Bodies from the Library 2

Selected and introduced by

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Collins Crime Club 2019

Selection, introduction and notes © Tony Medawar 2019

For copyright acknowledgements, see Acknowledgements

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

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

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: 9780008318758

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008318765

Version: 2020-10-23

Cover

Title Page BODIES FROM THE LIBRARY 2 Forgotten stories of mystery and suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of the Golden Age Selected and introduced by

Copyright

Introduction

NO FACE

Christianna Brand

BEFORE AND AFTER

Peter Antony

HOTEL EVIDENCE

Helen Simpson

EXIT BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Q Patrick

ROOM TO LET

Margery Allingham

A JOKE’S A JOKE

Jonathan Latimer

THE MAN WHO KNEW

Agatha Christie

THE ALMOST PERFECT MURDER CASE

S. S. Van Dine

THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

Edmund Crispin

CHANCE IS A GREAT THING

E. C. R. Lorac

THE MENTAL BROADCAST

Clayton Rawson

WHITE CAP

Ethel Lina White

SIXPENNYWORTH

John Rhode

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DORSET SQUIRE

C. A. Alington

THE LOCKED ROOM

Dorothy L. Sayers

Acknowledgements

Also available

About the Publisher

‘A great many crime short stories continue to be written with nothing but entertainment in mind.’

Julian Symons

As with the first volume of Bodies from the Library (HarperCollins, 2018), the aim of this volume is to bring into the light more lost or previously unknown short fiction by some of the best-known writers active during the Golden Age of crime and detective fiction, a period that can be loosely defined as starting in 1913 and ending in 1937. These dates mark the publication of two major titles: Trent’s Last Case , in which the journalist E. C. Bentley provided an antidote to Sherlock Holmes; and Busman’s Honeymoon , described as ‘a love story with detective interruptions’ by its author Dorothy L. Sayers.

For our purposes, there is also a loose definition of crime and detective fiction and in this volume, as well as stories that conform to S. S. Van Dine’s requirement that ‘there simply must be a corpse’, there is a story that sets out merely to deceive the reader by only appearing to be criminous, one that blurs the distinction between fact and fiction and another that was published after the end of the Golden Age but playfully tweaks its tail …

Enjoy!

Tony Medawar

February 2019

They sat in their silent ring in the darkened room and their touching fingers trembled and jerked apart and touched again … He was trying frantically to get through to them. ‘Listen to me! Listen! They were wrong, warn them, they’d got it all wrong!’ But they did not hear him; over his voice the sweet piping treble was burbling on of the peace and sunshine over here on the Other Side, and all the flowers. No ear for his soundless screaming: ‘It’s all going to begin again …’

Ringing up the police—Miss Delphine Grey. ‘Mr Joseph Hawke to speak to Superintendent Tomm.’

The weary voice. ‘Yes, Mr Hawke?’

He was half hysterical, gibbering with excitement. ‘You know, Superintendent, Joseph Hawke, famed clairvoyant. I sent you that article I published after the last time. The man is a lunatic—’

The murderer killed apparently at random, anyone, any time, any place. The swift incapacitating stab in the back, the body turned over and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again. A plastic sheet would be throw down, which had protected the killer from the spurting blood; and for the rest, no sign left, ever, no clue for a police force stretched to its limit, on the edge of desperation. And every crank in the country ringing up, writing in, with their crack-pot theories. ‘Well, so, Mr Hawke—’