Guilty creatures, p.1
Guilty Creatures, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Introduction, selection, and notes © 2021, 2022 by Martin Edwards
“The Green Parrakeet” © 1918 by The Estate of F. Tennyson Jesse
“Hanging by a Hair” © 1950 by Clifford Witting. Reprinted with the permission of The Estate of Clifford Witting.
“The Man Who Shot Birds” © 1954 by The Estate of Kathleen Freeman
“Death in a Cage” © 1958 by Josephine Bell. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Estate of Josephine Bell.
“The Hornet’s Nest” © 1967 by Christianna Brand. Reprinted with the permission of A. M. Heath, on behalf of The Estate of Christianna Brand.
Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover illustration © NRM/Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be pleased to be notified of any corrections to be incorporated in reprints or future editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the British Library
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Edwards, Martin, editor.
Title: Guilty creatures : a menagerie of mysteries / edited and introduced
by Martin Edwards.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2022] | Series:
British Library crime classics
Identifiers: LCCN 2021042285 (print) | LCCN 2021042286 (ebook) | (trade paperback) | (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories, English. | Animals--Fiction.
| Animals in literature. | LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Short
stories.
Classification: LCC PR1309.D4 G85 2022 (print) | LCC PR1309.D4 (ebook) |
DDC 823/.087208--dc23/eng/20210927
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042285
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042286
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane
The Case of Janissary
The Sapient Monkey
The Green Parrakeet
The Oracle of the Dog
The Man Who Hated Earthworms
The Courtyard of the Fly
The Yellow Slugs
Pit of Screams
Hanging by a Hair
The Man Who Shot Birds
Death in a Cage
The Man Who Loved Animals
The Hornet’s Nest
Back Cover
Introduction
From the first detective story, Edgar Allan Poe’s locked room puzzle “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” onwards, animals, birds, and insects have played a memorable part in countless mysteries, and in a wide variety of ways. Count Fosco, the brilliantly characterised villain in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White was surrounded by “a cockatoo, two canary-birds and a whole family of white mice,” while the hound of the Baskervilles famously terrorised Dartmoor in Arthur Conan Doyle’s superb Sherlock Holmes novel. Since then, many crime writers have written about members of the animal kingdom. This anthology celebrates an often-overlooked species of classic crime fiction.
Doyle was a man who loved sport and the outdoors, and his interest in animals is reflected in a few of his finest pieces of fiction, although it must be said that the guilty creature in “The Speckled Band,” one of the finest entries in the Holmes case-book, does not actually exist.
Apart from The Hound of the Baskervilles, there is “Silver Blaze,” one of the most popular short stories to feature animals. Holmes investigates the disappearance of a prize-winning racehorse, which is favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the death of its trainer owner. His inquiries give rise to a celebrated exchange with the competent but unimaginative Devonshire police officer Inspector Gregory:
Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
The patterns of animal behaviour are central to the story, which was first published in 1892. Four years later, Doyle took up riding during a trip to Egypt. He soon received a reminder of the unpredictability of animals: on one occasion a frisky black stallion sent him flying and kicked him on the head with such force that he was lucky not to lose an eye.
By that time, the literary career of Nat Gould was already under way. His first book, The Double Life: a Tale of the Melbourne Cup, appeared in 1891, and he proceeded to turn out more than a hundred thrillers, generally with a horse racing theme. The Morning Post described him, with a touch of hyperbole, as: “the most widely read of all modern story-tellers, and a genius in his down-right way.” His successes were later eclipsed by those of the high-profile former jockey Dick Francis, whose crime writing career began in 1962 with Dead Cert. No fewer than three of his thrillers, which invariably drew on his knowledge of horse racing, won Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America.
Animals play an extraordinarily wide variety of roles in crime stories. They may be victims, witnesses, even detectives. Authors who are passionate animal lovers are especially inclined to make use of them in their fiction. A prime example is Agatha Christie. She said in An Autobiography: “On my fifth birthday, I was given a dog. It was the most shattering thing that ever happened to me; such unbelievable joy that I was unable to say a word.” The new pet was a Yorkshire terrier puppy, and Christie’s devotion to dogs became lifelong.
Christie wrote a short story, “The Incident of the Dog’s Ball,” in or around 1933, although it was not published for more than three-quarters of a century, when John Curran included it in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Mysteries in the Making. The reason for its non-appearance seems to be that Christie decided to rework the central idea into a full-length Hercule Poirot novel, Dumb Witness, aka Poirot Loses a Client, which first appeared in 1937. Christie dedicated the book to her wire-haired terrier, Peter, who is fictionalised in the story as Bob, and whose picture took pride of place on the dust jacket of the first edition. She also has Poirot say approvingly: “The dog, he argues from reason. He is intelligent, he makes his deductions according to his point of view. There are people who may enter a house and there are people who may not—that a dog soon learns.”
Stella Tower’s Dumb Vengeance, published four years before Christie’s book appeared, is a rare mystery by a talented but little-known writer (she also published under the name Faith Wolseley), but is even more striking. The story is told in the first person; the narrator is Miss Jenkins, who lives at Houghton, the home of well-to-do John Vine and his wife, Gloria. Vine is an amiable fellow, and Miss Jenkins is devoted to him. But the first twist in this interesting story comes when we discover that Miss Jenkins is a dog…
It is more than likely that Dumb Vengeance was the first crime novel to be narrated by an animal—I haven’t yet found an earlier example—but it was not the last. Felidae, published in 1999 by the Turkish-German writer Akif Pirinçci, is an especially striking piece of work. Narrated by Francis, a cat, the book was subsequently filmed, and launched a series which has so far run to eight books.
Felidae is a dark story, in marked contrast to many of the so-called “cosy crime” mysteries which focus on animals and which have enjoyed considerable success right up to the present day. The American Clea Simon has become a prolific author of light-hearted pet mysteries such as Probable Claws, Cries and Whiskers, Parrots Prove Deadly, and When Bunnies Go Bad. Cats are especially popular protagonists in detective stories, and the long-running series by Lillian Jackson Braun which began in 1966 with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (the cat in question is a Siamese called Koko) yielded many bestsellers.
Writers often find their imagination liberated by a storyline about an animal, bird, or insect . The British philosopher and mystic Gerald Heard made an unexpected splash with A Taste for Honey, a curiosity of a crime novel published in 1941 under the name H. F. Heard. The story featured an enigmatic beekeeper who calls himself Mr. Mycroft; it was filmed (not very successfully) in 1966 as The Deadly Bees, with a script co-written by Robert Bloch, and gave rise to a movie subgenre jokily dubbed as “beesploitation” and featuring legendary flops such as The Swarm.
A much more effective thriller film was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier, and with a screenplay written by Evan Hunter, who was perhaps better known as Ed McBain, the master of the American police procedural novel. Ann Cleeves won a CWA Gold Dagger for Raven Black, published in 2006, and ornithology features in many of her books, above all her first series of eight novels featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones. Birds continue to feature in interesting crime novels, including Out of a Clear Sky, a story of psychological suspense by Sally Hinchcliffe, and a first novel which seems, surprisingly, to have had no successors.
Guilty Creatures gathers together a wide range of stories illustrating some of the endless possibilities of this branch of mystery fiction. I’m grateful to the staff of the publishing department at the British Library for their work on the book, to Nigel Moss, John Cooper, and Jamie Sturgeon for their constructive suggestions about stories which might fit the brief, and to Doug Greene for his help as regards the story by F. Tennyson Jesse.
And now it just remains for me to express the hope that readers, whether animal lovers or not, will find plenty of entertainment in these pages. It’s just possible you may never look at your much loved pet in quite the same way again…
—Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Edinburgh-born writer and physician Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859–1930) created, in Sherlock Holmes, the most renowned character in the history of fiction. Detection was only one of his many literary interests. Rodney Stone was a novel about boxing, The Tragedy of the Korosko was a thriller set in Egypt, and The Lost World, a work of science fiction. His historical novels include Sir Nigel, set in the fourteenth century, and the Brigadier Gerard books looked back to Napoleonic times. Doyle’s interest in the macabre surfaced in memorable short horror tales such as “The Leather Funnel,” “The Terror of Blue John Gap,” and “Lot No. 249.”
“The Lion’s Mane” was one of the last stories that Doyle wrote about Holmes, and its merits are often underestimated, although Doyle himself thought it one of the best of his stories in terms of plot. First published in The Strand Magazine in December 1926, although possibly written five or six years earlier, it presents an unusual mystery and is especially notable for its account of Holmes’s activities during his retirement. The great detective himself, rather than Dr. Watson, narrates. The story features an intriguing “dying message clue” and the tragic death of a dog, as well as an extraordinary explanation for the mystery. Holmes’s use of photography in his detective work is mentioned (for the first time in the canon), and the story illustrates the benefit to a sleuth of being exceptionally well read.
***
It is a most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career should have come to me after my retirement, and be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him. Thus I must act as my own chronicler. Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty! As it is, however, I must needs tell my tale in my own plain way, showing by my words each step upon the difficult road which lay before me as I searched for the mystery of the Lion’s Mane.
My villa is situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel. At this point the coast line is entirely of chalk cliffs, which can only be descended by a single, long, tortuous path, which is steep and slippery. At the bottom of the path lie a hundred yards of pebbles and shingle, even when the tide is at full. Here and there, however, there are curves and hollows which make splendid swimming pools filled afresh with each flow. This admirable beach extends for some miles in each direction, save only at one point where the little cove and village of Fulworth break the line.
My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves. Half a mile off, however, is Harold Stackhurst’s well-known coaching establishment, The Gables—quite a large place, which contains some score of young fellows preparing for various professions, with a staff of several masters. Stackhurst himself was a well-known rowing Blue in his day, and an excellent all-round scholar. He and I were always friendly from the day I came to the coast, and he was the one man who was on such terms with me that we could drop in on each other in the evenings without an invitation.
Towards the end of July 1907, there was a severe gale, the wind blowing up-Channel, heaping the seas to the base of the cliffs, and leaving a lagoon at the turn of the tide. On the morning of which I speak the wind had abated, and all Nature was newly washed and fresh. It was impossible to work upon so delightful a day, and I strolled out before breakfast to enjoy the exquisite air. I walked along the cliff path which led to the steep descent to the beach. As I walked I heard a shout behind me, and there was Harold Stackhurst waving his hand in cheery greeting.
“What a morning, Mr. Holmes! I thought I should see you out.”
“Going for a swim, I see.”
“At your old tricks again,” he laughed, patting his bulging pocket. “Yes, McPherson started early, and I expect I may find him there.”
Fitzroy McPherson was the science master, a fine upstanding young fellow whose life had been crippled by heart trouble following rheumatic fever. He was a natural athlete, however, and excelled in every game which did not throw too great a strain upon him. Summer and winter he went for his swim, and, as I am a swimmer myself, I have often joined him.
At this moment we saw the man himself. His head showed above the edge of the cliff where the path ends. Then his whole figure appeared at the top, staggering like a drunken man. The next instant he threw up his hands, and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Stackhurst and I rushed forward—it may have been fifty yards—and turned him on his back. He was obviously dying. Those glazed sunken eyes and dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else. One glimmer of life came into his face for an instant, and he uttered two or three words with an eager air of warning. They were slurred and indistinct, but to my ear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips, were “the lion’s mane.” It was utterly irrelevant and unintelligible, and yet I could twist the sound into no other sense. Then he half raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air and fell forward on his side. He was dead.
My companion was paralysed by the sudden horror of it, but I, as may well be imagined, had every sense on the alert. And I had need, for it was speedily evident that we were in the presence of an extraordinary case. The man was dressed only in his Burberry overcoat, his trousers, and an unlaced pair of canvas shoes. As he fell over, his Burberry, which had been simply thrown round his shoulders, slipped off, exposing his trunk. We stared at it in amazement. His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how terrible that agony had been.
I was kneeling and Stackhurst standing by the body when a shadow fell across us, and we found that Ian Murdoch was by our side. Murdoch was the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man, so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend. He seemed to live in some high abstract region of surds and conic sections with little to connect him with ordinary life. He was looked upon as an oddity by the students, and would have been their butt, but there was some strange outlandish blood in the man which showed itself not only in his coal-black eyes and swarthy face, but also in occasional outbreaks of temper, which could only be described as ferocious. On one occasion, being plagued by a little dog belonging to McPherson, he had caught the creature up and hurled it through the plate-glass window—an action for which Stackhurst would certainly have given him his dismissal had he not been a very valuable teacher. Such was the strange, complex man who now appeared beside us. He seemed to be honestly shocked at the sight before him, though the incident of the dog may show that there was no great sympathy between the dead man and himself.
