E. C. Bentley - Trent’s Last Case

‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

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Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Thomas Nelson and Sons 1913

Copyright © Estate of E. C. Bentley 1913

Introduction © John Curran 2017

Afterword © Estate of Dorothy L. Sayers 1978

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1913, 2020

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008216269

Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008216276

Version: 2020-06-24

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Copyright Copyright Introduction Dedication I. BAD NEWS II. KNOCKING THE TOWN ENDWAYS III. BREAKFAST IV. HANDCUFFS IN THE AIR V. POKING ABOUT VI. MR BUNNER ON THE CASE VII. THE LADY IN BLACK VIII. THE INQUEST IX. A HOT SCENT X. THE WIFE OF DIVES XI. HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED XII. EVIL DAYS XIII. ERUPTION XIV. WRITING A LETTER XV. DOUBLE CUNNING XVI. THE LAST STRAW Afterword The Detective Story Club About the Publisher COLLINS CRIME CLUB An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Thomas Nelson and Sons 1913 Copyright © Estate of E. C. Bentley 1913 Introduction © John Curran 2017 Afterword © Estate of Dorothy L. Sayers 1978 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1913, 2020 A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008216269 Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008216276 Version: 2020-06-24

Introduction

Dedication

I. BAD NEWS

II. KNOCKING THE TOWN ENDWAYS

III. BREAKFAST

IV. HANDCUFFS IN THE AIR

V. POKING ABOUT

VI. MR BUNNER ON THE CASE

VII. THE LADY IN BLACK

VIII. THE INQUEST

IX. A HOT SCENT

X. THE WIFE OF DIVES

XI. HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED

XII. EVIL DAYS

XIII. ERUPTION

XIV. WRITING A LETTER

XV. DOUBLE CUNNING

XVI. THE LAST STRAW

Afterword

The Detective Story Club

About the Publisher

‘SOME time in the year 1910 it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to write a detective story of a new sort …’

Thus begins E. C. Bentley’s discussion of his famous novel, Trent’s Last Case. In his 1940 autobiography, Those Days , he devotes an entire chapter to the genesis of what has become one of the most famous milestones in the genre. He continues:

‘It should be possible I thought, to write a detective story in which the detective was recognisable as a human being … It was not until I had gone a long way with the plot that the most pleasing notion of all came to me: the notion of making the hero’s hard-won and obviously correct solution to the mystery turn out to be completely wrong … In the result, it does not seem to have been generally noticed that Trent’s Last Case is not so much a detective story as an exposure of detective stories.’

In the year 1910 the market for detective short stories was thriving. Sherlock Holmes had dominated for the previous two decades since his first Strand appearance, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891). R. Austin Freeman’s Dr Thorndyke, one of the earliest, and certainly the most persuasive, of the forensic detectives—Freeman was a medical doctor—had been investigating in both short story and novel since 1907 and, as Bentley was considering his contribution to the genre, G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and A. E. W. Mason’s Inspector Hanaud were embarking on their crime-solving careers. Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard and Victor L. Whitechurch’s Thorpe Hazell in Thrilling Stories of the Railway were also among the dozens of detectives—most of them now long forgotten—appearing regularly in the popular magazines. The stage was set for a ‘detective story of a new sort’…

Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born in London in 1875; he won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford and it was while studying Law in London that he began writing for various newspapers and magazines including, for ten years, the Daily News . Although called to the Bar in 1902, most of his working life was spent at the Daily Telegraph , beginning in 1912; although he ‘retired’ from journalism in 1934, with the outbreak of WWII and the call-up of younger men, he returned as literary critic in 1939, eventually leaving in 1947.

More whimsically, Bentley was also the originator of the four-line metrically-irregular verse that became known as the ‘Clerihew’. The earliest example dates from 1905:

‘Sir Humphrey Davy

Abominated gravy

He lived in the odium