by Mike Ashley
Carr wrote ten historical mystery novels. Some use as a device a modern-day character regressing in time, of which the best is The Devil in Velvet (1955), where a professor, following an apparent pact with the devil, has the chance to go back and solve a murder before it happens.
A genuine historical mystery was the subject of The Daughter of Time (1951) by Josephine Tey. Voted the favourite novel of all time by the Crime Writers Association, it is not technically an historical detective story. It features Tey’s present-day detective, Alan Grant, who while laid up in hospital uses an acquaintance to help him research the deaths of the princes in the Tower. This was the same method used by Colin Dexter in his award-winning Inspector Morse novel, The Wench is Dead.
During the 1950s a number of authors turned to the historical detective form. Wallace Nichols, a poet and writer, began a long-running series about Sollius, the Slave Detective, in the London Mystery Magazine. His first case is reprinted here.
Robert van Gulik, one-time Dutch ambassador to Japan, had become fascinated by an eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel, Dee Goong An, which featured the cases of a real historical character, Dee Goong, a seventh-century Chinese magistrate. While on war duties in the Pacific, van Gulik translated the stories into English as Dee Goong An: Three Murder Cases of Judge Dee (1949). By then he had become so fascinated with this character that he continued to write about him for the next twenty years, producing a delightful series of novels and stories, one of which is reprinted here.
In America, Theodore Mathieson struck upon the idea of setting major historical characters difficult crimes to solve. The stories were collected together as The Great Detectives (1960), and showed the detective skills of Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Captain Cook, even Florence Nightingale. Since several of these stories were set in the Middle Ages one might argue that Mathieson was the first to write a medieval mystery.
By the sixties and seventies there were a number of writers producing novels set in the nineteenth century. Leaving aside the many stories that feature Sherlock Holmes, there were a series of Victorian police procedurals, of which the best are Peter Lovesey’s books about Sergeant Cribb, and there were several novels featuring the Bow Street Runners, such as those by Richard Falkirk and Jeremy Sturrock.
So, as we can see, by the time Brother Cadfael first tended his herb garden at Shrewsbury Abbey, the historical detective story had been gathering pace for some years. Yet, the stories had not been sown in especially fertile soil. Ellis Peters, on the other hand, if I may mix my metaphors, had struck a particularly rich vein. Here, for the first time, was an author skilled both in detective fiction and, under her real name of Edith Pargeter, equally skilled at historical fiction. She was thus able to blend the two genres seamlessly, along with immaculate characterisation and an ability to bring the past alive as no other had before.
A further boost came from the publication of The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco, a superbly gothic detective novel set in a remote Italian monastery where Brother William seeks to solve a series of increasingly bizarre murders. Despite the gothic trappings the novel owes much to Sherlock Holmes. It is a fascinating puzzle and made an equally fascinating film, starring Sean Connery.
With the success of Brother Cadfael and The Name of the Rose, others have followed: the Brother Athelstan novels by Paul Harding, the Hugh Corbett books by Paul Doherty, the Matthew Stock stories by Leonard Tourney, the Nicholas Bracewell books by Edward Marston. These and many more are listed in the appendix.
In this anthology I have sought to include new stories by many of today’s leading writers of historical whodunnits, as well as reprinting some of the classics of the field. I am also delighted that Ellis Peters has kindly provided a foreword for the collection. Since she opened up a whole new vein in mystery fiction, I can do no better than to hand over to her to declare this anthology open.
Mike Ashley
March 1993
Foreword
by Ellis Peters
I was not aware when I began my first novel featuring Brother Cadfael that I was opening or developing a new area of fiction. True, I had encountered hardly any previous historical mysteries, though I can recall reading a few short stories, including one which featured Aristotle as a detective. In general I avoid reading anything that may overlap what I’m working on, in subject or period, to put all influence out of the question.
In 1976 I was between books and passing the time while I thought about the next one, and it happened that I dipped into the massive History of Shrewsbury compiled by two nineteenth century clerics, Owen and Blakeway; books I’d had since I was fifteen and knew very well.
The story of the expedition from the Abbey to acquire a saint’s relics from Wales was familiar enough, but it suddenly occurred to me that it would make a good plot for a murder mystery, and a novel way of disposing of a body. So, A Morbid Taste for Bones was conceived from the beginning as a murder mystery rather than an historical novel. Its locations, Shrewsbury and North Wales, were laid down by historical facts – historical, at least, according to the life of Saint Winifred which Prior Robert Pennant afterwards wrote, concluding it with the account of his own expedition into Wales to find and bring her back. The book, by the way, is in the Bodleian if anyone cares to pursue the study, though I have not seen it myself.
With so much recorded fact, I was not going to meddle too much with the story, though I admit to a major departure from the actual version of the result of the expedition. The whole process of working fiction into fact without playing tricks with history appealed to me strongly. The difficulties arising are half the attraction, like a cryptic crossword puzzle.
I did not intend a series when I began. The first novel was written as a one-off. But about a year later, after I had written another book, I became fascinated by King Stephen’s siege of Shrewsbury and as that happened only a short time after the translation of St. Winifred, I could use the same cast of characters. From then on the books took up a rhythm of their own.
Brother Cadfael did not emerge immediately. The cast of the novel was limited to the party of monks from Shrewsbury and the population of Gwytherin, so my protagonist had to be one of the Brothers: one with wider experience of life than an oblatus donated in infancy could have, so in middle life and with half a world behind him. He had to be one who spoke Welsh, a reason for including in the party a Brother of otherwise modest function. And so he started to emerge: elderly, travelled, humanely curious about his fellowmen, and Welsh. I hunted for a name unusual even in Wales, and found only two references to Cadfael in Lloyd’s History of Wales, so I borrowed that name. And there he was.
All the greater magnates in the novels are real – the abbots, bishops, Welsh princes, even the Dublin Danish adventurers. There was an Abbot Radulfus as there was an Abbot Heribert before him, and Heribert was demoted just as related, by the Legatine Council that appointed Radulfus in his place. Prior Robert was real enough, as he proved by writing his book. Hugh Beringar is my own man. At that time FitzAlan was sheriff, but he fled when Stephen stormed Shrewsbury, and I can find no record of the man Stephen must have appointed in his place. So I was free to fill the vacancy and free to suppose that in time Gilbert Prestcote died and gave place to his equally imaginary deputy, Hugh Beringar.
The steady progression of the books has surprised me, and has led to an emphasis on season, weather and the religious sequence of the year; but as soon as I realized it, I recognised how appropriate it is, since we are concerned with the regular lives of a community. As a result I have been able to focus on the day-to-day detail of community life, and I believe it is that which has made the books so popular.
In the years since I began the Cadfael books I have not read many other historical mysteries, so I am fascinated by the wonderfully mixed bag of stories included in this anthology. I have also read Lindsey Davis’s novels set in Vespasian’s Rome, told in the colloquial style of a slightly seedy private eye, which I thin
k absolutely first class. She brings Imperial Rome to life from the street angle, laundresses, thuggish trainee gladiators and all, and still presents us with a very likeable young protagonist.
Perhaps that is the secret of the successful historical detective story: the ability to include a human and likeable detective in a background that comes to life and becomes as real to today’s readers as it was to the souls living all those centuries ago.
PART I
The Ancient World
THE LOCKED TOMB MYSTERY
Elizabeth Peters
Elizabeth Peters (b. 1927) is ideally suited to open this anthology. Under her real name of Barbara Mertz she is a noted Egyptologist and has written a number of studies of ancient Egypt, including Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs (1964), which is the story of Egyptology. Under two pen names – Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels – she has written a long line of mystery and detective novels. These include The Curse of the Pharaohs (1981), which introduced the Victorian archeologist, Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson who, on their trips to Egypt, encounter any amount of bizarre crimes.
Elizabeth Peters has the following to say about our first fictional sleuth in the following story. “Amenhotep Sa Hapu was a real person who lived during the fourteenth century BC. Later generations worshipped him as a sage and scholar; he seems like a logical candidate for the role of ancient Egyptian detective.”
Senebtisi’s funeral was the talk of southern Thebes. Of course, it could not compare with the burials of Great Ones and Pharaohs, whose Houses of Eternity were furnished with gold and fine linen and precious gems, but ours was not a quarter where nobles lived; our people were craftsmen and small merchants, able to afford a chamber-tomb and a coffin and a few spells to ward off the perils of the Western Road – no more than that. We had never seen anything like the burial of the old woman who had been our neighbor for so many years.
The night after the funeral, the customers of Nehi’s tavern could talk of nothing else. I remember that evening well. For one thing, I had just won my first appointment as a temple scribe. I was looking forward to boasting a little, and perhaps paying for a round of beer, if my friends displayed proper appreciation of my good fortune. Three of the others were already at the tavern when I arrived, my linen shawl wrapped tight around me. The weather was cold even for winter, with a cruel, dry wind driving sand into every crevice of the body.
“Close the door quickly,” said Senu, the carpenter. “What weather! I wonder if the Western journey will be like this – cold enough to freeze a man’s bones.”
This prompted a ribald comment from Rennefer, the weaver, concerning the effects of freezing on certain of Senebtisi’s vital organs. “Not that anyone would notice the difference,” he added. “There was never any warmth in the old hag. What sort of mother would take all her possessions to the next world and leave her only son penniless?”
“Is it true, then?” I asked, signaling Nehi to fetch the beer jar. “I have heard stories – ”
“All true,” said the potter, Baenre. “It is a pity you could not attend the burial, Wadjsen; it was magnificent!”
“You went?” I inquired. “That was good of you, since she ordered none of her funerary equipment from you.”
Baenre is a scanty little man with thin hair and sharp bones. It is said that he is a domestic tyrant, and that his wife cowers when he comes roaring home from the tavern, but when he is with us, his voice is almost a whisper. “My rough kitchenware would not be good enough to hold the wine and fine oil she took to the tomb. Wadjsen, you should have seen the boxes and jars and baskets – dozens of them. They say she had a gold mask, like the ones worn by great nobles, and that all her ornaments were of solid gold.”
“It is true,” said Rennefer. “I know a man who knows one of the servants of Bakenmut, the goldsmith who made the ornaments.”
“How is her son taking it?” I asked. I knew Minmose slightly; a shy, serious man, he followed his father’s trade of stone carving. His mother had lived with him all his life, greedily scooping up his profits, though she had money of her own, inherited from her parents.
“Why, as you would expect,” said Senu, shrugging. “Have you ever heard him speak harshly to anyone, much less his mother? She was an old she-goat who treated him like a boy who has not cut off the side lock; but with him it was always ‘Yes, honored mother,’ and ‘As you say, honored mother.’ She would not even allow him to take a wife.”
“How will he live?”
“Oh, he has the shop and the business, such as it is. He is a hard worker; he will survive.”
In the following months I heard occasional news of Minmose. Gossip said he must be doing well, for he had taken to spending his leisure time at a local house of prostitution – a pleasure he never had dared enjoy while his mother lived. Nefertiry, the loveliest and most expensive of the girls, was the object of his desire, and Rennefer remarked that the maiden must have a kind heart, for she could command higher prices than Minmose was able to pay. However, as time passed, I forgot Minmose and Senebtisi, and her rich burial. It was not until almost a year later that the matter was recalled to my attention.
The rumors began in the marketplace, at the end of the time of inundation, when the floodwater lay on the fields and the farmers were idle. They enjoy this time, but the police of the city do not; for idleness leads to crime, and one of the most popular crimes is tomb robbing. This goes on all the time in a small way, but when the Pharaoh is strong and stern, and the laws are strictly enforced, it is a very risky trade. A man stands to lose more than a hand or an ear if he is caught. He also risks damnation after he has entered his own tomb; but some men simply do not have proper respect for the gods.
The king, Nebmaatre (may he live forever!), was then in his prime, so there had been no tomb robbing for some time – or at least none had been detected. But, the rumors said, three men of west Thebes had been caught trying to sell ornaments such as are buried with the dead. The rumors turned out to be correct, for once. The men were questioned on the soles of their feet and confessed to the robbing of several tombs.
Naturally all those who had kin buried on the west bank – which included most of us – were alarmed by this news, and half the nervous matrons in our neighborhood went rushing across the river to make sure the family tombs were safe. I was not surprised to hear that that dutiful son Minmose had also felt obliged to make sure his mother had not been disturbed.
However, I was surprised at the news that greeted me when I paid my next visit to Nehi’s tavern. The moment I entered, the others began to talk at once, each eager to be the first to tell the shocking facts.
“Robbed?” I repeated when I had sorted out the babble of voices. “Do you speak truly?”
“I do not know why you should doubt it,” said Rennefer. “The richness of her burial was the talk of the city, was it not? Just what the tomb robbers like! They made a clean sweep of all the gold, and ripped the poor old hag’s mummy to shreds.”
At that point we were joined by another of the habitués, Merusir. He is a pompous, fat man who considers himself superior to the rest of us because he is Fifth Prophet of Amon. We put up with his patronizing ways because sometimes he knows court gossip. On that particular evening it was apparent that he was bursting with excitement. He listened with a supercilious sneer while we told him the sensational news. “I know, I know,” he drawled. “I heard it much earlier – and with it, the other news which is known only to those in the confidence of the Palace.”
He paused, ostensibly to empty his cup. Of course, we reacted as he had hoped we would, begging him to share the secret. Finally he condescended to inform us.
“Why, the amazing thing is not the robbery itself, but how it was done. The tomb entrance was untouched, the seals of the necropolis were unbroken. The tomb itself is entirely rock-cut, and there was not the slightest break in the walls or floor or ceiling. Yet when Minmose entered the burial chamber, he found the coffin op
en, the mummy mutilated, and the gold ornaments gone.”
We stared at him, openmouthed.
“It is a most remarkable story,” I said.
“Call me a liar if you like,” said Merusir, who knows the language of polite insult as well as I do. “There was a witness – two, if you count Minmose himself. The sem-priest Wennefer was with him.”
This silenced the critics. Wennefer was known to us all. There was not a man in southern Thebes with a higher reputation. Even Senebtisi had been fond of him, and she was not fond of many people. He had officiated at her funeral.
Pleased at the effect of his announcement, Merusir went on in his most pompous manner. “The king himself has taken an interest in the matter. He has called on Amenhotep Sa Hapu to investigate.”
“Amenhotep?” I exclaimed. “But I know him well.”
“You do?” Merusir’s plump cheeks sagged like bladders punctured by a sharp knife.
Now, at that time Amenhotep’s name was not in the mouth of everyone, though he had taken the first steps on that astonishing career that was to make him the intimate friend of Pharaoh. When I first met him, he had been a poor, insignificant priest at a local shrine. I had been sent to fetch him to the house where my master lay dead of a stab wound, presumably murdered. Amenhotep’s fame had begun with that matter, for he had discovered the truth and saved an innocent man from execution. Since then he had handled several other cases, with equal success.
My exclamation had taken the wind out of Merusir’s sails. He had hoped to impress us by telling us something we did not know. Instead it was I who enlightened the others about Amenhotep’s triumphs. But when I finished, Rennefer shook his head.
“If this wise man is all you say, Wadjsen, it will be like inviting a lion to rid the house of mice. He will find there is a simple explanation. No doubt the thieves entered the burial chamber from above or from one side, tunneling through the rock. Minmose and Wennefer were too shocked to observe the hole in the wall, that is all.”