The End Of Solomon Grundy

by Julian Symons

  For a moment she could not speak, then she said,

  “You’re not responsible.”

  “Do you know that if I’d been found guilty they wouldn’t have hanged me. That’s the law.” He laughed.

  “If you strangle someone they don’t hang you. If you shoot someone, they do.”

  I have done nothing, she wanted to say, but she could not utter the words. “Those letters you wrote, how could you have written them?”

  “They’re part of the game. You have to pretend, that’s one of the rules.”

  “The rules,” she cried out. “Did you live by the rules?”

  “I only did what I had to do,” he said, as though the words were an answer with which she should be satisfied.

  “But you don’t have to do it to me.” She was aware of a desire to live, the most intense desire she had ever known. “I am innocent. I’m not responsible.”

  “Which of us is innocent?” he said gently, almost chidingly. “And you said just now that I was not responsible. Do you mean that there is no such thing as responsibility?”

  Then the revolver went off.

  Felicity Facey heard it. “That was a shot.”

  “Don’t be absurd, my dear.”

  “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to telephone the police.”

  Her husband sighed.

  When the police arrived they found Grundy sitting beside the window, as though he were expecting them. His wife lay on the floor. He had shot her once, through the temple. His hands, large, strong and hairy, rested on his knees. One of them held the revolver.

  Epilogue:

  The End of Solomon Grundy

  Solomon Grundy was held to be fit to plead to the murder of his wife, and he refused to accept his counsel’s advice (his counsel was not Magnus Newton this time) to base a defence upon diminished responsibility. He refused also to enter the witness box. When he had been found guilty, and was asked if he had anything to say before sentence, he replied: “I am happy to accept the verdict of the Court, but I wish to go on record as saying that I do not regard the members of the jury as responsible for their actions.” The judge made no comment upon this remark before pronouncing the death sentence. Grundy was hanged on a cold morning in March.

  Shortly afterwards local school children began to sing a rhyme which, although (or perhaps because) they did not really understand the meaning of it, became very popular. It ran:

  Solomon Grundy

  Strangled her Monday.

  Arrested on Tuesday.

  Tried on a Wednesday.

  Acquitted on Thursday.

  Shot her Friday.

  Arrested on Saturday.

  Ate his dinner Sunday.

  Hanged on a Monday.

  That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

  Inspector Bland Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Immaterial Murder Case 1945

  2. A Man Called Jones 1947

  3. Bland Beginning 1949

  Inspector Crambo Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Narrowing Circle 1954

  2. The Gigantic Shadow also as: The Pipe Dream 1947

  Joan Kahn-Harper Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Man Who Killed Himself 1967

  2. The Man Who Lost His Wife 1967

  3. The Man Whose Dreams Came True 1968

  4. The Players & The Game 1972

  5. The Plot Against Roger Rider 1973

  Sheridan Haynes

  1. A Three Pipe Problem 1975

  Novels

  (in order of first publication)

  1. The 31st of February 1950

  2. The Broken Penny 1953

  3. The Paper Chase also as: Bogue’s Fortune 1956

  4. The Colour of Murder 1957

  5. The Progress of a Crime 1960

  6. The Killing of Francie Lake also as: The Plain Man 1962

  7. The End of Solomon Grundy 1964

  8. The Belting Inheritance 1965

  Non-Fiction

  1. Horatio Bottomley 1937

  2. Buller’s Campaign The Boer War & His Career 1974

  3. Thomas Carlyle The Life & Ideas of a Prophet 1954

  4. England’s Pride General Gordon of Khartoum 1954

  5. The General Strike 1987

  6. The Thirties 1954

  7. Tell-Tale Heart The Life & Works of Edgar Allen Poe 1954

  Synopses of Symons’ Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  The 31st February

  Anderson was a bored, unhappy sales executive longing for something to liven up his monotonous life. But perhaps he wished too hard because it was not long before he found his wife lying dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. An accident of course - so why wouldn’t the police believe him?

  The Belting Inheritance

  When a stranger arrives at Belting, he is met with a very mixed reception by the occupants of the old house. Claiming his so-called ‘rightful inheritance’ the stranger makes plans to take up residence at once. Such a thing was bound to cause problems amongst the family - but why were so many of them turning up dead?

  Bland Beginning

  A purchase at a second-hand bookshop seems an innocent enough event. Tony Shelton hadn’t expected it to be anything but that - and he certainly hadn’t expected it to throw him head first into the world of violence, blackmail and robbery. For it becomes clear that the book has a rather higher price than he paid for it - a price that was to lead to murder..

  The Broken Penny

  An Eastern-block country, shaped like a broken penny, was being torn apart by warring resistance movements. Only one man could unite the hostile factions - Professor Jacob Arbitzer. Arbitzer, smuggled into the country by Charles Garden during the Second World War, has risen to become president, only to have to be smuggled out again when the communists gained control. Under pressure from the British Government who want him reinstated, Arbitzer agreed to return on one condition; that Charles Garden again escort him. The Broken Penny is a thrilling spy adventure brilliantly recreating the chilling conditions of the Cold War.

  Buller’s Campaign

  A powerful and invaluable reassessment of the life of General Buller and of the part he played in British military history. Beginning with his struggle for the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1895, it goes on to portray his role in the Boer War, and on its path, reveals many of the Victorian Imperialist attitudes of the day. A man of numerous failures, General Buller has been treated unkindly by history but Symons here seeks to paint a more rounded picture. Whilst never attempting to excuse the General’s mistakes, he portrays Buller as a complex and often misunderstood character and reveals the deep ironies that surrounded so much of what he achieved. An exceptional book and an outstanding contribution to military history.

  The Colour of Murder

  John Wilkins was a gentle, mild-mannered man who lived a simple, predictable life. So when he met a beautiful, irresistible girl his world was turned upside down. Looking at his wife, and thinking of the girl, everything turned red before his eyes - the colour of murder. Later, his mind a blank, his only defence was that he loved his wife far too much to hurt her.

  The End of Solomon Grundy

  When a girl turns up dead in a Mayfair mews, the police want to write it off as just another murdered prostitute, but Superintendent Manners isn’t quite so sure. He is convinced that the key to the crime lies in ‘The Dell’, an affluent suburban housing estate. And in ‘The Dell’ lives Solomon Grundy. Could he have killed the girl? So Superintendent Manners thinks.

  England’s Pride

  General Gordon, charged with the task of defendi
ng Khartoum, was stabbed to death on 26 January 1885 when the Mahdi’s forces took the town by storm. Two days later, the Expeditionary force arrived to relieve Gordon but found the town firmly in the hands of the Mahdi. In England’s Pride, Julian Symons tells the story of the disastrous and tragic failure of this mission. Analysing events from both a political and military stance, and consulting a wide range of sources, he questions why the Gladstone Government had not acted sooner in the first place, and then, once orders had been given, what contributed to the complex chain of events that was ultimately to thwart the relieving force. Capturing in brilliant detail all the glory of Victorian times, England’s Pride is a vivid and dramatic book on a sorely neglected subject.

  The General Strike

  In May 1926, Britain was gripped by what became known as the General Strike. This downing of tools lasted for nine days, during which time it divided the people, threatened the survival of the government of the day and brought the country nearer to revolution that it perhaps had ever been. In this accurate and lively account, Symons draws on contemporary press reports, letters and oral sources, along with TUC records to provide an invaluable historical account of the remarkable event and the people and places that featured so prominently in it.

  The Gigantic Shadow

  Bill Hunter, TV personality, made his living by asking the rich and famous difficult and highly personal questions. But when the tables were turned and he found himself being asked about his own rather murky past, he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. Out of a job and little hope of finding another, he teamed up with the reckless Anthea to embark upon a dangerous and deadly plan that was to have murderous consequences.

  Horation Bottomley

  Horatio Bottomley was one of the most flamboyant characters of the twentieth century. From his inauspicious beginnings as a child in an orphanage, he made a series of extremely shrewd financial investments, went on to achieve Parliamentary success, and was reputed to have a mind to equal the finest legal brains in the country. From these dizzy heights he fell to sudden bankruptcy and the remainder of his life proved to be an eternal repeat of the cycle - huge success (he was nearly included in the post-war cabinet) to complete ruin. In this superb biography, Julian Symons brilliantly captures all the irony and drama in the life of this remarkable man, and creates a very readable, and all-too-poignant story of success and failure.

  The Immaterial Murder Case

  ‘Most immaterialists are a little mad. If you ever meet one, you should be most careful to keep your fingers crossed.’ American-born John Wilson and his troop of distinguished friends were well known in the fashionable parts of London. And at their social gatherings the very latest fad was ‘immaterialism’, and the quest for the perfect immaterial work of art - but what they hadn’t expected to find was the perfect immaterial murder.

  The Killing of Francie Lake

  Octavius Gaye, founder and creator of the hugely successful magazine empire, Plain Man Enterprises, saw himself as the original ‘plain man’. The truth however was rather different as Gaye was an unscrupulous tycoon with a strangely captivating nature who surrounded himself by a series of weak-willed puppets that he manipulated to his heart’s content. One such puppet was Francie Lake and as the plot unfolds, Symons reveals how and why Francie simply had to die.

  Tell-Tale Heart: The Life & Works of Edgar Allen Poe

  This biography strips away the myths that have grown up around the life of Edgar Allen Poe, and provides a completely fresh assessment of both the man and his work. Symons reveals Poe as his contemporaries saw him - a man struggling to make a living out of hack journalism and striving to find a backer for his new magazine, and a man whose life was beset by so many tragedies that he was often driven to excessive drinking and a string of unhealthy relationships. Fittingly written by another master in the art of crime writing, The Tell-Tale Heart brilliantly portrays the original creator of the detective story and reveals him as the genius, and unashamed plagiarist, that he was.

  A Man Called Jones

  The office party was in full swing so no one heard the shot, fired at close range through the back of Lionel Hargreaves, elder son of the founder of ‘Hargreaves Advertising Agency’. The killer left only one clue; a pair of yellow gloves, but it looked almost as if he had wanted them to be found. As Inspector Bland sets out to solve the murder, he encounters a deadly trail of deception, suspense, and two more dead bodies.

  The Man Who Killed Himself

  Arthur Brownjohn has never quite got anything right. Whatever he does, it always seems to go more than a little awry. The same could be said for the murder of his wife - a bungled, inferior affair despite his having consulting all the experts in the field of killings, executions and dastardly deeds. Resolving never to repeat the same mistakes, he enlists the help of Major Easonby Mellon - a man who really knows what he’s doing!

  The Man Who Lost His Wife

  Gilbert Welton’s life changed one breakfast time - his wife, Virginia, announced she was leaving him. Perhaps not the expected beginning of a comedy, but Symons employs his customary skill and brilliant wit to reveal the funny side of the tale. The result is a hilarious and riotous look at the life of a very ordinary middle-aged man.

  The Man Who’s dreams Came True

  A likeable but rather hapless young man decides he’s tired of small-time games and attempts to break into the big league. However, he finds himself woefully out of his depth and ends up caught out in an ingenious back-firing murder conspiracy. Entertaining and full of suspense, Symons’ plot has enough twists to keep you guessing right until the final thrilling conclusion.

  The Narrowing Circle

  Dave Nelson was fiercely ambitious. First in line for the top job on a magazine, he had every right to feel lucky. So when Willie Strayte was offered the job instead, and then turned up dead twenty-four hours later and everyone pointed the finger at Dave, he felt his luck had run out. As the net draws tighter around him, he finds himself in a desperate struggle for survival.

  The Paper Chase

  Crime-writer Charles Applegate decided to set his second novel in a progressive school. Taking a job at Bramley Hall to see what such a school was like ‘from the inside,’ Applegate found to his dismay that he was expected to do rather more than just people-watch. And when a murder took place on his first night there, his skills as a detective writer were called upon as well. But real-life crime was to prove very different from its fictional counterpart.

  The Players & The Game

  ‘Count Dracula meets Bonnie Parker. What will they do together? The vampire you’d hate to love, sinister and debonair, sinks those eye teeth into Bonnie’s succulent throat.’ Is this the beginning of a sadistic relationship or simply an extract from a psychopath’s diary? Either way it marks the beginning of a dangerous game that is destined to end in chilling terror and bloody murder.

  The Plot Against Roger Rider

  Roger Rider and Geoffrey Paradine had known each other since childhood. Roger was the intelligent, good-looking, successful one and Geoffrey was the one everyone else picked on. When years of suppressed anger, jealousy and frustration finally surfaced, Geoffrey took his revenge by sleeping with Roger’s beautiful wife. Was this price enough for all those miserable years of put-downs? When Roger turned up dead the police certainly didn’t think so.

  The Progress of a Crime

  Hugh Bennett, young reporter on a local paper, witnessed a terrible crime - a group of boys stabbed a man to death on Guy Fawkes’ night, right in front of the fire on the village green. But as Bennett attempts to write the story for his paper, doubts begin to creep in about what he had actually seen, and he finds himself facing an immense moral dilemma. On first publication, The Progress of a Crime was seen as setting new standards in crime fiction.

  The Thirties

  Julian Symons here presents a unique view of the 1930’s. Rejecting the standard historical line, he instead examines the decade as an artistic movement using so
urces as diverse as the Communist Daily Worker and the Fascist Action together with a wealth of contemporary prose and poetry. His sympathetic treatment of the material allows a picture of the hopes and aspirations of Britain’s young artists to emerge, and through this, he poignantly reveals their wilful belief that the social difficulties of the time were necessary as a herald of society’s glorious rebirth.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Thomas Carlyle was a man of huge influence in the nineteenth century. A prolific writer and historian, he was also a fervent campaigner for social reform, attacking the laissez-faire philosophy that was so endemic in his times. His reputation, however, plummeted soon after his death, and his unpopularity continued for many years, with critics of the twentieth century interpreting his work as a foreshadow of Fascism. In this masterly biography, Julian Symons seeks to give a balanced and lively account of the life and work of this controversial man. He reveals him to be an eccentric figure, a man of literary genius and immense social influence but also a man plagued by his own personal tragedy.

  A Three Pipe Problem

  Hugh Bennett, young reporter on a local paper, witnessed a terrible crime - a group of boys stabbed a man to death on Guy Fawkes’ night, right in front of the fire on the village green. But as Bennett attempts to write the story for his paper, doubts begin to creep in about what he had actually seen, and he finds himself facing an immense moral dilemma. On first publication, The Progress of a Crime was seen as setting new standards in crime fiction.

  www.houseofstratus.com