The Rasp

Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1924

Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd 1932

Copyright © Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1924

Introduction © Tony Medawar 2015

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1932, 2015

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008148119

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008148126

Version: 2015-10-20

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter I: TOLLING THE BELL

Chapter II: ANTHONY GETHRYN

Chapter III: COCK ROBIN’S HOUSE

Chapter IV: THE STUDY

Chapter V: THE LADY OF THE SANDAL

Chapter VI: THE SECRETARY AND THE SISTER

Chapter VII: THE PREJUDICED DETECTIVE

Chapter VIII: THE INEFFICIENCY OF MARGARET

Chapter IX: THE INQUEST

Chapter X: BIRDS OF THE AIR

Chapter XI: THE BOW AND ARROW

Chapter XII: EXHIBITS

Chapter XIII: IRONS IN THE FIRE

Chapter XIV: HAY-FEVER

Chapter XV: ANTHONY’S BUSY DAY

Chapter XVI: REVELATION AND THE SPARROW

Chapter XVII: BY ‘THE OWL’S’ COMMISSIONER

Chapter XVIII: ENTER FAIRY GODMOTHER

The Detective Story Club

About the Publisher

Footnotes

INTRODUCTION

PHILIP MACDONALD was born in London on 5 November 1900. Writing was in his blood. His paternal grandfather was the Scottish novelist and poet George MacDonald and he was a direct descendant of the MacDonalds who were massacred in Glencoe in 1692. MacDonald’s parents were Constance Robertson, an actress, and Ronald MacDonald, a playwright and novelist. The MacDonalds lived in Chelsea before moving to Twickenham, where Philip attended St Paul’s between 1914 and 1915. His publishers later stated that, on leaving school, he ‘enlisted as a trooper in a famous cavalry regiment, and saw service in Mesopotamia’, now Iraq. While full details have not yet been established, his experiences led to the novel Patrol (1927), which was filmed in 1929 and again as The Lost Patrol in 1934 by director John Ford. MacDonald wrote the script for both films, and there are also echoes of Patrol in his script for another film Sahara (1943).

Other than juvenilia, Philip MacDonald’s serious writing career began with a brace of Buchanesque thrillers, which he co-authored with his father. In the first, Ambrotox and Limping Dick (1920), a new drug ‘Ambrotox’ is stolen from a country house and an heiress is kidnapped. The second, The Spandau Quid (1923), is notable for the many small details that prefigure MacDonald’s most famous novel, The List of Adrian Messenger (1959). The Spandau Quid has a frenetic pace and a confusing plot involving smuggled gold, a sunken U-boat and ‘Germans, Sinn Feiners and Bolsheviks’. Both books feature Superintendent Finucane of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, but the policeman is drawn so sketchily that he cannot be considered a series detective.

No doubt keen to capitalise on the burgeoning popularity of detective fiction, MacDonald decided to try his hand at what would come to be known as whodunits. His first attempt, The Rasp, was first published ninety years ago (August 1924) and forms the debut of MacDonald’s best-known creation, Colonel Anthony Ruthven Gethryn. The Rasp was widely praised and Gethryn would go on to appear in another eleven detective stories which maintain a generally high standard. They included ingenious murderers (The Choice, 1931), well-realised settings (The Crime Conductor, 1931, set in London’s theatre quarter) and novel concepts (Persons Unknown, also 1931, later published as The Maze, in which the reader and Gethryn are presented with precisely the same information in the form of evidence presented at an inquest).

It is likely that MacDonald saw Gethryn as a romanticised version of himself and, as an amateur sleuth of independent means, MacDonald’s detective has much in common with Dorothy L. Sayers’ rather better-known creation, Lord Peter Wimsey. Born approximately fifteen years earlier than MacDonald, Gethryn—whose unusual middle name is pronounced ‘rivven’—is the son of a Spanish mother and a ‘hunting country gentleman’ as a father. ‘No ordinary child’, Gethryn excelled at school and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied History and Classics. After University he travelled extensively before returning home to write poetry and a single, reasonably successful novel before being appointed as private secretary to a Government Minister. On the outbreak of war, Gethryn enlisted as a private in an infantry regiment but a year later he was invalided out and, with the help of his Uncle Charles, became a member of the British Secret Service. By 1919, Gethryn had attained the rank of Colonel and been decorated several times. When Uncle Charles died, he left Gethryn a substantial annual income, equivalent to £400,000 in today’s money. Gethryn promptly settled into a house in Stukeley Gardens, a fictional street in Knightsbridge, London, and resigned himself to a life of leisure from which he quickly tired. In need of distraction, he joined an old University friend to become the co-proprietor of a magazine, and it is in this capacity that the reader discovers him at the outset of The Rasp, ‘tall…with a dark, sardonic sort of face and a very odd pair of eyes”.

MacDonald did not only write about Gethryn. In the 1920s and 30s he penned several other novels and some very good non-series detective stories, including two of the three titles published under the pen name of Martin Porlock: Mystery at Friar’s Pardon (1931) features an outrageously simple solution to a baffling ‘impossible crime’, and X v. Rex (1933) is one of the earliest crime novels to feature a serial killer. Almost all of his books were warmly praised, though some critics noted an increasing tendency to structure his books as if they were a treatment for a film. In fact, MacDonald’s first script was an adaptation of his own novel, Patrol, and the second, Raise the Roof (1930), is generally recognised as the first British film musical.

In 1931, after marrying the writer Florence Ruth Howard, Philip MacDonald moved to Hollywood to focus on writing for the screen rather than the page. His third full script was an adaptation of The Rasp (1932), co-written with another crime writer, J. Jefferson Farjeon. Directed by Michael Powell, The Rasp starred Claude Horton as Gethryn, and was well-received by critics and audiences, but sadly no copies are now known to survive and the film is considered lost. As well as adapting his own work such as Rynox (1932) for films, MacDonald produced many original film scripts throughout the 1930s and 40s, including several for the very popular Charlie Chan series based on the novels by John P. Marquand. Working sometimes with other writers, MacDonald also adapted the work of writers, such as Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1930) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher (1945); he also wrote the script for two versions of Love from a Stranger (1937 and 1945), adapting Frank Vosper’s stage play, which was itself a heavily reworked version of a play by Agatha Christie, The Stranger, based on her own short story ‘Philomel Cottage’.

Although Philip MacDonald focused on screenplays for the cinema and television during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, he also wrote a small number of novels. These included The Sword and the Net (1941), a well-regarded Second World War thriller published under the by-line ‘Warren Stuart’, and Forbidden Planet (1956), the novelisation of the cult science fiction film of the same title. And after a solitary Gethryn short story, ‘The Wood-for-Trees’ (1947), 1959 saw the publication of the last and—in the opinion of many critics—the best of the Gethryn series, The List of Adrian Messenger. In this thrilling novel, Gethryn identifies the ruthless mind behind a series of seemingly accidental deaths. John Huston’s enjoyable 1963 film of The List of Adrian Messenger starred George C. Scott as MacDonald’s detective, with memorable if somewhat bizarre cameos from Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra, as well as a brief appearance by Huston himself. The highlight of the film is a fox hunt, a controversial sport in which MacDonald had a lifelong interest. He had been a keen horseman from very young and had an unfulfilled ambition to ride in the Grand National. MacDonald also had a lifelong love of boxing, reflected in Gentleman Bill: A Boxing Story (1922), and he loved dogs—after moving to Woodland Hills in Los Angeles, he and Ruth bred Great Danes.

Philip MacDonald died in California on 10 December 1980. At his best he was among the most innovative of the writers of the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction and, in Anthony Gethryn, he created one of the great gentleman sleuths of the genre.

TONY MEDAWAR

May 2015

All the Birds of the Air

Fell a-sighin’ and a-sobbin’

When they heard of the death

Of Poor Cock Robin.

‘Who’ll dig his Grave?’

‘I,’ said the Owl,

‘With my little Trowel;

I’ll dig his Grave.’

‘Who killed Cock Robin?’

‘I,’ said the Sparrow,

‘With my Bow and Arrow,

I killed Cock Robin!’

CHAPTER I

TOLLING THE BELL

I

THE Owl shows its blue and gilt cover on the book-stalls every Saturday morning. Thursday nights are therefore nights of turmoil in the offices in Fleet Street. They are always wearing nights; more so, of course, in hot weather than in cold. They are nights of discomfort for the office-boy and of something worse for the editor.

Spenser Hastings edited The Owl, and owned a third of it; and the little paper’s success showed him to possess both brains and capacity for hard work. For a man of thirty-three he had achieved much; but that capacity for work was hard tested—especially on Thursday nights. As to the brains, there was really no doubt of their quality. Take, for instance, The Owl ‘specials’. After he had thought of them and given birth to the first, The Owl, really a weekly review, was enabled to reap harvests in the way of ‘scoops’ without in any way degenerating into a mere purveyor of news.

The thing was worked like this: If, by the grace of God or through a member of the ‘special’ staff or by any other channel, there came to Hastings’s ears a piece of Real News which might as yet be unknown to any of the big daily or evening papers, then within a few hours, whatever the day or night of the week, there appeared a special edition of The Owl. It bore, in place of the blue and gold, a cover of red and black. The letterpress was sparse. The price was twopence. The public bought the first two out of curiosity, and the subsequent issues because they discovered that when the red and black jacket was seen Something had really Happened.

The public bought the real Owl as well. It was always original, written by men and women as yet little known and therefore unspoilt. It was witty, exciting, soothing, biting, laudatory, ironic, and sincere—all in one breath and irreproachable taste.

And Hastings loved it. But Thursday nights, press nights, were undoubtedly Hell. And this Thursday night, hotter almost than its stifling day, was the very hell of Hells.

He ruffled his straw-coloured hair, looking, as a woman once said of him, rather like a stalwart and handsome chicken. Midnight struck. He worked on, cursing at the heat, the paper, his material, and the fact that his confidential secretary, his right-hand woman, was making holiday.

He finished correcting the proofs of his leader, then reached for two over-long articles by new contributors. As he picked up a blue pencil, his door burst open.

‘What in hell—’ he began; then looked up. ‘Good God! Marga—Miss Warren!’

It was sufficiently surprising that his right-hand woman should erupt into his room at this hour in the night when he had supposed her many miles away in a holiday bed; but that she should be thus, gasping, white-faced, dust-covered, hair escaping in a shining cascade from beneath a wrecked hat, was incredible. Never before had he seen her other than calm, scrupulously dressed, exquisitely tidy and faintly severe in her beauty.

He rose to his feet slowly. The girl, her breath coming in great sobs, sank limply into a chair. Hastings rushed for the editorial bottle, glass and siphon. He tugged at the door of the cupboard, remembered that he had locked it, and began to fumble for his keys. They eluded him. He swore beneath his breath, and then started as a hand was laid on his shoulder. He had not heard her approach.

‘Please don’t worry about that.’ Her words came short, jerkily, as she strove for breath. ‘Please, please, listen to me! I’ve got a Story—the biggest yet! Must have a special done now, tonight, this morning!’

Hastings forgot the whisky. The editor came to the top.

‘What’s happened?’ snapped the editor.

‘Cabinet Minister dead. John Hoode’s been killed—murdered! Tonight. At his country house.’

‘You know?’

The efficient Miss Margaret Warren was becoming herself again. ‘Of course. I heard all the fuss just after eleven. I was staying in Marlin, you know. My landlady’s husband is the police-sergeant. So I hired a car and came straight here. I thought you’d like to know.’ Miss Warren was unemotional.

‘Hoode killed! Phew!’ said Hastings, the man, wondering what would happen to the Party.

‘What a story!’ said Hastings, the editor. ‘Any other papers on to it yet?’

‘I don’t think they can be—yet.’

‘Right. Now nip down to Bealby, Miss Warren. Tell him he’s got to get ready for a two-page special now. He must threaten, bribe, shoot, do anything to keep the printers at the job. Then see Miss Halford and tell her she can’t go till she’s arranged for issue. Then, please come back here; I shall want to dictate.’

‘Certainly, Mr Hastings,’ said the girl, and walked quietly from the room.

Hastings looked after her, his forehead wrinkled. Sometimes he wished she were not so sufficient, so calmly adequate. Just now, for an instant, she had been trembling, white-faced, weak. Somehow the sight, even while he feared, had pleased him.

He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his desk.

‘Lord!’ he murmured. ‘Hoode murdered. Hoode!’

II

‘That’s all the detail, then,’ said Hastings half an hour later. Margaret Warren, neat, fresh, her golden hair smooth and shining, sat by his desk.

‘Yes, Mr Hastings.’

‘Er—hm. Right. Take this down. “Cabinet Minister Assassinated. Murder at Abbotshall—”’

‘“Awful Atrocity at Abbotshall”,’ suggested the girl softly.

‘Yes, yes. You’re right as usual,’ Hastings snapped. ‘But I always forget we have to use journalese in the specials. Right. “John Hoode Done to Death by Unknown Hand. The Owl most deeply regrets to announce that at eleven o’clock last night Mr John Hoode, Minister of Imperial Finance, was found lying dead in the study of his country residence, Abbotshall, Marling. The circumstances were such”—pity we don’t know what they really were, Miss Warren—“the circumstances were such as to show immediately that this chief among England’s greatest had met his death at the hands of a murderer, though it is impossible at present to throw any light upon the identity of the criminal.” New paragraph, please. “We understand, however, that no time was lost in communicating with Scotland Yard, who have assigned the task of tracking down the perpetrator of this terrible crime to their most able and experienced officers”—always a safe card that, Miss Warren—“No time will be lost in commencing the work of investigation.” Fresh paragraph, please. “All England, all the Empire, the whole world will join in offering their heartfelt sympathy to Miss Laura Hoode, who, we understand, is prostrated by the shock”—another safe bet—“Miss Hoode, as all know, is the sister of the late minister and his only relative. It is known that there were two guests at Abbotshall, that brilliant leader of society, Mrs Roland Mainwaring, and Sir Arthur Digby-Coates, the millionaire philanthropist and Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Conciliation. Sir Arthur was an extremely close and lifelong friend of the deceased and would affirm that he had not an enemy in the world”—’

Miss Margaret Warren looked up, her eyebrows severely interrogative.

‘Well?’ said Hastings uneasily.

‘Isn’t that last sentence rather dangerous, Mr Hastings?’

‘Hm—er—I don’t know—er—yes, you’re right, Miss Warren. Dammit, woman, are you ever wrong about anything?’ barked Hastings; then recovered himself. ‘I beg your pardon. I—I—’

There came an aloof smile. ‘Please don’t apologise, Mr Hastings. Shall I change the phrase?’

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Hastings. ‘Say, say—put down—say—’

‘“—and are stricken aghast at the calamity which has befallen them”,’ suggested the girl.

‘Excellent,’ said Hastings, composure recovered. ‘By the way, did you tell Williams to get on with that padding? That sketch of Hoode’s life and work? We’ve got to fill up that opposite-centre page.’

‘Yes, Mr Williams started on it at once.’

‘Good. Now take this down as a separate piece. It must be marked off with heavy black rules and be in Clarendon or some such conspicuous type. Ready? “The Owl, aghast at this dreadful tragedy, yet arises from its sorrow and issues, on behalf of the public, a solemn exhortation and warning. Let the authorities see to it that the murderer is found, and found speedily. England demands it. The author of this foul deed must be brought swiftly to justice and punished with the utmost rigour of the law. No effort must be spared.” Now a separate paragraph, please. It must be underlined and should go on the opposite page—under Williams’s article. “Aware of the tremendous interest and concern which this terrible crime will arouse, The Owl has made special arrangements to have bulletins (in the same form as this special edition) published at short intervals in order that the public may have full opportunity to know what progress is being made in the search for the criminal.

‘“These bulletins will be of extraordinary interest, since we are in a position to announce that a special correspondent will despatch to us (so far as is consistent with the wishes of the police, whom we wish to assist rather than compete with) at frequent intervals, from the actual locus of the crime a résumé of the latest developments.”’ Hastings sighed relief and leant back in his chair. ‘That’s all, Miss Warren. And I hope—since the thing is done—that the murderer’ll remain a mystery for a bit. We’ll look rather prize idiots if the gardener’s boy or someone confesses tomorrow. Get that stuff typed and down to the printers as quick as you can, please.’

The girl rose and moved to the door, but paused on the threshold.

‘Mr Hastings,’ she said, turning quickly, ‘what does that last bit mean? Are you sending one of the ordinary people down there—Mr Sellars or Mr Briggs?’

‘Yes, yes, I suppose so. What I said was all rot, but it’ll sound well. We just want reports that are a bit different from the others.’

She came nearer, her eyes wide. ‘Mr Hastings, please excuse me, but you must listen. Why not let The Owl be really useful? Oh, don’t you see what it would mean if we really helped to catch the murderer? Our reputation—our sales. Why—’

‘But I say, Miss Warren, look here, you know! We’ve not got an office full of Holmeses. They’re all perfectly ordinary fellers—’

‘Colonel Gethryn,’ said the girl quietly.

‘Eh, what?’ Hastings was startled. ‘He’d never—Miss Warren, you’re a wonder. But he wouldn’t take it on. He’s—’

‘Ask him.’ She pointed to the telephone at his side.

‘What? Now?’

‘Why not?’

‘But—but it’s two o’clock,’ stammered Hastings. He met the level gaze of his secretary’s blue eyes, lifted the receiver from its hook, and asked for a number.

‘Hallo,’ he said two minutes later, ‘is that Colonel Gethryn’s flat?’

‘It is,’ said the telephone. Its voice was sleepy.

‘Is—is Colonel Gethryn in—out—up, I mean?’

‘Colonel Gethryn,’ said the voice, ‘who would infinitely prefer to be called Mr Gethryn, is in his flat, out of bed, and upon his feet. Also he is beginning to become annoyed at—’

‘Good Lord—Anthony!’ said Hastings. ‘I didn’t recognise your voice.’

‘Now that you have, O Hastings, perhaps you’ll explain why the hell you’re ringing me up at this hour. I may mention that I am in execrable temper. Proceed.’

Spencer Hastings proceeded. ‘Er I—ah—that is—er—’

‘If those are scales,’ said the telephone, ‘permit me to congratulate you.’

Hastings tried again. ‘Something has happened,’ he began.

‘No!’ said the telephone.

‘D’you think you could—I know it’s an extraordinary thing to ask—er, but will you, er—’

Miss Margaret Warren rose to her feet, removed the instrument from her employer’s hands, put the receiver to her ear and spoke into the transmitter.

‘Mr Gethryn,’ she said, ‘this is Margaret Warren speaking. What Mr Hastings wished to do was to ask whether you could come down here—to the office—at once. Oh, I know it sounds mad, but we’ve received some amazing news, and Mr Hastings wishes to consult you. I can’t tell you any more over the phone, but Mr Hastings is sure that you’ll be willing to help. Please come; it might mean everything to the paper.’

‘Miss Warren,’ said the telephone sadly, ‘against my will you persuade me.’

CHAPTER II

ANTHONY GETHRYN