Here is an extract from Gavin’s monograph:
‘No record of the original ritual exists in the Club’s archives, but Maisie Ward’s biography of Chesterton gives a version which apparently Chesterton himself had published in a small literary magazine.
‘Although Ward’s version may be complete in itself, it ends a little abruptly, and we should remember that it is not our own “prompt” copy and so may have been edited. But, that said, it is simple, light-hearted and short, lasting less than two minutes, and involves only the Ruler and the Candidate. The latter is asked to agree to two statements. The first demands the forswearing of “Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery” in the detection of crime, the second requires moderation in using “Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts … Trap-Doors … Super-Criminals and Lunatics” among other things. This could well be a swipe at certain thriller-writers of the 1920s; it certainly makes clear what sort of authors were not welcome in the Club. And the idea of asking what thing the Candidate held sacred and to swear by that is there from the start – although the skull seems to be a later addition.
‘The 1930s may have been the Club’s golden age, but for our archives it is the Dark Ages – though outside sources hint at lost gold. In her memoirs, Dame Ngaio Marsh (who, living mainly in New Zealand, did not become a member till 1974) recalls being a guest at the pre-war initiation of E.C. Bentley involving Wardens of the Naked Blade, the Hollow Skull and the Lethal Phial, with Dorothy L. Sayers as president brandishing and firing off a pistol. But this may be inaccurate because Sayers did not become president until 1949 and Bentley was a founder member of the Club. However, in 1936 Bentley was inaugurated as president and so Dame Ngaio may have been remembering this ceremony, of which we have no record. And Sayers could have played the “Warden of the Firearm”, for which post there is later evidence.’
A bit of detective work by Gavin Lyall and Peter Lovesey unearthed a printed version of the ceremony as it was probably used in 1937, which – quoting Gavin’s monograph once again – ‘… lengthens the oath and ends on a threat for breaking it: “may total strangers sue you for libel, your pages swarm with misprints and your sales continually diminish.” This text adds the now-familiar opening: “What mean these lights … this reminder of our Mortality?” and goes on to a sponsor mentioning the candidate’s books. It also adds “Eric the Skull”, the first extant mention of the name, along with a skull-bearer and several torchbearers. If our interpretation of Dame Ngaio’s memory is correct, these could have been invented for the 1936 Presidential Inauguration and later carried across to the Initiation Ceremony. But there is no reference to any Wardens.
‘However, in 1958 the Wardens, including those of the Firearm, Rope and the Blunt Instrument, were back in force for the inauguration of Lord Gorell as president (actually co-president with the self-effacing Agatha Christie), and to other unspecified posts. The colourful ceremony was credited to Richard Hull (elected 1946) and is full of high drama (or low comedy) delivered in mock Shakespearean lines by a dozen voices, with a “lugubrious” piano introduction.’
Here is an extract from that ceremony:
ORATOR: Who are you and why do you wander aimless with instruments of death in your hands, murder in your hearts and sorrow in your faces?
ROPE: We are members of the Detection Club. All sworn initiates.
BOWL: We bear the emblems of our trade. We do but murder in jest, poison in jest.
RING: And we are sad because we have no head.
ORATOR: No head? Are there not those who will rule you? I call upon the Warden of the Rope.
(The Wardens enter, as called.)
ROPE: I cannot serve. My rope is slack and my noose unknotted.
ORATOR: I call upon the Warden of the Bowl.
BOWL: I cannot serve. My bowl is empty.
ORATOR: I call upon the Warden of the Firearms.
FIREARMS: I cannot serve. My fire is quenched.
ORATOR: I call upon the Warden of the Sharp Instrument.
SHARP INSTRUMENT: I cannot serve. My edge is blunted.
ORATOR: I call upon the Warden of the Blunt Instrument.
BLUNT INSTRUMENT: I cannot serve. My hand has lost its power.
And so on, and so on …
I should point out that the Inauguration Ceremony when I took over the presidency from H.R.F. Keating was considerably simpler than that.
The Initiation of New Members also went through considerable metamorphoses, though lack of documentation makes it difficult to be precise about these. A version used in 1966 seems to have purged out much of the original humour, and contained ten rules for the proper conduct of crime writers, including this one: ‘They must not allow two statements to contradict one another unless that contradiction proves to be an essential part of the plot.’
In the late 1960s the old Detection Club rules changed, as the qualification for membership was broadened to include writers who created ‘detectives, secret service agents or other chief characters’. The whodunnit was no longer the only form that Detection Club members were allowed to write. And the Initiation Ceremony was adjusted accordingly. Back to Gavin Lyall’s monograph:
‘By this time the Club’s standards had been, as one might put it, changed. Writers of books not solely concerned with detection were being admitted, and although there are references in the Club minutes to inauguration changes made in 1969, these new writers do not seem to have been fully acknowledged until a total revision in 1977. Following the by-now classic opening, the president (then Julian Symons) gave a description of the traditional murder mystery, then handed over to readers who recited brief rules for the spy story, the police procedural, the adventure, and an appeal in favour of the Queen’s English. There followed encomia on the candidates’ work and the oath was taken.’
There were further changes to the ceremony in the early 1980s and the new version was used when, in 1985, H.R.F. Keating took over the presidency from Julian Symons. Characteristically impish, Harry had written the rubric in verse.
Since then, the wording of the Initiation Ceremony has changed yet again – back to Gavin Lyall’s line about ‘a Club whose strongest tradition seems to be the rewriting of its traditions’ – but I will draw a veil over its current form. Some secrets, as I said, should not be shared.
One element of apparent continuity in the Detection Club is the Presidential Robe, a rather splendid quasi-academic gown in red satin, as worn by the president at the Initiation of New Members. Cut on generous lines, one would naturally assume that it was so tailored to accommodate the substantial frame of G.K. Chesterton, the founding president or leader. And one would assume that it would have coped well with the bulk of Dorothy L. Sayers too.
Alas, one’s assumptions would be wrong. The original robe was lost after a dinner at the Savoy in the 1960s, and rumour has it that the hotel paid to have a facsimile made. So, the gown I wear at the autumn dinners is a fake. Like everything else about the Detection Club, the mythology is once again blurred and unreliable … which I must say I find one of the most enduring – and endearing – qualities of the organisation.
To conclude then: the Detection Club has always been a lively association of crime novelists, which does not take itself too seriously, and whose sole purpose is to have convivial dinners. It is emphatically not a trades union and has no aim to raise the profile of crime-writing or of individual crime writers. The Club’s ceremonies and usages may have changed over eighty-five years, but I like to think that the basic spirit in which Anthony Berkeley and others founded it has remained intact.
ALSO AVAILABLE
THE FLOATING ADMIRAL
By Members of The Detection Club
including Agatha Christie & Dorothy L. Sayers
Preface by G.K. Chesterton
Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse, the Inspector’s i
nvestigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, who owns the boat, is clearly withholding information, and the victim’s niece has disappeared—even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder if there isn’t more to this case than meets the eye …
In this rare collaboration by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and ten other crime writers from the newly-formed Detection Club, each author wrote one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to supply a prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope, published at the end of the novel, with Agatha Christie’s ingenious conclusion acknowledged to be “enough to make the book worth buying on its own.”
This new edition is introduced by the Detection Club’s current President, the author Simon Brett, who investigates the background to this extraordinary collaboration of the crime-writing fraternity.
ALSO AVAILABLE
ASK A POLICEMAN
By Members of The Detection Club
including Dorothy L. Sayers & Gladys Mitchell
Preface by Agatha Christie
Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary: with suspicion falling on the Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard, the impartiality of any police investigation is threatened. Abandoning protocol, he invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman …
This unique whodunit involved four of the 1930s’ best crime writers swapping their usual detectives and indulging in sly parodies of each other. It is introduced by Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes an exclusive preface by Agatha Christie, ‘Detective Writers in England’, in which she discusses Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and her Detection Club colleagues.
ALSO AVAILABLE
SIX AGAINST THE YARD
By Members of The Detection Club
including Margery Allingham & Dorothy L. Sayers
with Superintendent Cornish of the CID
Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator?
In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder mystery, which real-life Superintendent Cornish of Scotland Yard then attempts to unravel.
This clever literary battle of wits from the archives of the Detection Club follows The Floating Admiral and Ask a Policeman back into print after more than 75 years, and shows some of the experts from the Golden Age of detective fiction at their most ingenious.
For true crime aficionados, this new edition includes an essay by Agatha Christie, one of the inaugural members of the Detection Club. Unseen since 1929, her article discusses the infamous Croydon Poisonings, a real-life perfect murder, the solution to which remains a mystery to this day …
ALSO AVAILABLE
THE ANATOMY OF MURDER
By Members of The Detection Club
including Francis Iles, Helen Simpson
& Dorothy L. Sayers
As aficionados of even the most gruesome crime fiction will testify, nothing beats the horror of the real thing. True crime stories have inspired murder mystery writers from the very earliest days of detective fiction, but what happens when you ask the best authors to recreate the most infamous true crimes as if they were fiction?
From the dark streets of Pimlico and Paris to the exotic reaches of Sydney and Adelaide, some of the world’s most notorious murders are here retold by seven of the most accomplished crime writers of their generation:
Helen Simpson • The Death of Henry Kinder
John Rhode • The Crimes of Constance Kent
Margaret Cole • The Case of Adelaide Bartlett
E.R. Punshon • An Impression of the Landru Case
Dorothy L. Sayers • The Murder of Julia Wallace
Francis Iles • The Rattenbury Case
Freeman Wills Crofts • A New Zealand Tragedy
This compelling fourth collection from the archives of the illustrious Detection Club, finally back in print after more than 75 years, includes a new introduction by Martin Edwards
Also in this series:
THE FLOATING ADMIRAL
ASK A POLICEMAN
SIX AGAINST THE YARD
THE ANATOMY OF MURDER
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
The Detection Collection Page 20