Tuesday, November 12, 2024

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: A CASE FOR DEDUCTION

"A Case for Deduction" by M. P. Shiel & "John Gawsworth" (T. I. Fytton Armstrong) (first published in Thrills:  Twenty Specially Selected New Stories of Crime, Mystery and Horror, anonymously edited by Gawsworth, 1936; reprinted in Ellery /Queen's Mystery Magazine, November 1948)

Uncle Quintus, relaxing with a pipeful of cannibis, challenges his nephew challenges his nephew to solve a mystery involving an artist friend of Quintus, Aubrey Smith.  One evening he called on his lady friend, Hylda, with a large bouquet of flowers he could ill afford and wearing a black suit as if he were in mourning -- both of which aroused the curiosity of Hylda and her crippled father, Captain Hood.  At one point, Aubrey seemed about to explain himself, but left that evening without doing so.  On his was to his flatlet in Maida Vale, he saved two people who nearly were in an automobile accident.  The two, an old man, named Sir Phipps O'Dowdy* O'Donague, and his daughter, Laura, invited him to their house for a drink.  

Aubrey thought this was a strange adventure to happen on his birthday.  He had not mentioned it was his birthday to Hylda; indeed, although he and Hylda had been engaged since they were thirteen, he had never told her of his birthday (they were both now twenty-one).  The two entertained him in a manic manner and he was not able to leave the house until, three in the morning. During the evening, the old man made a point of showing Aubrey a photograph of a beautiful woman he called  "Salvadora Rosa," seeming to believe that Aubrey knew who the woman was.  Although Aubrey sensed that they wished he would call on them again, he did not do so, feeling vaguely uncertain about the encounter.  A week later, then, O'Donague pulled up in his Rolls in from of Aubrey's flat.  O'Donague would constantly visit Aubrey from then on, seeking out his friendship.  Over the next month or two, the old man continued to flaunt the photograph to Aubrey.

It turned out the La Rosa lived nearby and the O'Donague was fixated by her.  She had had a daughter by her ex-husband, a Polish Count.  The Count had been trying to get the girl from La Rosa for year, to no avail because La Rosa had hidden her so well.  Now a seven-year-old girl had gone missing from a nearby village.

Lydia had contacted Aubrey to inform him that her father had died.  Although there was no proof, she was sure he had been poisoned.  Then her father's old butler died on returning from the funeral.  Aubrey then learned that O'Donague has left him a bequest of 175 pounds per year -- enough money that he and Hylda could soon plan on getting married.  But O'Donague had left La Rosa a bequest of thirty thousand pounds -- reason enough for Laura to suspect her of poisoning him.

Now things get confusing.  It turns out there is another Aubrey Smith who may have claim to the 175 pound inheritance.  And this Smith, although unmarried, has a seven-year-old child who spoke French in his household.  And on the day Aubrey and Hylda were to be married, that child is shot outside the church; the two Aubrey smiths then vanished, one chasing the other -- but who was chasing who?  Then Hylda's father dies suddenly.  Aubrey is accused of kidnapping the young girl.  O'Donague's coffin is disinterred and the old man was found to have had his throat cut, his mouth full of something resembling powdered glass, and with enough prussic acid in his stomach to kill thirty people.

Can Uncle Quintus's nephew deduce what had actually happened, just as the police finally did?

The reprint in EQMM is interrupted by a "Challenge to the Reader" from editor Queen, noting that M. P. Shiel's "cases for deduction" were never cut-and-dried affairs, susceptible wholly to sheer and unadulterated logic...


*Dowdy was the middle name of Shiel's father.


M. P. Shiel's (his birth name was Sheill, but he preferred to drop the final "l"; 1865-1947) best selling work is the novel The Purple Cloud (1901), part of a loosely linked trilogy considered to be the first "future history" series in science fiction.  His place in annals of mystery fiction was sealed by the publication of stories featuring Prince Zaleski, tales influenced by Poe and considered to be some of the most flamboyant works of the English Decadent Movement.  Shiel's novel The Yellow Danger (1898) is thought to be a possible basis for Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu, and was a likely influence on H. g. Wells's The War in the Air, among other novels.  In 1914 Shiel was convicted and spent sixteen months in prison; it had been generally assumed that he was found guilty of fraud.  It wasn't until 2008 that it was revealed that he had been found guilty of "indecently assaulting and carnally knowing" his 12-year-old de facto stepdaughter.  (Yuck!)  Shiel also proclaimed himself to be King Felipe of Redonda, a small uninhabited island in the West Indies, claiming to have been crowned king of that island on his fifteenth birthday.  On Shiel's death, the "title" passed on to John Gawsworth, Shiel's literary executer, who m ilked the title for all it was worth.  Gawsworth reportedly kept Shiel's ashes in a biscuit tin on his mantle. and would sprinkle some of the ashes in a strw for special guests.

As you can tell, Gawsworth (1912-1970) was also a bit of an odd duck.  A poet, essayist, and editor of anthologies, Gawsworth was a friend of Arthur Machen, Edgar Jepson, and Hugh MacDiamid -- completing short stories by all three --  and Lawrence Durrell, Dylan Thomas, and George Woodcock -- his friendship with Thomas and Woodcock later turned to enmity.  After "inheriting" his title to the Kingdom of Redonda, he styled himself H. M. Juan 1; the title then went to Gawsworth's literary executor Jon Wynn-Tyson (H. M. Juan II); Tyson then abdicated in 1997 in favor of Spanish novelist Javier Marias (H.M. Xavier I), who became literary executor for shiel and Gawsworth; Marias died in 2022 and I'm not sure if the "title" survived him.  (During his lifetime, though, Marias bestowed titles and Duchys to people he liked, including A. S. Byatt, Francis Ford Coppolla, Roger Dobson, Frank Gehry, Orhan Pamuk, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Eric Rohmer, Ray Bradbury, Alice Munro, Umberto Eco, Milan Kundera, and Ian McEwan among them.

All of this is probably more than you wanted to know about the authors.

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