The Middle Temple Murder

‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This Detective Club edition published 2019

First published in Great Britain by Ward Lock 1919

‘The Contents of the Coffin’ published in The Adventures of Archer Dawe (Sleuth-Hound) by Digby, Long & Co. 1909

Introduction © Nigel Moss 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

J.S. Fletcher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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: 9780008283049

Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008283056

Version: 2018-11-28

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

I. THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER

II. HIS FIRST BRIEF

III. THE CLUE OF THE CAP

IV. THE ANGLO-ORIENT HOTEL

V. SPARGO WISHES TO SPECIALISE

VI. WITNESS TO A MEETING

VII. MR AYLMORE

VIII. THE MAN FROM THE SAFE DEPOSIT

IX. THE DEALER IN RARE STAMPS

X. THE LEATHER BOX

XI. MR AYLMORE IS QUESTIONED

XII. THE NEW WITNESS

XIII. UNDER SUSPICION

XIV. THE SILVER TICKET

XV. MARKET MILCASTER

XVI. THE ‘YELLOW DRAGON’

XVII. MR QUARTERPAGE HARKS BACK

XVIII. AN OLD NEWSPAPER

XIX. THE CHAMBERLAYNE STORY

XX. MAITLAND alias MARBURY

XXI. ARRESTED

XXII. THE BLANK PAST

XXIII. MISS BAYLIS

XXIV. MOTHER GUTCH

XXV. REVELATIONS

XXVI. STILL SILENT

XXVII. MR ELPHICK’S CHAMBERS

XXVIII. OF PROVED IDENTITY

XXIX. THE CLOSED DOORS

XXX. REVELATION

XXXI. THE PENITENT WINDOW-CLEANER

XXXII. THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN

XXXIII. FORESTALLED

XXXIV. THE WHIP HAND

XXXV. MYERST EXPLAINS

XXXVI. THE FINAL TELEGRAM

THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN

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The Detective Story Club

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

THE year 2019 marks the centenary of The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher (1863–1935), first published in 1919 in the UK (Ward Lock) and US (Knopf). Well received by literary critics on both continents, it attracted lavish praise from US President Woodrow Wilson as the best detective story he had read. The book quickly became a bestseller, especially in the US, where Fletcher was even heralded as the literary successor to Arthur Conan Doyle, and it later entered the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of landmark mysteries. Though Fletcher was already an established author, he was now propelled to literary fame and commercial success, and during the 1920s and early 1930s his vast output was rivalled only by Edgar Wallace and E. Phillips Oppenheim. His influence contributed significantly to the growth in popularity, social acceptance and respectability of crime fiction and was of historical importance to the genre.

Joseph Smith Fletcher was born in 1863 in Halifax. His father, a clergyman and keen bibliophile, died when Fletcher was still a baby, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother on her farm in Yorkshire. A semi-invalid for much of his youth, Fletcher’s formal education did not begin until his mid-teens. However, he developed a passionate enjoyment for reading prose and poetry at a young age, particularly the great adventure stories of Fenimore Cooper, Captain Marryat, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, and by age 16 claimed to have read over two thousand books. This was reflected in the hugely fertile imagination and wordsmith skills displayed in Fletcher’s fictional writings. Before turning age 17, Fletcher had published his first collection of poetry.

After completing his schooling in Wakefield, Fletcher moved to London to study law. He attended fraud and murder trials and gained an in-depth knowledge of criminal law, useful for his later detective fiction. But plans to become a barrister were abandoned in favour of journalism, and by age 20 he was working as a sub-editor on an educational journal in London. He soon returned to Yorkshire, where for the next 15 years Fletcher worked for various regional newspapers, including the Leeds Mercury (writing rustic pieces under the pseudonym ‘Son of the Soil’) and the Yorkshire Post. Fletcher married in his early-20s, but this was to end in separation. His second marriage was to Irish novelist Rosamond Langbridge, noted for her psychological study of Charlotte Brontë, and they lived in the home counties until his death.

In his late-20s, while still working in journalism, Fletcher’s wide-ranging and prolific writing career took off, encompassing poetry, biography, history and historical fiction, topography, country life, cricket, religion and detective fiction, extending for over 40 years, and resulting in some 237 books—almost half were mysteries—a true literary behemoth. Fletcher’s first fictional work was a historical romance, When Charles I was King (1892), one of the last Victorian three-decker novels. He published collections of journalistic pieces about the Yorkshire countryside, and novels of rural life after the style of Richard Jefferies. Fletcher’s regional dialect writings earned him the soubriquet ‘the Yorkshire Hardy’. His historical reference works about Yorkshire were admired and respected, especially the three-volume A Picturesque History of Yorkshire (1900), and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

In the early-1900s, Fletcher gave up journalism to devote himself to writing books, including his first crime novels. This was a time of buoyant public demand for mystery stories, a lucrative pastime for authors. The Sherlock Holmes stories of Conan Doyle were especially popular. Fletcher’s early crime fiction was a mix of orthodox mystery novels and short stories, as well as thriller ‘shockers’ similar to those of Edgar Wallace and Sax Rohmer. His best-known mystery story collection featured an elderly Yorkshire amateur detective, The Adventures of Archer Dawe, Sleuth-Hound (1909), followed later by stories of private investigator Paul Campenhaye, Specialist in Criminology (1918). By the end of WWI, Fletcher had gained a reputation as a moderately successful, talented author, writing in different genres on a wide range of subjects.

The Middle Temple Murder (1919) was to prove a breakthrough for Fletcher. It begins, in arresting fashion, with Frank Spargo, a young sub-editor on the Watchman newspaper, walking home from Fleet Street in the early hours of a June morning in 1912. He happens upon the discovery of the body of an elderly man who has been found bludgeoned to death, lying in the entrance to barristers’ chambers on Middle Temple Lane, a narrow thoroughfare running between Fleet Street and the Embankment. There are no means of identification on the body; the victim’s pockets are empty, save for a scrap of paper bearing the name and address of Ronald Breton, a young barrister. Spargo senses a potential journalistic scoop. He gains the trust of Detective-Sergeant Rathbury of Scotland Yard, and accompanies him during initial enquiries. Subsequently they agree to exchange and share information, while pursuing their investigations independently. Spargo adopts the novel approach of publishing his findings in the Watchman and inviting the public to come forward with information. This strategy proves successful—as well as advancing the paper’s circulation. The narrative focuses on Spargo’s unravelling of the mystery—who the murdered person was, why he was murdered, and who did it. Breton assists him in the background.

The book succeeds on many different levels. Spargo is personable and likeable, a refreshingly principled journalist. Although wholly inexperienced at sleuthing, he displays enthusiasm, determination and wisdom. Along with E.C Bentley’s earlier fictional creation Philip Trent, Spargo was one of the first journalist-detectives, later to prove popular with American and British crime writers. The story is mainly set in urban London, around Fleet Street, the Temple and Waterloo, areas with which Fletcher was familiar. There are occasional excursions—to Market Milcaster, a decaying, genteel West Country market town, and at the conclusion to the northern Fell country. The atmosphere of each location is vividly and evocatively conveyed, enhancing the storytelling.

The plot is well constructed, complex and entertaining. The diverse storyline threads and multi-dimensional sub-plots are akin to the pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle; eventually slotting together to form a pleasing symmetry and reveal an intricate and intriguing mystery. Colourful new minor characters are introduced at different stages, and fresh clues regularly emerge during the investigation to set the story off in a new direction, in the vein of a pursuit thriller; these help to hold the reader’s interest throughout. The pace is quicker than in many other detective stories of the period, with plenty of plot twists, red herrings and historic crimes subordinate to the murder which reveal a motive deep in the past. Fletcher doesn’t leave loose ends. With a tightly plotted, swiftly moving and suspenseful storyline, he manages to keep the murderer’s identity hidden until the penultimate page. Fletcher’s journalistic skills show in the short chapter structure, multi-layered plots and page-turning, cliffhanger style of writing, typical of series publications. The book is well written but unpretentious; it has a surprisingly modern feel, brisk and light, and still holds up well today.

One of the sub-plots is developed from the short story ‘The Contents of the Coffin’, which appeared in Fletcher’s earlier collection The Adventures of Archer Dawe, Sleuth-Hound. That story is helpfully included in this new edition; it offers an interesting comparison.

The success which followed the publication of The Middle Temple Murder in August 1919 transformed Fletcher’s writing career. At the end of WWI Fletcher was in his mid-fifties, and thereafter until his death in 1935 he predominantly wrote detective fiction, prodigiously averaging three mystery novels annually. The Middle Temple Murder was Fletcher’s first detective novel to be published in America. It went through six printings during the first year and together with Woodrow Wilson’s widely-publicised encomium quickly established Fletcher’s reputation in the US. The New York Times Book Review in August 1920 hailed Fletcher as a ‘new’ author of detective fiction that was ‘ingenious, complicated and much better written than the average’. Fletcher was dubbed ‘the Dean of Mystery Writers’. One leading American critic wrote of his ‘concocting detective stories that hold the reader absolutely breathless’; and another ‘I simply live from Fletcher to Fletcher’. The traditional Englishness and vibrantly described settings (usually in London and Yorkshire), as well as refined style of Fletcher’s mysteries, were particularly appealing to Anglophile readers. During the 1920s, more than 40 Fletcher mystery novels and short story collections appeared in the US, including reprints of earlier works published in the UK. Those who enjoy The Middle Temple Murder are recommended to The Charing Cross Mystery (1923), a comparable example of his best mystery writing.

In the late-1920s critics began referring to the ‘Fletcher Factory’ or ‘Fletcher Mill’ to describe his prodigious, almost business-like output. His reliable and entertaining novels became a mainstay of public libraries and high-street shops. But the sheer speed of writing and over-production inevitably meant fluctuation in quality. By the mid-1930s Fletcher’s popularity had started to wane. The Golden Age was in full flow in England and had brought in a fresher, more modern style of detection writing; and in America darker ‘hard-boiled’ mystery stories were in vogue, reflecting the recent economic depression. However, Franklin D. Roosevelt kept up the US presidential Fletcher-reading tradition, with several Fletcher detective novels among his summer vacation books in 1934. Fletcher died in January 1935 at his home in Dorking, just short of age 72; his writing career had spanned five decades.

Since his death, Fletcher’s works have largely been out of print and neglected, except for The Middle Temple Murder. There are several evident contributing factors for this decline. Firstly, the older style of Fletcher’s mystery writing: he was from an earlier generation than most Golden Age authors, a contemporary of Conan Doyle. Many of Fletcher’s crime novels pre-date the Golden Age and are mystery adventures and thrillers typical of the Holmesian era; even those written within it are of a very different style. There is no closed form of detection and fair play clueing, and his plots lack the sophisticated puzzles and emphasis on deduction contained in the works of Christie and other Golden Age leading practitioners. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in 1933, ‘Mr Fletcher does not write detective stories in the modern sense of the phrase,’ rather that he appealed to those readers ‘who like being puzzled, but do not want to sit down to a mystery story as though it were an examination paper.’ As he wrote in various genres, Fletcher chose mostly not to stick with one hero or detective in a series, save for the early Archer Dawe and Paul Campenhaye short stories and one series detective, Ronald Camberwell, a private enquiry agent, who first appeared only in 1931 in the twilight of the author’s writing career.

What of Fletcher’s place within the period as one of its most prolific authors? Fletcher has accurately been described as ‘a journeyman writer … a true professional who knew what his readers wanted (and wanted in quantity) and produced what was needed’. His sleuths were mostly young inexperienced men in unexpected situations, who display energy, dedication and courage to solve problems and uncover hidden truths—quite different to the typical Golden Age professional detectives. His mysteries were well-constructed tales, written with zest and appealing spontaneity; they contain original, ingenious problems, often involving fraud and clever swindles as well as murder, with rapid-paced thrilling incidents and workmanlike storylines, leading to logical but often surprising conclusions. Barzun and Taylor praise Fletcher’s ‘true knack of storytelling and ability to create atmosphere’. Another commentator has written that ‘his stories and characters linger in the mind, his yarns are perfect for their period, and he writes with humour and compassion and not a little empathy and insight’.

Edward Powys Mather, better known as ‘Torquemada’, who reviewed mystery fiction and compiled cryptic crosswords for the Observer in the 1930s, completed Fletcher’s unfinished novel Todmanhawe Grange (1937) after the author’s death, and wrote an Introduction with this tribute: ‘It may be said that with the late J.S. Fletcher, Yorkshireman, journalist, historian and nature lover, the detective story was only a parergon; yet he played a considerable part in its literary development, and the earliest books on his long list of mystery stories were worthy pioneers in an army which has since invested England in its hundreds of thousands’. Fletcher’s novels were translated into fifteen European languages, and even Chinese. His considerable international success throughout the 1920s fuelled the demand for and growth of crime and detective fiction; it also encouraged many of the Golden Age writers who followed and, ironically, have outlasted him in popularity.

And the starting point for this achievement was The Middle Temple Murder.

NIGEL MOSS

June 2018

CHAPTER I

THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER

AS a rule, Spargo left the Watchman office at two o’clock. The paper had then gone to press. There was nothing for him, recently promoted to a sub-editorship, to do after he had passed the column for which he was responsible; as a matter of fact he could have gone home before the machines began their clatter. But he generally hung about, trifling, until two o’clock came. On this occasion, the morning of the 22nd of June, 1912, he stopped longer than usual, chatting with Hacket, who had charge of the foreign news, and who began telling him about a telegram which had just come through from Durazzo. What Hacket had to tell was interesting: Spargo lingered to hear all about it, and to discuss it. Altogether it was well beyond half-past two when he went out of the office, unconsciously puffing away from him as he reached the threshold the last breath of the atmosphere in which he had spent his midnight. In Fleet Street the air was fresh, almost to sweetness, and the first grey of the coming dawn was breaking faintly around the high silence of St Paul’s.

Spargo lived in Bloomsbury, on the west side of Russell Square. Every night and every morning he walked to and from the Watchman office by the same route—Southampton Row, Kingsway, the Strand, Fleet Street. He came to know several faces, especially amongst the police; he formed the habit of exchanging greetings with various officers whom he encountered at regular points as he went slowly homewards, smoking his pipe. And on this morning, as he drew near to Middle Temple Lane, he saw a policeman whom he knew, one Driscoll, standing at the entrance, looking about him. Further away another policeman appeared, sauntering. Driscoll raised an arm and signalled; then, turning, he saw Spargo. He moved a step or two towards him. Spargo saw news in his face.

‘What is it?’ asked Spargo.

Driscoll jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the partly open door of the lane. Within, Spargo saw a man hastily donning a waistcoat and jacket.

‘He says,’ answered Driscoll, ‘him, there—the porter—that there’s a man lying in one of them entries down the lane, and he thinks he’s dead. Likewise, he thinks he’s murdered.’

Spargo echoed the word.

‘But what makes him think that?’ he asked, peeping with curiosity beyond Driscoll’s burly form. ‘Why?’

‘He says there’s blood about him,’ answered Driscoll. He turned and glanced at the oncoming constable, and then turned again to Spargo. ‘You’re a newspaper man, sir?’ he suggested.

‘I am,’ replied Spargo.

‘You’d better walk down with us,’ said Driscoll, with a grin. ‘There’ll be something to write pieces in the paper about. At least, there may be.’ Spargo made no answer. He continued to look down the lane, wondering what secret it held, until the other policeman came up. At the same moment the porter, now fully clothed, came out.

‘Come on!’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll show you.’

Driscoll murmured a word or two to the newly-arrived constable, and then turned to the porter.

‘How came you to find him, then?’ he asked

The porter jerked his head at the door which they were leaving.

‘I heard that door slam,’ he replied, irritably, as if the fact which he mentioned caused him offence. ‘I know I did! So I got up to look around. Then—well, I saw that!’

He raised a hand, pointing down the lane. The three men followed his outstretched finger. And Spargo then saw a man’s foot, booted, grey-socked, protruding from an entry on the left hand.

‘Sticking out there, just as you see it now,’ said the porter. ‘I ain’t touched it. And so—’

He paused and made a grimace as if at the memory of some unpleasant thing. Driscoll nodded comprehendingly.

‘And so you went along and looked?’ he suggested. ‘Just so—just to see who it belonged to, as it might be.’

‘Just to see—what there was to see,’ agreed the porter. ‘Then I saw there was blood. And then—well, I made up the lane to tell one of you chaps.’

‘Best thing you could have done,’ said Driscoll. ‘Well, now then—’

The little procession came to a halt at the entry. The entry was a cold and formal thing of itself; not a nice place to lie dead in, having glazed white tiles for its walls and concrete for its flooring; something about its appearance in that grey morning air suggested to Spargo the idea of a mortuary. And that the man whose foot projected over the step was dead he had no doubt: the limpness of his pose certified to it.

For a moment none of the four men moved or spoke. The two policemen unconsciously stuck their thumbs in their belts and made play with their fingers; the porter rubbed his chin thoughtfully—Spargo remembered afterwards the rasping sound of this action; he himself put his hands in his pockets and began to jingle his money and his keys. Each man had his own thoughts as he contemplated the piece of human wreckage which lay before him.

‘You’ll notice,’ suddenly observed Driscoll, speaking in a hushed voice, ‘you’ll notice that he’s lying there in a queer way—same as if—as if he’d been put there. Sort of propped up against that wall, at first, and had slid down, like.’

Spargo was taking in all the details with a professional eye. He saw at his feet the body of an elderly man; the face was turned away from him, crushed in against the glaze of the wall, but he judged the man to be elderly because of grey hair and whitening whisker; it was clothed in a good, well-made suit of grey check cloth—tweed—and the boots were good: so, too, was the linen cuff which projected from the sleeve that hung so limply. One leg was half doubled under the body; the other was stretched straight out across the threshold; the trunk was twisted to the wall. Over the white glaze of the tiles against which it and the shoulder towards which it had sunk were crushed there were gouts and stains of blood. And Driscoll, taking a hand out of his belt, pointed a finger at them.

‘Seems to me,’ he said, slowly, ‘seems to me as how he’s been struck down from behind as he came out of here. That blood’s from his nose—gushed out as he fell. What do you say, Jim?’ The other policeman coughed.