We staggered from the Palace through the howling wind and pelting snow of a renewed storm, through frigid drifts that rose higher than our boot tops, and turned about to see the great black edifice of the Anthracite Palace in flames.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE PEACOCK STREET PECULIARS, by Michael Mallory
Damn you, Graham Wicking! I thought as I set down the old book, which I had been struggling through for the best part of a half-hour. It was Wicking who had gotten me into this wretched situation, and now there was no way of backing out.
In addition to being a longtime friend (at least up until now), Graham Wicking was the owner of a small mystery imprint called Crime Does Not Pay which, if nothing else, adequately described his royalties system. I can speak to that first hand since my first two books—written long before my acclaimed (if I may speak so immodestly) “DCI Sim Tanner” series began—have been reprinted by Wicking. I was hesitant at first about the prospect of seeing those early efforts in print again, as they reflected a somewhat immature author, but Wicking is a persuasive man, and no matter how underbaked my early efforts might have been, they were a damn sight more accomplished than this.
I took up the book again and forced myself to continue. The Case of the Vindictive Vicar was the next story in the seemingly unending chronicles of one Shadrack House, London’s second most brilliant consulting detective. Along with his companion and biographer, Dr Joseph Whatley, who roomed with him in a flat at 117C Peacock Street, House was the scourge of the criminal world, etc. etc. etc., yada yada yada.
Written in the early 1930s by someone named William Radford Stinson, these stories were the most shameless and relentlessly terrible imitations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes tales that I had ever read, and even though Wicking was paying me to write an introduction to his forthcoming Shadrack House omnibus, practically no amount of money totally compensated for having to endure Rudimentary, my good Whatley every other paragraph.
I moaned and cursed him again. Then I realized something: Wicking had given me wide berth as to how I would introduce the stories and had at no time been insistent upon my praising them. Perhaps it would be best to simply tell the truth. Turning to the pad of paper by my elbow, I jotted down a title: A House is not a Holmes, then I sat back and watched, almost as an outsider, as the introduction proceeded to flow out of my pen as though under its own power.
If you are reading for enlightenment, you will find more of that in a pub brawl, I saw myself write. If you are reading for entertainment, there is more to be found in a seed catalogue. If you are reading to appreciate the style of the writing, be forewarned that you will find a far more exacting command of the English language at any performance by Marcel Marceau.
Chuckling, I continued: Having acknowledged this, why, then, am I wholeheartedly commending to you, fair reader, the execrable stories contained in this book? For the simple reason that only through familiarity with the worst storytelling ever committed to paper—i.e., the works of William Radford Stinson—will you be able to appreciate fine literary creation.
Or even mediocre literary creation.
Or any kind of literary creation.
Plus, I am being paid to do so. There is no sense in both of us losing money on this deal.
When finished, I sat back and read it over top to bottom, savouring the sort of bitchy invective that might have given Kenneth Tynan pause. Wicking would more than likely ask for my head over it, but he had no one to blame but himself for enlisting me to break a champagne bottle over the prow of this doomed ship.
Glancing at my wall clock, I was startled to see that it was already 5:50. I had promised to meet Jim Redgrave at The King’s Arch at six. But knowing Jim as I did, my tardiness would hardly be a hindrance. I headed for the door, but then at the last minute swept back to my desk and scooped up my introduction. As the current Arts editor for the Daily Standard, Jim would no doubt enjoy it.
* * * *
The smoky atmosphere of The King’s Arch pub was as welcome as a fat advance. It was nearly quarter past the appointed hour, and as I had suspected, Jim was at a corner table, contemplating a nearly empty pint glass, his stained green necktie (which was as much a part of the man as his shaggy grey mane) appropriately loosened.
As soon as he saw me enter, he flagged me over. “Forgot to wind the watch again, eh, Len?” he shouted over the din.
“Work,” I called back, snaking my way to the bar where I ordered a lager for me and another pint of bitter for Jim, which I carried over to the table.
“Ah, all is forgiven,” he said, eyeing the full glass. “Sit down, Sir Arthur, sit down.”
Calling me Sir Arthur was his way of needling me about having myself given up a position at a daily newspaper to become a mystery novelist.
“So,” he went on, “who has the great Leonard Dobie been killing today?”
“William Radford Stinson,” I replied, pulling out my introduction and handing it to him.
While I sipped my pint, Jim donned his half-glasses and read through the pages quickly, giving several small, snorting laughs in between swallows of bitter. When he was finished, he handed the pages back.
“The Tower has a new executioner, I see,” he said. “You enjoy lawsuits, do you?”
“My publisher said that Stinson died sometime in the seventies, and you know as well as I that you can’t libel the dead.”
“True enough. Just don’t join him through suicide.”
“Come again?”
“Look, Len, you want to savage a Booker winner, you go right ahead, they can take it. Even if they can’t, they’ll pretend they can and console themselves with all their fame and filthy money. In other words, they don’t care what anyone says about them, they’ve got the bloody Booker. But this guy of yours…Stilton, is it?”
“Stinson,” I corrected, “though he has the talent of a cheese.”
“Yes, well, if he was really that bad, then ridicule is redundant. Sure, some may laugh at what you wrote—I laughed at it—but I’m a professional cynic. This will be read by the general public, some of whom might not agree with you.”
“Christ, Jim, you haven’t read this man’s deformed stories.”
“Quite right, I haven’t. Nor do I want to, based on your recommendation. All I’m saying is that it’s possible old Stinson will survive the attack out of sympathy, if nothing else, while you will inadvertently make yourself seem like an arrogant bastard who enjoys dancing on the grave of an inferior.
“You’ve heard of ‘kill the messenger,’ right? Well, try, ‘I’ll never read that messenger again, he’s too nasty,’ on for size.”
He did have a point. No matter what I thought of the lame and lethargic adventures of Shadrack House, somebody out there—perhaps a healthy number of somebodies—might actually like them. If I were to come off too glibly cruel regarding the man’s work I might lose readers of my own. Now I was very glad that I had decided to bring the introduction along for Jim’s perusal.
“I knew it came too easy,” I sighed. “The prose, I mean. The words just rolled out of my pen.”
“Like bitter flowing out of a tap, eh?” he responded, fingering his now-empty glass and looking at me expectantly.
“I bought the last round,” I protested.
“Right, but that was before you put me to work,” he said. “For editing services rendered, one more pint of Fuller’s. That’s cheap, too, considering I’m saving your professional arse.”
I smiled. “Since you put it that way, I’ll get the next two.”
After more than two additional rounds, I left my friend to stagger off to his tube stop and me to mine.
* * * *
I thought no more about the introduction until the next day, when I received a call from Wicking asking when he might receive it.
“Soon,” I promised, and immediately set to work on a more serious version, which did anything but flow out of my pen. I strained to find anything good to say about William Radford Stinson
and I finally settled upon such vague pronouncements as:
Credit must go to Stinson for not attempting to duplicate the style and voice of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but rather for taking the established archetypal character and placing his own distinctive stamp upon it.
Let the readers find out for themselves how atrocious that distinctive stamp was.
Once I had handwritten the first draft (the only way I can compose, even today), I typed it into the computer and, after giving it a quick once over, saved it. I would go over it again in the morning and then email it to Wicking, and good bloody riddance.
But I had no sooner risen from my writing desk than another thought struck me. Could the generous endorsement of such worthless hackwork do just as much damage to my reputation as the indictment of it?
“Oh, damn you, Graham Wicking!” I moaned aloud once again. If the man really had to republish complete tripe, why couldn’t it at least be complete tripe with some kind of historical relevance, like the works of Anne Radcliffe?
Sitting back down, I popped up the second introduction and re-read it. Maybe it was because I was expecting the worst, but it did not read all that glowing. It was fine, and I, frankly, was eager to be rid of it, so after weighing a couple of word choices and cleaning up a grammatical mistake, I opened up an email and attached it.
Before I hit the send button, however, I had another attack of deliberation. Waffling, if you must.
“Oh, bloody hell,” I muttered, pulling out the pages for the first, vicious version, and typing it directly into the body of the email. At the top I wrote:
Graham—I was of too different minds regarding Shadrack House, so I am sending you both. Please choose the one you like best.
After sending it, I hoped I had seen the last of Stinson and his maimed creation until the cheque from Wicking arrived.
Alas, that hope was dashed three nights later.
* * * *
It was sometime after midnight, and I had settled into bed and was on the verge of floating off to nightly oblivion when the phone rang. Lurching up, rather disoriented, I began to grope for the phone in the dark room. Finding it, I shouted: “Yes, hello, this is Dobie, who is calling?”
“Good morning, Sir Arthur,” a voice replied.
“Jim, for god’s sake!” I cried. “What time is it?”
“Twelve-thirty-six. Don’t tell me you were asleep. Oh, of course you were, you’re no longer working for a daily like us honest folk, are you?”
“Christ, Jim, what is it you want?”
“Remember your friend, Stinson?”
“Of course. What of him?”
“Yesterday Considine, our managing editor, was on one of his royal tears about his work load. During the course of his rant he dropped a line about wishing he could just disappear into the void like Radford Stinson.”
“What does that mean?” I yawned.
“Exactly what I wanted to know, so I went down to the morgue files and looked up whatever we had on him, just out of curiosity. And guess what I found?”
“He was untalented enough to go into writing films and made a bloody fortune?”
“Sour bollocks don’t become you,” Jim said. “You’d write a film script in a heartbeat if anyone ever asked you.”
He was right, but that was beside the point. “For god’s sake, Jim, tell me what you found.”
“Considine was not speaking metaphorically. Your man Stinson really did disappear into the void. Here, let me read it for you…”
Over the phone line I could hear the rustling of a sheet of paper.
“Headline: ‘Writer is missing.’ Dateline: London. Byline: Ronald Messervy. Copy: ‘Friends of William Radford Stinson of Lambeth, who achieved some success prior to World War II as a writer of detective stories, have contacted the Metropolitan Police to report that the sixty-five year old author has been missing for the better part of a fortnight. He was last seen on Tuesday the twenty-third of July, having appeared at a meeting of a group of devotees of his writings who call themselves the Peacock Street Peculiars.’”
“The Peacock Street Peculiars?” I repeated. “You mean the man actually had a fan club?”
“Even Hitler has a fan club,” Jim rejoined. “But the gist of this is that Stinson left the gathering to go home, and after that he was never seen again.”
“What year was this?”
“Nineteen seventy-four.”
Why had Wicking never mentioned the man’s disappearance? Perhaps he was not aware of it, assuming as he did that Stinson had simply died. All hopes for returning to sleep had suddenly gone away and were replaced by that kind of excitement that occurs when an idea suddenly strikes. An idea so good that it simply has to be explored and written down.
The mystery of Stinson’s fate was far more intriguing than anything the man ever wrote. If I could discover the truth, it would make for a fascinating introduction.
“You still awake, Len?” I heard Jim’s voice ask.
“Yes, no thanks to you,” I replied. “Jim, is that reporter, Messervy, still around?”
“No, Ronnie retired around the time Thatcher left and died maybe six, seven years ago.”
After asking Jim to send me a copy of the article, I rang off. And despite my presumption that I would be awake the entire night, I fell back asleep sometime after 2:30.
* * * *
The next morning I rang up Wicking. “Graham, I need to speak to you about the introduction,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I like it, but I don’t understand the cover message. What do you mean, ‘choose the one you like best?’”
“I mean just that, pick the favourable one or the honest one.”
“But I only received the one in your attachment. I particularly like the bit about his distinctive stamp.”
So Wicking had only received the protect-my-arse version? I must have somehow made a muddle of inputting the other one. But it was no matter at this point.
“Look, Graham, I found something out about Stinson last night that I’d like to include as well. In fact, I’d like to redo the entire thing.”
“The one you sent is fine, Len.”
“Even so, the one I’m contemplating will be far finer. It shouldn’t take me long to research it. What’s your absolute drop dead, head-in-the-basket, deadline?”
“Now, actually.”
“Come on, Graham, I know you can squeeze out a couple more days.”
“Len, really—”
“Today is Thursday. Give me until Monday end of day. That’s all I’m asking.”
There was a sigh at the other end. “Len, really, the one you sent is perfect.”
“I’ll get back to you on Monday. Thanks, Graham.”
I rang off, a plan already in mind. I was thinking far beyond a mere introduction for a small genre publisher. The mystery of William Radford Stinson was the stuff of a major article for a slick, or even a book about one of the most intriguing (if unknown) real-life mysteries of the last century! The intro for Graham would simply be the tease.
Even so, the weekend was not much time. I had to get moving. The place to start, I reckoned, was the British Museum. Tubing there after lunch, I began by checking every listing for Stinson. There were only three: two collections of his dreadful stories and one of those round-robin mystery “novels” in which a dozen authors each take a chapter and do their damnedest to flummox the poor sod who has to follow them. Such projects tend to be far more entertaining for the contributors than the readers.
* * * *
Stinson had been enlisted to wrap the entire mess up in the final chapter, but I was not much interested in his contribution as his bio in the back of the book, which read:
Perhaps best known for his Sherlockian-flavoured stories about Shadrack House, the pride of Peacock Street, William Radford Stinson (b. 1909) sidelined his writing career in the late 1940s to become a London barrister. His contribution to ‘Murder-Go-Round’ represents his first fiction i
n a quarter century, and we are delighted to have him back.
A barrister? This was new information, but it went a ways toward explaining why his fiction output had been so sporadic. More importantly, the bio implied that he was still practicing law when the book was published in 1969, five years before Stinson’s disappearance.
Snapping the book shut, I returned it to the stacks and contemplated my next move. Somewhere in this great repository of information there must be a listing of barristers from the city of London, but how much digging would it take to unearth it? I had a better idea.
Leaving the building, I crossed the street to the Museum Tavern where, fortified by a pint, I pulled out my mobile phone and called Henry Beckham, Esq., the man who had ably handled my divorce proceedings some years back.
“Dobie!” Henry’s voice cried. “What a surprise. You must be in trouble or else you would not be calling. What is it this time, another disastrous marriage or a plagiarism suit?”
“Neither, you insufferable git,” I replied cheerfully. “I’m trying to find out about one of your lot called Stinson, William Radford Stinson.”
I gave him the basic information, but to no avail: he had never heard of the man, either as a lawyer or a writer. After enduring and returning a few more jovial insults and making the promise to join him at his club for dinner some night, I rang off.
I was working on my third pint when my mobile rang. It was Beckham calling back.
“I hope you appreciate the effort I have put forth on your behalf,” he began. “I checked with a friend of mine at the Temple, Derek Evans, and he was indeed able to produce someone who remembered this Stinson chap of yours. The fellow’s name is Todgers, though I’m told he’s generally referred to in chambers as ‘Old Todgers.’”
“What does he recall?” I asked.
“From the description of him, the Battle of Hastings.”
“What does he recall about Stinson?”
“Well, Derek told me that Old Todgers characterized Stinson as a rather nondescript sort, with a tendency to turn down high-profile cases for sure bets that required less work. Unimaginative was the word used to describe him.”
The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters Page 50
