Ezra Pound’s and Olga Rudge’s The Blue Spill: A Manuscript Critical Edition 9781474281058, 9781474281089, 9781474281072

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EZRA POUND’S AND OLGA RUDGE’S THE BLUE SPILL

Modernist Archives Series Series Editors: Matthew Feldman (Teesside University, UK) and Erik Tonning (University of Bergen, Norway) Editorial Board: Chris Ackerley (University of Otago, New Zealand), Ronald Bush (University of Oxford, UK), Mark Byron (University of Sydney, Australia), Wayne K. Chapman (Clemson University, USA), Miranda Hickman (McGill University, Canada), Gregory Maertz (St John’s University, USA), Alec Marsh (Muhlenberg College, USA), Steven Matthews (Oxford Brookes University, UK), Lois M. Overbeck (Emory University, USA), Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp, Belgium). From letters, journals, and notebooks to unpublished or out of print works, unfamiliar but important writings in translation and forgotten articles, Bloomsbury’s Modernist Archives series makes available to researchers at all levels historical archival material that can reconfigure received views of Modernist literature and culture. Annotated throughout and supported by extensive contextual essays by leading scholars, the Modernist Archives series is an essential resource for anyone with a serious interest in 20th Century Literature and Culture. Titles in Series David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture, edited by Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-Owen and Kathleen Henderson Staudt David Jones’s The Grail Mass and Other Works, edited by Thomas Goldpaugh and Jamie Callison Ezra Pound and Globe Magazine: The Complete Correspondence, edited by Michael T. Davis and Cameron McWhirter Ezra Pound’s and Olga Rudge’s The Blue Spill: A Manuscript Critical Edition, edited by Mark Byron and Sophia Barnes W. B. Yeats’s Robartes-Aherne Writings, Wayne K. Chapman Forthcoming Titles The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and the Frobenius Institute, 1930–1959 Edited by Ronald Bush and Erik Tonning Edith Ayrton Zangwill’s The Call: A New Scholarly Edition Edited by Stephanie Brown Global Modernists on Modernism: An Anthology Edited by Alys Moody and Stephen J. Ross Man into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition Edited by Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer

EZRA POUND’S AND OLGA RUDGE’S THE BLUE SPILL

A MANUSCRIPT CRITICAL EDITION Edited by Mark Byron and Sophia Barnes

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Author © The Estate of Ezra Pound and The Estate of Olga Rudge, 2019 Editorial matter © Mark Byron and Sophia Barnes, 2019 The Blue Spill: Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. Editorial matter: Mark Byron and Sophia Barnes have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray Cover image © Corbis Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-8105-8 ePDF: 978-1-4742-8107-2 eBook: 978-1-4742-8106-5 Series: Modernist Archives Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

for Mary de Rachewiltz

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CONTENTS

Figures viii Editorial Preface to Modernist Archives ix Foreword xi Acknowledgements xiv Part One: The Edition1 1 Introduction: ‘Brilliant Detective cut off …’: The Blue Spill as an Incomplete Murder

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2 Textual Essay: ‘Too Much Attention to Detail …’: The Composition of The Blue Spill 22 3 Reading Text: The Blue Spill 33 Part Two: Essays133 4 A Golden Age Clue-Puzzle: The Blue Spill and Detective Fiction

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5 Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: A Career in Artistic Collaboration

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Bibliography 165 Index 170

FIGURES

1.1 YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2816, TS1, 68. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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1.2 YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2816, TS1, 69. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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3.1 YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2820, TS12, 133. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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5.1 Advertising poster for the Concerti Tigulliani, 1934–35. Filippo Romoli (1933), Riviera di Levante, Rapallo. Società Industrie Grafiche Barabino & Graeve, Genova. Private collection of Mark Byron. Courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz

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5.2 Advertising poster for the Concerti Tigulliani, 1934–35. Filippo Romoli (1933), Riviera di Levante, Rapallo. Società Industrie Grafiche Barabino & Graeve, Genova. Private collection of Mark Byron. Courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz

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5.3 Advertisement for S. A. Luciani and Olga Rudge, eds. (1939–47), Vivialdi Manuscripts: Facsimiles. Siena: Accademia Chigiana

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5.4 Verso, Advertisement for S. A. Luciani and Olga Rudge, eds. (1939–47), Vivialdi Manuscripts: Facsimiles. Siena: Accademia Chigiana

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EDITORIAL PREFACE TO MODERNIST ARCHIVES

Archival excavation and detailed contextualization is becoming increasingly central to scholarship on literary Modernism. In recent years, the increased accessibility and dissemination of previously unpublished or little-known documents and texts has led to paradigm-shifting scholarly interventions on a range of canonical authors (Beckett, Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Woolf, among others), neglected topics (the occult, ‘primitivism’, fascism, eugenics, book history, the writing process) and critical methodologies (genetic criticism, intertextuality and historical contexts). This trend will surely only increase as large-scale digitization of archival materials gathers pace and existing copyright restrictions gradually lapse. Modernist Archives is a book series that aims to channel, extend and interrogate these shifts by publishing hitherto unavailable or neglected primary materials for a wider readership. Each volume also provides supporting, contextualizing work by scholars, alongside a critical apparatus of notes and references. The impetus for Modernist Archives emerges from the editors’ well-established series, Historicizing Modernism. While Historicizing Modernism’s focus is analytical, Modernist Archives will make accessible edited and annotated versions of little-known sources and avant-texts. The monographs and edited collections in Historicizing Modernism have revealed the extent to which contemporary scholars are increasingly turning towards archival and/or unpublished material in order to reconfigure understandings of Modernism, in its broader historical rootedness as well as in its compositional methodologies. The present series extends this empirical and genetic focus. Understanding and defining such primary sources as a broad category extending to letters, diaries, notes, drafts and marginalia, the Modernist Archives series produces volumes that not only unearth significant unpublished material and provide original scholarship on this material, but also develop cutting-edge editorial presentation techniques that preserve as much information as possible in an economical and accessible way. Also of note is the potential for the series to explore collections pertaining to the relations between literary Modernism and other media (radio, television), or important cultural moments. The series thus aims to be an enabling force within Modernist scholarship. It is becoming evermore difficult to read this extraordinary period of literary experimentation in isolation from contextualizing archival material, sometimes dubbed the ‘grey canon’ of Modernist writing. The difficulty, we suggest, is something like a loss of innocence: once obviously relevant materials are actually accessible, they cannot be ignored. They may challenge received ideas about the limits or definition of Modernism; they may upend theoretical frameworks, or encourage fresh theoretical reflection; they may require new methodologies, or revise the very notion of ‘authorship’; likewise, they may require types of knowledge that we never knew we needed – but there they are.

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EDITORIAL PREFACE TO MODERNIST ARCHIVES

However, while we are champions of historical, archival research, Modernist Archives in no way seeks to influence the results or approaches that scholars in this area will utilize in the exciting times ahead. By commissioning a wide range of innovative and challenging editions, this series aims to once more ‘make strange’ and ‘make new’ our fundamental ideas about Modernism. Matthew Feldman Erik Tonning

FOREWORD

Several years after they met, having relocated from Paris to Rapallo, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound composed an unfinished detective novel, a clue-puzzle murder mystery, The Blue Spill. Its existence in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University is not unknown among Pound scholars. But it would be fair to say that knowledge of this large archival remnant is not especially widespread, nor does it involve much more than a superficial awareness of the novel’s generic affiliations. One might wonder, with reason, why such an Ozymandias of the archive – a truncated monument to a rich, lifelong collaboration – deserves to be taken from its vault and provided with the scaffolding of a scholarly edition. The text’s significance is at least threefold: first, the remarkable collaboration of a concert violinist and music historian with an avant-garde poet, to produce a novel in a distinctly middlebrow genre, bears the potential to generate a few surprises and to revise views of each author’s repertoire; second, the fact of its collaborative generation places it squarely within the zone of the most experimental aspects of Transatlantic Modernism, and even locates its heritage in the Parisian locale of its authors’ first meeting; and third, the material nature of collaboration in the novel’s composition potentially sheds light on Modernist practices more generally. I first read The Blue Spill typescripts in January 2006 while undertaking a Donald C. Gallup Research Fellowship at the Beinecke Library, mainly invested in reading and transcribing large portions of The Cantos typescript drafts, and surveying Pound’s unpublished prose and various prose fragments. Having accomplished all I could manage in the month allocated by the fellowship, I turned to the pleasure I had put aside for my final day. Though fragmented, the text was by turns amusing, knowing in its generic and historic contexts, and nostalgic for a time and place not so very far away, but receding from view at a moment of rapid cultural and political change in Western Europe. The draft added a curious dimension to both authors, and stood to be worth investing time and attention in its transcription. Subsequent visits to the archive in 2012 and 2013 were aimed at studying Pound’s interests in early medieval sources, including two sets of notes on John Scottus Eriugena, forming the central pillar of my 2014 monograph, Ezra Pound’s Eriugena. I was able to scan the typescripts of The Blue Spill, having a much clearer idea of their potential worth to the community of Pound scholars. After discussing the prospect of editing the material with Sophia Barnes, then a doctoral student under my supervision at the University of Sydney, we set about structuring the project as a collaboration in scholarly editing. Sophia produced a diplomatic transcription in short order, and cleaned up most of the incidental errors and idiosyncrasies. Sophia also produced a running chapter summary, enabling both of us to keep astride of plot developments, some of which defy chronology and become rather knotty, not least the twice-revised Chapter 2 and the fragments of the typescript’s final pages. I then developed the transcription into a reading text, annotating its textual particularities wherever significant variation occurred, or wherever the documents overlapped, bifurcated or

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FOREWORD

otherwise strayed from the linearity essential to the clue-puzzle detective genre. The essays were shared between the editors, and although authorship might be detected or guessed at on stylistic grounds, this division of labour was only ever partial: our thinking on the nature of this typescript, and its location in the history of the detective genre, as well as in the chronology of its authors, is essentially collaborative and complementary. Part One of this book contains the working parts of The Blue Spill edition: the Introduction presents the case for the critical typescript edition as a collaborative project responding to aspects of Rudge and Pound’s professional lives, and to their reading interests in the Golden Age of detective fiction. Several aspects of historical and thematic context are canvassed, each of which comprise important elements of the plot: economic conditions leading up to the Great Depression and the role of commodity markets (the novel drafts were most likely composed very soon after Black Tuesday 29 October 1929); the institutional role of art in society and a defence of aesthetics; and the rising prominence of private ownership of automobiles in England through the 1920s. The structure of the narrative is also laid out: the cast of characters is listed and the web of relationships between them sketched; and a chapter-by-chapter plot summary is provided. The Introduction concludes with a catalogue of potential culprits and a speculation on the identity of the murderer based on a short analysis of the fragmented narrative. Following the Introduction, the textual essay provides detailed information regarding the physical organization of the typescript documents, inferences concerning the composition and revision processes, and a conceptual list showing how the two partial typescripts, and various typescript and autograph fragments, fit into the incomplete narrative scheme of the novel. Some of the documents demonstrate particularly complicated relationships to the narrative – the twice-revised Chapter 2 is a good case in point, as is the set of fragments composed late in the process but impinging on information given very early in the narrative – and these are given examination. Finally the textual essay provides the editorial rationale: the role of accidentals and typing errors, the arrangement of paragraphs and sentences in the reading text and the presentation of dialogue. The reading text of The Blue Spill is the heart of this project and occupies the greatest and most central position. Running to 47,000 words, with another 14,000 words of textual apparatus and occasional substantive footnotes, the reading text is structured to provide the most coherent account of the documents, with contradictions, variants and other problemata recorded in the apparatus and referred to the documents’ description in the textual essay. This unfinished narrative presents its own editorial challenges, but it would be fair to say that these are of considerably less complexity than those pertaining to Pound’s poetic texts, and foremost, clearly, The Cantos. The significance of variants and errata has been weighed against producing a reading text of appropriate clarity befitting the genre – prose belonging to (and parodying) the middlebrow genre of detective fiction. An editorial impulse for exhaustive annotation and completeness of description has been tempered by consideration of the reading context. This literary curiosity is intriguing in its own right. The plainest presentation of the narrative, with sufficient information regarding the physical and conceptual state of the text and its documents, offers readers the chance to discover some surprising new dimensions to two well-known avant-garde figures: Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound. Part Two comprises two essays that complement the reading text and begin to locate its features within literary and cultural contexts. The first essay concerns The Blue Spill as detective fiction, read in the context of the Golden Age of detective fiction – Rudge and Pound are known to have enjoyed reading many of its major proponents – and its first

FOREWORD

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transposition to Italy in the Gialli publishing genre. The narrative advertises itself as a clue-puzzle murder mystery, drawing on the loose rules of the genre as they were slowly codified in the 1920s and 1930s, and displays familiarity with the inherently self-parodic capacities of the genre (notably in the figure of the leading sleuth). The second essay places Rudge and Pound’s literary labours in the context of collaboration of different kinds: literary collaboration in the Anglophone tradition; the curiously intensive and cosmopolitan nature of Modernist collaboration that crossed genres and artistic modes, particularly in the Paris scene where Rudge and Pound first met; and the remarkable collaborative tenor of their respective careers in literature and music. These two figures were by no means unique in this sense, but were eminently equipped to engage in the collaborative venture of detective fiction. This essay also interrogates the significance of the genre itself as a mode of avant-garde collaboration. Despite its august roots in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James and others, detective fiction was – and arguably, with some exceptions, remains – a distinctly middlebrow genre. The intersection of aesthetic innovation, genre fiction and collaboration provides an opportunity to examine the cultural moment from a different angle, and in a different light. It will be instructive to discover what kinds of insights into Modernist authorship, genre and collaboration these themes invoke in the readers of this book. Mark Byron The University of Sydney

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to Mary de Rachewiltz, whose enthusiasm for this project from its initial socialized stage has been an ongoing source of moral support and confidence. Her generosity and good faith have made possible a significant number of projects on the lives and works of Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge, as generations of scholars across the continents can attest. It is an enormous pleasure to dedicate this edition of The Blue Spill to her, in memory of her parents and their collaborative ventures. Another special thanks is due to Mr Declan Spring of New Directions Publishing Corporation, who has graciously provided permission to publish the typescript drafts of The Blue Spill, to quote from a selection of Pound’s published texts and to reproduce material advertising the Concerti Tigulliani in the 1930s as well as Olga Rudge’s editorial work publishing Vivaldi manuscript facsimiles for the Accademia Chigiana in the same decade. The typescripts on which this edition is based are housed in the Olga Rudge Collection, YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folders 2814–24, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Mark first accessed these typescripts in January 2006 when he was a recipient of a Donald C. Gallup Fellowship, and was greatly assisted by the generosity of Patricia C. Willis, then curator of the American Literature Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, her formidable successor. He was able to take extended notes and arrange for digital reproductions of the archival material in subsequent visits in 2012 and 2013. He would like to thank especially both Naomi Saito and Ann Marie Menta for their considerable help in matters of accessing the materials and obtaining reproductions, without which the process of transcription would have taken far longer and at significant expense. Any collaborative project relies for its survival and prosperity on the reliability of its collaborators. While Mark may have unintentionally tested the limits of this theory, he has been very fortunate indeed to have worked with a reliable, patient collaborator in Sophia Barnes, whose scholarly proficiency and editorial acuity kept things on the rails. Beginning on the project as a research assistant during her doctoral studies, Sophia graduated from supervisee to colleague and collaborator, and deserves accolades for her excellent work and example of academic and personal integrity. It has been an honour to supervise her doctoral project, and now to share authorship and editorship of the present volume. Sophia would like to extend her heartfelt thanks to Mark for his unceasing generosity and encouragement, both as a supervisor and a collaborator. She has been especially privileged in having had Mark’s invaluable support and guidance throughout her doctoral studies, and the opportunity to contribute to this exciting project. Finally, the authors owe a large debt of gratitude to the Modernist Archives series editors, Matthew Feldman and Erik Tonning. Both gave generously of their time, provided timely and astute advice, and supported this project unstintingly from its genesis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS



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The staff at Bloomsbury have been exceedingly patient and efficient: our thanks go to David Avital, senior publisher in literary studies, Leeladevi Ulaganathan, our project manager, and editorial assistants Clara Herberg, Lucy Brown and Mark Richardson. All previously unpublished material by Ezra Pound, Copyright © 2017 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust, used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., agents for the Trustees. All published material by Ezra Pound used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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PART ONE

The Edition

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FIGURE 1.1:  YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2816, TS1, 68. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

FIGURE 1.2:  YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2816, TS1, 69. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Chapter ONE

Introduction ‘Brilliant Detective cut off …’: The Blue Spill as an Incomplete Murder

The Blue Spill, an unfinished detective novel, has been brought out from its crypt in the Olga Rudge Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, where it has lain, mostly untroubled, for more than forty years. Consisting of two unfinished and partially overlapping typescripts, this collaborative project between Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound was undertaken in the winter of 1929 (according to Rudge’s biographer Anne Conover) or 1930 (according to the Beinecke Library’s accession data). The novel draws heavily for its style – and its parodic force – upon the detective fictions of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and others writing during what has come to be known as the Golden Age of detective fiction. The rising popularity of English detective fiction in the 1920s saw the emergence of such subgenres as the country-house murder mystery – Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) which introduced Hercule Poirot, the ‘closed room’ mystery – from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841) and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) to Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) and Nicholas Blake’s Thou Shell of Death (1935) to the ‘cosy’ mystery – Dorothy Sayers’s The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) – all of which inform the narrative tone, plotting and themes of The Blue Spill to varying degrees. In keeping with the sardonic wit, genteel treatment of sexual activity and violence, and varying modes of understatement appropriate to the class implications of these genres, The Blue Spill also draws on Rudge’s and Pound’s extensive reading of the stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, especially those featuring Bertie Wooster and his man Jeeves. The translation of English detective fiction into the Italian publishing scene, evident in the very rapid rise in popularity of Gialli novels (named for their distinctive yellow covers) may also have played a role in the decision to attempt writing a financially lucrative novel. This was by no means the most obvious literary project for a concert violinist and music scholar, and an avantgarde impresario and pre-eminent poet. Quite clearly the novel is Rudge’s – specific evidence for this view is presented in the textual essay to follow – but Pound’s influence and enthusiasm are palpable in his many marginal comments, certain aspects of dialogue and elements of setting and character. Although Rudge never completed the project, it carries a tone and balance evident nowhere in Pound’s writing. An argument for collaboration may be made similar to that of Pound’s role in the production of T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land of seven or eight years before. Rudge did the hard work of setting down narrative episodes – perhaps conceived in private meditation as well as discussion, although lacking any record of

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EZRA POUND’S AND OLGA RUDGE’S THE BLUE SPILL

how the story came about such notions are strictly speculative – and typed the text for Pound’s editorial and annotative energies to do their work. Rudge indicates near the end of the typescript that the resolution to the mystery rests in Pound’s hands: ‘Writ by order of EP who was to supply reason in last chapter!’ This resolution was never declared, and the reader must be satisfied with their own resolutions as well as any other diversions picked up along the way. This strange confluence between detective fiction and avantgarde writing arises in the feature of narrative irresolution: from Samuel Beckett’s Molloy (1946) and Carlo Emilia Gadda’s Modernist masterpiece, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana) (1957) to Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy of City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986). Inspector Love’s irascibility seems to be a private joke between Olga and Ezra, where his habits of murmuring (perhaps recalling W. B. Yeats in the Stone Cottage winters of 1913–16) and his blasting of the press, not to mention his impatience with ponderous witness statements, all point to Ezra Pound’s infamous energy and cantankerousness (the fun to be had with such names as Love and Bryde might also suggest a sentimental element in the story’s composition). The figure of Rodney, an avant-garde artist with a licence to behave badly, as well as the Soho scene of the French Café in the late 1920s fictionalized in Carpentier’s French restaurant on Dean Street, also point to Pound’s direct contributions to the novel’s atmosphere. The Blue Spill centres upon the murder of Mr Marshall, an irritable patriarch of a nouveau riche family who reside in the Graylands estate near the village of Ripton in Surrey. As the plot develops more figures become credible suspects of the murder, and the introduction of stock investments complicate the potential lines of desire and culpability. However, all elements of the narrative point to the material object central to the narrative and surely linked to the murder. The titular blue spill is the mystery document hidden in plain sight throughout much of the narrative, comprising the fifth compromising page of the industrial report that serves as financial guarantee, catalyst for blackmail and ticket to freedom for the characters. Its removal from the crime scene by persons unknown is a mystery unsolved at the endpoint of the typescripts, but a certain amount of careful reconstruction and speculation leads to a proposed solution to the novel at the conclusion of this chapter. What is of particular interest in terms of the material and thematic emphases of the narrative is that a written text, seen and disappeared, mimics the incompleteness of the typescript in which its story is developed. The final, crucial pages are missing, denying the reader the payload just as the missing sheet has the capacity to do at each stage of its existence: first as evidence of a failed experiment, then when that danger passed as evidence of a corrupted scientific method and source of blackmail. As it appears and disappears in the typescript, the blue spill is its own curious MacGuffin. The missing page 90 of the second typescript turns up in a different folder in the archive, where Inspector Love invests considerable energy pondering the significance of the paper: did it exist? Was it of any importance? Was its apparent triviality actually a cleverly concealed mode of subterfuge on behalf of certain persons in the Graylands household? But what of the blue spill itself, as an object? A spill is a paper, often twisted, used to light candles or cigarettes: Darrow uses this device to light his cigarettes in Chapter 22. It may also echo the taper of Pound’s first published volume of poetry, A Lume Spento of 1908. The colour of the missing sheet in this narrative is telling in terms of its potential literary implications. The blue sheet of paper used in the Parisian Pneumatique telegram system from 1866 to 1984 was known as the petit bleu. On 6 June 1923, soon after they first met, Olga Rudge sent Ezra Pound a petit bleu to excuse herself from a scheduled

INTRODUCTION

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meeting. The choice of a blue spill as the central prop or MacGuffin in the novel no doubt bore the symbolic weight of their mutual affection. But they also drew on a significant literary and cultural history too, whether intentionally or otherwise. The discovery of a petit bleu between a German intelligence officer and a French military officer contributed to the retrial of Albert Dreyfus in the infamous Dreyfus Affair that scandalized the Third Republic between 1894 and 1906 (see Colaresi 90). Maurice Leblanc’s stories in the early years of the twentieth-century feature the ‘gentleman thief’ and detective Arsène Lupin, who often receives ‘a little blue’ in the course of the narrative. The petit bleu was in common usage as an instrument of communication, but notably Marcel Proust was well known for his reliance upon them for urgent messages. Madame de Vionnet sends a petit bleu to Strether in Henry James’s The Ambassadors, published in 1903 and a subject of Pound’s essay ‘Henry James’, published in the Little Review in August 1918. The key to the object’s identity in the present narrative is that it is a commissioned laboratory report, a document meant to be read and preserved: it is not yet a means for igniting a fire but the possibility of its doing so, flagged early and prominently in the title, becomes potentially significant in solving the clue-puzzle. The composition of The Blue Spill in 1929 or 1930, when Rudge and Pound were living in Italy, provides an unusual perspective on their collaborative projects in the 1920s and 1930s. This is the subject of an essay in Part Two. A few features of the novel might be noted here, as preliminary context for the reading text to follow. At the time Pound was turning to matters of legal and political institutions and the distribution of justice in The Cantos and in various prose projects, most notably the conspiracy of munitions profiteering he saw in geopolitical and economic systems, culminating in the First World War. During a conversation between Inspector Love and his offsider Dr Whitby at the beginning of Chapter 3, Whitby comment on the ‘strangeness’ of the US justice system, by which he means the arbitrariness of sentencing and the relative liberty of those with money to mount a proper defence. This brief moment echoes Pound’s burgeoning concerns, but also provides a brief window into the comparative values and thematic focus of the British clue-puzzle genre and the emerging hard-boiled genre of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the United States. Perhaps emblematic of this transatlantic awareness, Love ruptures the class gentility of his genre when he opines on the quality of crime reportage at the end of Chapter 12: ‘Damn the press!’ The function of art in the novel also touches on the biographies of the violinist and the poet who first met in Paris in the 1920s. Rodney, the avant-garde artist perhaps modelled on Wyndham Lewis, first appears in Chapter 3 as the painter of the artworks in Margela Marshall’s disorderly room, and who ‘had been hung in the Academy that year’. At the same time Love notices Margela’s literary preferences, particularly her interests in foreign literature (‘in translation’): Maurice Dekobra (1885–1973), a French writer of subversive journalistic novels in the 1920s and 1930s who turned to writing whodunits later in life; Paul Morand (1888–1976), a pioneering Modernist writer whose early collection of stories Tendre Stocks (1921) was translated by Pound as the long-unpublished Fancy Goods (1984), and who later became well known as a Vichy collaborator and anti-Semite; and Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863–1938), a Decadent poet, journalist and composer who came under the influence of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, and who was in turn an intellectual influence on Italian fascism. Margela’s intellectual curiosity – or avant-garde posing – seeps into her character throughout the narrative. In his second interview with Margela, Love asks her for a description of her father’s study ‘as though looking at a picture’, where art functions as an heuristic device to solve a crime. She seems to inspire a retrograde

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aesthetic in Rodney however: his portrait of her in the Royal Academy of Art is thought by Whitby to approach the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema or Sir Frederick Leighton (Chapter 15). Mrs Rodney shares Whitby’s modern sensibility when she regales Love, at great length, with her theories of Rodney’s revolutionary approach to art that ‘concentrates on the essential’ and her dismissal of ‘dud’ art criticism in The Times (Chapter 21). While Love is non-committal in his preferences, Whitby certainly belongs to the avant-garde circles of Paris and London of the 1920s: he is friends with Rodney and other artists, and an habitué of the cafés of Montparnasse, but curiously, is a newcomer to Carpentier’s café in Soho, modelled on Le Tour Eiffel in Dean Street with its long history of artistic associations, and scene of William Roberts’s well-known 1962 portrait of the Vorticist group with Pound and Wyndham Lewis dominating the scene. Before turning to an outline of the narrative and characters of The Blue Spill, one element of its historical context demands brief mention: the displacement of footprints by automobile tyre tracks. Footprints bear evidentiary force in roughly half of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, from the first published story ‘A Study in Scarlet’ (1887) to one of the last, ‘The Lion’s Mane’ (1926) – not to mention the crucial footprints of the eponymous The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) – and quickly became a staple of clue-puzzle detective fiction (O’Brien 55–60 and 81–87; see also Hildebrand). Inspector Love makes reference to shoes in a moment of shared memory with Whitby when he recites a line – ‘The cop stood on the corner and his shoes were full of feet’ – from Wendell Hall’s 1923 arrangement of a traditional lyric, ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo.’ In his clue-puzzle, Love is left with tyre tracks to decipher. This proves easy enough – the car belongs to Mr Shelton, a family friend – but this clue (or red herring) tells the reader that car ownership means something very different in this story than it does in the years even soon after the time of the action. Car production rose very quickly in the 1920s in the United States and in Britain, largely as a result of rising affluence and lower costs associated with the Ford Model T or ‘Tin Lizzie’ (the make of Rodney’s vehicle, also seen in the vicinity on the night of the murder). The prevalence of car ownership in the UK also increased rapidly in the 1920s, from less than 200,000 at the beginning of the decade, when Pound left for Paris, to well over 1.2 million by its end, when composition of The Blue Spill took place (O’Connell 59). Similarly, the number of private car licences rose from about a quarter of a million to over 900,000 in the same period (120). The notion that car ownership is not difficult to determine by sight alone, or that a local mechanic can write down the licence plates of all cars that pass his business during his fallow hours, suggest a note of nostalgia for a time recently passed when most cars on the road were identifiable, and not a blur of interchangeable and mass-produced transport units. Having said this, Rodney drives a Tin Lizzy or Model T Ford: the very emblem of mass production and for decades the most popular model of car on American and British roads.

CAST OF CHARACTERS Marshall Mrs Marshall Margela Marshall Dane Marshall Inspector Love Doctor Whitby

Fearsome patriarch of Graylands, businessman, murder victim Marshall’s wife, long-suffering and near-deaf Marshall’s daughter, romantically involved with Rodney Marshall’s son, romantically involved with Pegsy London Detective New neighbour to the Marshalls, friend of Inspector Love

INTRODUCTION

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Brooks Local policeman first on the murder scene Bennet Graylands butler Margaret Owen ‘Pegsy’, Graylands parlourmaid, romantically involved with Dane Marshall Eva Mullins Graylands parlourmaid Bryde Graylands chauffeur Mr Brinkly Lawyer for Mrs Marshall Ronald Bemburg Friend of Dane Marshall, colleague at Morton and Haddocks Mr Bemburg Father of Ronald Kitty, Alma, The six daughters of Mr and Mrs Bemburg Louisa, Marjorie, Lilian and Arabella Bemburg Monsieur Carpentier Proprietor of the French Café, Dean Street, Soho Darrow Director of Corradium Cylinders Ltd. Mr Clifford American tourist in London, investor in Corradium Washington Clifford’s chauffeur Mulver American friend of Clifford, alleged to have hired a hitman Rodney Avant-garde artist, lothario, holder of Corradium stock Mrs Rodney Rodney’s muse and impresario Flossie Melvill Cabaret performer, friend to both Rodney and Whitby Wade I Medical practitioner, artist, friend to Rodney and Whitby Wade II Whitby’s batman (a composition error?) Charles Danton Evans Marshall family friend, friend of Shelton in the car on the night of the murder Albert Slater Evans’s butler Shelton Solicitor, Marshall family friend, whose car left tyre tracks outside Graylands on the night of the murder Mr Daniel Of Daniel and Daniel, New Oxford Street, commissioned to adjust and clean Mr Marshall’s browning revolver Bute Friend of Bryde, killed in a car accident the day following the murder Bill Local Ripton mechanic Hare Darrow’s business partner Bane and Gunaway Investors in Corradium Ltd.

NARRATIVE SCHEMA Chapter 1 Inspector Love arrives at Graylands, an estate near Ripton, Surrey, in which a murder has taken place. He meets his old friend Dr Whitby who has just moved in next door to the family of the victim, Mr Marshall. Whitby tells Love that a maid from Graylands came to him immediately following the murder on Sunday, the previous night. Love elicits preliminary information from Whitby regarding the murder: apparently Marshall was not well liked, and bullied his family. There is a wife, a daughter and a son at Cambridge. Upon entering Graylands Love heads straight into the study to inspect the crime scene, dismissing Inspector Brooks, who reports before he leaves that there is no sign of the

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murder weapon, and that car tracks were noticed outside the property. The body is in the billiard room, which opens off the study.

Chapter 2 Love inspects the crime scene and the body, as well as the desk in the study. There is an unfinished letter on the desk, half-hidden under the blotter. Love talks to himself when alone. Dr Whitby interrupts Love to tell him he has been talking to the victim’s wife. Love asks to see her and is introduced to Mrs Marshall, who is almost deaf. Love begins to interrogate her and she explains that she did not hear the shot last night, but was fetched by the parlourmaid, Eva (Mullins), who came immediately upon hearing the shot herself. Mrs Marshall was not warned of what she would find when she opened the study door to find her husband’s body impeding her path. She moved him a little and tried to revive him. Love’s interview is interrupted by the butler announcing a letter for him, which contains the medical report. Mrs Marshall is alone momentarily with the doctor, and asks if there is any further information. He begins to advise her not to bother Love for more, but is interrupted when Love returns. Love asks Mrs Marshall about the weapon, a ‘small sized browning’, and she says that no one in the family has ever owned one. Whitby asks on behalf of Mrs Marshall whether there is any further information and Love replies bluntly. Mrs Marshall asks for herself and Whitby wryly notes Love’s politeness in his response to her. The Inspector steps into the garden, and Whitby follows. Love notices Mrs Marshall anxiously awaiting the arrival of her son.

Chapter 3 Love walks through the garden with Whitby, discussing Brooks and the car tracks. They discuss previous cases they have worked on together. Love talks to himself, noting the layout of the house and garden as he goes. They joke about Whitby being a suspect. The son of the victim, Dane Marshall, arrives and encounters the two men. Whitby hands to Love the telegram Dane received from Bennet, the Graylands butler. Dane has not been told yet that it is murder rather than a death from natural causes. Dane is dazed at the news of murder. Love asks him if he can think of any reason that the murder might have happened. Dane has no idea, and runs into the house. Love asks the butler to fetch the victim’s daughter, Margela Marshall. He meets her in the drawing room, and evaluates her with backhanded compliments. Margela recounts the evening: she was in her bath at the time of the murder, didn’t hear the shot and wasn’t called downstairs until the doctor arrived. Love asks to see her room and observes the paintings on the walls. There is a reproduction of a portrait of Miss Marshall by a painter called Rodney. Love inspects the bathroom and interrogates her sequence of events. They return to the drawing room and Love asks to see servants, seating himself on a chair.

Chapter 4 Inspector Love is in the garden, thinking that, save for the letter Love found in the study (its contents yet to be disclosed), events would necessitate an arrest and a triumph for Brooks. He comes inside to see the parlourmaid Owen on the telephone, engaging in a suspicious conversation – ‘promise me you know nothing’ – with her brother. Love asks if Dane has returned to town, and when he was last down. Owen replies that it has been several weeks. Love asks if he was here the previous night (Sunday) and Owen denies this.

INTRODUCTION

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Owen departs to Love’s suspicion that she was not talking to her brother. He is trying to piece together the sequence of events: exactly when the shot was fired and who was called. He asks to see the maid Mullins and asks if Dane had been down. She too states that Dane has not visited for many weeks, and that Mr Marshall had been particularly difficult lately. Mullins reports very theatrically about having overheard a fight between Mr Marshall and his daughter not long before the murder. She heard money mentioned, and Mr Marshall threatening that his daughter would not get any until he was dead. ‘The kitchen’ thinks Margela was referring to money for the purposes of marriage. Love returns to the study and sits at the desk, noticing that the top right drawer is out of alignment, and discovers it is unusually heavy. On further inspection it is revealed to be a miniature safe. Love looks for Margela, who is in the drawing room with her mother, and asks her to come with him to the morning room. He asks her what she noticed in her father’s study the night before. She says he had been sorting his papers and had broken his glasses. Love asks about the contents of his desk, and Margela mentions a letter he was writing, several bundles of papers, with one blue paper on top of a pile (not mentioned in Love’s recent inventory). Love interrogates Margela about the meeting with her father, then lets up a little in his pressure. When Love asks directly about Dane, she is startled to hear that he visited on Sunday night. Love tells Margela that Dane is ‘under observation’, and she immediately begins defending him even though no explicit accusation has been made. Margela retreats upstairs and Love goes to speak to her mother again. Love asks Mrs Marshall about her son: she says that she did not know he was there the day before. She asks what Margela has told him, then makes for the door and falls into a faint. When she comes to she draws back from her daughter, and Love notices the distance in their relationship. Love tells Margela that he will have to make an arrest if her brother does not explain himself. When he takes leave he goes back to the study and inspects the desk one more time, and notices that there is no blue paper.

Chapter 5 When Love is at Whitby’s for lunch the following day (Tuesday), he reports that the browning has ‘turned up’ overnight on the study sofa. He observes that Mrs Marshall has changed her story to the affirmative of whether any of the family owned revolvers, and that the firearm must have been returned via the window. It appears that each member of the family is covering for another. Whitby mentions that his man noticed Bryde, the Marshalls’ chauffeur, entering the garage late at night on Sunday when he was supposed already to be in bed. The man, Wade, reports details about Bryde’s private affairs that throw a new light on his character – he had fallen for one of the household maids and threatened with dismissal by Mr Marshall. Wade leaves, and Love and Whitby muse on how many people possess a motive to kill Mr Marshall. Love observes that Dane had asked his father for something that he refused – this, it seems, was the content of the letter, to which the reader has not yet been privy. Margela wanted something also, and had been refused – she is now financially independent. Love finally reflects on Mrs Marshall’s motives, and decides he is sick of the whole affair. He jumps up and says he’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. After Love has left to see Bryde, Whitby reflects that he feels sorry for the chauffeur. He also meditates on the motives of the rest of the family and Love’s view of them. Love returns and reports on his visit to Bryde, who denies hearing or seeing anything but admits to having been out: he claims to have

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walked home from his club at eleven with a man named Bute. Love and Whitby decide to go and visit the club. At the club, someone confirms that the two men left together on Sunday night. They ascertain Bute’s place of work and decide to visit him. They arrive at the garage where Bute works to find out that he was killed the previous morning (Monday). They obtain his home address and visit Bute’s lodgings where the landlady has no recollection of Bute’s movements on Sunday. They return to Graylands to seek out Bryde. He seems shocked at the news of Bute’s (his alibi’s) death. After they leave him Love observes to Whitby that he spied the Ripton Herald on the bench, with the story of Bute’s death in it.

Chapter 6 During this time Dane Marshall has been with his mother while Margela has been spending time with a school friend. Mrs Marshall was visited by Mr Brinkly, her lawyer, but excused herself. Love discovers that Brinkly hired a firm of private detectives to investigate the murder, then promptly dismissed them without explanation. Love thinks to himself about Whitby and his aid to Dane, the possession of the revolver, the stories provided by both Margela and Dane, and the fact that the browning (Margela’s, it has emerged) had been given to Mr Marshall to have cleaned two weeks before the murder. Love is sorting through Marshall’s desk while thinking about this, looking for any reference to a gunsmith. Mr Shelton, and old friend of the family, arrives and asks to see Love. It transpires that his car made the tracks in front of the house: he stopped outside the house on Sunday night at around eleven with the intention of discussing something with Marshall, then changed his mind. Love asks Shelton if he has any ideas or suggestions about the murder. He prevaricates, but ends up talking about Dane’s and Margela’s ‘foolish’ behaviour. A detective comes in to reveal that a journalist has cracked the mystery of the tyre tracks. Shelton, overhearing, is furious. Love calls in a second journalist and ‘cracks’ the story to him, revealing that it has been explained away, to Shelton’s immediate relief. He continues to speak about the murder and mentions that Marshall thought his daughter was being blackmailed. He mentions Rodney, a ‘bohemian’ painter whose portrait of Margela may have precipitated an affair, whereupon the ‘wife’ in the matter appears to have threatened to mention Margela in divorce proceedings if she is not paid out. Shelton says he is sure she is innocent, but delves into the whole story regardless. He gives Love Rodney’s details. Shelton then explains that Dane wanted to go to Canada to work, but his father would not let him.

Chapter 7 After Shelton leaves Love goes to visit a Mr Charles Danton Evans, the only other caller besides Shelton at Graylands on Sunday. Evans corroborates Mr Shelton’s story that he was brought home by him. Love returns to Whitby and recounts his travails. He is keeping a notebook of all the details, the suspects and their ‘types’. He asks Whitby what Dane was doing at his place the previous day (Monday). Whitby replies that Dane left him a note to thank him for his aid on the night of the murder. Love then muses on different types on murders and unlikely outcomes. He continues to add to his ‘specimens’ book, a folly defining his style of detection. Whitby finds Love’s talking out loud annoying and leaves the room. Love considers the perils of dismissing the numerous hoax letters and time-wasting interviews, having missed a conviction in a case earlier in his career by dismissing a confession as the work of a crank.

INTRODUCTION

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Chapter 8 The next morning Love interviews Mullins for the second time to go over the details of her story about the night of the murder. He enquires about what she heard and what Margela’s movements were. He asks for Owen to be fetched and then interrogates the maids about Margela’s bathing habits. They are scandalized but provide the details.

Chapter 9 As the maids regale the general household staff with details of their interrogation, Love visits Whitby to explain the reasons for his questions. Margela cannot be responsible because she would have had to run the bath, come downstairs to murder her father and then go back upstairs so as to be found in the bath – he does not think her capable of it. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Albert Slater, Charles Danton Evans’s butler, who says that Mr Evans came in at quarter past twelve, rather than eleven thirty as he had told Love. After Slater leaves Whitby observes that someone in the house must have been in cahoots with the murderer. Love dismisses this, and suggests that Marshall might have let in his murderer. When Whitby points out that the door was bolted, Love suggests that Marshall could have bolted it after the arrival of someone he thought would stay all night – such as his son.

Chapter 10 Inspector Love comes upon the young policeman Carr hanging around in the kitchens talking to the servants. Love asks him about Owen’s brother. Carr responds that he understood she was an orphan, and that she plans to be married soon. Love asks to have Owen sent to him. He notes how attractive she is, and then asks about her brother. Without a beat she tells him that she does have a brother but they don’t know of it at Graylands; he is a clerk at Ware and Wells and she wants to protect his reputation. Love visits Ware and Wells in Soho to find that Owen (the brother) has left, and so he sets off around the corner to Monsieur Carpentier’s restaurant in Dean Street for lunch. He sees a bohemian man who the proprietor identifies as Rodney – Margela’s portraitist and whose wife Shelton thinks is blackmailing her. Love runs into the brother Owen after lunch and questions him: he confirms everything that Owen said. Love returns to Graylands and runs into Owen in the corridor. He asks if she took any more telephone messages on Monday morning, to which she replies that there was one from Dane. Love is annoyed that this has not been mentioned earlier. The substance of the call appears trivial: Dane’s request that Bryde bring the car for him on the Tuesday morning, having forgotten to make this request earlier. Love sits down to make a list of the facts as they are, still wondering about the alibi of Bryde and Dane, and where Miss Marshall’s revolver had been for the past two weeks between its having been cleaned and the murder having taken place. His thoughts turn to the blue paper in the steel-lined drawer in Marshall’s desk: was it significant, and was its disappearance meaningful? Or was Margela inventing it as a ruse to throw Love off the scent?

Chapter 11 Love visits Mr Daniel, owner of the shop to which the revolver was sent for cleaning two weeks earlier by Mr Marshall himself. Bryde the chauffeur picked it up the Saturday before the murder: Daniel saw the car outside with an old lady, Mrs Marshall, reading a book

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in the back. Love returns to Graylands to interview Bryde again in the garage, and asks why he didn’t report having picked up the revolver. Bryde states that he brought it back to Mr Marshall but hadn’t told Love because he couldn’t prove having given it back to him. He says that he also ran some other errands for Mr Marshall, but refuses to elaborate. Love returns to the house to ask Mrs Marshall what she did on Saturday. He then asks Margela, who says her father made no mention of the revolver – her revolver which he had had cleaned for her and should have received back. Love then questions the butler and cook. At one o’clock on Saturday, Mrs Marshall, Dane and Margela were in the study together. When lunch was called Dane and Margela went into the dining room at once and Mrs Marshall went upstairs. There was no one in the hall. A parcel was given by the ‘Master’ to the butler to take to the cook. Bryde was having an early lunch in the next room. Upon working through this reconstruction of the Saturday prior, Love returns to the garage to question Bryde, who maintains that he met Mr Marshall alone in the hall. Something doesn’t stack up. Whitby and Love ponder what might have been the sequence of events, and who is telling or not telling the truth.

Chapter 12 Love makes enquiries about the Bembergs, with whom Dane had spent most of his Sundays for the past two weeks. He thinks that he might find ‘Pegsy’, Dane’s love interest, among them. Love visits the Bembergs in an over-decorated house in St John’s Wood: they are a large family of a son and six daughters, of which Love immediately recognizes Dane’s ‘Pegsy’ is not one. As he is leaving Love is accosted by the Bembergs’ son, who claims that he may know why Dane was down at Graylands late on Sunday – a girl. He mentions the pretty parlourmaid at Graylands and intimates she is the object of Dane’s affections. Love realizes Owen is Pegsy. Bemberg then asks Love if Dane has ever mentioned Canada: Dane wanted to go to Canada on the proceeds of his investment in Corradium (its first mention in the novel) but that his father wouldn’t allow it. Love begins to think about the different motives this gives Dane. As he heads back to Graylands he ‘realizes’ that Brooks was right about Dane’s guilt. He imagines the headlines condemning his own delay in arresting the criminal, and reflects on Bemberg’s mention of Corradium.

Chapter 13 Love wakes after a bad night. He already has a warrant for Dane’s arrest but is waiting for the circumstances of Sunday night to be cleared up before he uses it. Walking to Graylands, he is picked up by Shelton, who offers him a lift. He notices Whitby running along the road in his suit. When he gets to Graylands Whitby runs in and says that he was conducting an experiment. After changing he explains that he had an idea to measure how long it takes to get from Graylands to the railway station: no less than twenty minutes. Whitby has worked out that with the locked gates and so on, getting from Graylands to Ripton station Dane would not have had time to commit the crime. There is the possibility of him having gotten a lift, but Love knows there will be no arrest today. Love and Whitby visit a neighbouring estate, the owners having blocked access through their property to the station in an attempt to force the hand of the town council to build a road. The lodge keeper confirms that between himself and the guard dogs, undetected access was very unlikely. Love still believes that Dane ‘knows something’ but no longer thinks he is guilty. He muses on Margela’s motives, and Owen’s, and thinks that they must all be ‘a blooming lot of Borgias’.

INTRODUCTION

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Chapter 14 Love comes across Dane in the paddock below the house. As he tells Dane that he had been going to arrest him, but now has proof of his innocence, Dane looks anything but relieved. Love says that he knows Dane was at Graylands on Sunday and the young man runs off. Love follows after a beat and sees Owen inside. Dane would have had time to speak to her. He asks her where she met with Dane on Sunday night, and from her reaction sees that Dane did indeed have time to warn her. She says that they met in the garden house, and confirms that they did not want anyone to know about their engagement. While they were in the garden together they heard a car stop far down the road and noticed it was eleven. Owen heard another car stop at half past eleven before she returned inside and bolted the door. Love berates Dane for withholding information. He asks Owen if she heard anything in the house when she returned at half past eleven: she replies in the negative, telling Love that Mr Marshall was just walking from the dining room to the study. Love turns back to Dane to ask about the car at eleven. Dane asks if Owen can leave Graylands and Love replies that she must not leave Ripton until the case is resolved.

Chapter 15 On his way to meet Love at Carpentier’s restaurant in Dean Street, Soho, Whitby he sees a man who he recognizes from the papers as ‘Rodney’. He rehearses the story of Rodney and Margela Marshall as it was reported in the newspapers, reminisces about the artist colony in Montparnasse prior to the First World War, and provides a history of Rodney’s artistic development: the once avant-garde enfant terrible had his recent portrait of Margela Marshall hung in the Royal Academy of Art. Love arrives at Carpentier’s to meet Whitby, and two men who look like father and son enter at the same time as him. Love tells Whitby they are the Bembergs, who then join Rodney for lunch. As Whitby and Love talk over lunch Love tries to eavesdrop on the three men, who are discussing Corradium and its stock dive. Love hears Mr Bemberg ask his son who gave him the tip to buy Corradium, and he responds by stating Dane Marshall was its origin. Wade, a fellow painter and now doctor familiar to both Whitby and Rodney, enters Carpentier’s and says hello to Whitby. He mentions having seen Rodney on Sunday night at a party at the Harrises where he turned up to pick up Flossie Melvill, a well-known burlesque entertainer. They decide to go and visit her before her matinee show.

Chapter 16 Love and Whitby visit and watch Flossie Melvill perform. Whitby tells Love about Flossie, a singer he once treated for an injury and with whom he developed a fond relationship. She is a character, with a big personality and a drinking habit. After the show they go backstage to speak to her. She dismisses them quickly but then offers them a drink at her place, which is filled with flowers and trinkets. Whitby brings up the party at the Harrises and Flossie confirms that she left early with Rodney. No sooner is his name mentioned than Rodney makes an entrance, displaying great familiarity with the place, and sits himself down. He mentions to Love that he is looking to sell his car, since it broke down in the middle of the road and refused to budge. Flossie confirms it broke down when they left the party on Sunday night. Love

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recites their movements and amazes Flossie. He knows that they broke down at Sufton, asked the way at Ripton south, broke down again in Ripton Common and left the car at a garage nearby. Rodney takes a call from an unnamed woman (Mrs Rodney). Love and Whitby take their leave and Love mentions to Whitby that he’s just made the connection: he had a report (presumably from Owen) of a car that stopped on Ripton Common on Sunday night and now knows that it was Rodney’s. Love and Whitby take a taxi together.

Chapter 17 Whitby is in his study wondering about Love’s whereabouts, having had ‘no news of him’, when Love suddenly turns up at the open French window. He says he has some news for Whitby and proceeds to tell him that Bryde is innocent. He explains that the sister of Mullins has been ill and has an alibi for Bryde. She was the fiancée of Bute, who mentioned his walk home with Bryde from the club on the Sunday night of the murder in a letter written to her the next morning before his untimely death. Bryde then turns up outside at Whitby’s with something to tell them. He has been keeping the truth about the revolver from Love, having never returned it to Mr Marshall. After picking it up from Daniel and Daniel, he left it in the garage if full view and returned to find it missing. He didn’t ask Mr Marshall about it and it was never mentioned. Love is annoyed but one more loose thread is tied up and Bryde leaves.

Chapter 18: Inquest 1 Love exits the building where the inquest into Mr Marshall’s death is underway. Brooks wonders aloud about the location of the revolver during the initial search of Graylands, and Love mentions its return to the sofa after his own arrival at the crime scene. Whitby comes outside with Mrs Marshall and Bryde, helps the old lady into her car, who offers Love a lift. They discuss the case, and Whitby raises the possibility of suicide. Mrs Marshall does not think it possible, and ultimately Whitby agrees, based on the fact that the weapon was missing. Love muses on the awkwardness between members of the family – Margela, Mrs Marshall and Dane – and observes Mullins closely as she converses animatedly with Bryde. Mrs Marshall suddenly brings up the possibility of suicide again, and Love mentions the absence of fingerprints on the revolver when it was put back in the room. Mrs Marshall insists that her son is not guilty, and Love is equivocal in his answer. At Graylands Love encounters a man named Brinkly who introduces himself as Mrs Marshall’s lawyer. He asks about the verdict, and Love answers, ‘murder by person or persons unknown’. He mentions Dane being under observation. Dane comes in from the garden and Brinkly lets loose, reprimanding him for humiliating his mother. Dane retorts angrily and walks off. Love privately muses on the fact that he thinks Mrs Marshall knows more than she lets on, given that the revolver was replaced in her son’s absence, when she knew he was under suspicion.

Chapter 19: Garage Love trudges through the rain on an errand to the garage at Ripton Common, providing an amusing interlude in the narrative: imagining himself ill, he conjures up the headlines depicting his tragic death and his brilliance. At the garage he asks a man named Bill about the traffic on the night of the murder. Bill says he was awakened a little after

INTRODUCTION

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midnight by a man, transporting a lady, who thought he had a breakdown on the common (Rodney and Flossie). Bill gets out the notebook in which he noted down the car’s number and as he does, Love looks over his shoulder at the numbers preceding and following. Bill, it turns out, writes down numbers for all passing cars. Love returns to Graylands on foot in the rain, first imagining himself on his sickbed attended by various nurses, and then wondering about the source of the letters he has found among Dane’s possession.

Chapter 20: Evans 1 Love visits Mr Evans, and is met by Albert Slater, the overly suspicious butler. Love asks Mr Evans about his movements on Sunday night, knowing that he was delivered to his house by Shelton before eleven but then was seen outside afterward. Evans says he went for a walk on the common, saw a car that had stopped up the road from Graylands, and then returned home. Love asks whose car it was and Evens responds that it might have belonged to the Murphys, who owned an American car. It seems Evans also spied Rodney and Flossie broken down on the common. Love walks back to Ripton, wondering to whom the American car belonged. He has collected data on all the cars in the neighbourhood and knew it didn’t belong to the Murphys. He checks the numbers he copied from Bill’s book and finds a number for an American car owned by some American tourists staying at the Carlton. He locates the family who report that they went away for a few days, during which the chauffeur lent the car to a man called Mr Mulver, a friend of his employer’s. Mr Mulver borrowed the car on Sunday night. Love goes to see Mr Mulver at the Carlton and finds that he has returned to America. The only information he can glean from the staff is that Mulver hurried over dinner on Sunday in order to keep an appointment. Love gets in a cab to go to Carpentier’s for lunch.

Chapter 21: Z Love pays a visit to Mrs Rodney, following up on Rodney’s challenge to ‘ask his wife’ to find out anything about his movements. Love decides that since Rodney was certainly within a few minutes of Graylands on the night (and more or less at the time) of the crime, it is worth following up. In addition, Shelton has suggested that Mrs Rodney was blackmailing Margela. After much knocking Love is eventually let in by Mrs Rodney, who seems obsessed with her husband and his work and insists on showing Love some paintings. In response to his questions about Rodney’s movements on Sunday night Mrs Rodney says that her husband never tells her anything. She says she went to the Harrises’ party to find no sign of either Rodney or Flossie. Mrs Rodney laughs off Love’s questions about the blackmail of which she has been accused by Shelton. She admits to having made the threat but claims that she had fully intended that Mr Marshall refer the matter to a lawyer. She reveals that the threat to have Margela involved in a divorce suit was empty because she and Rodney are not in fact married. She wanted to scare Margela off and reveal the young heiress’s bourgeois conservatism to Rodney. Mrs Rodney dismisses the prospect of her husband’s involvement in the murder out of hand, and suggests Love to look into Corradium, saying that ‘something happened there’. The Rodneys had received some part payment in stock from Marshall for the picture of Margela. Love leaves quietly confident that neither Rodney nor his ‘wife’ was involved in the murder. He thinks that tomorrow he will ‘look into Corradium’.

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Chapter 22 Love arrives at a building called Denham House to visit the offices of Corradium. He is led in to see a man named Darrow with a very attractive secretary. Darrow seems unsurprised by Love’s visit. Love asks Darrow about if he knows Mr Marshall and he admits it immediately. He interrupts Love to ask about his war service: it transpires they had been stationed in the same place and Love had given the young man and his friend cigarettes. As he speaks he lights both their cigarettes with a folded blue paper – a ‘spill’. Darrow volunteers a long story about Marshall for which he cannot offer any proof but seems to be honest because he freely implicates himself. Darrow and a fellow prisoner of war named Hare came up with a new way for treating copper ore and decided to set up a business after the war. Mrs Marshall was a friend of Hare’s mother and through him they met Marshall, who offered to help rustle up investment, but is presented by Darrow as a stingy and greedy man. Marshall didn’t invest himself but found others to do so, introducing Hare and Darrow to Bane and Gunaway, who were then to become directors of the company. After initial testing (six weeks earlier) the chemical reports on Hare’s formula came back less than satisfactory. It became clear that more work would need to be done, but they were already overextended financially. Marshall revealed to Darrow and Hare that he had read the report upside down while in their presence and knew their situation. He pointed out that the removal of page 5 would make the report appear to show a positive rather than negative outcome. The report thus altered, the money men stumped up and the ensuing testing showed the formula to be successful. However, Marshall began blackmailing Hare and Darrow as he retained possession of the incriminating page 5 of the report. He was murdered not long after this meeting. The chapter concludes with two fragments. The first begins mid-sentence: it seems the blue paper was taken by a man ‘about to be governor of Wyoming’. Darrow shows Love a letter that came to him via American mail advising that Marshall accidentally took his own life fooling with the safety catch. Darrow tells Love he doesn’t know who wrote it, but that he received it from Mulver, who claims to be in possession of ‘page 5’ following its theft by a ‘gunman’ employed for that purpose. The second fragment has Love telling Whitby the account provided to him by Darrow, who responds by claiming its implausibility makes it sound ‘like something out of a book’. Love assumes Mrs Marshall thinks Margela is the murderer, and that she replaces the revolver to draw suspicion away from her son. Love is bogged in a mystery he cannot solve. The fragment concludes with a retrospective summation: Dane Marshall left for Canada, presumably with Owen in tow, Mrs Marshall continued her life with increasing attention from Mr Brinkly, and Margela Marshall renounces her London contacts and stays more often at Graylands. Rodney’s portrait of Flossie Melvill is censored by the Lord Chamberlain, much to Mrs Rodney’s disgust.

Appendix 1 Love scans his theories concerning the murder: both Dane and Margela owned firearms, but a gunman may have gained entry into the house when Owen left the door open.

Appendix 2 Darrow explains the financial structure of Corradium Cylinders Ltd. to Inspector Love, including the distribution of stock ownership. He also recounts Marshall’s attempt

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to take over the company by blackmailing Hare and Darrow with the release of the compromising page 5 of the initial laboratory report. These notes comprise the substance of Darrow’s speech in Chapter 22.

Appendix 3 A single page chart outlining the way Corradium enters into the narrative and implicates several major characters.

POTENTIAL CULPRITS Dane Marshall: suspected by Brooks and eventually Love because of his father’s objection to his proposed marriage to the parlourmaid Owen; was out with Owen when murder occurred. Margela Marshall: seen / heard fighting with her father immediately prior to his murder; being ‘blackmailed’ by Mrs Rodney and wanted access to her money, which would come to her when her father died; was in the bath when the murder occurred. Mrs Marshall: appears to have thought it possible that either her daughter or son killed her husband, and lied to protect either or both. Rodney: was with Flossie Melvill in his broken-down car on Ripton Common when the murder occurred. Mrs Rodney: ‘blackmailing’ Miss Marshall to teach both Margela and her own husband a lesson; turns out not to be married to Rodney so her threats are empty; dismisses Love’s interrogation as silly. Love does not suspect her. Bryde: the chauffeur is implicated by the threat to his job proceeding from his behaviour towards one of the parlourmaids; further implicated by the death of his alibi and his possession of the revolver; eventually cleared by a corroborating witness to his alibi. Shelton: implicates Mrs Rodney; was in the car which stopped outside Graylands on Sunday; sees Mr Evans out walking on Sunday. Evans: out walking late on Sunday night; saw Rodney and Flossie in the broken-down car. Darrow: one half of Corradium Cylinders Ltd.; was being blackmailed by Marshall so had motive, but was open about this with Love without being asked and handed over letter from Mulver. Brinkly: Marshall’s lawyer who appears to be close to Mrs Marshall; makes a prominent spectacle of his disapproval of Dean Marshall’s intransigence under questioning. Mulver: an American who was seen on the road near Graylands on the Sunday; after the murder appears to be in possession of ‘page 5’ of the Corradium report which was being used to blackmail Darrow (i.e. ‘The Blue Spill’); may have hired someone – ‘the gunman’ – to obtain it from Marshall, by force if necessary; an accident ensued, in which Marshall shot himself ‘fooling with the safety’.

NIHIL SAPIENTIAE ODIOSIUS ACUMINE NIMIO So … whodunnit? It would seem perilous to venture an answer to such a question when a detective story is curtailed abruptly, still with much narrative detail to play out and a key intrigue (Corradium) only belatedly introduced. Keeping in mind the epigraph to

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Poe’s ‘Purloined Letter’ above (‘Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness’1), the following hypothesis can be taken as a challenge to readers to contest the identity of the culprit, and perhaps even to stimulate the completion of The Blue Spill by an author with the competence to do so. The analysis abides by the first and cardinal rule of Ronald Knox’s ‘Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction’, first published in his introduction to Best Detective Stories of 1928–29: ‘The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know’ (Knox 194). It also abides by most of S. S. Van Dine’s Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories first published in 1928, with particular mention of Rule 19, that the ‘motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal,’ and must give the reader ‘a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions’ (Van Dine 30). The presence and absence of page 5 of the Corradium report in the narrative gives new impetus to Van Dine’s list of prohibited items in Rule 20, which includes ‘The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unravelled by the sleuth’ (Van Dine 30). Mrs Marshall is the killer. She is faking her deafness. This allows her to acquire information from Inspector Love, determine his strategies of investigation, and deploy these advantages to protect her children and the family home, their inheritance. She may or may not be in a relationship with her lawyer Mr Brinkly, but it would put her husband’s irascibility in context either as a reaction to this knowledge, or as a precipitating factor. Dane and Margela Marshall understand their mother’s strategy, of course, knowing she is not deaf. Dane in particular seems prepared to suffer arrest and conviction for the murder, and Love is right to be suspicious of his stonewalling under questioning. Margela is compromised by her ‘relationship’ with the lothario artist Rodney, as well as Mrs Rodney’s half-mocking, half-serious attempt at blackmail. The Rodneys share terms with Mr Marshall as stockholders in Corradium, which becomes the material, if not the efficient cause of the crisis. Pound’s burgeoning interest, in the closing passages of the typescript, in the workings of share markets and their relation to material production arguably makes share capital the formal cause of the crisis. One might imagine a good portion of the missing narrative – ‘Writ by order of EP who was to supply reason in last chapter!’ – exploring the depredations of capital and international markets, taking their toll on the integrity of human relationships. If Mrs Marshall is the guilty party, one might also expect complicity and culpability to extend across the entire spectrum of characters, from Marshall family members and employees to the American investor Mr Clifford and his mysterious friend Mulver. The introduction of Mr Clifford and Mulver in Chapter 20 widens the line-up of potential culprits. Their claims on the sensitive information contained in page 5 of the Corradium report, possessed by Marshall, must be taken into consideration, despite the fragmentary nature of their profiles and their potential narrative implications in the final sections of The Blue Spill typescripts. Bill the mechanic provides Love with sufficient information to determine ownership of the American car stopped up the road from Graylands on the night of the murder, and Love confirms that the car was loaned to Mulver, a friend of Mr Clifford. Presuming Mulver tells the truth in his letter to Darrow, reported in a post-narrative fragment, and that he hired a ‘gunman’ to retrieve the page from Graylands, there is a strong motive for the murder. If she is indeed the murderer,

Poe erroneously claims the quotation derives from Seneca but in fact it comes from Petrarch’s treatise De Remediis utriusque Fortunae. 1

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how does Mrs Marshall fit into this? Mr Marshall’s desk was constantly cluttered with papers, allowing Mrs Marshall to feign ignorance of the family’s financial affairs but to understand more than she let on. Knowing at least the potential for contestation over page 5 of the report, she is able to remove it from the field of evidence and simultaneously throw significant suspicion upon Mr Clifford and Mulver. The more Love comes to know of these characters and their implication in the Corradium scandal, the further he will be thrown off the scent. From the reader’s perspective, close attention to Mrs Marshall is paramount from the beginning, as she slips further into irrelevance – living up to the blandness of ‘Graylands’ itself – as the narrative progresses. How did Mrs Marshall shoot her husband without leaving any obvious evidence, such as gunpowder residue or fingerprints? Following the inquest in Chapter 18 Whitby tells Mrs Marshall that suicide was not the likely cause of death but not impossible, whereas the police doctor ruled out suicide in the first instance. Mrs Marshall reacts with (feigned?) shock at the idea her husband would even contemplate his own life, but almost immediately softens her view in light of his nervous character. When Inspector Love first views the murder scene he notices the blotter is the only unencumbered space on Marshall’s desk. Between its cover and the first sheet this he finds an envelope and unfinished letter, the contents of which are not disclosed. Love also finds a discarded issue of The Times with a clipping taken from it, but again any detail is left undisclosed to the reader. When Love first interviews Margela in Chapter 4, she states that the blotter was open on the desk the previous evening and her father was busy sorting through files and papers. She identifies the blue page – the crucial page 5 of the Corradium report – bent at the end to fit in the open drawer of the desk. Mrs Marshall used the blue page, and perhaps a sheet from the blotter, to hold the browning pistol without leaving fingerprints as she shot her husband. In order to conceal the crime she needed to dispose of the sheet, which would have been scorched and carried gunpowder residue from the shot. It becomes a blue spill in several senses: a means to ignite evidence (that is, itself and perhaps a blotter sheet), and an item used in the spilling of Mr Marshall’s blood. As this document also bore the weight of blackmail, its disappearance would benefit Corradium Cylinders Ltd., and by extension calm the turbulent waters implicating Rodney, Mrs Rodney, Margela, Dane, Darrow and the Marshall family investments. Her children could then follow their paths in life relatively unobstructed, their inheritances assured. Mrs Marshall could now pursue her own interests, whether with Mr Brinkly or otherwise, unconstrained by a bad marriage. Yet this scenario only peers into the great ball of crystal: who will lift it?

Chapter TWO

Textual Essay ‘Too Much Attention to Detail …’: The Composition of The Blue Spill

The composition history of The Blue Spill is as obscure as the whereabouts of the offending page 5 of the Corradium laboratory report in the narrative itself. Anne Conover mentions it twice in her biography of Olga Rudge. It was intended as an initiative to augment Rudge’s income, drawing on the ‘whodunit’ detective fictions she and Pound enjoyed reading, and drawing for its setting on the British country houses of her youth (Conover 89). Conover places the time of composition after Rudge had moved into her Venice abode in Calle Querini in September of 1929, and punctuated by the Black Friday New York stock exchange crash on 28 October. The accession information in the Olga Rudge Collection (YCAL MS 54) at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library places the composition in winter of the following year, 1930. While the narrative itself is almost entirely Rudge’s invention – with certain probable exceptions such as the character of Rodney, Love’s critique of artistic practice and occasional rants about international finance – Conover sees evidence of Pound’s sustained contribution to the project: ‘Pound cut the work mercilessly, scribbling editorial queries about inconsistencies in the margin in blue pencil’ (89). She locates this editorial activity in April 1933, when Pound was in Rapallo and Rudge in Paris, over three years after the typescript was produced (109). The genetic timeline between the first and second drafts of the novel is unknown, although given the relatively discrete way the documents fit together one might guess that this work was completed in a single extended phase of activity. The Blue Spill slowly becomes a mystery centred upon the location of a mystery document – page 5 of the inconclusive Corradium laboratory report – hidden in plain sight during both Brooks’s and Love’s inspection of the crime scene, but later removed. In this sense the offending sheet is a cipher of another document hiding in plain sight: the eponymous purloined letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s story of 1844. The textual identity of the story’s MacGuffin is a deft metafictional touch, befitting both Rudge and Pound’s intellectual and artistic interests (remembering that their search for long overlooked Vivaldi manuscript scores ensued between 1935 and 1939). Pound’s ardent argument for the revival of lost texts and overlooked figures in intellectual and poetic history is a consistent thread through his career, from his research in Troubadour poetics in graduate school to The Eparch’s Book of Leo the Wise in Thrones. All of this adds some symbolic significance to the identity of the two typescript drafts of The Blue Spill. In what appears to be a remarkable coincidence, the portion of the typescript in which Darrow tells Inspector Love of the history of Corradium and the significance of the report itself misplaces page 5. The leaf numbered 5 in Folder 2823 has a paragraph pasted on its lower half bearing a heading ‘6’, and between this leaf and the leaf numbered 6 there is

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another leaf containing more pasted sections, titled ‘5B’. Further, there are in fact two leaves numbered 6, overlapping in a few lines of text material. Despite this documentary turbulence, the narrative itself flows quite smoothly across these pages, as serenely as Darrow’s retelling of his company’s history.

OVERVIEW OF THE DOCUMENTS The entire typescript of The Blue Spill is housed in the Olga Rudge Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, YCAL MSS 54 Box 115, Folders 2814–2824. The Blue Spill comprises two partial and overlapping typescripts. The first typescript corresponds to Chapters 1–7 of the reading text. The second draft revises Chapters 1 and 2, the second in two separate (but largely overlapping) versions, but does not include any material from Chapters 3 to 7. It then continues with material corresponding to Chapters 8–22, as well as unsorted unnumbered pages concluding the narrative. Appendices 1 and 2 contain material from pages following the second draft of Chapter 2 in Folder 2818. The material in Appendix 1 fits the narrative at the end of Chapter 5, except that it includes reference to the character Mulver whose name does not appear until Chapter 20. Appendix 2 comprises seven pages of manuscript notes in Pound’s handwriting, providing a schema for incorporating the business model and stock ownership of Corradium Cylinders Ltd. into the narrative, as well as indicating its economic implications for several characters. These rough notes are transformed into dialogue between Darrow and Inspector Love in the second typescript, immediately following the second version of Chapter 2. Appendix 3 contains a diagram drawn in pencil below the final paragraph of Chapter 19 in Folder 2820, sketching out Inspector Love’s investigation into Corradium and its implication in Marshall’s death. The narrative halts at a crucial point where the mysteries of Corradium Cylinders Ltd. are beginning to clarify for Inspector Love, including ownership of the company, stock allocations and the varied financial interests (and thus motives) of numerous characters. Much crucial information is missing, however, denying the reader the narrative payload just as the missing page of the report had the capacity to do at each stage of its existence – first as evidence of a failed experiment, then as a history of corporate dishonesty once the follow-up experiments succeeded, and finally as an obvious material instrument of blackmail. The following document schema clarifies where certain narrative elements occur in the typescripts, including their arrangement in and between the two drafts, and the location of unnumbered and misallocated sheets in the archive. This schema is thus a vital heuristic device in untangling the process of revision, and in making at least a semi-educated guess as to ‘whodunit’ and the explication of the murder motive.

FIRST DRAFT Folder 2814 Twenty pages of blue type with pencil annotations and additions TS1, 1, 1–8: 8 pages corresponding to Chapter 1 TS1, 2, 1–5: 5 pages corresponding to Chapter 2 (text in pencil on verso of leaves 4 and 5)

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TS1, 14–20: 7 pages corresponding to Chapter 3 (text in pencil on verso of leaves 15 and 17) [NB: there are no leaves numbered TS1, 21–31, which may be missing]

Folder 2815 Eleven pages of blue type with pencil annotations TS1, 32–42: 11 pages corresponding to Chapter 4 [NB: there are no leaves numbered TS1, 43–60, which may be missing]

Folder 2816 Eighteen pages of blue type with pencil annotations and additions TS1, 61–66: 6 pages corresponding to Chapter 5 (text in pencil on verso of leaves 62, 63, 66) [NB: no leaf is numbered TS1, 67] TS1, 68–76: 9 pages corresponding to Chapter 6 (text in pencil on verso of leaf 72) TS1, 77–78: 2 pages corresponding to Chapter 7 Between pages 77 and 78 are two unnumbered leaves containing three passages: Passage 1 (77): ‘By the way Whitby’ is incorporated into the pencil additions in TS1, 68, corresponding to Chapter 6 Passage 2 (77): ‘The Inspector had taken advantage’ is incorporated into TS1, 78, corresponding to the conclusion of Chapter 7 and the endpoint of TS1 Passage 3 (78): ‘Among Dane’s own papers’ is incorporated into the pencil additions in TS1, 68, corresponding to Chapter 6

SECOND DRAFT Folder 2817 Twenty pages of purple and blue type with pencil annotations TS2, 1–7: 7 pages in purple type corresponding to revised Chapter 1 TS2, 8–13: 6 pages in purple type corresponding to revised Chapter 2 TS2, 14: 1 page in purple type corresponding to the opening of Chapter 3 TS2, 8–13: 6 pages in blue type (misnumbered 9–14) containing a second revision of Chapter 2

Folder 2818 Two unnumbered pages in blue type corresponding to the final fragment of Chapter 22 On the verso side of both pages are handwritten pencil notes that comprise Appendix 1

Folder 2819 Twenty-seven pages of blue type with pencil annotations TS2, 79–81: 3 pages corresponding to Chapter 8

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TS2, 82–84: 4 pages corresponding to Chapter 9 (misnumbered: ‘84B’ precedes 84) TS2, 85–89: 5 pages corresponding to Chapter 10 (90 has been misfiled in Folder 2122) TS2, 91–97: 7 pages corresponding to Chapter 11 (97 is in purple type) TS2, 98–104: 6 pages corresponding to Chapter 12 (there is no 101 but no text is missing) TS2, 105–106: 2 pages corresponding to the opening of Chapter 13

Folder 2820 Twenty-seven pages of blue type with pencil annotations and additions TS2, 107–110: 4 pages corresponding to the remainder of Chapter 13 TS2, 111–115: 5 pages corresponding to Chapter 14 (text in pencil on verso of 112) TS2, 116–121: 7 pages corresponding to Chapter 15 (including the unnumbered leaf) Between pages 115 and 116 is an unnumbered page of typed and pencil text to be inserted into Chapter 14 at TS2, 114 TS2, 122–127: 6 pages corresponding to Chapter 16 TS2, 128–133: 6 pages corresponding to Chapter 17 (diagram in pencil on TS2, 133 is reproduced in Appendix 2)

Folder 2821 Eleven pages of blue type with pencil annotations and additions TS2, 18, 1–6: 6 pages corresponding to Chapter 18: Inquest 1 (text in pencil on verso of 3) TS2, 19, 1–5: 5 pages corresponding to Chapter 19: Garage (text in pencil on verso of 1 and 3)

Folder 2122 Seven pages of blue type with pencil annotations TS2, 90: 1 page, torn, comprising the misplaced final section of Chapter 10 1 unnumbered page in blue type corresponding to the penultimate fragment of Chapter 22 TS2, 20, 1–5: 5 pages corresponding to Chapter 20: Evans 1

Folder 2823 Eighteen pages of blue type with pencil annotations TS2, 22, 1–6: 8 pages corresponding to Chapter 22 (including page 5B and ‘6’ between 5 and 6, and the second leaf numbered 6 overlapping for several lines with the first) TS2, 21, 1–10: 10 pages corresponding to Chapter 21: Z

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Folder 2824 Three pages of blue and purple type One carbon page in purple type numbered 17 corresponding to an early portion of Chapter 3 Two pages of blue type numbered 17–18 corresponding to an episode early in Chapter 3 (this closely follows the pencil addition on the verso of TS1, 15 and TS1, 16–17) Chapters 21 and 22 appear in reverse order in the typescript, perhaps a function of the imminent break in composition and the consequent fragmentation of the narrative. The typescripts are cited throughout the reading text apparatus and in the critical discussion of The Blue Spill. The sequential order of the documents in Folders 2814–2824 is as follows: TS1, 1, 1–8 TS1, 2, 1–5 TS1, 14–20 TS1, 32–42 TS1, 61–78 TS2, 1–14 TS2, 79–133 TS2, 18, 1–6 TS2, 19, 1–5 TS2, 20, 1–5 TS2, 21, 1–10 TS2, 22, 1–6 Loose leaves

EDITORIAL RATIONALE The two overlapping typescript drafts of The Blue Spill comprise a relatively simple structure. The first draft establishes the scene at the Graylands estate, the narrative style of the murder investigation, and introduces most of the major figures: the lead detective, the detective’s confessor, the detective’s professional rival, the surviving family members and the serving employees. The second draft recapitulates this early scene-setting, with little significant variation, and proceeds with a series of complicating factors: the location and movement of two separate motor cars, friends and associates of the Marshall family members as well as of the servant class, the web of romantic entanglements within and beyond Graylands, deliberative scenes set in Whitby’s neighbouring house, as well as action in Soho and the offices of Corradium Cylinders Ltd. in London. While the typescript concludes with a series of speculative fragments and a suggestive note by Olga Rudge – ‘Writ by order of E.P. who was to supply reason in last chapter!’ – a number of options arise in solving the clue-puzzle, as will be explored below. Given the relatively straightforward structure of the documents, the abiding principles of presentation are those of coherence and continuity. Significant variations between the

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first and second drafts are few, and these are indicated in the apparatus. Both typescripts are littered with a large number of typographic errors (spelling, missed keys, multiple keys etc.): most of these are incidental to the meaning of the relevant passage and have been silently corrected. If in the judgement of the editors an error has any substantive import, or is otherwise of interest, it is recorded in the apparatus so as to keep the reading text as clean as possible and to avoid impeding its flow. The objective of the present edition is to produce a clean reading text of an unfinished set of typescripts. Although much necessary and insightful theoretical work has been done in recent decades on matters of textual editing, modern manuscript editions, narrative and textual incompletion, textual fluidity and concepts of document and work, in this instance such otherwise very helpful interventions are not essential for the production of a reading text, and little mention is made of leading studies in these fields. That the narrative failed to reach a state of completion, and never appeared in print form, simplifies the conceptual framework considerably. Instead complexity lurks in the nature of the collaboration between Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound, and in their response to the detective clue-puzzle genre – a genre already self-aware with the potential for parody, and located at a fascinating intersection of avant-garde and middlebrow cultures. These issues are addressed in the critical essays in Part Two, following the reading text.

Paragraphs Both typescripts tend to run in long paragraphs, combining multiple lines of dialogue with each other and often also combining extended descriptive and narrative material. The reading text in this edition introduces paragraph breaks throughout to provide a smoother reading experience. The most common point of division occurs when dialogue moves from one character to another. Descriptive or narrative phrases and sentences set amidst passages of dialogue are appended either before or after the quoted speech to which they most clearly relate, and in some cases are given standalone paragraphs. This set of editorial choices seeks clarity of meaning and narrative flow as foremost considerations, without claiming formal or stylistic priority over alternate choices of text presentation on the page.

Sentences Just as dialogue and narrative material are combined into single paragraphs or text blocks, there are very many long sentences in the typescripts. These can be extended passages of dialogue, or long narrative or descriptive passages, or even a combination of these. Such sentences have been broken into shorter sentences first with consideration to grammar and syntax, and second to produce a clearer reading experience. The sheer number of paragraph breaks precludes their notation in the reading text, but as a point of comparison the reader may wish to consult the facsimile reproduction of typescript pages of The Blue Spill on pages 3–4. Dialogue set out in a more conventional form can be attributed more clearly to relevant characters, and the tone and pacing of the conversation also becomes more prominent to the reader’s ear. The opportunity to imagine variant tones of voice, and to interpret matters of plot development and narrative tension seem fundamental to any reading experience, and is perhaps a more keenly felt aspect of reading in the case of detective fiction.

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NARRATIVE REVISION The physical evidence presented by the archival documents indicate that both drafts of The Blue Spill were composed in one extended process, either in late 1929 as Anne Conover claims (89), or in 1930 as the Beinecke accession data has it. Olga Rudge used a pale blue ribbon on a single typewriter for the entire extant text. The identity of the typist is clear because there is no evidence of Pound’s characteristic typing flaws: hitting punctuation keys instead of letters, the liberal use of the ‘/’ key in place of regular punctuation, and in-text deletions indicated by overtyping a series of ‘/’ or ‘H’ keys. Further, the typist demonstrates other habits not found in Pound’s typing: in-text deletions by overtyping a series of ‘x’ keys, faintly struck or omitted vowels, the absence of space between punctuation (commas, quotation marks, or full stops) and the subsequent word or sentence, ending numerous sentences with a comma instead of a full stop, and transposed apostrophes in contracted words (‘hav’nt’ instead of ‘haven’t’, for example). The few existing pages of purple type suggest the tantalizing possibility of a carbon copy, lost or displaced, evident in the purple leaf numbered 17 in Folder 2124 clearly comprising a carbon copy of its corresponding blue leaf. The process of revision takes several forms across the two typescript drafts. The following commentary pays close attention to the most prominent examples of revision and addition, including the special case of Chapter 2, which went through three drafts across the two typescripts. Rudge makes numerous interventions in pencil throughout the typescripts, often inserting interlinear and marginal additions, and sometimes adding a page or more of extra material on verso pages. Her handwriting comprises the large majority of these pencil annotations and additions: the reading text apparatus indicates where Pound’s material interventions are clear (almost always in handwritten additions and marginal comments and annotations). However there are particular themes that may be sheeted home to Pound throughout the text, among them: locations such as the French Café in Soho and Whitby’s reminiscences of the Montparnasse café scene in Paris in the 1920s; Inspector Love’s irascible temper and his critique of Rodney’s artistic practice; the market implications of characters’ investments in Corradium; and, most frustratingly, the missing solution to the murder itself. Chapter 2 in its three versions offers a particularly vivid example of the revision process. It is a crucial chapter for several reasons, not least for being the point in both typescripts where the family name ‘Marishall’ changes to ‘Marshall’. The shuffling of typed material with numerous pencil insertions in TS1 might explain the principal motivation of producing TS2: rather than reconciling a reconsideration of the plot or the inclusion of new material, TS2 is largely aimed at producing a clean text. Narrative reference to ‘the corpse’ in TS1, 2, 1 is emended in pencil to the deceased ‘man’, perhaps to soften the tone of the forensic task before the police and Inspector Love. The first pencil addition on the verso of TS1, 2, 4 contains Love’s sardonic view of Mr Marshall’s physique: ‘Love could not help thinking that if this man he had just seen as a corpse on the billiard-room table had led a ‘quiet ordinary life’ it was certainly a triumph of mind over matter, and that his physique maligned him.’ Mrs Marshall’s hearing issue is reinforced in pencil additions in the margin of TS1, 2, 4: ‘The Inspector had to repeat his question several times before Mrs Marshall seized it.’ Her repetition of Love’s questions before her reply compounds this effect, and in the same scene her claim that the room was poorly lit is also added in pencil. The remaining two pencil additions on the verso of TS1, 2, 4 also directly raise questions of Mrs Marshall’s character. In the second addition,

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Love asks Mrs Marshall if she turned over her husband’s body without help, along with her affirmative reply. This exchange is removed in TS2. The third pencil addition on the verso of TS1, 2, 4 concerns Mrs Marshall’s anxious query of any further information, to which Love responds that the doctor’s report is the only information available. A recently widowed woman might very well be anxious for any news, but it is as much the source of the news as its content that appears to preoccupy her. The pronounced gesture towards her hearing loss also seems less the action of one habituated to such a condition as one wishing to draw attention to it. It is worth noting that the potential for physical comedy in this chapter is declined. Mrs Marshall’s deafness and the requirement for Love to repeat himself is not put to comic effect in a slapstick vein, instead providing an opportunity for more subtle humour as Love modulates his temper and Whitby marvels at his calm response to Mrs Marshall immediately following his venting frustrations to Whitby (perhaps significantly, this episode comprises the extended pencil addition on the verso of TS1, 2, 5). Changes in the means of communication also extend to the location of the telephone (later inserted by hand) and Love receiving a telegram instead of a telephone call immediately following the (inserted) conversation of the telephone’s whereabouts. This again declines the potential for slapstick, where, if the telephone call is retained, no sooner is the telephone mentioned than Love is called to it. Several extended pencil additions occur at pivotal moments in the narrative, introducing a clearer sense of the evidence at play in Inspector Love’s deliberations. The verso of TS1, 15 contains an entire paragraph in which Whitby hands Love a telegram confirming Mr Marshall’s cause of death as they speak to Dane Marshall for the first time together. Dane is not yet aware of the cause of death, and this moment allows Love to consider his reaction to the shocking news. Three lines of dialogue are added on the verso of TS1, 17, occurring at the point where multiple typescript leaves in Folder 2824 conclude: one leaf is in purple ink, perhaps a carbon copy, and two other leaves are in the customary blue typewriter ink. This suggests a break in the composition process, and deals with Margela Marshall’s incredulity at the murder. As such it complements the passage concerning Dane’s reaction two leaves earlier in TS1. Rounding out this scene is a pencil addition at TS1, 20 to conclude Chapter 3: this describes the logistics of gathering up the household staff for interview, as well as Inspector Love’s observations of their groupings and movements. This stands in contrast to the numerous marginal additions made in pencil at TS1, 35, where Love purports to show scant regard for the kitchen staff and their speculations on the events of the previous evening. These passages are emended to remove direct speech, and as a direct mediation by the narrator, must be treated with caution: perhaps the staff (and the reader) are being led to believe Love’s nonchalance, rather than understanding its value as a tool of inquiry. Chapter 5 is heavily annotated in pencil, and extensive pencil additions occur on verso pages of TS1, 62, 63 and 66. The in-text emendations concern the logistics of the browning pistol’s whereabouts, as well as Love’s deliberations on the killer’s mode of access into the house (TS1, 61). Some details concerning the background of Wade, Dr Whitby’s batman, are added in pencil at TS1, 62. More telling are the additions made at TS1, 63, where Inspector Love considers the motives of Dane and Margela. Such added details as Dane’s behaviour indicating his unstated personal difficulties, and the financial independence Margela stands to obtain on her father’s death, develop the potential motives of the Marshall children in an attempt to ward off any early identification of the culprit. Whitby’s extended ruminations on the children’s motives are added in pencil on

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the verso of TS1, 63, the effect of which is to compound Love’s earlier considerations, but also to add Whitby’s observation that the household was overcome by a feeling of ‘constraint’. Given his prior experience in the Marshall home, this contributes to the aura of conspiracy or collusion between the family members. The final verso addition in Chapter 5 has Love critique the chauffeur Bryde’s alibi, given that his account of his return home on Sunday night did not match the record of events. Chapter 6 is heavily emended in pencil, both in the margins and on verso pages. The suspicion cast on the Marshall children in Chapter 5, and Whitby’s own sense that the household is behaving with an odd ‘constraint’, now extends to Love noticing the unusual interest Whitby takes in this case (TS1, 69). Often bored in previous collaborations, Whitby’s interest is put down to the proximity of his new abode to the scene of the crime, and his familiarity with the household. There is an undertone here: does Love suspect Whitby is holding something back from him, or has he a particular reason to take a heightened interest? This subject recurs in the loose leaves at the conclusion of TS1: Whitby responding to Love’s query at a call Whitby received from Dane Marshall; Love’s meditations on Dane’s character and prospects, including his romantic involvement with ‘Pegsy’ but minus his intentions to emigrate to Canada (these are excised from the beginning and end of the inserted paragraph). The Canadian subplot is filled out by Dane’s friend Bemberg in Chapter 12 (TS2, 102–3). In another marginal addition in pencil, Love makes a note of the physical evidence provided in the laboratory report: the browning revolver found in the house was indeed the murder weapon, and it bore no fingerprints (TS1, 69). The verso leaf of TS1, 72 contains in pencil addition an extended moment of levity in the narrative: Mr Shelton’s car is identified by a lurking reporter when in interview with Love, but when a second reporter appears, Love provides him with the same information, reassuring Shelton that the information was neither incriminating, nor from that moment exclusive. To cap off the joke, Rudge and Pound name the first reporter’s paper Metaphor. Nothing is to be taken at face value in this game of detection, except for the critical moments when face value provides the sleuth with the evidence leading to the crime’s solution. Chapter 7 is the final chapter represented in TS1, its brevity punctuated by two unnumbered pages containing three sections of text belonging to Chapter 6. The major editorial intervention in the chapter bears upon a passage, lightly struck, in which Love expands upon his physiological theories of criminality. This passage clearly mocks theories of phrenology and moral degeneration populating nineteenth-century fiction, particularly such detective fiction as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. The suggested removal of the passage – it is retained in the reading text for reasons of continuity – may be due to its tone detracting from the careful planting of evidence in marginal and verso pencil additions in preceding chapters. With the exception of the two revised versions of Chapter 2, the second typescript contains fewer significant lengthy pencil additions than TS1. This suggests that TS2 represents a fluent composition process after the kinks of Chapter 2 were ironed out, producing a clear narrative thread from Chapter 8 to the final fragments of Chapter 22 (which appear prior to chapter 21 in the typescript). There are numerous pencil emendations throughout the typescript, indicated in the reading text apparatus. Love’s suspicion that Owen invents a brother to distract him is added in Chapter 10 at TS2, 85, and this chapter also concludes the matter of timing on the night of the murder. Chapters 8 and 9 work through the movements of the household staff and the Marshall family between 10 p.m. and 11.50 p.m. when the fatal shot was fired. Love’s interviewees

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provide overlapping and confusing testimony, but nothing conclusive can be drawn from their statements individually or collectively. Mullins and Margela Marshall were the last people to see Mr Marshall alive, and associated suspicion falls upon them, albeit glancingly. Chapter 12 sees the first lengthy pencil emendations take place, where large sections of text are very lightly struck in pencil in TS2, 103 and 104: following his conversation with Dane Marshall’s friend Bemberg, Love constructs a scenario in which Dane argues with his father about his romance with ‘Pegsy’ and his desire to move to Canada, finds the revolver in his father’s study and shoots him dead; the second lightly marked passage concerns Bemberg’s mention of Corradium and how it might impact the financial motives of the leading suspects. The notation is not decisive and so these passages have been retained in the reading text. Later similar examples of lightly struck text include Love’s internal monologue in Chapter 13 in which he determines Margela had opportunity to reclaim her revolver after Bryde returned it to her father’s study. An addition in pencil on the verso of TS2, 113 has Owen (‘Pegsy’) revealing new information about Dane’s movements the night of the murder. Owen claims she withheld the information not to absolve Dane of suspicion but to conceal their engagement from Love and the Graylands household. Pencil emendations in Chapter 18 (‘Inquest’) emphasize Love’s forensic skills over those of Brooks, his professional adversary: Love correctly identifies the revolver as belonging to Margela, and deduces that Dane did not have possession of it on the night of the murder (TS2, 18, 1). Another significant addition concerns Whitby’s compassion for Mrs Marshall (‘the frail little woman’) following the Inquest (TS2, 18, 3), consistent with additions made in Chapter 2 emphasizing Mrs Marshall’s deafness and her seeming passivity in the immediate post-murder investigation. An entire paragraph is added on the verso of TS2, 18, 3 in which Whitby admires Miss Marshall in the courtroom ‘with the cynical amusement of a bachelor hardened against womanly wiles’, and Mullins’s terror at being cross-examined on the stand. These alterations provide an important context for identifying the culprit: not only Mrs Marshall’s physical bearing, but Whitby’s apparent interest in her welfare that might blind him to patterns of behaviour intended to deceive. Mrs Marshall’s insistent questioning in the car journey immediately following provides further behavioural evidence of her modus operandi. The final substantive pencil addition in the second typescript concerns a paragraph on the verso of TS2, 19, 1 in which Love congratulates himself silently on a walk to Ripton Common, on his eccentric methods leading to the discovery of important information. His belief in his forensic methods is undercut by the narration, which emphasizes the role of imagination and emotion in drawing out evidence. In counterpoint to the emendations concerning Mrs Marshall, these augmented aspects of Love’s character – raising the tenor of his eccentricity – may function to draw the reader away from a line of inquiry fitted to the evidence by foregrounding his persona rather than diminishing it. Editorial emendations in Chapter 22 are comprised of pages or sections of typed material cut out and rearranged to provide a coherent scene at the Corradium offices. These pages and sections are unnumbered, impeding any attempt to discern the order of such changes. At this point the narrative is to be passed from Rudge to Pound towards a resolution of the mystery – a phase that never came to pass. There exist distinct patterns in the extended pencil additions in the typescripts. Rudge is adding nuance to the presentation of evidence, whether to focus on characters’ reactions to new information, or to provide additional context to specific narrative details.

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Other aspects of chronology and characters’ movements on the night of the murder are also subject to emendation. One might take this to be a normal condition of writing clue-puzzle detective novels. Pound tends to query the length of descriptive passages, particularly of Love’s state of mind and analytic processes: this may be a reflex reaction to a character bearing similarities to himself, or it may be in the aid of narrative efficiency, or perhaps a little of both. There is a preoccupation with detail, towards the realist credibility of the plot and the role of specific objects – Corradium stock, laboratory reports, the browning revolver – suggesting that Rudge and Pound were collaborating on building a picture that would obscure the killer in plain sight. In essence, close observation of the revision process provides an object lesson in the accretive textures of clue-puzzle detective fiction.

Chapter THREE

Reading Text The Blue Spill

CHAPTER 1 A little knot of curious people were standing in the road outside a gate marked “Graylands.” A policeman moved them on. “Murder?” someone asked him in a hushed though rather eager voice, but he only shook his head noncommittally. The crowd soon drifted off. Graylands was certainly the last place in the world one would think of as being the scene of a crime. The little that could be seen over the top of the gate was singularly peaceful and attractive, every detail spoke of beauty, comfort, and rich middle class security. The house was set in a terraced garden. Brick steps, low and very wide, stretched from the front gate down to the house door; inside steps again led from the front hall down to the living rooms at the back which were on a level with the garden, and in its turn the garden dropped away in terraces.1 The view stretched over the Surrey hills in the distance. The house low and rambling was covered in roses for which Graylands was famous. Such was the “the scene of the crime” as it appeared in the bright light of a May morning. * * * “Inspector Love speaking … who is it … oh Brooks, yes?” The Inspector gave all his attention to the long gurgle which came from the receiver. He jotted down a number on a pad in front of him. “All right … all right I’ll come at once.” Love rang off, his face wore a brighter and less “Monday morning” look than it had done before Inspector Brooks had rung up. “Murder, last night, at a place called Graylands near Ripton, at least they think it was murder,” he said to the young sergeant who was the only person in the room with him. Inspector Love pushed back his chair and stood up, seated at his desk he had seemed a small man, but standing it became apparent that he was above middle height and except for a pronounced stoop would have seemed tall. His prematurely grey hair contrasted oddly with his small very black moustache.2 Some people went so far as to hint that this

The terraces here serve as a reminder of Ecbatan, the capital of the Median Empire founded in the late eighth century BCE. Pound mentions the city in Cantos 4 and 5 but the most prominent citation arises in The Pisan Cantos – “the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars” (74 / 445). This city of concentric terraces represents the harmony of nature and civilization, earth and cosmos, and echoes the Mesopotamian ziggurat (Terrell 14), embodied variously in the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. 2 Charlie Chaplin is likely the point of reference lurking behind this image. From his first film appearance as The Tramp in Kid Auto Races in Venice (1914), he had popularized the toothbrush moustache. However, it bears 1

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was dyed. With a hat on his greyness was much less noticeable and he looked ten years younger at least than when bare headed. “Tell Inspector Beedwell that I’ve gone down to Graylands as soon as he comes, and if any important message comes for me telephone me there you’ll find the number under the name Marshall.” “Right sir.” The sergeant knew that messages for Inspector Love were best sent on at once and he stopped what he was doing to look up the Marshalls’ number in the suburban directory. The Inspector had taken off the receiver again. “Ripton 2244 … Dr Whitby? … hello Whitby, Love speaking. I’ve just heard that you were in on that affair last night, I’m going down myself to see about it now. Their local man is tied up with another job. I’m speaking from the office. Could you meet me at Graylands in three quarters of an hour … I’ll be there by ten … good!” “Curious that old Whitby should be mixed up in this,” he mused. “This will be the fourth job we have been on together, wonder what he is doing at Ripton?” The Inspector went over to the bookshelf and pulled out a heavy directory. “Let me see … Marshall … Graylands … Ripton …” He spent some minutes consulting books and jotted down a few notes. “It never does any harm to seem to know a thing or two that people don’t expect you to know.” he said half out loud. “Makes ’em think you probably know a deuce of a lot besides, and that’s all to the good. Let me see now what I’ve got ... Christian names, wives, children, clubs, local charities, boards, that ought to do me to go on with for the present.” He pocketed his notebook and picked up his hat. A car was waiting for him and in three quarters of an hour, as he had promised Dr Whitby, he arrived at the front gate at Graylands. The policeman outside recognized him as the famous Inspector Love and let him in without question, and a tall man who was already half way down the path to the house, stopped on hearing the car and came slowly back to meet him. “Ah Whitby, there you are!” The two men greeted as old friends. “Glad to see you. Brooks gave me your telephone number this morning – how did you get yourself mixed up in this?” “I live down here now. I’ve just taken a house, moved in a week ago.” Whitby had a calm rather languid manner of speaking that was a great contrast to the detective’s spasmodic jerky one. “I came down here for a little peace and quiet and to escape people like you,” he continued. Love smiled. “Not so easy as all that,” he said. “I was saying to myself just now that this would make the fourth job we have been on together.” Whitby nodded. “Yes, and always murder. That Chinese student murder was the last and now here is another.” “You are quite sure it’s murder?” asked Love, dropping his voice. The doctor glanced round to see who the cautious Inspector seemed afraid would overhear his question, but there seemed no one within earshot.3 He answered with great deliberation. “You know me Love, you know I don’t easily say I’m sure of a thing unless

remembering that the style was imported into Europe from the United States in the late nineteenth century, displacing the popular Kaiser moustache in Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century. 3 The doctor glanced round to see who the cautious Inspector was afraid could overhear them, but he saw no one near enough to bother about (TS2, 3).

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I am sure, and in this case I don’t think there can be any doubt of it being murder all right. In the first place the weapon is missing.” “Hm,” said Love, “weapon missing eh?” “Yes, and then the wound, though it might just possible have been self-inflicted, still is extremely unlikely to have been made by anyone who had serious intention of committing suicide. Too awkward altogether. Anyway you’ll see for yourself.4 That’s the room where it happened.” Dr Whitby pointed to a bow window giving on the left side of the house. The two men had been walking slowly towards the front door as they talked. The Inspector gave a perfunctory glance in the direction pointed out to him. “You were going to tell me how you got mixed up in this … whatever it is,” he said. “Why I was called over last night when they found Marshall shot. One of the maids ran over to get me – I’ve taken the place next door.” Whitby nodded in the direction of a small house partly visible through the trees at some distance. “I came over at once, but he was dead when I got here – must have died a few minutes before. He was shot in the throat. His wife was with him when I arrived. She is nearly stone deaf and had not heard the shot. The maid who heard it was too frightened to go in to the room herself and investigate, so she went for Mrs Marshall. A dreadful shock for the poor woman to go in there without proper warning and find her husband lying dead. She went all to pieces when she understood that he was dead – she hadn’t realized it until I told her. She had been trying to revive him and all that. Curious how people will never admit that anyone is actually dead until they have had a doctor tell them so, just as well I suppose.” “Why did they send for you, I didn’t know you had a private practice?” “I haven’t. The maid was told to telephone for the doctor and for the police, but she said she thought it would be quicker to run over to me. I think she was frightened to stay in the house. As a matter of fact I did get there quicker than any other doctor would have done. My man rang up the police at once and they couldn’t have been more than ten minutes getting here.” Love walked slower and slower as they neared the house. “What do you know of the Marshalls?” he said. “Nothing much. I’ve been here such a short time. I knew them by sight of course. He had the reputation of being an old curmudgeon who bullied his family, especially his wife. I took over my place from the Purfords – they had known the Marshalls for years. They said the old man used to be terribly rude to her and make fun of her for the mistakes she would make on account of her deafness. I gather he wasn’t a popular character. There is a daughter, I believe she manages to be away a great deal.” “Isn’t there a son?” “Yes one son, just left Cambridge I think.” “Many servants?” “Five or six indoor servants.5 By the way one of them is remarkably pretty, couldn’t help noticing it even last night.”

“Yes, and then the wound, though it might possibly have been self-inflicted, still it is extremely unlikely that anyone with serious intention of committing suicide would have going about it in such an awkward way. Oh well come and see for yourself” (TS2, 3). 5 “Five or six indoor servants ” (TS1, 1, 5). 4

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“Hmm … Whitby, you used not to notice that kind of thing.” “No, more’s the pity, I left it to you.”6 Love laughed complacently. “Anything else to tell me before I go in?” he said. The doctor shook his head. “Well then let’s go in. I’m glad you are here to stand by me with the old lady. I must confess that deaf people rattle me. I must see Brooks though first of all.” They were admitted into the house by a butler whose appearance was very much that of a “family” butler, and whose annoyance at the presence in “his” hall of the young policeman who had been stationed there was obvious.7 Instead of asking for his colleague Inspector Brooks, or for anyone else, Love walked straight off down the passage to the left, opening doors as he went until he found the one opening into the room he had been shown from the garden.8 It was there in the unfortunate man’s own study that the tragedy had occurred. Whitby remained in the hall where he explained Love’s identity to the astonished and indignant butler. The room in which Love found himself was handsomely furnished in a heavy conventional manner. A large writing table that nearly filled the bow window was the most conspicuous thing there. On the left side of the desk and at right angles to it, about five feet9 out from the wall, there was a large chesterfield sofa. Back of the sofa was a door that led into the billiard room. In the middle of the floor a large and unmistakable stain on the carpet had been left untouched, and other stains on the leather cushions of the sofa showed where the injured man had been placed the night before. The Inspector turned quickly when he heard the door he had just shut behind him open again. “Ah, there you are,” he said as Inspector Brooks from the local police station entered. He was a tall red-faced man self-conscious and awkward at meeting his redoubtable colleague, the more so for his efforts not to appear so.10 “I’m very pressed for time, we are all taken up with the Booth case11 otherwise I shouldn’t have bothered you,” he said looking fussed and important. “Shall I show you my notes before you look round? I’m anxious to get back as soon as I can.”12 “I met Whitby as I came in. Do you know anything that he doesn’t know?” said Love rather curtly. He had not wanted to see Brooks to soon. Annoyed that his chance of telling the story first had been taken from him, Brooks’s manner did not conceal the fact very well. “Oh you’ve seen him already have you, well I suppose he does know as much as we do so far. He got here before we did.” Notwithstanding the slight encouragement he had been given Inspector Brooks got out his notebook while Love sank into a chair, with a bored expression. “Here is what I’ve got.” Brooks started to read in a very satisfied manner. “The station was called at

“No, more’s the pity, I left it to you,” said the doctor dryly (TS2, 4). was obvious (TS1, 1, 5). The clue-puzzle genre often drew upon the distinction between the landed class and the professional classes such as the police. The irony resides, of course, in the offended sensibilities of the butler, a servant trading on his proximity to the landed class. 8 ^He went in and shut the door behind him^ (TS2, 5). 9 six feet (TS2, 5). 10 Brooks was a tall redfaced man. At the moment he looked fussed and important (TS2, 5). This sentence in TS2 replaces the more descriptive sentence of TS1, 6, retained in the reading text. 11 This is the only mention of the otherwise mysterious Booth case. It would need to be serious to take a local Inspector away from such a high profile murder as the Graylands case. This is perhaps reflected in Booth’s selfimportant air but the proper name curiously elicits no reaction, let alone curiosity, from Love. It is less a red herring than Brooks’s MacGuffin, taking him off-stage and out of the narrative. 12 Booth’s final sentence is omitted from TS2, 5. 6 7

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three minutes past twelve, from Dr Whitby’s house. Four men got here by a quarter past. I myself was here by twenty-five past. The parlourmaid Mullins had heard the shot a little before twelve and she had called her mistress. Dr Whitby had been sent for at once and was waiting for us here. We saw no signs of any one having got in the house, or in the grounds. The doors and windows were all locked for the night. No sign of their having been touched.” “Any sign of a struggle in here?” “Absolutely none, and as far as has been ascertained nothing has been stolen or deranged. We haven’t found the weapon though, otherwise we might have thought of suicide.”13 “Hmm, no weapon,” said Love thoughtfully.14 “There are marks of a car outside the front gate, the most important clue to my way of thinking. The household knows nothing of it, I’ve asked them, but it is a car that must have stopped in front of the house after eleven last night. I can tell from the state of the tracks as there was a slight shower after eleven and the tracks are different of course to what they would have been if the roads had been dry.” “And the household know nothing?” “Apparently not. I haven’t seen Mrs Marshall since last night. She was very hysterical then and it was impossible to question her. The daughter had nothing to tell. She seemed even more upset about her mother than about her father. I haven’t questioned the servants separately. They all said they knew nothing last night.” “Who was in the house at the time?” “Only Mrs Marshall, her daughter and the four maids. The men servants sleep over the garage.” “Is there no telephone from the house to the garage?” Love interrupted. “There was one but it has been out of order for some days they tell me.”15 Brooks fumbled in his pocket for some papers. “I’ve made a rough plan of the house and grounds you might find useful, and I’ve had the fingerprints of everyone in the house, including the corpse.” Brooks had evidently made a great effort not to be caught napping.16 Love said nothing either in praise or blame though, but got up out of his chair and Brooks quite correctly took the move as a hint for his departure. “Shall I leave you the two men I have here now?” “Yes,” said Love, “please do for the present. I’ll call you up if I need help.” Brooks looked as if he were doubtful whether this last remark was sarcasm or meant in good faith. However he decided that if he accepted it as a compliment he would be spared the necessity for repartee, never his strong point, so he let the matter drop.17 “The body is in there, in the billiard room.” He pointed to the door on the left. “Our doctor was here this morning. He found one bullet in the throat, you ought to have his report soon now.”

“We haven’t found the weapon though so it can’t be suicide” (TS2, 6). The phrase Nothing taken is added to Love’s line in TS2, 6. 15 “There was one but it has been out of order for some days they tell me. There is a bell though which rings from the kitchen” (TS2, 7). 16 Brooks had evidently made a great effort not to be caught napping by his redoubtable colleague (TS2, 7). 17 The final phrase so he let the matter drop is omitted in TS2, 7. 13 14

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With a nod Brooks took himself off, inwardly congratulating himself that pressure of work elsewhere enabled him to get out of the responsibility of have to solve a problem to which he felt there was small chance of finding an easy answer, for him at any rate.18

CHAPTER 2 Inspector Love was relieved19 when Brooks left him to get on with the job in his own way. It seemed to be a quiet and leisurely way.20 He seemed to spend an agreeable few minutes admiring the rock garden under the study window, then he turned and went into the next room.21 The dead man had been laid on the billiard table. The Inspector turned down the sheet that covered the body and disclosed the already discolored face of a man about sixty. The mouth and chin were partly hidden by the cotton wool that had been packed round the wound in the throat, but Love pushed it down to enable him to see the whole face, and the line of the jaw. It was a countenance that must have been heavy and sullen looking even in life.22 In death it still had one eyelid very slightly open which gave it the look of spying at what was going on. Love found that spying look from a dead man irritating.23 Using a corner of the sheet he tried to close the eyelid and failed.24 After a rapid glance which noted that the man was tall and strongly made, he paid no further attention to the corpse beyond covering it again with the sheet.25 Going back to the study Love sat down before the desk and gave his attention to the things on it, being meticulously careful to replace anything he picked up in the exact spot in which he had found it. He had put on gloves for the purpose. The desk was in great apparent disorder: the only unencumbered spot on it was, oddly enough, the large blotter in the centre.26 Love examined this carefully and smiled to himself on finding a letter and an envelope hidden between the cover of the blotter and the first sheet of blotting paper.27 “Letter … unfinished too … wonder if Brooks missed this or if he left it?” Love had a habit of making running comments about things out loud to himself when alone. He often did it when other people where there, without realizing it.28 Very few people though could have followed his disjoined burbling. He skimmed through the letter quickly and then put it away in his note case.29

The phrase for him at any rate is omitted in TS2, 7. Inspector Love ^was^ relieved (TS1, 2, 1). 20 This sentence appears only in the second version of Chapter 2 in TS2, 8. 21 then he turned and went into the ^next^ room (TS1, 2, 1). 22 TS1, 2, 1 records this sentence as: The face must have been heavy and sullen looking even in life. 23 Love found that spying look (TS1, 2, 1). 24 ^using a corner of the sheet^ he tried to close the eyelid and failed (TS1, 2, 1). 25 After a rapid glance which ^noted^ that ^the man was^ tall and strongly made , he paid no further attention to ^the corpse beyond^ covereing it again with the sheet (TS1, 2, 1). 26 Might the blotter be Rudge and Pound’s purloined letter, the key to the mystery hidden in plain sight? The blotter soaks up excess ink, spilled ink, while the spill brings flame to candles and cigarettes. Both paper objects are used for purposes other than textual inscriptions, and both are consumed in the process of their use. Free indirect discourse allows both Love and the narrator to observe the “oddity” that the blotter occupies the only unencumbered space on the desk. 27 Love examined this carefully and smiled to himself on finding a letter and an envelope tucked away in the lining of the cover (TS2, 8, version 2 of Chapter 2). 28 The habit had become so engrained that he often did it when other people were present without realizing it (TS2, 8). 29 This sentence appears only in the second version of Chapter 2 in TS2, 8. 18 19

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At that moment Dr Whitby came into the room. “I’ve been seeing Mrs Marshall. She is quite calm this morning. I should hardly have thought it possible from the state she was in last night.” “Good, I’ll see her as soon as I have finished here.” Love continued his examination of the room muttering himself the while. He glanced through a pile of newspapers on a small table.30 “The Financial Times, The Investor … all financial papers. He evidently wanted to watch what was going on even if he had retired … let’s see, what about the waste paper basket, did Brooks mention that? He’s nuts on such things as a rule … nothing in this one at all, cramps one’s style that does.” He picked up a Times that had been put behind the basket to be thrown away, doubtless, and glanced through it quickly. A small clipping had been made in it. Love made a note of the date.31 “Has the son got here yet?” he asked. “No, there has hardly been time.” “Why, where is he, abroad?” “No, he is in London, but curiously no one seems to have thought of sending for him last night. It was only when Brooks asked for him this morning that they realised he hadn’t been notified. Bennet, that’s the butler, sent off a wire then on his own responsibility. The young man ought to be here at any moment now.”32 The Inspector took off his gloves and put them in his pocket and gave a last glance round the room then he said,33 “Well I suppose I’d better start with the household if I’m to see them all before lunch.” Love went out into the hall where the butler was still jealously guarding the young policeman. “Will you tell Mrs Marshall I would like to see her?” “Mrs Marshall is waiting for you in the morning room. This way if you please sir.” Bennet flung open a door and announced them sonorously.34 Whitby followed Love into a large pleasant room, furnished in yellow chintz. Mrs Marshall was sitting in a large chair by the fireplace at the end of the room.35 She did not notice their entrance, being unable to hear Bennet’s announcing them, and remained motionless in her large chair,36 her hands clasped in her lap, a slight figure in black, not unlike in pose and appearance the portrait of Whistler’s Mother, familiar to travellers on the underground.37 Seeing her

^He glanced through a pile of newspapers on a small table^ (TS1, 2, 2). Love made a note of this fact (TS1, 2, 2). 32 TS1, 2, 2 omits Love’s question: “Why, where is he, abroad?” and Whitby’s reply reads: “No one thought of sending for him last night. It was only when Brooks asked for him this morning that they realised he hadn’t been sent for. Bennet wired on his own responsibility. He ought to be here at any moment though now.” 33 ^The Inspector took off his gloves and put them in his pocket and gave a last glance round the room then he said^ (TS1, 2, 2). 34 ^Bennet flung open a door and announced them sonorously^ (TS1, 2, 2). 35 a large chair (TS1, 2, 2). 36 remained ^motionless^ in her large chair (TS1, 2, 2). 37 James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1, 1871, oil on canvas, 144.3 x 162.4 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. This painting, known colloquially as Whistler’s Mother, is the first of several artworks cited by the narrator in The Blue Spill. Anna McNeill Whistler sat for her portrait at 96 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1871 (Whistler’s residence, built on the site of Thomas More’s garden, and decorated in Japoniste style). The painting was accepted in the 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in 1872, but having narrowly avoided rejection, precipitated Whistler’s rift with the London art world. The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris acquired the painting in 1891, just as the same city acquired Ezra Pound after Hugh Selwyn Mauberley in January 1921. 30 31

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sitting there unconscious of them38 the Inspector thought that she looked older than her husband, but when she did at last see them and jumped up quickly from her chair to come towards them, her manner of moving was so spontaneous and young, that he changed his opinion. She was a small and frail looking woman, with a severe though not unpleasant face, which had a look of great absorption and concentration. If Mrs Marshall had collapsed the night before, as Dr Whitby had stated, she had by now quite recovered her self-control. She motioned the two men to the chairs she intended them to occupy, and resumed her own. “If you will turn towards the light a little more and speak distinctly – I shall be able to follow you.” she said to the Inspector “I am getting very deaf, but I can lip read.” For a fleeting minute the Inspector had the feeling that the places were reversed, and that he was not the examiner but the examined. He shook off the feeling with an effort. “Will you tell me just what you know about last night?” “What happened last night?” said Mrs Marshall repeating the phrase she had just seized in the interrogative manner usual to the very deaf.39 “I know nothing but what I have already told Dr Whitby and the other inspector last night, haven’t they told you?” “I must have it at first hand,” said Love bluntly.40 “Very well,” said Mrs Marshall, pausing for a moment as if to think where she should commence, but Love interrupted her before she had a chance to speak. “Where were you last night?” “I was in here all the evening, but I wouldn’t have been able to hear an unusual noise in the study if there had been any, even though it is only just across the passage. I did go into the study several times during the evening but my husband was always alone.” “Have you ever had any reason to think that such a thing might happen to your husband?” When she had taken in the questions Mrs Marshall seemed shocked by it and even indignant at the suggestion.41 “Certainly not. Who should I suspect of such a dreadful thing? My husband had no enemies that I know of. He led a very quiet ordinary life, we all live very quiet ordinary lives. I can see no possible reason any one could have for doing such a thing. It must be the act of a maniac, that is all I can think.” Love could not help thinking that if this man he had just seen as a corpse on the billiard room table had led a “quiet ordinary life” it was certainly a triumph of mind over matter, and that his physique maligned him.42 “How did you first know what had occurred?” “When Eva, that is the parlourmaid, came in and pulled me by the arm to attract my notice. I was reading by the fire here. I knew something must have happened. She was so excited but I couldn’t make out what she said except something about “study.” I followed

The connection with the London Underground has not been located, but presumably refers to posters advertising the Musée d’Orsay or product endorsements. The iconic painting became even more familiar following the United States Postal Service issue of the 1934 Mothers Day stamp, designed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 38 Seeing her sitting there ^unconscious of them^ (TS1, 2, 3). 39 the ^interrogative^ manner (TS1, 2, 3). 40 “I ^must^ have it at first hand” (TS1, 2, 3). 41 Mrs Marshall seemed shocked at Love’s suggestion (TS1, 2, 4). 42 This sentence appears in pencil on the verso page of TS1, 2, 4. An asterisk at this point in the typed text indicates it is to be inserted here.

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her into the passage and called out to my husband and when he didn’t come I went into the study and found him lying there.” “How was he lying when you found him, did you alter his position at all?” The Inspector had to repeat his question several times before Mrs Marshall seized it.43 “Did I move him? Yes.44 I had to a bit, the study door had stuck, I couldn’t think what has holding it and had to push it hard to get it open enough to look in. He had fallen in such a way that his legs kept the door from opening easily.45 He was lying on his face, I thought he had been taken ill and turned him over, but then I saw the wound. There wasn’t much light in the room.”46 “Did you turn him over without help?”47 “Yes Eva didn’t come in to the room with me.48 I called to her to telephone the doctor and the police and I did everything I could to revive him, but I realize now that he must have been gone already.” The woman was evidently trying hard to control herself, but all her body was trembling.49 “You didn’t call your daughter and the servants. Why?” “I thought Eva would do that. I didn’t realize she had gone herself for Dr Whitby instead of telephoning as I had told her to do.” “Where is the telephone kept?” Love remembered how he had seen it on the desk. “On my husband’s desk.”50 At this moment Bennet discretely interrupted. “A message for you sir,” he said to Love, handing him an envelope.51 The Inspector took it and walked off to the far end of the room and read it, leaving Mrs Marshall with the doctor.52 She turned to him anxiously. “Has he discovered anything else do you know, could I ask him or wouldn’t he tell me. I feel my deafness so much now,” she said sadly. “I can’t follow what is being said around me quickly enough. People are so impatient with deafness. I am never told anything about until it is over and done with. People haven’t time to try and talk to me, I get only old facts and stale news.” “I wouldn’t advise you to …” The Inspector’s return cut short what answer the doctor had commenced making to Mrs Marshall’s question. “One more question, Mrs Marshall,” said Love. “Has any one of the househosld ever had a small sized browning do you know?”53

This sentence appears in pencil in the left margin and is to be inserted here (TS1, 2, 4). This question and answer also appear in the left margin in pencil (TS1, 2, 4). 45 He ^had fallen^ (TS1, 2, 4). 46 ^“There wasn’t much light in the room”^ (TS1, 2, 4). This sentence is omitted in versions 1 and 2 in TS2, 11. 47 This question does not appear in either version of Chapter 2 in TS2. 48 Love’s question and Mrs Marshall’s response appears in pencil on the verso page of TS1, 2, 4, again inserted here as per asterisk. 49 ^The woman was evidently trying hard to control herself, but all her body was trembling^ (TS1, 2, 4). 50 The question and response concerning the telephone is inserted from a pencil note on the verso page in TS1. 51 ^ he said to Love ^handing him an envelope^ (TS1, 2, 5). The change from Love’s taking a telephone call to receiving a telegram was made necessary following the inserted question and answer concerning the whereabouts of the telephone immediately prior. 52 The Inspector ^took it and walked off to the far end of the room and read it^ (TS1, 2, 5). 53 The murder weapon is a Browning revolver: very likely the FN M1910 model, a six-chamber 0.38 calibre semiautomatic pistol that became widely used in Europe as a military and police pistol, particularly in the Second 43 44

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“No Inspector. I am certain, no one.” “The medical report has just come in. It seems the wound was made by a small size browning bullet.” Love handed the report he had just received to Mrs Marshall.54 “Mrs Marshall was just wondering if she might ask you if there was any news,” said Whitby. “Well until I have been another quarter of an hour on the job at least it’s no use expecting anything of me,” said Love impatiently. Mrs Marshall had been standing near them and evidently trying to follow what the two men were saying. Though the fact that she had failed to do so was apparent from her next remark. “Have you no other news for us Inspector?”55 “I am afraid up to the present that the doctor’s report is the only such news. I can understand your anxiety – please believe we will leave no stone unturned and I hope soon we will have some news for you.” Whitby smiled at Love’s sudden change to a courteous, sympathetic manner, so different to the one he had had a minute before when answering the same question but by Whitby on Mrs Marshall’s behalf. He caught Love’s eyes and his smile deepened to a grin.56 “Old humbug,” he murmured. The inspector as he spoke had half opened one of the long French windows looking on the garden.57 “May we go out this way? I should like to take a turn round the lawn before I see the servants.” He stepped outside, not waiting for an answer and Dr Whitby followed him. Looking back through the window as he was shutting it behind them, Love saw Mrs Marshall resume her large yellow chair and the patiently waiting attitude in which he had first seen her, but now she kept her eyes on the door.58 “Of course,” thought Love, “the son hasn’t come yet.”59

World War. The weapon has a curiously rich history in political assassinations: it was used by Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 – the event that famously precipitated the First World War; Paul Daumier, the president of France, was assassinated in 1932 by a Russian émigré, Paul Gorguloff, with this pistol; and, most relevant for Pound, Governor Huey Long was assassinated with an M1910 in 1935, soon after he announced his intention to run for president of the United States on a ticket with the notorious radio broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin. The weapon’s name also bears irresistible literary associations for Pound – not the only time in The Blue Spill that Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear directly or otherwise. 54 This sentence replaces a pencil addition in TS1, 2, 5: ^Mrs Marshall sighed and shook her head despairingly.^ 55 This paragraph is a pencil addition from the verso leaf in TS1. In TS2, 13, it is compressed to: That Mrs Marshall had not caught this remark was apparent by her next sentence. “Have you no news for us yet Inspector?” 56 This paragraph is another pencil addition from the verso leaf in TS1. It is lightly emended in TS2, 13. 57 The phrase looking on the garden is added in pencil in TS1, 2, 5, but is omitted from both versions of Chapter 2 in TS2, 13. 58 ^Looking back through the window when he had shut it he saw that^ Mrs Marshall resumed her patiently waiting attitude (TS1, 2, 5). 59 This sentence appears in both versions of Chapter 2 in TS2, 13. Love’s internal monologue replaces a sentence of narrative description in TS1, 2, 5: She was ^expecting^ anxiously ^for^ the moment ^when^ her son should arrive. At this point TS2 breaks off into several pages of autograph notes reproduced in Appendix 1. Much of the material appears to function as Inspector Love’s retrospection on the whole case, thus set towards the end of the narrative proper. These notes converge with the main body of the narrative in Chapter 3 when Love and Whitby first encounter Dane Marshall.

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CHAPTER 3 The rose garden was looking at its best. Love could not resist burying his nose in a large crimson damask and sniffing luxuriously. “This is very pleasant,” he said, “but not what I am here for. I want to see those car tracks Brooks was so proud of.” He walked up the path towards the front gate – the steepness of the slope did not allow a carriage drive at Graylands.60 “I suppose this is what he means.” Love stopped where the marks of a large car were plainly visible out side the gate.61 “Very interesting, and I suppose Brooks has cleverly deduced the make and number of the car from these traces. A pity no one seems to have got in or out of it though, that might have helped matters for us.” Love walked slowly down the road to the side gate. “Everything seems to be pretty much trampled out by now isn’t it?” said Whitby, following him. “The cop stood on the corner and his shoes were full of feet,” Love chanted.62 “Do you remember that American crook we caught in the Charing Cross hotel Whitby?” “Do I! And his singing that in the taxi on the way to the station.” “Clever fellow he was, due out again by now I think. It’s quite ten years since all that.” “Yes at least. He was extradited wasn’t he? Why, he may have been out for years. There is no telling with those American judges though – queer laws they have, they may have to give a life sentence for shop lifting, while a fellow who embezzles thousands can get off with a year or so and a caution.” They walked by the closed garage. The Inspector rambled on in his disjointed way, now stopping, now going on abruptly.63 “The garage … nice little garage … door on road … little door at the back into garden … path leading past our study window.” He made his comments half out loud to himself. The path he had just noticed was screened from view of the house by a hedge, as was the garage.64 Outside the study window the Inspector stopped again. Whitby, who also stopped and looked in the study window as his friend was doing, was surprised to feel a chill strike him, though he had had experience enough of gruesome things in the course

A comment in Pound’s hand appears in the left margin: [Roped off own stables + red neg.] (TS1, 14). “I suppose this is what he means,” ^he muttered to himself^ stopping where the marks of a large car were plainly visible out side the gate (TS1, 14). Car tyre prints become potentially significant plot devices throughout The Blue Spill, providing an updated variation on the shoe print as clue-puzzle evident in Sherlock Holmes stories and elsewhere. For further discussion see pp. 10–11 in the Introduction. 62 Love either quotes from the traditional lyric “Barefoot Boy with Boots On,” or from the opening lines of Wendell Hall’s 1923 arrangement of the traditional song, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo”: “The night was dark and dreary, and the air was full of sleet Well the old man stood out in the storm and his shoes were full of feet.” 63 ^They walked by the closed garage.^ The Inspector ^rambled on in his disjointed way, now stopping, now going on abruptly.^ (TS1, 14–15) The pencil emendations are made in Pound’s hand, as is a note in the top margin that reads: “E. P. private property.” The first sentence of the paragraph is omitted in TS2, 14. 64 This sentence concerning the hedge only occurs in TS2, 14. The narrative in TS2 continues for another page on a misfiled leaf numbered 15 in Folder 2818, which closely follows the present narrative scene to the line: “Regret to inform you of sudden demise of Mr Marshall your father.” Following this in Folder 2817 is version 2 of Chapter 2, and the episodes collected as Appendices. TS2 contains no further material from Chapters 3–7 and recommences at Chapter 8. 60 61

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of his profession to make him indifferent. Yet for some reason he could not explain, he turned away from the sight of the disorder in the study – with its grim significance – turned again to the garden.65 “And to think I came down to this part of the world to get away from such things. And then I go and choose a house not more than two minutes away from this,” he complained. “Yes,” said the Inspector chuckling, “and Brooks has probably got his eye on you. What were you doing up at that time of night? A respectable old fogey like you should have been in bed ages before.” “Well I dare say you could get up quite a good case against me if you wanted a herring,” said the doctor. “There is even a small browning among my traps, or should be.66 Come on and see if it’s there. At any rate come for lunch.” “Thanks, I’d like to. I’ll get on now with the servants.” The noise of a car stopping attracted Whitby’s notice. “There is the son,” he said as the Graylands gate opened and a young man entered. They waited till the young man came up to them. Whitby shook hands with him and introduced the Inspector.67 “I don’t know,” said the doctor, “whether you know just what has happened.” “My father’s dead, yes. I had a wire from Bennet.” He took a crumpled telegram from his pocket and showed it to the doctor who read: “Regret to inform you of sudden demise of master of Mr Marshall, your father.” The Doctor handed the telegram to Love who glanced at it and then look significantly at Whitby, who realized that he was obviously the one to break the news to Dean Marshall of his father’s death not being due to natural causes as he had taken for granted. The Doctor cleared his throat nervously before speaking.68 “Yes he asked to send a wire this morning. Your mother was in no state to think of sending for you, or of anything else last night, and no one else seems to have thought of it.” “Last night?” said young Marshall, “was it last night?” “Yes, and a much more tragic state of things than you could imagine from that telegram. Your father was found shot in his study.”69 The young man had turned pale under his healthy bronze. He did not say a word for a moment. Then: “Where is my mother?”70 He started to pass them, but Love put out a detaining hand on his arm. “I must ask you one or two questions first, a matter of form, I won’t keep you a minute.” Dane Marshall stopped. He seemed completely dazed. “Had you ever any reason to suspect that such a thing might happen?”

Whitby, ^who also stopped and looked in the study window as his friend was doing,^ was surprised to feel a chill strike him, though he had had experience enough of gruesome things in the course of his profession ^to make him indifferent. Yet for some reason he could not explain,^ he turned away from the sight of the disorder in the study––with its grim significance––bound again to the garden (TS1, 15). 66 “There is even a small browning among my traps, or should be. ^Come on and see if its there^” (TS1, 15). 67 Whitby who had met him once before shook hands with him and introduced the Inspector (Folder 2818, 15). 68 This paragraph is composed in pencil on the verso leaf in Rudge’s hand and marked for insertion at this point. The episode – from this point to Love’s line below, “I think I must know less than anyone about last night” – recurs on two typed pages filed in Folder 2824, numbered 17 and 18, with little variation from the present text. 69 “Your father was ^found shot^ in his study” (TS1, 16). 70 “Where is my mother, ” (TS1, 16). 65

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The young man seemed hardly to have taken in Love’s question. “Eh … what …” he began vaguely, but the second time on Love repeating it patiently he took it in.71 “Good God no, what do you mean?”72 “Mr Marshall had no enemies, he had never received threatening letters of any kind?” “Never to my knowledge.”73 “That is all then for the present Mr Marshall, I won’t keep you. I want to see your sister now.” The young man rushed on into the house. The butler who was evidently waiting for him threw open the door of the sitting room and immediately shut it behind him.74 “Bennet,” said the Inspector, “will you tell Miss Marshall should like to see her now.” “Miss Marshall has not left her room yet this morning sir, but I will let her know you desire to see her.”75 The butler returned in a few moments saying that Miss Marshall would be down directly. “I will get back now to my own place said Whitby. Lunch will be ready any time you come over.” “Thanks Whitby, see you later. Mind you clean up your guns.”76 The Inspector walked into the drawing room on which large double doors opened into the square hall. He had just settled himself into the most comfortable chair (he tried several) when Miss Marshall’s entrance brought him to his feet again.77 She was undoubtedly an attractive young woman of the “fine girl” type, large of build like her father. She had what is called a winning manner, and a good share of health well-fed beauty, but Love at that moment was mostly struck by the already heavy line of jaw and chin. His thoughts flashed to the figure on the billiard room table where he had observed similar lines only a short while before. “Is there anything you think you should tell me Miss Marshall?” “I think I must know less than anyone about last night.”78 “Would there maybe be events you know of that might possibly lead up to last night’s tragedy?” Miss Marshall looked round helplessly “I can’t … if only I could!” “Will you tell me what you do know of last night then?”79

but the second time on Love repeating it patiently he ^took it in^ (TS1, 16). 72 The episode, typed and filed in Folder 2824, contains the following addition: The young man seemed angry as well as shocked at the suggestion. 73 “Never to my knowledge (TS1, 16). 74 The butler who was evidently waiting for him threw open the door ^of the sitting room^ and ^immediately^ shut it behind him (TS1, 16). This sentence does not appear in Folder 2824. 75 “I will ^let her know you desire to see her^” (TS1, 17). 76 “Thanks Whitby, see you later. ^mind you clean up your guns^” (TS1, 17). 77 The Inspector ^walked into the drawing room on which large double doors opened into the square hall.^ He had just settled himself into the most comfortable chair ^(he tried several)^ when Miss Marshall’s entrance brought him to his feet again (TS1, 17). 78 The repeated instance of this episode in Folder 2824 concludes at this point. 79 Three lines of dialogue, from “Would there maybe” to “last night then?”, are added in pencil on the verso of TS1, 17. An insertion point is indicated on TS1, 17 at the very point where the repeated instance in Folder 2824 concludes, suggesting an interruption to the composition process. 71

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“I wasn’t called until after the Doctor got here. Eva lost her head and ran out of the house without coming to me as I expect Mother thought she would, and when I did get down, Mother was nearly out of her mind with the shock and in no state to talk. Dr Whitby got her to her room and gave her a sleeping draught, that is all I know.” She smiled pathetically at the Inspector. “Is there any news this morning? I am just up, couldn’t sleep all night,” she said rather apologetically. “News? No I am afraid not. I rather came down here to get it,” Love answered.80 “I take it then that you were in your room last night at the time of the murder?” “Yes I went up to bed at half past eleven.” “Did you hear nothing at all unusual?” “No, nothing.” “Where is your room Miss Marshall? I would like to see it next.” “If you want to.” She led the way into the hall and up the wide stairs to a room on the left at the end of the gallery. “This must be just over the study isn’t it?” The girl nodded. “And yet you heard no shot?” “No.” “But surely you must have heard the side door opening and the noise of the running to and fro when the maid went for the doctor. The noise must have been just under your window.” “No I didn’t. I must have been in my bath then, that door there.” She nodded towards a half opened door.81 Love wandered about the room, and Miss Marshall perched on the windowsill watching him as he took stock of her possessions. The room must have been attractive when in order but the still unmade bed attested to her being as she said “just up.”82 If there was no very great imagination shown in its decoration, it showed a firm intention of the part of its occupant to take no aesthetic risks. The pictures were all photographs or reprints of celebrated paintings, safely classic, the only modern work ventured on was a reproduction of a portrait of Miss Marshall herself, by a man named Rodney, that had been hung in the Academy that year. (He had seen it reproduced in the Sketch.)83 The small bookcase was filled with Oxford Anthologies, and all the new “best books” that a serious minded young suburbanite would absorb as a matter of course: foreign literature being represented by Dekobra, and Morand, and d’Annunzio, in translation. Love however was not interested in Margela Marshall’s literary leanings. He gave more attention to the bathroom adjoining, much to the girl’s embarrassment, as the room was

“News? No I am afraid not ^I rather came down here to get it^” Love answered (TS1, 18). ^She nodded towards a half opened door^ (TS1, 18). 82 The room must have been attractive when in order ^but the still unmade bed attested to her being as she said “just up”^ (TS1, 18). 83 The pictures were all photographs or reprints of celebrated paintings, safely classic, the only modern work ventured on was a reproduction of a ^portrait^ of Miss Marshall herself, and ^was by a man named Rodney,^ and had been hung in the academy that year. ^(He had seen it reproduced in the Sketch)^ (TS1, 18). The inserted phrase naming Rodney is in Pound’s hand, as is the final phrase in this sequence, added in the right margin of the page. That Pound intervenes with the introduction of aesthetic matters – photography, portraiture, the Royal Academy – in developing the figure of Rodney suggests this character may be Pound’s creation, and perhaps even a composite figure (part Wyndham Lewis?) drawn from life. 80 81

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in disorder after her bath.84 The bathtub was still filled with water, a sponge floating, a towel fallen in, and the whole room in more disorder than one would have expected. She murmured confusedly something about the room not having been done since yesterday, that she had been called out of her bath last night, but Love seemed not to notice her remarks which increased a slight irritation in her manner. The detective wandered round the room in a seemingly aimless way, the girl watching him with ill concealed impatience. “Where were you all last evening?” he said at last. “In here writing.” “But I thought you said you came up at 11.30.” The girl blushed with annoyance. “I went to my room after dinner, but I went down later to speak to my father, and came up again as the half hour was striking by the hall clock, and that is always a quarter of an hour slow, so it must have been 11.45 to be exact.”85 “Then as far as you know you are the last person who spoke with your father?” “Yes I suppose so.” Then the possible significance of her answer seemed to strike her. “You don’t think, I mean you don’t suggest …” she began, when Love interrupted. “My dear young lady, I don’t think, I don’t suggest, I merely look at each fact as it comes, and collect as many facts as possible, we have no time in my profession to consider possibilities.” Miss Marshall did not seem much comforted by the Inspector’s reply or by his manner, and led the way down to the drawing room again in silence.86 “If you would send all the servants to me here now I would be much obliged, I will not need to detain you further.” The girl nodded silently and left the room. She evidently met Bennet in the hall because Love heard her transferring her commission to him and then up the stairs again obviously to her own room. It took Bennet a few minutes to round up the eight persons who composed the domestic staff. Love saw through the long window the chauffeur and gardener coming up the path with a young maid servant who was half running to keep up at their speed. They were soon all collected and Love who had seated himself again in the chair of his first choice began proceeding with his usual conventional question. “Is there anything you can tell me …”

CHAPTER 4 The Inspector took a few turns up and down the garden while smoking a hurried cigarette, thinking with annoyance that he would have to let Brooks know the turn things had taken. “I suppose he will want an immediate arrest and I shall have to persuade him to wait. Lucky he didn’t see that letter I found in the study.” He went into the house again by the side door. The telephone he was making for had been removed from its usual place in the study, now locked, and had been put on

He gave more attention to the bathroom adjoining, much to the girl’s embarrassment, ^as the room was in the disorder of after the bath^ (TS1, 19). 85 “I went to my room after dinner, but I went down later to speak to my father, and came up again as the half hour was striking by the hall clock, and that is always a quarter of an hour slow, ^so it must have been 11.45 to be exact^” (TS1, 19). 86 The following sentences to the end of the chapter were added in pencil beneath the typed text. 84

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a small table in a corner of the hall. As he opened the door he saw Margaret Owen the parlourmaid speaking into it. He heard only the words: “But it is impossible, you must explain …” Then the noise of the door opening made her stop and turn. On seeing who had come in she looked for a moment terrified, and dropped the earpiece on the floor. The voice of whoever she was speaking with continued meanwhile to be heard coming from it: “you know nothing, promise me, you know nothing more than the others, prom …” Love took a hurried step to pick it up, but she had snatched it first, and rang off abruptly. She pulled herself together and asked quietly “Were you wanting the telephone sir?” “When you have finished, no hurry.” “I’ve finished sir. We aren’t really supposed to use the telephone for ourselves, but my brother rang me up, he was worried about what has been happening,” she explained nervously. “Quite so,” said the Inspector. “Tell me, has Mr Marshall gone back to town yet?” “I don’t know sir, I’ll see.” “No don’t go, I want you to try and remember when he was last down here.” “I can’t remember exactly. Not for several weeks though.” “You did not see him here last night?” “Oh no sir he was not here last night.” “What time did you go to your room?” “I was in my room by eleven. It was my night out Sunday, but I was in by eleven. Mullins can tell you I spoke to her when I came in.” “Which way did you come into the house?” “By the side gate, not the one near the garage, the other one. I didn’t have to use the key to the kitchen entrance as Mullins was there and let me in.” “You saw no one in the road outside, or in the garden?” “No one I would have told you.” “Tell Mullins to come to me now, will you.” Owen hurried off and the Inspector cursed himself for a fool in not having been the one to pick up the receiver first. He felt that the girl was not telling him the truth. “Brother my eye,” he said to himself, “and she was as white as chalk.” Mullins looked primly pleased to be the center of things again. “I want to ask you a few more questions. I didn’t have the time this morning. Tell me now, are you quite certain you heard only one shot?” “Yes sir I’m sure. If there had been another I would have heard it even if I had been down in the kitchen, because the doors were open, and I notice every sound when I’m downstairs alone being rather nervous like.” “You heard the shot when you were at the top of the kitchen stairs, that is, nearly opposite the study?” “Yes.” “Then after hearing the shot, how long did it take you to call Mrs Marshall, about two or three minutes?” “I waited a minute after Mr Marshall didn’t answer before I tried the door. I think it must have been quite three minutes.” “And how long did it take you to get to Dr Whitby?” “I couldn’t say. I ran all the way, but it seemed a long time to me I was that frightened, about another three minutes perhaps.”

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“And you heard no noise after you left the house, no other shots?” “No, I thought some one was running after me at first, but it was only my heart thumping.” “Did anyone call last night?” “No sir.” “What time did young Mr Marshall leave yesterday?” “He wasn’t here yesterday at all sir, he hasn’t been down hardly any the last four weeks.” “Have you any idea why not?” “No, except it was that master has been so extra crotchety lately. He hasn’t been pleasant company for anyone to tell the truth, not that I would speak evil of the dead, but everyone knows it’s so. I didn’t want to say so before the others, but he was going on something awful to Miss Margela last night, I couldn’t help hearing seeing as the door was open and I had to pass on my way down to the kitchen.” “Hm,” was all Love said as if to himself. Mullins chose to consider that as encouragement to continue. “Yes, he was going on at her something awful, said she was spoilt and ungrateful, and what all, she was asking for money I think, and he says not a penny my girl and don’t you think it for such folly, and she said the money is mine anyway, grandfather left it to me, and then Mr Marshall he said ‘not till I’m dead my girl and don’t you have any illusions about it.’ I think she was wanting some money to get married on, that’s what we all think in the kitchen.” Love showed scant signs of interest in what was being thought in the kitchen, and dismissed Mullins just when she was well wound up and ready to reel off all the family gossip that she had been able to pick up in her two years at Graylands.87 The study had been locked up when the body had been taken into the billiard room and Love had the keys in his pocket. He unlocked the door and going in, went and sat himself down in the large desk chair. For several minutes he sat there doing nothing but letting his eyes stray over the things on the desk. The desk was an American table desk, with one fairly large drawer in the middle and rows of smaller drawers down each side. Love noticed that the top drawer on the right had been taken out of its hole and was lying on top of the desk. He lifted it to put it in its place again.88 To his surprise, he nearly dropped it, because instead of being the light thing he expected it was much too heavy to lift in one hand as he had tried to do. He examined it and saw that though at first glance it did not differ at all from the others it was lined with steel as was the hole it went into, being in fact a miniature safe. The lock further search showed was concealed under a tiny gliding panel of wood in the middle drawer. Love put back the desk as he had found it and jumping up went in search of Margela, carefully locking the door behind him. The girl and her mother were in the drawing room, Mrs Marshall at the fireplace with some embroidery, her daughter at the very opposite end of the room with a book.

^Love showed scant^ signs of interest in what ^was being thought in^ the kitchen dismissed Mullins just when she was well wound up and ready to reel off all the family gossip that she had been able to pick up in her two years at Graylands (TS1, 35). 88 In TS1, 35 this sentence is passed through with two dashes in pencil with the added phrase was slightly open, also in pencil. A note “stet” in the right margin indicates the entire passage is to be retained. 87

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“I’ve hardly interrupted a tête a tête,” said Love to himself. “I suppose this is what is called keeping up appearances for the sake of the servants.” The large girl greeted him with a pathetic smile. Margela always put a world of meaning into her smiles. They implied that she understood, and sympathised with (as no one else could) the person she was thus favouring. Vain or shy people often liked it, not realizing that it was used on everyone. They were not sentimental smiles by any means. There was a faint touch of irony in them that made them piquant, implying always that “WE understand, WE are different.” She broke down with these wily smiles the reserve of the most reserved, but some people were repelled at once as at some unwarrantably familiar gesture. Love was one of these. He wondered whether he would bring up the subject of Dane Marshall’s having been down the night before but decided that if they did not already know of it, it might upset the girl and take her mind off what he wanted her to tell him more particularly. “I would like to speak to you in the morning room Miss Marshall.” Margela followed him in silence. “If you can remember one or two things it might be a great help,” said Love. “First just what was your father doing when you went into the study last night?” “He had just broken his glasses. He had been sorting some papers and was groping round on the floor picking up the bits, annoyed.”89 “How was the room lighted?” “Only the desk lamp was lit.”90 “Now can you remember what his desk looked like?” “I don’t understand. Looked like? It was the same as usual, very untidy. He used to say he knew where everything was but one wouldn’t have thought so.” “Yes, now can you try and give me an idea of what it looked like just as you would if you were describing a picture? Don’t try to tell me what you know was most probably there, but just describe it as if you were seeing it for the first time.” Margela looked puzzled. “I’ll try, but I really wasn’t noticing anything specially. But let me see, his large blotter was open I remember.91 Perhaps the desk was a bit more untidy than usual, one of the side drawers was open, that was full of papers. My father wouldn’t use a file of any sort, he used to sort his letters and papers in small bundles, flat, with clips. There were always three or four bundles on the desk.” “And last night?” “I think the three bundles that were always piled up on top of one another at the back on the left hand side must have been there or I would have noticed it. They were the housekeeping books and bills. Father did everything himself since he retired. He took over the housekeeping from my mother altogether. In the middle of the desk was the stationary holder, and I’m pretty sure that was open, next to it on the left was the picture of Dane and me as children.92 There were some cigar boxed stacked in front, so you can

^“He had just broken his glasses. He had been sorting some papers and was groping round on the floor picking up the bits^ annoyed ” (TS1, 36). There is a note in the left margin “[elab]” indicating there may have been more description intended here. 90 ^“Only the desk lamp was lit”^ (TS1, 36). 91 “But let me see, his large blotter was open I remember ” (TS1, 37). 92 An addition in the left margin reads: “Can you remember if the bundles all be” – it is not clear where this phrase is to be inserted or how it qualifies the questions Love puts to Margela (TS1, 37). 89

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only see the top half of it, then the brass inkwell in front of the blotter, the telephone to the right and the small bookcase behind it at the back, with the directories, and bundles of letters on that too, there was one that seemed new with a race meeting ticket in too.” “And the bundle in the open drawers?”93 She hesitated.94 “It had a blue paper on top, something rather long, that had to be bent at the end to fit in the drawer, a bluish paper, a kind of hard shiny paper.” “You don’t remember anything else that struck you?” “No I don’t think so.” “You say your father seemed annoyed?” “Yes he seemed annoyed with me for coming and interrupting, but I got the impression that he was annoyed with something before that. He was a very nervous man.” “You wanted to talk to Mr Marshall about something urgent I take it and not very agreeable to him.” The girl flushed. Like most people who flatter themselves on their ability to gain the confidences of others, she did not care to make any herself. “As a matter of fact we had what you might call a row, as I suppose the servants have already let you know. My father even followed me out into the hall and called out a few home truths after me as I went upstairs, which you also have probably heard via the kitchen.” “I quite understand it is unpleasant for you my probing into your private affairs like this,” said the Inspector soothingly. “But you must realize that it is only to straighten matters out for you all. Also you can be sure that anything you tell me will not get any further.” The girl who had shown signs of annoyance that looked as if they could develop into rage spoke in a milder tone. “I will tell anything I know but I don’t know anything more than the rest of you. Even mother thinks I know more than I want to say, just because I was the last person known to be in the study with father.” “You said just now that your father came out of the study after you and called to you as you were already on your way upstairs. Then what did he do?” “I think he went into the dining room to get a drink. He usually did before going to bed.”95 “And you went straight to your room?” “Yes and that is the last I know about what happened yesterday.” “When did your brother last come down here?” “Two weeks ago.” “You didn’t see him here yesterday?” The girl looked startled at something in Love’s tone of voice. “But he wasn’t here yesterday.” “As a matter of fact we know that he was in Surbiton last night.” The girl seemed struck dumb with surprise, and waiting for some further revelation from Love, then after a minute’s painful wait asked, “Where is he now?” “He went back to town after lunch as he intended. He is under observation. Of course, under the circumstances, he refused to give me an explanation.”

The phrase “Love prompted her” in pencil was added interlineally at this point and then deleted (TS1, 37). This sentence has been added in pencil in the left margin (TS1, 37). 95 A pencil note his affairs? occurs here in TS1, 38. 93 94

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“But it is impossible, it is monstrous, of course he wasn’t here, we would have known it. Besides, even supposing that in a moment of anger he would do such a ghastly thing, he wouldn’t do it in cold blood, and I had only left my father a few minutes when he was shot. There couldn’t have been time for a quarrel, besides Dane would never, it’s unthinkable, what motive could there be. What…” The girl was already in tears.96 “I know that.” Love interrupted. “I am not satisfied that we have reason enough to make an arrest, but I can’t tell how my colleague, who I am supposed to be working with, will feel about it. Certainly the reporters will make all they can of it when they hear of it.” “How can I tell mother!” Margela turned to the Inspector pleadingly. “Must she know? I’m sure it’s a mistake that will be cleared up immediately and that Dane had nothing to do with last night. Why should she have this dreadful worry for nothing, couldn’t it be kept from her?” “I’m afraid not. I want to speak about it to her myself.” Miss Marshall started to speak, then stopped, shrugging her shoulders as if to show she would make no further attempt to change the Inspector’s intention. Rather to Love’s surprise she did not go into the drawing room with him but turned to the stairs in the direction of her own room, leaving him to speak to Mrs Marshall alone. The embroidery had been laid aside, the little old lady had evidently been looking for their return. She was beginning to look worn out with worry. “Where is my daughter?” she asked anxiously. “Miss Marshall has gone upstairs,” said Love, pointing to the ceiling and mouthing his words in what he thought was a clear manner of enunciating. Mrs Marshall led him to a chair in a good light and watched anxiously for his words. “Have you any news yet?” “Nothing very definite as yet.” “Nothing yet.” She gave a sigh which might even have been of relief. The Inspector lent forward to catch her attention. “Did you see your son here yesterday?” “My son, what about him?” She had clearly not understood, and Love repeated the sentence. “See him,” she said anxiously, “... I don’t understand, write it please.” She took a pad and pencil from a small table beside her and handed it to him. The Inspector hurriedly scrawled his question. “Of course not, he wasn’t here yesterday.” The hand in which she was holding the pad trembled. Love wrote again. She glanced at what was written and turned deadly white. “I assure you he couldn’t have been here without my knowledge.” She watched every movement of the Inspector’s fingers as he wrote hurriedly: Your son was seen at Surbiton station last night. He admits it himself. He took the 12.30 back to town. Can you suggest any reason why he should have come? Mrs Marshall could hardly find strength to answer. “I know nothing of this. Does my daughter know, did you tell her?” “Yes” Love nodded. “And what did she say?” “Nothing of any importance.”

^The girl was already in tears^ (TS1, 39).

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Mrs Marshall started towards the door, but after a few steps crumpled in a heap in a dead faint. The butler answered Love’s ringing, and the two men did the obvious things to bring the fainting woman to. She commenced slowly to come round again, and Bennet left the room to call Miss Marshall. She came at once and seating herself on the sofa where the men had placed her mother, and took her by the hand. Mrs Marshall opened her eyes and looked at her daughter, then drawing away her hand, tried to struggle up, but the effort was too much for her and she fell back again in another faint. The Inspector took refuge in the morning room while Owen, whom Bennet had also called, was fussing over her mistress. Miss Marshall came in to him there. He felt that the mother and daughter did not want to be together, and wondered if it had been so before the events of Sunday or not. “I am sorry I have had to disturb your mother so much, but she would have had to know soon. In fact if your brother does not change his attitude, it will be impossible to keep the most unfavourable interpretation being given to his silence. I am sure Inspector Brooks will want a provisional arrest as soon as he is informed of the facts.” “I will telephone to Dane as soon as he has had time to get back to his rooms. I hope you won’t question mother any more today. I don’t think she is in a condition to stand it.” The Inspector had taken leave of Miss Marshall, and Bennet had already given him his hat and stick and was holding the door open for him when Love remembered that he had not been into the study to verify Miss Marshall’s picture of the desk. He turned back again and unlocked the now familiar door. He took out his notebook and checked off the things the girl had spoken of and which he had written down at the time. There were a great many things that she had forgotten, but all the things she had mentioned seemed there, till he got to the last item on the list. There was no blue paper on top of the bundle in the small drawer. And though Love searched the desk and the room and even examined the dead man’s clothes, no paper that in any way resembled the one he was looking for could be found.

CHAPTER 5 97 Dr Whitby was delighted when Love turned up and more so when he announced that he had come to stay for lunch.98 The Doctor had not seen him to talk to since the day when they had gone to the railway station together, and he was curious to hear about fresh developments. He knew better though than to question Love, especially before a meal.99 All he did to hasten possible confidences was to have lunch put forward a half hour. Over his coffee and cigarette the Inspector began to talk. “That browning turned up, been put back in the night. Found it on the study sofa.”100 “What was the bright idea?”

TS1 clearly begins a new chapter at this point: at the top of the fresh page is the pencil note “7=4,” which repeats the formula found at the beginning of previous chapters, albeit not in numerical sequence here. 98 Dr Whitby was delighted when Love turned up and ^more so when he^ announced that he had come to stay for lunch (TS1, 61). 99 He knew better though than to question Love, especially ^before a meal^ (TS1, 61). 100 “That browning turned up, been put back in the night ^found it on the study sofa^” (TS1, 61). In the left margin is a pencil note: “The browning put back?” 97

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“Dunno, turns out to be the daughter’s and the one that killed him.101 You were there weren’t you when I asked the old lady if any of the household had revolvers? You remember she said positively that none of them did, now she says the opposite.” “Probably didn’t hear things,” said Love.102 “How did the thing get there? I thought you kept the study locked?” “I did,” said Love briefly.103 “Search me, it could have been got in through the window from the room above. There were no footprints outside. I found it on the sofa, nearly sat on it. Fool place to put the thing.” “But Miss Marshall’s window is above the study. What does she say about it?”104 “She doesn’t necessarily know anything about it. Anyone could have got onto the balcony in front of her window without her knowledge, either from the ground, though I didn’t find any trace, or from the window in the corridor, or from the one in her mother’s room, for that matter.”105 “Whose turn it is to be arrested now?” said Whitby laughing. “Arrest be blowed. If they think they can force me to arrest them they are mistaken, first the son then the daughter.” “Well I’ve got a bit of evidence for you, been waiting for you to get through lunch first.” Love sat up. “Go on.” “Well my man came to me this morning, he telephoned for the police Sunday you remember, and then searched the grounds. When the police came he went over to Graylands. I sent him back here for something I needed. Now he comes and says that on his way back here he saw Bryde …” “Bryde, the chauffer that is?” “Yes, the chauffer. Well he saw him going in to the garage by the back door. He didn’t think it strange at the time as he knew about the bell from the garage to the house over there, he naturally supposed that the men servants had been called first thing.”106 The Doctor interrupted his talk to observe, “I can’t understand how they weren’t myself.107 Yesterday my man by chance heard Bennet’s complaining that they weren’t called, and he thought it queer that he had seen Bryde there, when he was supposed to be in bed.” “Hmm … can I see that man of yours now?”

“Dunno, turns out to be the daughter’s ^and the one that killed him^” (TS1, 61). This crucial and yet unproven inference – that the browning in question was the murder weapon – is added in pencil. 102 ^“Probably didn’t hear things,” said Love^ (TS1, 61). 103 ^“I did,” said Love briefly^ (TS1, 61). The remainder of this paragraph is heavily edited by way of transposed words and phrases. Although these changes improve grammar and syntax, the register of Love’s dialogue is noticeably more demotic than in preceding chapters. 104 “But Miss Marshall’s window is above ^the study^ ” ^“What does she say about it?”^ (TS1, 61). 105 ^“She doesn’t not necessarily know anything about it,^ anyone could have got onto the balcony in front of her window without her ^knowledge^, either from the ground, though I didn’t find any trace, or from the window in the corridor, or from the one in her mother’s room, ^for that matter^” (TS1, 61). Following this is the excised sentence: . 106 ^he naturally supposed^ that the men servants ^had been^ called (TS1, 62). 107 ^The Dr interrupted his talk to observe^ “I can’t understand how they weren’t myself” (TS1, 62). 101

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“There he is mowing the grass.” He called out “Wade” and the man turned sharply.108 He had been Dr Whitby’s batman during the war, and had remained with him ever since. He repeated the story that he had told the doctor under questioning from Love, and also certain details about Bryde’s affairs that looked as if they might throw a new light on things.109 “He was under notice, not for any fault of his own but he had fallen for one of the maids over there, and she wouldn’t have anything to say to him, and he was such an excitable jealous kind of a chap there were always ructions going on in the kitchen. So at last Mr Marshall said one of them have to go. First he said Owen, but then he had words about something with Bryde so he said he would have to be the one to go.” “Hm … Well that’s all you know about Sunday then is it? I’ll see you later.”110 Love nodded to the man to leave the room rather impatiently. Whitby was plainly impressed by the new development and hardly waited for the door to close behind Wade before he suggested “The chauffer getting his own back?111 But then I don’t see why he would have replaced the revolver.” “To give me more work this afternoon,” snapped Love who was consulting his notebook. “That I must admit strikes me as a bit curious.” “Get on with what you were saying” said Love.112 He said, after several moments silence, “You know it’s rather amusing Whitby when you come to think of it, here we have an apparently respectable middle aged householder, and every one says ‘who could possibly have any reason to want to murder him, except for revoking at bridge or something like that’, and here in his own house hold are four people who have good reasons for doing so as most reasons are for wanting to murder. All four of them now are in a position to have to prove that they didn’t.”113 “Four people,” said the doctor surprised. “Yes,” said the Inspector calmly, “Bryde makes the fourth. We have young Marshall, his sister, his mother, and now the chauffer.” “Well, I can see the chauffer had a good reason, he had lost his job and his girl, and I know the son must have got mixed up in something queer from his attitude. But I don’t see where the others could have any reason, except perhaps the mother, and even then, bad tempered husbands are pretty common and the majority die a natural death.”114

In TS1, 62 these two sentences are additions in pencil in the left margin. In TS1, 62 this paragraph is an interlinear addition in pencil, replacing the excised paragraph: 110 “Hm … ^Well that’s all you know about Sunday then is it? I’ll see you later^” (TS1, 62). 111 Whitby was plainly impressed by the new development ^and hardly waited for the door to close behind Wade before he^ suggested “The chauffer ^getting his own back?^” (TS1, 62). Note that Whitby’s animated inference that revenge was a potential motive for Bryde has been excised from the typescript. 112 These two lines concluding the exchange between Whitby and Love are composed in pencil on the verso page. Consequently there is some uncertainly as to their intended location within the repartee. 113 “here in his own house hold are four people who have good reasons ^for doing so as most reasons are^ for wanting to murder. All ^four^ of them ^now are^ in a position to have to prove that they didn’t” (TS1, 63). 114 “Well, I can see the chauffer had a good reason, he had lost his job and his girl ^+ I know the son must have got mixed up in something queer from his attitude^ but I don’t see where the others could have any reason, except perhaps the mother, ^and even then, bad tempered husbands are pretty common and the majority die a natural death.^” (TS1, 63). 108 109

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“The children seem to have much more definite reasons than the wife.” Love at this moment found that his pencil needed sharpening and proceeded to do so leaving Whitby to wait impatiently for further revelations. Love was not the kind of man who could or would do two things at once unless he definitely had to. When his pencil had been returned to his pocket he continued. “The son had asked his father for something which he seemed to consider necessary to his career. He had been refused already several times, as a reference in a letter that the old man was writing shortly before he was shot shows. In the letter he gives a flat and final refusal to his son’s demand.115 As to the daughter’s possible motive. She had wanted something too that she considered vitally important from her father, and had been refused. I admit I have only Mullins’s testimony so far about this and will have to look into the matter thoroughly. But I know from the family lawyer that her father’s death puts her in a position of financial independence. Then the mother, as you were the first to tell me, has been ill treated for years,116 it seems to be common knowledge, and what with her infirmity which probably makes her inclined to brood over her wrongs, and revolvers left round the house handy, it is not outside the bounds of possibility that in a moment of … etc.,” said Love. Whitby made no comment but his expression showed he was not convinced.117 “No,” said Love, the usually silent man well wound up. “I don’t want to come across any more people with motives in this case for the moment thank you.” He gulped down his coffee that he had forgotten and which was stone cold and jumped up. “I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour,” he said and left the room by the French window. It was quite half an hour before he returned. Whitby had been occupying himself as he took the usual half hour siesta he allowed himself after lunch with speculating on what was happening. He supposed Love had gone off to see Bryde. He felt inclined to be sorry for the chauffeur, for one special reason. He certainly had not been spending a great deal of sympathy on the Marshalls – he reflected that they did not ask for any. Mr Marshall’s death, as far as the Doctor was aware, had not drawn an expression of sorrow from any of his family, even at the first when usually the faults of the deceased were forgiven or glossed over. The doctor smiled as he remembered Love’s words after lunch, about Mrs Marshall and his children having motives for the crime. At that rate more than half the families in England were hiding potential murderers, as a crotchety tyrannical father, brow beaten woman, and children whose economic independence would date from their parents decease, were pretty easy to find. Whitby had been in and out of Graylands a good deal since Sunday, and what has struck him as most curious was a feeling of constraint over all the family. He noticed that they never seemed to be together, that they even obviously avoided one another. He could not make it out. It is this attitude towards one another, more than anything else, that would make one suspect them of knowing more of the affair than they admit. He felt that each was wondering whether the other knows what he knows.118

“In the letter he gives a flat and final refusal ^to his son’s demand.^” (TS1, 63). “^But I know from the family lawyer that her father’s death puts her in a position of financial independence.^ Then the mother, as you ^were the first to tell me^ told me, has been ill treated for years […]” (TS1, 63–64). 117 Whitby made no comment ^but his expression showed he was not convinced^ (TS1, 64). 118 The entire paragraph – from “He supposed Love had gone off to see Bryde” to “each was wondering whether the other knows what he knows” – is composed in pencil on the verso page of TS1, 63, followed by a large note: 115 116

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The noise Love made by coming back as he had gone by the window interrupted the doctor’s meditation. “Yes, your man seems to have made no mistake Whitby. Bryce admits it was him he saw. He was just coming in he says. It was his night off, or else he took it, I don’t know that for certain yet. He says that he had seen or heard nothing, and that the first he knew of the matter was when the police came a few minutes later when he was already in bed. His alibi may be all right, but it will be difficult to control to the minute. He says he was at some club, near the post office.” “I know the place,” said Whitby, “that would be a good half hour’s walk from here.” “He says he left at eleven and walked home with a fellow named Bute to see something in his rooms and that then Bute came on with him here to the gate as they were talking over something and Bryde didn’t want to be out too late.” “Sounds pretty straightforward.” “I’m going round to that club now, want to come?” “Yes rather – I’ll get out the car.” The doctor’s shabby but serviceable two-seater, was only a few minutes in getting them into the centre of Ripton.119 The club where Bryde had spent his Sunday evening was merely a large room over a garage, where the men meet to play various games and read the papers. It was run by some church society. It was closed in the daytime except on holidays, but the watchman in the garage was in charge of the keys, and also kept what record they had of the members. It was part of his work to be there Sunday nights. He remembered both Bryde and Bute being there that particular Sunday. He seemed to know them both very well. Everyone had left the club at eleven, all he remembered the two men going off together. He was also able to give the name of Bute’s place of work. “Now for Bute,” said Love as they stumbled down the rather dark stairs which led to the club. He was pleased at the speed with which they had been able to get the information.120 The address they had been given was of a garage about fifteen miles out.121 The doctor had a good chance to show what his car could do, and they soon found the place. The inspector did not get out of the car but called to a helper who was loafing around the garage to send Bute out to them. The man looked at them open-mouthed. “He looks the complete idiot,” said Love impatiently as instead of going for Bute the man crossed over to them. “Bute,” he repeated thinking the man might not have caught the name. “Bute,” repeated the man after him, “ain’t you heard sir, it was in all the papers this morning. Bute was killed yesterday morning. A lorry went over him, just where your car is now sir – died at the scene – was you wanting him for something special?” “Yes,” said Love, “can you give me his home address?” “23 Albert Road, is all I know. He was in lodgings.” “Thanks, let’s get on there now, Whitby.”

“repeat here speculat. only.” This suggests that Whitby’s ruminations provide important context if not specific clues to the murder. The passage occurs when Love is away after lunch speaking with Bryde. 119 ^The doctor’s shabby but serviceable two seater, was only a few minutes in getting them into the centre of Ripton^ (TS1, 65). 120 “Now for Bute,” said Love as they ^stumbled down the rather dark stairs which led to the club. He was pleased at the speed with which they had been able to get the information^ (TS1, 65). 121 The address they had been given was of a garage about fifteen miles out, (TS1, 65).

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The doctor was glad to get off the exact spot where the unfortunate Bute had met his finish, and they got back to Ripton even quicker than they had come. After winding about some streets in a poor part of the town, which were unfamiliar to the doctor, they found Albert Road. Bute’s landlady, though ready to oblige with reminiscences about her lodger for every other time, however, had no recollection of his movements on the Sunday.122 Bute had his own key and was in the habit of coming in quietly so that they never noticed him going. They went down the gravel path in the sordid strip of land the occupants of no 23 referred to as the front garden. Whitby said, “Bryde doesn’t seem to be a particularly lucky young man, does he?” Love grunted. “Umph, let’s get back to Graylands.” He was silent all the way. They found the garage door then window open and Bryde cleaning the car. He came out to speak to Love. Love told him the news of Bute’s death. He seemed shocked at the news.123 “Last time I saw him who would have thought of such a thing, nice chap he was, one of the best,” he said in an awed voice. “Yes,” snapped Love, “exactly, last time you saw him. I’m afraid you will have to find another alibi Bryde,” and he signalled Whitby to drive on without stopping to see the effect of his words on the chauffer. “I can’t help thinking it’s a bit hard on that chap,” said Whitby referring to Bryde. “Do you,” answered the Inspector. “Hmph, I’ve got to be suspicious quite a great deal … curious thing, when I went out to the garage to speak to Bryde after lunch I noted a copy of the Ripton Daily Herald on a bench. It’s still there, I looked just now. It’s today’s copy. Of course Bute’s death is in it. Bryde may have known about it when he sent me on that fool’s errand.” “I don’t think he looks as if his brain is the kind that could work as quick as all that,” said the doctor, adding meditatively, “you never can tell though, when a man is really in a hole it sometimes sharpens the greatest fools.” “Well Bryde will have to have another try to find some alibi to explain why it took him nearly twice as long as it should have done for him to get home on Sunday night.”

CHAPTER 6 124 Dane had not left the grounds since he had come back from London. He spent a good deal of his time in the large field at the very end of the garden, kicking a golf ball around rather aimlessly. In the house picking out tunes on the piano with one finger occupied him. He was a good deal with his mother also. His sister on the contrary shunned the rest of the family only appearing at dinner, and spent most of the day with an old school

Bute’s landlady, ^though ready to oblige with commiserations about her lodger, however for every other time^ had no recollection of his movements on the Sunday (TS1, 66). 123 They found ^the garage door then window open and^ Bryde cleaning the car. ^He came out to speak to Love. Love told him the news of Bute’s death.^ seemed shocked at the news (TS1, 66). 124 Love’s final comment in the previous chapter appears in pencil on the verso page in TS1, 66. A new chapter immediately following the conversation between Love and Whitby is indicated by a circled 6 in the right margin, the top of the page being occupied with pencil additions (TS1, 68). 122

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friend who lived near. Mrs Marshall refused to see any one. Mr Brinkly had come down from town twice, but she excused herself from seeing him on the score of ill health. Love had seen a man well known to him as an employee of a firm of private detectives hanging round the house the previous day, and had learnt from him that Brinkly had employed his firm to look into the matter. But the same day they had received orders to stop enquiries. No reason seemed to have been given by Brinkly for the sudden change in plans. There was nothing in the correspondence Love had brought with him to throw any light on things – and he got through it quickly, throwing a remark to Whitby from time to time. The doctor’s interest in the case was rather surprising to Love. He remembered how bored Whitby would have been by just such a crime in the days when his work brought him in contact with them. Now every detail seemed to interest him. It got to be quite a hobby with him. Of course knowing the people made a difference, thought Love. Then he turned his attention from the doctor’s to his own pet hobby and getting out his notebook.125 “By the way Whitby,” said Love suddenly, “what was young Marshall doing over at your place Monday afternoon? I was told he stopped off on his way to the station.” “Just a call, I was busy at the time and didn’t see him. He left a note which he wrote in my study, only a few words to thank me for what I had been able to do Sunday night. Very civil.”126 “Just a call,” said Love half out loud – “why not.” Dr Whitby had been of great help to the Marshalls on the night Mr Marshall was killed, certainly the least Dane could do was to thank him for it. Dane Marshall seemed from all accounts to be the kind of young man who would not neglect such an obvious duty. Love suspected that except for the mystery surrounding his Sunday visit to Rylands, the young man’s life was an open book. Dane had seemingly never been in a scrape in his life. Though he had succeeded in breaking away from his family and getting into rooms of his own in town, he led as tame a life there as he would have done at home. “Pegsy” still remained unaccounted for, and Love thought she would be probably the person to throw light on Dane’s recent actions, and he was trying to find some means of identifying her.127 Who had been in possession of Marshall’s revolver? That question once answered – Love felt that a great many others would be found to answer themselves. Margela and

The entire paragraph is composed in pencil, first following the typed text on the page, then running up the left hand side and across the top of the page. The following paragraph, in pencil, continues to the end of the page and the first two sentences of the subsequent paragraph runs across the top of the next page. A marginal comment in pencil and in Pound’s hand in the left margin reads: report on condition // cartridge?? The typed text begins again at: Margela and her brother (TS1, 69). 126 This brief dialogue comprises the first of three paragraphs on unnumbered leaves (between 77 and 78) at the conclusion of TS1. The subject of Dane’s call appears in Whitby’s reply (in the inserted material) and Love’s murmured response (in the TS), confirming this as the correct location. 127 This paragraph incorporates the second of three paragraphs on unnumbered leaves at the conclusion of TS1: Dane had seemingly never been in a scrape […] which puzzled the Inspector. Note that sentences at the beginning and conclusion of this inserted passage are struck in the typescript. The opening sentence: The closing sentence: ^Also in Dane’s own papers there had been no reference to Canada, which puzzled the Inspector.^ 125

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her brother both persisted in their statement that the browning had been given to Mr Marshall to be seen to two weeks before the day it had so dramatically turned up again. Mullins also remembered the incident. Where had it been during the two weeks? Had Mr Marshall after having it mended kept it in his own possession, or had he returned it to his daughter? The report he had received about the revolver showed clearly that it was the one used on the night of the crime. One part was missing. There were no fingerprints on it, and the revolver though not a new one was in spick and span condition, as it would have been if it had recently been overhauled.128 Love was thinking of all these things, as he went through the papers on Mr Marshall’s desk in hopes of finding a reference to a gunsmith. The local firm of gunsmiths knew nothing of the matter, the clerk there telling the Inspector very frankly that he doubted if Mr Marshall would have given them the job, as the last times they had done work for him he has been very hard to please, and had notified them that they need not expect his custom again. There was nothing in the desk that had any bearing on the revolver however, and Love was just preparing to leave when there was a knock on the door and Bennet appeared. “Mr Shelton is here sir, would you see him? He says to explain that he is a friend of the family and he would be glad if you could spare a few minutes.” “All right I’ll see him.” “In here sir?” “Yes.” A tall man entered nearly filling the doorway. Though he was wearing sports clothes he contrived to covey a slightly ecclesiastical impression, due perhaps to his stiff manners, and a monkish fringe of hair round his otherwise bald head. “Ah Mr Shelton you wished to see me.” The detective stood up and pushed a chair towards his caller. “Yes, as a friend of the family and also one of the last people I understand to see our poor friend alive, I thought you might find me of use in some way. I should be only too happy.” Mr Shelton got out his little speech but he did not take the chair, which was the one Mr Marshall used at his desk. “Why yes Mr Shelton perhaps I could. Would you rather we went into another room?” “I should much prefer it,” said Shelton eagerly, “I find it very distressing to be in this room, knowing what has happened here – terrible, terrible.” They went into the drawing room. Mr Shelton hummed and hawed before getting started. “There is something … I feel perhaps I could explain something you may have been puzzled. I notice it has been commented on in the papers. Perhaps I should have come sooner, but one instinctively tries to keep out of anything quite so sensational. I must insist before I go any further, Inspector, that what I have to say won’t be disclosed to the press.” “I’m personally very much against giving the press any details at this stage of things.129 It does a lot of harm. You can count on me to keep what you say between ourselves,” said Love.

The three sentences beginning with The report he had received are composed in pencil in the right margin (TS1, 69). 129 “I’m personally very much against giving the press any details at this stage of ^things^” (TS1, 70). The change in wording from “game” to “things” is potentially significant in a clue-puzzle narrative, 128

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Mr Shelton looked relieved. “Thank you. What I wished to speak about is those car tracks which were noticed and quite correctly, to have been made after eleven on the night my poor friend was killed. The papers have mentioned them several times.” Mr Shelton coughed nervously, and went on. “I have a car, in fact it was my car which left those tracks. I passed here about half past eleven on my way home from a dinner party. I had come out of my way to drop Mr Evans at Fairview.130 I saw the light in the study – the curtains were not drawn, by the way – I stopped, I suppose I had a premonition. Anyway, I had the thought to come and speak to Marshall about something we had been discussing that afternoon, then I decided I better not.” “I see,” said Love. “Yes,” went on Shelton. “I am by preference conventional in my behaviour. It would have been most unusual for me to have called on anyone at that hour of the night. I must have had an intuition that something was wrong, perhaps I should have come in. Anyway I didn’t, only I would like the fact of my having considered doing so kept to ourselves as it might arouse comment in the neighbourhood. These small places, you know what they are like.” “I quite understand. There is not the slightest need for the matter to be mentioned. I had not given any importance to the marks myself as soon as I saw that no one had got out or into the car.” “Well I feel very relieved to have spoken of this to you. I didn’t want to come into this, but private considerations I know must not be allowed to interfere in any way. I did not want the police to be wasting their time on false clues.” “Have you any suggestions to make about the affair?”131 Mr Shelton settled himself more comfortably in his chair and looked important. “I can point to no person definitely, but I have an idea. I don’t want to violate any confidence the family have shown me, but I think I can go so far as to say that I consider they are – that is, Mr Dane Marshall and his sister – behaving very foolishly in the matter, and that they don’t realize how seriously they are compromising themselves.” “I should be glad to hear anything you can tell me about the situation.” Love was getting tired of Mr Shelton’s barrister-like tendency of talking round the subject and was impatient for him to get to the point. “Oh, I don’t wish to tell you anything. I have I repeat nothing definite to tell, only a suspicion. I should not feel justified in wasting your time with such a thing.” “Curse the man and his scruples,” said the Inspector to himself. “I shall have to get it out of him with a buttonhook.” Bennet came in at that moment. “The sergeant here wants to speak to you sir.” The red face of a young police officer appeared towering over Bennet’s head.132 “Yes, what is it?” The Inspector was curt. “It’s about those car tracks sir.” The sergeant spoke with pride as if he had made an important discovery. “Well?”

providing (and then occluding) insight into Inspector Love’s mentality and modus operandi. His investigative and interpretive methods and theories of criminality are given more air in Chapter 7. 130 “^I had come out of my way to drop Mr Evans at Fairview^” (TS1, 70). 131 Pencil note in left margin, in Pound’s hand, reads: ? saw other car (TS1, 71). 132 Pencil note in left margin, again in Pound’s hand, reads: Love // at door (TS1, 72).

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“We’ve found the car sir.” The detective grinned. He noticed that Mr Shelton looked very uncomfortable. “How did you do that?” “Well sir perhaps it wasn’t rightly speaking us, but one of those young reporter chaps who have been hanging around. He noticed a car that is outside now, and he asked the chauffer what those tracks of the car the other night had been like, and Bryde said it was the same car. There can’t be any doubt. We pushed the car out and the old tracks are still there. It’s the same car alright. Bryde says it belongs to a Mr Shelton, a friend of the family who lives at Hart Hill.” “And where is that young reporter?” Mr Shelton interrupted, turning a furious look on the young policeman. “He said he would be back presently, he has gone to telephone to his paper he told me.” The Inspector, with great difficulty suppressing a desire to laugh, nodded to the sergeant to leave the room. “I’m sorry Mr Shelton, I’m afraid all the details will be in tomorrow’s paper. What can we do? That’s the way they track us down. It shouldn’t be allowed of course.” “Nothing surprises me nowadays,” said Mr Shelton gloomily. Love rang the bell violently. “Are there any more press men hanging round?” “There is a gentleman from the Bulletin,” said Bennet. A short untidy looking young man in an blue serge suit appeared in a moment. “You’re Bulletin aren’t you? I’ve seen you before,” snapped Love. “Who was that contract sleuth just now?” The young man grinned. “Metaphor, chap named Boyce.”133 “Metaphor eh? Well would you like a better story than the Metaphor?” said Love blandly – pulled out his notebook and pencil. The Bulletin representative seemed to think that a sufficient answer. Love dictated slowly: “While Mr Shelton of Hart Hill was reporting to Inspector Love events observed by him at Graylands that took place on the evening of Sunday at 11.30 while his car was stationed at the gate, the Metaphor reporter made the astonishing discovery that Mr Shelton’s car had been at some recent date where Mr Shelton had reported it had been.” Love nodded to intimate he was through. The Bulletin man made off grinning. “Thank you Inspector,” said Mr Shelton slowly.134 “You were going to tell me something,” said Love. The Inspector had given up hope that Mr Shelton would do anything of the kind, but thought that the unforeseen incident might have loosened his scruples a little, in which supposition he was right. Mr Shelton’s gratitude was making him forget his discretion. “It is these modern young people. They think they can decide everything for themselves. Nothing is sacred to them.” “Does he mean his contract?” thought Love.135

The newspaper title of Metaphor appears to be an in-joke between Pound and Rudge, as no newspaper by this name has been found to have existed in England in the early decades of the twentieth century. 134 This passage – beginning at Love rang the bell violently – appears in pencil on the verso page (TS1, 72). Marginal notes in TS1 indicate that it is to be inserted at this point in Shelton’s and Love’s conversation. 135 The word contract is added in pencil in TS1 and is an uncertain attribution here. 133

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“Only the day he was killed Mr Marshall and I were talking on the subject,” he continued indignantly. “Since I am apparently to be dragged into this I prefer to appear as a friend and even as an agent for Mr Marshall and not as a possible murderer.” The Inspector tried to soothe his indignant visitor and Mr Shelton calmed down sufficiently to go on with one of his long-winded explanations.136 “I am a solicitor. Mr Marshall confided to me a matter he did not want to mention to his own solicitor.137 A very delicate matter. Mr Marshall in short thought his daughter was being, or likely to be blackmailed. As she will not give me her confidence in the matter I haven’t much to go on, but it may give you an indication of the right direction in which to make enquiries.” “Blackmail eh,” said Love meditatively. “Yes Mr Shelton please go on.” “I repeat I have no proofs of any kind,” continued the solicitor, “and it would serve no purpose for me to risk an action for defamation. So I am not prepared to substantiate anything I am telling you now. That is your job.” “Yes, yes, I understand,” said Love, cursing the man’s slowness. “I will give you an idea of the family’s position her to make things more clear to you.” Mr Shelton had got his wind again. “Miss Marshall is a charming young lady, but unfortunately she has not much chance down here of ... hmm ... settling herself, to put the matter crudely. Her father, a self made man – you understand what I mean – had a limited circle of acquaintances, and most of his friends were not of a type to interest his daughter, who had had every advantage, and wanted a better social position, or shall we say a more interesting circle than she had at home, quite natural and laudable to be sure. Her brother is younger than she is and his set is not much use to her. Lately she became acquainted with some London people, of a rather bohemian set I might call it, though one of them is an academician. Through them she met a painter, I will not name, sufficiently well known, and there seems to have been some flirtation. The man has been married some years, though not very happily from all one hears. Miss Marshall seems to have become attached to him,138 but probably nothing more than a mild flirtation would have happened, if his wife had not had an affair of her own with some penniless young man, and wanted a divorce. Neither she nor the young man nor the painter, had any money for divorce proceedings. The wife had the idea of getting it through Miss Marshall by threatening to bring her name in to court as correspondent. A bit of bluff I’m sure, and of course blackmail though difficult to prove. I am sure Miss Marshall has not been any more indiscreet than the present fashion in behaviour allows, but a law court cannot keep up with the fashions in such things, and judges matters of behaviour with the standards of the preceding generation. What is considered perfectly all right today by the standards of Miss Marshall and her circle, would look unbelievably scandalous to a court of law judging such things by the standards of mother’s generation.” “Yes, yes I follow you,” said Love, wishing he would get on with it.

A short vertical line is struck through this sentence in TS1. It is retained here to reiterate Love’s variable attitude towards Shelton: at turns amused, impatient and earnestly in pursuit of potential evidence. An additional pencil comment in Pound’s hand appears in the left margin: What reports were there in court? 137 “I am a solicitor, Mr Marshall confided to me a matter he did not want to mention to his own solicitor” (TS1, 73). 138 “Miss Marshall seems to have become attached to him, ” (TS1, 74). 136

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“The man I take it would marry Miss Marshall if he were free, but he will not go to any trouble in the matter. He hasn’t the money to fight a case. Miss Marshall was entirely dependent on her father. On his death she became able to touch the money her grandfather left her. On the other hand her godfather …” Love interrupted. “You mean that Miss Marshall benefits by her father’s death.” Mr Shelton was not so shocked as he might have been by the suggestion. “Yes her grandfather’s money would have allowed the divorce to go through quietly, and if it had been done without scandal as it could have been if they were all agreed, her godfather probably would not have taken as severe a view of the matter as he would certainly have done had there been any scandal. Of course don’t think that the idea of Margela killing her father is possible for an instant. I am sure the affair of the revolver could be cleared up at once if she would be more frank, but the people she was associating with, what do we know about them? Rodney, his wife, and the wife’s lover all had good reason to wish Marshall out of the way. He would never have given his daughter the money they wanted.” Mr Shelton had forgotten his intention of mentioning no names. Love made a mental note of the one he had let slip. “Do you know where I can find Rodney?” said Love crudely after all the man’s beating around the bush. “Yes I can give you address. I was to have gone to see him on Mr Marshall’s behalf, but the situation is altered now. He had a picture of Miss Marshall in this year’s Academy.139 I don’t know if you have time for such things. Quite good I must say, though I don’t hold with this new style, women’s vanity!” sighed Mr Shelton. “If his picture had been refused she wouldn’t have seen anything in the fellow, without doubt. After all she was not her father’s daughter for nothing.” “Now what about the son wanting to go to Canada?” Love cut in. “Yes poor Marshall mentioned that to me too. He has been having a lot of trouble with the children lately. I don’t think it was serious though – young men get restless. I told him to give Dane a check and send him to Paris for a weekend.” “Well I’m glad to have learnt these things, they may prove useful.”140 The Inspector stood up. His manner of ending an interview was nothing if not decided. Mr Shelton could not overlook the hint. He too got up, and only stopping to remind Love that all he had told him was in confidence, and only conjecture, he left. Love sighed with relief as the door closed behind him.141

The Royal Academy of Art, founded by King George III on 10 December 1768, and located in Burlington House, Piccadilly. An independent, privately funded institution, its annual exhibition is a prominent event on the London social calendar. 140 “Well ^I’m glad to have learnt^ these things, they may prove useful” (TS1, 76). 141 Mr Shelton could not overlook […] door closed behind him added in pencil next to the typed text (TS1, 76), then at page bottom and finally along right margin. This passage replaces several lines of struck typed text as well as a pencil addition, also struck, in the left margin: Love watched him driving off, then home himself. The struck passage of typed text is as follows: 139

“Delighted to be of use any time. Do you think it would be of use for me to wait and see that young reporter?” “No I don’t advise it,” said Love decidedly. In a moment he heard Shelton’s car going off.

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CHAPTER 7 142 As soon as he had got rid of Shelton Love started off in the direction of Fairview, where Mr Charles Danton Evans lived. He had been the only other caller besides Shelton at Graylands on the Sunday.143 He was shown in to what appeared to be the study at once, and found Mr Evans – a long, lean, dreamy looking man, who looked as if he would be a suitable companion for Mr Shelton but hardly a suitable one for the rough and irritable late owner of Graylands. From his appearance one might have deemed Mr Evans kept silk worms as pets, or took rubbings of old brasses as a hobby. As a matter of fact he was something of an athlete, and his golf was a source of as much pride to his friends as to himself. The Inspector explained briefly the reason for his visit. Except that Mr Evans admitted that Mr Marshall had seemed rather preoccupied when he last saw him, he had nothing of interest to impart. He corroborated Mr Shelton’s account of having been brought home by him after a dinner they both were at. The only satisfaction Love got out of the visit was the knowledge that he had one less stone to turn. He hurried back to the Yews. In Dr Whitby’s study a quarter of an hour later he was amusing the doctor by a highly coloured account of Shelton sleuthed by the reporter. Getting out his notebook he was soon deeply occupied in adding the names of the new people he had met in the course of the day to what he called his “collection.” After each name he noted the physical characteristics and the type to which the person belonged, besides the circumstances of their lives as far as he knew, and their connection with the case he was working on. The doctor rather scoffed at a lay man dabbling in physiology and warned Love against half baked ideas, but Love paid no attention,144 and continued to class his “specimens” under various mysterious headings: Thyroid pituitary, sub-thyroid, etc., and took all his pride and joy in the work. It was his one hobby. He felt that certain types were less likely to commit certain crimes and was considered by his associates often to have what they felt was a lenient attitude, considered on occasion, even under suspicion, too lenient towards people against whom there was a mass of circumstantial evidence.145 On the other hand he would often dog people relentlessly who seemingly hardly came into an affair at all, for no other reason than that “there was something about the set of their eyes.” To say

TS1, 77, indicates a new chapter at this point with the heading “4=6” in pencil. The disordered chapter numbers are probably due to chapter divisions being inserted after the typed text. 143 He had been the only other caller besides Shelton at Graylands on the Sunday (TS1, 77). 144 The narrative is interrupted at this point in TS1, 77, by two unnumbered leaves comprised of fragments glued together. Numbers in the left margin may signify where paragraphs are to be placed in the larger narrative, although this is far from clear. The first and third paragraphs have been placed in Chapter 6 as they comprise part of the conversation between Whitby and Love about Dane Marshall; the second of these paragraphs concludes Chapter 7. 145 The entire passage Thyroid pituitary […] circumstantial evidence is lightly struck in pencil (TS1, 78). It is retained in the reading text for its elaboration of Love’s physiological theories of criminality. These interests intersect with (and parody) such theories as phrenology and its associations with criminality. Sherlock Holmes dabbles in such theories in several stories. Conan Doyle drew from the historical work of Cesare Lombroso, the so-called “Father of Criminology” whose theories were deeply influenced by social Darwinism and degeneration theory (see Cavender and Jurik 325). Phrenology made something of a comeback in the early twentieth century in the context of criminology. The psychiatrist Bernard Hollander drew heavily on the work of Franz Josef Gall, the German physician and founder of phrenology, in such works as The Mental Function of the Brain (1901) and Scientific Phrenology (1902). 142

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that his methods infuriated most of his associates would be saying little. Unfortunately for them he was nearly always right in the long run, but it was often a very long run. Whitby, who was trying to read, found Love’s habit of talking out loud to himself irritating in the extreme. At last in desperation he went into the dining room with his book. Returning an hour later he heard as he opened the door Love still muttering “Deficient, sub thyroid …” He shut the door again from the same side from which he had opened it, and returned to the dining room, deeming the discomfort of reading in a straight chair a lesser evil than Love’s distracting noise.146 The Inspector had taken advantage of Whitby’s offer and was staying the night with him.147 He had brought with him a lot of correspondence connected with the case he had not had time to examine fully. Some of the letters were from people who had seen Young Marshall at Ripton Sunday night: they merely confirmed what Love already knew. Others were from the usual hoaxers who delight in wasting the police’s time but whose letters often are so convincing and had to be looked into. Then letters from evidently unbalanced people, which perhaps another man would have immediately thrown in the waste paper basket. Love plodded through them all. Once some years ago, when he had been connected with another murder case, he had had an experience which made him careful of treating apparent irrelevant communication too carelessly. Some half mad person had sent him a letter where circumstances relating to the crime and even the name of the criminal were given, but so interlarded with blood and thunder biblical quotations, the whole letter showing clearly that it was written by some one of unbalanced mind that no one took it seriously. After two years the truth came out. The criminal before committing suicide writing a full confession to Love himself, confessing every detail of the letter he had paid no attention to years before.148

CHAPTER 8 149 The next morning Love had Mullins go for another interview which she did not find as amusing as the first one she had had with him. She was no longer allowed to tell her story in as dramatic a manner as her fancy allowed, but was kept down to answering what seemed to her very dull and irrelevant questions. “We will go over the thing again,” said the Inspector, who had seated himself at the desk in the study with a large sheer of paper in which he made mysterious signs – which, for all her craning, Mullins could make head nor tail of. They were in fact a kind of short hand Love had worked out for himself.

He shut the door again from the same side from which he had opened it, ^and returned to the dining room, deeming the discomfort of reading in a straight chair a lesser evil than Love’s distracting noise^ (TS1, 78). The narrative breaks off at this point in TS1. 147 The Inspector had taken advantage of Whitby’s offer and was staying the night ^with him^ (TS1, unnumbered page between 77 and 78). Note that two typed lines of dialogue immediately before this sentence have been struck: This entire paragraph is the second of three discrete sections on unnumbered leaves at the conclusion of TS1. 148 The phrase ^confessing every detail of the letter he had paid no attention to years before^ is added in pencil along the final line of the torn sheet of paper, then runs up the right margin (TS1, unnumbered page). 149 All material from this point to the final fragments is taken from TS2, corresponding to Beinecke YCAL MSS 54 Box 115 Folders 2819–2824. 146

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“What I want to find out this morning is the time as near as you can remember that things happened on Sunday night.” Love read off a list he had made.150 “Now Mrs Pile said she went to her room at ten. She was not up all day so we can count her out.151 Owen came in and went to her room at eleven; Bennet went over to the garage at a quarter to ten; Bryde had not been in the house since teatime. Is that right?” “Yes sir.” “And what time was it that you came down stairs the last time before you heard the shot?”152 “It was eleven thirty by the clock in Miss Marshall’s room.” “Why were you in Miss Marshall’s room then?” “Miss Marshall had told me I could take some aspirin from the little cupboard in her bathroom earlier, only I forgot. But coming past her door and seeing it open and she not there I went in and took it.” “And then what did you do?”153 “I went down to the kitchen to heat some water for a hot water bottle, and I thought I would make myself a cup of tea, at the same time, which is what kept me so long.” “Where was Miss Marshall at the time?” “Talking to her father in the study.” “Do you know when she went upstairs again?” “I don’t know what time it was exactly. I heard them talking in the hall just as I was starting to drink my tea. That must have been ten minutes later, perhaps a bit more.154 As I’d stopped to read a picture paper and forgotten the water was boiling, I thought they were going to the dining room. But I heard Mr Marshall really shouting and I thought she must be going upstairs and he calling after her.” “And it was while you were reading the picture paper that you were near the study door and overheard the conversation inside.” Mullins blushed purple, but did not attempt to deny her eavesdropping. “Yes sir.” “Then your impression is that Miss Marshall went to her room about ten minutes or a quarter to twelve, and that the shot you heard was five minutes later?” “Yes.” “And none of the others in the house had been called while you were gone?” “No sir, I showed the doctor the bell to Owen’s room and he rang it himself.” “Did she come at once?” “Yes she was still dressed.”155 “How do you account for Miss Marshall not having heard either the shot or the noise you and he must have made going in and out?”

^Love read off a list he had made^ (TS2, 79). This sentence is added in pencil at the end of Love’s enumeration of the household residents. It has been shifted to precede his speech for reasons of continuity. 151 “Now Mrs Pile said she went to her room at ten, ^she^ was not up all day ^so we can count her out^” (TS2, 79). 152 “And what time was it that you came down stairs the last time ^before you heard the shot?”^ (TS2, 79). 153 A pencil note in Pound’s hand in the left margin reads: Was bath running (TS2 , 79). 154 “That must have been ten minutes later ^perhaps a bit more^” (TS2, 80). 155 A pencil note in the left margin reads: delete bath 2nd Chap (TS2, 80). This appears to refer to Love’s earlier interview with Margela Marshall in Chapter 3, during which he inspected her untidy room and bathroom. Further direct reference to the bath is removed a few lines on. 150

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Mullins looked startled. “Why I never thought … it is funny if she didn’t hear anything.”156 “Who called Miss Marshall?” said Love impatiently. “Owen did. I called out to her as I saw her coming down what had happened and to go and call Miss Marshall. She was down at once.” “Was she dressed?” “No just her bath robe.”157 “And where were you all until the police came?” “Miss Marshall and her mother and the doctor were in the study and Owen and cook and I stayed outside in the hall. My sister came down to see what the matter was but I sent her up again.” “And when the police came what did you do?” “We were all told to stay in the hall where we were while they went through the house searching. When they had finished I helped the doctor get Mrs Marshall to her room. She was carrying on something awful.” Love had been questioning Mullins almost mechanically for the last few moments, as if his mind was really working on something else, and he surprised her by saying abruptly, “Fetch that girl Owen.” Some idea had evidently occurred to him that made him grin with satisfaction. He thought he had found something either to cross off or add to his “list.” His manner had become abrupt – quite different from his former rather stilted politeness. He addressed himself to Owen. “When you called Miss Marshall on Sunday night, what was she doing, do you know?” “She was in her bath sir.” “How do you know, did you see her?” “I did. I was so upset with the news I just went in to her room. I don’t know if I knocked even and she was in the bath.” “Did you see how full the bath was?” The Inspector saw Mullins and Owen exchange surprised looks. “I can’t say I noticed sir. It must have been full because I only saw her head and shoulders out of the water.” Mullins interrupted. “Miss Marshall always takes a very full bath. She forgot to take the plug out last night. I emptied it this morning, it was quite full.”158 “And when you went in for the aspirin at 11.30 was the bath full?” “No sir it was empty.” “Are you sure of that?” Love spoke eagerly – the girls exchanged glances again. “Yes.”159 “And does Miss Marshall take a bath at night usually or in the morning?” “At night sir,” Owen and Mullins spoke nearly together.

Both Love’s question concerning Miss Marshall and Mullins’s reply are added in pencil in TS2 (80). “She was down at once ” ^“Was she dressed?”^ ^“No just her bath robe”^ (TS2, 80). 158 A pencil note in Pound’s hand in the left margin reads: more circ. vs. margerine (TS2, 82). 159 ^“And when you went in for the aspirin at 11.30 was the bath full?”^ ^“No sir it was empty.”^ ^“Are you sure of that?” Love spoke eagerly – the girls exchanged glances again – “Yes”^ (TS2, 81). 156 157

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CHAPTER 9 Mullins retold the scene later in the servants’ hall. The cook was shocked at the Inspector’s indelicacy. What would the man want to know next! Why should the Inspector have wanted to see the bath, to have the geyser even lighted, and then to sit on the edge of the tub watching and waiting until it was nearly full? A little later Whitby was hearing the reason for the actions that had so surprised Mullins and Owen. “If Mullins and Owen have told me the facts correctly as they know them, and if Mullins especially has made no mistakes, this lets the girls out of it.160 I swear she hasn’t the type of brain or the speed to think out such a complicated alibi.” “You mean,” said the doctor sarcastically, evidently not impressed by Love’s train of thought, “that if it were another type of person that Miss Marshall is, you would suspect them of turning on the bath, then going downstairs to kill an unsuspecting victim, and then going up again so as to be found innocently taking a bath?” “Yes it’s a possible attempt at an alibi. People think up stranger things than that. It’s not flawless by any means. But anyway it looks as if she were telling the truth when she says she went to her room at 11.45. It takes that bath a good twelve minutes to fill up. It was empty when Mullins went into the room on her way down stairs. It was full when Owen looked in just a few minutes after twelve. I think that there is no reason to doubt that Miss Marshall was in the study all the time that Mullins was in the kitchen and that Mullins was at the top of the kitchen stairs all that time listening to the family row, and that she would have heard if Miss Marshall left the study more than once.” “A good deal seems to depend on Mullins’s testimony. I suppose she is reliable?” “I should think so. One gets queer surprises I admit with people, still here again it is the question of what motive would she have to put me wrong?” “Good Lord I should think she might have a hundred,” said the doctor. “What about sympathy for Bryde? He seems a nice young fellow, and unlucky. That always appears to their sense of pity. She might be shielding him, holding something back.” “I don’t think she would have enough interest in Bryde to take the risk. I’ve looked into her affairs a bit. She has a very satisfactory young man of her own.” “It’s quite true,” said Whitby, “that in that respectable class their sympathy rarely goes to the point of wanting the criminal to escape. They have a touching belief in the necessity of ‘justice being done’.” The doctor’s man interrupted the conversation at this point. “A person wishes to speak to Inspector Love alone for a minute he says.” “Have him in here if you want,” said Whitby. “I want to potter about in the garden a bit.” He went out through the long French window. The man who came in seemed familiar to Love, and he remembered he had seen him at Mr Evans’s where he had opened the door to him. He remembered the mean looking face, the small eyes set close together, the long nose, the inquisitive look. “I didn’t say my name because you wouldn’t have known it,” he began, “and I didn’t think that I should use Mr Evans under the circumstances. I am Mr Evans’s butler.” “Yes I remember you. What is it you want?”

^“If Mullins and Owen have told me the facts correctly as they know them, and if Mullins especially has made no mistakes,^ this lets the girls out of it” (TS2, 82). 160

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“It’s about when you went to see Mr Evans the other day ...” The man hesitated and didn’t seem to know just how to begin.161 “Well.” “I feel I ought to tell you what I know, but you wouldn’t let it get back to Mr Evans that I came to you would you? Because I wouldn’t want to lose a good place, and there may be nothing in what I tell you.” “Well,” repeated Love, and the man continued somewhat embarrassed by his curtness. “When you were there yesterday I overheard what you came about. I was in the other room. I don’t know if you noticed the double doors were open?” “Go on,” was all Love said. “I heard you ask Mr Evans what time he came in on Sunday night, and he said eleven thirty. Now I know exactly what time he came in because I forgot and put the chain on the front door so he had to ring,162 and I had to come down and let him in. I looked at my watch when I heard the bell, and it was a quarter past twelve.” Love brought out his notebook. “What is your name?” “Albert Slater.” “Anything else you want to tell me?” “No sir.” “All right I know where to find you if I want you,” and Love gave him a nod of dismissal. The unprepossessing Mr Albert Slater got himself out of the room looking embarrassed. Love moved to the window to see where the doctor had got to. He was not far off.163 Love tapped on the window to call him and the doctor came at once, stopping in the porch to drop his garden basket.164 “Funny that man turning up just after what you were saying about the servant class. That fellow is butler to Mr Evans, and very much on the side of law and order.165 He thinks his master is concealing his whereabouts Sunday night. I shall have to look it up. There may be something in it. I’ve got more people under observation as it is than I can cope with.” Whitby shed his heavy gardening gloves and came back to the comfortable chair he was in before the interruption. “I’ve been thinking over what we were saying. It’s obvious to me that someone in the house is holding something back, even if the murder was not actually committed by someone in the house. Someone in the house must have been confederate to someone from outside and opened the door for them, and let them escape afterwards. It couldn’t have been done otherwise.” “My dear fellow,” said Love looking quite pained at Whitby’s outburst. “How you jump at conclusions! It is not at all necessary that anyone who was in the house at the time is implicated in any way. After all Mr Marshall himself can have let his murderer in for all we know, and the getaway would have been quite easy. The murderer could have

^The man hesitated and didn’t seem to know just how to begin^ (TS2, 83). “Now I know exactly what time he came in because I forgot and put the chain on the front door so he had to ring” (TS2, 84B). 163 ^Love moved to the window to see where the doctor had got to. He was not far off^ (TS2, 84B). 164 ^Love tapped on the window to call him and the doctor came at once, stopping in the porch to drop his garden basket^ (TS2, 84B). 165 “That fellow is butler to Mr Evans, ^and very much on the side of law and order^” (TS2, 84B). 161 162

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slipped into the billiard room when the alarm was given, and then out of the side door after Mullins.” Whitby was rather squashed by Love’s final manner. He lit another cigarette and had nearly finished it before he made another remark. “But look here Love, if a visitor came at that time of night, unless it was someone who would have stayed all night, Marshall wouldn’t surely have bolted the door and put the chain up after letting him in. Mullins is positive on the point of the side door being locked.”166 “No I admit he wouldn’t be likely to put the chain on the door as well as bolting it if he thought he would have to take it off again shortly and let whoever it was out, and of course for Bryde he wouldn’t, but though he let him in he might not accompany him to the door when he left, and Bryde could have hidden somewhere and not left at all till after Mullins did. But say it was not Bryde but someone who he would expect to stay the night coming late in the evening like that – his son for example.”167 Whitby couldn’t at the moment think of an answer.168

CHAPTER 10 The young policeman who had been stationed in the hall to Bennet’s so intense displeasure,169 had been told he could wait for any message from the Inspector in the servants quarters downstairs, where he professed himself happier. He did not make this confidence to the Inspector, but gratefully to the cook and housemaids who were doing their utmost to make things pleasant for him. Carr was the young man’s name. He was a good-natured fellow but even his best friends had to admit that he was a bit slow, but that fortunately is not an insuperable barrier to promotion. Love had observed in him one very useful trait and that was a good visual memory, and an almost phonographic correctness in recording any phrase he had taken in. It is quite true that he rarely did take in any phrase, but when he did Love was sure that he would repeat it verbatim, with no variations, due to his having thought the speaker meant to say so and so. “Lord preserve us from imagination” was perhaps the most frequent and most pious of Love’s prayers. The Inspector’s method with Carr was not to ask him to observe anything that would have confused the young giant, but by taking it for granted that Carr had knowledge of such and such a thing and dexterously questioning him, it often turned out that Carr did often know more than he himself realized.

“But look here Love, ^if a visitor came at that time of night, unless it was someone who would have stayed all night,^ Marshall wouldn’t surely have bolted the door and put the chain up after letting him in. Mullins is positive on the point ^of the side door being locked^” (TS2, 84). 167 ^“No I admit he wouldn’t be likely to put the chain on the door as well as bolting it if he thought he would have to take it off again shortly and let whoever it was out, and of course^ for Bryde he wouldn’t, but though he let him in he might not accompany him to the door when he left, and Bryde could have hidden ^somewhere and not left at all till after Mullins did.^ the house but say it was ^not Bryde but^ someone who he would expect to stay ^the night^ coming late in the evening like that––his son for example” (TS2, 84). 168 Below this final line is the pencil note: This chap. shifted (TS2, 84). No indication is given to where the chapter might be moved, thus it has been kept in its place in the typescript. 169 The ^young^ policeman who had been stationed in the hall to Bennet’s so intense displeasure (TS2, 85). 166

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The Inspector wanted to clear up the mystery of Owen’s brother.170 He believed that young man to be a pure invention of Owens, made on the spur of the moment, to explain a telephone message and he felt that Carr, now quite at home in the servants quarters at Graylands might prove of use.171 “Have you heard any talk about a brother of Owen’s, Carr?” “No sir, I can’t remember any talk of him.” “But you have heard that she has one?” “No I heard that she was an orphan with no family at all. That is why cook said she was so glad she was going to settle down.” “Settle down where?” “I don’t know. She speaks about it, they say she is going to be married and leave the end of the month. They tease her a lot but she don’t seem to mind. Nice tempered girl.” “Oh well send her to me now.” Owen had recovered her looks and self-possession. Love could hardly believe that it was the same girl who had looked absolutely petrified with fear at the sight of him as she had been the day he found her at the telephone. She looked very fresh and dainty in her blue morning uniform, and if she had any suspicion that the Inspector had caught her in a lie and was going to tax her with it, she showed no sign of nervousness. Love was quite pleased with her appearance and manner. His own towards her was infinitely more polite than it would have been to Miss Marshall. She showed no surprise when the Inspector told her he had just heard she had no brother and asked for an explanation.172 “I should have told you the other day sir, only I was startled at your coming in suddenly. I have one brother but they don’t know of it here. I don’t want it known as long as I am in service, as my brother is just starting to get on well, and it would be a handicap to him to have it going round that his sister was a parlourmaid.” “What is your brother?” “He is a clerk sir with Ware and Wells. He will be sent as a buyer soon if he goes on as well as he has up to now.” “I see.” The Inspector’s manner was sympathetic. “Well you are hardly likely to be in service very long I should imagine.” Owen looked pleased at the implied compliment. “Would you mind not mentioning it here about my brother?” “Of course, of course, you can run along now.” “Ware and Wells” – the Inspector made a little chant of the names as he wrote them down. He looked at his watch and decided that it being only 11.30 he could just get up to town and, among other things he had to do, catch young Owen on his way out to lunch. When he did get to the huge building of the well-known firm it was to meet a stream of employees hurrying out to their lunches. The door-keeper said Owen had already left, so Love decided he would go for his own lunch to a little place he knew in Dean Street

^The mystery of Owen’s brother the Inspector wanted to clear up. He believed that young man to be a pure invention of Owens, made on the spur of the moment, to explain a telephone message and he felt that Carr, now quite at home in the servants quarters at Graylands might prove of use^ (TS2, 85). These two sentences are added in ink at the top of the page, then in pencil running down the right margin and then into the text space where they appear in the reading text. Note the inversion of the first sentence. 171 Circled in pencil in the left margin is the aide-mémoire: does Love not come in again? (TS2, 85). 172 She showed no surprise when the Inspector told her he had just heard she had no brother ^and asked for an explanation^ (TS2, 86). 170

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just around the corner. It was a little French restaurant, a favourite haunt of his.173 The proprietor, beaming at the sight of “Mistaire Loff,” led him to the best vacant table and then dived into the cubby-hole of a kitchen reappearing immediately with an omelette soufflé which he served the Inspector himself. “Did you know I was coming, or is this a new conjuring trick, Carpentier? Very good I must say.” “It was commandeered for them but they will not observe,” said the proprietor in a husky whisper, nodding in the direction of another table, and he went off chuckling. The people whose patience or inattention Monsieur Carpentier felt so sure of were a couple whose pleasure in one another’s society evidently could not be increased even by one of his own special omelettes soufflé. The Inspector ate theirs with no feeling of remorse. “Who are they?” he asked Carpentier, who had returned to hang around and see that he was being properly attended to. “Oh it is a painter, for years he come, always the same table and always a different lady.” Love gave an amused glance at the Lothario, a large bearded man in his early forties conforming to all the Bohemian conventions in dress.174 “What’s his name?” “Mistaire Rodny.” Love spent his time during his meal watching the flirtation between Rodney and the young lady with him. He was near enough to see and admire the finesse of Mr Rodney’s technique in such matters. He also felt that he was killing two birds with one stone as he had only been prevented from looking up the painter before by lack of time. He was pleased to have a chance of seeing him without being seen. He thought that Mr Shelton’s suspect seemed to be taking life rather lightheartedly, and was sorry the necessity for seeing Owen’s brother prevented him remaining to watch Rodney, and not entirely on that gentleman’s account alone, but for the sake of his pretty companion.175 “Foreigner perhaps, pretty hands and feet, what’s the use of hat brims like that to a pretty woman?” Love hurried away regretfully, cataloguing a list of as many of the young lady’s characteristics as he had time to take in. Going back to Ware and Wells he met again a stream of employees, this time hurrying back to work. He recognized Owen at once from his likeness to his sister. The young fellow seemed surprised at a stranger’s addressing him by his name. Love explained briefly who he was and what he wanted. After one glance at the young man there seemed very little doubt that he was a close relation to, if not her brother – Owen’s brother.176 He answered all Love’s questions goodnaturedly, and what he said tallied in every particular with his sister’s account of the matter. He admitted

The identity of this restaurant, in Dean Street, Soho, is very likely to be Le Tour Eiffel, the infamous scene of William Roberts’s Vorticist group portrait, painted in 1962 but set in spring of 1915. The establishment had come under the proprietorship of a Belgian, Victor Berlement, in 1914. Already known as “The French Pub,” it became a locale for the bohemian set, as Roberts’s painting attests. It would later gain new fame as the location where Charles de Gaulle was said to have written his speech of 18 June 1940, in which he called upon the French to defy the German occupiers as well as the Vichy government of Marshall Pétain (see Hutton 2012, 36). 174 ^Love gave an amused glance at the Lothario, a large bearded man in his early forties conforming to all the Bohemian conventions in dress^ (TS2, 87). 175 not entirely on that gentleman’s account alone, ^but for the sake of his pretty companion^ (TS2, 87). 176 “^After one glance at^ the young man there seemed very little doubt that he was ^a close relation to, if not her brother – Owen’s brother^” (TS2, 88). 173

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that he had telephoned to her on Monday, and the Inspector left him with a very strong suspicion that he had been barking up the wrong tree. Love wandered down Oxford Street, keeping to the wrong side of the sidewalk, and impeding the foot traffic in a manner one would have hardly thought possible in a member of the police force. His absentmindedness was due to the fact that he was puzzling over his “collection of facts” that was increasing slowly, but without any relation between them to help him in the solving of the problem that was tantalizing him. “All the same I’m sure that wasn’t her brother I overheard,” he said to himself, immediately reproaching himself for allowing feelings to weigh with him. He decided to postpone seeing Rodney and went back to Graylands. Owen opened the door to him herself. The Inspector found her as attractive in her black uniform as in her morning blue. “Come here a minute.” He led the way to the morning room. “I wanted to say it’s all right about your brother. I saw him myself this morning. I won’t worry you about him again. Now what I want to know is were there any more telephone messages on Monday morning that you took?” “Only Mr Dane’s sir.” “And why didn’t you tell me of it before?” said Love severely, thoroughly annoyed at the calm young person before him. Owen looked injured, surprised at his change of tone. “I don’t know what you mean sir. You’ve never asked me before about any other messages. I’m sure I have no reason to conceal that I took the call when Mr Dane rang up Monday afternoon.” “And what did he want?” “Only to say he had forgotten to tell Bryde to bring the car for him Tuesday morning.” “Oh well that’s all I want to know.” The Inspector felt a fool and suspected he looked it, and was glad when the door closed on Owen. “Serves me right being led off on a wild goose chase.” Love flung himself into a chair, and digging in his pocket brought out his notebook. Trying to make out his own crabbed handwriting did not improve his temper, nor did the fact that he had to admit to himself that he knew very little more about the case than when he first took it up. He reread the items on his list again, first crossing off one marked “Owen’s brother.” The list was as follows: 1. No evidence of infraction: all doors and windows found locked, no finger prints unaccounted for. Mullins swears side door locked as usual when she opened it to go for doctor. 2. Police find no trace of weapon. 3. Reappearance of weapon on Tuesday morning, two days after crime. 4. Chauffeur seen in garden night of crime at a time he supposed to be in his room. 5. Chauffeur’s alibi: was Bryde aware of Bute’s death when he gave him as alibi for time unaccounted for between his leaving the club and entering garage? 6. Where was Dane Marshall between 11.30 and 12? 7. Who had had Miss Marshall’s revolver the past two weeks? 8. Had Mrs Marshall […] tried to mislead? 9. Was Mr Shelton’s account of the family situation correct? 10. Why had Dane Marshall suddenly decided to go to Canada?

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11. Who was Pegsy? 12. Was Dane Marshall trying to shield someone? 13. Granting that there had been a blue paper on Mr Marshall’s desk, who had it now and why had it been taken?177 Had there been such a blue paper in the steel-lined drawer?178 Was it a mistake on Miss Marshall’s part? Was she thinking of some paper that she had noticed days before and which was not necessarily there on the Sunday night? A paper of no importance. She had not seemed to attach any special importance to it when she told him of it. Or had she? How was he to know whether she was not a consummate actress trying to lead him off the right track, off her track? He did not think she was quick enough to take advantage of his questioning her about the state of her father’s desk to invent the story of a blue paper, on purpose to confuse him and waste his time. Or was she quick enough? Was it likely that she would show such finesse now, when she had shown so little in her private affairs up till now that her clumsy intrigue with Rodney was common knowledge? How could a man fathom the lies even the most unimaginative woman would invent for never to be got-at-able reasons of her own? Love muttered monotonously over his notebook, like a snuffy old priest over his breviary. The words that he kept repeating over and over were, “that blue paper.”179

CHAPTER 11 Mr Daniel closed his large order book with decision. “There is no mistake you can see for yourself. The order was booked on Monday, nearly two weeks ago, we being at the twenty-third today. It was called for last Saturday the nineteenth. Mr Marshall himself brought it in on the Monday. I was here at the time myself. It was a small browning, needed adjusting. I took it out of my assistant’s hand to have a look at it, because I am interested in them all naturally, and I remember I said to Mr Marshall, ‘not a very new model is it,’ and he said ‘perhaps not, but it will do well enough’.” Inspector Love was looking more serene this morning. Daniel and Daniel of New Oxford Street had sent through a message that they had information for him, and Love had come round himself to see to the matter. “Did Mr Marshall often come in here?” “Yes, he had been a client of ours for some years. He came to us for fishing tackle mostly. He had a place in Scotland and we sent up there regularly. As a matter of fact I only had that address and I never associated him with Graylands. I don’t know why

Item 13 on this list appeared as item 9 in the typed passage, but an indication in pencil relocates the item to the final position in the list, as represented in the reading text. Items 8–13 and the following paragraphs to the end of the chapter appear on a single typed sheet that has been misplaced in the typescript, and is likely to be the missing TS2, 90 (the top of the page is torn off where the number would normally appear). Chapter 10 appears in YCAL MSS 54 Box 115 Folder 2819, truncated at TS2, 89 in a list of Items 1–6, immediately followed by TS2, 91. 178 Had there been such a blue paper ^in the steel lined drawer^? (TS2, 90). 179 A series of pencil notes in Pound’s hand running down the left margin accompany this paragraph: Chap. II anything missing / Lawyer’s report / known valuables gone?? / steel lined drawer, details (TS2, 90). This reference suggests a direct link with the loose pages from Folder 2818 transcribed in Appendix 1. 177

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I had the idea he had a flat in town. If it hadn’t been for that I should have communicated with you sooner. I did see something about the murder in the paper but I never read that kind of thing much, and I never thought for an instant that it was the Mr Marshall who dealt with us.” Though Mr Daniel did not tell the Inspector the fact that the Marshall “murder,” which he only knew of from the newspaper account, and D. S. Marshall esq. Bannock, Scotland were one and the same person, was made known to him by his pageboy.180 That bright youth had identified a picture in the Daily Mirror with a gentleman who used to come in a new model Chrysler. He had been sat on by the clerks when he made the remark, and made aware of the fact that small boys are supposed to be seen and not to observe, when someone remembered that the Chrysler owner’s name was Marshall too, and that there might be something in it after all.181 “And the revolver was given to the chauffer?” continued Love. “Yes, he had the slip we give with the number of the revolver and the date the work was to be finished. I didn’t see him myself – I’m never here Saturdays. Smith here gave it to him.” “Yes,” said a clerk who had been listening to the conversation, having been sent for to bring the book to Mr Daniel’s private office. “The chauffer came in on Saturday about eleven, the open paper package had been ready some days but he didn’t say anything.” “Was anyone in the car did you notice?” “No, I didn’t see the car at all. The page might know.” The page was sent for. “Do you remember a car that came here last Saturday morning? The chauffeur came in to get something. It was a big new gray car.” “Yes sir, I remember Mr Marshall’s Chrysler.” “Was there anyone in it besides the chauffeur?” “No sir, there was no one besides the chauffeur, but there was a lady inside at the back.” “What did she look like?” “She was an old lady reading a book, She didn’t notice when the chauffeur got in but just went on reading.” “Can you describe her?” “I only saw her from the side. She had a straight sort of face, and grey hair and a big fur cape.” “Well well,” said Love good humouredly to the small boy. “We may need you as a witness. Take care of yourself.” Mr Daniel was saluted more ceremoniously then Love went off feeling that in a quarter of an hour he had found some evidence that was incontrovertible. He hurried back to Graylands. Bryde was in the garage, obviously doing nothing. He had wanted to leave and take up a new job he had found, but after the discovery of the day before, the Inspector had told him he would have to remain in the neighbourhood, and the Marshalls were quite willing to keep him on. Bryde had been getting a lot of sympathy especially from the

Though Mr Daniel did not tell the Inspector so the fact ^that^ Marshall ^“murder,” which he only knew of from the newspaper account^ , and D.S. Marshall esq. Bannock, Scotland ^were^ one and the same person ^was made known to him by^ by his ^page^ boy^ (TS2, 91). 181 A pencil note in the left margin reads make into conversation (TS2, 92), but for reasons of continuity the passage is maintained as it appears in the typescript, as reported speech. 180

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staff, who were much impressed with the dramatic suppression of his alibi. Bryde himself was apparently brooding over the matter. “Look here Bryde, it would probably save you a lot of trouble to be frank with me. Why didn’t you tell me about getting that revolver from Daniels last Saturday morning?” Bryde turned green. “I swear to you Inspector I’ve nothing to do with this affair. Only everything looks against me. I know if I told you the truth you wouldn’t believe me. My luck’s gone, that’s what it is.” “You would do much better to tell me what you know, unless you are keeping it to tell your lawyer.” Love spoke shortly. His time had been wasted the last few days owing to Bryde, and his manner was curt. “What’s the good of my telling you something I can’t prove? You’ll only think I am making it up.” “Get on with it man. We know that you went to fetch the browning, then what did you do with it?” “Do with it?” Bryde repeated, “I brought it back to Mr Marshall.” “At what time?”182 “At about one o’clock.” “Where was he when you gave it to him?” Bryde paused a moment. “In the hall. I met him as I went into the house.” “Then why couldn’t you have said so in the first place instead of holding up things like this and making such a song about them?” “Well I couldn’t prove I gave it back to him.” “Were you alone Saturday?” “No, madam was in the car. She went up to town to the dentists. Then I had one or two other errands for Mr Marshall besides Daniels.” “Didn’t Mrs Marshall know you went to Daniel’s?” “I don’t think she paid much attention when I had messages for Mr Marshall. He always told me where to take her and what order to go to places in. He was very fussy. She let him arrange things. She would have a book in the car and read when she had to wait. I have been expecting her to say some thing about Daniel, but she probably never noticed where I was stopping.” “Well if you have anything more to tell me now’s the time.” Love still spoke impatiently. Bryde shook his head negatively. “You needn’t expect much from me if anything turns up later that you’ve been keeping back.” Love looked severely at the chauffeur who fidgeted uncomfortably but said nothing further.183 The Inspector returned to the house to find Mrs Marshall. Determined to leave nothing to chance he made out a written list of questions for her. Though she was not in bed she had not left her room for several days, and Love was shown upstairs to see her. He found her stretched on a chaise longue. Mrs Marshall would admit to no knowledge of that special browning. All she said she knew was that there had been a browning which

(TS2, 93). This line to follow Love’s question is excised from the typescript. ^Bryde shook his head negatively.^ ^“You needn’t expect much from me if anything turns up later that you’ve been keeping back.” Love looked severely at the chauffeur who fidgeted uncomfortably but said nothing further^ (TS2, 94). These sentences are added in pencil in the right margin.

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belonged to her daughter. But she did not remember seeing it or hearing of it for a long time. She remembered Bryde stopping at a shop in New Oxford Street but did not notice what shop it was. She did not know Daniel. On arriving home she went straight to the study with some library books she had brought from town. When lunch was announced she went upstairs to leave her things, and then joined the family in the dining room.184 Love then asked to see Miss Marshall. Her mother did not seem to know whether she was at home or not. She turned out to be at home. The Detective questioned her closely about what had been the order of the morning Saturday. “After breakfast I had a round of golf with father.” “And then what did you do both of you?” “Nothing, we came home.” “And then?” “We both went into the study till lunch time.” “And your mother?” “She went up to town in the morning. She only came in at lunch time.” “Where did she go when she came in?” “She came straight into the study where we were, then when lunch was announced she went upstairs to take off her hat and coat, and father and I went into the dining room.” “Did you meet anyone in the hall when you were on your way to the dining room?”185 “No.” “Not even one of the servants?” “No, there was no one there.” “Did your father make any reference to the revolver?” “No, we hadn’t spoken of it since I gave it to him.” Love looked searchingly at the girl. She was as glib and self-possessed as Bryde had been tongue-tied and nervous – and her statement gave the lie to the chauffeur’s.186 Leaving Miss Marshall, Love went in search of Bennet. Love had been often criticised for the way in which he went after his witnesses himself whenever possible instead of having them up. But he said to find them in their natural environment often suggested useful ideas to him. When Love got near the half opened door which led into the kitchen he could hear Bennet who was holding forth to the maids. “Don’t tell me that I could sleep in the next room to a murderer and not know it. I am very sensitive to such things. I’ve never made a mistake in anyone yet, and if Inspector Love would take my advice and listen to me, man to man I could tell him a thing or two that … ” Love’s entrance stopped Bennet suddenly. The Inspector was in no mood for a man to man talk but ready with a few cut and dried questions. “Bennet at what time did you announce lunch Saturday?” “At one o’clock as usual sir.” “And where were the family when you called them?” “Master and Miss Marshall were in the study with Madam who had just come in.”

The left margin has the pencil comment Put into conversation, referring to Mrs Marshall’s recollections (TS2, 94). 185 “Did you meet anyone in the hall ^when you were on your way to the dining room^?” (TS2, 95). 186 ^Love looked searchingly at the girl. She was as glib and self-possessed as Bryde had been tongue-tied and nervous––and her statement gave the lie to the chauffeur’s^ (TS2, 95). Pencil addition in text and right margin. 184

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“Did they go into the dining room at once?” “Madam went upstairs, the others went in at once.” “Would you have seen if there had been anyone in the hall as they passed through on their way to the dining room?” Bennet was pleased at the amount of attention he was getting before the maids, and tried to make his answers a model of conciseness. “No sir, Master handed me a parcel that I was to take down to cook at once, something that had been sent for from town. I left the room before they did, but I could hear them going through the hall.” “Where was Bryde at one o’clock?” “I didn’t see him. I can’t say.” The cook who had been listening joined in. “I suppose it’s no harm for me to say that the poor fellow was where he ought to have been. He was in the next room having a bit of early lunch as he had asked me special.” “At one o’clock, are you sure?” The cook was not so sure of the exact time as she had first been. “Thereabouts I’m certain.” “Well was it before or after Bennet brought down the parcel?” Love insisted patiently. “It was after, because Bennet was saying how he should have brought it in himself, and not let Madam take it to the study, and I told Bryde so when he came in.” The Inspector walked off. “Bryde’s alibi seems to be holding a bit better this time, but there is still one thing,” he reflected as he walked down the garden in the direction of the garage.187 The Inspector found no on there, but Bryde’s head appeared at the window of the room above in answer to his call. He was evidently smartening himself up. “I’ll be down directly.” “No don’t bother,” said Love. “I can hear from here all right. Tell me, Saturday when you met Mr Marshall in the hall as you were telling me just now, was he alone?” Bryde was obviously unprepared for the question and hesitated. Then he said firmly, “Yes he was alone.” “You are sure there was no one else in the hall?” “Certain sir.” “Well that’s all then.” Love turned and walked along the garden till he came to the side gate. He wanted to get over to Whitby’s and find a comfortable chair where he could think the matter out in quiet. “One of them is lying, but which one? It’s not necessarily Bryde because he chokes over every answer.” Whitby was a sympathetic listener and Love liked to talk to him, and found that it helped him to straighten out his facts and pigeonhole them better than solitary work with his notebook. “Say the old man and the girl are in the hall. Bryde comes and hands the browning to him. He hands it straight over to his daughter – ‘here you are this is yours’ – or some remark like that. She may not want that remembered at the present moment, and she may have squared Bryde. On the other hand, Bryde may never have gone to his master with it at all.”

“Bryde’s alibi seems to be holding a bit better this time, but there is still one thing,” he reflected ^as he walked down the garden in the direction of the garage^ (TS2, 96). 187

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“It wouldn’t surprise me if Bryde were trying to shield her. I should think he was a decent chap,” said Whitby. “I think he is in too tight a hole to have much thought for any anyone but himself, however it seems impossible to straighten this out. They may both be telling the truth. The girl would precede her father into the room, probably, and she might very well not have noticed Bryde. He may have handed the thing to Marshall without a word. It seems unlikely though that neither of them noticed the other if they were as near as that. What suggestions have you Whitby?” “Hmm,” was all Whitby could think of saying at the moment, so Love took to his meditations with his notebooks and his humming again and Whitby took refuge in the next room.

CHAPTER 12 The Inspector felt it was high time for him to do something about the unknown lady with whom Dane had intended, at least, to pass the Sunday evening.188 He had made enquiries about the people named Bemberg with whom Dane had spent most of his Sundays for the past two weeks, and discovered that Mr Bemberg’s family consisted of a wife, one grown up son, and six daughters of ages ranging from 15–25.189 The six daughters decided Love. He felt sure that among them he would find Pegsy. He blamed himself for having delayed unpardonably, when the girl who could solve the problem of where Dane Marshall had been the night of the murder had been right in his hand, as it were, all the time. He rang up Mr Bemberg, only to be told that he would not be at home till dinnertime. Love left a message to say he would call round at nine o’clock. At ten to nine the Inspector dropped off a bus which had taken him to the corner of Abbey Road. As the hour struck in a neighbouring church the Inspector rang the Bembergs’s highly pitched bell.190 All the Bemberg family were in the drawing room when he arrived, and to his annoyance he was shown straight in among them. The Bembergs were hospitable, also they were not averse to a little excitement. They felt the Inspector was providing them with a thrill and wished to make what return they could by a politeness and warmth of reception that rather embarrassed him. The room seemed all gold mirrors and red plush, blazing with crude unshaded electric light with elaborate fern stands in the windows.191 Many such rooms still exist in Hampstead and St John’s Wood in great glory. To tackle nine members of one family at once was too much he felt.192

The Inspector felt it was high time ^for him to do something about^ the unknown lady with whom Dane had intended, at least, to pass the Sunday evening ^had been unknown for too long^ (TS2, 98). 189 six daughters ^of ages ranging from 15–25^ (TS2, 98). 190 ^[sp][p] and as the hour struck in a neighbouring church the Inspector rang the Bembergs’s highly pitched bell^ (TS2, 98). Bemburg is the generic name for cuprammonium rayon, first produced by the J. P. Bemburg company in the last years of the nineteenth century. The connection, if any, with St John’s Wood, is obscure. 191 The sentences beginning with All the Bemberg family are rearranged in the typescript, with some pencil additions and typed text transpositions. The major change is that the description of the room now precedes the enthusiastic hospitality of the Bemberg family (TS2, 98). 192 ^To tackle nine members of one family at once was too much he felt^ (TS2, 98). This sentence is added in pencil in the left margin. 188

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Mrs Bemberg, who looked and dressed like a large and elaborate satin cushion, was sitting in one of those curious chairs still met with occasionally called a tête a tête. It was placed in the centre of the room. Mrs Bemberg motioned the Inspector to come and share the twin half of her seat with her. The attention and the giggles it caused the younger members of the family – who unlike their elders regarded this particular piece of furniture as a joke – rather caused the Inspector to assume his stiffest and most Inspectorial manner, and to intimate that he would stand. This put his visit in its purely official light. Mr Bemberg, who had been about to start proceedings by offering him a whisky and soda, thought better of it, and waited for the Inspector to speak. “Is it correct Mr Bemberg that Mr Dane Marshall was at your house last Sunday, and the Sunday before that?” “Yes he was here all right, both days. He often comes to us, has a game of tennis with the girls.” “Are these all your children?” “Yes, six girls and a boy, and that is Mrs Bemberg.” From a safe distance the Inspector looked at the ladies. “And what are their names may I ask?” Bemberg showed no surprise at the question. He gave the names, pointing at the same time to their respective owners. “My boy Ronald, then Kitty, Alma, Louisa, Marjorie, and Lilian and Arabella. Don’t ask the girls’ ages,” he said facetiously, “they don’t like it.” One glance at the young ladies convinced Love that he was on the wrong track. Alma, Lilian, and Marjorie were gawky schoolgirls, and though he knew nothing of Dane Marshall’s tastes, he felt that the very prominent profiles of Kitty and Louisa, who were older, were not of a kind to attract any but young men profiled to match.193 He felt that he had wasted his evening, and shutting up his notebook – the sign always of departure with him – he thanked Mr Bemberg, and nodding to the rest, looked round awkwardly for the door. Ronald Bemberg followed him to show the way out. As soon as the drawing room door closed after them, the young man said rather hesitatingly, “Can I see you alone Inspector for a minute?”194 “Yes. What is it?”195 The young man had taken him into a small room near to the front door. “If you hadn’t come here I don’t think I should have spoken to you about this,” commenced Ronald Bemberg, “because it’s strictly speaking not my business, and I don’t like to get mixed up in things, but I think I know of a reason for Marshall being down to Ripton Sunday night, that has nothing to do with the crime there as I’m sure he hasn’t.”196 “I should be glad to hear it,” said Love. “I think it’s a girl,” went on Bemberg. “Pegsy!” thought Love to himself.

^As for the oldest Miss Bemburg, her interest in tennis needed no other explanation than consideration of it all avoir du pois^ (TS2, 99). The transcription of this interlinear pencil addition is uncertain and adds little to Inspector Love’s meditations. Thus it has been removed from the reading text. 194 As soon as the drawing room door closed after them, ^the young man said rather hesitatingly^ “Can I see you alone Inspector for a minute?” (TS2, 99). 195 “Yes. What is it?” (TS2, 100). 196 “it’s strictly speaking not my business, ^and I don’t like to get mixed up in things,^ but I think I know of a reason for Marshall being down to Ripton Sunday night” (TS2, 100). 193

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“I know Marshall well enough. I’m at Morton and Haddocks too. I can’t say that we are really intimate, though I’ve been down to their place several times for the weekend. It’s a nice place they have there.”197 The Inspector nodded. “Well I’m almost sure, I’m not certain mind you of what I’m going to tell you.” Young Bemberg broke off, he looked a bit anxious.198 “Have you ever seen a photograph of a girl on Marshall’s desk?” he went on rather disjointedly. “I may have.” “The girl in the large hat!” thought Love, but he only said, “I only saw it once. He doesn’t always keep it out. It wasn’t framed when I saw it. But if it’s the girl I think it is, I think I know why Marshall is so mysterious about Sunday.”199 The young man’s self-assurance was returning. He began to talk quickly and confidently.200 “Marshall’s what you’d call reserved over everything, always. It’s his nature. I’m perhaps too much the opposite myself, always tell everything I know, unless it has to do with business of course.” “The photo of the girl: think you know who it is?” Love brought him back to the point.201 Young Bemberg waited to prepare his effect. “You’ve been down to Graylands a lot lately. You must have noticed a pretty girl there.” A light broke on the Inspector. Of course, what a fool he had been. “Owen!” he said. Young Bemberg nodded. “Well it’s a photograph of that girl that Marshall keeps in his desk. Naturally if he has been having an affair with his people’s parlourmaid he wants to keep it quiet. For all he knows she may have a family who would step in and blackmail him, try to make him marry her, Lord knows what.” “I think you may be right, Bemberg. I remember thinking the picture seemed to remind me of some one I had seen before but I couldn’t place it.” “I wouldn’t have told you all this but I think Marshall is a bit pigheaded, and he doesn’t see his own interest always. If he went down there on the quiet to see the girl Sunday, that explains his reason for being at Ripton. He must have met her somewhere outside. They never would have dared to meet in the house.” “Did Master Marshall ever speak to you about Canada?” “Canada … well I don’t know if you would call it speaking about Canada. He did mention to me about ten days ago that if he made what he hoped out of Corradium,

“[…] It’s a nice place they have there” (TS2, 100). The parlourmaid may be a clue to Dane Marshall’s behaviour and movements leading up to the murder. Pound and Rudge clearly thought this too direct a statement, thus its excision. 198 “Well I’m almost sure, I’m not certain mind you ^of what I’m going to tell you.” Young Bemberg broke off, he looked a bit anxious.^ “Have you ever seen a photograph of a girl on Marshall’s desk?” ^he went on rather disjointedly^ (TS2, 100). The first insertion in pencil runs up the right margin of the page, the second across the page into the right margin. 199 Love’s statement is composed, rearranged, deleted, typed over and augmented by pencil insertions in TS2, 100. These details are not represented in the apparatus, as they are mostly of an incidental nature. 200 ^The young man’s self-assurance was returning. He began to talk quickly and confidently^ (TS2, 100). 201 “The photo ^of the girl: think you know who it is?” Love brought him back to the point^ (TS2, 100). 197

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he said he felt like giving up the office and trying to get a small farm in Canada.202 Got talking about what a healthy life it was. All that bunk – I don’t think he meant it.” The Inspector suspected that he had got to the end of Mr Bemberg’s fund of useful knowledge about Dane, and he hurried off, eager to follow up this new trail. Ronald Bemberg he thought must be very sure of his friend’s innocence to risk bringing up a piece of evidence that could be made to weight against him. It supplied a further and stronger motive for the crime than the mere refusal of his father to let him go to Canada. It opened the way to a thousand possibilities.203 “Pegsy” – Owen’s name was Margaret of course. The Inspector cursed himself for having been so slow as not to have seen that long ago. Her letters he remembered were not written in the tone of an “affair” but as if by someone very sure of her position, and who was looking forward to a very definite future as several references otherwise of no importance showed very definitely. Dane’s wanting to go to Canada was clear. Everything commenced to fit in. In the light of this new discovery Love thought of proof after proof that he had overlooked, which now seemed startlingly visible. Dane could have got into the house any time after dinner. Dane may have met his father in the garden, when Mr Marshall had his after-dinner stroll. They could have quarreled desperately then without anyone being the wiser. From a man like his father Dane could expect no sympathy if he found out that his son was engaged to marry his parlourmaid. Love thought of the kind of thing a coarse-minded man like old Marshall would say if he heard of such a thing. He could imagine the two men meeting in the garden, old Marshall’s insults to his son, and Dane hanging round the house – looking in at the uncurtained window of his father’s study, going in at the door the old man had forgotten to lock, or had purposely left open for his son – and then some more quick angry words, Dane seeing red, the revolver that Mr Marshall had laid down on his desk, forgetting to return it to his daughter – the one shot.204 “Yes the young man seemed to be in a bad box,” the Inspector thought, any sympathy he might feel for Dane, whom he qualified to himself as “a decent chap,” being forgotten in the excitement of feeling that he was on the right track at last. He walked all the way home from Abbey Road, thinking hard all the time, and muttering congratulations to himself. Then suddenly all the pleasure he was feeling at having solved part at least of the problem suddenly left him.205 He had remembered Brooks. Brooks who had believed Dane the murderer from the very first. How could a dunderhead like Brooks have hit on the right criminal from the start, when he Love who had studied the case for days had been blind? It was nearly enough to make him look for flaws in the evidence that only a second before

“He did mention to me about ten days ago that if he made what he hoped out of Corradium he said he felt like giving up the office and trying to get a small farm in Canada” (TS2, 102). Note that there is no TS2, 101: the sentence from 100 runs straight on to 102. This paragraph has a pencil note Carodium? in the left margin, while Bemburg’s stock tip concerning the mysterious stuff has been deleted from the draft. 203 This paragraph is accompanied by two pencil notes in the left margin: the first cut? is overturned by the second stet, but nevertheless Pound and Rudge were ambivalent about how explicitly to present Love’s forensic deliberations, in keeping with other deletions of direct reference to the novel’s MacGuffin: Corradium. 204 This entire paragraph is lightly struck in the typescript. There is a penciled question mark in the left margin, indicating the status of the passage was still up for consideration. A number of references to Love’s accounting of the crime elsewhere in the typescript have been excised or rewritten in less overtly. However the ambiguity of the instructions in the typescript weigh in favour of retaining Love’s deliberations in the reading text. 205 These last two sentences are transposed from TS2, 103, where they have been lightly struck out in the typescript. 202

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he had found so convincing. Another thought increased his gloom. The Press! Love lay awake that night seeing in his mind’s eye the headings that would appear in the papers. He thought of the reporters he had snubbed. “Inspector’s Delay,” “Wake up Police.” He got up the next morning anything but refreshed, wishing that the arrest of young Marshall was over and done with. He remembered Bemberg’s mention of Corradium. He had not noticed seeing the name in either Dane Marshall’s papers or in his father’s. He made a note to remind himself to speak to Mr Allbright about it. He was not likely to make use of Bemberg’s tip which may have been very well meant, but Love never indulged in anything approaching speculation. The cutting he had noticed in the financial paper he had found in Marshall’s study had been about then though. It was probably of no important thought Love wearily. Still he would have see to it.206 “Damn the Press,” he said heartily.207

CHAPTER 13 The Inspector had passed a bad night. His bacon was uneatable, or so he said, but for some reason he did not give he ate it. He vented his annoyance on everyone who crossed his path. He missed the fast train to Ripton by one second and had to wait for the next. He arrived at his destination still feeling himself a very ill-used man, specially chosen by an unjust providence to be burdened with petty annoyances. His ill humour increased as he came in sight of the local police station. He was thankful to hear Brooks was not there. His spirits rose a little. The idea of having to talk to a smug Brooks, who would not have omitted he felt sure the “I told you so” that is always harder to bear than anything else, had been galling to him.208 Though he had a warrant for young Marshall’s arrest he was not by any means sure that the circumstances of the Sunday night would be cleared up sufficiently in the course of the day to warrant him using it. Nevertheless he took a man from the local station up to Ripton with him. He was overtaken by Mr Shelton in his car, who stopped and spoke to him, insisting that Love should let him drive him the short distance between the local police station and Graylands. It was a straight road, and Love noticed a man running down the road in front of them. As the car overtook him, Love saw with surprise that it was Dr Whitby. He wondered what he was up to. Shelton, he was relieved to see, had not noticed him. Not that he felt that there was any cause for secrecy about the doctor’s wanting to run down the road if he wanted to, but he knew that Shelton would surely delay him with useless talk about it. When they got to Graylands he hurried in with a hasty word of thanks. He waited in the garden for the man to arrive, before he came though he was surprised to see Whitby come in at the gate still running. He stopped at the front door, panting, and looked at his watch. “What’s the awful hurry Whitby?”

This paragraph is also lightly struck in the typescript with a penciled question mark in the left margin. It has been retained in the reading text for similar reasons to the previous example. The pun on Love’s aversion to speculation is duly noted. 207 Love’s final exclamation is added in pencil below the lightly struck paragraph preceding. 208 The left margin carries two editorial notes in pencil: most of this not essential, and cd. be shortened. Rudge and Pound are clearly weighing narrative disclosure against succinct presentation in this phase of the composition process, following on from similar dilemmas in the previous chapter. 206

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“No hurry at all,” said the doctor. “I’m making an experiment.”209 “What’s the idea?” said Love, completely at sea, wondering if Whitby had some idea which he had to run to carry out why he chose a particularly dusty public road for that purpose instead of the one on the common. “I can’t talk now,” said Whitby. “I must get back and change. Won’t do to catch a chill at my time of life.” Love grunted. He knew Whitby was not a man to worry much about chills. Like most doctors he paid very little attention to the warnings he would recommend to his patients. “Come on in with me. I want to talk to you about something.”210 “Do you propose to run all the way?” said Love suspiciously. “If so I’ll join you later.” “No , I’ve done all the running I want for the present.” “All right then, come on. Why may I ask you do you wear that costume for your exercises?” said Love with a glance at Whitby’s rather heavy tweed suit. “I had it on and the idea came to me and I couldn’t stop to change.” They had reached the French window giving on to the doctor’s study. “Sit down there I’ll only be a minute.” The doctor disappeared into the house. Love settled himself in on one of the chairs on the porch.211 The doctor’s figure appeared for a moment at an upper window towelling vigorously. The doctor came down a few minutes later, looking exceedingly pleased over something. “Now what’s the mystery Whitby?” “I had an idea in the night,” answered the doctor. “It struck me that no one had timed how long it takes from Graylands to the station.” “Why it’s a quarter of an hour from your house to the station and two minutes from you to Graylands, not more than seventeen walking, and running about seventeen.”212 “Yes that’s all right,” interrupted the doctor, “it takes that from my house, but …” he repeated, “but … it takes a great deal longer than that from Graylands to the station. If they don’t take a short cut through my garden they have to go round a much longer way than I have.”213 “Well I suppose anyone in a hurry could go through your garden and through the wood on this side.”214 “In the day time yes, but at night my front gate is locked. I see to it myself. So that night if anyone did come in my back gate they couldn’t have got over the front one.215 It was pure chance that Mullins found my back gate open that night. It was only because I had broken the old key in the lock the night before as I tried to turn it, and the locksmith had taken off the lock and not come back with the new one.”

“No hurry at all,” said the doctor. stet (TS2, 105). “Come on in with me, . I want to talk to you about something” (TS2, 106). 211 Love ^settled himself in on one of the chairs on the porch^ (TS2, 106). 212 “[…] not more than seventeen walking, ^and running about seventeen.^” (TS2, 106). Identical walking and running times clearly make no sense, but this matter is left unresolved in the manuscripts. 213 “Yes that’s all right,” interrupted the doctor, “^it takes that from my house,^ but …” he repeated, “but … it takes a great deal longer than that from Graylands to the station. ^If they don’t take a short cut through my garden^ they have to go round a much longer way than I have” (TS2, 107). 214 “Well I suppose anyone in a hurry could go through your garden ^and through the wood on this side^” (TS2, 107). 215 “In the day time yes, but at night my front gate is locked. I see to it myself. ^So that night if anyone did come in my back gate they couldn’t have got over the front one.^ […]” (TS2, 107). 209 210

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“And the wall?” “It’s too high. Besides, there are very serviceable spikes. The Purfords took this place before Ripton was so built up – it was considered to be so out of the way – and they were subject to fidgets.”216 “How long do you make it then from Graylands to the station?” Love’s interest was thoroughly aroused. “It can’t be done in less than twenty minutes running,” said Whitby decisively. “I don’t want to boast, but running is my game.” The Inspector remembered a collection of medals he had seen once among Whitby’s traps, and knew he could take his word for it. “Twenty minutes,” he said thoughtfully, “that lets our young friend out of it.” “That was my idea,” said the doctor complacently. “Hm … The 12.5 the shot could not have been fired before ten to twelve, even allowing for … no, couldn’t be done, pretty conclusive. It’s the Essex estate that cuts into what would be their direct road to the town. There is some suit on now for a right of way, but up to the present it hasn’t been decided and the path is shut off. The only short cut now to the station is through my place, and as I say on Sunday though the back gate was open by chance, the front was locked and the key in the house, and the wall is too difficult to make the attempt worthwhile.” “There is still the possibility of him having had a lift from some passing car.” “You still mean Dane Marshall by ‘him’?” said the doctor. “Yes, I haven’t finished with that young man yet. However I don’t think there will be a sensational arrest today,” Love spoke cheerfully. The relief in the Inspector’s voice had Whitby look at him in surprise. “You sound as if you didn’t want an arrest, what’s the idea?” “I do want an arrest, but I don’t want to have my hand forced, and arrest the wrong person. They are always in such a damn hurry.” He wandered around the room till he located Whitby’s cigarettes and lit one absentmindedly. “It was a good idea of yours I must say. Can’t think how I was such a fool to overlook it all this time. I had a plan of the house and grounds made too.” “Well it’s only a week or so that the path through the Essex place has been barred. They are trying to get the town council to make a road through that way to the station, and they think if they shut up the path it will force their hand. I don’t know enough about things down here to know if they have a chance of winning the case, they are certainly inconveniencing people.” “Well couldn’t any one who wanted to pass that way climb over the barrier there?” “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it myself, but I heard that the Harts who own the place had a keeper put there specially to stop anything of the kind.” “I had better get over there and find out then first thing,” said Love, throwing away his half-smoked cigarette. “You will probably have to go all the way round to the front gate. Shall I come along?” Whitby’s interest was increasing. “Yes, do,” said Love. The two men went out by Whitby’s front gate, and found, as the doctor said, that the shortcut was very thoroughly barred. They had to go round to the front lodge.

“[…] The Purfords took this place before Ripton was so built up––^it was considered to be so out of the way^––and they ^were subject to fidgets^” (TS2, 107). 216

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The husband of the lodge keeper was the man employed by Mr Hart to keep watch over the gate at the short cut and keep out any determined trespassers. The man laughed at the suggestion that any one might possibly have climbed over the gate. “They might climb the gate perhaps sir, but Mr Hart’s dogs would have something to say to them then.” He took the Inspector round to the back of the lodge where two business-like looking watch dogs were chained up. “We let these out at night,” he said. “No one could get into the place without these here giving us notice.” “Do you remember hearing them bark at all a few nights ago, last Sunday in particular?” Love asked perfunctorily. “Ah the night Mr Marshall was shot. No, we didn’t get a sound from them.” The keeper walked back with them and let them out of the contested gate near the doctor’s house. “I don’t think those dogs would let any one by,” said Love. “I don’t think that there is any chance of anyone having got through that way.” The Inspector let Whitby go back to his pottering in the garden, and strolled over to Graylands. The policeman who he had brought with him was doing that part of his duty (and a large part it must be too) which consisted in “hanging round.” As Love got into the lane that separated the two gardens he caught a glimpse of him sauntering aimlessly about. He swore softly to himself at the sight of him. He reminded him that something was expected of him in the way of a sensational arrest and he was quite unready to oblige. Dane Marshall’s attitude seemed clear to him now. Dane must have realised all the time that he had a perfectly sound alibi to fall back on if the worst came to the worst.217 There was still the possibility that he had had a lift from some car passing at the time. The Inspector had no information of the sort, though he had a pretty good idea of what cars had passed that way on the Sunday night. There was also the possibility that Dane had “taken” a lift, hung on behind, in vulgar English, one car which came along conveniently at just the right moment and then jumped off before they came into the town.218 That he had had any car come for him was practically impossible. In that case he would never show himself in Ripton. Everything seemed to confirm the detective’s original idea, which was that Dane knew something about the matter but was shielding some one else. That could be the only reason for the young man’s refusal to explain his actions in any way. Dane would have had interest in shielding three out of the six women in the house at the time if they came under suspicion: his mother, his sister, and “Pegsy.” Up to now it was only Margela who could be said to be “under suspicion.” She did not attempt to deny that the revolver was hers, and if Bryde’s story about returning it to Mr Marshall was true, she had had plenty of opportunity of getting it in her possession again.219 That she had a quarrel with her father just before he was killed she also had not attempted to conceal. In Mrs Marshall’s

Dane must have realised all the time that he had a perfectly sound alibi to fall back on ^if the worst came to the worst^ (TS2, 110). 218 There was also the possibility that Dane had “taken” a lift, hung on behind, in vulgar English, one car which came along conveniently at just the right moment ^and then jumped off before they came into the town^ (TS2, 110). Note the activity Love speculates Dane may have conducted is one particular to motor transport of the time: to jump on the back of a moving vehicle and then disembark undetected. All cars of the time were manufactured with running boards, but this feature of car design began to be phased out in the 1930s. 219 The second part of the sentence pertaining to Bryde’s story is lightly struck in the typescript, accompanied by a penciled question mark. The uncertainty of admission or deletion in this case weighs in favour of retaining the full sentence in the reading text. 217

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case there seemed to be motive enough for her to do such a thing, but motive is one thing and will to do is another. It is true that she had been the first person to see Mr Marshall after he had been killed. She had been left alone for some minutes until the doctor came, quite long enough to give her time to conceal the weapon. Love could also think of the situation which might occur between Owen and the murdered man. She might premeditate a crime which she would certainly benefit by. “They’d have to be a blooming lot of Borgias though,” thought Love … “still … queerer things happen … must look into it.”220

CHAPTER 14 The thought of the police sergeant waiting on the other side of the hedge in the Marshall’s garden goaded Love to action. He hurried, banging the Doctor’s garden door behind him and called to the sergeant who turned and came to meet him in the lane which linked the two gardens.221 Love merely told him to go back to the station again. If the sergeant had thought he had been called to Graylands to assist at a sensational arrest he showed no surprise. The Inspector stood a moment in thought watching the man disappear down the narrow lane, and then turned in through the Marshalls’s gate. He caught a sight of Dane Marshall in the distance. He was in the paddock at the far end of the garden idly knocking a golf ball round. He evidently felt the house unbearable. His mother had not left her room for several days. Her heart, never strong, had been seriously affected by the recent excitement and the doctor had insisted on absolute rest. Dane and his sister had never been congenial and the recent events had not brought them together seemingly. As for Owen, the young man probably thought it wiser to avoid any meeting at the present time. Love walked down the sloping stretch of garden, as he neared the paddock Dane seeing him coming walked up to meet him.222 “Anything new Inspector?” “Perhaps. I got down here early this morning with the idea of taking you into custody Mr Marshall.” Love’s manner was slightly quizzical. The young man said nothing. “Unfortunately,” continued Love, “I say unfortunately because it seems to be what you have been wanting, I do not yet feel I should be justified in doing so.” “Why not?” said Marshall bluntly. “Because I have just had conclusive proof that you are not the criminal.” The Inspector was rewarded for this piece of bluff by the look in the young man’s face, a look which expressed anything but relief. “You know who did it then?” he said quickly. Love ignored the question. “But in view of the fact that I now know positively that you were here on Sunday … and why, perhaps you may feel like telling me something that you were keeping back before?”

This final meditation by Love is replete with Pound’s fingerprints. The Borgia clan and their propensity to commit treason, murder and other crimes in the pursuit of power is a subject in Canto 5 and Canto 30. Indeed the history of Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), and his children Cesare and Lucrezia concludes A Draft of XXX Cantos, first published in 1930, the same year in which The Blue Spill was composed. 221 He ^hurried banging the Doctor’s garden door behind him and^ called to the sergeant who turned and came to meet him in the lane which linked the two gardens^ (TS2, 111). 222 This scene echoes that which opens Chapter 6, and may even comprise a repurposing of that episode, albeit at a later point in the narrative. 220

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“I have already told you the simple truth I know nothing whatever of the matter.” Dane spoke with angry emphasis, and turning quickly on his heel walked off towards the house. The Inspector saw that the young man meant to beat him in reaching the front door, and did not try to catch him up as he knew he would have no chance to outstrip him. He smiled to himself rather concertedly and followed in the same direction at his usual deliberate pace.223 He was wondering which of the three women Marshall in all probability had hurried to warn of the turn of events. That such had been the young man’s intention he had no doubt.224 The side door was open. Dane in his haste had not bothered to shut it. The Inspector walked in. There was no sign of any one about in the hall or living rooms. In the turn of the stairs the Inspector saw Owen, dust cloth in hand, polishing the banister. “Where is Mr Marshall?” “He has just come in sir. He went into Mrs Marshall’s room.” “And Miss Marshall, is she in?” “She is with Mrs Marshall too,” Owen answered with her usual calm. Love reflected that Dane had already had time to speak to all three women privately in the short space of time since he had left him in the paddock: to the girl when he passed her on the staircase; to his mother by scribbling a hasty message on her pad, as that was a very usual way for the family to communicate with her; and to his sister because he could speak with her, secure of the fact that his mother could not overhear. The Inspector beckoned Owen to come downstairs. “Come in here, I want to speak to you.” He held open the door of the morning room. “Where was it you saw Mr Dane Marshall the night his father was killed?” he said abruptly. Owen showed no sign of surprise at the question, which confirmed Love’s suspicion that Dane had found time to warn her.225 “I saw Mr Marshall in the garden house,” she answered quietly. Love noticed that she had dropped the sir in speaking and felt that she was answering in her character of fiancée to young Marshall and not as the parlourmaid as she had done up till then. “And why have you concealed this?” said Love sternly. “Do you realize that it is a serious matter suppressing evidence like that?” “Mr Marshall told me to say nothing, I know he had nothing to do with the crime.” “Mr Marshall seems to be taking a great deal of responsibility on himself,” said Love sarcastically. “It was only that we didn’t want anyone to know about our being engaged.” Owen looked pleadingly at Love but he was looking the other way. “And if Mr Marshall denied being there, how could I go against him – I hadn’t anyway to prove it. Who would have taken my word against his …”226

^He smiled to himself rather concertedly and^ followed in the same direction at his usual deliberate pace (TS2, 112). 224 He was wondering which of the three women Marshall ^in all probability had hurried to warn of the turn of events. That such had been the young man’s intention he had no doubt^ (TS2, 112). 225 Owen showed no sign of surprise at the question ^which confirmed Love’s suspicion that Dane had found time to warn her^ (TS2, 112). 226 The conversation between Love and Owen, from Love’s question “Why have you concealed this?” to Owen plaintively asking “Who would have taken my word against his …” occurs on the verso leaf of TS2, 112. The final line is followed by an excised sentence: 223

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“How long were you in the garden house? What time did you get there?”227 “I was there at a quarter to nine. I went into the house at eleven, but I came out again nearly at once, and did not go back till half past.” “And all that time that you were outside you saw no one except Dane Marshall, or heard no unusual noise in the grounds?” “No one, nothing.” Love brought out a pencil and sharpened it with great precision to give his hands something to do while he thought a moment. “You said the first day I questioned you that you heard a car pass and stop at half past eleven.” “Yes, that was just as I had come in the last time and was bolting the door again.”228 “And before that did you notice anyone passing?” “There was a car at eleven. It stopped far down the road. It was that made me notice the time and see that it was eleven and time to go in.” The Inspector nearly smiled at the thought of the car interrupting the promenade sentimentale and bringing the two lovers back to a sense of time. “When you came out again it was still there?” “I don’t know, it may have been, I never thought of it again.” “What direction was it coming from?” “From the road by Ripton common.” The door opened, Love who had been standing with his back toward it turned at the sound. Dane Marshall came into the room. “Am I interrupting Inspector? I wanted to ask you something that concerned Miss Owen too.” “You have come in time. There was a question I want to ask you.” “I have told you all I know,” said Dane for the nth time, exasperating the Inspector. “Indeed,” he said dryly. “Eh ... Miss Owen here tells me she distinctly remembers a car which stopped far up the road at eleven. As there is no house in that direction, a car stopping there would perhaps strike you too. Why did you not tell me of this?”229 Dane was one of the most unwilling witnesses Love could remember. He seemed to resent being asked a direct question.230 “Mr Marshall,” he commenced231 bluntly, “you have already wasted a lot of my time, of the police’s time. I don’t know what your intention is, but you are certainly laying yourself open to grave suspicion of trying to shield your father’s murderer. There was some excuse for your silence before, in the fact that you were anxious to keep your engagement a secret, but that fact has come to light (and most facts come to light in time)” he added ponderously. “So unless you can give me reason for your reticence, I shall have to work on the supposition that you are wilfully concealing something that could be of use to the police,” Love was surprised at the effect

“How long were you ^in the garden house? What time did you get there?”^ (TS2, 113). “Yes, that was just as I had come in the last time ^and was bolting the door again^” (TS2, 113). 229 ^“Why did you not tell me of this?”^ (TS2, 114). 230 The following lines The Inspector interrupted […] “Now what about that car that was there at eleven?” derive from an unpaginated leaf in TS2 between 115 and 116, bearing a pencil instruction Insert 114 in the left margin. The first sentence is lightly struck, presumably for reasons of narrative incompatability: 231 The word commenced is likely to be a remnant of the passage having being composed separately and later inserted into the narrative. 227 228

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his words seemed to have on the young man who up till now had seemed merely sullen and indifferent to questions. “What can I say? I can’t invent things I haven’t seen to look as if I were trying to help. Why should I confuse matters for you? If you ask me a direct question I will answer if I can.” “I am talking to Miss Owen now, later,” said Love coldly. Dane looked suddenly humble. “May I stay?” Love nodded to him to sit down, and turned again to the girl. “When you came in by the side door at half past eleven what was happening in the house did you hear anything?” “No. I did see Mr Marshall just coming out of the dining room, and I waited a moment till he got back to the study as I didn’t want to meet him.” Love turned to Dane again. “Now what about that car that was there at eleven?” “Yes, I noticed it too. There was a car stopped up the road at eleven.”232 “Do you remember how long it was there?” “No, I didn’t stay watching it. If it didn’t go on again it certainly put its headlights out, or I would have noticed it when I went out again, but the way to the station is in the opposite direction.” “I am aware of the fact,” said Love sharply. “You said you wanted to ask me something.” “Miss Owen wishes to leave Graylands. Have you anything against it?” “No so long as she stays in Ripton.” “That’s no good at all,” said Dane gloomily. “Where does she want to go?” “To London for a week or so until this affair is cleared up. We can’t get married until it is.” “No,” said the Inspector decidedly. “I may need to question her again. She can’t go farther than Ripton for the present.” Young Marshall and the girl exchanged glances showing annoyance at the situation. “You see,” said Dane trying to speak in a conciliatory manner, “your discovery of our ... engagement, makes it awkward for her to remain here, and Ripton is pretty much as bad. The place is buzzing with our affairs as it is.” “I am afraid I can’t consider your private feelings in the matter. My job is to clear up the mystery of your father’s death which is a more important matter.” “Yes, yes of course,” said Dane.233 Owen felt perhaps that he was not managing the situation with tact. She turned to the Inspector. “Perhaps it would be possible if I stay on here. It would be much more convenient all round if I stayed, for you not to mention that you know about us.” “I’m not here to talk. Your private affairs are no interest to me except in so far as they may affect the case.” “I think I had better stay here Dane,” the girl said in an undertone.

“Yes, ^I noticed it too.^ There was a car ^stopped up the road at^ at eleven” (TS2, 114). A pencil note in the left margin reads: INSET look of frankness (TS2, 114). This refers to the material typed and written in pencil on the leaf between TS2, 115 and 116. There exist contradictions between this passage and the interview as it is conducted above: Dane is in the room but in the new material enters and interrupts an interview between Love and Owen; and the subject of the car parked nearby at 11 p.m. on the night of the murder is revisited, as though it has not been spoken of by Dane to this point. For these reasons the contents of that page are placed in Appendix 2. 232 233

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“I’m very much against it, but I suppose there is nothing to be done,” he answered in the same tone. The Inspector chose to consider the subject as closed and turned to the girl again, notebook in hand. “You say you saw Mr Marshall in the garden house, that is at the end of the garden. How did you notice any car from there?” “We met in the garden house. As it got to be near time for me to go in I walked up the garden to the gate with him, and stayed there talking until I heard the car in the distance.” “And you noticed nothing unusual in the house when you went back, even the slightest thing?” “No, the first time at eleven I said a few words to Mullins, and then went to my room, and came down again directly, and the second time I saw Mr Marshall, but there was nothing unusual in that.”234 “And didn’t you notice the car again?” “No,” repeated Owen patiently. “Were you where you would have seen it if it had been there?” “Yes, I went out to the front gate. I certainly should have seen it if the lights had been on.” “But not otherwise?” “No it was too far to have seen it in the dark.” The Inspector beat a tattoo with his finger on the table. He said nothing. Dane Marshall fidgeted. Owen looked at him in a warning and beseeching manner as if begging him to be patient. “Well that’s all,” said Love, suddenly coming out of his meditation. “I’m staying here for a bit. I don’t need you anymore now.” The lovers accepted his abrupt intimation as permission to go, and left the room. Love brought his map of Graylands and the neighbourhood and studied it with renewed care. The map showed up the Doctor’s discovery clearly.235

CHAPTER 15 Dr Whitby strolled along Dean Street in a leisurely manner. He was early for his appointment and he preferred, as he had to wait, to do so in the open air and get the benefit of what little pallid sunshine found its way to the lower level of Dean Street.236 Inspector Love had asked his friend to lunch with him at Carpentier’s. Whitby did not know the place, but he knew Love and his tastes well enough to feel sage in expecting a really good lunch. He had stopped to look at a poster. At that moment a man who was coming along at a great speed behind him bumped into him rather hard. The man called out “sorry” in a long cheerful voice and hurried on. Whitby looked after and saw him turn into Carpentier’s restaurant. The doctor wondered where he had seen the man

“No, the first time at eleven I said a few words to Mullins, and then went to my room, and came down again directly, ^and the second time I saw Mr Marshall, but there was nothing unusual in that”^ (TS2, 115). The left margin bears a pencil note: Where was Dane when Owen went in at eleven? Car? 235 The final sentence is followed by a pencil addition in the left margin: ^The map showed up the Doctor’s discovery clearly^ (TS2, 115). 236 A pencil addition is indicated above the line, which reads: the lower level (pavement), 6 feet from pavement (TS2, 116). 234

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before. He was a tall rather heavy man with a long untidy black beard. His shoulders Whitby noticed had quite filled Carpentier’s small doorway. The doctor thought him a man of about forty or thereabouts. “Must be a painter. Looks as if he had come straight from the Dôme.”237 Whitby had a few recollections of the Montparnasse artist colony of before the war, and of the Café Royal as it was in the old days.238 He wondered idly who the man would be lunching with, and amused himself picking out from the women passing by any he thought attractive and wondering if she were the one whom the painter would presumably be waiting for. However no woman who looked as if she could possibly suit the requirements of the man inside passed, and Whitby turned his attention to other matters. Suddenly the name he had been searching came back to him: “Rodney.” The man was Rodney of course – he had often seen his face in the papers. A painter of very modern tendencies, he had for years been a scandal to the British philistine. He seemed to delight in annoying them in carefully thought out manners. However lately he had seemed to be making some compromise to the public taste. A few years ago the idea of Rodney exhibiting at the Royal Academy would have seemed an impossibility, or a joke. Rodney himself would have looked upon such a suggestion as an insult, and would have probably tried to bring a libel action against anyone who made it. He had not exhibited in England, except for a few shows in a small gallery in Bond Street. These shows had bewildered the public and infuriated the critics, who wrote columns of insult. Rodney, therefore, if not appreciated, was very well known. People “knew the name.” Then for long he had disappeared abroad where rumour had it he was taken quite seriously.239 This year, to everyone’s surprise, he had for the first time been hung in the Academy.240 The picture was a portrait of Margela Marshall. The faithful few of his early followers were horrified and bewildered. They were used to his haggard Venuses, and could not understand when they were confronted with a type of female beauty as conceived by Alma Tadema or Sir Frederick Leighton, a type they had been taught to scoff at by Rodney himself.241 The public however knew what it liked.

The Dôme café in Montparnasse, Paris, was a regular haunt of artists, writers and intellectuals from its inception in 1898. It was unofficially known as the “Anglo-American café,” and appears in such novels and memoirs as Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Anaîs Nin’s Delta of Venus, Simone de Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Age of Reason. Besides Pound and his circle in the 1920s, notable Dômiers also include Aleister Crowley, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani, Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The café became the setting for crime fiction when Elliot Paul published The Mysterious Mickey Finn: or Murder at the Café du Dôme in 1939. 238 In the late nineteenth century Arthur Symonds and Ernest Dowson were at the centre of a literary salon in the Café Royal in Regent Street, London, which aimed to provide a place for artists and writers to meet and confer on the model of Parisian café culture. Some of its famous visitors include Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine – adding enormous kudos to Dowson’s and Symonds’s aims. Other habitués included Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw, James McNeill Whistler, W. B. Yeats, as well as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists, and even F. T. Marinetti and the Italian Futurists. It later became popular with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, as well as with Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, Harold Nicholson and Kenneth Clark. Curiously perhaps, it also attracted some of the luminaries of detective fiction, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton. 239 People “knew the name.” ^Then for a long he had disappeared abroad where rumour had it he was taken quite seriously^ (TS2, 117). 240 This year, ^to everyone’s surprise,^ he had ^for the first time been hung^ in the academy (TS2, 117). 241 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) was a Dutch painter who settled in England in the 1870s, and was made a British Denizen by Queen Victoria in 1873. His style intersected with the techniques of the Pre-Raphaelite 237

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It liked Rodney’s new manner. The public also took great credit to itself for being able to appreciate anything by a man who had so great a reputation for being “modern” as had Rodney. His former admirers consoled themselves with the story that was going around among their inner circle that the painting was a joke on Rodney’s part, that he had vowed to give the public what it liked. To show that he could do so if he wanted to and for that reason had presented them with a carefully finished canvas of a carefully chosen young lady – “the right kind of girl” exactly like every other “peach” in the philistine orchard, but superlatively large and downy. The public’s collective leg however was not to be pulled so easily. The public really knew what it liked and when it was given it accepted it without questioning the donor, so the joke, if it had been intended as such fell rather flat, and Rodney was said to be already heartily sick of the fatted calf which was being offered him in various quarters. He was also said in these parts, and Chelsea, to be delighted with the fatted calf, depending on which younger artists he had “appreciated” or failed to appreciate.242 Whitby had already walked up and down for five minutes when he saw Love, punctual to the second, appearing in the distance. Just before he reached the door of the restaurant two men passed him and went in ahead. Whitby gave them a hurried glance and thought they must be father and son. The father, if it was the father, was a florid amiable selfsatisfied looking man, the son like the father in feature and manner but minus the selfsatisfaction. But Whitby got the impression that his full glory was dimmed as it were by the presence of his parent, and that if the father had not been there he too would have beamed contentment. “Do you know who those two are?” said Love coming up at that moment. “No, they look like father and son.” “They are the Bembergs,” said the Inspector. “Never heard of them.” “Friends of the Marshalls. Wonder how they found this place? We don’t get their sort here as a rule – not enough gilt.” How the Bembergs had found Carpentier’s was soon apparent. Whitby followed Love into the tiny restaurant. Carpentier himself bustled up seeing Love to find him the best table available. The table he gave them was next to the one where the Bembergs had just sat down with Rodney. Whitby and Love exchanged amused glances. “Funny combination,” remarked the detective. “Wonder what they are up to? Old man Bemberg trying to get Rodney to paint the portraits of his six daughters at a reduced rate on the half-dozen.” “Yes,” answered the doctor, “and young Bemberg who probably introduced Father to Rodney there to remind him of the commission if the deal comes off.” While Love and Carpentier were discussing the menu Whitby looked round the room. It was the first time he had been there. It was a low room with about twenty tables crowded

painters, and his concentration on historical themes (Ancient Egypt, Merovingian, and especially Classical Greece and Rome) saw his reputation eclipsed with the rise of the artistic avant-garde in the early twentieth century. Sir Frederick Leighton (1830–1896) became a Royal Academician in 1868 and rose to become its president in 1878. His focus on historical themes, particularly classical and biblical themes, drew him into the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tomb in Florence in 1861. He was awarded an hereditary peerage in the 1896 New Year Honours List but died the next day without heirs. 242 This sentence is added in pencil in Pound’s hand up the left margin. It extends the critique of the vanities of the artistic public, as well as the professional rivalries among artistic practitioners themselves.

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together, no different to other little Soho French restaurants, except that the food was better. Carpentier saw to that. Whitby watched amusedly as Carpentier suggested to Love what to order. He wondered if Love realized that he had been made to change the menu of the meal he had first ordered. Carpentier suggesting other things so discretely in place of it, making all his suggestions seem to come from Love himself, that one hardly realized what he had done. “Somebody there who seems to know you,” said the Inspector. Whitby half turned to look in the direction Love indicated. He caught the eye of a man on the other side of the room and nodded to him. “That’s Wade,” he explained. “We were at Guys together – used to see a lot of him at one time. He used to be a friend of Rodney’s by the way. He was a painter before he took up medicine. Took up anatomy to help him with his work, got interested in it and dropped painting. He is a very good surgeon.” “Do you think he still sees Rodney?” Whitby was answering the question at length but he noticed that Love was really not listening to what he was saying. So he shut up. The Inspector had stopped eating. He had a vague faraway look in his eyes. Whitby thought for a moment that he had swallowed a fish bone. Whitby stopped talking and watched him. After a moment Love said, “Sorry, what was it you were saying? I was trying to follow something at the next table.” He gave a quick glance in the direction of Rodney’s party. “They are talking about Corradium,” he said. “Ever heard of it?” “No,” answered Whitby, wondering what it could be. He too strained his attention to catch what was the subject of conversation at the next table. He heard the word “shares” and gathered that it was a company of some kind. Old Bemberg was trying to get his son to remember just when Corradium had commenced to go down. Rodney who presumably had no interest in the company was looking bored, but Mr Bemberg was on a subject that really interested him and he continued. “Who was it anyway gave you the tip to buy Corradium Ronald?” he asked his son. “Dane Marshall.” “Young Marshall, how did he get on to it?” “His father, I suppose. We haven’t heard of it officially at Holborn yet.” Rodney, who did not care to remain silent long, abruptly turned the subject to one which interested himself, and Love losing his vague expression remembered his duties as host. The doctor’s friend on the other side of the room stopped on his way out to speak to Whitby. “Hello, there’s Rodney,” exclaimed Wade. “I didn’t notice him from where I was sitting.” “Do you ever see him now?” said Whitby. “Hadn’t seen him for years, then he turned up at a studio party at the Harrises last Sunday.” “Last Sunday, do you happen to remember at what time?” said Love. Wade looked a trifle surprised at the abrupt question, but answered readily enough. “It must have been between half past ten and quarter to eleven. He only stayed a few minutes.” He turned to Whitby. “He came to get Flossie Melvill. You must have seen her at least.” “At least is good, yes I’ve seen her,” said the doctor. “Is she vamping Rodney?” “Some talk about something of the kind at Harrises.” “Flossie Melvill,” said Love. “Isn’t that the woman who is on at the Empire now?”

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“Yes, you should see her, she does a really good turn.” “What about a matinee this afternoon Whitby?”243 “Righto,” said the doctor. “I’d like to see Flossie again. We can go behind and meet her after if you like.” “Oh you know her? Splendid, yes, I would like very much to meet her.” The doctor’s friend declined to join them at the Empire, and hurried off to an appointment in a few minutes. Rodney and his friends also left very soon. Love was glad that neither the son nor the father had seen him, apparently. He did not for private reasons specially want them to notice him at that time. Love and the doctor sat on till the room was nearly emptied. They did not want to get to the Empire much before Flossie’s turn, which came in the middle of the show.

CHAPTER 16 Flossie Melvill’s turn had just been announced when Love and the doctor arrived at the theatre. Whitby had seen her both on and off the stage, but not since she had become a star. He had known her more years ago than she would care to remember perhaps. When Flossie first got a job as a first row chorus girl in a musical comedy years ago the position had been the height of her ambition, and she would have laughed at the idea of her name starred as it now was. A broken kneecap had been the commencement of her rise. She had had a bad fall, not while she was upon the stage, but after the show, when full of youthful exuberance she was indulging in what the management termed “monkey shines.” She found herself out of work, with no money put away. It was really the making of her. As she would say to her friends (Flossie’s conversation was almost completely autobiographical), “When me legs gave out I had to fall back on my Brines dearie.” A friend trying to help her had given her an engagement to sing at a small nightclub. Her voice was atrocious, but having had no training she was without the appalling mannerisms common to most singers, and her tremendous vitality and irresistible cheek, combined with the good humour that never failed her and which she was able to communicate to her listeners, carried her through.244 She was a great success to everybody’s surprise, except her own. Flossie was never surprised at anything. Everyone liked her, and she liked everyone with a lack of discrimination that makes for a lot of happiness. Her blunders, her indiscretions (and worse) were so enormous that people began to take them for granted and she could soon get away with “anything.” She was supposed to be never completely sober, but no one could say they had ever seen her really drunk. She was like one of those toy dolls balancing on a ball base, which reeled round all the time but never lose their balance altogether. Whitby was amused to see how little she had changed. Her jolly laugh was exactly the same as he had heard it years ago when he had been treating her broken knee.

The sentence is excised here (TS2, 120). Following from the previous chapter’s critique of public taste and artistic practice, this foray into the philistine tendencies of the performing arts in London serves as a companion diatribe-in-miniature. The textual evidence – Rudge types both chapters, but it is Pound’s handwriting in Chapter 15 and Rudge’s handwriting in this chapter – suggests a collaborative effort, with labour divided according to artistic mode. 243 244

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Her success that afternoon was tremendous. Whitby noticed that Love was enjoying himself hugely. When Flossie commenced “now then all together” the doctor heard a feeble croak on his left joining in the chorus – it was Love. At the end of the turn they went round to the stage door and Whitby sent in his card with a pencilled message. He knew Flossie would not remember any but a friend’s nickname, and usually only the ones she had bestowed herself at that. Flossie snatched the card from her dresser’s hand, gave one glance at Whitby’s illegible doctor’s scrawl and tossed it away. “What a fist, here you read it if you can.” When she took in who was waiting to see her she gave a shriek of joy. “Where is he? Bring him in, and his friend, all his friends!” Flossie fell on the doctors neck when he appeared. “There he is, himself as it were! Who’s your friend? Pleased to meet you.” She held out a plump hand to Love. “Here’s another victim for you Flossie, my friend Inspector Love.” “Love is it? Then it’s me is the victim. What are you inspecting Inspector? Nothing to do with the show, my act is guaranteed pure and free from preservatives.” Love murmured some compliment which she hardly heard, being always more interested in what she was saying herself. She stopped suddenly in her burbling and turned to the doctor. “Look you boys will have to toddle off now. I’ve got another show tonight. I’ve got to rest, must think of my voice you know.” She burst into trills and runs in burlesque imitation of a prima donna. “Why Flossie I’ve hardly had a word with you. Let us take you back to where you belong anyway.” “I’ve got me own car now luvvie. But I tell you what, I’ll take you boys along with me and give you one little drink at my place, and then you hop it. It’s really on your account I’m giving in to him Inspector” – she turned graciously to the Inspector – “all on account of your name Love!”245 She sang the last word on two notes with the seasick swoop of a ballad concert contralto.246 The gorgeous car waiting was Flossie’s, as she explained with satisfaction. She still lived in the sordid looking house in Doughty Street where she had been when the doctor first knew her, because, as she explained to Love, her landlady had been “a mother and more to the orphan child” and she hadn’t the heart to leave her. Flossie had the two rooms on the ground floor, and she had also what she called her studio, a room built out over what once had been the garden. It was a large, comfortable and unpretentious room. Two large chesterfields were at right angles to the open fireplace. There was practically no other furniture so as to leave room for dancing. A small and well-stocked bar had been built in to one corner, and in the other was a huge table that Flossie devoted to her floral tributes. She would never have thought of buying flowers for herself. The place was refreshingly free from junk. Flossie was not acquisitive. Besides she was hardly ever up in the daytime, so if she had had the shopping instinct she would not have been able to gratify it. The chauffeur who was also general factotum soon produced what was Flossie’s idea of a little drink. The doctor caught a piteous look from Love who never drank cocktails,

“It’s really on your account I’m giving in to him Inspector”––^she turned graciously to the Inspector^––“all on account of your name Love!” (TS2, 123–124). 246 She sang the last word on two notes with the seasick swoop of a ballad concert contralto (TS2, 124). 245

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and with a little sleight of hand cleverly substituted an empty glass for the one that was embarrassing the Inspector so much. Flossie was turning the gramophone on.247 “I’ve been hearing about you from Wade, Flossie,” said the doctor. “That man! Don’t believe a word he says about me.” “Why not, he only said nice things.” “The other night he said to Harris, loud enough for me to hear him, that I looked like a mug of beer.” “Tut tut! You must have mistaken. He could never say a thing so absurd,” said the doctor, thinking privately that Wade’s simile was not a bad one. “I heard him all right,” continued Flossie indignantly. “I wasn’t going to stay in that house another minute. Harris hasn’t any idea how to manage a party. As soon as my friend came I left.” “Oh, that was the party last Sunday night was it? I heard you left early.” “Yes I went off with Rod for a drive in his Tin Lizzie.248 You ought to see that car. If we broke down once we broke down ten times. I thought we would never get home, but nothing ever worries me. I went to sleep.” A door banged outside. “I shouldn’t wonder if that was him now – hullo Rod!” as the door opened and Rodney strode in. It was characteristic of the man that he could never be said to walk but to “stride.” He flung the cane he had brought in with him on to the nearest table with a clatter, and fell into an armchair heavily with touching confidence in its springs. He grunted in reply to Flossie’s greeting, his manner indicating that he was fed up with things in general. “Floss I want a drink.” “All right, after you have said how de do nicely,” and Flossie named the three men to one another. “I’m too tired to talk,” said Rodney, “don’t expect it of me.” “What’s the trouble then duckie?” cooed Flossie. “Carburettor, plugs, valves?” “Madam, I know not and a greatly care not. I know Percy sat down in the middle of Tottenham Court Road and refused to budge.” Rodney turned to Love hopefully. “You are not looking for a car by any chance are you? I’ve got one I’d be willing to sell cheap.” “Rod, none of that. I’ve been telling them about that car of yours. I haven’t forgotten sitting for hours in the cold the other night, not knowing if I’d ever get home, and you enjoying yourself monkeying with the insides of the thing, not even throwing me a word.” “I like that. You had a fur coat and two rugs. You were fast asleep from the moment we got out of town. You wouldn’t even have known we had stopped at all if I hadn’t told you.” Flossie squealed indignantly. “I like that! I know everything we did, we …” “Left London at 10.30. At Sufton had to stop owing to a puncture. Went on, at Ripton South asked your way. Passing through Ripton Common another breakdown. Mr Rodney walked to Bill’s garage and knocked them up. Car righted, brought back here and left in garage down the road for the night.”

Flossie’s ^was turning the^ gramophone on (TS2, 124). The “Tin Lizzie” was the Model T Ford, sales of which in England rose very rapidly during the 1920s.

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The Inspector stopped speaking. He had not opened his mouth before the whole time he had been in Flossie’s place. She looked amazed. “Who is the sleuth Floss?” Rodney was grinning broadly. “What else do you know?” said Flossie laughing a shade nervously. “My indiscretion only centres around Ripton for the present. Graylands to be exact,” said Love. “Oh, the Marshall murder?” Rodney said. “Who is that?” Floss asked him. “Precisely.”249 The telephone rang at precisely this moment. “Hello,” said Flossie, unhooking the receiver. “Yer … hang on.” “A lady for you Rod, name age and sex not stated.” “Christable!” Rodney peevishly hurled himself out of his chair and grabbed the receiver. “Yes … no I’m not … I can’t say … perhaps.” He hung up violently. “Ouf,” he heaved a mock sigh of relief, and turned to the Inspector. “I’ll tell you one thing, if there’s anything you want to know anytime about anybody you go and ask my wife. She knows everything.” He was going to fling himself back into his comfortable chair when Flossie put herself in front of it. “Rod no sitting down again, you’ve got to go now all of you.” Whitby and Love took themselves off and had the tact not to wait for Rodney. “You know she is a good creature,” said Whitby as they walked down Doughty Street in search of a taxi. “Yes,” answered Love rather absently, then: “Queer all these new details.” “What do you mean?” “Why, that it was Rodney’s car. I’d traced it back to Doughty Street garage, but I didn’t know whose it was. I had a report about a car that stopped on Ripton Sunday night long ago.” “Yes but I don’t see …” “Ripton Common is a stone’s throw from Graylands. Rodney left your little friend alone in the car, for how long, we don’t know. She doesn’t, she says she was asleep.” “Still I shouldn’t think …” “No, neither should I,” said Love. “Still, I’ve got to look into it. There are several things about that crime I would really like to know.” “Ask Mrs Rodney,” the doctor laughed. “Quite seriously I probably will,” said Love. A taxi passed then, the two men got in. “Waterloo.” Love brought out his note book and to Whitby’s intense discomfort began his sotto voce humming. “Really Love, in a small taxi,” he protested. “What …” said Love vaguely. “Oh, sorry …” He stopped a moment. By the time they had got to Tottenham Court Road he was at it again. The doctor suffered in silence.250

A pencil note in the left margin, in Pound’s hand, reads: Ask re/. gunman’s car (TS2, 126). Pound adds two pencil notes at the bottom of the page. The first reads: strange car seen or not seen. The second reads: fori sq. another damn blank (TS2, 127). The verso side of the leaf has another pencil note in Pound’s hand: Rodney doesn’t notice – Flossie might notice it. 249 250

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CHAPTER 17 Whitby was in his study, trying to persuade himself that he was working, but in reality his mind was wandering. He wondered what Love was up to, and why he had had no news of him. “Hello, Whitby.” Love stood in the open French window. He had come up the gravel path so quietly that Whitby, who was sitting with his back turned, had not heard him. The doctor had often noticed the Inspector’s cat like lightness in walking. “I’ve got some news that will please you.” “Good.” The Doctor judged from Love’s manner that the news though good was not superlatively good. He got out the decanter and poured Love a drink before asking any questions. The Inspector tantalized him for some minutes by saying nothing further. Whitby knew Love was reticent always, and never so much so as when he had anything to tell. Then he would delight in procrastinating, not with the idea of annoying his hearer, but as if he could not bear to part with his precious bit of information. After five minutes patience on the doctor’s part Love repeated, “I have some news that will really please you.” “Why so?” The doctor thought that he had waited long enough to risk a question.251 “Oh that fellow Bryde you all seem to like. Can’t see anything in it myself, given me a lot of useless trouble.” “What about him? Did he do it?” “You mean shoot Marshall? No he didn’t do it.” Whitby looked pleased, he had for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom been sorry for the surly chauffeur. “Good, that always makes one suspect less for you anyway.” “Umph, well anyway we have found an alibi for him all right.” The Inspector was not sharing his friend’s good humour. He slumped down in a chair.252 “How did you find it?” The doctor wished Love would not need some prompting. “I found it,” he answered, “I didn’t find it. It turned up as most of our best bits of evidence seem to do. Chance found it.” He relapsed into silence again. After waiting a few minutes the doctor exasperated got up as if to leave the room. “Where are you going? I was just going to tell you about that alibi. However it will keep if you are busy.” “No do go on,” said the doctor. He sat down again, very pleased with the success of his little strategy. He knew if Love could be only started talking it would be all right. The difficulty lay in getting him started. “It’s all come up indirectly, very lucky for Bryde. I never believed a word he said.” “His manner is certainly unfortunate,” said Whitby. “Well you know that girl over there, what’s her name, sister of the other one, Mullins.” “I know the one you mean, the girl was ill. Mullins’s younger sister.” “Yes,” said Love, “that’s the one. She has had to go to hospital and they have got a temporary girl in. She turns out to have a very good alibi for Bryde.”

A pencil note in Rudge’s hand in the left margin reads: then who did the damn revolver?? (TS2, 128). The Inspector was not sharing his friend’s good humour. ^He slumped down in a chair^ (TS2, 128).

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“Why didn’t he give her instead of Bute then, the perfect gentleman? Cherchez la femme I suppose.”253 “No, nothing of that. She only confirms what Bryde said at first, and which Bute would have confirmed all right if he hadn’t been run over by that lorry. However he has confirmed it now.” “Who Bute?” said the doctor completely mystified. “I thought he had been killed?” “He was killed all right, poor chap. This new girl working over there now turns out to be his fiancée.” “Bute’s fiancée? Was she with them that night?” “Don’t jump to conclusions” said Love severely. “This girl had never seen Bryde in her life before she went to Graylands for the first time. Yesterday that was, but the very morning of the day he was run over Bute had posted her a letter in which he mentions having walked home from the club the night before with a chap called Bryde.” “Curious that, and her turning up at Graylands after.” “Yes, Bute wrote very long winded letters. He goes into a lot of details. Bryde had some gramophone he wanted to sell, and Bute was thinking of buying it and so he walked all the way back with him, talking it over.” “And the letter is genuine you are sure?” “Hmph, genuine, I should think so. I’ve spent nearly all day looking into that. There is no chance of its being a put up job. The girl apparently had never heard of Bryde before and wouldn’t have in all likelihood unless she had turned up at the house over there where I don’t doubt they talk of nothing but Bryde from morning till night in the kitchen.” The doctor’s man came in with a note for him. Whitby glanced at it and jumped up.254 “Don’t go yet Love, I’ll be back in five minutes,” said the doctor, leaving the room. “I’m in no hurry now, in fact I may want to stay to dinner.” “Good, I’ll tell them in the kitchen.” The doctor came in again after a few minutes. “Look here, Bryde is outside now. He came to me with a story of something he has been keeping from you. I said that I’d ask you not to be too hard on him if he would make a clean breast of it.” “Nuisance that fellow is,” said Love. “Well let’s have him in.” The doctor put his head outside the door and called out to Bryde to come in. He came into the room sheepishly. “I don’t know if the doctor has explained to you sir,” he began hesitatingly. “You’ve been holding something back as I thought from the first,” said Love. “What is it?” “I hope you won’t blame me for it too much, but things looked so bad for me, what with having been seen in the garden that night, and then Bute who could have cleared me being killed like that and me having no other alibi. I thought I would keep quiet and not risk making things any blacker for myself.” He stopped as if expecting Love to speak but he said nothing and so Bryde went on.255

“Why didn’t he give her instead of Bute then, ^the perfect gentleman?^ Cherchez le femme I suppose” (TS2, 129). 254 The doctor’s man came in which a note for him. ^Whitby glanced at it and jumped up^ (TS2, 130). 255 He stopped as if expecting Love to speak but he said nothing and so Bryde went on (TS2, 131). 253

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“It’s about that revolver. I got it from Daniels in the morning but I never gave it back to Mr Marshall.” “Ah,” said Love, “then what did you do with it?” “Nothing, I don’t know what happened to it.” “Explain yourself. You don’t know what happened to it? What do you mean?” “I mean I left it in the garage and then I don’t know what happened to it. It was gone when I came back in the afternoon. I meant to take it to the house before lunch, but I forgot and after when I went back to the garage where I had left it it had gone.” “Do you mean it was stolen?” “I don’t know. I thought at first that Mr Marshall had found it himself and taken it, and I was expecting him to say something to me about it. He would have been put out I know at my not bringing it to him at once, and he didn’t miss a chance to make a row I can tell you.” “And didn’t he ask you about it?” “No not a word. He didn’t know I had gone to Daniels for certain. I had a good many things to do in town Saturday and he said to go to Daniels if I had time and if not go Monday.” “Have you any idea who took it?”256 “No, it might have been master, only it wasn’t very like him to say nothing about it.” “What time did you go back to the garage?” “At three. I had hurried away after lunch to the gardener’s cottage. I wanted to have a word with him. When I got back I noticed the revolver was gone. I had left it on the shelf. Anybody could have seen what it was.” “Well I must say that for anyone who is innocent you behave more like a criminal than any I have seen. You don’t seem to realize how you’ve been wasting my time. What time did you take the car out that afternoon?” Whitby had rarely seen Love show such annoyance. “At three, I took Mrs Marshall and Miss Margela over to Curleigh.” “Anyone could have got in to the garage through the garden door,” said Love bitterly. “Where did you leave it, in full view I suppose?” “I just put it on the shelf. Anyone who came in could have seen it of course, only we have never had anyone try to get in the garden from the back door. It’s in full view of the house.” “Look at all the time you have lost me you fool,” said the Inspector violently. Bryde shuffled uneasily where he stood. “I didn’t think. It was Bute’s death so sudden like that got me.” “You should have told me from the very first. You have concealed most important evidence.” The miserable chauffeur tried to think of something to say, but found nothing. “How could anyone tell it was a revolver on the shelf? Was it in a box? How did you get it from Daniels?” “They had a box for it, but it was just too big for the pocket of my uniform so I left it on the counter and slipped the revolver in my pocket.” “And then you left it in full view for any one to pick up who happened to come into the garage. Yes I think if Mr Marshall had known he would have had something to

A blue pencil note in Pound’s hand in the left margin reads: Put in what rev’s wrapped up in (TS2, 131).

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say about it. Now before you go,” said Love with heavy sarcasm, “can you remember anything else you have overlooked?” “No sir.” “Hmph.” Love ignored both the doctor and Bryde who was standing uneasily in the middle of the room, and appeared to be deep in thought. Whitby, taking pity on the unlucky chauffeur, nodded to him to go, and Bryde muttering confusedly, “if there is nothing else you want me for,” got himself out of the room. Love got up and started fidgeting around the room. “Just look at the time that’s been lost. All the work I’ve done for nothing.” Whitby, having no remark to meet the situation, kept a prudent silence.257

CHAPTER 18 Inquest 1258 Love, who was the first to come out of the building, came down the steps wrestling with his umbrella.259 It was cold and windy. He hated rain as much as a cat did, but he waited outside on the sidewalk watching the other people who had been with him at the inquest that morning coming out. Inspector Brooks who followed closely on his heels, stopped to speak to him. The burly Inspector had had a reproof from the coroner about the way the police inspection had been carried on the night of the crime and was not in the best of humours. “Always the way,” he said bitterly. “Plenty of people to tell you how you should have done things afterwards. How was I to make a special search for a revolver in the time under the circumstances I ask you?” Love said a few words to calm him. But Brooks found more consolation in talking himself than in listening. “I ask you, how at that time of night could we make a thorough search of a place the size of Graylands for a thing the size of a revolver? There had been time for it to be hidden before we got there over and over. Besides you know what I think? The son took it away with him when he left.” “And who brought it back? We know he was in London the night that was done.” Brooks had no answer to make and looked more annoyed than before. He had consented only grudgingly to Inspector Love’s warning the evidence about the revolver having been replaced. There was not doubt that the revolver found on the sofa was the one which had killed Mr Marshall, nor was there any doubt of its being Miss Marshall’s.260

Chapter 17 ends near the top of TS2, 133. Underneath is a series of pencil notes, providing a schema by which to weave in Corradium as the MacGuffin holding the entire mystery together. These notes are transcribed in Appendix 3. 258 Chapter 18 is unusual to this point in the typescript, being given its own title: Inquest. The pagination begins again at 1, a pattern for all subsequent chapters in the typescript draft. Consequently, page references now include chapter and page numbers. 259 Love ^who was the first to come out of the building^ came down the steps wrestling with his umbrella (TS2, 18, 1). 260 Only the first sentence in this paragraph exists in the typed text. The remainder is added in pencil up the right margin and across the top of the page (TS2, 18, 1). 257

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“Well, he could have got somebody to put it back. He had to get rid of it some way. He probably thought that would get us on to some other idea about the whole thing,” he said after a moment.261 “Hardly worth the risk I should think, and not so easy to get someone to compromise themselves so seriously as having anything to do with that revolver,” said Love.262 Brooks buttoned his macintosh more closely at the neck. “Well, I can’t stay talking here this weather. Are you coming along?” “No,” said the Inspector “not now, see you later.” He was a miserable sight under his dripping umbrella, with his coat collar turned up. He had come away without an overcoat, and was feeling cold and uncomfortable. At that instant Mrs Marshall’s car, which had not been allowed to park outside in the narrow old street, came up and before he had time to move back on the pavement out of the way had splashed him from head to foot.263 Love told the chauffeur exactly what he thought of him and why. Bryde mumbled an apology as he brought the car to a standstill. Mrs Marshall appeared on the steps with Mullins and Doctor Whitby. Love moved out of their way. He had no reason to want to see Mrs Marshall and he thought she would rather not see him. He felt she looked as if she couldn’t stand much more, and wondered that she had not tried to avoid the ordeal of appearing at the inquest by pleading sickness. Doctor Whitby helped her slowly down the steps and into the car. Mullins, full of self importance, not at all defused by the rain, got up in front near Bryde. Love, who was waiting for Whitby to join him, was walking slowly on the when he heard the doctor calling to him. He went back. Mrs Marshall lent out of the car. “Inspector let me give you a lift, the doctor is coming with us too.” Love accepted, grateful to get in out of the rain, but embarrassed at accepting the favour. He looked round expecting Miss Marshall who had come down the steps after her mother to join them, but saw that she was just getting into a small two-seater which had drawn up behind them.264 “What was it all about?” said Mrs Marshall as soon as Bryde closed the door. “What was it annoyed Inspector Brooks? I saw he looked put out.” “The coroner thought the police had not made a thorough search after they came Sunday night,” Whitby answered in his clear precise voice which the deaf woman seemed to understand. Mrs Marshall gave a pale little smile. “Search! Poor fellow, I should think they knew more about that house than I did by the time they had finished.” The Inspector was feeling very uncomfortable – Mrs Marshall looked to him as if she might collapse at any moment. He glanced meaningly at the doctor who understood evidently what was worrying him. “She is all right, plenty of stamina,” he murmured in an undertone. “What was the talk with the other doctor about, the one who came from the police?” The widow was not going to be left in ignorance if she could help it.

“Well, he could have got ^somebody^ to put it back. He had to get rid of it some way. He probably thought that would get us on to some other idea about the whole thing,” ^he said after a moment^ (TS2, 18, 1). 262 This sentence is added interlinearly in pencil. 263 ^At that instant^ Mrs Marshall’s car, which had not been allowed to park outside ^in the narrow old street^, came up and before he had time to move back on the pavement out of the way had splashed him from head to foot (TS2, 18, 1–2). 264 This sentence is added in pencil following the typed text. It runs up the right margin and across the top of the page. 261

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Whitby, whom she had addressed, answered rather hesitatingly. “The police doctor disagrees with me. He considers it impossible that the wound should be self-inflicted. I think, on the other hand, that it would not have been impossible. Of course I was the first to see Mr Marshall. I am sorry that my opinion does not carry more weight with the coroner.” “Suicide!” The astonishment in the woman’s voice was obvious. “Speaking technically – it is a wound that might have been self-inflicted. Personally I don’t think it was suicide,” said the doctor. “My husband is the last person one would ever think likely to take his own life,” said Mrs Marshall hesitatingly. “Still I suppose one can never be certain about what even the people one knows best may do under certain circumstances. He had been a very highly strung man all his life. These last weeks he has been unusually nervous.” She looked at both men in turn as if expecting an answer. Neither Whitby nor Love felt there was anything to say. After a few moments silence she took up the question again. “I should not have moved him when you went in the study, then you could have told better what really happened. But how could I stop to think at such a moment? It was dreadful to see him lying there on his face. I wanted to help him.” Her voice trembled, and she broke off. “You need not blame yourself. It would have made no difference in today’s verdict,” the doctor spoke.265 “You forget that the weapon being missing is what makes suicide out of the question.” “You have seen my husband when he was alive doctor. Do you think that he looked like a man who could commit suicide?” “It would be impossible for me to say. I never considered him from that point of view. I’ve only met him for a minute or two. He certainly showed no obvious signs of a such a temperament that any doctor would notice. His own medical man might have an opinion.” Mrs Marshall may have heard but she looked vaguely at the doctor and made no comment. She must be talking out of sheer nervousness, he thought. He felt a sudden pity for the frail little woman. Why had her daughter not stayed to bring her home? It looked unkind he thought, the tragedy in the Marshall family had evidently estranged the remaining members of it, instead of uniting them as might be expected.266 The scene at the inquest came back to him with startling clearness. Miss Marshall had answered the few perfunctory questions put to her in a nearly inaudible tone of voice. She looked very pretty in her black dress. Whitby had noticed, with the cynical amusement of a bachelor hardened against womanly wiles, that she was carefully made up, but in a natural manner, her lips touched with a pink instead of a red lipstick which would have called attention to the fact that they were too full and firm in line by nature. She had been questioned first, then Mrs Marshall, then Mullins. Inspector Brooks’s part in the affair coming in for a few unpleasant remarks that even Love felt were not justified. Mullins had been so terrified at first that she could hardly speak, but being gently treated she soon picked up courage and the doctor could see that she was beginning to enjoy the experience. He watched her sitting next to the chauffeur in the front of the car, talking animatedly, telling Bryde all about it, thought the doctor.267

Whitby’s first sentence is added in pencil in the left margin (TS2, 18, 3). The sentences He felt a sudden pity […] as might be expected are added in pencil up the right margin. 267 This long paragraph narrates Whitby’s recollections of the inquest and his various character assessments. It appears in pencil on the verso of TS2, 18, 3. 265 266

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Mrs Marshall broke the silence suddenly.268 “If the weapon had been found do you think that there was likelihood of its being considered suicide?” She came back to the subject persistently. Love looked at her curiously. This time she had addressed herself directly to him.269 “Fingerprints,” he said. “Fingerprints?” she repeated after him. “There would have to be fingerprints, Mr Marshall’s fingerprints, if he did it himself.” “Yes, yes of course.” “And,” continued Love, “there were no fingerprints on the revolver that was put back in the room.” The car which had been running slowly on account of the wet slippery roads stopped in front of Graylands. Mrs Marshall sighed and seemed to be collecting all her strength for the effort of getting out of the car and into the house. She put her hand on the Inspector’s arm. “If you only knew my son, you would know that what you suspect him of is impossible. It was just a dreadful coincidence that he came down to Ripton that night. I know he didn’t do it,” she pleaded – looking anxiously for some sign of agreement with her on Love’s part. “I wish he had not been here,” said the Inspector, who was embarrassed by her direct appeal to him. The doctor and Mullins, one on each side of her, got her slowly into the house. Love followed them. He stopped outside the front door to shake his dripping umbrella.270 The rain had stopped suddenly and there was an agreeable freshness in the air. It might be a fine day after all, he thought, and at the moment a ray of sun came out as if in confirmation of his thought. He stepped inside the front door to wait in the hall till the doctor came. Whitby, who had taken Mrs Marshall up to her room, came down in a few minutes.271 “Curious little woman,” he said. “She was so calm at the inquest where one might expect her to have broken down. It has quite exhausted her though.” They stood there in the hall, the doctor preparing to go back to his work, and Love getting as much wet off his coat as he could with a handkerchief.272 At that moment Love was more interested in whether his feet were wet than in Mrs Marshall and he only grunted. A small dried up looking old man came out of the morning room. Love had not seen him before and wondered if he were a relation. Though there was no physical resemblance to any of the Marshalls he seemed quite at home. He looked from the doctor to the Inspector then back again.273

This sentence is added in pencil in the top margin of the page (TS2, 18, 4). Love looked at her curiously. ^This time she had addressed herself directly to him^ (TS2, 18, 4). 270 The typescript records Whitby following the group into the house, which is impossible as he and Mullins assist Mrs Marshall. This is a clear slip of the typewriter, where Love should appear at this point instead. 271 ^He stepped inside the front door to wait in the hall till the doctor came^ (TS2, 18, 4). 272 They stood there in the hall, the doctor preparing to go back to his work, and Love getting ^as much wet off his coat as he could with a handkerchief.^ (TS2, 18, 5). 273 A ^small dried up looking old^ man came out of the morning room. ^Love had not seen him before and wondered if he were a relation. Though there was no physical resemblance to any of the Marshalls he seemed quite at home. He looked from the doctor to the Inspector then back again^ (TS2, 18, 5). 268 269

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“Is this Dr Whitby?” he said in a jerky abrupt manner.274 “My name is Brinkly. What was the coroner’s verdict may I ask?” “Murder by person or persons unknown.” “Terrible thing, incomprehensible, how is Mrs Marshall?” “She is feeling the strain of course.” “She won’t see me I suppose.” “I heard her just say that she would see no one. It has been a terrible ordeal for her this morning.” Mr Brinkly fidgeted about the hall. Whitby thought he wanted to say more to him, but as he was busy he saw no reason why he should hang round while Mr Brinkly was thinking what to say, so he left hurriedly. “You are Inspector Love I take it?” said the old man. “Yes.” The Inspector felt he could waste a few minutes talking while he waited for the weather to clear a bit more. “My name is Brinkly,” he repeated, as if Love had not just heard him make that statement to Whitby.275 “I am Mrs Marshall’s lawyer, and a very old friend of the family besides. Tell me, where are those children? Weren’t they there this morning?” “Miss Marshall went away with a friend after the inquest. She was called but she knew nothing to throw any light on the matter. Her brother was not there. We are likely to need him soon,” said the detective, adding meaningfully, “we have him under observation.” “Observation,” the old man said scornfully. “He is a nice specimen to observe I must say. We are speaking of you sir,” he added briskly to Dane who came in then from the garden. The young man stood quietly while Mr Brinkly, who had seemingly lost all command of himself, raved at him for some minutes. “Fine son I must say. Allow your mother this humiliation, your name in all the yellow papers, just because you want to keep your precious private affairs to yourself. If you killed your brute of a father, and Lord knows I’m the last to reproach you with it, say so like a man, and let’s have done with this intolerable situation. It is killing your mother, it is …” Brinkly seemed to realise that he was saying too much and stopped suddenly. Love was interested in seeing how the young man stood the tirade. Dane looked sulky and stubborn. He did not try to answer – he just waited for the old man to finish. When he saw that both Love and Brinkly were expecting some kind of an answer from him he said defiantly: “If you are not all tired of asking the same questions over and over, I am of answering. I say for the last time I know nothing of what occurred Sunday. I was not in the house at the time of the shooting. Where I was is nobody’s business but my own. It’s up to you now Inspector,” and turning he walked away into the garden again, slamming the side door violently after himself.276 Brinkly looked rather ashamed of himself for this outburst.

“Is this Dr Whitby,” ^he said in a jerky abrupt manner^ (TS2, 18, 5). “My name is Brinkly,” ^he repeated, as if Love had not just heard him make that statement to Whitby^ (TS2, 18, 5). 276 “I was not ^in the house at the time of the shooting.^ Where I was is nobody’s business but my own. It’s up to you now Inspector,” and turning he walked away ^into the garden again, slamming the side door violently after himself^ (TS2, 18, 6). 274 275

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“Of course Inspector I have not the slightest idea that Dane is guilty, only he is so exasperating with his mysteries – I suppose he has some intrigue with a married woman or some such foolishness up his sleeve, and is trying to do what he has been taught to believe is ‘the right thing.’ All rot, probably – feels himself a hero, no thought of his poor mother of course.” The Inspector did not feel impelled to point out to Mrs Marshall’s champion that since the revolver had been replaced during Dane’s absence, it was possible that perhaps she herself knew as much of the matter as Dane. That someone from inside the house had replaced it he felt convinced. These things he kept to himself. He gave an anxious glance out of doors, decided that the rain had stopped for the moment at least, and with a short “good day” that cut Mr Brinkly’s complaints short, he left the house.

CHAPTER 19 Garage Inspector Love trudged along the muddy road in deep thought. Any one who had seen him might well have thought he was meditating on some most important clue. As a matter of fact he was meditating, but on a subject that had nothing to do with crime. At one moment he stopped, seemed undecided and half turned as if to go back, then he thought better of it and walked on quickly, head down, all his attention given to dodging puddles.277 The trouble was that Love was cold, and what he was considering with so profound an air was whether he should go back to the doctor’s house and borrow an overcoat, or whether he should count on the walk warming him up. If he went back he would lose time and give himself so much further to walk back through the wet.278 Besides, it looked as if the weather might change at any moment and then he would have the overcoat to carry. He tired himself out in imagination, dragging an imaginary overcoat along hot dusty roads. Then he branched off, and considered the subject from another point of view. He saw himself in bed ill with double pneumonia, he took himself through all the stages of that illness and gave it various endings, first picturing himself convalescing at Brighton, then considering a funeral at Golders Green. By the time he had in imagination composed his own death notices in the daily papers and read the articles in his honour – deploring that the “brilliant detective should be cut off, just when he was on the point of solving one of the murder problems of the century, etc.” – he had brought himself back to the business of the day.279 Love allowed his imagination considerable license when he himself was the object. Though when it was a matter of “work,” he tried to do without imagination at all, and flattered himself that he succeeded, in which he was mistaken. His errand that morning was distinct proof that this was true. If he was not guided by his imagination, what

then he thought better of it and ^walked on quickly, head down, all his attention given to dodging puddles^ (TS2, 19, 1). 278 A pencil note in the left margin reads the c of city man (TS2, 19, 1). 279 This passage in its humour provides significant clues as to how the reader is to interpret Love’s irascibility. His attitude to other characters – Bryde’s time-wasting and withholding of evidence, Brooks’s ponderous narration – is turned onto himself in an extravagant rehearsal of personal tragedy. Rather than mere self-indulgence, might this and other similar passages, perhaps even by virtue of their humour, demonstrate Love’s method of working through melodrama in order to extract relevant forensic detail? 277

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possible reason could he have for this expedition? He would have hotly repudiated any suggestion that he was guided by instinct. He would have explained his action by platitudes – leaving no stone unturned, truth stranger than fiction, etc. He had snubbed Inspector Brooks when he had called attention to the car tracks in front of the gate at Graylands, pointing out the fact that no one had left the car. He had proof that Dane Marshall had come down by train. But he was off to a garage that he had found was the nearest to Graylands because he found that garages, like public houses and such places where men congregate, were where one came across bits of juicy clues that often proved useful.280 After a quarter of an hour’s walk he had reached Ripton Common. He stopped where the London road branched off to the right. He considered the wet spongy ground, the gorse bushes, the clumps of trees, and thought it a Godforsaken place. Love was more a lover of comfort than of nature. The garage was where the two roads met.281 It was a shabby place, joined on to a small house. The house had a flyblown sign in the window: “teas.” The kind of place where on holidays dozens of cars would be parked all day, but which never saw a customer on other days. Love knocked first on the door of the garage – but got no reply. Trying the house he had better luck. The door was opened by a woman who had no excuse, the Inspector thought, for her dishevelled untidy condition – as she could have nothing much to do in at that deserted time, and had certainly not been wasting her energies cleaning the house in any way. A man in a greasy overall was reading the paper in the little sitting room. She showed him into it. “Gentleman, Bill.” Bill dropped his pink paper on the floor and got up. “What can I do for you sir. Bit chilly sitting out in the garage on a day like this.” “I haven’t a car,” said Love. “I need a bit of information from you. If you are able to talk. You are here most of the time I take it” “Yes I’m here all the time, live here, it’s my house. I get a fellow to help Sundays which is our busy time, and I have an odd job man to help with the cleaning, except for that I run the place alone with the Missus.” The Inspector would not have used the word run to describe the way things were done. He glanced round the untidy slipshod place. Crawl is more like it, he thought. “Do you get many cars down this way at night?” “A fair amount,” said Bill. “What I am interested in finding out is what cars were down this way last Sunday night, I mean even ones which passed without stopping. Do you notice them much?”282 “Can’t say I do except the ones as stop here. We get them all the time on the London road.” “On Sunday did you have any stopping here at all?”

A pencil note in the left margin of the previous paragraph, why does he go to garage? (TS2, 19, 1), is answered here as an extended narrative evaluation of Love’s forensic methods and his apparent irrationality. Most of the paragraph – His errand that morning […] juicy clues that often proved useful – is a lengthy pencil addition inserted from the unnumbered verso of TS2, 19, 1. 281 ^The^ garage ^was^ where the two roads met (TS2, 19, 2). 282 “What I am interested in finding out is what cars were down this way last Sunday night, ^I mean even ones which passed without stopping.^ Do you notice them much?” (TS2, 19, 2). 280

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“At night you mean?” Bill scratched his head thoughtfully.283 “Yes.” The Inspector pulled out a cheap imitation of a wheel back chair and sat down at one on the small tables where the crumbs of cake from yesterday’s tea were still on the cloth. “Late last Sunday I was called up out of bed. Some gentleman thought he had a breakdown, but he was only another of the kind who don’t understand the workings of their own cars and then blame the makers. He had run off the road on to the common. I had to get up and go out and see to it.” “What time was this?” “About twelve it must have been, or soon after.” “Do you know who he was?” “Is it for the police?” Bill looked impressed, and when Love explained who has was he became very anxious that the Inspector should realize that he would tell him everything he knew – which attitude on Bill’s part gave Love the impression that he there were things not connected with Sunday night that Mr Bill would not have felt inclined to communicate so freely. He felt however that they had nothing to do with the case in hand, and though they might be of interest to the local police and to his colleague Brooks especially, Love saw no reason for him to notice anything not directly connected with the business he was on.284 “I don’t know who the gentleman was but I’ve got the number of the car. I always keep numbers, never know when they may be needed.” The man fished a dirty looking notebook out of his pocket and pointed to the entry. “A Ford car it was,” Bill elaborated, “not much of a thing, and the gentleman was no driver. He left it up the road on the common. I got it down here for him then he took the London road.” “In what direction?” “Back to town they said they was going.” “They,” said Love. “Who else was with him?” “A lady, seen her before somewhere it seems to me, perhaps she might have got in the picture papers sometime. Plump piece, good looking too, a lot of curly hair.” Love had brought out his own notebook and looking at Bill’s over his shoulder scribbled hastily.285 Love felt that Bill’s description would cover nearly all the ladies who “got into” the picture papers.286 He wondered if in time the study of the picture papers would reduce all women to one type. They all seem to try to look alike he thought. “You didn’t hear any names mentioned? What did he call her did you hear?” “He didn’t call her anything. She called him, well names you might call them, they weren’t Christian names though,” said Bill, grinning at the recollection. “She wasn’t pleased at having been kept waiting.” “How did they know there was a garage here if they were not on the London road? Have they been down here before?”

^Bill scratched his head thoughtfully^ (TS2, 19, 2). Love saw no reason for him to notice ^anything not directly connected with the business he was on^ (TS2, 19, 3). 285 This sentence is written in pencil on the verso side of the page. 286 The number 6090 is written in pencil at the top of the page with an arrow linking it to this sentence. The connection is not clear. 283 284

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“I don’t remember seeing them before except the woman somewhere,287 but if they had passed this way in the daytime ever they would have remembered my place. You can see the sign from a long way off, and I have signs down the road, and on Ripton Common Road too.” “What other cars were there at night?” “None that stopped here.” The detective brought out his notebook again. He had copied down the number of the car Bill’s dirty finger had pointed to in his equally dirty book, but he had also copied the numbers preceding and following it. Bill, who was not observing except in the matter of cars perhaps, had not noticed the Inspector having done so.288 He looked rather confused when Love pointed out what he had done. “Oh yes, those others,” he said confusedly. “I keep a list of numbers of any cars that are passing. Just a habit again, but I can’t tell you anything about those – they are cars that didn’t even stop here.”289 Love did not feel that the garage owner was being very frank with him.290 The detective also thought that Mr Bill would not be above accepting “something” to keep his mouth shut about a car which wished to pass and be forgotten. However he had the numbers owing to Bill’s carelessness and that was the principal thing. Bill would not be likely anyhow to know much else. Feeling that he had learnt all there was to know from that source Love nodded rather curtly to Bill and started back again in the direction he had come. The route suggested to him the same train of thought he had been indulging in as he came along it before. Only he varied and elaborated a little. He dodged a puddle, wondering if his feet were damp would he have caught cold. The picture of himself in bed with pneumonia came into his head. He imagined nurses: from nurses in general he got to think of a nurse in particular, who in understanding he had not liked. He wondered if he had really taken a chill.291 He thought of possible nurses, of ideal nurses, of the women he had seen lately, Mullins, no, she would chatter surely. Owen he thought might do perhaps she was likely to be calm and self-effacing he felt sure. The self-assurance and obvious efficiency that Miss Marshall would show in a sick room would annoy him. Her mother was too frail, but might be sympathetic. She would be the kind to wear herself out through too much pity with the sufferer. How few women one could bear to have round! Love congratulated himself on his bachelorhood. His mind started on another subject.292 “Why did the poor fish … perhaps old Brinkly is right … I hadn’t thought of a married woman … but the letters read more like a girl’s letters, as far as one can tell. Still, there

“I don’t remember seeing them before ^except the woman somewhere,^ […]” (TS2, 19, 4). Bill, who was not observing except in the matter of cars perhaps, had not noticed ^the Inspector having done so.^ (TS2, 19, 4). 289 ^“Oh yes, those others,” he said confusedly.^ “I keep a list of numbers ^of any cars that are passing. Just a habit again^ but I can’t tell you anything about those––they ^are cars that didn’t^ even stop here” (TS2, 19, 4). 290 Love did not feel that the garage owner ^was being very frank with him^ (TS2, 19, 4). 291 ^He dodged a puddle, wondering if his feet were damp if he had caught cold. The picture of^ himself in bed with pneumonia ^came into his head,^ he ^imagined^ nurses, from nurses in general he got to think of a nurse in particular, ^who in understanding he had not liked^ ^he wondered if he had really taken a chill^ (TS2, 19, 5). 292 ^His mind started on another subject^ (TS2, 19, 5). This sentence is added in pencil in the right margin. 287 288

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might be more than one woman, how can one tell?” Love started his usual muttering and walked on so absorbed in the train of thought that had grown out of his fears about catching cold that he did not notice that it had begun to rain again, and though he put up his umbrella mechanically he never once gave a conscious thought to the rain that had been worrying him so much before it started. He turned in at Whitby’s gate. For an hour he was using his friend’s study and telephone. Then he went in search of the doctor who had discreetly left him alone. “Done a good day’s work today anyway, good old fashioned sleuth stuff. Did you keep collections of the numbers of motor cars when you were a small boy Whitby? I used to.”293

CHAPTER 20 Evans 1294 Albert Slater opened the front door with that air peculiar to butlers, and an extra nuance of self-satisfaction more or less peculiar to himself. This vanished when he saw who was on the doorstep and a slightly anxious expression came into his eyes. “I wish to see Mr Evans.” Inspector Love entered the hall. He ignored Slater’s look which seemed to be asking him to remember something. He guessed the man was worried that his officiousness should lose him a good place, which he had probably had had time to consider meant more to him than any feelings of abstract justice. Mr Evans it seemed was still at breakfast, but he sent word for the Inspector to come to him in the dining room. “Good morning Inspector. You’re early, but if you had come later though you would have missed me. I go up to town by the nine thirty.” Love refused the coffee and also cigarettes which Mr Evans pressed on him. He searched for a diplomatic formula which would enable him to find out what he wanted without insulting by showing too blunt a disbelief of his account of things on the Sunday night. “I have come again to trouble you Mr Evans. A matter of form you understand, but sometimes one overlooks something that could be of use,” he began not very coherently. “Any thing I can tell you?” said Mr Evans cheerfully. “I remember that when I was asking you about the hour you came home last Sunday, you told me that Mr Shelton dropped you at your house shortly before eleven.” “Yes that is right.” “I now hear that you were seen outside your house considerably later than that. Would you mind giving me some account of your actions? We are keeping tab of any night walkers on that Sunday as you can imagine.” “I don’t know how you came to hear of it. I didn’t think I met anybody. I didn’t tell you about it. I thought all your interest was in the time the car got here. Yes I came in, then as I was walking up the steps I noticed the rain had just stopped and I thought

This offhand comment by Love provides a clue to his age. The first English cars were in production in 1896 and only became moderately numerous in the early years of the twentieth century. Love’s comment – that he noted down number plates as a small boy – in the narrative present (no later than 1930), would place him in his mid-thirties at the very most, and by implication Whitby as well. 294 A pencil note in Rudge’s hand runs up the left margin: Actor? Reason on common––done again (TS2, 20, 1). 293

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I would go for a walk. I often do at night. I walked round on the common a bit and then came in again. I suppose I must have been out half an hour at least.” “Did you go in the direction of Graylands?” “Yes I started down the London road in that direction, because I thought that road would be drier than the road through the common. Then I saw a car stop down the road not a hundred yards from Graylands. I thought it would probably be someone I knew. I know most of the people in this part. I didn’t want to have to make conversation at that time of night so I turned back and went along the road through the common.” “What kind of car did you notice.” “It passed me before it stopped. I saw it was a long racing car. I thought it might be the Murphys, they have a car like that, an American car, can’t remember the name of them for the moment. It didn’t see me I should think.”295 “I wish I had heard this before. Did you see no one else?” Mr Evans looked at Love in his deceptively gentle manner. “You know Inspector, I believe in minding my own business. I am always at your disposition to answer any questions, but I have not the time or the inclination to play at being a sleuth at my time of life.” “Quite, quite,” said Love in a conciliatory manner, “but as you happened to be one of the few people out round here at that time Sunday, your evidence can be of great use to us.” Mr Evans looked at his watch. Love looked at his. He saw Mr Evans still had time for his train. “We have heard of a car on the common,” he said frankly. “Did you see anything of that one?” “Yes I also saw that one. I saw one had run off the road on to what is really a cart track, a few minutes walk from the cross road.” “Did you see who was in it?” “Yes I walked up to it. I thought for a moment there might have been an accident, but there was nothing wrong apparently.” “Who was in it?” Mr Evans stalled. “There seemed to be a lady asleep, she didn’t hear me come up. I thought it none of my business to disturb her. There seemed to be nothing wrong. We get a lot of trippers from town on Sundays, they make themselves very much at home on the common.” “Asleep?” said Love. “Yes,” said Evans, “so I gathered and she was snoring quite rhythmically.” Love smiled “Was there no one else?” “I saw no one. There is a large garage just down the road from there. I thought who ever was with her had probably gone there for something. I walked on, the car had gone by the time I came back. It was a little two-seater, Ford I think.” “And what about the other car, did you see that again?” “No I didn’t go that way, I cut across the common.” Love got up and closed his notebook. “I won’t keep you any more Mr Evans, thank you.”

“[…] it didn’t see me I should think” (TS2, 20, 2).

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Mr Evans motioned him to stay. “Do you mind telling me from whom you got your information about my movements Sunday?” “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You were not the only person up late that night, and you are well known in the neighbourhood.” Mr Evans showed no sign of pressing the matter, and himself showed Love out. The Inspector walked back to Ripton, thinking that the morning had not been entirely wasted. Evans had confirmed what he had learned from the garage keeper, in whose word unsupported he would not have felt any great confidence. “Lady asleep … American car, who did the American car belong to … it wasn’t the Murphys as Evans had suspected.” Love had been at great pains to collect data on all the cars in the neighbourhood.296 Love pondered and muttered to himself as he walked. In his office in town he found various reports awaiting him. He waded consciously through a lot of tedious details, to be rewarded at last by something that really interested him. The car number he had copied from the garage keeper’s greasy notebook, turned out to be one belonging to an American car owned by some Americans at that time staying at the Carlton.297 He went over to investigate the matter at once. The owners of the car were some people named Clifford who had been “doing” England for the past weeks. They were at present away for a few days stay in the country with friends, but had left the car and the chauffeur in town. The chauffeur was a negro of the blackest blackness named Washington and Love found him cheerful and polite and delighted to talk. He had not driven the car Sunday, he remembered – very well. Mr Mulver had had it. Mr Mulver was an American gentleman, a friend of his employer’s. He liked to drive the car. It was a make he was used to. He used to borrow it quite often. Mr Clifford knew all about it, it wasn’t any hanky panky on Washington’s part, as he made clear. Mr Mulver had borrowed the car Sunday night before dinner and Washington had not seen it again till he went to the garage the next morning. It had been cleaned already. It was no different than when it went out. Mr Mulver was very careful of the car. The garage cleaner remembered the car coming in. Mr Mulver brought it back about two o’clock Monday morning. Mr Mulver was staying in the hotel. Love went back to the Carlton to see Mr Mulver. Mr Mulver had left for America on Monday. Mr Mulver he gathered was a person of some importance at the Carlton. His enquiries as to where Mr Mulver had been on the Sunday night were coldly received. After a great deal of patient wangling it was ascertained that on Sunday evening Mr Mulver had hurried over dinner as they had some appointment. That was the extent of the information Love was able to collect about the car that had stopped on the road to Graylands the night of the crime. He filled several pages of his notebook though with the scanty material. And then turned his mind on to the question of where he should go for his very much delayed lunch. He looked at his watch. “Where could he get anything fit to eat at that time?” In a fit of extravagance he hailed a taxi. “Dean Street, Carpentier’s restaurant.” He leant back in the cab luxuriously, wondering just how it could be “charged to the office.”

This pencil addition in Rudge’s hand runs up the left margin (TS2, 20, 3). The car number he had copied from the garage keeper’s greasy notebook, turned out to be one belonging to an American car owned by some Americans at that time staying at the Carlton (TS2, 20, 3–4). 296 297

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CHAPTER 21 298 Z “Ask my wife, if you want to find out anything.” Rodney’s mocking words came back to Love’s mind in a tantalising manner though he tried to forget them. He argued with himself that there was no reason, even if Mrs Rodney did show an uncanny knowledge of her husband’s peccadillos where other women were concerned, that she would have anything more to go on than vague suspicions which long knowledge of Rodney would allow her to use in a very telling manner on occasion. But Love wanted facts. He sighed as he looked up Rodney’s address. It wasn’t too far away thank goodness, he would be able to get there in a quarter of an hour, better risk it, after not much time lost. Thus Love to himself. He knew that he had no definite question to put to Mrs Rodney, and that disconcerted him. He did not care for what he considered was an indirect and feminine manner of approach to a problem. However since Rodney had without doubt been within a few minutes of Graylands the night of the crime, and since Mrs Rodney had, if Mr Shelton were to be believed, made what could not be described as other than an attempt at blackmailing Miss Marshall, they certainly could not be left out of any investigations. He did not want to admit to himself that he had been impressed and influenced by Rodney’s half-annoyed, half-humorous reference to his wife’s omniscience. Love set out for Chalk Mews Chelsea where Rodney’s studio was with mixed feelings. He found the place with difficulty. Rodney’s name was written up over the door of what was obviously a garage, the stables now housing motors. Love looked round for any sign of a house door and finding none knocked on the garage. It was six o’clock in the evening and already turning dusk. The Inspector had timed his visit to ensure him finding Rodney out and his wife in. He had nothing more to go on that an idea that painters worked while it was light and then rushed out to find amusement not returning to the scene of their labours until the light was good. Rodney should be gone by now. Judging by the complete silence that greeted his knocking Love thought that Mrs Rodney must also be away. Half angry at himself for coming at all and for the waste of time, he turned to go, then he gave one backward glance at the place. In the small window of a little room over the garage a woman was seated calmly manicuring her nails. Love knocked again. The woman did not even glance down. “I’ll make her look round,” said Love to himself furiously, annoyed at her indifference, and he let out an ear-splitting whistle299 which had the effect of making the woman turn her head and look down in his direction. “Is this where Mr Rodney lives?” Love called up. “He isn’t at home,” a voice called back. “Is Mrs Rodney then?” Love insisted. “Half a minute.”

Chapters 21 and 22 are filed in reverse order in Folder 2823: the consequence of Love’s visit to Mrs Rodney lead directly to his visiting Corradium Cylinders Ltd. The correct chronology is restored in the reading text. A textual argument also exists for this reversal: Chapter 22 concludes with an unfinished sentence, indicating a loss of an unspecified amount of narrative material. The following text in Folder 2824 also comprises incomplete narrative fragments. 299 ^Love knocked again. The woman did not even glance down – ^ . “I’ll make her look round,” said Love to himself furiously, ^annoyed at her indifference^, and he let out an ear-splitting whistle […] (TS2, 22, 2). 298

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The Inspector waited many half minutes before the garage door was rolled up, exposing an extraordinary room that was garage, studio, kitchen, and he suspected also bath and bed room too. “I’ve been knocking for five minutes,” said Love severely as the door opened. “I don’t open when I am busy. I haven’t a servant to say not at home to callers when I don’t find it convenient to see them.300 Come in though now, I’ve finished. By the way, who are you?” There was no doubt of the woman, who led the way to the back of the garage where two deck chairs indicated a sitting room, being Mrs Rodney. Love found the words “the haggard Venus” coming into his mind, and remember that Whitby had once mentioned it as being the title of one of Rodney’s best known pictures. That the woman could be no other than the person who had suggested the strange title was apparent even to Love’s unimaginative brain. Tall, thin, tired looking, but ageless, she carried her small head at a Burne-Jonesish angle,301 her heavy dull gold hair seeming to weigh her down. Her face was very pale and she had a tortured expression, but when she smiled, as she did noticing Love’s bewilderment at his strange surroundings, she showed a set of charming small teeth and her smile was delightfully mischievous and even childlike. He found a card and handed it to Mrs Rodney. “I wanted to see Mr Rodney, but as he is not here perhaps you could give me a little information?” Mrs Rodney, who had stretched herself out in a deck chair, held out a languid hand for it. “Inspector Love? Now what has Rodney been up to, it isn’t the car this time.” Love followed her round the back of Rodney’s battered car which was taking a good sight of the space in the studio garage living room.302 “Do sit down won’t you.” Mrs Rodney looked at Love suddenly with more attention. The Inspector lowered himself cautiously into a deck chair that was let down as low as it could go, and then tried to sit upright on the edge of it. “I seem to know your name … I have it, the Marshall murder.” “Yes I am on that,” said Love glad to have escaped laborious explanations. “You I understand are on terms of friendship with the Marshall family.” A gleam of amusement lit up the woman’s face. “Well ... terms of friendship are rather difficult things to define, still …”

“I haven’t a servant to say not at home to callers when I don’t ^find it convenient to see^ them” (TS2, 22, 2). 301 Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) was a leading figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and in later life worked closely with William Morris on a large number of decorative arts projects. His reference here in the context of female portraiture associates Love’s aesthetics with a movement eclipsed by the modernist avant-garde. The passage concerning Rodney’s “haggard Venus” paintings occurs in Chapter 15 as Whitby waits for Love outside Carpentier’s in Dean Street, Soho. The omniscient narrative mode clearly reports Whitby’s meditations while he waits, judgements he has evidently shared with Love in conversation in the interim. This earlier reference concerns the surprisingly dated aesthetic mode Rodney chooses to employ in Margela Marshall’s portrait, in the lineage, as Whitby tells the reader via the narrative voice, of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema or Sir Frederick Leighton. In the present scene Love draws these strands together, seeing in Mrs Rodney evidence of both the “haggard Venus” and Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics. 302 ^Love followed her round the back of Rodney’s battered car^ which was taking a good sight of the space in the studio garage living room (TS2, 22, 3). 300

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The Inspector was feeling unexpectedly embarrassed before this faded woman whose elegance of gesture and gently disdainful manner seemed to him strangely out of place in what were to him surroundings of extreme sordidness. He looked round him, seeing inspiration for his next remark, but he was surrounded by nothing more inspiring than the backs of large canvases all turned face to the wall. “Do you know my husband’s work?” said Mrs Rodney, following his gaze. “I’m afraid …” began Love, but she had uncoiled herself from her chair and was turning a canvas round with an air of interest she had not shown up till then. “I’m afraid Mrs Rodney that today I have only time for official business,” said Love stiltedly. “Good God man, I’m offering you the chance of your lifetime. There haven’t been so many good Rodneys together for years. It’s a collection got together from all over for the New York exposition. It will be sent off in a week.303 They will never come back to England.” She spoke with contempt. Even Love, whose business made him suspicious of people’s motives, did not suspect her of trying to turn him off his investigations onto another subject. Her enthusiasm was too wholehearted for that. The woman’s worn face became illuminated by her enthusiasm. “You understand …” began Love awkwardly. “Yes, yes, what was it ... oh the Marshalls, of all boring deadly people. They nearly had a disastrous effect on Rodney’s work. Did you see that awful portrait he did of the girl?” “Yes, I saw it and it is in reference to Miss Marshall that I would like to ask you one or two questions.”304 Mrs Rodney did not let him get any further. “Ah you’ve seen that picture. What could have … however that’s all over. But is that really all you know of his work? Impossible, you must let me show you …” She had jumped up again and was dragging at a tall canvas in another corner of the studio. “You saw what he did of Miss Marshall ... this is what he did of me.” She stood aside to let him look at the canvas in an attitude of triumph. The embarrassed detective gave one glance at the work which was unmistakably a portrait of Mrs Rodney entirely naked standing holding out a mirror to an invisible audience, and in the mirror was a reflection of Rodney’s face. “Very fine,” he mumbled. “Ah you see the difference!” She was looking at the portrait with a look of rapture. “Potty,” said Love to himself. “It is one of his earliest. Of course he doesn’t use that method now. This is his latest.” The Inspector glanced at the work which he would have considered – except for Mrs Rodney’s assurance that it was her husband’s “latest” – as being the work of some precocious child of five who had been left alone with a few tubes of oil paints.305 Mrs Rodney suddenly started to drag the picture back to its place against the wall and came back to her chair.

“^It will be sent off in a week^” (TS2, 22, 4). “Yes, ^I saw it and it is in reference to Miss Marshall that^ I would like to ask you one or two questions ” (TS2, 22, 4). 305 Mrs Rodney’s comment and Love’s silent critique of Rodney’s new style are added in pencil in Rudge’s hand along the top of the page and down the right margin (TS2, 22, 5). 303 304

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“You must think I am ‘Queer’,” she said in a quiet conversational tone, “to attach so much importance to your knowing my husband’s work. But really you know it is very logical. You are evidently interested in him for some reason or other. If you don’t know his work, the principles that guide him, how can you expect to understand anything about him? You would only be dreadfully confused by what would seem to you incomprehensible things in his character and actions. You can only know Rodney through his work.” The logic of her argument appealed to the Inspector. He was glad that she had some method in her seeming madness and began to feel interested. He tried to frame a sentence in a way that would catch her imagination. “How do you explain, Mrs Rodney,” he commenced wilelely, “that your husband painted the portrait of Miss Marshall so unlike his work in what you have just showed me, and that even I can see is a masterpiece …” “You see that even, do you?” Mrs Rodney showed her small teeth in a quick smile. “It’s like this, that portrait was intended to be entirely satirical, then that lump of a girl is an insinuating creature. Rodney was in a bad period, there is no excuse for him, he knew what he was doing …” She broke off as she could not bear to continue the subject. “You mean that your husband just out of idleness, ahem, trifled with the feelings of the young lady …” “Trifled, good God man where did you pick up that expression? And what do you think I care about his trifling, as you say, with that bitch or any other for that matter? It’s his work I am thinking of.” Love made an effort to pull the conversation back to a track he could run on.306 “Mrs Rodney, I am not an artist. It would really be serving no purpose to try and discuss with me your husband’s work. But if you would answer a few questions I will not keep you long.” Mrs Rodney leant back in her chair with a look of unutterable weariness, but made no comment. “Do you know where your husband was on the Sunday night?” “Let me see, that was the night of the Harrises’ party. How should I know Inspector? I was there but he had already left by the time I got there.” “Your husband himself told me that you knew everything and to come to ask you if I wanted to find out anything,” said Love smiling. “Indeed.” Mrs Rodney seemed pleased as at a compliment. “He never tells me anything,” she said as if in explanation. “You must be in the same position as I am,” said Love lightly. “They never tell me anything.” She smiled and then said with an air of frankness: “Well, I’ll give you my idea about Sunday. Rodney can’t stand Harris or his friends. As he and I never go out together he must have had some special reason for going there Sunday. Flossie doesn’t sing on Sunday, she strikes me as being the only person in the Harris set that Rodney would go out of his way to meet. Flossie is the real thing,307 and the natural reaction from a type like that girl from the suburbs would be Flossie, thank god for Flossie.” The Inspector wriggled in his deck chair. It seemed hard to keep this female on the subject.

This sentence is added in pencil along the top of the page (TS2, 22, 6). “Flossie is the real thing, the natural reaction from a type like that girl from the suburbs would be Flossie […]” (TS2, 22, 6). 306 307

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“When I got to the party Rodney had left and not only was there no sign of Flossie but no one even mentioned her, out of regard for my feelings I suppose. I knew what had happened. They weren’t at her place, I found that out myself. Rodney turned up in the small hours, cursing the car. It was brought back next day by Flossie’s chauffeur. I felt practically sure that they had been to Ripton Common. Now that you have turned up I feel certain of it.” “Why were you practically certain that they had been to Ripton?” “Because Rodney never has more than one idea in his head at a time. Sunday he was talking about a cottage he had heard of down there that might do for a young sculptor he is interested in, and Tuesday he was speaking of the place as if he knew it – he had been here all Monday so I felt sure that he had gone there Sunday night.”308 The Inspector felt unconvinced. It seemed rather far-fetched even for such queer people. “That was the night Mr Marshall was murdered.” His words seemed to have no effect on the woman. “Curious coincidence,” was her only comment.309 “I don’t like to use the word blackmail Mrs Rodney, but I must,” said Love, coming to the point with a rush. “The silly little fool!” Mrs Rodney burst out laughing. “Has she told you that story?” Either the woman was a superb actress or her amusement was genuine. “You may not know that Mr Marshall had already put the matter in the hands of his solicitor, and if it had not been for the occurrences of the Sunday you would have heard from him.” “Exactly what I intended,” said Mrs Rodney calmly. “May I ask if you really do not see the seriousness of suggesting to a young girl that if she will not furnish you with money you will bring her in as respondent in a divorce action against your husband?” “It would have been serious if the circumstances has been as you suggest. I should have been the last person in the world to try and get money that way. Besides, I am not in a position to make any such threat, even if I wanted to. I am not married to Rodney.” Mrs Rodney spoke as if she had scored a point.310 “It is old scandal now and Miss Marshall had never heard of it, I counted on that,” she explained, smiling at the detective. “It’s really very simple. I was married to a man who wouldn’t give me a divorce when I wanted it. Very well I’ve done without. I’ve lived as Mrs Rodney for sixteen years now. It was more convenient, but all our old friends knew, my case was even in the papers at the time. It was such an old scandal that no one talks of it any more. The only reason that Miss Marshall never knew …” “Then what were you trying to do Mrs Rodney?” said Love, completely at sea.311

“Because Rodney never has more than one idea in his head at a time. Sunday he was ^talking^ about a cottage he had heard of down there that might do for a young sculptor he is interested in, ^and Tuesday he was speaking of the place as if he knew it––he had been here all Monday so I felt sure that he had gone there Sunday night.^ ” (TS2, 22, 7). The inserted material is added in pencil, first interlinearly and then down the right margin. 309 This line is added in pencil (TS2, 22, 7). 310 This sentence is added in pencil in the right margin (TS2, 22, 7). 311 Mrs Rodney’s response––“It has nothing to do with the Marshall murder”––is added in pencil and then struck through (TS2, 22, 8). 308

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“I was trying to show Rodney that this girl he was imagining was something exceptional, or would be if only she could be taken away from her family and surroundings, was at heart a mass of middle class prejudices. I am sick of these little bourgeoisie always talking of freedom, of escape from their families. They always rush back to them for protection. Never admitting of course that it is for their own sake. It’s always so as not to hurt dear Aunt Annie’s feelings or some such slush.” Mrs Rodney spoke with light scorn – smiling – Love interrupted impatiently.312 “A murder has been committed, Mrs Rodney. Your husband has been seen near the scene of the crime about the time it was committed. I have evidence that there could have been serious cause for disagreement between him and Mr Marshall. Mr Marshall was not an easy character and he would not take such a plot against his daughter lying down. It is not necessarily wilful murder – it might have been self-defense.” Mrs Rodney looked at the detective with a look of pity. “Rodney did not kill Mr Marshall. Don’t waste your time on the wrong trail. Rodney might kill that dud art critic what’s his name on the Times, or the censor, but people like Marshall to Rodney aren’t of enough importance, they are outside the picture. Look at his work, see how he concentrates on the essential.” “Mrs Rodney, your arguments are very interesting but they would be of more use to the lawyer for the defence than they are to me at the present moment.” He was feeling angry with the woman. Why did she bring painting and pictures into every sentence? It was a subject he knew nothing about and cared less. The woman’s complete ease puzzled him. She must have cared for Rodney to go to all the trouble she had in the fake blackmail of Margela Marshall, but she seemed to brush aside all evidence of Rodney’s being near Graylands when the crime was committed as of no importance. “Who do you think killed Mr Marshall?” said Love abruptly. “I don’t think it is any of the people that have been mentioned in the papers. Knowing Marshall I should think it was some one he had double-crossed in business. Money is the only thing feeling seems to run really high about in those circles.” “For example …” said Love, encouraging her to continue. “Well there’s, what’s the name of it … oh yes, Corradium, some thing happened there. I don’t understand these things. We had some stock, part payment from Marshall for that picture. Look into Corradium, Mr Love, you might find something there.” The Inspector said nothing of what he was thinking. He absentmindedly accepted a cigarette from the packet of woodbines Mrs Rodney held out to him. She said nothing. Having been well trained through association with Rodney to let him alone when he showed any signs of cerebration, she knew how to respect the almost physical efforts the male often shows in his attempts to think a thing out. She lay back in the deck chair and watched the Inspector with a quiet smile.313

This line is added in pencil. This passage shows clear amusement on Rudge’s part, and perhaps even self-mockery on Pound’s part, in Mrs Rodney’s sainted patience with regard to her artist “husband.” Pound’s theories of masculine artistic potency are famously articulated in his Postscript to Remy de Gourmont’s Natural History of Love (see Pavannes and Divigations 203) and are satirized in Rodney’s philandering ways. His actions find their echoes in other characters, most notably in Love’s dated view of women as pleasant ornaments or irritating harridans, as well as in Whitby’s predilections for attractive young women. 312 313

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“You said Corradium, why Corradium? Mr Marshall was interested in other companies besides that.” “I only say it because that is the stock we got from him. I thought at one moment he had sold us a pup. It seems to have righted itself now though, but it was acting queerly a few weeks ago.” “Hm … well Mrs Rodney. We haven’t cleared up that little business of who was where on Sunday night. However, from what I’ve seen of Rodney, I confess I should be surprised at him doing in anyone in the neat and tidy way it was done at Graylands. It’s most unprofessional of me to say such a thing.” The Inspector said it with a chuckle. He seemed to have found his good humour again. Mrs Rodney laughed too. “You are right Inspector, Rodney couldn’t do a thing quietly to save his neck.” “Well I must go now.” Love got out of the deck chair without knocking down any of the canvases that were leaning against it and walking round the car found the garage door. Mrs Rodney said goodbye to him cordially, and Love went off with mixed feelings about the woman whose manners were so simple in contrast to her exotic appearance. “Corradium,” he said to himself. “That’s the third time the name has come up. I’ll look into it tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 22 The revolving door of Denham house was spun round quickly by a boy in uniform and Inspector Love stepped into the hall. A bemedalled commissionaire was at his elbow immediately to direct him to the office he wanted, but Love waved him off. He did not intend to be hurried, he wanted to take stock of his surroundings. The office of Corradium Cylinder was in a large new building in a small street off the Haymarket. Everything about the place was new. Even the names of the firms occupying the building were new to the business world. The place was designed to give the impression that no money had been spared to reproduce the American idea of what luxurious offices should be. The mixture of styles was amusing. The broad marble hall had a mosaic pavement copied from Pompeii, the bronze railings round the three lifts were copied from a celebrated Florentine tomb.314 Except that the corners of the marble halls and stair landings were lacking in that truly American commodity, the spittoon or cuspidor, every attempt had been made to reproduce the atmosphere of a real American office building, as far as the twelfth storey. Beyond that Love could not go.315 When the Inspector had had a good look around he allowed the impatiently waiting lift man to take him up to the sixth floor and pilot him to the door of Corradium Cylinder Ltd. He waited in an outer hall to the office while his card was taken in.

The choice of mosaic pavements appears in keeping with Pound’s appreciation for the mosaics of the NormanByzantine cathedral of Monreale in Sicily, or the sixth-century Byzantine churches of Ravenna, particularly the Basilica di San Vitale and the Basilica di Sant’Apollonio Nuovo. The choice of Pompeii bears associations with Imperial Rome, and the implied eclipse of empire echoed in the fate of Pompeii beneath the ash of Mount Vesuvius. The Florentine tomb might recall the Medici Chapel in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, another deflection from Pound’s most highly prized tomb (in Italy at any rate): that of Sigismundo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. 315 A marginal note in pencil suggests these two final sentences be cut, but no indication is made in the typed material itself. 314

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“This way sir.” The door was opened into a large room which with the outer hall was apparently all space occupied by Corradium Ltd. The place looked rather bare. The furniture, some light coloured unusual wood, was devoid of ornamentation or moulding. There seemed to be no office fittings of any kind, except the large desk and the small table near the window for the typist. No filing cabinets apparently and nothing on the desk in the way of papers to suggest that much work was going on. A young man was sitting, not at the desk, but in an armchair before the fire (it was May in London). He rose as Love came in, and before speaking to the Inspector he told the stenographer who was sitting primly in front of her table that she could go. Although it was already eleven in the morning there seemed to be no sign of work on the table in front of her. The Inspector could not help thinking that though she was not at her desk, she had only just vacated the other armchair by the fire opposite to the young man’s. She would make an attractive picture anywhere she cared to sit, Love thought, preferably with the light shining through her golden hair. In an office where perhaps little work was done, the young lady would not be a living reproach to idleness by a too business-like looking appearance. The Inspector was sorry to see her leave the room. He decided she looked a nice girl as well as a charming one. The young man he also liked on sight. He had not expected to find Corradium represented by two such attractive young people. Mr Darrow (manager) looked barely thirty. He was tall and well built, with irregular features and a manner that one felt would be cheerful under any circumstances. “What can I do for you Inspector? Come and sit here won’t you.” Something in Darrow’s manner made the Inspector feel that he was not entirely surprised to see him, and that he was even amused at his visit. “I have come to see what information you can give me about some one who had considerable interest in your company. You must have known him personally, Mr Marshall of Graylands.” To the Inspector’s surprise the young man laughed shortly. “Known him! Excuse my laughing but the idea of being asked if I knew him strikes me as funny. Yes I knew him, and I can tell you a lot about Mr Marshall, and a great deal that you would be perhaps surprised to know, and which you might find hard to believe.” “It takes a great deal to surprise us,” said the detective.316 Darrow held out a cigarette case and Love helped himself. He disproved his previous remark by feeling surprised by a very little thing. The young man instead of offering a lighter or a match, lit both their cigarettes with an spill of paper. An old fashioned spill to light his cigarette by from a young man whose appearance and surroundings seemed to indicate the latest Dunhill model seemed slightly odd to Love. He noticed that on the small table by Darrow’s elbow there were several more blue spills in a tobacco jar. “Weren’t you on Hill 64?” said Darrow suddenly, looking at Love curiously. “I was, why?”

The following exchange is excised in blue pencil from this point the typescript and transposed later in the scene, perhaps for reasons of drawing Darrow and Love together by way of previous military service (a not uncommon device in interwar literature, and no doubt a not uncommon occurrence in city life): 316

“It takes a great deal to surprise us,” said the detective. “Weren’t you on Hill 54?” Darrow looked at Love curiously. “I was, why?” (TS2, 20, 3)

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“Do you remember giving some fags to two chaps you didn’t know who were going up the line, one particularly bloody night end of October it would have been.” “It’s quite likely, a good many fags were given away under those circumstances.” “Well I remember, it was my first night up the line. One doesn’t forget that one as easily as the others, and in consideration of those fags I’ll tell you a few things that I wouldn’t have told other members of the force.” Mr Darrow stopped a few minutes in thought. “If you want to know about Mr Marshall,” he continued, “I would like to tell you, you may only think I am pulling your leg. I warn you I can’t give you what you might consider proofs of what I say.” “Go on,” Love answered genially. “You know in our profession it’s supposed to be up to us to furnish the proofs.” He liked the young man, he was in a comfortable chair, and the girl had been charming though she had now unfortunately disappeared. “All right, I’ll tell you the whole story. First let me tell you though that whoever got rid of Marshall did away with the most pestilent fraud, blackguard and rotter, and did a good days work whoever he is.” The speaker’s eyes were alight with something that was not amusement. Love had let his cigarette go out, he stretched out his hand for a spill but the young man forestalled him and lit up for him again. “I’ll have to tell you a lot about Corradium first,” he continued, “and how it started. It was when I was prisoner in Sennelager in 1917 that I met a chap there I knew, chap called Hare.317 We became good friends.318 He was a scientist, a man who should never have joined up. He was wasted as an infantry officer, but he had a romantic streak in him and joined up, one of the first. However what I’m getting at is that Hare was working out a new process for treating copper ore, the low grade kind especially that it doesn’t pay to treat by the old process. He used to jaw about it to me, not that I understand much about that kind of thing, and I got interested. I had a few hundred pounds and we decided that when we got back (if ever) that we’d pool any money we could get hold of, and that he would complete his experiments and then we would form a company and what not. Afraid I’m very long winded,” he broke off. “No, no,” said Love, “very interesting, go on.” “Well we did get back and we got our bonuses, and I put my money in too, and Hare worked the thing out. By that time our own money was pretty neatly gone. Then I met Marshall.” “Where did you meet him?” Love interrupted. “Oh his wife was a friend of Hare’s mother. They hadn’t met for years but Mrs Hare knew we were looking for backers and she thought of Marshall and made the introduction. He got interested and promised to do a lot. He did do some. He didn’t put in the money himself too as he had promised but he did get a couple of other men to invest. We started the company. Marshall wouldn’t be a director himself. His reasons

Sennelager, a town near Paderborn in Germany, has long-held military associations, from its origins in 1851 as a Prussian cavalry training camp. During the First World War it included a POW camp housing mainly British merchant seamen and fishermen. It is currently under British control and home of the 20th Armoured Infantry Brigade. 318 “We became good friends. ” (TS2, 20, 4). 317

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sounded all right, but he was in everything and knew everything. We knew very little of the man at that time. It was rumoured, and I’ve since found out that it was true, that his money was made through exports to Holland. He was able to retire because after August 1914 his exports there were double of what they had been previously. That’s another thing about the man that makes me not feel his demise, even apart from the fact that he was trying to skin us.”319 “From what I can make out he didn’t hold much Corradium stock himself,” said Love.320 “His many profits were conservatively invested. Mr Marshall was not a man to risk losing money, not after he had got it. You might say he carried a solid city of burgess or bourgeois feelings or principles right up to the crime belt and into debatable territory. They say you know that the Greeks are honest after they have made their first twenty thousand. Friend Marshall didn’t stop there, he wanted to go right on making. Marshall introduced us to Mr Bane and Mr Gunaway – they are now our directors – he introduced us but I can’t say he helped us into their confidence. Gunaway liked Hare and I think that put the deal through in the first place. He is a gentleman. Bane is a bit rough, but straight. We had organised a preliminary company, stock on sale, and some little, not very much sold. We retained 60% ourselves, that is Hare 48% and me 12%. Bane stood to hold 20% and Gunaway 10%. They had paid in enough so far to cover our expenses. Marshall had QPD 10% but he hadn’t paid up very much.”321 Darrow broke off to light himself another cigarette with one of his remaining spills. “Six weeks ago we had a jolt,” he continued. “A report from the chemical experts that we were counting on showing at a board meeting arrived. The report said that though the experiment had been successful in 60% of the tests, in the remaining 40% it had failed or been very uncertain. We had been counting on their report, money gone, office rent due, nothing to go on with.”322 “Well Hare and I were in this room talking it over. It was a long six page report on blue paper like this.” He held out the remains of the spill he had been using, then tossed it in the fire. “Well Marshall came and sat down there on the chair in front of my desk. The report was lying on the desk. Marshall talked about various things, of no important, then he let me know that he knew about the report, he had read it while he was talking to us. I found that he could read documents that were upside down in front of him, or from any angle. He had trained himself to do it, he told us so. He read enough to get the gist of the thing and then he sprung it on us that he knew, not that we would have tried to conceal it from him. We were in a fix. Hare knew his thing was all right. He only needed time to fix it

Marshall’s wartime profiteering places him in infamous company in Pound’s rogues gallery.

^“From what I can make out he didn’t hold much Corradium stock himself,”^ said Love (TS2, 20, 5). 321 This long paragraph comprises several fragmented pages in the typescript: it begins on TS2, 20, 5, on which a short section is pasted from another page numbered 6; the passage continues on the next page numbered 5B, itself made of two composite pages. The following page is numbered 6, and as a full page retains this number. 322 “We had been counting on their report, money gone, office rent due, nothing to go on with, ” (TS2, 20, 5B). 319 320

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up, but the damn report had to go before the committee. Then Marshall said, ‘look here, give me this, I’ll make it all right’.”323 “He was a clever devil, no mistake about that. He had seen that as the report was typed it would be possible to omit the page that had the report of the percentage of failures. It was really very simple. The last words on page four were ‘the process has been completely successful in …’ then it continued on page five ‘60% of cases’ and went on to talk of the failures. Page six commenced with the words ‘90% of cases’ … you see the point he was showing us. If page five was left out of the report, the part about the failures was left out with it, and the thing read quite clearly from page four to six. Marshall said ‘given that I’ll have that 6 into a 5 in a jiffy’.”324 “Hm,” said Love thoughtfully. “Of course if you want to tell me all this.” “Yes,” said Darrow, smiling, “I think it may be of use to you.”325 “To get on with my story. The report went before the board, minus page five, … Marshall’s people put money into it all right. In the mean time Hare corrected his formula and we got another report that it had functioned in 98% of tests. You might have thought Marshall might have been content, but he couldn’t play straight. It wasn’t in him. He started blackmailing us, Hare and myself, wanted Lord knows what and threatened to bring up that fifth sheet, which he had taken care to keep, before the committee. That’s what he was up to when he was shot.”326 “Look here,” said the Inspector, “I haven’t asked you tell me all this and you may have your reasons but it puts you in a [compromised position.]”327 […]328

The following passage precedes the passage above in the reading text, which begins on a new page in the typescript. Clearly the second, longer version of Marshall’s upside-down reading is the intended version, and is kept in the reading text. “Hare and I were in here talking it over when Marshall came in. The report was lying there on my desk. We talked about various things then Marshall let us know that he knew all about the report––he had read it ^I found that he had learned to read documents upside down^ ^He said it was a most useful he had trained himself to be able to ^read documents at almost any angle and from a considerable distance.^ We would have told him about the report anyway. He looked at it, and then he said, ‘give that to me, I can fix it’ ” (TS2, 20, 5B). 324 A third version of the same episode exists on a subsequent page also numbered 6, as follows: “Marshall came in and sat down there in front of my desk. He talked of various things but while he was doing it he was reading the report, the pages that were spread on my desk. Upside down. He had trained himself to do that, he said it was a useful accomplishment. I just tell you this to show the kind of man he was, we would have shown him the report any way. He read enough to get the gist of the thing, and then he sprung it on us that he knew. Hare knew he had the right idea, and only wanted a bit of time to fix it up, but there was that damn report that had to go before the committee. Then Marshall said ‘Look here I can fix this so that you can show it anywhere you please’” (TS2, 20, 6, second version). 325 The left margin has in pencil, in Pound’s hand, a note that states: Co[mpany] found, stocks solid. 326 The right margin has Olga Rudge’s note stating: If 2nd report satisfied how could M. blackmail? 327 The narrative stops at this point in the typescript, at the very bottom of the page. Clearly there was at least limited additional material, but its location is unknown. 328 The following material appears in a single unnumbered page filed in Folder 2822, bearing no obvious relation to any other material in that folder. It entails a continuation of Love’s conversation with Darrow but containing new material – Darrow’s receipt of Mulver’s letter from the United States and mention of his “gunman friend.” 323

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“A Sunday, he was with us all the evening.” The Inspector realized the difficulties which would lie in the way if he had needed to trace the theft of the missing paper to a man who was about to be governor of Wyoming with access to the powers in Washington,329 still he felt that Darrow was talking about the affair in quite too light hearted a manner. “I don’t know if you realize that for several weeks now various people have been under grave suspicion of having committed a murder.” Darrow made no answer. He looked for another paper in his desk. “Here is something that came with the American mail.” He handed over an American Post Office envelope. Mulver’s name and address was pencilled on it in block letters.330 Inside was a plain post card written on also in pencil in the same characters. “As you are a soft hearted chap it may interest you to know that the old fool did it himself fooling with the safety catch.” The detective looked at Darrow suspiciously. The young man met the look with unconcern. “Now you know as much as I do,” he said. “Except who wrote this.” “I don’t honestly know. As Mulver sent it on to me I presume it to be from his gunman friend. A fellow who had a reputation for understanding the workings of most safes, perhaps it was through him that Mulver came into possession of page 5.331 But Mulver hadn’t time to go into details when I saw him, and I never saw him myself. His friend was anxious to catch the next boat home.” “Then I take it this gunman friend of your friend’s was employed to steal the missing page of the report that you claim Marshall was holding to blackmail you with.” “Mulver knew about the fix Hare and I were in. He was not a talkative man but he did mention that he had a friend who had had to leave San Francisco332 rather suddenly and who was so hard up that he would break into the bank of England for 50 pounds. I never saw the man, and this is the first I have heard from him.”333

a man who ^was about to be governor of Wyoming with access to the powers in Washington^ (TS2, unnumbered page) Pound’s birth and first two years of life in Idaho may have drawn him to choose Wyoming as the senatorial state in the narrative (it appears in his handwriting and was almost certainly his decision). The Class A senator from Wyoming at the time of composition was John B. Kendrick, a Democrat, who served 1917–33. The Class B senator was first Patrick J. Sullivan, a Republican who replaced Francis E. Warren who died in office, and who served from 5 December 1929 to 20 November 1930 when he retired at the end of Warren’s term; and second Robert D. Carey, a Republican who was elected to a full term on 1 December 1930 and served until 1937. There appears to be no particular significance for Pound in any of these figures, which may have been a motivation to choose Wyoming in the first place. The connection with Washington DC is telling. Pound corresponded with the New Mexico senator Bronson Cutting from November 1930 (the precise time of composition of The Blue Spill) and 1935, and with the Idaho senator William Borah between 1933 and 1939. He also visited Washington DC in 1939, in an attempt to convince Congress to avert the looming European war. 330 He handed over an ^American Post Office^ envelope . ^Mulver’s^ name and address was pencilled on it in block letters (TS2, unnumbered page). 331 ^“I don’t honestly know. As Mulver sent it on to me I presume it to be from ^his gunman^ friend. ^A fellow who had a^ reputation for understanding the workings of most safes, perhaps it was through him that Mulver came into possession of page 5. […]” (TS2, unnumbered page). 332 a friend who had had to leave ^San Francisco^ (TS2, unnumbered page). 333 “I never saw the man, ” (TS2, unnumbered page). The verso page has the pencil comment in Olga Rudge’s hand: Writ by order of EP who was to supply reason in last chapter! 329

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[…]334 “Well that’s an explanation. It doesn’t contradict anything so far.” Love had just finished telling Whitby Darrow’s account of what had killed Marshall. Whitby had been frankly sceptical, making one objection after another that Love had explained away. “It doesn’t seem natural, it sounds like something out of a book,” he complained. “And you have forgotten what has been one of the most puzzling things about the affair, that revolver, who had it, and who put it back.” “That,” said the Inspector calmly, “is the only thing the affair that I’ve felt I understood from the beginning. Mrs Marshall of course.” “Mrs Marshall? Whatever for?” “It was her daughter, she thought the girl did it. She must have known she had been quarrelling with her father.” “Yes, but why put it back?” “When the son was suspected of course, she didn’t want to help her daughter at the expense of her son. She must have thought the only thing to do was to put it back where she had found it. She must have been half distracted. I saw how upset she was in the car that day when I pointed out that the absence of fingerprints wiped out any chance of its being suicide.” “Then all the family has been suspecting one another, a fine situation. The mother thought it was one of her children, and they thought it was the mother, and they have all been trying to shield one another. None of them daring to speak out even among themselves. But you don’t believe that crook’s story (if it isn’t a fiction of Darrow’s) about Marshall doing it himself? How? Why? And what happens now?”335 “What indeed. I’ve got a story I can’t prove. I shall have to see the head office. It will be another of these mysteries that the papers make so much of the first few days that that no one ever hears of any more. Well, Whitby old man, I wonder where and how I shall meet you again”336 As Love had predicted no further public mention was ever made of the Marshall murder, and at the end of a few weeks even Ripton had stopped talking about it. Dane Marshall left for Canada as had planned and Owen presumably joined him there, though nothing was made public. Mrs Marshall continued her solitary life just the same as before, except that the faithful Brinkly came oftener. Miss Marshall gave up the set she had been with so much in London, and was more at home. Ripton gossip had it that Mr Shelton was paying her serious attentions. Bryde stayed on at Graylands and transferred his affections to the late Bute’s fiancée. As for Rodney, he was heard of again soon. His picture of Flossie Melvill, after having had a scandalous success, had been forbidden to be shown by the censor. “They pay all together too much attention to detail,” said Mrs Rodney.

The following material is typed on two sheets placed in Folder 2818. It comprises Love’s reflections on the case of the Blue Spill, as well as brief notes concerning the afterlives of several major characters. Although the scene is titled “Chap[ter] 2,” Darrow’s name is mentioned, and the (dubious) existence of the “gunman friend” flows on directly from the scene fragment preceding this one. It represents the final chronological scene in the narrative and thus concludes the reading text. 335 Whitby’s questions concerning the “crook’s story” are added in pencil. 336 . 334

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APPENDIX 1 [YCAL MSS 54 Box 115 Folder 2818. Appendix 1 comprises two pages of manuscript notes on verso pages in Rudge’s hand detailing Love’s theories concerning the murder. This material might be absorbed into Chapter 5, except that Mulver’s name does not arise in the narrative until Chapter 20. It appears in TS2 immediately following the conclusion of the second version of Chapter 2.] Love brought out his notebook. “Marshall was short-sighted, in fact his sight was decidedly poor.”337 “Where did you find out he was short-sighted, and what that has to do with it?” The Doctor was decidedly sceptical. “One moment,” said Love, “We know Marshall was writing an impatient letter to his son.” “I’ve got his oculist’s statement if it interests you.” “Spare us – I apologise.” “I have his daughter’s statement that he had just broken his glasses about 11.30. That explains interrupting the letter to son. You can see that without my going into details can’t you?” Whitby nodded. “The children were the only members of the family who had revolvers – presents from Brinkly by the way – Marshall had just got one himself. Whether he was familiar with handling them I haven’t been able to ascertain, but say he picks up one in a hurry – in a half dark room, remember only a desk lamp was on, and he without his glasses – say he doesn’t understand the thing – say the gunman knocks up his hand …” “Just why do you believe in the gunman?” broke in Whitby. “How could the fellow have got in? Marshall wouldn’t have been likely to lock the side door after him too.” “He can have slipped in the house when Owen left the door open, when she came out to see young Marshall the second time. The car that stopped down the road at eleven must have been his. Or rather the … that Mulver borrowed when he went to the dance with Flossie and Darrow he leaves it outside the house – gunman knows about it – he borrows it and returns it to the same place afterwards.” “Very ingenious,” said Whitby, “and what happens now?”

(TS2, unnumbered sheet in Folder 2818).

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APPENDIX 2 [YCAL MSS 54 Box 115 Folder 2818. Appendix 2 comprises seven pages of manuscript notes, numbered 1–7, in Pound’s handwriting. These also appear in TS2 immediately following the conclusion of the second version of Chapter 2.]

Page 1 Corradium X: Were you on hill 64. L: Yes. X: Once give fags to two chaps going up on a wet, properly wet bloody night

L: Quite likely. X: I remember. 1st time I went up. In consideration of which I will reveal what might have concealed from other m. force. ––– more drama. ––– Miss T. rings, brings in filing case. M Removes folder Single item M: That will be all for the moment.

Page 2 Mulver: annoyed, but not unduly worried What he said: “Seen so many better guy’n that bumped off.” ––– Ch. Perhaps the late-or morn has blunted our what ch’um’ay call it. ––– [Marshall marry – exports to Holland after Aug. 1914] Why he was able to retire. I mean from then on he exports a bit more than he had previous to that date. ––– That’s why I don’t greatly feel his demise. After from his trying to skim us.

Page 3 His profits were most safely and conservatively invested. Mr M. not a man to lose money. Not after he’d got it. You might say he carried a solid city burgess [?] of bourgeois feelings or principles right up into the crime belt – or into debatable territory. They say the Greeks are honest after their first 20 thousand. No friend M. didn’t stop there. He wanted to go right on making. ––– Am I clear – he found us worried.

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Page 4 We’d organized a preliminary co. Stock on sale & some letter – not much really sold. The rest unpaid capital. Ours – & Mr Bane & Mr Gunaway (our 2 directors) & a bit to man called Tilault. ––– we got those reports & were afraid we’d be held up by 4 months. No rent & nothing to live on. ––– M. takes out p.5, said he would talk to B & G, removed 5 & went out. All right no harm done.

Page 5 (new report) Hare went to work. 3 weeks, 4 hours sleep. New report OK ––– M. said we owed him or 1/3 of our shares. We held 60%, H. 48 & me 12, means our loss of control. Agree with H inalienable voting stock. (All right, we prob. did owe him 3 weeks credit.) He said he wd. “expose us” to B & G ––– He’d sold on the up – a few shares. Expects a drop before the new report – that riled him. He was annoyed with H.

Page 6 Owes his trouble to his temper. Hadn’t enough, unloaded on B & G. ––– Gunaway a gentleman. Bane a bit rough – but straight. M. introduced us – but can’t say he helped us into their confidence. G liked H. I think that put the deal through in 1st place. Not M – his wife knew H’s mother, ran into him one day at Simpsons.

Page 7 We retained 60%, that is Hare 48 & me 12 Bane stood to hold 20% Gun 10%, they’d paid in so far enough to cover our expenses, & M 10% but he hadn’t paid up very much.

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APPENDIX 3 [This diagram is drawn on the final page of Chapter 19 (TS2, 133). It functions as an heuristic chart for what is presumably a much more extensive section of the novel concerning Marshall’s business dealings and specifically those with Corradium Cylinders Ltd. This mysterious stock option draws Darrow, Rodney, Mrs Rodney, Mulver, and the (real or imaginary) hired killer, into the scene of Graylands, and by various modes of implication (clandestine romance, inheritance, jealousy), Margela and Dane Marshall as well as Mrs Marshall. Any attempt to write the latter part of the narrative would do well to begin from here.]

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2.

1.

Love starts wondering about Corradium

⇓

Love sees Cristobel. one more remark Corradium

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2 ½ L[ove] looks up Corradium on market for past months

3. [xxx] best thing L[ove] can do is to see who is Corradium, & what they know about Marshall

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Corradium on change up  down  up

⇓

new stock that has fluctuated

dates of fluctuation = attempt to fit to his biography FIGURE 3.1:  YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folder 2820, TS12, 133. Courtesy of the Ezra Pound Trust and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

PART TWO

Essays

Chapter FOUR

A Golden Age Clue-Puzzle The Blue Spill and Detective Fiction

The detective story is a game. It is more – it is a sporting event. And the author must play fair with the reader. […] For the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws – unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding: and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them. — S. S. Van Dine (1928) The unfinished manuscript of The Blue Spill was developed by Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound during the Ligurian winter of 1930, perhaps as a pleasurable diversion from their other, more intensive editorial and curatorial projects. From two drafts of different lengths we can piece together the pair’s experiment in a style of detective fiction which had reached new heights of popularity during the interwar years, and which is often referred to as the clue-puzzle. The form was a ubiquitous and lucrative one internationally, and in The Blue Spill we see its distinctively English incarnation, with all the trappings of the drawing room – or, in this case, the billiard room – mystery, in a suitably palatial country manor. While the majority of detective novels written in the century preceding the rise of the clue-puzzle were not published in the form of novels but rather ‘in the pages of the elusive magazines and regularly appearing newspapers’, Pound and Rudge’s foray into the field came at a time when the novel had firmly established itself as the leading form of detective fiction in Britain as elsewhere (Knight 1998, 11). Rudge and Pound were keen readers of detective fiction and even a cursory glance over the incomplete manuscript of The Blue Spill reveals the influence of that master of the form, Agatha Christie. While Christie’s particularly English style garnered a wide readership in the interwar period (as indeed for many decades to come) it is important to note, as Stephen Knight does, that the clue-puzzle was ‘by no means an English or between-wars phenomenon’ – or at least not exclusively so (Knight 2010, 84). We see its genealogy not only in the works of Christie’s compatriots Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers and Anthony Berkeley, but also in those of the French author Gaston Leroux and early American practitioners like Carolyn Wells, Anne Katherine Green and Mary Roberts Rineheart – among many others. Nonetheless, The Blue Spill fits neatly into what is often characterized as the Golden Age of the clue-puzzle style between the two World Wars, adhering as it does to myriad wellestablished tropes of the genre, while arguably satirizing their very familiarity. There are many competing, and compelling, theories regarding the enduring appeal of the crime novel in all its forms, and precisely why the clue-puzzle found such a wide audience in its historical moment. In his genealogy of the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction, Knight acknowledges the diversity of ideas about precisely why the form rose to such heights during the interwar period. Where the poet C. Day Lewis

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(himself an author of detective fiction writing under pseudonym of Nicholas Blake) saw the form as inseparable from the decline of religion in the early twentieth century, Eric Routley regarded it as a ‘Puritan’ form, concerned with condemning ‘excess in any form, murderous, sexual, even convivial’. For Geraldine Pederson-Krag and Charles Rycroft it concealed a Freudian conflict, while Edmund Wilson suggested that detective mysteries tapped into a collective sense of guilt and fear (Knight 2003, 88–9). Far from constituting a monolithic body of work we might interpret through these diverse lenses, crime fiction at this time was heterogeneous in both style and scope, and there was ‘a wide range of practice’ in the genre beyond the archetypal clue-puzzle, even at the height of its popularity (77). Neither should the internal complexity of that particular – and particularly successful – form be underestimated. Escapist but also displacing real anxieties; enclosed in setting but suggesting that the enclosure in itself contains deep personal threats; clever but always implying that you the reader could be as clever; modernist to some degree but also inherently humanist: the ‘golden age’ clue-puzzle is a highly complex form. (91) In both omnipresence and volume a Golden Age it certainly was, for despite the emergence of what Julian Symons describes as ‘rebellion’ against its tropes, ‘during the thirties the classical detective story burgeoned with new and considerable talents almost every year’ (Symons 1985, 108). Notwithstanding scholarly acknowledgement of the form’s heterogeneity even at the height of its popularity, it is nonetheless true to say that exemplars of detective fiction in the interwar period – English or American – could generally be depended upon to abide by certain rules. These rules were laid down with near-parodical exactitude by ‘S. S. Van Dine’, a pseudonym for the American art critic Willard Huntington Wright, who published several successful detective novels of his own throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. Van Dine’s rules, such as they were, reinforced an enduring tenet of the clue-puzzle: that its explanation, while elusive, must be both rational and naturalistic. No occultism, no ‘wilful tricks or deceptions’ other than those ‘played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself’ were allowed. No clues could be withheld from the clue-puzzle reader; and the culprit must finally be identified not by ‘accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession’, but by a rational process of information gathering and logical reasoning. The clue-puzzle plot must not be cluttered with attention-diverting romance, or ‘irrelevant sentiment’; neither must it be resolved by the sudden appearance of a heretofore unseen character (Van Dine). The spectre of the ‘unlikely person’ as the perpetrator of the crime had become less common during the Golden Age; such a culprit was too easily identified by the ‘cunning reader’, according to Dorothy Sayers, who affirmed, with due deference to ‘a new axiom, laid down by Mr G. K. Chesterton’, that ‘the real criminal must be suspected at least once in the course of the story. Once he is suspected, and then (apparently) cleared, he is made safe from future suspicion’ (Sayers 1946, 106). The murderer – for the crime must be murder – should therefore be a character ‘with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest’; not so familiar, however, as the detective himself, who ‘should never turn out to be the culprit’. A professional criminal must not be involved – and the murder at the centre of the clue-puzzle ‘must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide’ (Van Dine). While The Blue Spill adheres faithfully to many of Van Dine’s rules others are either deliberately or unwittingly flouted, with the novel’s most likely (albeit incomplete) explanation in clear conflict with these last two key tenets.

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If the Golden Age clue-puzzle which The Blue Spill is clearly intended to emulate – albeit, perhaps, with tongue firmly in cheek – was ‘no more than another competing sub-genre with its own audience and patterns’, it was nonetheless ‘one in which some of the best finished and most technically skilful work in crime fiction was achieved’ (Crime Fiction 85). One persuasive argument for the immense popularity of the clue-puzzle as a sub-genre of detective fiction points to the particular way in which the form engages the reader in a kind of game. While readers are challenged to solve the puzzle before the fictional detective, we nevertheless expect the best detective fiction to stay one step ahead of us. If a reader is able to identify the culprit before the detective does, he or she feels ‘disappointed in the writer’s ability to make the problem difficult enough’ (Raskin 1992, 73). When the narrative elements surrounding the central crime are sufficiently entertaining we might even find ourselves paradoxically engrossed by and distracted from the solution to the puzzle. The best detective fiction should be able to keep us at one remove from the true culprit by diverting our attention this way and that way until the process of deduction is complete, as a parade of suspects emerge and are exonerated, new clues are uncovered, suspicions raised and then put to rest. Perhaps the analogy of the ‘puzzle’ is an imperfect one, if ‘the major portion of the play-related pleasure derived from reading detective fiction […] springs from the reader’s enjoyment of the writer’s virtuosity in playing with and against the conventions of the genre’ (Raskin 1992, 73, my emphasis). We are reminded that though the genre’s many conventions were clearly demarcated and understood as such by both reader and author, as much pleasure for either derived from experimenting with these conventions as from adhering to them. The detective fiction author might invent ‘new combinations’ of the relationship between the genre’s key players: detective, culprit, victim and narrator. Likewise, he or she may find ‘a novel blend of idiosyncratic and admirable qualities in composing the character of the detective’ (Raskin 1992, 76) – something we undoubtedly see exemplified in the enduring appeal of Christie’s two most famous, and eccentric, detecting figures, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The narrative structure of the classic clue-puzzle is a doubled one, comprised of the crime itself and the process of deduction it precipitates, and around which the novel proper revolves. Tzvetan Todorov offers us something like a typology of what he calls the ‘whodunit’ as the coming together of two temporal threads: ‘the days of the investigation which begin with the crime, and the days of the drama which lead up to it.’ In the ‘purest form’ of the whodunit, the story of the crime and the related story of its deduction ‘have no point in common’ (Todorov 1977, 44). This is to say that the clue-puzzle narrative only begins ‘after’ the crime upon which it is focused has already been committed, with the culprit, at least for the bulk of the novel’s length, having successfully evaded detection. The form’s twofold structure implicates the reader of the detective novel in the storytelling process in a particularly explicit way: we experience the investigation of the crime as the primary narrative, and piece together the precipitating narrative of the crime itself at roughly the same pace as does the detective – and in possession of the same suite of clues. Todorov draws a link between the twinned threads of the detective novel and the Russian Formalist categories of the fable and the subject, from which we might extrapolate a neat typology: Fable / Subject Story / Plot Crime / Deduction

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Story and plot are, of course, but ‘two points of view about the same thing’, and what distinguishes detective fiction in this typology is the way in which it ‘manages to make both of them present, to put them side by side’ (Todorov 1977, 46). It does so by making the first story that which is only accessible to a reader – or indeed to the detective, who acts as a kind of cipher for that reader – via the second story. The detective novel is a fiction of the ‘drive and capacity to interpret’ (Gillespie 2008, 346), privileging the process of finding answers and the possibility that there is a correct interpretation of events, even if it is initially difficult to uncover. A detective story might unfold from the perspective of the detective’s colleague, friend or partner – the Watson type, so to speak – or from what Sayers termed the ‘middle viewpoint’, through which we the reader see everything that the detective sees, usually in the close third person, but ‘are not told what he observes’ (Sayers 1946, 98–9). This latter style, exemplified in The Blue Spill, enables readers to feel as if they are detecting alongside the detective, yet to still be pleasurably surprised and outgunned when the solution is revealed. The Golden Age of the clue-puzzle saw a shift from the uncanny brilliance of inductive reasoning exemplified by Sherlock Holmes, to a logical and rational approach. The clue-puzzle detective deduces the solution to the mystery and pinpoints the culprit using those same clues which are available to the reader, should he or she care to spy them; which is to say that the genre gives its readers a chance to play detectives too. When we reach the conclusion of a classic clue-puzzle, we will realize that we had the clues at our disposal all along, even if only at the moment of explanation, and in retrospect. Like E. C. Bentley’s Phillip Trent, or even occasionally Christie’s Hercule Poirot, the detective figure at the centre of The Blue Spill, Inspector Love, is capable of missing or misreading a clue, and draws only on the resources of a recognizably human, albeit unusually instinctive and sharp, mind. Like Poirot or Miss Marple, Love is an intuitive seeker of information, drawing on that which is tangible – if obscured – to solve the crime, in contrast to the mental acrobatics performed by a character like Sherlock Holmes, himself modelled on Edgar Allen Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. The clue-puzzle detective is ‘clever, insightful and persevering, rather than flamboyantly active or coincidentally fortunate like heroes of the detective past and of other sub-genres’ (Knight 2010, 88). He or she is usually also the narrative’s central protagonist, often reappearing in several volumes of a series and focal to much of the action. While we have only one novel devoted to Inspector Love, he is certainly worthy of his status as protagonist of The Blue Spill: sharp as a tack and a little bit eccentric, with a healthy ego and a few odd habits to boot. Notwithstanding the primacy of murder most foul to the detective fiction narrative, the spectre of violence itself lies on the periphery of the clue-puzzle. In nearly every example the primary crime is discovered after the fact, and the details of death are only ever described to the reader through the process of explanation following the discovery of a crucial final clue. While in earlier examples of the form the detective himself (for it was usually a male) could emerge as the criminal, as the clue-puzzle grew in popularity the detective became almost universally a figure with the power – and responsibility – to resolve the threat of crime and restore order. Indeed, the popularity of the detective novel generally cannot be decoupled from the function of the detective in embodying a conception of law and order as incorruptible and accountable. Given the irresistible urge of readers to torment themselves with riddles and puzzles, Dorothy L. Sayers wondered in 1929 why the ‘detective story should have had to wait so long to find a serious exponent’ towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle, suggesting that the form could not flourish ‘until public sympathy had veered round to the side of

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law and order’ (Sayers 1946, 73–4). The rise of the institutional figure of the detective (notwithstanding stellar exceptions to the rule, like Agatha Christie’s brilliant but amateur sleuth Miss Marple) was necessary for the glamorization of his role in classic detective fictions – and Britain did not have a force of public detectives until 1884 (Holquist 1971, 140). Those exemplary clue-puzzle fictions which proliferated during the interwar years in Britain offered their readers portraits of a society clinging fast to the civilities of the drawing room in the aftermath of a conflict whose surviving casualties would have been clearly visible in every village and town. If the form helped to ‘reduce diffuse feelings of anxiety produced by ominous social developments’ (Raskin 1992, 92), could it be accused of providing a false resolution to and displacement of those ethical tensions which threatened to surface in a society still defined by the slaughter of a generation – and careening fast, if unknowingly, towards the nightmare of another? The Golden Age clue-puzzle recovered order, sanitized crime and moved it off-screen. Its focus was the aftermath, and the restoration of normality via the process of identifying, catching and punishing the culprit. Rare indeed was the clue-puzzle murderer who got away with his or her crime. The manor house at the centre of so many Golden Age detective fictions is a gated and privileged space, invaded – sometimes even from within – by a killer, and thereafter by the intrusion of the authorities. Murders take place in enclosed and ‘exclusive’ settings, where ‘members of the working classes play very minor roles and servants are used only as passing suspects’ (Knight 2010, 86). The pastoral peace of the country village is disrupted by those phenomena of the urban and industrial centre: crime and corruption, scandal and greed. Representatives of the new capitalist ascendancy – businessmen, industrialists – were not infrequently the victims of a cluepuzzle murder, in what we might read as a kind of punishment for scaling the walls of an inner sanctum where money was more often inherited than earned. In the cluepuzzle novel, ‘as in all novels of manners, there is a constant interplay […] between the customs and mores of a certain milieu and psychological and ethical realities. [The] murder is the breach that violently breaks open this microcosm and forcefully brings in the outside world’ (Charney 1981, 79). Did detective fiction provide a false resolution to social tensions? Or did it expose, even subvert, the status quo in relations between social groups? As Julian Symons observes, ‘it was taken as a matter of course in Golden Age deduction that murder most often took place where servants were around, but no servant could ever be guilty of more than petty theft or attempted blackmail’ (Symons 1985, 94–5). On the one hand, the insistence that both victims and culprits must be drawn from the world of the upper classes might be understood to perpetuate the idea of their greater social importance; on the other hand, readers are confronted with the spectre of violence, deception and corruption located firmly within the houses and families of the landed gentry. Echoing Knight’s characterization of the form as more complex than it is sometimes understood to be, Richard Raskin notes that detective fiction could function either to ‘(a) reinforce or (b) undercut social myths which serve[d] the purposes of groups enjoying or aspiring to privilege and power with respect to other groups’ (Raskin 96, my emphasis). Of course, Pound and Rudge were living not in England during the composition of The Blue Spill, despite its setting, but were resident in Italy, a country with its own rich tradition and history of detective fiction. Detective novels were ubiquitous in Italy in the 1930s, enjoying a flowering of popularity there as in England and America, and their rise can be traced back to the launch in September 1929 of Mondodori’s I Libri Gialli series

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(Dunnett 2011, 748). While the first four titles of the series were novels in translation, including one by the now familiar Van Dine, Italian authors soon began producing their own detective fictions. ‘Publishing houses strongly promoted crime fiction as a respectable genre [while] at the same time Italian writers investigated the role of the genre and its social and pedagogical functions’ (Pezzotti 2014, 9). Crime fiction in Italy was a broad church at this time, with Mondadori including everything ‘from spy stories to thrillers’ under their Gialli umbrella (Pezzotti 2014, 12). Their ubiquity, and the sensationalism which was associated with them, was the subject of some critical disapproval. Jane Dunnett cites a deep-seated ‘unease’ on the part of the ‘literary establishment’ at the threat the form posed to ‘canonical notions of what constituted literature’. This disapproval could not dent the popularity of the genre, one that would ‘prove immensely influential in the subsequent development of twentieth-century Italian narrative’ (Dunnett 2011, 745). There was a lively critical debate regarding the ‘respectability’ of the detective novel during this period, and one which drew in critics who might not usually have been expected to engage with so-called letteratura popolare – accusations ‘of moral degradation and delinquency’ were among the accusations levelled by critics (Dunnett 2011, 746, 751). And while the tenor of this critical debate might seem at odds with the relative gentility of the Golden Age clue-puzzles of Agatha Christie, there is an analogue between the Italian literary establishment’s distaste for letteratura popolare and the disapproval with which many critics regarded popular genre fiction in Britain (Dunnett 2011, 753). However, as the Gialli’s popularity grew, ‘a new perception of crime fiction was […] supported by the endorsement of several intellectuals of the time who were also avid crime fiction readers’ (Pezzotti 2014, 12–13), echoing the pleasures taken in the form by Pound himself, and his friend and literary collaborator T. S Eliot. As the Battle of the Brows raged in Anglophone criticism, Pound and Rudge dabbled in what was a distinctly middlebrow genre, then at the height of its popularity with a mass-market readership. The interwar publishing landscape into which The Blue Spill might have entered, had it been completed and published, was one distinguished by the rise of the newspaper, and more broadly by ‘the emergence of mass culture’ (Bingham 2012, 56). New forums for the dissemination of information could not help precipitate a shift in the relationship of readers to literature of all types. The middlebrow has long been associated with conservatism, characterized as lacking in self-consciousness and averse to experiment (Lassner et al. 2013, 7). While Modernism’s ‘stylistic inventiveness and often deliberate obscurity meant that it was deemed, at its inception, to be elitist’, detective fiction of the Golden Age ‘when seen as taking a “reassuring” role in the face of social and historical change […] is condemned as conservative and resistant to change’ (Stewart 2013, 102–3). Yet the explosion of popular culture which began during the interwar years was coterminous with the height of twentieth-century Modernism, and both modes occupied a rich literary landscape. As Victoria Stewart has argued, ‘Interwar debates about detective fiction were no less vigorous than debates about Modernism at the same period and indeed […] were continuous with them’ (Stewart 2013, 102). Detective fiction cannot be so easily dismissed as neatly separable from the ‘inventiveness’ of Modernism literary experimentation; indeed, the greater the proliferation of generic ‘rules’ for detective fiction during the interwar years, ‘the more resistant detective fiction was to such strictures’ (Stewart 2013, 103). While the position of an author like Agatha Christie ‘as a serious artist, as not only chronologically Modern but aesthetically Modernist’ has arguably been ‘obscured’ by popular perceptions and reception of her work (Birns & Boe Birns 1990, 120), recent criticism examining the

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connection ‘between “modernism” and “epistemology” (a concern with questions of knowledge)’ has enabled a link to be drawn ‘between modernist literature and the detective genre’ (Marcus 2003, 246). If detective fiction as a mass-market form was once placed in critical opposition to the avant-garde of high Modernism, contemporary scholarship has done much to shift perceptions of the distance between them, and to suggest that in fact the form is more contiguous with Modernism than might previously have been acknowledged. Whether Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound intended to fashion an exemplar of the cluepuzzle with The Blue Spill; or, in rehearsing so many of the genre’s well-established tropes, to satirize its formulaic popularity, they had clearly apprised themselves of its most reliable conventions. We have already learnt that murder is ‘the crime par excellence’ of the clue-puzzle (Wells 1913, 219), and the necessary villainy at the centre of The Blue Spill is the mysterious death of one Mr Marshall, an English businessman who, notwithstanding the stately grandeur of his rural residence, Graylands, trails the unmistakable odour of new money. He is the archetypal clue-puzzle victim, a man ‘of some importance and wealth’, yet one whose position is not ‘of long-standing or antique respectability’ – for even here, in the manor house, ‘instability is constant’ (Knight 2003, 77–8). We first encounter Graylands and its recently deceased patriarch as Inspector Love arrives at the scene in the village of Ripton on the Monday morning following the murder, to guide us through the ensuing investigation. Just as the clue-puzzle fiction demands at least one death as its centrepiece, it likewise demands a full cast of suspects, whose possible culpability the chief detective – or detecting figure – must methodically consider. The late Mr Marshall is only cursorily mourned and the gathered testimony of employees, family members and townspeople paints a picture of a boorish, unpleasant and unlikeable bully, neatly fitting the mould of the form’s typical victim as ‘a person of little emotive value’ to the remaining characters (78). Upon discovery of the crime and Love’s arrival on the scene at Graylands, the clues begin to mount and the list of suspects lengthens. Inspector Love is joined in his investigation of the Marshall murder by his old friend Whitby – a doctor, in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes’s trusted colleague Watson – with whom the detective has consulted before. It is to Dr Whitby, who has just moved to the country and, conveniently enough, into a property next door to Graylands, that the frightened parlourmaid Eva runs for help upon discovering her master has been murdered. His status as Love’s right hand man might be presumed to excuse him from the list of possible suspects, and he has the wit to disclose early on in the proceedings that he is the owner of a small firearm near identical to that apparently used as the murder weapon. The Marshall family are now reduced to an elderly widow, hard of hearing; an unprepossessing daughter, Margela, to whose limited charms Love is immune; and a son, Dane, who has come down from Cambridge and upon whom the largest share of suspicion soon falls. Neither Marshall’s widow nor his daughter heard the shot that killed him, the former being all but deaf and the latter claiming to have been ensconced upstairs in her bath. Margela’s alibi is soon confirmed by Love’s intrusive questioning and detailed inspection of her private rooms, which put to rest any doubts regarding her innocence. Despite her entanglement in an adulterous scandal with a bohemian painter, which had recently elicited a threat of blackmail from the artist’s wife and given rise to a heated argument between father and daughter on the night of the murder, Margela is cleared of Love’s suspicion, if not raised to his good opinion. While Dane Marshall insists that he was not at Graylands at the time of his father’s killing, Love’s hunch that he was indeed

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present, unbeknownst to either his sister or mother, places him squarely in the detective’s sights. It seems that he too was embroiled in a dispute with his murdered father, who was unwilling to give financial assistance to either child. ‘A blooming lot of Borgias’ indeed, as Love wryly observes (TS2, 111). Love’s intuition proves correct as it emerges that Dane was indeed present at his family’s property on the night in question, albeit on another business entirely – visiting his secret fiancée, a parlourmaid named Owens. The young man is only proven innocent of patricide when an odd experiment conducted on a hunch by Dr Whitby, running in his suit under a hot midday sun from Ripton train station to Graylands, reveals that Dane would not have had time to murder his father and return on the night train to his residence in Cambridge. It is an eccentric experiment worthy of Hercule Poirot, and indeed recalls that inimitable private detective’s astute deductions as to the movements of the murderer in one of Christie’s most renowned and earliest mysteries, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926. A new suspect from outside the family circle enters the fray when Whitby’s manservant interrupts a companionable lunch between the doctor and the detective to report on the unusual movements of one Mr Bryde, Mr Marshall’s chauffeur – and the clue-puzzle’s requisite ‘red herring’. On the night of the murder Bryde, it seems, was up past his bedtime. The chauffeur had his own reasons for disliking Mr Marshall, having recently been threatened with dismissal for his attentions to yet another of the Marshalls’ ubiquitous (and uncommonly comely) parlourmaids. Love’s suspicion of Bryde is only strengthened when the one man who could have verified his whereabouts on the night of the murder is found to have been killed on the morning following, in an accident at work. Next, it is revealed that the murder weapon itself, a small browning of Margela’s that had recently been sent for cleaning, remained in Bryde’s possession after he retrieved it from the gunsmith on his master’s behalf. It is only when the widow of Bryde’s late friend is able to confirm the unfortunate man’s story that he is exonerated, though canny readers of the clue-puzzle genre might guess early on that the chauffeur Bryde is unlikely to be the novel’s real culprit, not only because of the conveniently circumstantial nature of the evidence which seems to incriminate him, but precisely because of his social position. We can turn again to Van Dine to be reminded that ‘servants – such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like – must not be chosen by the author as the culprit.’ And why not? ‘It is a too easy solution’ (Van Dine). The peculiar balance of order and subversion which characterizes the clue-puzzle demands that the culprit be drawn from the same – or a not too distant – social class as his or her victim. As successive suspects are exonerated, Inspector Love proposes an unusual explanation for Marshall’s untimely death: namely that Mr Marshall, having recently broken his glasses, might have fumbled and shot himself, either in conflict with another person or by accident. Whitby challenges this hypothetical scenario when he raises the mystery of the pistol’s absence at the crime scene upon the detective’s first inspection, followed by its reappearance the next day. Inspector Love, it turns out, has already concluded that responsibility for this series of events can be attributed to Mrs Marshall, who temporarily hid the murder weapon in a misguided attempt to protect her children from suspicion. Who, then, might have been there in the study with Mr Marshall when the shot was fired – either by an unknown visitor or by Marshall himself? Who let this visitor in, given that the door was bolted after him? Was someone resident at Graylands in cahoots with the visitor, or did Mr Marshall let the culprit in himself and bolt the door afterward, anticipating an overnight visit? Here the status of Marshall’s death – murder or accident – is

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cast into some doubt, unresolved in the absence of a conclusive alternative explanation as the manuscript is left unfinished. We cannot disregard Van Dine’s commanding insistence that to end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to play an unpardonable trick on the reader. If a book-buyer should demand his two dollars back on the ground that the crime was a fake, any court with a sense of justice would decide in his favor and add a stinging reprimand to the author who thus hoodwinked a trusting and kindhearted reader. (Van Dine) If indeed the ‘crime’ which precipitates the story of The Blue Spill is no such thing, then we might consider whether this potential disruption of a central clue-puzzle tenet constitutes something of a joke on the part of its authors at the expense of the form’s accepted conventions. There is a rich thread of humour woven through the unfolding story of Love’s perambulatory investigations in Ripton, prompting us to consider what place comedy might have in this particular clue-puzzle narrative and in the form generally. Some critics regard a certain drollness as being central to the genre – at least in its English incarnation – for while murder and laughter ‘might at first blush seem to be as far removed one from the other as it is possible to be,’ in many clue-puzzles ‘comedy is almost as important as the crime.’ The ‘deflationary mode’ is ‘perhaps the chief tool of any crime writer needing to lard the pages with a little humour’ (Keating 1987, 7, 22). We see this humour in witty or facetious descriptions of primary characters – Love’s sardonic observation that in her ‘heavy line of jaw and chin’ Margela Marshall bears an unfortunate resemblance to her late father – and in the endearing oddities of Love himself as the central detective figure (TS1, 17). With his tendency to talk out loud to himself whether alone or in company (a habit that infuriates Whitby), his notebook of ‘specimens’ and his flashes of uncanny intuition, Love is an ‘eccentric of the good old English school,’ to borrow Hanna Charney’s phrase (Charney 1981, 33). Alongside the ‘deflationary mode’ we see also a certain metafictional sensibility and a capacity for self-satire in the best examples of the clue-puzzle, exemplified by the recurring Agatha Christie character Ariadne Oliver, a theatrical and prolific writer of detective fictions and sometimes companion of Hercule Poirot. And if Christie confined herself to a ‘narrow social range of characters’ in the world of middle-to-upper class English country houses, it was if nothing else a milieu ripe for parody (Ungerer 1998, 90). The story of The Blue Spill intersects with historically situated anxieties about class strata in several ways, from the stench of industry which Mr Marshall brings with him into the upper echelons of country society, to the scandal of young Dane Marshall running away to Canada with the parlourmaid, Pegsy Owens. Ripton may be close to London but it possesses the required mix of landed gentry and servants, bohemians and blue-collar workers – not to mention a passable French restaurant and a local musical club – to fit the mould of the ‘comic village,’ peopled by familiar types and ruled by order, that became such a reliable setting for the interwar cluepuzzle (DeMarr 1987, 75). The strongest lead in the mystery of Marshall’s death, whether it came about through bloody murder or clumsy misadventure, is left by a clue laid early in the narrative and with little fanfare, in the best tradition of the genre. This crucial piece of the puzzle is the disappearance of a blue sheet of paper which Margela reports having seen on her father’s desk during their argument, but which is missing when Love first inspects the crime scene on the Monday morning of his arrival. The source and significance of this

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sheet of paper – the ‘blue spill’ of the title, so called for its use in lighting cigarettes – will only be revealed in the final fragments of the manuscript’s concluding pages: it is the incriminating missing page of a doctored report produced by the company Corradium. The company’s name first appears in the text when mentioned by one Mr Bemberg, a friend of Dane Marshall’s, as a hot stock tip. In the final, incomplete (and non-sequential) sections of the manuscript, Love pays a visit to Denham House in London, where the offices of Corradium are located. He is led in to see a Mr Darrow, who seems unsurprised by the detective’s visit and admits to his acquaintance with the late Mr Marshall without hesitation. Love and Darrow briefly and companionably discuss their shared service in the First World War before Darrow lights a cigarette for himself and Love with a folded blue paper – a ‘blue spill’ – and proceeds to volunteer his story. Darrow’s partner, a fellow soldier named Hare, is the brains behind Corradium, having come up with a new way to treat copper ore. Assistance in setting up the company was offered by Mr Marshall, with whom Hare shared a family connection, and while the parsimonious businessman avoided putting his own money into the enterprise, he offered to rustle up investment among his acquaintances. After initial testing of Hare’s formula, a report came back from the lab with less than satisfactory results; clearly more work would need to be done, but Darrow and Hare were already overextended. The two men met with Mr Marshall, who revealed that he had surreptitiously read the report in question and suggested that the removal of Page 5, which contained the disappointing results, would turn a negative report into a positive one. The alteration was made and the investors came through with their money, with ensuing testing demonstrating that the formula was indeed correct – lo and behold Corradium became a sure thing. No sooner had its stocks begun to rise than Mr Marshall began blackmailing Hare and Darrow with the incriminating missing page, threatening to reveal the deception which had taken place at his own urging. A note in the typescript margin in Rudge’s hand queries the effectiveness of Marshall’s blackmail following the successful second round of testing – “If 2nd report satisfied how could M. blackmail [?]” – which may indicate that she and Pound were still deliberating over the denouement of the story when composition ceased (TS2, 20, 6). Notwithstanding this query, it seems clear enough that the blue spill of the title was indeed that incriminating ‘Page 5’ taken from the initial Corradium report by Mr Marshall, seen by Margela in her father’s office on the night of his murder yet missing the next morning upon investigation of the crime scene, apparently taken by the night’s unknown visitor. The second draft’s final scenes indicate that it may have been stolen on behalf of a man of some importance, one Mr Mulver, an American whose car – it emerges, late in the piece – was seen on the road near Graylands on the night of the murder. Inspector Love is shown a letter which Mr Darrow reveals was delivered to him via American mail, containing the suggestion that Mr Marshall accidentally took his own life while ‘fooling with the safety’ of his revolver (TS2, unnumbered page). The identity of the letter’s writer is unknown, but Darrow informs Love that he received it from Mulver, who appears now to be in possession of the blue spill. Marginalia and handwritten notes on the typescript of this section indicate that while Mr Mulver himself may not have been responsible for Marshall’s murder, he was undoubtedly linked to the crime scene, having hired someone – here identified only as ‘the gunman’ – to retrieve the Corradium report’s missing page. Whether we are intended to believe the letter’s claim that an accident ensued, in which Marshall fell clumsy victim to his own pistol while ‘fooling with the safety’ – or whether he was killed by Mulver’s hired gunman – is not entirely clear, as the scene ends with Rudge’s emphatic note: ‘Writ by order of EP who was to supply reason in last chapter!’ (TS2, unnumbered page).

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Whatever the ‘reason’ which ‘EP’ was to supply, The Blue Spill turns out to be a tale of stock manipulation, greed and blackmail. Pound’s disdain for the particularly American incarnation of capitalism which we see in the corrupt behaviour of the late Mr Marshall cannot help but lend the spectre of this unlucky man’s demise a symbolic dimension. Directly or indirectly it is money that leads to the death precipitating the narrative of The Blue Spill, and while we might expect a deeply buried family secret or a long-held grudge to be revealed as the motive for a clue-puzzle murder, simple avarice was not entirely outside the norm. Julian Symons reminds us, ‘it was accepted [of the genre] that the motives for all crimes should be personal, and within that context rational. They should not be committed for reasons of state or on behalf of theoretical principles or by somebody merely insane’ (Symons 1985, 5). If nothing else we can at least concede that monetary gain may seem to some minds a perfectly rational – if banal – motive for murder. A partially handwritten series of notes (included out of sequence in folder 2818) give us a glimpse of the manuscript’s intended conclusion. Love is seen reflecting on the likelihood of the Marshall case, now apparently solved, fading in public memory; Dane has moved to Canada with Owens, and Mrs Marshall continues to reside at Graylands with regular visits from lawyer-on-the-make Mr Brinkly. Margela is now being courted by a family friend named Mr Shelton, while her previous paramour, the painter Mr Rodney, is enmeshed in yet another scandal. The last word belongs to Mrs Rodney, his apparently long-suffering yet unflappable wife. As the narrative is left finally incomplete the reader is drawn into a kind of detecting process of their own, raking through the clues and unanswered questions to determine the solution. If Marshall did indeed shoot himself accidentally while handling his pistol, he must nonetheless have done so while Mulver’s hired gunman was present, or how else would Mulver know? And if Marshall did fall victim to his own clumsiness, had he perhaps brought out his pistol because he felt threatened? In the absence of a conclusion we cannot answer these questions with absolute certainty; either way it seems likely that the solution would have diverged from that ‘axiom laid down by Mr G. K. Chesterton’ that the murderer ‘must be suspected at least once in the course of the story’ (Sayers 1946, 106). If we take as our culprit – or at least as an aggravating presence – the hired gunman acting on orders from Mr Mulver, then even in this Pound and Rudge break with clue-puzzle tradition, for ‘professional criminals’, like servants, are rarely found to be guilty (Knight 2003, 77). After all, as Van Dine tersely insists, crimes committed by ‘house-breakers and bandits are the province of the police department – not of authors.’ In the realm of the clue-puzzle, the ‘really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities’ (Van Dine). Why did Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge choose the clue-puzzle as their form for a collaborative project to while away the winter hours? Was the project an experiment in genre – an investigation of what it might mean to conform to rather than break with convention? For where the Modernist literary work is distinguished by its awareness and refutation of generic and formal boundaries, the genre text par excellence is marked out by its conformation to established rules. If ‘the masterpiece of popular literature is precisely the book which best fits its genre. […] The whodunit par excellence is not the one which transgresses the rules of the genre but the one which conforms to them’ (Todorov 1977, 43). Notwithstanding the failure of its probable resolution to live up to Van Dine’s strict standards, the mystery of The Blue Spill is a carefully constructed one, with the motivation for Mr Marshall’s possible murder implied by a cannily placed clue visible at the very beginning of the narrative, in full deference to the conventions of the

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form. While it will likely remain a mystery precisely why Rudge and Pound undertook the composition of The Blue Spill, what is plain enough from the pages of the manuscript drafts is both the liveliness of ongoing deliberations regarding its composition, and the fact that it was indeed a collaborative project. The interactive and dynamic nature of that collaboration is borne out by the surviving typescripts, with a creative and editorial relationship unfolding in the notations, corrections and marginalia visible on nearly every page. We can only assume Rudge appended the note: ‘Writ by order of E.P. who was to supply reason in last chapter!’ after the novel’s composition had been abandoned, given her use of the past tense; this indicates that it was at least intended to have been completed, and was perhaps superseded by other projects. Whether it was intended to have been published in any form we cannot know.

Chapter FIVE

Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound A Career in Artistic Collaboration

Given that The Blue Spill manuscript has attracted no visible critical attention to date, and may not be widely known even among Pound scholars, the notion of an avantgarde violinist and a major Modernist poet collaborating on a genre novel will surely come as something of a surprise. The Blue Spill is a literary curiosity in several ways: further emphasizing its unusual (unprecedented?) parentage, it falls within the distinctly middlebrow genre of the clue-puzzle murder mystery, and opens itself to suggestive readings in terms of its authors’ motivations, its tone and its self-consciousness with regard to historical, aesthetic and rhetorical contexts. This essay seeks to explore each of these dimensions of the text’s immanence, framing it in relation to some of the major theoretical and empirical discussions concerning collaboration, the so-called Battle of the Brows, and the role of such experimentation in literary Modernism.

LITERARY COLLABORATION The role of collaboration in the history of English literature carries formidable weight in the practice of drama – an inherently collaborative form – in the Elizabethan Age. Dramatists routinely wrote and produced plays in pairs as much as exercising the prerogatives of sole composition. The most prolific pair was Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher with more than a dozen attributions (some of which may have been revised by Phillip Massinger). Fletcher is understood to have collaborated with Massinger on at least eleven plays, and with numerous other playwrights in various combinations. Shakespeare is now considered to have collaborated with several playwrights on a number of plays, including the early Edward III with Thomas Kyd and others, Pericles with George Wilkins, Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen and the since lost Cardenio with John Fletcher, parts of several plays with Thomas Middleton, and, in The New Oxford Shakespeare, among a full seventeen co-authored plays, with Christopher Marlowe on Henry VI Part I, Part II and Part III. Closer to Rudge and Pound’s time, W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood collaborated on three plays: The Dog Beneath the Skin; or, Where is Francis? (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936) and On the Frontier (1938). Drama’s proclivity for collaboration is evident in the inherently contingency of the playtext: it may be augmented more or less radically as the running script for a production, and its transformation into a live production involves the intellectual and physical labour of many people, including the director, lighting technicians, stage-hands, actors and theatre managers, not to mention the role of publicity and marketing. Literature offers a number of significant collaborative ventures in other genres, demonstrating how notions

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of authorship changed, or were challenged by the extent of collaborative enterprises that ran against the grain of the times. The lifelong collaboration between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell manifests itself in their ambiguous and imbricated authorship of such publications as Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in 1775 and Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1785 – Boswell waited until Johnson had passed away to publish his account of their tour, not only to avoid brooking contradiction of events but also to prevent contestations of authorship. The myth of solitary authorship in the Romantic poetic canon has been dismantled by Jack Stillinger and others: close attention to manuscripts and first editions shows how the collaboration between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads – ‘one of the more tantalizing of the unsolvable questions in literary history’ (Stillinger 1991, 121) – and the socialization of multiple drafts by Coleridge and John Keats, demand far more complex notions of authorship and textual form (see also Stillinger 2006). These developments test theories of authorship by scholarly examination of manuscript drafts and historical context, and have reshaped notions of authorship in the age of modernity: from the Elizabethan context to the present day, and with particular emphasis in the time spanning from Romanticism to Modernism. In the years before Rudge and Pound were writing and editing The Blue Spill the Paris Surrealists were already engaged in their radically collaborative experiment in poetry and prose, Cadavre exquis or Exquisite Corpse, in which each member of a composition circle would be given a rule to follow or the work of only the previous contributor. This model of serial collaboration also appealed beyond the avant-garde, and was a mode by which members of the Detection Club in London (established in 1930) composed several novels. Such authors as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Milward Kennedy and even G. K. Chesterton contributed to the round-robin novels The Floating Admiral (1931), Ask a Policeman (1933) and Six Against the Yard (1936). The Detection Club also produced two collaborative radio serials, Behind the Screen (1930) and The Scoop (1931). Both were broadcast on BBC National Radio and published the following week in The Listener, with the proceeds going towards renting premises in Soho for Club dinners and meetings. This activity occurred quite coincidentally at the time of composition of The Blue Spill, in London rather than Paris. But certain characteristics are shared among these collaborations: plot arrangements that unfold out of chronological order, the slow unveiling of information and apparent contradictions and tensions in plotting that are resolved on the solution of the puzzle (or not quite resolved, but with working notes suggesting resolution, in the case of The Blue Spill). Collaboration was not a commonly acknowledged phenomenon in the higher orders of literary production in the time leading into Modernism. Robert Louis Stevenson collaborated with the poet W. E. Henley on the play Deacon Brodie, or, The Double Life (privately printed in 1880 and first performed in 1882) – now thought to be the inspiration for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) – Beau Austin (1884/1890), and Admiral Guinea (1884/1897); and with stepson Lloyd Osborne three novels: The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894). H. G. Wells, ‘who narrowly avoided collaborating with [Henry] James, describes double writing as a matter of fingers stuck where they do not belong’ (Koestenbaum 1989, 168). James lamented Wells’s rejection of his offer, but turned it to positive effect in writing ‘Collaboration’ (1892), a story narrated by a painter in Paris that tells of collaboration between a German musician and a French poet on an opera that will bring them both considerable personal and professional disappointment. This

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variation on the theme of literary collaboration – entailing music, poetry and painting – in fact has its basis in the actual literary collaboration between Rudyard Kipling and his brother-in-law Wolcott Balestier (Tintner 1983, 140–3) on a serialized novel The Naulahka (1892). Two cases add some complexity to the work Rudge and Pound accomplished in composing and revising The Blue Spill. The first example is that of Ford Madox Hueffer and Joseph Conrad, who collaborated on three novels – The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903) and The Nature of A Crime (1909) – at a time when neither writer had achieved any significant literary reputation of his own. This was soon to follow for both writers, however, with Conrad’s reputation secured with the publication of Under Western Eyes (1911) and Victory (1915), and Ford’s with The Good Soldier (1915) and his Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–8). Koestenbaum claims that Conrad and Ford ‘proudly labelled their work criminal’ (168), enjoying the sense of transgression collaboration brought, although they may not have shared this attitude equally: ‘Ford remembered Conrad shuffling the manuscript pages of Romance “distastefully as if they had been the evidence of a crime”’ (Koestenbaum 1989, 168, quoting Ford 1924, 29). A significant dimension to their collaboration bears direct relevance for Rudge and Pound’s literary experiment. Ford and Conrad’s three novels experiment with narrative chronology as a way of getting beneath modern sensibility and disclosing the ‘neurasthenia’ at the heart of modern identity (Koestenbaum 1989, 167). By eschewing chronological order, narrative can work ‘backwards and forwards’, to disclose modern ennui (Ford 1924, 129–30). In this sense their collaboration ‘was criminal because its ambitions were so revolutionary: they meant to alter the techniques that fiction used to represent masculinity’ (168). The second case concerns Pound’s own collaboration with T. S. Eliot on the manuscripts of The Waste Land. The publication of the original drafts of The Waste Land in 1971 caused a reconsideration of the poem, its meaning, and the nature of its authorship – questions still being explored due to the nature of the materials (see Rainey). While the poem is still firmly considered to be Eliot’s composition, its force and effect is fundamentally the product of the process of shaping and editing undertaken by Pound in the months leading up to its first publication in 1922. With the resurfacing of manuscripts long thought lost – gifted to Eliot’s benefactor John Quinn after his arranging the initial publishing contract and Eliot’s receipt of the 1922 Dial poetry prize, and eventually bestowed to the New York Public Library – the biographical context of composition came to the fore. Eliot, suffering a complex nervous disorder, first drafted the poem in 1921 and asked Pound for his editorial opinion. Pound cut large swathes from the draft: from the opening epigraph quoting from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the long first section bearing the poem’s original title, ‘He Do the Policeman in Different Voices’, to the sequence of shorter lyrics, ‘The Death of Saint Narcissus’, ‘Song for the Opherion’, ‘Exequy’ and ‘Dirge’, now considered to function as elegies for Jean Verdenal, Eliot’s friend killed in the First World War. Of the sections that survived, several endured significant revision, particularly with regard to versification and lexical choice. Wayne Koestenbaum makes a case for a homosocial collaboration in The Waste Land (112–39), where the poem’s disjunctions and discontinuities associate it with a kind of male ‘hysteria’ and dislocate it from traditional models of male authorship. While there are dangers in applying too narrow a hermeneutic framework, this mode of authorial anxiety can be helpful when considering the poem’s collaborative textures:

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‘It is problematic to call The Waste Land collaborative, because standard notions of authorship deem it Eliot’s. Its manuscript, however, reveals that Ezra Pound determined its final shape, transforming a “sprawling, chaotic poem” into something hard and powerfully disjunctive’ (112). Whether or not Eliot chose to invoke a ‘male analyst’ to work through his aboulia in the composition of The Waste Land (116), and aided by presence of Vivien as a homosocial agent just as Dorothy Wordsworth was for William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (118), Pound certainly understood the cloying potential for male authorial collaboration. His doggerel lyric makes light of the poem’s ‘gestation’, by playing on its all-male parentage: These are the Poems of Eliot By the Uranian Muse begot; A Man their Mother was, A Muse their Sire. How did the printed Infancies result From Nuptials thus doubly difficult? If you must needs enquire Know diligent Reader That on each Occasion Ezra performed the Caesarian Operation.1 This gender ambivalence extends to Tiresias, the figure Eliot saw as central to the whole poem and pre-eminent among other figures in the poem such as Marie, Madame Sosostris, Philomela, Mr Eugenides and Phlebas the Phoenecian. Tiresias occupies two identity positions, just as Eliot and Pound contribute in complementary modes in their collaboration as poet and editor. What eventuates is a ‘kind of poetics of codependency in which participants require the presence of each other to advance their own private agendas and also satisfy emotional needs’ (Badenhausen 2004, 14). This deeply structured collaborative process extends to the reader: ‘Unwilling to explain itself, requiring a reader-as-collaborator (“mon semblable, – mon frère!”) to unravel its disguises, it remains passive towards a ‘frère’ whose attentions it solicits by this technique of direct presentation without transitions’ (137–8). Jack Stillinger provides a simpler, and perhaps more compelling account of this collaboration: ‘it took one poetic genius to create those 434 lines in the first place, and another to get rid of the several hundred inferior lines surrounding and obscuring them’ (Stillinger 1991, 128). This evaluation has the virtue of invoking the notion of poetic ‘genius’ while simultaneously drawing attention to its fallacy as an instrument of individual labour. The publication of manuscript facsimiles opened up questions of authorial subjectivity in the case of The Waste Land, providing scholars and readers with new information concerning the composition process and the radical editorial interventions leading to publication, of a poem already bearing a significant public persona. This situation allows for a theoretical framing of collaboration by means of critical examination of documents and published texts. Yet there are alternate, occluded forms of collaboration

Letter to T. S. Eliot, 24 December 1921, reprinted in SL 170.

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that do not provide such a clarifying picture. How extensively did Mary Wollstonecraft contribute to and shape the texts of William Godwin? What exactly was the nature of the collaboration between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley? Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning? Véra and Vladimir Nabokov?2 The hidden nature of these collaborations prohibit potentially sophisticated critical models of authorship, composition and influence, although as with The Waste Land, there is always the possibility of new documents coming to light, or new methods of evaluating them, that extend understanding of the processes and concepts involved in producing collaborative works. The examples provided here are some of the better-known exhibits in this shadow history of literary composition, and it is noteworthy that in each case the benefits of collaboration appear to favour the male author, in some cases quite heavily. Jack Stillinger has argued that cases of multiple authorship are historically specific in their conditions of production, and demand evaluation on this basis rather than being made to fit preconceived concepts or categories (136). He has also argued, persuasively, that collaboration in the composition process is more prevalent in literary history than the record would suggest, and that it ‘can be found virtually anywhere we care to look in English and American literature of the last two centuries’ (22). Further, Susanna Ashton’s study, Collaborators in Literary America, 1870–1920, suggests that the pre-Modernist epoch she calls ‘The Collaborative Age’ provides ample evidence for literary collaboration in the American context. This adds to the argument for more sophisticated concepts of authorship, sensitive to the historical forces of publication at work in specific examples (see Leonard et al. for an intensive discussion of these issues; see also Woodmansee and Jaszi). M. Thomas Inge also draws attention to the ‘mediation and compromise’ entailed in the modern publishing industry, that serves as a counterpoint to persistent notions of artistic individualism ‘trying to create something pure and unsullied by the rank commercialism of society’ (623). In the case of The Blue Spill, the documents make clear that Rudge produced more of the labour up to the point of fragmentation and abandonment, with Pound serving in an editorial role as well as taking responsibility for the remainder of the narrative arc (a remainder that never came into being). These phases of the project are marked by their temporal and geographical separation, embodying a combination of what Seth Whidden has called collaboration in praesentia and collaboration in absentia (Whidden 2007, 76). In a sense The Blue Spill provides a case for collaboration that combines some of the features of The Waste Land – compositional and editorial functions remaining largely distinct – and some features of the occluded model of collaboration, where Pound receives more credit than is perhaps warranted, or at least received more attention than his contribution would suggest on terms strictly proportional to his material contribution.

Holly Laird explores the collaborative texture of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and specifically the role his wife Harriet Taylor played in its composition. An extended critical discussion – on occasion rising to the temperature of dispute – emerged in the 1980s and still retains the potential to give perspective on scholarly assumptions of authorship and composition practices (see Laird 2000, 39–55). Bette London examines the complex nature of the collaboration of W. B. Yeats and Georgie Hyde-Lees, where the latter’s ‘automatic writing’ formed the basis for much of Yeats’s A Vision. Questions of sincerity, deception, the division of labour (and acclaim), and tending an artistic legacy, produce fascinating interpretive potential (see London 1999, 179–209; see also Harper for a detailed account of the collaboration and its wider aesthetic and cultural implications). 2

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MULTIMEDIA COLLABORATION IN MODERNISM As with literary and dramatic collaboration, other forms of artistic collaboration possess eminent histories that reach a point of concentration in the major centres of Modernism. Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets often worked together on specific projects, and the Arts and Crafts movement, headed by William Morris, also saw collaboration between artists and writers in book design and illustration. Modernism hardly invented multimedia collaboration, but it did precipitate an upsurge in such activity, particularly in the charged atmosphere of Paris. Igor Stravinsky’s ballet and orchestral work Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) caused a scandal at its première in 1913, but one shared with Vaslav Nijinsky, its choreographer, Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, and the stage and costume designer Nicholas Roerich. The Dada film experiment Ballet Mécanique of 1923–4 was also a product of significant collaboration between its director, the artist Fernand Léger, film-maker Dudley Murphy, the artist Man Ray as its cinematographer, and its composer George Antheil. Antheil was to collaborate with Rudge on stage on several occasions, playing several of Pound’s compositions along with classical and contemporary repertoires. He also collaborated with Pound in developing aspects of music theory, although he eventually disavowed Pound’s book Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony (1924). Pablo Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes in several productions, producing stage sets and costumes for Parade (1917), Tricorne (1919), Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (1920) and Cuadro Flamenco (1921). Parade in particular is an emblem of Modernist collaboration: the poet Jean Cocteau wrote the scenario and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the programme notes (Freeman 1999, 140–51; see also Carr). The Italian Futurists typified collaborative activity extending across many factions and groupings in the Modernist milieux of Europe, collaborated in the writing of manifestos (Mary Ann Caws 2001, 170–246; see also Apollonio), the mounting of painting exhibitions, and the publication of periodicals. Their activity also extended to extravagant theatrical events (see Berghaus 1998). Genres of artistic activity such as opera and drama are inherently collaborative, and the interest in Modernist collaborations rests in the particular aesthetic effects of specific combinations. How did Man Ray’s cinematography shape the film of Ballet Mécanique, and can this be attributed to the success of his work in photography and the plastic arts? How did Picasso’s sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, given the painter’s fame by the 1920s, impact upon the commercial success of these productions? Similar questions can be asked of the famous stage collaborations later in the century between the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, the composer John Cage, and the painters (and set designers) Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The historical formations of genres such as novels and poetry also directly shape the nature and variety of collaborative energy. The modern publishing industry implicated editors in their authors’ works – cases in point include Maxwell Perkins of Charles Scribner’s Sons cutting Thomas Wolfe’s drafts of Look Homeward, Angel (1929) and Time and the River (1935) to a fraction of their original lengths, and making substantial stylistic interventions; and the excision by accident or design of Greek text and Chinese ideograms in Pound’s Pisan Cantos (1946) by his editors T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber, and James Laughlin at New Directions. In these and other cases, legitimate questions may be asked of the nature of authorship, the line between creative input and editorial intervention, and the status accorded to interventions made without authorial approval or, in some cases, the author’s knowledge. Any attempt to produce scholarly editions of

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such texts, or to account for their manuscript genesis, needs to take such questions into account. A prominent and increasingly influential range of scholarly editing techniques and theories has grown in response to these issues, such as genetic editing, genetic criticism or critique génétique, and social text theory – Jerome McGann considers literary texts to be ‘collaborative events’ per se (McGann 1991, 60). Translation of modern texts also comprises an important facet of collaborative literary work, such as Samuel Beckett’s attempts to translate his novel Molloy into English with Patrick Bowles, Watt into French with Ludovic and Agnès Janvier, and the plays Embers and All That Fall into French with the novelist Robert Pinget (see Sabljo for a fuller account of these collaborative translations).

OLGA RUDGE AND EZRA POUND IN COLLABORATION Both Rudge and Pound gained extensive experience of artistic collaboration throughout their professional lives. Pound’s varied career as poet, reviewer, composer, impresario, essayist, inveterate epistolarist and political interventionist led him into a great number of collaborative relationships. His early years in London saw him organize the Imagiste poets with H. D. and Richard Aldington, and with Wyndham Lewis, Henri GaudierBrzeska and Jacob Epstein he was an integral part of the Vorticist movement – whose adherents were as much concerned with the visual and plastic arts and music as with literary experimentation. The winters in 1913–16 with W. B. Yeats at Stone Cottage in Sussex had Pound translating Chinese poetry and Japanese Noh drama from Ernest Fenollosa’s notebooks, and discussing poetry and poetics with Yeats: Richard Badenhausen even credits this time directly on Pound’s editing of The Waste Land several years later, demonstrating to him ‘that advanced collaboration between authors and texts could be a norm’ (70). Pound was not afraid to try his hand at a number of genres and forms, whether as a stand-in drummer at the world première of his opera Le Testament de Villon in Paris on 29 June 1924, or in translating Egyptian love poetry with his sonin-law Boris de Rachewiltz. To this short list one might add, over the course of several decades, Pound’s innumerable acts of advice, editorial intervention, rewriting and copublishing, with writers, musicians, film-makers, photographers, members of Congress, publishers, journalists, political agitators and no doubt figures working in other fields of endeavour yet to be fully documented and evaluated.3 One of the most persistent media of collaboration for Pound was music, where he worked for greater or lesser periods with Katherine Ruth Heyman, Viola Baxter, Agnes Bedford – with whom he collaborated on Five Troubadour Songs (1920) and the early inklings of his opera Villon – Walter Morse Rummel – resulting in the publication of Heasternae Rosae (see Rummel) – Gerhart Münch, Tibor Serly, Margaret Cravens, Yves Tinayre, Marjorie Kennedy-Frazer and most prominently, Olga Rudge. Born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1895, and raised and educated in London, Dorset and Paris, Rudge had begun performing as a violinist in salons and in public from her late teenage years. She was already well known internationally as a concert violinist by

To take just one example of Pound’s vigorous, interventionist productivity, see Robert Spoo’s excellent account of Pound’s draft copyright statute, ‘Copyright and Tariff’ (Spoo 2013, 116–52). Pound had this published in two instalments in The New Age in September and October of 1918, theorizing (on flawed and incomplete legal knowledge) an ambitious Modernist view of copyright and piracy as it stood in the United States. 3

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the time she and Pound met in 1923, and, as a performer, was intimately acquainted with the mechanics of artistic collaboration. Pound first heard Rudge in performance during a time when he sought to extend his knowledge of the new movements in music by reviewing for The New Age. He first mentions Rudge in a review of November 1920 under the pseudonym William Atheling, where he states himself ‘charmed by the delicate firmness of her fiddling’, despite the ‘serious error in changing partners’ to a less able pianist during the performance at the Aeolian Hall in London on 10 November (Pound 1920, 44; quoted in Pound 1977, 233–4) – a concert postponed from May due to the sudden death of Rudge’s mother, who was transcribing sheet music for the performance at the time. By this point Pound had already established music-related collaborations with George Antheil, Walter Morse Rummel, Agnes Bedford, Arnold Dolmetsch, Tibor Serly, Gerhart Münch and others, but it was to be his partnership with Rudge that endured and prospered with their respective moves from Paris to Rapallo and Sant’Ambrogio. Rudge and Pound became more closely acquainted in Natalie Barney’s Paris salon in 1922–3 (Wilhelm 1994, 3). Their first musical collaboration came to fruition at the recital Rudge shared with George Antheil in the Salle du Conservatoire in Paris on 11 December 1923. Rudge and Antheil played, among other pieces, an arrangement for solo violin of the twelfth-century Troubadour Gaucelm Faidit, as well as Pound’s musical composition, ‘Sujet pour violon’ (Pound 1977, 247). Pound and Antheil had met earlier that year, and had collaborated on rewriting Pound’s opera Villon, first drafted with Agnes Bedford in 1921. Antheil rehearsed with Rudge in her Paris apartment and first performed with her on 4 October 1923 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in front of a ‘huge Léger cubist curtain.’ Antheil’s sonatas caused a sensation, described in florid (and self-aggrandizing) detail in his autobiography, and oft-quoted since: I remember Man Ray punching somebody in the nose in the front row. Marcel Duchamp was arguing loudly with somebody else in the second row. In a box nearby Erik Satie was shouting, ‘What precision! What precision!’ and applauding. The spotlight was turned on the audience by some wag upstairs. It struck James Joyce full in the face, hurting his sensitive eyes […] In the gallery the police came in and arrested the surrealists who, liking the music, were punching everybody who objected. (Antheil 1945, 7–8; quoted in Conover 2001, 7–8; Halliday 2013, 4; Nadel 2004, 198) Pound’s opera premièred in Paris on 29 June 1926, only ten days after the première of Antheil’s infamous Ballet Mécanique, the scene of yet another theatre riot, at which Pound and Rudge were in attendance. Pound’s première was attended by Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Constantin Brancusi, Virgil Thompson and others, and received warm reviews (Conover 2001, 67). Rudge performed a number of Pound’s violin compositions during the years in Paris before Pound left for Rapallo in 1924, consolidating a collaborative relationship that was to flourish in Italy (Pound 1977, 421). Rudge and Pound’s musical collaboration took on a new dimension in the Tigullian concerts they organized in Rapallo between 1933 and 1939. They combined with Gerhart Münch to form the Amici di Tigullio, and were assisted by Desmond Chute, an expatriate priest, the local pianist Renata Borgatti who was Olga’s long standing accompanist, as well as sponsors such as Natalie Barney, Prince and Princess de Polignac, heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. The concerti Tigulliani began on 10 October 1933 in the Rapallo Town Hall, with Clément Janequin’s Le chant des oiseaux as the opening piece – it was reprised as the greater part of Canto 75 of The Pisan Cantos in 1946, reproducing

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FIGURE 5.1:  Advertising poster for the Concerti Tigulliani, 1934–35. Filippo Romoli (1933), Riviera di Levante, Rapallo. Società Industrie Grafiche Barabino & Graeve, Genova. Private collection of Mark Byron. Courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz.

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FIGURE 5.2:  Advertising poster for the Concerti Tigulliani, 1934–35. Filippo Romoli (1933), Riviera di Levante, Rapallo. Società Industrie Grafiche Barabino & Graeve, Genova. Private collection of Mark Byron. Courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz.

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Münch’s arrangement of the violin line for Olga Rudge as it appeared in Ronald Duncan’s journal The Townsman in 1938. This piece also featured in the final concert of this first series in March 1934. Besides Olga Rudge on violin, the concerts featured Gerhart Münch on piano, Luigi Sansone also on violin, and on occasion, Marco Ottone on cello and Mario Brizzolari on violin. Later series involved other musicians such as the singers Lonny Mayer and Guido Guidi, the pianist Renata Borgatti, and in 1937 and 1938, the Hungarian String Quartet of Sándor Végh, László Halmos, Denes Koromzay and Vilmos Palotai (Schaffer 421). Pound acted at various times as booking agent, advertiser, promoter, ticket seller and distributor of royalties. He also arranged for the production of a series of wonderful brochures in art deco style, bringing the concerts into the heart of the Tigullian tourism industry (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2). In addition to these series of concerts, exposing the Tigullian musical community to classical and contemporary repertoires, Pound and Rudge organized music study weeks focused on specific works and composers, including works composed by participants in their collaborative circle. The final concerts were held in March 1939, following which Rudge and Pound’s attentions shifted firmly to the compositions of Antonio Vivaldi and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.

VIVALDI FROM RAPALLO TO SIENA The Tigullian concerts and study sessions throughout the 1930s saw an emergent awareness of the comparative neglect of Antonio Vivaldi, a composer whose works had suffered almost complete eclipse by the twentieth century. Rudge, Pound and Gerhart Münch drove the initiative to rehabilitate Vivaldi’s works, beginning by tracking down archives that contained existing manuscripts. Pound arranged a study group in Rapallo when Münch returned to Germany in 1936 and published an article in Il Mare on 14 March 1936; Rudge wrote two pieces on Vivaldi in April and May. In a letter of 19 November 1937 Pound emphasized the urgency of the project: ‘The first thing you do anywhere shd/ be to look at the catalog/ of the library […] and make note of manuscripts and old edtns/ of Vivialdi if any’ (quoted in Moody 2014, 254). Münch told Pound he had located an important Vivaldi manuscript in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden, and that it was worth the effort of transcription and preservation: ‘Eventually they sent for a copy of this manuscript, which probably would have been lost otherwise, as so much in Dresden would be during the coming war’ (Wilhelm 1994, 110). Pound ordered a set of microfilms of the manuscripts and eventually passed them on to Count Guido Chigi Saracini in Siena. Rudge later published some of the Dresden manuscripts in Vivaldi: Quattro Concerti Autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (see Vivaldi). Rudge herself travelled to Turin in 1936 to catalogue the 309 Vivaldi manuscripts then held in the Biblioteca Nazionale: Schaffer records that these manuscripts ‘are in 27 volumes, eleven of which were the gift of the Foà family in 1927; the remainder were donated by the Giordano family in 1930’ (328). She had worked with Chigi Saracini since 1932 at the summer school and associated concerts, the Estate Musicale Chigiana, and in 1938 took the position of secretary of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena (see Schaffer 321–463 and Stephen Adams 1975, 112). At this point she catalogued and published the Vivaldi manuscripts, advertising for which can be seen in Figures 5.3 and 5.4. The entire programme of the third Settimana musicale in Siena was dedicated to Vivaldi’s work in September 1939, resulting in the publication of Antonio Vivaldi: note e documenti sulla vita e sulle opere (see Chigi Saracini et al.).

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FIGURE 5.3:  Advertisement for S. A. Luciani and Olga Rudge, eds. (1939–47), Vivialdi Manuscripts: Facsimiles. Siena: Accademia Chigiana.

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FIGURE 5.4:  Verso, Advertisement for S. A. Luciani and Olga Rudge, eds. (1939–47), Vivialdi Manuscripts: Facsimiles. Siena: Accademia Chigiana.

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This crucial intervention in the preservation and awareness of Vivaldi’s manuscripts continues to reverberate: an earlier version of his opera Orlando Furioso among his papers in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin was attributed to him by Reinhard Strohm in 1973. This work was a 1714 recomposition of Giovani Alberto Ristori’s opera of the same name that was performed in Venice in 1713 when Vivaldi and his father were directors of the Teatro San Angelo (see Strohm). Rudge and Pound were instrumental in the so-called Vivialdi Revival, but they did not act alone: Dr Alberto Gentile, a professor of music at the University of Turin was the moving force behind the acquisition of the Vivaldi collection in Turin, having appraised a cache of materials when approached by the Salesisan monks of the Collegio San Carlo in San Martino, Monferrat. The fourteen volumes of Vivaldi manuscripts were then reunited with other manuscripts held by the Durazzo family (descendents of the Austrian ambassador to Venice in the eighteenth century) to form the Vivaldi collection in Turin (Susan Adams 2010, 175–7).

MIDDLEBROW COLLABORATION Rudge and Pound were on the cusp of a major scholarly and artistic collaboration concerning Antonio Vivaldi’s manuscripts when they began The Blue Spill. The congeniality of each author towards collaboration is thus not surprising, but the radical difference in register and cultural import compared with the prestigious Vivaldi revival raises interesting issues. The genre of detective fiction itself saw a great deal of collaborative experimentation at the time, evident in the novels produced by members of the Detection Club in the early 1930s. It was also a genre to which literary figures were drawn: not only novelists such as G. K. Chesterton; the avant-garde art critic Willard Huntington Wright wrote twelve Philo Vance detective novels in the 1920s under the pseudonym S. S. Van Dine; and the poet Cecil Day Lewis published twenty detective novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, including A Question of Proof (1935) and Thou Shell of Death (1936). The detective genre’s appeal for avant-garde experimentation was realized in 1937 on the publication of Cameron McCabe’s metafictional narrative The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor, in which the narrator is the murderer and torments the detective into killing him halfway through the novel. A long ‘epilogue’ is added by A. B. C. Müller, a minor character in McCabe’s narrative who evaluates the veracity of the story after the fact, and who is aided by commentary from book reviewers real and imaginary. An editorial afterword added in the 1981edition attempts to establish the context for these various conflicting layers, an anti-narrative worthy of Carlo Emilia Gadda’s avant-garde masterpiece, of 1946–57, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana. Rudge and Pound were inveterate readers of detective fiction in the British style. The house in Venice, the ‘Hidden Nest’ on Calle Querini, made evident this deep interest: ‘On entering in the 1980s, one saw a large bookcase straight ahead that was usually filled in the past with cheap ‘tecs’ or detective novels that Pound devoured in his offhours, usually and preferably by the French writer Simenon’ (Wilhelm 1994, 36). Pound mentions Simenon in a letter to Robert McAlmon on 2 February 1934 and again in a letter to Agnes Bedford in December 1936 (Pound 1950, 253 and 285). Pound read Dorothy Sayers in large quantities as well, although he did not rate her translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia as highly as her detective fiction: ‘He tried to persuade her to take on one of the great economic “murderers” like Sir Basil Zaharoff as the subject for a detective story, but she did not feel there was enough suspense, and proceeded to turn out an inferior Dante’ (Wilhelm 1994, 107). Here one might find a clue as to

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the allure of the detective genre for Pound. Perhaps he considered his view of history, distilled in The Cantos, was one similar to literary detection, uncovering the great crimes and criminals of the ages: ‘Pound often said that the “teasiness” of his first thirty cantos was meant to suggest the pattern of a detective novel: who got the world into its current mess?’ (Wilhelm 1994, 36) Money and politics inhibit cultural and artistic production across the ages in Pound’s poem, from the mosaics in Byzantine churches of the sixth century, to the curse of usury in Dante’s time and in the Italian Quattrocento, down to the frailties of the gold standard exploited by unscrupulous governments, and the modern munitions industry colluding with said governments to precipitate a world war (with a second looming beyond the horizon of the Great Depression at the time of composition of The Blue Spill). Just as in clue-puzzle detective fiction, the evidence of such criminality is hiding in plain sight, built into the economic and political systems of the modern west. It is the duty of the poet and his readers to recognize the evidence, including the insights of authors occluded from official history. The breadth of Pound’s publication outlets over his career illustrates the way he courted avant-garde circles early in his career, but became amenable to publishing in journals distinctly not of the artistic elites – from the nativist journal Pagany in 1930–3 (which did in fact publish a wide range of American avant-garde writers among many others outside of the elite, the only non-American exceptions being Jean Cocteau and Georges Hugnet), to the local Rapallo paper Il Mare, to which Pound contributed a biweekly ‘Supplemento Letterario’ between 20 August 1932 and 15 July 1933, as well as many other journals and newspapers, including some less salubrious outlets during his years in Saint Elizabeths (White 2013, 173–5; see also Società Letteraria Rapallo). Along with such figures as T. S. Eliot, Pound published in the magazine To-Day as early as 1918. Its editor, Holbrook Jackson, was conscious of matters of elitism in authorship and readership, claiming that the magazine ‘has never been “highbrow”, or merely intellectual, or priggish […] or pedantic’ (Jackson 1919, 201; quoted in Kane 2015, 59). H. L. Mencken as editor introduced Pound, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Djuna Barnes, Dorothy Parker and others to a diverse readership in The Smart Set, a journal with a distinctly middlebrow agenda avant la lettre. Gilbert Seldes, who had published The Waste Land in The Dial in 1922, gave Menken credit for shaping public taste in the interwar years (Hamilton 2012, 130). The term ‘middlebrow’ arose in the mid-1920s, and was first used for satirical purposes in Punch as early as 1925: ‘the BBC claim to have discovered a new type, the “middlebrow”. It consists of people who are hoping that someday they will get used to the stuff they ought to like’ (quoted in Driscoll 2014, 7). As a manifestation of anxieties about cultural authority, ‘it is a nexus for prejudice towards the lower middle classes, the feminine and domestic, and towards narrative modes regarded as outdated’ (Brown and Grover 2012, 1). Its critics read the middlebrow aspirational agenda as a thinly veiled snobbishness, providing a liberty to mock the lower middle classes from (usually) a higher social position with a level of education to match. Q. D. Leavis wrote in Fiction and the Reading Public (1932) that middlebrow literature implied ‘touching grossly on fine issues’ (quoted in Brown and Grover 2012, 6), inducing a passive state in the reader similar to Woolf’s complaint against literary realism. The detective narrative offers some resistance to this view, as it challenges the reader to employ their analytic skill in contest with narrator and detective, to solve the mystery and to arrive at a verdict of guilt. Nicola Humble has written on the middlebrow novel of the interwar era as an ‘essentially parasitical form, dependent on the existence of both a high and a low brow for its identity’ (11). By

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reworking the formal and aesthetic structures of aesthetically ambitious narratives, but simultaneously quarantining itself from ‘lowbrow contamination’, the middlebrow novel was able to emulate and parody highbrow intellectual pretensions (Humble 2001, 12). The force of mockery rubbed both ways, however: both Pound and Rebecca West were scornful of the literary pretensions of the very successful Victoria Cross (Vivian Cory Griffin), author from the turn of the century to the late 1930s of erotic novels set in exotic locations (Dierkes-Thrun 2016, 202–5). Perhaps the most famous literary protest against middlebrow literature came from Virginia Woolf, who in an unpublished letter to the editor of the New Statesman and Nation (later published in 1942) declared: ‘If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half-crushed worm dares call me “middlebrow” I will take my pen and stab him, dead’ (Woolf 1942, 119). Critics have linked Woolf’s contempt for the middlebrow category to her disdain for realism, not least that of John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, and Arnold Bennett, expressed most directly in her essay ‘Modern Fiction’ (Brown and Grover 2012, 8). Woolf generalizes from middlebrow readers and writers to a condition of existence: ‘The middlebrow is the man, or woman, of middlebred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object, neither art itself nor life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably, and rather nastily, with money, fame, power, or prestige’ (116). In her chapter ‘Woolf in the Modern Library: Bridging the Gap Between Professional and Common Readers’, Lise Jaillant situates Woolf’s letter in the context of an emergent professional class of readers, to which she belonged, and her response to the mass production of literary novels alongside sensational and popular genres that arose in the 1920s and 1930s (Jaillant 2014, 83–102). This anxiety from above, as it were, lends a contemporary edge to the reception of detective fiction by the literary classes. Rudge and Pound would have been only too aware of the fun they could have as authors in the clue-puzzle detective genre. As the example of Victoria Cross suggests, the so-called Battle of the Brows in the 1930s bore implications for the gendering of literary production, as well as for the relative legitimacy bestowed upon various literary forms. The editors of the volume of essays, Middlebrow and Gender, 1890–1945, argue that the boundaries between the avant-garde and the middlebrow were not as clearly defined and rigid as has been assumed, and the policing of these boundaries has tended to obscure some of the cultural and gendered aspects of their production as terms of alterity. This is part of the project to widen the parameters and definitions of Modernism of the last two decades, pushing beyond ‘elitist territories’ and exploring how middlebrow literature intersects with other kinds of cultural developments in the marketplace (Ehland and Wächter 2016, 2). While previous accounts of midcentury taste by Peter Swirski and Lawrence Levine have tended to elide the term middlebrow for the less relativist term ‘nobrow’, more recent scholarship has gained from its flexibility not only as a restitutive term, but as a mode of evaluating the intersections of literary culture and popular writing, and the relation of authors to their readers. If Rudge was the driving force behind the project of composing The Blue Spill, and in order to relieve economic pressure, she was doing so in the possession of eminent artistic capital. Pound’s collaboration complicates any gendering in this particular example, and the interruption of the clue-puzzle atmosphere with reminiscences of Montparnasse, or avant-garde Soho, or parodic appraisals of cutting-edge painting, cross and re-cross those literary class boundaries so necessary to Woolf. Ehland and Wächter also detect formal and structural properties in middlebrow fiction: even though it ‘usually adheres to conspicuously affirmative structures of plot development

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in order to meet genre expectations and publishers’ requirements, the narratives are often in a disintegrative state in form and subject’ (2). The Blue Spill literalizes this condition as an unfinished set of typescripts, but putting this to one side, its narrative affinities with other detective novels of its time – the collaborative novels of the Detection Club, or Cameron McCabe’s nested detective fictions in The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor – mark it out as mediating between different aesthetic zones of middlebrow and avantgarde. The parodic fidelity to the clue-puzzle genre is evident in Inspector Love’s irascible character and unorthodox modes of meditation, as well as in Dr Whitby’s eccentricities (running at top speed from the station to Graylands in order to measure the minimum time of transit on foot) and counter-scenarios that advance Love’s forensic analysis of the murder scenario. The strict class divisions of the country-house detective novel are adhered to in the characters of the Marshalls and their staff, including obligatory stealthy defiance in the love plot involving Dean Marshall and the parlourmaid ‘Pegsy’ (Margaret Owen). This in turn is refracted in Margela Marshall’s ill-advised liaison with the artist Rodney, who bursts the Edwardian class bubble with his actions, as does his ‘wife’ Mrs Rodney in her indifference to his amorous activities and ardent belief in his art. While the narrative remained incomplete, it is clear that the class and genre implications of the heavily stratified Edwardian rural estate was a source of great creative energy for Rudge and Pound, as well as a means by which to nudge a genre already well aware of its parodic potential. The Blue Spill – and detective fiction more widely – seems to run against the historical view of middlebrow as female and domestic rather than male and exilic (Humble 2001, 11). It is acutely aware of its framing characters’ negotiations of cultural capital – what Pierre Bourdieu came to call l’art moyen (see Pollentier) – eschewing epiphany and oracular speech of the avant-garde for the messiness of Marshall’s desk, and the infernal missing page upon which all hinges, but which has very likely gone up in smoke.EZRA POUND’S AND OLGA RUDGE’S THE BLUE SPILL

164

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANUSCRIPTS The Blue Spill (c. 1929–30), YCAL MSS 54, Box 115, Folders 2814–24. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven.

WORKS BY EZRA POUND Ezra Pound (1920), ‘Music’, The New Age (25 November): 44. Ezra Pound (1950), Selected Letters 1907–1941, ed. D. D. Paige. London: Faber. Ezra Pound (1958), Pavannes and Divagations. New York: New Directions. Ezra Pound (1977), Ezra Pound and Music: The Complete Criticism, ed. and commentary R. Murray Schafer. New York: New Directions. Ezra Pound (1995), The Cantos, 15th printing. New York: New Directions.

SECONDARY WORKS Adams, Stephen (1975), ‘Pound, Olga Rudge, and the “Risveglio Vivaldiano”’, Paideuma 4.1: 111–18. Adams, Susan (2010), Vivaldi: Red Priest of Venice. Oxford: Lion Hudson. Antheil, George (1945), Bad Boy of Music. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Apollonio, Umbro, ed. and intro. (2001), Futurist Manifestos, trans. Robert Brain. Boston: MFA Publications. Ashton, Susanna (2003), Collaborators in Literary America, 1870–1920. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Badenhausen, Richard (2004), T. S. Eliot and the Art of Collaboration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berghaus, Günter (1998), Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909–1944. Oxford: Clarendon. Bingham, Adrian (2012), ‘Cultural Hierarchies and the Interwar British Press’, in Middlebrow Literary Critics: The Battle of the Brows, 1920–1960, ed. Erica Brown and Mary Grover. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 55–68. Birns, Nicholas, and Margaret Boe Birns (1990), ‘Agatha Christie: Modern and Modernist’, in The Cunning Craft: Original Essays on Detective Fiction and Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Roland G. Walker and June M. Frazer. Macomb, IL: Western Illinois University, pp. 120–34. Brown, Erica, and Mary Grover, (2012), ‘Introduction: Middlebrow Matters’, in Middlebrow Literary Cultures: The Battle of the Brows, 1920–1960, ed. Erica Brown and Mary Grover. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–21. Byron, Mark (2002), ‘A Defining Moment in Ezra Pound’s Cantos: Musical Scores and Literary Texts’, in Music and Literature, ed. Michael J. Meyer. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, pp. 157–82.

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INDEX

Aldington, Richard  153 Alighieri, Dante  160–1 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence  8, 93, 93 n.241, 116 n.301 Antheil, George  152, 154 Ballet Méchanique  154 Apollinaire, Guillaume  152 art criticism  8 status of  7, 162 Auster, Paul  6 automobiles  xii, 8, 112 n.293, 114 n.297, 144 Model T Ford, ‘tin lizzie’  8, 98 n.248 avant-garde  xii, xiii, 7, 8, 15, 27, 94 n.241, 116 n.301, 141, 147, 148, 160, 161, 162–3 Barnes, Djuna  161 Barney, Natalie  154 ‘Battle of the Brows’  140, 147, 162 Baxter, Violet  153 Beardsley, Aubrey  93 n.238 Beauvoir, Simone de  93 n.237 Beckett, Samuel  6, 153 Bedford, Agnes  153, 154, 160 Beinecke Library, Yale University  xi, xiv, 5, 22, 23, 28 Berkeley, Anthony  135, 148 blackmail  6, 12, 13, 17–21, 23, 63, 82, 115, 119, 120, 125, 126, 139, 141, 144, 145 Blake, Nicholas (Cecil Day Lewis)  5, 136, 160 Blue Spill, The  xi, 3–4, 23–6, 138, 141–4, 160, 162, 163 revision of  xii, 23, 28–32, 144, 149, 151 unfinished condition of  xii, 5, 6, 115 n.298, 135, 144, 145–6, 163 blue spill  6, 18, 144 petit bleu  6–7 pneumatique (Paris)  6 Borah, William  126 n.329 Borgatti, Renata  154, 157 Bourdieu, Pierre  163

Brancusi, Constantin  154 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)  148, 161 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett  151 Browning, Robert  93 n.241, 151 Browning revolver  10–12, 21, 29–30, 32, 41–2, 41 n.53, 44, 53, 60, 75, 77, 79, 142 Burne-Jones, Edward  116 n.301 Cage, John  152 Capa, Robert  93 n.237 Cartier-Bresson, Henri  93 n.237 Cather, Willa  161 Chaplin, Charlie  33 n.2 Chesterton, G. K.  93 n.238, 136, 145, 160 Chigi Saracini, Count Guido  157 Christie, Agatha  5, 135, 139, 140, 142, 143, 148 Hercule Poirot  137, 138 Miss Marple  137, 138, 139 Clark, Kenneth  93 n.238 class discourse  120, 139, 142, 143–4, 161–3 clues/evidence footprints  8, 43 n.61, 54 tyre tracks  8, 12, 43 n.61 Cocteau, Jean  152, 161 collaboration  30, 147–51 editorial  xii in Modernism  xiii, 5, 152–3 Pound–Rudge  xi, xii, xiii, 7, 27, 140, 146, 153–7 Tigullian concerts  xiv, 154, 155–6. See Vivaldi, Antonio Collins, Wilkie  5 Conan Doyle, Arthur  8, 30, 93 n.238, 135, 138 Sherlock Holmes  30, 138, 141 Dr Watson  138, 141 Corradium  14–15, 17–21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 31–2, 82, 83 n.202–3, 84, 95, 103 n.257, 115 n.298, 120–4, 129, 131–2, 144 Cravens, Margaret  153

INDEX

Cross, Victoria (Vivian Cory Griffin)  162 Crowley, Aleister  93 n.237 Cunningham, Merce  152 Cutting, Bronson  126 n.329 D’Annunzio, Gabriele  7, 46 de Gaulle, Charles  73 n.173 Dekobra, Maurice  7, 46 De Rachewiltz, Boris  152 de Rachewiltz, Mary  xiv Detection Club, The  12, 148, 162 detective fiction clue-puzzle  xi, xiii, 8, 32, 135, 136–7, 139, 141–2, 145 ‘cosy’ mystery  5 gialli  xiii, 5, 139–40 Golden Age of  xii, 135, 136, 139, 140 hardboiled  7 as social critique  139 ‘whodunit’  22, 137, 145 Diaghilev, Sergei  152 Doolittle, Hilda, ‘H.D.’  153 Dowson, Ernest  93 n.238 Dreyfus Affair  7 Duchamp, Marcel  154 economics  145, 161 editorial rationale  xii, 22, 26–7 Eliot, T. S.  5, 140, 152, 154, 161 The Waste Land  149–51, 153, 161 Epstein, Jacob  153 Eriugena, John Scottus  xi Ernst, Max  93 n.237 Fascism, Italian  7 Fenollosa, Ernest  153 Gadda, Carlo Emilia  6, 160 Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri  153 Great Depression  xii, 22, 161 Green, Anne Katherine  135 Hall, Wendell  8, 43 n.62 Hemingway, Ernest  93 n.237, 154 Heyman, Katherine Ruth  153 Hyde-Lees, Georgie  151 n.2 interwar period  135–6, 139, 140, 161 Isherwood, Christopher  93 n.238, 147 James, Henry  xiii, 7, 148 Janequin, Clément  154–7

171

John, Augustus  93 n.238 Johns, Jasper  152 Joyce, James  154, 161 Kandinsky, Wassily  93 n.237 Kennedy-Frazer, Marjorie  153 Knox, Ronald, ‘Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction’  20 Leavis, Q. D.  161 Leblanc, Maurice  7 Leighton, Sir Frederick  8, 93, 93 n.241, 116 n.301 Leroux, Gaston  5, 135 Lewis, Wyndham  7, 8, 46 n.83, 93 n.238, 153 London  8, 18, 26, 39 n.37, 63, 64 n.139, 93 n.238, 96 n.244, 143–4, 148, 153–4 McAlmon, Robert  160 McCabe, Cameron, The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor  160, 163 McGann, Jerome J.  153 MacGuffin  6, 7, 22, 36 n.11, 83 n.203, 103 n.257 manuscript  xi, 23–6 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso  93 n.238 Mencken, H. L.  161 middlebrow literature  xi, xii, xiii, 27, 140, 147, 160–3 Mill, John Stuart  151 n.2 Miller, Henry  93 n.237 Modernism  xi, xiii, 140–1, 147, 148, 152, 162 Modigliani, Amadeo  93 n.237 Mondadori  139–40 Morand, Paul  7, 46 Morris, William  116 n.301, 152 Münch, Gerhart  153, 154, 157 Nabokov, Vladimir, and Véra  151 narrative technique  137, 138, 145 ‘middle viewpoint’  138 Nicholson, Harold  93 n.238 Paris  xi, 6–8, 22, 28, 39 n.37, 93 n.238, 148, 152, 153–4, 162 Café du Dôme  93 n.237 Parker, Dorothy  161 Paul, Elliot, The Mysterious Mickey Finn  93 n.237 Perkins, Maxwell  152 phrenology  65 n.145 Picasso, Pablo  93 n.237, 152

172

Pinget, Robert  153 Poe, Edgar Allan  xiii, 5, 22, 138 C. Auguste Dupin  138 popular fiction  5, 135, 140, 145, 162 Pound, Ezra  93 n.238 A Lume Spento  6 The Cantos  xi, xii, 7, 33 n.1, 88 n.220, 161 ‘Henry James’  7 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley  39 n.37 Le Testament de Villon  153, 154 and music  154 The Pisan Cantos  152, 154 in Saint Elizabeths  161 and translation  7 ‘William Atheling’  154 Proust, Marcel  7 Rapallo  xi, 22, 154, 157, 161 Rauschenberg, Robert  152 Ray, Man  93 n.237, 152, 154 Rimbaud, Arthur  93 n.238 Rineheart, Mary Roberts  135 Ripton, Surrey  6, 9, 15–17, 31, 141, 143 Roerich, Nicholas  152 Royal Academy of Art  8, 15, 39 n.37, 46 n.83, 64 n.139, 93 Rudge, Olga  xi, xiii, 153–4 and the Accademia Chigiana  xiv, 157–60 Rummel, Walter Morse  153–4 Sartre, Jean-Paul  93 n.237 Säschsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden  157 Satie, Erik  154 Sayers, Dorothy  5, 135, 136, 138–9, 145, 148, 160 scholarly editing  ix, 153 Seldes, Gilbert  161 Serly, Tibor  153, 154 Shaw, George Bernard  93 n.238 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft  151 Shelley, Percy Bysshe  151

INDEX

Siena  157 Simenon, Georges  160 Soho  6, 26, 28, 95, 116 n.301, 148, 162 French Café  6 Le Tour Eiffel  8, 73 n.173 Spender, Stephen  93 n.238 Stevenson, Robert Louis  148 Stillinger, Jack  148, 150–1 Stravinky, Igor  152 Surrealism  148, 154 cadavre exquis/exquisite corpse  148 Symonds, Arthur  93 n.238 Symons, Julian  136, 139, 145 Taylor, Harriet  151 n.2 Thompson, Virgil  154 Todorov, Tzvetan  137–8, 145 transcription  xi, 157 United States justice system  7 Van Dine, S. S. (Willard Huntington Wright)  20, 135, 136, 140, 142–3, 145, 160 Venice  22, 33 n.2, 160 Verlaine, Paul  93 n.238 Vivaldi, Antonio  xiv, 22, 157–60 Orlando Furioso (opera)  158 Wells, Carolyn  135, 141 Wells, H. G.  148 West, Rebecca  162 Whistler, James McNeill  39, 39 n.37, 93 n.238 Wilde, Oscar  93 n.238 Wilson, Edmund  136 Wodehouse, P. G.  5 Wolfe, Thomas  152 Woolf, Virginia  93 n.238, 161–2 Yeats, William Butler  6, 93 n.238, 151 n.2, 153



173

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