Sometimes I wish that I had the courage to visit Mrs Hollis at Mickleham Grange and ask for her version of the story. Would she give it to me? I hardly think she would. Sympathy, yes, understanding, yes, but her confidence, no.
There are secrets which saints and witches never tell.
THE HABEAS CORPUS CLUB
PEREGRINE POCOCK is a prolific writer. His stories are sensational, but his characters—and usually they are bad characters—live. For they are his own children, plentifully endowed with Peregrine’s vigorous vitality. Writing primarily for cave men of the low-browed Cro-Magnon type, he yet numbers among his readers prime ministers and archbishops.
But even the ordinary lay student of Pocock and those authors who laboriously follow his footsteps in the dark must have been struck by the fact that less than justice is done to the characters they murder at the end of the first or second chapter.
A corpse has to be discovered in startling circumstances—on the farther side of the bunker that guards the thirteenth green, in a reserved sleeping berth on the Orient Express, in Sir Marmaduke’s family pew at Widdecombe Basset, in a pantechnicon outside Number 10 Downing Street. The corpse is the important thing. It is the spring-board that projects frail clues and dark suspicions.
But what of the man to whom it belongs? Cut off in the first few pages, he has no opportunities of displaying, to say nothing of developing, his character. His entry coincides with his exit; he dies that romance may live, a clothes-peg for the garrotter’s scarf, a receptacle for the chemist’s poison, a shooting target for the Baby Browning, a fleshy sheath for the assassin’s knife.
Remembering that Peregrine Pocock’s characters are alive, and that the fact is vouched for by all our younger clergy and the whole of the medical profession, there is nothing really surprising in their founding the Habeas Corpus Club. The suggestion of a permanent home where, in the words of the club’s prospectus, men and women who have given their lives for the novel-reading public may have an opportunity of developing their characters in a more sheltered environment, was first mooted by the widow of a wealthy stockbroker who had been done to death in the opening sentence of a popular detective story. The idea caught on, and when she herself was stabbed in the sequel after a life of quiet unostentatious penal service, a few friends desirous of commemorating her career decided to extend the original scheme by admitting as associate members characters who were eligible for murder but who, for one reason or another, had been unable to meet their authors. The secretary, himself the victim of a Spanish vendetta, in showing me round the club summed up this side of its activities in the phrase, ‘the self-determination of smaller personalities’.
The visitor is at once struck on entering the building by the spaciousness of the lounge for associate members. An arrangement of boxes, not unlike that of the old coffee taverns, gives ample opportunity for associates to meet with authors and to discuss with them in privacy the details of their deaths. On the occasion of my visit there must have been at least thirty people in the room. Wealthy businessmen in fur-lined overcoats chatted with collectors of eastern curios and eccentric numismatists. Old sea captains, remarkably hale and brown, seated on their iron-bound chests before the fire, discussed rude ciphers with miners from Australia and California and compared tattoo marks. An elderly Mormon, conspicuously bewigged, carried on a tender conversation with a beautiful German spy. From time to time an author would break into a little group and then withdraw with one of its members to a box. I was told by the secretary that booking up engagements is no easy matter, and with the comparative low death-rate in many novels it is difficult to avoid cut-throat competition. One of their associate members, an old lady of over ninety, the morganatic wife of one of the crowned heads of Europe, had been on their books ever since the club was started. She had stipulated at first for a life extending over at least six chapters and for serial publication, but had been obliged to lower her terms. She was actually thinking of offering to be murdered in the foreword and had sketched out an effective dust-cover for her pall.
‘Hers is a very difficult problem,’ said the secretary, ‘but there is just a chance that she might be used by Lady Julia Longbow in her Memories of a Diplomat’s Wife.’ When terms have been satisfactorily discussed with an author, a contract is drawn up and signed, and the associate member’s name is posted in the lobby on a board inscribed ‘Forthcoming Deaths’. I myself had the privilege of witnessing a charming little ceremonial that arose out of such an announcement. A pageboy entered the lounge, telegram in hand. I recognised him at once as Eddie Kershaw, one of Pocock’s earliest creations, the boy, it will be remembered, whose body was found in such intriguing circumstances in the Vale of Health in Hampstead.
‘Telegram for Sir Lazarus Money!’ he cried.
A tall, florid gentleman, with a carnation in his buttonhole, sprang at once to his feet. ‘It’s my call, boys!’ he said as he made his way to the bar. Instantly there was a buzz of conversation.
‘Who’s the author?’
‘Old Rickaby; Rape and Carnage are to publish it at seven and six.’
‘A first-class show.’
‘And what about cinema rights?’
‘Is he going to let you talk?’
‘No, confound him! I only half whisper a woman’s name.’
‘Never mind, old boy. One crowded hour of glorious life; it’s worth it, you know. They’ll motor you down, of course?’
‘Yes, in the usual Rolls Royce, to some out of the way shooting-box on the Yorkshire moors.’
They thronged around him, loud in their congratulations. Two men especially attracted my attention from their extraordinary likeness to one another.
‘Who are they?’ I asked the secretary.
‘Twins,’ he replied. ‘They have recently joined as associates, but I don’t expect we shall have them long on our books. They have hit on a really novel line in mixed identities—each is murdered by the other’s wife, who mistakes him for her own husband. The public will get double value for its money, since everything will be duplicated. I have seldom met with a situation so lavish in false clues. Gore-Hemmeridge is meeting the twins to-morrow to talk over details. Goodbye, Sir Lazarus, and the best of good wishes.’
‘And now,’ said the secretary, ‘I expect you would like to see something of the residential side of the club.’
We passed through swing-doors marked ‘Members Only’ into the reading-room where conversation appeared to be general. I suppose I must have shown surprise, for the secretary quietly drew my attention to a printed notice over the mantelpiece:
IN LIFE YOU WERE SILENT; YOU MAY TALK NOW.
‘The things that are said,’ remarked the secretary, ‘when death has at last unsealed their lips are remarkably interesting. This room is rich in reminiscence, and it is most encouraging to observe how members’ characters unfold as they talk. Mr Luker, whom the world knew only as a miser (you will remember how he was found shot in the back in the fourth chapter of The New Guinea Mystery), has, through his friendship with Otto Schmid, the secret service agent, become intensely interested in the ethical basis of internationalism. Again, Mr Schmid has been led through his talks with Professor Maguire to make a special study of instinct and behaviour and their relation to each other in the Social Commonwealth. Occasionally, of course, we find members unresponsive. Colonel Woodcocke, of the Indian Army, and Janet Strong, the asylum nurse, could only be aroused from a morbid and taciturn brooding over the past by a common interest in the game of chess. They are now the life and soul of the Entertainments Committee.’
The members, I was told, follow events in the publishing world with the greatest interest. Many of them have personal friends among prospective victims in whose fate they are naturally concerned, and details of forthcoming novels are anxiously looked for. ‘We don’t in any way discourage it,’ said the secretary, ‘since it tends to take them out of themselves. Every day I become more and more convinced of the value of the work th
e club is doing. It is a necessary corollary to all imaginary and creative effort. There should be similar institutions in every city if only the charitable public gave with their heads as well as with their hearts. But millions now giving will never try.’
He shook hands with me warmly as I left.
‘One question,’ I said. ‘Do members never leave the premises?’
‘Never by day,’ he answered, ‘always by night. There is still a place in the scheme of things for retributive justice. What I am about to say does not, I am sure, apply to you. We have no quarrel with journalists. At night the club is closed. We go to haunt the authors who murdered us. Do you wonder that Peregrine Pocock hardly ever sleeps?’
Contents
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CONTENTS Introduction by Richard Dalby Midnight House The Star Across the Moors August Heat Sambo Unwinding Sarah Bennet’s Possession The Tortoise The Beast with Five Fingers Six to Six-Thirty Blinds Miss Cornelius The Heart of the Fire Peter Levisham The Clock Ghosts and Jossers The Sleeping Major The Ankardyne Pew The Tool The Devil’s Bridge Two and a Third Miss Avenal The Double Eye The Dabblers Mrs Ormerod The Follower The Man Who Hated Aspidistras Double Demon The Arm of Mrs Egan Account Rendered The Flying Out of Mrs Barnard Hollis The Habeas Corpus Club
INTRODUCTION by Richard Dalby
MIDNIGHT HOUSE
THE STAR
ACROSS THE MOORS
AUGUST HEAT
SAMBO
UNWINDING
SARAH BENNET’S POSSESSION
THE TORTOISE
THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
SIX TO SIX-THIRTY
BLINDS
MISS CORNELIUS
THE HEART OF THE FIRE
PETER LEVISHAM
THE CLOCK
GHOSTS AND JOSSERS
THE SLEEPING MAJOR
THE ANKARDYNE PEW
THE TOOL
THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE
TWO AND A THIRD
MISS AVENAL
THE DOUBLE EYE
THE DABBLERS
MRS ORMEROD
THE FOLLOWER
THE MAN WHO HATED ASPIDISTRAS
DOUBLE DEMON
THE ARM OF MRS EGAN
ACCOUNT RENDERED
THE FLYING OUT OF MRS BARNARD HOLLIS
THE HABEAS CORPUS CLUB
The Double Eye Page 33