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.

Popping a Penny in Your Pudding

by Mary

We weathered another Attack of The Household Appliances in mid-November when the oven conked out for the third time so we were without its culinary assistance for a couple of weeks. Thus it was we discovered cooking using burners only was possible to the extent of creating a simulacrum of breakfast buns or a biscuit somewhat resembling a ginger snap by cooking them in a frying pan. Now repaired, the oven's been behaving itself so we are in fine shape for Yuletide cuisine.

So far.

Speaking of festive cookery, for me one of the most memorable passages in Dickens' Christmas Carol is his description of the Cratchit family's Christmas pudding as it was about to be brought to table:

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding!

This homely scene is a favourite because the scullery of a childhood home was equipped with a copper of Victorian vintage such as Dickens mentions. A brick cube holding a tub for laundry with water heated via a small built-in fireplace, we didn't use it for its intended purpose nor yet to heat Christmas puddings so the black beetles had it to themselves. No, our puddings were boiled for hours in a basin wrapped in a tea towel so we were familiar with the steamy aroma Dickens so poignantly describes.

Naturally Christmas puddings prepared for high society were elaborate concoctions. Consider Mrs Beeton's "mode" for her Christmas Plum-Pudding, which she modestly describes as "Very Good". As well it should be, given it contained one and a half pounds of raisins, half a pound apiece of currants and mixed peel, three-quarters of a pound of bread crumbs and the same amount of suet, eight eggs, and a wine glass of brandy. The result was boiled for five or six hours and again for two hours the day it was served. Mrs Beeton considers this princely pudding sufficient for seven or eight persons.

Admittedly it could not provide as many helpings as Mrs Beeton's magnificent creation but the two-serving tinned Christmas pudding a British friend sent some years ago worked well for us. It may be those who look askance at tinned cranberry sauce as an acceptable side dish for holiday meals would not agree on aesthetic grounds, given these festive puddings traditionally should be shaped like cannonballs rather than cylinders. But it's the thought and the taste that matters, right?

There's a old custom my family and many others kept up albeit in a modified way. In the Victorian era silver charms said to foretell their finders' fortunes were included in the pudding and I gather it's possible to purchase similar festive folderols these days . However, when our pudding was served it was inevitably accompanied not only by piping hot custard but also a maternal warning to watch our teeth. This was necessary because a silver sixpenny bit would be lurking somewhere in the pudding although on one occasion a copper penny well wrapped in greaseproof paper was substituted. Whatever the denomination, whoever found the coin in their portion could expect good luck during the following year.

As to the Crachits' pudding, given their difficult financial circumstances, it seems unlikely they would be able to pop a penny in their pudding but there's still a pleasing Yuletide connection between their copper cookery and our cooked copper coin.

Minor Characters Have Lives Too

At Kevin Tipple's blog Mary discuses writing, characters, and how history relates to our characters. Check it out at: Minor Characters Have Lives Too .