click as it turned on and off, signalling the water line had frozen. (A more solid clunk indicates the power's gone out, leading to the same result. Those occupying an older house soon learn to read its various noises.) On this occasion, heat gun in one hand, torch in the other, and swathed to Michelin Man proportions, Eric trundled out into bitterly cold darkness to squirm into the crawl space -- a well-named location given it's only a couple of feet high -- to deal with the problem.

The same blockage happened the following night.

Experience is an excellent teacher so ever since we take shifts flushing the loo every hour on the hour around the clock during the worst spells of frigid weather. So far this winter it hasn't been necessary for him to brave that cold, dark place again. And just as well, given it's the home of enormous spiders, one or two of which have successfully stormed the ground floor of Maywrite Towers. Those intruders did not, shall we say, hang about the place long. To avoid the possibility of upsetting subscribers with arachnophobia, I shall not describe the awfulness of these unwanted visitors except to mention they are larger than any arachnid has the right to be. Unfortunately, they seem unaffected by extreme cold. Which is a pity, because we've just weathered a couple of weeks featuring successive days well below freezing and nights sprinkled with single-digit readings with an occasional sub-zero temperature tossed into the mix.

Our prize exhibit so far this year is the unforgettable night when the thermometer dipped to minus 14*F. On the other hand, when lows during the dark hours are forecast to be 15*F or higher, both shifts are able to retire to bed at the same time, the well pump clicking on and off a reassuring lullaby since it means the water line's still flowing.

Brushing Away the Pixel Dust

by Eric

When Mary pointed out to me that it was 25 years since the first Orphan Scrivener appeared in February 2000 I went to the newsletter archive on our website to read that issue.

It seems I had recently driven to the post office, finding there the March issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine with the third story about our Mongolian Inspector Dorj, Death on the Trans-Mongolian Railway. I also learned on that day a quarter century ago,a nor'easter was on the way inland and as the snow accumulated my old Chevette barely made it up the long hill outside town, fishtailing all the way.

When the Internet came along I thought it represented the future. The whole planet would be linked in instantaneous communication. Pure science fiction.

While that is partly true, the Internet seems to be mostly about the past. Tom Swift's Amazing Electric Attic.

Used to be the past went away and stayed away. Now you just have to rummage around cyberspace. Brush away the pixel dust and those ancient, discarded television shows and movies are all there, along with every forgotten fad and useless piece of trivia. Trying to recall the name of an obscure sixties band that cut two singles and broke up? Once upon a time they were never to be heard of again. Today they've got a new CD available at their website. Heck, the Internet attic is even crawling with web spiders, thanks to search engines.

And we all keep shoving our own pasts into the attic.(See for example the Orphan Scrivener archive I've just been reading: https://maywrite.blogspot.com/p/list-of-essays-we-started-this-email.html) Even if we make no effort at preservation, websites like the Wayback Machine are making sure nothing is lost. I was born long before the World Wide Web was invented so I can only delve a limited distance into my past but younger people can already review their entire lives.

In the long ago, when I sat reading a Batman comic with a scratchy 45 of The Purple People Eater for a soundtrack, a cool glass of root beer Fizzies in my hand, I sometimes felt a frisson, almost as if I were being watched.

Now I know what it was.

The older me peering back through the Internet at my younger self.