Introduction and notes © 2020 by Martin Edwards
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Horror of Studley Grange
The Tragedy of a Third Smoker
The Man Who Disappeared
The Cyprian Bees
The English Filter
The Contents of a Mare’s Nest
After Death the Doctor
The Broken Toad
In the Teeth of the Evidence
The Case of the Chemist in the Cupboard
The Purple Line
Blood Sport
The New Cement
Back Cover
Introduction
Long before the days of DNA testing and mobile phone tracking, science and technology played a crucial part in the detection of crime, real and fictional. The Measure of Malice gathers together classic mystery stories united by a common ingredient. The stories illustrate ways in which a host of writers, some still renowned, others long forgotten, made use of scientific and technical know-how (often fresh and exciting at the time the stories were written, even if now seemingly quaint or obvious) in weaving their puzzles.
The connection between science and the crime genre goes back to the early days of the genre. Ronald R. Thomas, an American professor of English, has pointed out in Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (1999) that the nineteenth century saw authors “sometimes anticipating the actual technologies being developed by forensic science, sometimes appropriating or popularising them.”
Thomas describes “the virtually occult power forensic science came to possess over the human image in modern mass society on both sides of the Atlantic, a phenomenon which helped to establish the fingerprint, the mug shot, and the lie detector as central elements in the sometimes dangerous arsenal of law enforcement devices,” and argues that: “These features of the nineteenth-century detective story help to make the modern world of DNA fingerprinting, satellite surveillance and crime-scene computer simulation imaginable to us.”
One of the earliest and most insightful historians of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers, an author fascinated by the implications of scientific advance. In her introduction to Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928), she discussed the pioneering work of two notable Victorian novelists, J. Sheridan Le Fanu and Wilkie Collins, in the field of scientific detection. As she pointed out, the plot of Le Fanu’s Checkmate (1871) “actually turns on the complete alteration of the criminal’s appearance by a miracle of plastic surgery.” Sayers expressed surprise that more use had not been made of this technique (writers soon made up for lost time in this respect), while highlighting a couple of obscure stories where “the alterations include the tattooing of the criminal’s eyes from blue to brown.” Sayers also admired Collins’ use of the effects of opium as a plot device in The Moonstone (1868); this book and Checkmate were, in her opinion, “the distinguished forbears of a long succession of medical and scientific stories which stretches down to the present day.”
L. T. Meade, who originally made her reputation writing stories for girls, developed the scientific detective story in conjunction with collaborators who supplied the necessary technical know-how. As Sayers said, their stories “dealt with such subjects as hypnotism, catalepsy…somnambulism, lunacy, murder by the use of X-rays and hydrocyanic gas.
Crime writers have regularly consulted scientific experts over the years, and several have followed Meade’s lead in not merely taking professional advice but collaborating in more formal fashion. Meade’s most notable co-author was Robert Eustace, a doctor who would later work with Sayers on a highly ambitious and oddly under-estimated epistolary novel, The Documents in the Case (1930), as well as combining with Edgar Jepson to produce a notable mystery puzzle in the “locked room” vein, “The Tea Leaf,” which was included in the British Library anthology Capital Crimes (2015).
The New Zealander Ngaio Marsh, one of the so-called “Queens of Crime” from the Golden Age, collaborated on The Nursing Home Murder (1935) with Henry Jellett, an Irish-born gynaecologist who also helped her to adapt the book into a stage play. Coming up to the present day, crime writer Margaret Murphy has collaborated with two experts in forensic pathology: after writing with Professor Dave Barclay as A. D. Garrett, she launched a new series under the name Ashley Dyer, co-authoring her books with Helen Pepper.
Scientific progress has fuelled the writing of stories about murder committed by unexpected means. As Sayers observed, “It is fortunate for the mystery-monger that, whereas, up to the present, there is only one known way of getting born, there are endless ways of getting killed. Here is a brief selection of handy short cuts to the grave: Poisoned tooth-stoppings; licking poisoned stamps; shaving-brushes inoculated with dread diseases; poisoned boiled eggs…; poison-gas; a cat with poisoned claws; poisoned mattresses;… electrocution by telephone…; air-bubbles injected into the arteries… hypodermic injections shot from air-guns… guns concealed in cameras; a thermometer which explodes a bomb when the temperature of the room reaches a certain height…”
Medical men such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Richard Austin Freeman naturally made use of their expertise in their detective fiction. Their influence in particular exten
ded beyond crime writers who followed in their footsteps; at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Britain’s premier forensic entomologist Dr Zakaria Erzinclioglu said in his intriguing memoir Maggots, Murder and Men (2000) that “the Sherlock Holmes stories, which emphasise the central importance of physical evidence in criminal investigation, were actually used as instruction manuals by the Chinese and Egyptian police forces for many years, and the French Sûreté named their great forensic laboratory at Lyon after him.” Sherlock’s surname is also referenced in HOLMES 2, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, which at the time of writing remains the principal IT system used by UK police forces engaged in the investigation of major crimes such as murder and high-value fraud.
J. J. Connington, a major figure during the Golden Age of Murder between the two world wars, was not himself a doctor, but rather a professor of chemistry whose factual publications included Recent Advances in Inorganic Chemistry. His intricate “fair play” detective novels gain a good deal of their strength from his plausible descriptions of scientific and technological developments. Cunningly plotted books such as The Case with Nine Solutions (1928) demonstrate his command of scientific techniques, although it is fair to add that some of the ideas that seemed daring and up-to-the-minute during the 1920s and 1930s have not aged well.
Five of the authors featured in this book were doctors, two were engineers, and another was an academic chemist. The stories collected here display the wide variety of ways in which science came to the aid of (or, occasionally, helped to bamboozle) fiction’s detectives, as well as the varied ways in which crime writers of the past made use of science in their stories. The anthology also highlights some of the difference between science of the past and of the present.
Today’s readers can enjoy classic crime stories on more than one level, appreciating each tale on its own merits whilst also gaining an insight into vanished ways of life, and having the chance to see how scientific detection has in some respects over the years changed beyond all recognition—and how in certain essentials, it has not.
My thanks go to Nigel Moss, Jamie Sturgeon, and John Cooper, fellow enthusiasts for classic crime whose suggestions for stories to include in these anthologies are always invaluable. Mike Grost’s internet page on scientific detection, which also covers many American stories, was also helpful. And, as ever, I’m grateful to the publications team at the British Library for their continuing support.
Martin Edwards
martinedwardsbooks.com
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) made admirable use of his scientific knowledge in his stories about Sherlock Holmes. The sage of 221b Baker Street was modelled in part upon the Scottish surgeon and lecturer Dr Joseph Bell. Doyle studied under Bell, and worked as his clerk; many years later, he said in a letter to Bell: “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes… round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man.” Holmes has been described, by no less an authority than the forensic entomologist Zakaria Erzinclioglu, as “a pioneer forensic scientist. It was he who introduced the idea of taking plaster casts of footprints… We owe him a great debt of gratitude.”
“The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” which first appeared in the Strand Magazine in October 1891 and was later gathered up in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was the first short story in the canon to feature murder, and also the first to feature Inspector Lestrade. The Scotland Yard man had originally been introduced in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887), and ultimately appeared in fourteen entries in the series. Summoned to Herefordshire by Lestrade, Holmes solves the puzzle thanks largely to his ability to analyse footprints. He also makes use of knowledge gained from compiling his monograph “on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco.”
* * *
WE were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes, and ran in this way:
“Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the West of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11.15.”
“What do you say, dear?” said my wife, looking across at me. “Will you go?”
“I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.”
“Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes’ cases.”
“I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one of them,” I answered. “But if I am to go I must pack at once, for I have only half an hour.”
My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were few and simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a cab with my valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey travelling cloak, and close-fitting cloth cap.
“It is really very good of you to come, Watson,” said he. “It makes a considerable difference to me, having some one with me on whom I can thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless or else biassed. If you will keep the two corner seats I shall get the tickets.”
We had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of papers which Holmes had brought with him. Among these he rummaged and read, with intervals of note-taking and of meditation, until we were past Reading. Then he suddenly rolled them all into a gigantic ball, and tossed them up on to the rack.
“Have you heard anything of the case?” he asked.
“Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days.”
“The London press has not had very full accounts. I have just been looking through all the recent papers in order to master the particulars. It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those simple cases which are so extremely difficult.”
“That sounds a little paradoxical.”
“But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a very serious case against the son of the murdered man.”
“It is a murder, then?”
“Well, it is conjectured to be so. I shall take nothing for granted until I have the opportunity of looking personally into it. I will explain the state of things to you, as far as I have been able to understand it, in a very few words.
“Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in Herefordshire. The largest landed proprietor in that part is a Mr. John Turner, who made his money in Australia, and returned some years ago to the old country. One of the farms which he held, that of Hatherley, was let to Mr. Charles McCarthy, who was also an ex-Australian. The men had known each other in the Colonies, so that it was not unnatural that when they came to settle down they should do so as near each other as possible. Turner was apparently the richer man, so McCarthy became his tenant, but still remained, it seems, upon terms of perfect equality, as they were frequently together. McCarthy had one son, a lad of eighteen, and Turner had an only daughter of the same age, but neither of them had wives living. They appear to have avoided the society of the neighbouring English families, and to have led retired lives, though both the McCarthys were fond of sport, and were frequently seen at the race meetings of the neighbourhood. McCarthy kept two servants—a man and a girl. Turner had a considerable household, some half-dozen at the least. That is as much as I have been able to gather about the families. Now for the facts.
“On June 3, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house at Hatherley about three in the
afternoon, and walked down to the Boscombe Pool, which is a small lake formed by the spreading out of the stream which runs down the Boscombe Valley. He had been out with his serving-man in the morning at Ross, and he had told the man that he must hurry, as he had an appointment of importance to keep at three. From that appointment he never came back alive.
“From Hatherley Farmhouse to the Boscombe Pool is a quarter of a mile, and two people saw him as he passed over this ground. One was an old woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was William Crowder, a gamekeeper in the employ of Mr. Turner. Both these witnesses depose that Mr. McCarthy was walking alone. The gamekeeper adds that within a few minutes of his seeing Mr. McCarthy pass he had seen his son, Mr. James McCarthy, going the same way with a gun under his arm. To the best of his belief, the father was actually in sight at the time, and the son was following him. He thought no more of the matter until he heard in the evening of the tragedy that had occurred.
“The two McCarthys were seen after the time when William Crowder, the gamekeeper, lost sight of them. The Boscombe Pool is thickly wooded round, with just a fringe of grass and of reeds round the edge. A girl of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of the lodge-keeper of the Boscombe Valley Estate, was in one of the woods picking flowers. She states that while she was there she saw, at the border of the wood and close by the lake, Mr. McCarthy and his son, and that they appeared to be having a violent quarrel. She heard Mr. McCarthy the elder using very strong language to his son, and she saw the latter raise up his hand as if to strike his father. She was so frightened by their violence that she ran away, and told her mother when she reached home that she had left the two McCarthys quarrelling near Boscombe Pool, and that she was afraid that they were going to fight. She had hardly said the words when young Mr. McCarthy came running up to the lodge to say that he had found his father dead in the wood, and to ask for the help of the lodge-keeper. He was much excited, without either his gun or his hat, and his right hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with fresh blood. On following him they found the dead body of his father stretched out upon the grass beside the Pool. The head had been beaten in by repeated blows of some heavy and blunt weapon. The injuries were such as might very well have been inflicted by the butt-end of his son’s gun, which was found lying on the grass within a few paces of the body. Under these circumstances the young man was instantly arrested, and a verdict of ‘Wilful Murder’ having been returned at the inquest on Tuesday, he was on Wednesday brought before the magistrates at Ross, who have referred the case to the next assizes. Those are the main facts of the case as they came out before the coroner and at the police-court.”
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