Death of his Uncle
C.H.B. Kitchin
6 June 1939
Good character-drawing is the necessary foundation of all good fiction and without narrative power the novelist tends to become the essayist. Yet how tremendously important an ingredient is also a good style! Since bad and careless writing is a reproach still often aimed at the detective novel, all the warmer welcome should be extended to those in which literary merit is evident.
Mr. C.H.B. Kitchin’s “Death of His Uncle” has, for instance, many and evident faults, and might easily pass as no better than the average. The dialogue is sometimes forced and artificial, the plot has glaring coincidences and improbabilities—it is difficult to believe in that disguise business, and the midnight bathe is a trifle too opportune. Again, the device by which the culprit attempts to ward off suspicion is too familiar. Yet the literary qualities of the book are so high that it becomes something of an achievement, though perhaps the achievement of one whose real gifts are for the reflective essay rather than for the novel of crime and mystery. Readers of the still remembered “Death of My Aunt” will meet once more Malcolm Warren, the stockbroker with a flair for detection. His help is asked when the uncle of an old university friend disappears. He traces the missing man from hotel to hotel, discovers his clothes on the beach, and, though the local police accept the theory of a bathing accident, fears foul play, presently proving his suspicions justified.
The Reader is Warned
Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)
8 August 1939
The difference between invention and imagination is a little like that between talent and genius, since both genius and imagination contain, spring from, and far transcend what is yet, in a way, their origin and beginning. It is this power of inventive construction that for the detective novelist, as for the dramatist, is his peculiar need if story or play is to be built up into a logical and connected whole. It is a quality in no way essential to great literature, which may or may not show it; it may well be displayed in quite other walks of life, but without it neither good plays nor detective stories can be produced. It is indeed by the use of this gift that the detective novel is chiefly to be distinguished from other examples of the art of fiction.
That Mr. Carter Dickson possesses in an unusual degree this power of ingenious invention is shown once again in “The Reader is Warned” when from the incredible beginning, telling of the thought-reader who says to others, “At such a moment you are going to die,” and it is so, there is built up a perfectly reasonable and credible solution, though to the bewildered reader is seems like only sheer magic and witchcraft can explain such a tangle of strange happenings as Mr. Dickson records. That he possesses also the higher gift of imagination is shown by the manner in which is conveyed an unearthly atmosphere of wonder and of dread, all presently swept aside by the clear, strong common sense of Sir Henry Merivale and by the way, too, in which the whole story—“The Reader is Warned”—carries a moral against yielding to nerves and panic. The ending of the book is a little weak with a too garrulous murderer explaining in a monologue, for the benefit of unseen listeners, exactly the how and why of it all, but in the story as a whole Mr. Dickson displays an imagination as rich and varied as any expressing itself in the fiction of the moment.
About The Author
E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.
At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.
He died in 1956.
The Bobby Owen Mysteries
1. Information Received
2. Death among the Sunbathers
3. Crossword Mystery
4. Mystery Villa
5. Death of a Beauty Queen
6. Death Comes to Cambers
7. The Bath Mysteries
8. Mystery of Mr. Jessop
9. The Dusky Hour
10. Dictator’s Way
11. Comes a Stranger
12. Suspects – Nine
13. Murder Abroad
14. Four Strange Women
15. Ten Star Clues
16. The Dark Garden
17. Diabolic Candelabra
18. The Conqueror Inn
19. Night’s Cloak
20. Secrets Can’t be Kept
21. There’s a Reason for Everything
22. It Might Lead Anywhere
23. Helen Passes By
24. Music Tells All
25. The House of Godwinsson
26. So Many Doors
27. Everybody Always Tells
28. The Secret Search
29. The Golden Dagger
30. The Attending Truth
31. Strange Ending
32. Brought to Light
33. Dark is the Clue
34. Triple Quest
35. Six Were Present
E.R. Punshon
The Golden Dagger
“Why should anyone want to pinch the dagger—except to do somebody in?”
No one answered this question.
Item: one anonymous phone call reporting a murder at a historic country house – but no body is to be found. Item: one ornate antique knife, discovered in a village call-box, blood-stains on the blade.
Rather than identifying a corpse, Bobby Owen of the Yard has to find out who, if anyone, has actually been killed. Two persons, one a best-selling author, the other no-one’s cup of tea, are missing but a particular kind of hat keep turning up in the case – which also involves a haunted wood, a hatchet-wielding secretary, and a curious abundance of writers.
The Golden Dagger is the twenty-ninth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1951. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans, and a selection of E.R. Punshon’s prolific Guardian reviews of other golden age mystery fiction.
“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS
CHAPTER I
THE ’PHONE CALL
COMMANDER BOBBY OWEN, Scotland Yard, was very busy indeed. Almost as busy indeed as bored. For all the huddle of papers on his desk, all his overflowing ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays, all the letters he had been dictating and all the reports he had been signing, all dealt with such matters of detail, routine, procedure as any fairly intelligent boy of twenty could have dealt with almost as well.
It was with alacrity therefore, in the hope that it might presage something a little more interesting, that he answered a tap on his door with an invitation to come in. Detective Constable Ford appeared.
“’Phone message just received from a Lower High Hill call-box,” he announced. “Sarge said he thought you ought to see it.”
He laid a paper on the desk as he spoke. Bobby picked it up and read it aloud.
“Begins: ‘Speaking from call-box on road X79, near Lower High Hill. There’s been a murder at Cobblers if that interests you. Goodbye.’ Ends.”
Bobby laid it down again and looked annoyed.
“Some silly ass trying to be funny most likely,” he said.
“That’s what Sarge thought, sir,” answered Ford.
“Better check up all the same,” Bobby said. “Ring up our Lower High Hill man and ask him if anything unusual has been happening. Let me see. Cobblers? Isn’t that Lord Rone and Saine’s place? The chap the Daily Trumpeter keeps calling ‘Export Dictator’?”
“That’s right, sir,” agreed Ford. “The Trumpeter has a piece about him every day nearly. Extra big headlines this morning.”
“What about?�
�� Bobby asked.
“There’s a long letter from him, nearly a column of it, to say calling him Export Dictator, or any other sort of dictator, is too silly to need a reply. So they’ve put a big photo of him on the front page and a whole lot inside about Cobblers and the Carton family history. Especially the scandals, and there’ve been lots of them—very old family. Old-world pomp and state, they say, and the finest private art collection in the world, outside America. Worth thousands of pounds.”
“Trying to be nasty, I suppose,” Bobby remarked. “A tall poppy and ought to be cut down.”
“That’s right, sir,” agreed Ford, though it is to be feared the classical allusion was lost upon him.
“Well, let me know if you get anything from Lower High Hill,” Bobby said.
Ford retired. Bobby yawned and signed another report—on the style, cut, and colour of the ties the police are now permitted to wear on duty, and told himself that a drive out to Cobblers by way of the famous Cobblers Oaks would be an agreeable change, even if only to uncover a mare’s nest.
“Ought to have had sense enough to take the opportunity,” he reflected, and put out a languid hand to collect the next triviality which had been ‘passed to you’ for consideration.
But before he could apply his mind to the particular problem involved, Ford reappeared.
“Sarge said to inform you at once, sir,” he announced. “Constable Yates, Lower High Hill, states: ‘Re ’phone inquiry to hand, Mrs Jane Williams, Rose Cottage, this parish, reports finding knife, one, fancy handle, apparently bloodstained, in call-box near village, on road X79.’ He asks for instructions.”
Bobby sat back in his chair, a little startled. It might, of course, be part of some elaborate practical joke. The knife, with its ‘fancy’ handle, might have been used for skinning rabbits or killing pigs, or something of that sort. It might even be some new stunt of some specially enterprising young gentleman on the staff of the Daily Trumpeter, since that journal announced almost every day that Lord Rone and Saine was ‘murdering’ British exports. But then again it might not. What, he wondered, did ‘fancy’ handle mean?
“This private art collection the Trumpeter talks about,” he said slowly, “doesn’t it include what is supposed to be the finest collection of arms and armour ever got together? I seem to remember reading something of the sort.”
“I didn’t notice the Trumpeter said so much about that,” Ford answered. “It talked a lot about Dutch interior pictures and about a stamp collection Lord Rone has got together himself recently and worth thousands.”
“Dutch interiors, old arms and armour, and postage stamps,” Bobby remarked. “Seems to show a catholic taste. Well, you know, I don’t much care about bloodstained knives turning up after a ’phone call about a murder. Report back to your sergeant and tell him I think I had better drive out to Lower High Hill and have a look round, and I would like to take a man with me, just in case. Most likely it’s a leg-pull, but one can’t be sure. Ask your sergeant to spare you if he can.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Ford, looking very pleased—so pleased indeed that Bobby wondered if his message would not reach Ford’s sergeant in a slightly more peremptory form, as regarded at least Ford’s personal share in the proposed excursion, than Bobby himself had given it.
Not that he minded if that did happen, since Ford was an intelligent and reliable young man, who had already proved himself useful in emergency.
So he entered in his diary what he proposed to do and why, left a message or two with his secretary, and went out to find Ford had a car ready and waiting.
“Shall I drive, sir?” he asked when Bobby appeared.
But Bobby thought he would prefer to drive himself, and soon they were out in the country, both of them secretly aware, though neither of them would have admitted it for worlds, that even in a policeman’s life there are moments less arduous, difficult, and trying than others.
Lower High Hill is one of those oddly placed villages produced by modern conditions. It remains remote and solitary, living its own life in sleepy content, and it is in close touch with all modern developments. Television sets even are not unknown, and a good ’bus service puts the village within half an hour’s ride of two fairly large towns, west and north-west. London itself is not more than an hour away by motor coach, though this runs at much rarer intervals. True, the main road along which these ’buses and the coach pass is nearly two miles away over wooded and hilly ground, but an active walker can cover this distance in half an hour. On a bicycle even less time is required. This wooded and hilly country serves to act as a kind of curtain—not iron—between the village and the outer world and so helps to preserve much of its original character as a self-contained entity.
The village itself—there is hardly a building in it less than a century old, and gas, electricity, and piped water are alike unknown—is dominated by the enormous bulk of Cobblers, almost entirely rebuilt soon after the Napoleonic Wars, when a disastrous fire destroyed its Carolean forerunner. It is approached by a stately avenue of ancient elms, and if the house has small claim to architectural beauty, its very size gives it an imposing air.
“You wouldn’t think anyone could manage to keep a place like that going in these days,” Bobby remarked as it first came into view. “It must need a regular army of servants, and they aren’t so easy to get.”
“Well, sir, I suppose everything’s easy if you’ve got the money,” observed Ford, and Bobby in reply spoke those two dreadful words that in these days weigh so heavily on all.
“Income tax,” he said simply; and in the depressed silence that followed the utterance of those two sad words he drove on past the open entrance to the avenue of elms—the iron gates formerly guarding it had gone long ago to make munitions—past a lodge still clearly in occupation, and on to the village, where he drew up before the cottage that served both for police station and for the residence of Police Constable Yates, who represented law and order in Lower High Hill.
Yates was expecting them and the weapon found by Mrs Williams of Rose Cottage was carefully laid out for their inspection on a clean sheet of paper.
It looked both a lovely and a deadly thing with its long, narrow blade, inlaid with gold, tapering to a point of needle sharpness, and showing on it ominous brown stains at which both Bobby and Ford looked doubtfully. The handle was in the shape of a nude woman in ivory and gold—a magnificent piece of work. Italian, Bobby thought, of the Renaissance period, and at once a work of beauty and of death—in that, typical of its time.
“You can’t identify it in any way, I suppose?” Bobby asked presently.
Yates shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said, “though they do say as up at Cobblers there’s the like of it as was used before guns were thought of.” He paused and added: “That handle now, there’s times you could swear she was smiling wicked like, telling you to do the same and why not?”
“Why not what?” Ford asked, and Yates answered sombrely:
“Kill.”
“Oh, well,” Ford said.
Bobby had taken out his notebook and was putting down a full description of the weapon. He went on to make a sketch of it, and as he did so he, too, began to be aware of something of the same sensation that Yates had just spoken of. There were moments when it was as though the figurine was watching him as he worked, watching him with a sort of secret, hidden glee. He could almost have believed that the stains upon the blade had wakened it from long sleep to a life of its own, and that from it was proceeding waves of impulse imploring, urging, demanding that this fresh life imparted to it should be strengthened and continued in the same way.
“And the sooner, my dear,” he said as if he were addressing it and it could understand, “the sooner you are back again safe in your glass case, the better.”
Neither Ford nor Yates seemed to find anything strange in this remark, and indeed they were both of them regarding the thing with much the same sort of uneasy
mistrust.
“No chance of finding any useful finger-prints on it, I suppose,” Bobby remarked as he finished his sketch. “I expect the woman who found it didn’t think about that.”
“No, sir,” agreed Yates. “I asked her. She had handled it quite a lot, wondering what it was and showing it to neighbours. Some of them said to take it straight back to Cobblers, but she thought I had better see it first—and quite right, too.”
“It’ll have to go for expert examination at Hendon,” Bobby said. “What about the call-box?”
“I’ve shut it up,” Yates answered. “Stuck up a sign ‘Out of Order,’ but I couldn’t see anything to notice. I had a look round, but it all seemed as usual. No bloodstains, no signs of a struggle. I hadn’t time to make a proper search.”
“Good,” Bobby said approvingly. “You’ve done all you could. I’ll go and have a look at the call-box myself, though I don’t suppose you’ve missed anything, but I may as well see what it’s like; and then we’ll see if Lord Rone can identify the dagger as his property. If he can’t identify it from my sketch, I’ll bring him back here. Keep it safe, and above all don’t let anyone touch it. There may be a dab or two somewhere that might be useful.”
The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 26
