Tackling Tomes

by Eric

I prefer brief books. In grade school I'd cart five Doctor Seuss books home from the library, read them all immediately. and go back for more before closing time. The library was nearly a mile from home and up a steep hill. Who says reading isn't good exercise?

Long books overwhelm my attention span. Especially since I'm a slow reader. Not to mention I'm always impatient to discover how the story turns out.

Excuses, excuses...I know I should have read War and Peace by now but I just can't face it. It's so long it's famous mostly for being long...and the characters all having ten or fifteen different impossible to pronounce or remember Russian names. Or so I've heard. I'm not sure since I've never even contemplated tackling the tome.

Classic mysteries are the right size. Agatha Christie is a favorite. Georges Simenon's Maigrets are even shorter. Of course like many short books they are concisely written and all of a piece, which I find satisfying aesthetically. Gold Medal style noir from the forties and fifties share the same qualities. Jim Thompson and John D. MacDonald for example.

Even writers I like can discourage me with lengthy books. I've read virtually all of Steinbeck (including Grapes of Wrath) but not East of Eden. I haven't read Simenon's long autobiography Pedigree either. I did read Stephen King's The Stand but Under the Dome is too daunting. (Not for Mary, I might add. But she's even read Les Miserables! Honestly! All of it!)

Needless to say, being a writer and an English Lit major, my aversion to long books has left me with a fair amount of guilt. There are certain lengthy novels I have always felt I ought to read and felt this so strongly that I actually purchased the books and made the effort.

When I was in college I made day trips to New York City, spending much of my time in book stores. There I found a trade paperback edition of Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, the first of his seven volume Remembrance of Things Past. (In those days trade paperbacks were reserved mostly for literary titles not expected to sell as well as mass market paperbacks and were hard to find where I lived.)

What could I possibly have been thinking? Yes, the work was touted as one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. It was also more than 4,000 pages long, well over a million words. Oh, the naive optimism of youth! I started to read and got nowhere. Odd because I've read and enjoyed lots of French literature in translation quite apart from Simenon. The book remained on my shelves, taunting me, for decades. More than once over the years I have steeled myself for the task. I've never made it to page three.

There's no point in my trying again. Considering my reading speed the actuarial tables say I'd never make it to the end anyway.

Other important books have similarly defeated me. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, the fantasy classic Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Do I even have to tell you that James Joyce's Ulysses is on this list. None of these books were page turners for me. I barely turned one of their pages.

Well, so much for the mea culpas. I am now going to start reading Lock No. 1, an Inspector Maigret mystery that is a nice, neat 176 pages long and I fully expect to finish it.

Theirs is a Sinister Beauty

by Mary

This year a striking crop of volunteer foxgloves is growing in the back garden, flourishing in its shady grove. We calculated the tallest to be about six feet by the simple expedient of standing human measuring stick Eric next to it.

Traditional names for the plant that put the digit into digitalis include fairy gloves or thimbles. However, despite these charming names for foxgloves theirs is a sinister beauty, acknowledged by other names for them such as bloody fingers or witches' gloves. Which isn't surprising considering the entire plant is highly poisonous. We've noticed local deer, whose depravations decimated our beds of hosta and day lilies, do not bother them. Perhaps they instinctively realise it is far safer to dine elsewhere.

When recently admiring the display of these striking purple-red flowers it occurred to me it would be possible to utilise the toxicity of the plant as a murder method in a mystery novel. After all, like other plantings in Mother Nature's garden foxgloves may be attractive but can become deadly in the wrong hands.

My thoughts ran on. How could a murderer get the victim to eat them? It might be done by presenting a guest with a dish of stewed foxglove leaves, telling them it's the latest gustatory craze. How about creating a mixed salad featuring foxglove leaves masquerading as comfrey? Further investigation by our vast research staff revealed foxglove leaves have a unpleasant bitter taste and one mouthful of either dish would probably result in plates being pushed away.

Considering how deadly foxgloves are known to be, a Doubting Thomas might wish to know how their taste could have been identified. Elementary, my dear reader. Know-it-all Mr Google pointed me to an article at The National Library of Medicine featuring a detailed description of two cases of accidental digestion of foxglove leaves. Foxgloves do not flower in their first year and in these cases the leaves of a young plant were mistaken for kale. The patients survived to describe the taste of their near fatal dish. *

In closing, let me also mention -- no, I must insist -- subscribers may be interested in a fascinating article on the Open University's CORE website. Titled Digitalis Poisoning: Historical and Forensic Aspects, it includes comments on the use of the foxglove derivative digitalis in real life murders. **

Really, it's little wonder country folks' nicknames for foxgloves included dead men's bells or fingers.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4938686/
** https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82526436.pdf
Includes a section devoted to the use of digitalis in mysteries

The Ant Tree

by Eric

Elsewhere in this newsletter Mary details the malicious machinations of malevolent trees. While it's true that lately we seem to be surrounded by arboreal villains, not all trees are prone to falling on houses. In all fairness to trees, the ones I knew during my childhood were friendly.

For example the maple we kids called the Happy Tree, not because the tree was happy but rather because it made us happy to climb into the space where the trunk divided into three. Sitting high up on a bed of dry leaves and whirligigs, safely hidden in the tree's embrace, you could survey the whole front yard, spy on passersby on the sidewalk, or simply meditate.

Almost next to the Happy Tree, across the flagstone sidewalk leading to my grandparents' house (my parents and grandparents lived next door to each other) stood the ant tree. For some reason this maple was a favored destination for ants, so much so that generations of the industrious insects had worn a path in the lawn from the flagstones to the tree, a tiny rut that remained year after year. You could always find ants laboring along the path, often carting bits of leaves. How many tiny travelers had it taken to wear an actual indentation in the ground, even given ants have extra feet?

Several other maples lined the front lawn and although only two of them interested us kids, the others lacking ants and being unclimbable, my grandfather loved them all equally. He couldn't bear to see a single limb injured when the power company trimmed around the utility lines. He'd stand and watch the whole ugly business, yelling instructions, gesticulating, protesting. Whether he managed to mitigate the damage I can't say.

The pine in the side yard didn't attract ants but Daddy Long Legs (Harvestmen) seemed to love the thick layer of dried needles beneath the tree. If you looked closely you could count dozens of them lurching along comically on their ridiculous spindly legs that sprouted from their bulbous little bodies. So cartoonish in appearance, I didn't mind handling them.

Behind the barn (we lived in the suburbs but the barn remained from earlier days) grew another notable tree, an enormous apple tree in which my father and grandfather built a tree house complete with a shingled roof, white siding, and a front porch. Whatever current club we had formed held its meetings there except during the winter. The huge tree was also notable for bearing the largest apples I've ever seen. Their name escapes me. Possibly it was a variety that no longer exists, red and often lumpy and misshapen (they were also the ugliest apples I've ever seen) but fine for cooking or canning.

There were many apple trees scattered around. My grandparents had brought them when they moved from their respective farms and they were fascinating because each tree had been grafted with at least two kinds of apples. The towering pear tree had two kinds of pears, big yellow ones lower down and small green ones at the top.

Then there was the tall pine behind my parents' house. Planted long before the house was built, it had started out as my father's first Christmas tree. The pines along the edge of the garden in the backyard also helped celebrate that holiday. Rather than buying a suitable Christmas tree or tramping around the woods looking for one, my grandfather sometimes cut the top off one of the pines and used that.

So you can see that trees have not always been so vindictive towards me as they seem to be lately. Of course these examples are all from my childhood. Maybe trees hate adults.

They Should Rather Call the Wind a Menace

by Mary

I love trees so it follows I enjoy gazing at our surrounding woodland, especially when its autumn colours are spreading in stately fashion across the landscape. Winter however is a different kettle of fish. We sometimes experience the sort of wild weather causing old-timers to break out in an acute case of nostalgia.

There is, I understand, a German proverb declaring a tree won't fall at the first blow. I take this to mean the first blow of the axe and while I would not argue with that, the question for today is what about high winds blowing in an extremely intense snow squall?

While it's true the chorus in a certain musical film admitted to their habit of calling the wind Maria, it is my contention they should rather call the wind Menace. Subscribers will recall essays devoted to those occasions when we've escaped dire consequences from falling trees* although our luck ran out in 2022 when a neighbour's tree fell on a corner of our house, dragging phone and power lines with it.**

A couple of weeks ago we weathered a period of extremely wet and gusty conditions. The wind was maliciously wild indeed, whistling around Maywrite Towers, rattling doors and windows like a shameless burglar, creeping in through cracks in our crumbling walls, and whining threats up and down chimneys and along dusty corridors.

When the wind reached a screaming pitch there came that sickening distinctive thud when a tree falls. Next morning we saw chunks of it lying at bottom of the back garden, having hit the ground with such force it broke into a couple of pieces, bringing a smaller tree with it for fellowship's sake. Fortunately both fell far enough away not to endanger our battlements or any neighbouring property.

Fast forward to last week when one dark afternoon the Swan of Avon's strumpet wind got into a paddy and came a-calling embedded in a powerful snow squall. I was standing upstairs observing a wild curtain of snow blotting everything out as it drove at high speed past the window and thus was in just the right place to observe a pine tree falling.

Straight towards me.

Its fall must have taken mere seconds but seemed to take a longer time and in graceful slow motion to boot. At the last second it was deflected, perhaps by a change in wind direction, so it hit the corner of the porch roof, putting it just enough off course so its landing left it parallel to a side wall. There is no doubt I couldn't have got out of its way in time to avoid a closer encounter had it continued on its original path.

On reflection, it seems Algernon Blackwood (notice his surname?) presented a thought worth considering when a character in The Man Whom The Trees Loved observed "Trees in a mass are good; alone, you may take it generally, are—well, dangerous."

As a result of my experience with a lone tree, I am in a position to reveal that, contrary to popular rumour and in the spirit of aiding future scientific inquiries, it is not true your life passes before you when you suddenly realise you're facing imminent and seemingly unavoidable danger.

* A Trio of Assassin Trees
https://maywrite.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-orphan-scrivener-issue-eighty-nine.html#cracker
** No Ringie Dingies For Us
https://maywrite.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-orphan-scrivener-issue-one-hundred.html#ringie

The Mayers of Muggleswick

by Mary

In my early teens the grammar school I attended arranged for groups of girls chaperoned by a teacher to spend a weekend at its camp, housed in the former school building in Muggleswick, a hamlet in County Durham.

Having travelled by coach from Newcastle we were set down amid bleak, wind-swept moorland, dominated by knee-high ferns but with few trees. Continuing the journey on foot we marched through what was an alien landscape for us city girls. I have since learned that in 1890 Muggleswick consisted of three farms and a few cottages. In our time it was not much bigger.

Our first night of camping indoors began with our teacher combining every tin of soup we'd brought into a dish I can only describe as having an unusual appearance and memorable flavour, each of us having brought a supply of tinned food and necessaries in haversacks lent by the school. A particularly vivid memory of that weekend is that it was the first time I'd seen farm animals on the hoof.

During our visit we wandered about the moor but always stayed within sight of our base. In retrospect it was a pity because had I ventured further afield I would have visited the settlement's Church of All Saints.

I have found there's always something interesting to be seen in even the smallest church but in this case it was outside the building. When recently describing this trip to Eric I googled Muggleswick for photos to show him. To my amazement there is a Mayer family grave in the churchyard. Of course, at the time I had no idea how significant the name would become for me in later years. It's true Eric's ancestral tree is rooted in Germany, but it's not too wild to speculate this family residing a small semi-isolated settlement could well be connected to his branch even if at some distance. So I put on my research hat and dived into the murky depths of Google.

Now a Grade II monument included in the National Heritage's register, the only decoration on the Mayer headstone is a swag-framed cherub head with wings. It is an early work by John Graham Lough who was also responsible for the George Stephenson memorial near the Central Railway Station in Newcastle -- yes, in case you're wondering, it is the very memorial mentioned in Ruined Stones.

The headstone tells a sad story in commemorating several children born to John and Ann Mayer, who died in 1852 and 1860 respectively. Most of their children died young, at ages ranging from Matthew at seven weeks to William at 26 years old. None of his siblings reached their teens although Thomas would have been 13 had he lived to see his next birthday.

By enlarging this image of their somewhat weathered headstone it's possible to glean the names of these children and their ages when they died: Jane (2), John (9 months), a second John (7), and Matthew, noted above. Their father John's death at 47 is given, followed by another Jane (11). The monumental mason ran out of room when chiselling her age so it is squeezed in above her line, appearing on the far right of the headstone. I don't think the family would have been too pleased about that. The final line commemorates William, mentioned earlier.

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1240626

Subscribers will doubtless have noticed the surname of the parents of these children is given as the variant spelling of Mayor. Later it changed. The evidence: Ann died at 84. A self-described "affectionate tribute" to her dated 1889 appears on the back of the headstone courtesy of her ironfounder grandson, another William Mayer, who refers to his grandmother as Ann Mayer. William was also responsible for the bronze railing around the family grave. Constructed of interlinked hollow squares, it's weathered to an attractive greenish colour. I especially liked the hourglass mounted on the railing along the foot of the plot.

It appears grandson William died at 74. He is buried next to his relatives under his own tombstone, featuring some decorative elements but mostly plain. The foot of the stone informs visitors it was erected by his children Thomas, William, John, Elizabeth, and Ann. That sums up all I know about the Mayers of Muggleswick at this point but when there's more time I intend to look further into the matter.

Eschew the U

by Eric

Astute readers of this newsletter -- and what mystery reader is not astute? -- will deduce from subtle clues herein that whereas I am American, Mary is British. The clues I am speaking of are spelling conventions such as the telltale 'u' those of the British persuasion insert into certain words. As an American I eschew the 'u'.

Take for example the following quote from one of Mary's essays: "Our window looked out over the grimy industrial city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where grass and open spaces were uncommon. Uncommon, that is, unless you counted weedy World War II bomb sites coloured seasonally by the ruby of rosebay willow herb and dusty yellow coltsfoot..."

Did you spot the clue? The spelling of 'coloured'? A sure sign that Mary is from England, for those sharp enough to notice such clues thanks to years of perusing whodunits.

Of course, Mary would have doubled the 'n' in the previous sentence and written "whodunnits" just as she would have rendered 'traveling' as 'travelling'. I'm not sure how the British came to use all those surplus letters. I suppose when your empire spans most the world what's an extra 'u' or 'l'? I wonder how much more all those doubled letters and the occasional 'u' would have earned a British pulp writer at three cents a word? Or would that be 'pence'?

We have to cope with plenty of differences between American English and English English. I'm used to checking the 'mail' while Mary looks at her 'post' except when she says, "What's in the mail? Oops did I say 'mail'? Wash my mouth out!" Then again, for some strange reason, Americans get their mail at post offices' rather than 'mail offices' and the British refer to 'email' and not 'epost'. I'm sure there's a reason but I flunked linguistics in college.

Mary also insists cars have 'bonnets' rather than 'hoods'. Clearly she doesn't know this country very well. The hulking great manly SUVs Americans drive would not be caught dead with bonnets. I believe SUVs with bonnets are actually illegal in Tennessee.

Over the years I have picked up some British words, which can lead to confusion. At the grocery checkout not long ago I asked the clerk if she would double bag my tins. (Bags keep getting thinner. Eventually stores will just make do with the idea of a bag rather than a bag itself). At the mention of tins the clerk abruptly stopped scanning and stared at me with a puzzled look. "Double bag the tins, please," I repeated. The look went from puzzlement to utter incomprehension.

Then it hit me, like a sudden bong from Big Ben.

"Umm...cans. Would you double bag my cans? My wife's from England. They call cans 'tins' over there."

I remembered not to ask her to put the loo rolls in a bag.

Well, Mary and I have been married for thirty-one years so I was bound to add a few Briticisms to my vocabulary. It's been worth it. Even if she does talk funny once in awhile she's still a canny lass.

'Canny' by the way means nice or good. Mary's a Geordie from Newcastle, known as the Toon, where ears are lugs, mud is clarts, clamming means you're hungry, and people say they're gannen (going) eeyem (home).

And this isn't even mentioning the weird way Geordies pronounce their vowels or their glo'al stops. Mary recalls that her budgie would pronounce the only word he learned to speak (his name) as Pe-er.

But I don't want to get into that. It's another dialect altogether.Just thinking about it is bringing tears to my eyes. I better end this before I start bubbling.

Tuppence for My Thoughts

by Eric

I just finished reading The Secret Adversary and The Mysterious Mr Quin so I figured I might write something about their author, Agatha Christie. Unfortunately, whereas Mary has read pretty much all of Christie's works, I've read only a fair number. Then too, it's difficult to write about mysteries intelligently without giving too much away. Don't you hate it when the blurb on the back cover of a book recounts half the plot?

Nevertheless, I'm going to make a few random observations, the first of which is that I have never read a Christie I didn't like. For example, I've seen some bad reviews of The Third Girl but I found Poirot's excursion into the sixties counterculture rather entertaining. Some people seemed unhappy that Christie had abandoned the country estates and quaint English villages where she "belonged" but I've always been more attracted to her exquisite mystery puzzles and the interplay of her characters than her settings.

So not surprisingly I also enjoyed Death Comes as the End, the mystery set in decidedly not English ancient Egypt. No picturesque gardens, only sand. No stately mansions. Pyramids aren't really stately, are they?

This book highlights another characteristic of my Christie experience. Never once have I guessed the killer. You'd think I'd have done so simply by chance but Christie inevitably manages to point me towards the wrong suspect. I don't suppose I'm giving much away if I reveal that in Death Comes as the End the suspects are knocked off, one by one until the suspect list has dwindled to two. And even then I got it wrong!

You might gather from the above that I am not averse to less typical Christie mysteries. It's true. I even prefer the books that do not feature Miss Marple or Poirot. Indeed, reading about Hercule can be quite laborious.

It always annoys me when Christie's books are described as cozies. Her settings may not be gritty and she doesn't go in for graphic descriptions of violence but the motives and actions of her characters can be very black. I simply do not see much similarity between what she wrote and the sort of books marketed as cozies today. There was often a hard edge to Christie. A Crooked House, for instance, strikes me as downright noir. Christie listed it as one of her personal favorites.

In keeping with my taste for the atypical Christie I finally got around to reading The Secret Adversary. Childhood friends Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley go into business as The Young Adventurers and are hired to find a British agent who vanished while trying to deliver a secret treaty. A secretive criminal mastermind, bent on fomenting labor unrest in the interest of Bolshevism, is also after the agent and the treaty. Tommy and Tuppence end up chasing and being chased all over England. There's plenty of humor and snappy dialogue. And though it's more a spy/thriller than a mystery Christie keeps the identity of the arch-criminal well concealed until the surprising (to me at least) conclusion.

The stories in The Mysterious Mr Quin are odder still. In each tale Harley Quin (not the comic book character) appears as if by magic and through conversation acts as a kind of catalyst, allowing the narrator, the mild mannered socialite Mr Satterthwaite, to solve a mystery. The Mr Quin character is based on Harlequin, as the stories make clear through clever descriptions. For example: "Mr Quin smiled, and a stained glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of coloured light..." There's a definite aura of the supernatural. There are no physical clues in many of the stories. Rather, as Mr Satterthwaite gradually discovers the histories and relationships of the characters the solution becomes apparent. These reminded me a bit of Georges Simenon's books where Maigret figures out whodunnit by uncovering the secrets of the people involved.

So much for my reading of uncharacteristic Christie. I'm not familiar with the mainstream novels she wrote as Mary Westmacott. Maybe one of those should be next.