The Detection Collection

by The Detection Club

  ‘Well, she certainly spoke to Mitch, like her friend Donna told you. Doesn’t much like you, that lass, happy to see you squirm, I’d guess. Thing is, Mitch didn’t need to be warned off. She was ready to dump you anyway.’

  ‘But our baby …’ I said disbelievingly.

  ‘Hers, not yours. Seems she’d been having a thing with one of her tutors. Hairy bugger, ranting Red, drops his aitches, even less her family’s type than you, plus he’s already got a wife and five bairns so wasn’t going to be much enthused at the thought of another in either class. Mitch chatted to your mam about the pros and cons of termination. Not hard to guess which side your mam came down on after her experience.’

  I was completely knocked back by this. I felt that otherworldly light and shade beginning to swim around me once more.

  ‘Please,’ I murmured. ‘I need the nurse …’

  ‘In a sec,’ he said. ‘Just one last thing to get sorted. Was it because you really thought your mam had buggered things up between you and Mitch that you killed her? Or was it finding the insurance policy that made up your mind?’

  Suddenly I was completely back in the stark clear world of the hospital room.

  ‘I don’t understand …’ I said.

  ‘Aye, you do. Must have come as a real surprise when you found that policy for all that money with less than a year of its term to run. Your dad had taken it out for twenty years when he got married. He didn’t want to attract suspicion by going for a really short term. And your daft, doting mam kept up the premiums all them years, even adding a bit to it when she could, all to keep you covered in case she should snuff it before you came of age. I can see how you must have thought it a shame to let all her sacrifice come to nowt. And you’d have been able to buy that motorbike at last!’

  ‘This is outrageous!’ I protested. ‘You must be mad. Nurse! Nurse!’

  ‘Don’t shout, she doesn’t like it, remember,’ he said. ‘So you went home, made her a nice strong cup of tea, laced with the contents of your capsules. I bet you’d checked out the drug in the uni library and knew exactly how much would be a fatal dose. Soon she got dozy, and while she slipped away, you cleared away the cups, put a glass in her hand and sat down to write this letter. Then off to Greendale Gorge, crash gently through the fence, jump out of the car at the last minute, and scramble down the gorge to lie beside the wreck till you were found. Except you suddenly had a witness, the farmer in his tractor, so you had to take the risk of really going over the edge.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ I cried. ‘You don’t have a shred of evidence and if you dare repeat this in front of witnesses I’ll sue you for every penny you have!’

  ‘You’d not get much,’ he said quietly. ‘As for witnesses, well, I do have one. You see, your doting mam worried herself sick about you being away from home, having to do things for yourself, so she had some placebos made up which she mixed in with the real capsules, just to lessen the chance of you overdosing by accident. So there were enough sedative in her drink to knock her cold, but you’d have needed a lot more to kill her.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, dry mouthed.

  But I was already following his gaze to the door.

  It opened, and Mother came in.

  She smiled at me sadly, forgivingly, even – God help me – lovingly.

  But she didn’t speak. What was there to say?

  She’d warned me I’d make a fool of myself by writing to Dalziel.

  I should have listened.

  Mother is always right.

  THE DETECTION CLUB – A BRIEF HISTORY

  Simon Brett

  Probably the most pertinent comment about the Detection Club was made by the late Gavin Lyall, who described it as ‘a Club whose strongest tradition seems to be the rewriting of its traditions’. This endearingly British habit, combined with a deep unwillingness over the years to keep proper archives, means that the history of the Detection Club is, at best, sketchy and at times purely conjectural. As a result, this is not a definitive essay on the subject, merely an assemblage of verifiable facts, feasible conjectures and downright apocrypha. And it relies heavily on the researches of other members, some of whom are still alive and some of whom have passed away to solve that Eternal Whodunnit in the Sky.

  I am very honoured to be the current president of the Detection Club – honoured in particular because of the wonderful roll of names that I follow. On the Club’s letterhead are listed G.K. Chesterton, E.C. Bentley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Gorell, Agatha Christie, Julian Symons and H.R.F. Keating. I still can’t see my name there at the end of the list without mouthing an involuntary ‘Who?’

  In writing of the Detection Club there is also a minor problem of confidentiality. Though not a secret society like the Freemasons, it is essentially a members’ club, and there are some details that should not be made public. So, for example, while I might be very happy to reveal the method by which new members are voted in, I will not be revealing the names of defeated candidates, nor any of the reasons why they might have been defeated. I will maintain the Club’s tradition of benign propriety. (Mind you, there is currently an unauthorised website which contains many details of the Detection Club, so the maintenance of any secrecy in the current age is hard.)

  As is fitting for an association of its kind, the precise origins of the Detection Club are shrouded in mystery. You can read in many sources that it was founded in 1932 with twenty-six members, but this assertion is somewhat weakened by the fact that a letter was published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1930 and signed by members of the Detection Club. And the serials Scoop and Behind the Screen appeared in The Listener respectively in 1930 and 1931. They were written by multiple authors, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, E.C. Bentley and Anthony Berkeley, under the name of the Detection Club.

  So a more likely prehistory of the Club was that round about 1928 Anthony Berkeley and other detective writers started to meet for informal dinners, which then became more established into the rituals of a club. According to some sources, G.K. Chesterton was appointed the first president – though sometimes referred to as ‘leader’ – in 1930. Mind you, other authorities say that he didn’t take over the presidential mantle – of which more hereafter – until 1932. In fact, on the headed Detection Club notepaper it says Chesterton’s reign began in 1932, whereas in the Detection Club List of Members it says 1930. What is certain, however, is that, on 11 March 1932, the Constitution and Rules of the Detection Club were adopted.

  The opening section reads: ‘The Detection Club is instituted for the association of writers of detective-novels and for promoting and continuing a mutual interest and fellowship between them.’ And members had to fulfil ‘the following condition: ‘That he or she has written at least two detective-novels of admitted merit or (in exceptional cases) one such novel; it being understood that the term detective-novel does not include adventure-stories or thrillers or stories in which the detection is not the main interest, and that it is a demerit in a detective-novel if the author does not “play fair by the reader”.’

  In this 1932 Constitution, the Ordinary Meetings of the Club should be ‘not fewer than four in the year’, so things haven’t changed that much. In 2005 – and for many years before that – the Detection Club met three times.

  And what do we meet for? What indeed is the Detection Club for? This question is answered, in a way that still stands up today, by Dorothy L. Sayers in the 1931 introduction to The Floating Admiral, a multi-authored novel by members of the Club.

  ‘What is the Detection Club? It is a private association of writers of detective fiction in Great Britain, existing chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable intervals and of talking illimitable shop … If there is any serious aim behind the avowedly frivolous organisation of the Detection Club, it is to keep the detective story up to the highest standards that its nature permits, and to free it from the bad legacy of sensationalism, claptrap and jargon with
which it was unhappily burdened in the past.’

  So who were the members of this ‘avowedly frivolous organisation’ who would join each other for convivial dinners in the early 1930s? Well, they were then – as they are now – the cream of British detective writing. G.K. Chesterton, obviously; Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley (later, of course, to write as Francis Iles), Freeman Wills Croft, Clemence Dane, R. Austin Freeman, Ronald Knox, A.E.W. Mason, A.A. Milne, Baroness Orczy … The founding members make up an impressive list, by any standards. Then E.R. Punshon joined in 1933, Margery Allingham in 1934, and the American John Dickson Carr – the only non-British author ever to have been a member – joined the Club in 1936.

  The Second World War took its toll on many institutions and the Detection Club was not spared. There is no record of any dinners during that period, and certainly no new members were elected between 1937 and 1946.

  In the pre-war period – the 1930s are often referred to as ‘the Golden Age of crime fiction’ – the Club flourished, and even had permanent club rooms in London where the members could meet up and discuss their craft or, as is still the case nowadays, anything else that came into their minds. In the 1930s, the major dinner, when new members were initiated, was usually held at the Café Royal, but other venues were used for less formal meetings.

  After the war, through Dorothy L. Sayers’ influence with the Church authorities, a room was rented in Kingly Street for the use of members, and it is recorded that Christianna Brand, elected to the Club in 1946, used to ‘produce various delicacies in the way of food’.

  But the 1940s were no longer the ‘Golden Age’ of whodunnit puzzles set at country-house parties, where a murder was no more than a key to set a clockwork machinery in motion. Attitudes had changed, and the very future of the crime novel was under threat. I don’t think it’s too extreme to compare the position of crime fiction at the time to that of representational painting after the invention of photography. Its previous role seemed to be redundant, so the form could either disappear, or change. I’m glad to say that both painting and the crime novel changed, and found even more potential in their new incarnations.

  Greater reality and greater psychological understanding came into crime fiction. The genre opened out into other areas: espionage, the journalistically accurate thriller. And, inevitably, with these changes came an increasing moral ambivalence. Readers were no longer satisfied with a tale ended by Hercule Poirot in the library pointing a finger at some bounder, the loose ends of whose story would be conveniently tied into a noose by the hangman.

  There was more interest in the motivation of the criminal, even sympathy for the circumstances that might lead someone to commit a murder. What had been a world of black and white was now a blurred landscape of unsettling greys.

  Inevitably, the post-war change in attitude to the crime novel had its effect on the Detection Club, and that effect is well described in Julian Symons’ introduction to the 1981 anthology, Verdict of Thirteen:

  ‘The years of peace saw a dramatic decline in the detective story as the founders had conceived it, and this decline was mirrored in the Club’s fortunes. It had always depended on the intense enthusiasm of a few members, and now as these members died, or ceased writing, or lost interest, the numbers coming to meetings fell away … This was true especially after the death of Sayers in 1957 …

  ‘The dismal years were ended by two decisions. The first was to acknowledge that the old rules could no longer apply, and to broaden the membership to include the best writers in all forms of crime literature, including the spy story and the thriller. The other was the inspired suggestion that all dinners, except that at which new members were inaugurated, should be held in a club. This idea was an immediate success, and for several years now meetings have been held in the pleasant ambience of the Garrick Club, although the dinner for new members still takes place at the Café Royal.’

  Since the time Julian wrote that, though the Garrick is still used twice a year, the venue for the autumn dinner has changed. For some years in the 1990s, it was held at the Savoy, then at the Middle Temple, the Ritz and currently in the splendid surroundings of the Park Suite at The Dorchester.

  Who pays for all these wonderful dinners? The answer is that the members do. The Detection Club is a dining club, and one of the privileges of membership is the right to pay for your own dinner and that of your guests.

  At times, though, the dinners have been subsidised, usually by royalty income from the Club’s publications, of which some have already been mentioned. The Scoop and Behind the Screen were published in The Listener, then later broadcast, and the complete novel, The Floating Admiral, by Certain Members of the Detection Club, came out in 1931.

  The book was very much a product of its time. As is right and proper, there is a map in the front, showing the church and the river and the railway line. Each chapter was written by a different Detection Club member, and at the end of the book most of them also offered their solutions to what happened and who had perpetrated the murder.

  Dorothy L. Sayers wrote the introduction, and G.K. Chesterton the prologue. Then ensued chapters by, respectively, Canon Victor L. Whitechurch, G.D.H. and M.D. Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers again, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Croft, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley. And the copyright line reads, ‘The Detection Club’.

  Though a period piece, the book is surprisingly readable. Passing on the baton of narration does not have too disruptive an effect on the flow of the story, and some of the solutions offered are preposterously ingenious.

  The Floating Admiral has also proved of great benefit to Detection Club funds over the years. It was reissued by Macmillan in 1981 and then in a splendid new edition by HarperCollins in 2011. It has also been translated into quite a few foreign languages. (The title in German, incidentally, for people who like a cheap laugh, is Der Admirals Fahrt.)

  Apart from The Floating Admiral, there have been other books co-authored by members of the Detection Club. Titles such as Ask a Policeman, The Anatomy of Murder and Double Death spring to mind, though with some of these the Club imprimatur is not firmly established. For instance, in his preface to Double Death, which was first published in the Sunday Chronicle in 1939, John Chancellor did not make clear that it was a Detection Club book.

  One that definitely was, though, came out in 1978, under the title Verdict of Thirteen. Again it had a starry line-up of contributors: P.D. James, Gwendoline Butler, Dick Francis, Michael Gilbert, Christianna Brand, Michael Innes, Patricia Highsmith, Celia Fremlin, H.R.F. Keating, Michael Underwood, Ngaio Marsh, Peter Dickinson and Julian Symons.

  Also, in celebration of the last-named author’s eightieth birthday, Harry Keating edited a collection of short stories from Detection Club members who had had a particular closeness to Julian. In tribute to a writer whose titles had included The Man Who Killed Himself, The Man Whose Dreams Came True and The Man Who Lost His Wife, Harry insisted that each story in the collection should have a title beginning The Man Who … I myself was honoured to be one of the contributors to that ‘fiction Festschrift’ and wrote a tale of literary skulduggery that was called The Man Who Got The Dirt. Other splendid titles from the anthology included Len Deighton’s The Man Who Was A Coyote, Antonia Fraser’s The Man Who Wiped The Smile Off Her Face and Reginald Hill’s intriguing The Man Who Defenestrated His Sister.

  So how does one become a member of the Detection Club? Well, the answer is: by no effort of one’s own – except the effort of writing crime novels good enough to put one in the frame for consideration. But the election of new members is done by a genuinely secret ballot, and no one is informed that their name has even been put forward until they get a letter inviting them to join. By the same token, candidates who are not elected never even know that their names have been discussed. Certainly, since I have been involved in the Detection Club, I have never been aware of anyone lobbying to ge
t themselves elected. Which I think is just as well, because lobbying is not behaviour that would endear anyone to the membership.

  Nowhere is it written down precisely how many members of the Detection Club there should be at any given time, but in recent years it has always ended up round the fifty mark. As the numbers are reduced by what is euphemistically called ‘natural wastage’, so potential new members are nominated – with a proposer and seconder – and put up for election. The successful candidates then receive a letter from the current president, asking if they would like to become members.

  The answer, incidentally, is not invariably yes. Some writers are not by nature gregarious; some do not relish the prospect of travelling to London; some feel their lives are already too full. But I am glad to say that the overwhelming majority of writers invited to join are delighted to accept the honour of Detection Club membership.

  And when they have accepted, of course, they face the Initiation Ceremony. This is probably the most discussed aspect of the Detection Club, and many rumours abound as to the form it takes. Here, going back to my earlier caution, I have to be careful what I write. I can’t give much away about the current Detection Club initiation ceremony, but I can take an historical perspective and say how it used to be. On this subject, I will be relying heavily on the late Gavin Lyall who, characteristically laconic, wrote some years ago ‘A Brief Historical Monograph on the Detection Club Initiation Ceremony’.

  It should be said first that the ceremony has always had a tongue-in-cheek element. When new members in the twenty-first century are asked to lay their hand on Eric the Skull and say what, in the context of their crime-writing, they hold sacred, the expectation is that they will offer something lighter than deep religious beliefs. The equally jokey original ritual was probably devised by G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers – though Ronald Knox may have had a hand in it too – and was much concerned with the rules of the genre in which they were writing.