Obelists Ahoy!

by Eric

Years ago I purchased a Dover trade paperback edition of C. Daly King's 1935 novel Obelists Fly High. Dover's catalog featured a few old and obscure -- to me -- authors and titles like The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrelle and The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy. The sort of thing you can find easily online today at sites like Project Gutenberg but which were harder to come by years ago.

C. Daly King and his mysteriously named novel (what the heck is an obelist anyway?) were unknown to me. However, I was fascinated by the murder mystery set on a passenger plane making a cross country flight during the 1930s. Unfortunately there were no more King books to be found, at least by a non-collector like myself. The author and his work, although highly rated by critics, had dropped out of sight. Even during the 1930s his six novels had struggled to find American publishers which, perhaps, is why he virtually abandoned detective fiction after 1940 and returned to writing psychology books.

So I was delighted when I ran across The Complete Curious Mr Tarrant, a collection of a dozen stories, mostly published during the 1930s. Ed Hoch ranks the original edition of this book as one of the three greatest locked room mystery collections along with Carter Dickson’s The Department of Queer Complaints and G. K. Chesterton’s The Incredulity of Father Brown. I'd disagree. The locked room collections I've read by Mr Hoch himself struck me as clearly superior. But anyone who's ever met Ed Hoch would know he'd never blow his own trumpet.

Not to say I disliked C. Daly King's short stories. They were intriguing and entertaining in their own eccentric way. Like many amateur sleuths of the period, Trevis Tarrant is a gentleman of independent means with apparently unlimited time for investigations. Unlike most he is assisted by a valet, Katoh, who is a Japanese doctor and in his spare time, a spy. Tarrant is particularly interested in bizarre cases, which usually means cases that appear to involve the supernatural. In fact one case does turn out to be supernatural, a nice touch. I'm reminded of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder stories in which Carnacki sometimes fails to find mundane explanations for strange events.

Tarrant encounters a house that is purportedly haunted and a highway where headless corpses keep showing up. An Irish harp, an ancient codex, and a famous actress are all seemingly spirited out of locked rooms. Maybe best of all is the motor boat which causes its occupants to jump overboard and drown themselves.

As you can imagine, the weird and puzzling events make for fun reading. My problem was with the solutions. The first story, in particular, featured an explanation so obvious, even to me, that I'd have to call it the worst locked room story I've ever read. There's at least one other solution which seemed unsurprising and another whose mechanics didn't appear to be very workable but then I'm not very mechanically inclined.

Although the stories are certainly worth reading, I'd caution you to enjoy the rides but be prepared for some disappointing denouements.

Did I mention C. Daly King is an eccentric writer? Consider that word obelist, used in titles for three of his books. Way back when I read Obelists Fly High I looked the word up in the dictionary. No luck. Over the years I never did find a dictionary definition or anyone who knew what it meant. Not until the all-knowing internet came along did I discover that obelist was an authorism, that is to say a word coined by an author. In this case, King invented obelist to mean one who harbors suspicion, for example an amateur sleuth.

With the renewed popularity of Golden Age of Detection fiction C. Daly King may be emerging from undeserved obscurity but I doubt his authorism (another new word to me!) is going to enter common use.

A Week in the Life of Dracula

by Mary

When I was in my mid-teens my favourite teacher was the fellow who taught the English class.

Given our age group, my classmates naturally considered it the height of wit to refer to him as Bugsy, due to rumours he had several children. Since he may well still be alive, I shall therefore cover his possible blushes by referring to him as Mr H. He didn't present the traditional portrait of a teacher, often visualized as garbed in trousers slightly baggy at the knees and a chalk-dusted tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows. He was slight and otherwise average in appearance but he was certainly brilliant in his way of engaging the attention and interest of his class. His teaching was more in the mould of Mr Thackeray (the educator known as Sir in the Sidney Poitier film, not the author of Vanity Fair, whose pseudonyms included George Savage Fitz-Boodle)

At the start of our first class he told us he was a strict marker and rarely awarded, if memory serves, more than a middling grade. But if perchance he did, he went on, we should go home and lie down. The phrase will be familiar to long-time readers of various of my compositions because I pinched it, adding "with a damp cloth on your forehead" to round it out a bit.

When the topic was Shakespeare. members of the class took roles in the play under discussion and though remaining at their desks presented the chosen extract as a read-through. Of these miniature theatricals, one springing immediately to mind was from The History of The Life and Death of King John, which the toilers in the Maywrite Research Bureau inform me is one of the least performed of the Bard's creations.

On thus particular occasion, Mr H selected a conversation in which Philip Faulconbridge, a pivotal character in the play, takes part. Commonly known as Philip the Bastard, he claimed to be an illegitimate son of Richard the Lionheart, John's predecessor on the throne. As mentioned, the class was composed of teenagers, regarded by some who should know better as young savages whose language would shock a fish wife. However, the young lady chosen to take part in this excerpt refused to use Faulconbridge's nickname. Even tearaways have good hearts and her classmates did the right thing, nobly sparing her embarrassment by not sniggering whenever other characters used That Word.

Mr H usually presented us with a choice of homework essay topics. He possessed a robust sense of humour as demonstrated by the memorable afternoon when A Week In The Life of Dracula was on the list. I can only surmise he'd overheard a friend and I talking about how much we liked Hammer Films' presentations of such sanguinary tales of teeth and terror because I doubt he knew we'd stolen out of the building the previous Friday afternoon to catch a matinee screening of one such extravaganza at the local cinema, It was the only time we braved our formidable principal's wrath by decamping early but really teenagers must rebel at times, is it not so?

In any event, my colourful account of seven days in Transylvania received the best mark of any essay I wrote for Mr H. For reasons now forgotten I was unable to skive off and go home early in search of a cloth to dampen and apply to my forehead. Just as well perhaps, for as Demosthenes (the orator, not the actor) cautioned unexpected success often leads to extravagant acts, or as we would have said then "Don't push your luck, mate."

When my first short mystery story was accepted -- it was Aunt Ba's Story, broadcast on the BBC World Service -- I was so thrilled I wrote to Mr H at the school address to tell him and received a really nice congratulatory letter back. It meant a lot to me and still does. So Mr H. if you should happen to stumble over these reminiscences, a doff of the chapeau to you for your kindness in encouraging an apprentice writer and an all-round good egg to boot.

And that's no yolk!

Review: The Twenty-One Clues by J. J. Connington

by Mary

Much of the plot of The Twenty-One Clues revolves around members of the dwindling congregation of the Church of Awakened Israel, among them wealthy Mrs Victoria Alvington. She's made a will favouring her son Arthur and niece Helen, having disinherited her other son Edward and barred him from her house because he had the nerve to get a divorce. His divorce also cost him his deaconship in the church, largely due to the hue and cry raised by its minister, John Barrett. Mrs Alvington has been generous to the church, which Arthur and Helen don't like since it means less for them when the time comes. What's worse, Barratt is a frequent visitor to the Alvington home and has a fair bit of influence over Mrs Alvington's decisions.

Helen, the minister's wife, isn't much interested in church matters, regarding the congregation as of a lower class than herself. Nor does she care Mrs Esther Callis, wife of the church treasurer, seems rather keen on Barratt. Helen's not the only person who's noticed and others have been kind enough to mention it to her. Then there's Stephen Kerrison, possessor of a vicious tongue and successfully sued for slander twice. He's also narrow-minded, kills stray cats, and strongly disapproves of local couples dallying on a bracken-covered slope overlooked by the house he shares with his mother. Then there's Miss Maldon, a confirmed snooper according to local reporter Peter Diamond, and one not adverse to tattling about other people's business.

Adding to the undercurrents swirling about the congregation: a poisoned pen writer's scribbles are accusing members of impropriety.

Scandal erupts after a couple connected to the church are found dead among the aforementioned bracken, both shot in the head and a pistol and two suitcases lying nearby. A receipt showing the suitcases were deposited in the left luggage office at the local main line station the day before and two rail tickets to London are found in the dead man's jacket pocket. Torn love letters are strewn around the pair. The circumstances strongly suggest well-laid plans to elope so what caused this last-minute suicide pact? Or was it murder -- or possibly even a murder-suicide? Other possibilities exist...

During his investigation Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield quotes a rhyme neatly summarising the information needed to solve a crime:

What was the crime? Who did it?
When was it done? And where?
How done? And with what motive?
Who in the deed did share?

Some answers to these questions are immediately obvious but others are much more difficult to establish as Driffield and Inspector Rufford unravel a case becoming more complicated the longer it remains unsolved. Readers will learn contemporary details about notepaper manufacture, fire-arm forensics, Victorian double-florins, and fingerprint analysis -- I particularly enjoyed the fascinating methods used by the postal authorities to catch poisoned pen letter writers. Missing common household items, a disappearing car, and the fate of the most recent collection at the Church of Awakened Israel all play their parts in advancing to the solution to the case, one of the most complicated I've read in recent months.

My Verdict: The Twenty-One Clues relates a case where readers might wish to have pencil and paper on hand to aid them untangling the plot. And yes, there are indeed twenty-one clues, as I ascertained when I went back and counted 'em after missing several on my first read-through. I particularly enjoyed the scene where Driffield, his old friend Wendover, and Diamond play "choose your clue" for its clever way of reminding readers what information the investigators possessed at that point and award The Twenty-One Clues an A.

E-text: The Twenty-One Clues

Sludge or Slum-Gullian?

by Mary

I collect unusual words and recently learned a new one: slum-gullian, courtesy of a gent we know in Virginia who also provided a photo of a large pot of same simmering on his wood stove. The ingredients: hamburger, tomato paste, and several vegetables. It immediately struck me as essentially the same recipe as that for a dish we call sludge, made from cooked mince stirred into spaghetti.

Investigation of slum-gullian uncovered more than one theory as to how it got its name. The most common explanation of this prime example of a portmanteau word is that it's composed of slum, in the sense of an area with poor housing conditions, and gullian, said to be English dialect for cesspool or mud. Not exactly the most enticing dish to appear on a menu but its culinary cousin sludge provides equally hearty vittles in the sort of weather Mr Maywrite writes about.

According to those who know about these things, the first literary reference to "slumgullion" occurs in Mark Twain's Roughing It, published in 1872 *, The dish shows up when the proprietor of a stagecoach stop serves it to the latest batch of travelers passing through, Twain among them. Though it bears the name, it's been argued it's not the genuine article since Twain refers to it as a beverage pretending to be tea "but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler."

Admittedly naming our culinary invention sludge hints at nosh almost as awful as that served to Twain but in its defence it is both warming and filling while also attractive to us for another reason.

Why? Because sludge requires only three items: a tin of mince, spaghetti sauce, and a packet of pasta, meaning its ingredients don't take up much storage space, This is important for us because we don't have much room to spare after stocking up the pantry in late autumn against those days or weeks when due to local geography and stretches of brutal winter weather our buggy cannot roll to town. Thus we purchase enough comestibles we calculate as sufficient to provide sustenance for 77 days, the longest period -- so far at least -- when grocery shopping was just not possible. The most difficult time we've had in that regard was several years ago when we almost ran out of coffee. The horror! The horror!

Whatever way you spell it slum-gullian is a word to gladden wordsmiths' hearts, just crying out to be used in a limerick. Here's my attempt at

Boarding house owner Miss Mulligan
Claimed to serve genuine slum-gallian
Her paying guests cried
You stand there and lie!
Where's its bacon-rind scraps, you rapscallion?

Perhaps Miss Mulligan would have been better served by providing her boarders with a hearty helping of the stew whose name she shared.

* Twain describes this entertaining travelogue as a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing. It's available on Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3177/pg3177.txt

The Cruellest Month

by Eric

“April is the cruellest month….” wrote T.S. Elliot in The Wasteland. Which just goes to show he should've got out more. Specifically he should've got out today, when the wind is gusting, there's a foot of snow on the ground, and temperatures are plunging towards zero. If he were sitting on the porch roof outside our office window right now (and what an image that is) I'll bet he'd admit that the cruellest month is February when we've already suffered through more winter than we can endure and there's no relief in sight.

As for Mr Elliot mixing up his cruel months, I can hear him taking the Star Trek defense through chattering teeth. "Dammit Jim. I'm a poet, not a weatherman."

To which I can only reply, "Off to the Heaviside Layer, sir! And take those frozen cats with you!"

Outdoors everything is white and silent and stiff with cold as if the landscape has died and rigor mortis set in. Or maybe that's just the way I'm feeling. But when the sun struggles up from behind the mountains its thin icy light reveals new tracks in the snow where the local wildlife has been quietly going about its business all night long. The backyard is crisscrossed with dainty lines of deer tracks and twisty little ruts where smaller creatures -- rabbits, squirrels, mice -- have plowed through the drifts. There are also footprints leading to the propane tank after my Arctic expedition there to check the gauge a couple of days ago.

It could be worse. I've known worse. While living in different places I've experienced snow storms that buried the world in nearly three feet of the white horror and bouts of freezing rain that brought trees crashing down, limbs glistening with an inch and more of ice.

I'm discounting the monster snowfalls I remember from my childhood because everything looks bigger when one is smaller. Besides, heavy snow meant a day off school. I was never a big fan of cold but bundled up sufficiently I still enjoyed sledding and building snowmen and, of course, simply not having to go to school. I understand that today, thanks to the Internet, schools call for virtual days when the weather is bad, forcing students to work from home via computer. How unutterably cruel is that?

As I write this I'm chugging down pots of coffee, which is what I do in cold weather. I've always drunk coffee but the colder it gets the more I drink it. Lately that's a lot since temperatures haven't gotten up to freezing in weeks with the thermometer falling into the single digits nearly every night. For half my life I drank tea. As a teenager I lived on hot dogs and tea with sugar and lemon. How I don't know. I doubt there's enough nourishment in a hot dog to support a sparrow, which might be why sparrows don't eat hot dogs. Anyway, count on teens to choose the most unhealthy diet possible. I switched my allegiance to coffee after Mary and I got married. Since she was from England she should have been the tea drinker, shouldn't she? Life is strange. I actually don't care what I drink so long as it's hot and loaded with caffeine.

Sometimes I can warm up by writing. Rubbing words together to make a fire.

The wind's begun to howl.

I haven't seen two riders approaching...yet.

Review: The Master Detective: Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles by Percy James Brebner

by Mary

Detective Murray Wigan relates a number of cases solved with the assistance of Charles Quarles, professor of philosophy.

A ghastly discovery opens The Strange Case of Sir Grenville Rusholm: the coffin with the titular character's remains has been replaced with one containing lead. Who did it and why? And where is the baronet's body?

A ransom note is received following The Kidnapping of Eva Wilkinson, who has become involved with a suitor of whom her guardian strongly disapproves. A connection between these events seems strongly indicated.

Wigan takes up an old case dubbed The Delverton Affair, in which a banker was found dead in his office. He had been poisoned but there were no traces of any in the tumbler beside him.

A man is strangled in a locked room in The Mysterious House in Manleigh Road. Involvement of the supernatural is hinted when Wigan sees a re-enactment of the death in the room's mirror.

Murder strikes a troupe of seaside pierrots **and Wigan must solve The Difficulty of Brother Pythagoras, the victim. Members of the company claim they liked him but their expressions say otherwise.

A Member of Parliament suspected of treason is murdered after dining at home with an Italian and a German. A mysterious woman calls about her forgotten bag as Wigan investigates The Tragedy In Duke's Mansions.

A man working on a top secret project does not wish to miss a dance his beloved will attend and so leaves what becomes The Stolen Aeroplane Model at home. Only a handful know of the model's existence, so the field of suspects is narrow.

As usual a servant is the first to be suspected of theft in The Affair of the Contessa's Pearls. She denies all knowledge of the missing jewelry but could her brother be the culprit?

The arts, in this case a painting and two sculptures, play an important part in solving The Disappearance of Madame Vatrotski, current toast of the theatrical world.

Wigan visits a casual acquaintance the very night the latter is murdered. Solving The Mystery of The Man at Warburton's includes establishing why two letters sent to the murdered man a couple of years before were never opened.

A servant confesses to shooting his master as they return home aboard a ship bound for Liverpool. However, the dead man died from a knife wound, one of the oddest features in The Strange Case of Daniel Hardiman.

The Crime In The Yellow Taxi is the murder of Lady Tavener on a foggy London night. Investigation reveals neither she nor her husband were where they were supposed to be that night, nor were they together.

The blasphemous theft from a church of the gift of an elderly woman kicks off The Affair of the Jeweled Chalice. In the course of their investigation Quarles and Wigan visit a boys' club and follow a likely suspect.

Echoes of the chalice case continue in The Adventure of the Forty-Ton Yawl, which opens with Wigan taking a holiday in Folkestone after a breakdown. He goes sailing with a fellow guest and finds all is not as it seems.

A spate of burglaries has broken out. A local householder shoots and kills an apparent burglar in the early hours of the morning. The Solution of The Grange Park Mystery is not as simple as it seems. For a start, who is the dead man?

My verdict: I fear I must mark this collection with a B, as some stories are not quite fair to the reader. But still worth a glance if you have half an hour to spare for the clever explanations of how Quarles reasoned his way to a solution.

Etext: The Master Detective: Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles

The Appetizer to the Yuletide Feast

by Eric

Thinking of Christmases past I can remember the merry jingle of sleigh bells. Not in the snow but the ones my grandparents hung on the living room door. There was also a tree ornament that dated to long before my time, a thin, severe looking Santa who hadn't yet put on weight and become jolly. If I were an elf I wouldn't apply for a job at his workshop.

Although I don't date back to the era of those artifacts, the holidays f my childhood were a lot different than today's. For starters you couldn't sit comfortably at home ordering online from Amazon. Indoor shopping malls had barely been invented. To buy presents you went downtown, exposed to the elements, seeing your frosty breath (in the Northeast at any rate) as you hiked along crowded sidewalks. It took some gumption to put a gift under the tree.

Speaking of Christmas trees, you didn't have a choice between a real tree and a tree that looked real. Artificial trees were made of shiny aluminum.

One thing I suppose hasn't changed -- kids couldn't wait to rip the wrappings off packages. I was cruelly forced to consume scrambled eggs and orange juice before I was released to tear into the living room and start tearing. As far as what youngsters today find once those boxes are open, that's a different story.

But let's start with Christmas stockings. They were the appetizer to the Yuletide feast. Are they still packed with a tangerine, some walnuts and that little mesh bag of chocolate coins covered in gold foil? One thing that won't be found are the white candy cigarettes with red tips. Conversely third graders wouldn't make clay ashtrays to take home to their parents.

When it comes to the main menu in 2025, electronics are doubtless a must. You probably know what I mean -- those devices kids all have that beep and light up and who knows what. Well, I had a Robert the Robot. He rolled around, made noise, and his eyes flashed. He was battery powered. Does that make him electronic? I also thought about my metal bulldozer that drove around spewing sparks from its smokestack. Then I remembered winding it up. No electronics there.

I'm not sure if books are a big item these days. They were for me. There were always several thick, liberally illustrated volumes about nature, astronomy, dinosaurs and the like. Most of what I read in them is obsolete now. There were thirty-one planetary satellites in the solar system, most of which I could name. Now close to nine hundred have been discovered. It impressed me that Jupiter had an astounding twelve moons, not just the four I could see through my telescope, another Christmas gift. Today Jupiter has ninety-five moons and Saturn two-hundred seventy-four. And Saturn isn't the only planet with rings, having been joined by Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. There aren't even nine planets, Pluto having been demoted. On the other hand astronomers have identified dwarf planets and planets circling distant stars.

So even the science books I got for Christmas are as obsolete as Robert the Robot.

I also received fiction, usually the newest Tom Swift Junior books. Yes, even my Swifts are sadly dated. Oddly, those have aged better than the factual tomes. Diving Seacopters and Atomic Earth Blasters are as unreal today as they were back then.

Our imaginations and memories remain while the past slides away from us. I wonder what became of those sleigh bells my grandparents brought from the farm or the Santa ornament my great grandparents carried from Germany? Can Christmas survive in anything like its present form? Is it possible for children to believe in Santa in the Internet age? One can only hope.