Language in "The Mystery of the Yellow Room"

I jotted down a few notes while reading Gaston Leroux' The Mystery of the Yellow Room, a 1907 novel considered to be the first "locked room mystery."

The mystery takes place at a chateau: "The Glandier - ancient Glandierum - was so called from the quantity of glands (acorns) which, in all times, had been gathered in that neighborhood."  A standard French word, from the Old French glant, from the Latin glandem.

"Having explained so far, I cannot refrain from making one further reflexion."  When one ponders or considers a subject, the common term is that one "reflects" on the matter, but it is unexpected to see reflexion (or reflection) used in the noun form in this manner.  A reflection in a mirror, certainly, but as used here I was quite startled.

Now consider these unusual contractions:

"I have n't had them arrested."
"Are n't you satisfied?"
"A keeper is as much a servant as any other, is n't he?"
"But I've made him understand that his face does n't please me..."

I think I've listed a number of unusual contractions in my reviews of John Dickson Carr books, written in the 1930s.  This contracting of not to n't, unjoined to the verb is from decades earlier.  I don't know if this was common usage by copy editors of the time or not.

"When we were in complete darkness, he lit a wax vesta..."  Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth and the home, so I suppose the application of the name to a match is quite appropriate, though nowadays archaic.

"When I left my chamber, at half-past ten, my father was already at work in the laboratory.  We worked together till midday.  We then took half-an-hour's walk in the park, as we were accustomed to do, before breakfasting at the chateau."  Literally this makes logical sense; if you skip the morning meal and break your fast in the afternoon, that meal would be your "break-fast," but it does sound odd to the modern reader.

"Mademoiselle Stangerson threw a fichu shawl over her shoulders..."  A French novelist applies a French term: "Borrowed from French fichu (“(noun) triangular scarf; (adjective) got up, put together”) (in the sense of something thrown on without much thought), from ficher (“to drive something (such as a nail) by its point”), ultimately from Latin fīgō (“to fasten, fix; to pierce, transfix; to drive (a nail)”)"

Related: Pildomatist (from Leroux' Phantom of the Opera)

Death and drugs in "Bambi"

In a recent podcast of No Such Thing as a Fish, the elves commented that the original 1926 publication of "Bambi - A Life in the Woods" was quite different from the Disney version seen in movie theaters.  I decided to check, and here's my TL;DR summary -

A ferret kills a mouse, one jay calls another a murderer, a deer is shot and killed, a crow commits infanticide of a hare's offspring, a ferret mangles a squirrel, a fox tears a pheasant apart, humans commit mass slaughter of pheasants, a ferret kills a squirrel, an owl kills a squirrel, and Bambi gets violent:

"He turned to flee from the silent Bambi who came rushing after him.  Karus knew that Bambi was furious and would kill him without mercy..."

Another deer dies, a fox kills a duck, and Bambi takes drugs:

"Eat that," he commanded suddenly, stopping and pushing aside the grasses.  He pointed to a pair of short dark-green leaves growing close together near the ground. 
Bambi obeyed.  They tasted terribly bitter and smelled sickeningly.
"How do you feel now?" the stag asked after a while.
"Better," Bambi answered quickly.  He was suddenly able to speak again.  His senses had cleared and his fatigue grew less." 

An owl kills a mouse, a dog kills a fox, and finally a man ("He") is shot and killed.

I don't know how all that compares with the Disney film, which I've not seen.  I'm waiting for the Tarantino version.

Gleanings from The Big Sky

The Big Sky is the first novel in A.B. Guthrie's trilogy about the opening of the American west (the sequel to this novel (The Way West) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950).  Set in the 1830s, the story follows a Kentucky boy as he voyages up the Missouri to its headwaters and becomes a mountain man.  The protagonist is a crude, uneducated, quick-to-violence loner who has been compared to Faulkner's Mississippi characters.  I first read the book back in 1996 and decided it was time to give it a final goodbye read.  Guthrie is a admirable prose stylist, and the book has a lot of evocative passages, such as this one about a trapped beaver -

"He saw now that she had been at work on her leg.  A little bit more and she would have chewed herself free.  There were just the tendons holding, and a ragged flap of skin.  The broken bone stuck out of the jaws of the trap, white and clean as a peeled root.  Around her mouth he could see blood.

She looked at him, still not moving, still only with that little shaking, out of eyes that were dark and fluid and fearful, out of big eyes that liquid seemed to run in, out of eyes like a wounded bird's.  They made him a little uneasy, stirring something that lay just beyond the edge of his mind and wouldn't come out where he could see it.

She let out a soft whimper as he raised the stick..."

The repeating "out of eyes..." is also reminiscent of Faulkner.  The unspecified something "just beyond the edge of his mind" is I think the similarity of the beaver's eyes to those of his wife. 

"He would sit at the campfire and smoke or go about the horses or tend to the skins, and a man would know that he was away back in his mind, seeing old things, things that had happened long ago...  It was age getting him, likely; a man was lucky if he didn't grow too old and have to think that the best of what was going to happen to him had already happened.  God was mighty mean in some ways, letting a body get on to the point where he always hungered to turn back, making him know he wasn't the man he had been, making his bed cold but keeping in his mind the time when it wasn't.  It was like a man was pushed backwards down hill, seeing the top getting farther from him every day, but always seeing it, always wishing he could go back."

"Boone knocked out his pipe and sat still, letting time run by.  Each part of time was good in itself, if a man knew to enjoy it and didn't press for it to pass so as to get ahead to something different."

"Boone walked over and let himself out of the room. Rooms made a man feel shut in on himself; they made him uneasy, so’s his mind never rightly put itself to a thing but kept thinking about a way out, like a mouse in a bucket."

"When he came to a town, though, it wasn’t any better, with fools staring and wagging tongues and thinking as how one man ought to be like another and all knuckling under to rules and ways and work and sheriffs and judges, and calling themselves free. And all living smothered by walls and roofs, breathing air that the good was gone from, breathing each other’s stinks and the stinks that the hogs made in the pens back of the houses."

And also some interesting new words:

"He limped to the wall, making an uneven thump on the puncheon floor.."  Apparently a split log or heavy slab of timber used for flooring.

"He ate it all, ending by crunching up the softer bones [of the chicken] and sucking out the pockets of lights..."  I'm familiar with "lights" being used in reference to the lungs; here it presumably refers to fatty marrow, which would be light and float on water.

"His hand reached into the pocket of his black coat and came out with a key through which a whang was looped."  A leather thong.  The alternative meaning of "penis" doesn't seem applicable...

"... had found work in a store, where he got to parcel out beans and meal and copperas."  Crystals of iron sulfate is all I could find - not sure how they would be used by pioneering families.  Addendum: thoroughly explained here, with a hat tip to reader Bob the Scientist.

"Boone had just pulled the trigger on the cow and heard the punkiny sound of the ball as it went home."  Beats me.  Perhaps the sound of a bullet penetrating a pumpkin?

"Summers felt his legs playing out on him.  His head was dauncy, as if it wasn't fixed rightly to his neck."  Derived from the Gaelic, "the American sense, in either spelling, has always been rather a regional term, and these days is rare. The usual meaning is of a person who is feeling sick, weak, lacking in vitality, or not completely well."

"Let them bring their beaver to him, and he would bring them strouding and paints and sky-blue beads and powder and ball and alcohol and all that made a nation happy and great."  A coarse cloth used in trading with Native Americans, apparently derived from the name of the town in England.

"The wind was warm, coming over the mountains, and notionable.  Sometimes it cried shrill and wintry in the branches of the trees and then it would ease up and be no more than a whisper..."  I couldn't find a strict definition applicable to wind, but apparently the sense of a notion being vague and poorly-formed is applied to a wind that is variable in direction and intensity.

"Boone looked back at the horse.  With his mane roached and his tail combed he made a pretty sight."  Trimmed so that the hairs stand straight up, like a Mohawk.  Couldn't find an applicable etymology.

"How's a man to know?  Goddam it!"  "I didn't mean to r'ile you."  I've seen "rile" used many times, but never with an apostrophe to indicate an elision.  Rile is related to roil, which comes from the French rouiller, so maybe that's the pathway.

"Darkness seemed to squeeze around him - darkness and silence, made the darker and silenter by the little flame of the campfire and the mindless chuckle of the water." Apparently an acceptable alternative to "more silent."

Thoughts upon rereading T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

I recently found on my bookshelf a half-century-old copy of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.  I must have purchased it during or shortly after my years as a collegiate English major.  I had read it, deemed it a "keeper," placed it on a bookshelf, and then it had accompanied me through various moves to new cities and careers. 

As I looked at the cover, I realized there was only one passage that I could remember from the entire book:

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
                                 (Little Gidding)

I decided it was time to give the book a "goodbye read" and donate it to the library.  Almost immediately (at the start of Burnt Norton) I found another memorable passage:

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past,
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."

But what did it mean?  It's lyrical and clever - but I can't grasp the concept.

I kept reading, finding some interesting turns of phrase in Burnt Norton -

"... human kind
Cannot bear very much reality." 

- and in East Coker:

"... There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment..."

In this short work there was an abundance of unfamiliar and undoubtedly interesting words: suspire, behovely, sempiternal, chthonic, sortilege, scry, haruspicate, ineffable, appetency, tumid, periphrastic, hebetude, grimpen.  I'll need to look those up later (grimpen has an obvious connection to a certain Sherlockian mire).

By the time I finished the book, I realized Four Quartets is no longer "accessible" to me.  I can't consider myself successful to finish a book and wind up with just a handful of harvested quotes and interesting words if I don't also have a sense of what in the world I just finished reading.  This book took Eliot years to write and was meticulously crafted to encompass some of his deepest thoughts about religion and the "meaning of life."  But I can't for the life of me extract any of that for my own use.

It's not that I dislike T. S. Eliot.  I love Prufrock (see Spooning - and Prufrock - updated and Prufrock in cartoon format), and I fully intend to give The Waste Land (April is the cruellest month... Hurry up, please, its time...) a goodbye read.  But I expect it will be more of a dutiful read rather than an eager one.

And if T. S. Eliot is now beyond my ken, do I have the energy to read through The Canterbury Tales again?  Or Lord Byron's Don Juan, or Milton's Paradise Lost?  I consumed them eagerly as an undergraduate, secure in the knowledge that I was reading classic, perhaps immortal, literature and sharing an experience with dozens of generations of other readers worldwide.  If I had any hopes back then that I would be sitting with friends in my retirement to argue whether Byron's incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh influenced his writing of Don Juan, or to what extent Milton's blindness is reflected in his works, those hopes have long since faded.  Nowadays when I reach for something to read, my hand will bring down from the shelf something less challenging.

Image cropped for size from the original at Genius.

Trigger warning: animal abuse

YouTube link.

I couldn't watch all the way through.

Summary from The Guardian:

Undercover footage showing young dairy calves being kicked, violently thrown, having their heads stamped into the ground and suffering from heat exposure at a US farm known as the “Disneyland of agricultural tourism” was published this week.

Every year, more than 600,000 tourists visit the Fair Oaks Farms Dairy Adventure, a working dairy farm of 15,000 cows a few hours south of Chicago, Illinois. The farm, with its museum, restaurant and hotel – deemed the “Disneyland of agricultural tourism” this year by Food & Wine – sells a vision of quaint rural life: “It’s where families can view pastures dotted with dairy cattle” and “watch as a piglet is born” before they “top off this idyllic country day with a scoop of ice cream or a pork chop from Fair Oaks Farms’ restaurant”.

The farm is independently owned by veterinarian Mike McCloskey, but it is an affiliate of the Coca-Cola company, with which it produces a nutrient-dense milk product called “Fairlife” and other popular dairy products including Core Power Protein shakes. McCloskey, who co-founded the business with his wife, Sue, has stated that their farm provides in-depth training on humane care of animals.

ARM’s undercover investigator got a job at Fair Oaks as a calf care employee in 2018. The investigator reported that they received no training other than where to put the calves’ dead bodies. Furthermore, violence towards the animals appeared to be commonplace, typically stemming from frustration over the calves’ unwillingness to feed from artificial nipples.

Video footage captured between August and November of 2018 appears to show workers beating, kicking, and throwing the bloodied and emaciated baby animals as their mothers go hoarse calling to them from separated barns.

Primary source material here, with an extensive photo gallery.


Sort of related:

"I AM NOT A COW. I AM PROFESSOR DUNBAR. 

PLEASE DO NOT KILL ME."

The title is one of the penultimate lines from The Court of Tartary, a fantasy by T.P. Caravan first published in 1963. In the story, a professor of English literature "awakens" to find his mind is entrapped in the body of a cow, and the herd seems to be destined to the slaughterhouse.

"Edward Harrison Dunbar, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., L.L.D., member of the Modern Language Association and authority on eighteenth century literature, was not prepared for the situation in which he found himself: it had never been mentioned by any of the writers of the Age of Reason....

And even as he ran he wondered if he couldn't prove that Edward Young was the true author of the third book of Gulliver's Travels, because he knew that if he stopped thinking scholarly thoughts about the eighteenth century he would have to admit that he had turned into an animal. So as he ran he considered the evidence turned up by the publication of the Tickell papers and the discovery of Swift's old laundry lists and Night Thoughts and the graveyard poets and Gray's Elegy and the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and he had to admit that he was an animal....

There was no point in approaching his difficulty through the scientific method: he knew no science. There was no help for him in metaphysics: he had cleared his mind of Kant. Nor could the classics aid him: he had read Ovid, of course, and the Golden Ass, but he didn't see how they bore on his problem. And — he hated to admit it — nobody in the eighteenth century seemed to have wondered what would happen to a scholar who woke up and found himself a cow. All right. That left only his own experience to fall back on. But, being a professor, he had never had any experiences..."

He decides to use his hoof to draw a triangle in the dust.  Then... if I've piqued your curiosity, you can read the full story in ten minutes fulltext online at Scribd.

Making quills

YouTube link.

This is one of three videos I'm posting today from a British Library series entitled "Making Manuscripts."  There are several more in the series, which can be accessed at the British Library YouTube channel.

Making vellum

YouTube link.

This is one of three videos I'm posting today from a British Library series eneitled "Making Manuscripts."  There are several more in the series, which can be accessed at the British Library YouTube channel.

Making oak gall ink

YouTube link.

This is one of three videos I'm posting today from a British Library series entitled "Making Manuscripts."  There are several more in the series, which can be accessed at the British Library YouTube channel.

Our dystopic world

Found at The New Yorker.

Six more Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries

This is the ninth in an ongoing series of posts about the mystery novels of John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson).  Last July I covered the first four Henry Merrivale novels.  In November I tackled the next five.  Six more today, discussing the language only, with no plot-spoiling comments.

And So To Murder (1940)
Not a locked-room mystery.  Plot rather weak.

"In Mr. Hackett's experience, the ladies who wrote passionate love-stories were usually either tense business women or acidulated spinsters..."  What Mark Twain would have called a "two-dollar word" that simply means "sour" (made more acid).

"She was very casual, but she swanked like billy-o."  To swagger, show off.  Billy-o is a slang term for "the greatest extent or degree of something."

"The speaking-tube whistled again."

"The speaking tube supplemented the array of remotely controlled hand bells that were operated in the upstairs rooms and rang in the servant's quarters in even modest houses in the 19th century. The phrase "get on the horn" and "give him a blow" as well as the use of "blower" as a synonym for "telephone" are generally accepted as having their origin in this feature of speaking tubes."

"The dozenth pledge was broken."  We've seen JDC use this odd word before, but I note while looking it up again that it may be preferable to twelfth when referring to the final entity in a set of twelve, because "twelfth" might imply the existence of a thirteenth. 

"... fell overboard and was confined to bed with 'flu."  Yet another example of proper indication of a shortened word [but then maybe it should be 'flu' ?]

"What's the matter, honey?" she asked, in a different voice.  "Got the whips and jingles?"  In context the implication was "are you in love?" but online dictionaries list it as an idiom for delirium, especially DTs.

"Monica's a nice kid.  She's what I'd call a ginch; sweet voice, and big eyes...:  Oxford dictionaries suggest "An attractive woman, especially (frequently depreciative) one regarded as an object of sexual gratification," with "earliest use found in John Dickson Carr." (!)  Other online dictionaries offer only demeaning definitions and usages.

"So he was a cashiered prophet, was he?"  Dismissed, discarded.

"... I'd rather take a chance and trust you than have you chivvyin' Joe all over the landscape..."  To pursue, chase, hurry along, sneak up on, or verbally abuse.   Probably from the title of the 15th century Ballad of Chevy Chase, about a hunt at a chase [estate where game may be hunted].

"He would be sitting in a spacious office, all mahogany and deep carpets, with bronze busts on bookcases, and an Adam fireplace."  Eighteenth century neoclassical, named after three Scottish brothers.

"She [actress] incited what young ladies in the ninepennies had been overheard to describe as a "goosey feeling."  Cheap seats in the theater.

"It was a conference to which Monica and Bill were not admitted; they were compelled to kick their heels and fume in an outer room."  To wait impatiently or restlessly.

Nine - and Death Makes Ten (1940)
Not a locked-room mystery, but has a fiendishly clever plot with a "last person you'd suspect" outcome.

"His trunk stood beside one of the white-counterpaned berths."  Quilt or blanket.  Etymology ultimately from Latin pannus = cloth.

"But needs must when the devil drives."

""Crab cocktail," said the doughty Lathrop, consulting his menu."  Brave bold, from Middle English.

"Beside the grand piano there was a full trap-drummer's outfit for dancing."  The outfit here is apparently not clothing but a "drum kit" [set of drums].  Re the "trap" I found "drums, cymbals, bells, etc.," 1925, from earlier trap drummer (1903) "street musician who plays a drum and several other instruments at once," perhaps from traps "belongings" (1813), shortened form of trappings.

"But, you're tight as an owl already.  Can you hold any more?"   Intoxicated, in context.  But an odd idiom; I haven't found any logic behind it.

"It sounded blattering and almost obscene."  Blather, foolish talk.  "1520s, blether, Scottish, probably from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse blaðra "mutter, wag the tongue," perhaps of imitative origin, or from Proto-Germanic *blodram "something inflated" (the source of bladder)."

"... and then look like a martyr and say you're sure some poor goop will trust you?"  Silly, stupid person. 

"... like one of those nature-study motion pictures where they show a flower coming up whingo overnight."  I found nothing on this.

"She had him on the hip now.  She was winning this exchange..."  Borrowed from horse-racing I think, presumably the opponent's nose it at your horse's hip.

"The doctor laughed.  Max thought that his constant twingling, or laughing, or pointed innuendo, might have got on their nerves..."  I found nothing on this.

"... I could kick myself from here to the forepeak."  The part of the hold of a ship that is within the angle of the bow.

"Give me that torch," he said.  "If you try to press the button I'll have to slosh you."  British colloquial for "punch" (used here during a war blackout on a ship under submarine threat.)

"When I heard that [torpedo] alarm-signal go, I thought it might be a have."  In Australia/NZ it refers to a fraud or deception - would be correct in context here.

Seeing is Believing (1941)
Clever plot twist, but the reader is required to believe in the efficacy of hypnotism (a modern reader would be skeptical of this as a plot element, but 1930s readers were more accepting in that regard).  The book does make note of Henry Merrivale's birthday (Feb 6, 1871) and offers this concise precis by Chief Inspector Masters of Henry Merrivale's typical cases: "Whoever you think it can't be, that's always the person it is."

"... the polished hardwood floor, with rugs scattered on it, which was badly sprung in places and had a tendency to creak near the windows..."  In modern usage a sprung floor is a flexible one designed for dancing.  In context here it appears to refer to misaligned boards.

"... who now run a bucket-shop in the City and are almost as crooked as he was."  "An office with facilities for making bets in the form of orders or options based on current exchange prices of securities or commodities, but without any actual buying or selling of the property".  "The origin of the term bucket shop has nothing to do with financial markets, as the term originated from England in the 1820s. During the 1820s, street urchins drained beer kegs which were discarded from public houses. The street urchins would take the dregs to an abandoned shop and drink them. This practice became known as bucketing, and the location at which they drained the kegs became known as a bucket shop. The idea was transferred to illegal brokers because they too sought to profit from sources too small or too unreliable for legitimate brokers to handle."

"... life for George Byron Merrivale was not all ginger-pop either."  I found one other usage from 1925 referring to life not being all "ginger pop and chocolate cake."  Presumably viewed as a luxury.

"'Oh, I was no mollycoddle,' said H.M.... "  Pampered, overprotected person. "one who coddles himself," from Molly (pet name formation from Mary), which had been used contemptuously since 1754 for "a milksop, an effeminate man," + coddle (q.v.).

"Sir Henry Merrivale, in a white short-sleeved shirt and white flannels, was engaged in playing clock-golf."  "Clock golf is a game based on golf, originating in the mid 19th century. Players putt a golf ball from each in turn of 12 numbered points arranged in a circle as in a clock face, to a single hole placed within the circle."

"It would be rather awful, wouldn't it, if somebody we thought figured in one rôle really figured in exactly the opposite rôle?"  Discussion thread about the use/nonuse of the circumflex.

"... immersed in a curious anecdote about the Devenport brothers and their use of a lazy-tongs in the middle-'eighties."   A pantograph (item that extends or contracts like an accordion) (see the example of the mirror at the link).  Also the use of an apostrophe on "eighties" to make note of an elision.

"Would you like me to rub some embrocation on [a sore spot]?" Moistening or rubbing with spirit or oil.  From Latin and Greek for "lotion."

"Played the rip..."  In context, unfaithful to a spouse.

"But that very evening the case had the tin hat put on it when Agnew reported..."  "To put the tin hat on something is to finish it off or bring it to an end."  Thought to be an expression from the First World War.

The Gilded Man (1942)
Very gratifying to finally solve one (murderer, method, and motive) before the reveal at the end - but it required stopping near the end and spending an evening rereading from page one onward again.  Also notable for JDC's incorporation of humor unrelated to the plot, as for example after Sir Henry Merrivale finished his performance in the persona of "The Great Kafoozalum" for a magic show at the country estate, attended by a particularly annoying schoolmarm:

... H.M. himself [was] still in costume of the Great Kafoozalum, with a small girl clinging tightly to either hand.  The boys, though sneeringly disdaining such effete signs of friendship, nevertheless circled round and round him like Red Indians at a campfire, firing questions faster than newspaper reporters.
"Was it a trick when you dropped Miss Clutterbuk down the trap-door?"
"Why did you tie her up like that?  Was it the Indian rope-trick?"
"And gag her?"
"Did she really have that bottle of gin in her handbag?"
"Why didn't she reappear again on top of the bar counter, like you said she was going to?"
"Well, now, son, I expect something went wrong with the spell.  These tough old hyenas are pretty hard to put the hoodoo eye on..." 

But on to the language...

"... she was pretty, in the conventional sense of good features and rather wax-bloom complexion."  Not quite sure about this.  I found the word used to refer to the migration of salt to the surface ("efflorescence") of a artwork (especially colored pencils), and the coating of wax on the outer surface of a plant cuticle.  Also happens to lipstick. Can't quite see the application to complexion.

"Do you know what a beignoir is?"..."They have them in French theaters... a private box, a sort of cell with a hole cut in the wall, where people in mourning can go to the performance without being observed."

"El Greco, who saved his fingers from the Inquisition, had called that picture The Pool."  Presumably there's an interesting story behind this, but I couldn't find it.

"You come charging in here and look jail at everybody instead."  Another idiom I couldn't find.

"It's an old trick... Like the anonymous-letter ramp, you see."  Still another I couldn't find.  Not having a good day.

"Don't be surprised if you find my dabs on that knife." In context: fingerprints - presumably with reference to the method they are obtained.

"H.M. picked it up, while Nick retailed the evidence of the fingerprints."  To repeat or circulate.

"The flicker of firelight, from under a carved overmantel as big as an arch..."  Decorative panel over a fireplace (pix).

"... she was half-whistled herself." I finally found whistle-drunk meaning "too drunk to whistle."

"He says you hit him in the mush, whatever that is, with a snowball."  Mouth or face [Brit. informal]

"Commander Dawson, sitting in one of the embryo boxes with his feet irreverently on the rail..." ????

"... anybody but a Child Psychologist would have seen that this bottling-up presaged signs of explosion in a first-class beano."  Noisy celebration or party, also called beanfeast.

"On his head the Great Kafoozalum wore a huge bulging turban, fastened in front with a single paste ruby, from which a tall white aigrette rose up like the radio antennae of a police car."  Feather or plume (etymology from egret).

 "But it bled like billy-o."  (see above)

She Died a Lady (1943)
A mystery that relies a lot on the science of footprints, and a novel that has a bit too much forced humor, but one that reveals the murderer as absolutely the very last person you would expect.  I'll say no more.

"... a little causerie with her father--"  Informal conversation (from the French).

"I saw the quick, glutinous interest of the eye, and I didn't like it."  Glue-like.  Not sure how this applies to a gaze, except perhaps as a fixed stare.

"He'll go before the beak in the morning, and get fined ten shillings."  Court/judge in context.  Also used to refer to a schoolmaster.  Derivation not found - perhaps relates to an article of clothing or headwear?

"... Tom large and breckled and hollow-eyed..."  Couldn't find anything - not even in my OED.  Perhaps it's a printing error?

"It was while I was bucketing around a curve past Shire Oak..." Driving, in context.  Found definition "to travel quickly," "to move jerkily", and "to ride a horse hard," but not sure why.

He Wouldn't Kill Patience (1944)
Classic locked-room murder.  A herpetologist (and his favorite Bornese tree-snake named Patience) are found dead in his office at the Royal Albert Zoological Gardens.  Gas from a fireplace has asphyxiated them both.  The office is hermetically sealed, with locked door and windows, and with paper glued over the keyhole and other spaces ("Every microscopic opening in that room - the tiny little crack under the door, the keyhole, the joins of the two windows where the sashes meet - every place is sealed up as tight as a drumhead by glued paper fastened on the inside.")  So it appears to be suicide, but... "he wouldn't kill Patience."

"Aloof, disdainful of the canaille, he moved majestically down between the rows of specimens."  The lowest class of people; the rabble; the vulgar (from the French).

"The young man waved a brief-case."  Interesting to see the word hyphenated.  A reminder that originally it was a carrying case for legal briefs.

"In the middle of the front lawn, clearly seen by westering sunlight, stood a thickset man..."  Moving toward the west, obviously.  Apparently there is also an eastering.  And northering.

"Up to this time [the theater's] windows had been blind-eyed, its little foyer closed..."  not blitz-blackout-related since the time period is since 1928.  A search yielded many descriptions of blind-eyed buildings, but no definition.  Not apparently curtained, because often refers to abandoned buildings.  Maybe it's empty windows like blind eyes in a face.

"In that event, it wouldn't be worth while opening the new show."  Interesting to see it written as two words.

"It was very warm and stuffy in the sitting-room.  Its blackout, thick rep material, showed unevenly..."  A cloth woven with ribs.

"... Carey chose a B-middle-size and probed for the wards of the lock." (while trying to pick it).  Presumably the "protected part" inside the outer covering.

"Even Sir Henry Merrivale... fussed over her like a boiled owl."  Odd.  The Oxford Reference defines as "very drunk": "also drunk as a biled owl, …an owl, …two hoot owls, full as a boiled owl, lushy as…, tight as…, stewed as an owl, tight as…)"

"Far below, through the ropes and cords and raised drop-scenes of the flies, he could see a dim stage... His eyes moved over the cluttered stage, the battens with their pouring rays, the big dim theatre."  Flies in a theater refers to the "rigging system of rope lines, blocks (pulleys), counterweights and related device."  In a theater, battens are lengths of timber used to stiffen a surface of canvas.

Enough.  There's a limit on how much time I'm willing to spend searching arcane words and outdated dialect.

Four of the above are now listed on eBay.

A "crèche" of Penguins

A portion of the 2000-volume personal library of Karyn Reeves, who writes "A Penguin a Week."  She has an excellent blog; if you share her enthusiasm, there is a Penguin Collectors Society.

And I can't resist contrasting her bookshelves with this stack on a wall (original credit unknown) posted at Book Porn:

These two remarkable walls of books ended my original series of posts about readers' bookshelves. Karyn was not a reader of TYWKIWDBI, but I wanted to pay tribute to her collection [sadly, her blog seems not to be accruing any new posts, though the old ones remain up].

Next I'll post a few new additions to the bookcase series, then move back to the usual non-holiday formatting of the blog.

John Paul Sartre and his crabs

Jean Paul Sartre’s fame was still several years ahead of him; he was then in his late twenties and employed as an unpublished and unknown philosophy teacher. At the time Sartre was writing a book on the imagination and he hoped that [mescaline] would induce hallucinations that would give him a new insight into his research. However, his lifelong companion and fellow philosopher Simone de Beauvoir reported later that the plan may have succeeded all too well…
 
During the midst of his trip Sartre had received a phone call from de Beauvoir; a phone call that had apparently rescued him from a desperate battle with scrambled lobsters, octopuses and other grimacing sea-life. To Sartre ordinary objects had begun to change their shape grotesquely: umbrellas were deforming into vultures, shoes were turning into skeletons, and faces looked absolutely ‘monstrous’. All the while, behind him, just past the corner of his eye was the constant threat of the terrifying deep water dwellers. Yet, despite these horrible hallucinations (that seem rather uncharacteristic of the mescaline experience), by the following day Sartre had apparently recovered completely, referring to the experience with ‘cheerful detachment.’

However, in a later interview with John Gerassi, Sartre noted that in the days following his Mescaline trip he ended up having a nervous breakdown:

after I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time. I would say, “O.K., guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and quiet,” and they would be there, around my desk, absolutely still, until the bell rang. 

The funny thing about Sartre’s crabs and lobsters was that there were generally only 3 or 4 of them, and he was always totally aware that they were merely figments of his imagination.

The rest of the story is at Blue Labyrinths.  With a tip of the hat to Anna and the other QI elves at No Such Thing As A Fish.

Image credit.

Five more Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries

This is the eighth in a very long and just-begun series of posts about the mystery novels of John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson).  In July I covered the first four Henry Merrivale novels; continuing in chronological order, today I tackle the next five (focusing as always on the language, not the plot):

The Punch and Judy Murders (1935)
Although the two deaths occur in locked rooms, the method of death is not complicated (both victims have taken poison and locked themselves in the rooms).  The fiendish part is trying to figure out the perpetrator before the last chapter.  There are only about a dozen characters in the story, and if I had listed them in order of my suspicions, the true killer would have been very near the bottom.

"Now of course, H.M.'s conduct at its mildest can seldom be described as homely or commonplace..."  Interesting use of homely in its strictest sense of being ordinary.  Carr uses the word elsewhere to describe a person's visage as being unremarkable.  Modern usage of course implies that a "homely" person is unattractive or ugly.

"Outside [Torquay railway station] I was looking for a station-wagon for the Imperial Hotel..."  This term originated as a designation for vehicles used to transport people and supplies from a train station, long before it was applied to extended-length automobiles.

"This is a telescopic jemmy; finest thing made; a yard long extended, and its got a powerful leverage."  An alternative spelling of "jimmy" (crowbar).  Not sure how the word came to be used for that tool. 

"From the outer room I could hear the sergeant still droning on the telephone; and through the open window to the rear yard, somebody was commenting on the lascivious habits of carburetors."  

Clever and humorous bowdlerization.  And again later:

"Why don't you look where you're going," I snarled.  "Laundry!" I added, and thrust the bundle at him.  This was too much.  "I don't want the sanguinary copulating laundry," howled Dennis, who had been under a great strain that night."  

We know those are not the words Dennis used...

"I glanced down, and found myself looking into the frosty gaze of a genuine Anglican clergyman.  He did not seem to be the dominie for your money."  Alternate spelling of domine (clergyman or schoolmaster).

"And apparently it's a big ugly turnip-ghost; nothin' else."  Halloween jack-o-lanterns were once crafted out of turnips.  I presume this usage is related.

"Now that the little digression's over," he pursued almost cheerfully, "we can go back to horses and beans again."  Idiom, presumably.  Anyone ever heard it before?

"He got a whole coruscating whirl of nasty shocks."  Sparkling, from the Latin for "flash."

"Yet the car sped us out again, and down into an effulgent Whitehall."  Shining, radiant (from the Latin).

The Peacock Feather Murders (1936)
A concise summary (without spoilers) is at the Wikipedia  page.   Also of interest is a brief explanation by the author (via Henry Merrivale) of the reasons why a murderer would create a locked-room scenario.  In addition to the expected ones (to fake a suicide, because of a series of accidents), he adds here "a fourth motive, the neatest and most intelligent of all... if he can really create an impossible situation, he can never be convicted for murder no matter if all the other evidence is strong enough to hang a bench of bishops.  He is not tryin' to evade the detecting power of the law so much as to evade the punishing power."

"Why in the afternoon, anyway?  There's somethin' fishy about the sound of it.  I don't mean it's a hoax or a have; only that there's a queer and fishy element about it."  I don't know this phrase, and don't know how to look it up.  Is it familiar to any reader?

"He had been in such a fettle of triumph after winning this argument..."  Condition; unusual to see it used without "fine."

"She had, like that which has been vulgarly attributed to a certain danseuse, a glance that could open an oyster at sixty paces."   Not sure what female dancer he's referencing, but the phrase is directly borrowed from P. G. Wodehouse's description of Roderick Spode.

"Gor," he said.  "Burn me, son, I always regarded you as rather a tough walnut to crack."  An oath, more often seen as "gor blimey or cor blimey" (corruption of God blind me!)

"She is the last woman in the world who would throw her bonnet over the windmill; of that I can assure you."  To act in a deranged, reckless, or unconventional manner (refers to Don Quixote, who tossed his hat over a windmill as a challenge).  In context here, noting that the woman is virtuous.

"You will have observed," said Derwent, smiling gravely, "that no moths have settled on me.  Good night, gentlemen."  (there were some moths at the scene, but I don't know the implication of the phrase - maybe it means "I've been active and moving.")

"He strode out after her.  This passage-at-arms had been so brief and unexpected that nobody knew what to say..."  In this context a brief conversation involving an exchange of terse comments.  Classically apparently refers to a chivalric battle.

"But how are we to explain the fact that, whoever took [the teacups] there, we find no mark on them at all?  Somebody must have touched them, if only to range them on the table."  For "arrange".  Also used to mean to place in a row, rank, or classify.

"My father - made mistakes.  That I admit.  There were times when we were in very low water." Financial insecurity implied; interesting that both being in deep water and in very low water are bad situations (the low water probably implies the person is in a boat).

"That was also why he scattered so many clews - scattered 'em lavishly - scattered 'em like a paperchase."  A cross-country race ("Hare and Hounds") in which a trail of torn-up paper marks the trail.

"I had reason to think that somebody was deliberately maneuvering me into a snare which should end with a well-soaped rope and a ten-foot drop."  I used to lecture about death by asphyxiation, including the physiology of hanging, but don't recall any mention of the nooses being lubricated.  I'm guessing that doing so would facilitate the noose tightening on the neck rather than getting stuck on its own internal friction.  Interesting.

"Which is just as good as an alibi.  But on one point their apparent good sense seemed to go skew-wiff."  Out of alignment - obviously related to "askew."   I finally found skew-whiff: "The expression 'skew weft' dates at least from the 18th century as a term used by handloom weavers, typically in northern England. It was used originally to describe fabric which was out of alignment... The modern spelling comes from a corruption of 'skew-wift' whose sound developed colloquially in spoken English from the original. Bow weft also exists."

[why didn't they coordinate their alibis]... It would have been aes triplex, which no amount of batterin' would be able to break in court."  Literally "triple brass" = indestructible.

The Judas Window (1938)
The deceased is found in a study that has bolted steel shutters on the windows and a heavy door locked from the inside with a large sliding bolt.  In the same room a man lies unconscious; his fingerprints are on the murder weapon.  The best locked-room mystery so far.  Interestingly the action takes place in a courtroom only, with H.M. as the attorney for the defense of the man falsely accused.  Three parts to the book: "What Might Have Happened (first chapter)," "What Seemed to Happen (18 chapters)," and "What Really Happened (last chapter)."  Totally the last person I would have suspected as the murderer; I defy anyone to solve it before the name is revealed in the last two words of the penultimate chapter.  This PocketBook edition offers a schematic floorplan at the beginning.

In a poll of 17 mystery writers and reviewers, this novel was voted as the fifth best locked room mystery of all time. The Hollow Man, also by John Dickson Carr, was voted the best.

"Those arrows are trophies of the grand target, or annual wardmote, of the Woodmen of Kent."  A meeting of the inhabitants of a ward.

"He took silk before the war, but Lollypop told me herself he hasn't accepted a brief in fifteen years."  The award of Queen's Counsel is known informally as "taking silk."

"He was a member of the Royal Toxophilite Society and of the Woodmen of Kent."  From Toxophilus, the title of a 1545 book by Roger Ascham intended to mean ‘lover of the [archery] bow’, from Ancient Greek.

"With an effect like a Maskylene illusion, a little man thrust himself out of the crowd..."  John Nevil Maskelyne was an English stage magician (and the inventor of the pay toilet)

"There is insanity in the family, you know... Nothing much, of course.  Only like a touch of the tarbrush a few generations back."  A derogatory term implying real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry.

"Y'see, I'm the only feller who'd believe him.  I got a fancy for lame dogs," he added apologetically."  Helping a lame dog over a stile is an idiom for assisting a helpless or needy person.

"You remember the way the lines swing in John Peel?  'From a point to a check: from a check to a view: from a view to a kill in the morning.'"

The original title "From A View to a Kill" was taken from a version of the words to a traditional hunting song "D'ye ken John Peel?": "From a find to a check, from a check to a view,/From a view to a kill in the morning".
[Foxhunting glossary:
A Find: Discovering the fox's trail;
A Check: Losing the trail again (when the hounds lose the scent);
A View: Visually spotting the fox;
A Kill: Self-explanatory.]
So the truncated title basically means having the prey in your sights before killing it.

"... and then she mentioned that the one thing in prison Jim Answell hated most was the Judas window.  And that tore it, you see."  I think I'll not explain what a Judas window is, because it might give away an essential clue to solving the mystery.

"Her method of putting her hands on the edge of the box was to grasp it with both arms extended, as though she were on an aqua-plane."  Surfboard or bodyboard towed behind a motorboat.

"I thought you'd probably run straight to your friend Tregannon, and gone to earth among the bedclothes and the ice-caps in his nursin'-home."  An icepack worn on the head, according to Wiktionary.  Hypothermia cap used for chemo wouldn't have been relevant in the 1930s.

"He got out his watch, a large cheap one of the turnip variety, and put it on the table."  Slang for a timepiece that's big and awkward.  Apparently Winston Churchill's watch was referred to in these terms.

"I had to put that whole crowd under oath: I had to have a fair field and swords on the green: I had to have, in short, justice."  I'll need help with this idiom.

"So [redacted] was laid by the heels," I said, "all by perverting the pure rules of justice..."  Shackled or imprisoned.

Death in Five Boxes (1938)
Not really a locked-room mystery, but a clever murder mechanism perpetrated by the absolutely last name you would choose from a list of the principal characters.  I'll say no more.

"... and if the man who killed him isn't hanged higher than Haman, it won't be for lack of help I can give you."  From the book of Esther: "A gallows 50 feet high stands by Haman's house. He had it made for Mordecai, who spoke up to help the king."  The king said, "Hang him on it!"  So they hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.

"For pure perverted cleverness, their ways of wriggling out of things with explanations are as good as anything I ever heard.  Oh, they're mustard, all right!"  One British slang dictionary says the word can be used to mean "excellent."  Also carries the connotation of "hot stuff." "People and things weren't just like mustard, they were mustard."

... and just how in lum's name he figures in this case anyway..."  I couldn't find this one.

"I'm afraid you'll have to give me a lift home in your Black Maria or police car or whatever you call it."  Slang for a police wagon, but the origin of the phrase is uncertain.

"... oranges, apples, lemons, Brazil nuts, greengages, and bananas."  A type of plum.  However, not all gages are green, and some horticulturists make a distinction between the two words, with greengages as a variety of the gages...  Apparently Gage was the name of an English botanist.

"As soon as we get to the nearest A. A. box, I'll see that the damage is attended to."  Automobile Association boxes.

"Especially a re-fained long-legged prude like Bonita Sinclair?"  I have no idea, unless a mocking term for "refined."

"He could not in honesty deny that Marcia was very good-looking, but he suspected her of certain pawky humors, moods, and artistic tempers."  Shrewd, sly (Scottish).

"... he produced a half-flagon bottle of Ewkeshaw's Pale Ale."  A flagon is about a liter.  Etymology related to "flask" and to the practice of wrapping bottles in a straw casing.

"Hand the lady a cokernut," said H.M.  "That's idyllic, that is.  Do you honestly believe all that?"  Archaic form of coconut.

"What in the flamin' acres of Tophet do you expect to prove by it?"  Tophet was a location in Jerusalem in the Gehinnom where worshipers influenced by the ancient Canaanite religion engaged in the human sacrifice of children to the gods Moloch and Baal by burning them alive. Tophet became a theological or poetic synonym for Hell within Christendom.  So H.M. is asking "what in hell do you mean?"

"I can't be mixed up in any cloth-headed monkey-business like that."  Stupid (?), like soft-headed?

"He had devoted himself to his studies with the earnestness of one swotting for an examination..."  To study, from the Old English word for sweat.

"Heavy shutters were on the windows, backed with thick rep curtains to exclude every chink of light."  A silk, wool, rayon, or cotton fabric with a transversely corded surface.  Couldn't find the etymology.

"It's the draw of the town, like the Blackpool illuminations."  An annual lights festival.

"Mrs. Bartlemy, Sanders's landlady, was in the offing.  They heard her puff along the passage outside, and knock at the door like a steam hammer."  Foreseeable future, on the horizon.  A nautical term referring to distant sea but visible from shore.

"All that's worrying you is a social convention. 'They eat and drink and scheme and plod, And go to church on Sunday.  And many are afraid of God, But more of Mrs Grundy.'"  The poem from which this is taken is here, and the interesting history behind it is at Word Histories.

"Mrs. [redacted] and Mr. [redacted] were pull-baker, pull-devil every second of the time."  Anyone know this idiom??

"If a solemn lie is used to cheat an honest man, or sell some useless claptrap... then, say I, blow it higher than Boney's kite."  I found an old print mocking Napoleon flying a kite.  There must be a story (or an allegory) behind it.  I leave that up to my curious readers.

"Most of us, a' course, grow out of that.  Things get adjusted, and we come to accept necessary humbug lento risu."  In a Google book on the odes of Horace, the phrase was translated to mean "with a quiet smile."

"His worst moment was when [redacted] suddenly appeared in the bedroom, and began takin' an energetic dekko through the door to the living-room."  A look or glance. From the Hindustani, dekho. [1890s].

The Reader is Warned (1939)
Apart from the detectives there are only six characters in the book, and two of those are killed, but it's still not clear who the murderer is until the denouement.  S.T. Joshi considers this to be the best of the Merrivale novels, not for plot, but for character delineation.

"Sanders judged her to be very fashionably dressed, though her hat was put on anyhow."  The meaning is obvious, but the usage is odd.

"Colonel Willow, I believe, kept a straight bat and a stiff upper lip..."  Obviously a cricket reference.  Apparently used to refer to honest, honorable behavior.  Not sure what it means on the pitch.

"What I mean is that he's maybe got a new, simon-pure, fool-proof way of polishing people off..."  Absolutely pure.  From the phrase "the real Simon Pure", from the character Simon Pure (who is impersonated by another, and obliged to prove his identity) in Susanna Centlivre's 1717 play A Bold Stroke for a Wife.

"... he began to lumber back and forth with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets and his corporation, ornamented with a large gold watch-chain, preceding him in splendor like the figure-head of a man-'o-war."  John Dickson Carr uses this term frequently to refer to a protuberant abdomen. 

"I was just thinkin' -- where do you get the material for all these reelin' mysterious deaths?"  Not sure - maybe in the sense of shocking (send someone reeling)?

"As for your challenges... make 'em or not, but it's waste effort."  Modern usage would be "wasted."

"They waited in the dining-room, under huge dropsical pictures..."  Dropsy, from Latin hydrops, is dependent edema or anasarca.  Odd to apply it to paintings hung on a wall.  In one of the mysteries I reviewed earlier, he referred to walls as being "dropsical."

"They saw him get out of his car and waddle in through the rain, in a large transparent oilskin with a hood..."  Oilskins were waterproof raincoats.  Didn't know they could be transparent (would look like a condom).

"But people are believing it!"  "Oh, yes.  Pennik's mustard." [later] "Sort of astral projection.  I told you he was mustard." (see one possible explanation in Death in Five Boxes above)

"... it was the dozenth time he had told it, but he omitted nothing."  Apparently a perfectly good word, but the first time I have ever seen it used.

"I hope you noticed that? But oh, no. Down went the gage of battle on the floor, and I hope you're feelin' proud of yourself."  The giving of gage, or pledge, for trying a cause by single combat, formerly allowed in military, criminal, and civil causes, and finally abolished in 1819. In writs of right, where the trial was by champions, the tenant produced his champion, who, by throwing down his glove as a gage, thus "waged", or stipulated, battle with the champion of the demandant, who, by taking up the glove, accepted the challenge.  (Gage is from Old French)

"Put it down on the table and let's have a dekko at it."  (see above)

"Steady on!" advised Dr Sanders, in genuine concern.  "You'll have him chewing the carpet in a minute."  "Chew, or chewing, the carpet is not in the OED but it is in Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Slang. Green describes it as being US slang from the 1950s and defines it as 'to lose emotional control, to have a temper tantrum'."  [obviously the usage dates back well before the 1950s since this book was written in 1939].

"Is there a kind of judge, or court of appeal, or something like that, that an take back our verdict and say it's n.b.g.?"  Maybe "no bloody good"?

"... helping tend the lares and penates of an admirable house."  Guardian deities of the home.

"Darling, what on earth is the matter?  I never saw such an absolute juggins!  Is anything wrong?"  Someone very credulous or easily fooled.

Whew.  Lots of colloquial terms.  I'm exhausted.  But before i go, here is a useful link for those interested in mysteries:  99 novels for a locked room library.

Today I listed all five of these books on eBay, as a single lot.

Today (10/6) is Mad Hatter Day

Explained here:

Mad Hatter Day is 10/6. The date was chosen from the illustrations by John Tenniel in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, wherein the Mad Hatter is always seen wearing a hat bearing a slip of paper with the notation "In this style 10/6". We take this as inspiration to behave in the style of the Mad Hatter on 10/6 (which is October 6 here, although in Britain MadHatterDay occurs on June 10...but I digress...)

Mad Hatter Day began in Boulder, CO, in 1986, among some computer folk who had nothing better to do. It was immediately recognized as valuable because they caused less damage than if they'd been doing their jobs.

As I searched this topic on the 'net today, it was interesting to see how many observers misinterpret the 10/6 on his hat as being either a style number ("The Mad Hatter’s top hat, according to Lewis Carroll, was of the 10/6 style") or worse ("my birthdate (10/6) is on his hat although I think that is his hat size!"). The correct interpretation, of course, is that "the paper in the Mad Hatter's Hat was really an order to make a hat in the style shown, to cost ten shillings sixpence."

(Reposted)

"Reading away" library fines

Some library systems are modifying their long-standing policies on fines for overdue materials.  I thought this innovation was particularly apt:

So on Thursday, Leilany went to the East Los Angeles Library, a county facility, to read off $4 in late fees. Students can eliminate debt at a rate of $5 an hour under a program that took effect in June...

In an era where screen time dominates the lives of children, librarians and others haven't given up on instilling a love of books and libraries. They also want to make sure there isn’t a “library gap” between the more prosperous and the poor. The program for “reading away” library debt is especially important because the cost of damaged or lost materials can be high.

A library debt of $10 results in suspended borrowing privileges. Since “Read Away” went into effect, the county library system has cleared 3,500 blocked accounts, said Darcy Hastings, the county’s assistant library administrator for youth services.

Even fines of 15 cents a day per book can push children away.

“When charges accrue on a young person’s account, generally, they don’t pay the charges and they don’t use the card,” Hastings said. “A few dollars on their accounts means they stop using library services.”

Further details at the Los Angeles Times.

"Our boys need and deserve books"

Yesterday I was reading one of my John Dickson Carr mysteries, in this case a paperback edition published in 1943, and noticed the page above.  Apparently during wartime you could mail a used paperback book to the Army and Navy libraries for a 3c stamp.

Also of some interest was the following list on the next couple pages at the back of the book, listing best-sellers for 1943 (for this company, which obviously leaned toward mysteries).  But interesting anyway.

#232 reminded me how much I was enthralled by Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios when I read it decades ago - staying up most of a night to finish it, as I recall.  I think (hope) I have sufficiently forgotten the plot twist that I'll be able to read and enjoy it again.

The first four Sir Henry Merrivale novels

The first time I encountered John Dickson Carr's novels featuring Henry Merrivale, I read them in random order as I discovered them in used book stores.  For this final re-read, I'm going to progress through them in the order they were written.  The Merrivale novels were written under the pseudonym of "Carter Dickson," presumably because Carr was already writing several Gideon Fell mysteries each year under his own name. 

The Plague Court Murders (1934)
This is a classic "locked-room" mystery.  The victim is slain in a blood-spattered small outbuilding ("house") located in the center of an estate's courtyard.  Here's how the author describes the scene:

"First, the house.  The walls are solid stone; not a crack or rat-hole in 'em.  One of my men has been going over the ceiling inch by inch, and it's as solid and unbroken as the day it was put in... We've been over floor, ceiling, and walls.  Any idea of hinges or trap-doors or funny entrances you can get out of your mind... Next, the windows, and they're out.  Those gratings are solid in the stone; no question of that.  The gratings are so small that you can't even get the blade of that dagger through 'em, for instance; we tried it.  The chimney isn't big enough to admit anybody, even if you could drop down into a blazing fire; and finally, there's a heavy iron mesh across it only a little way up.  That's out... The door... bolted, and barred; and not one of those bolts you could do tricks with, either.  It's hard enough to pull back even when you're inside the place... Finally, here's the incredible thing... With the exception of the tracks you and I made... there isn't a footprint anywhere within twenty feet of that house.  And you and I know... that when we first walked out there we saw no footprints at all along the direction we went?"  That was unquestionably true...

In silence we walked all around the house, keeping to the margin of the yard.  The puzzle grew more monstrous and incredible as we stared at every blank side.  Yet I have not overlooked, omitted, or misstated anything, and all was exactly as it seemed to be: a stone box, with door and windows solidly inaccessible, no tricks of secret entrances, and no footprints near it anywhere before [Inspector] Masters and I had gone out.  That is literal truth."

For this book and the three below, I'll defer any discussion of the plot and focus instead on curiosities and uncommon language usage.

"The old man, Dean's father, had side-whiskers and a turkeycock nose."  A turkeycock is a male turkey; the term also refers to a pompous, conceited person.  Not sure if the usage here implies a shape to the nose, or a turned-up position (?).

"[They say] that this one mass of dead evil is always waiting for the opportunity to take possession of a living body... Do you think, then, that the clot could take possession...?"  ???

"... that's one of the oldest, stalest, childishest tricks in the whole bag.  Talk about whiskers... Lummy!"  I noted this in a review of an earlier book: "Madame doses herself with sleeping-tables on the same night that she burns with impatience to meet her lover?  Whiskers to you!  You make me laugh."  The sense is obvious, but it's a curious phrase.  Anyone seen it before? [answer in one of the Comments]

"The passage was narrow, but of great length, and reënforced by heavy beams..."  This placement of an (can we call it an umlaut?) over a doubled letter to guide the reader on the separation of syllables.  Less clumsy than "re-enforced" perhaps, but I think not standard modern usage.

"Staring at the dropsical walls, I wondered why they called it Plague Court."  Affected with dropsy (edematous).  ?? not sure of the applicability of the term to walls, unless in the sense of swollen if they are bowing outward.

"There were six of us present [including] a glucose old party named Lady Benning..."  In context she was definitely not a "sweet" lady.  I totally don't understand this usage.

"Inside were three things: a large folded sheet... a short newspaper-cutting... and a bundle of foolscap..."  A size of printing or drawing paper, 13.5x17".

"Beaton, waked and roused from the truckle-bed by a cry, found him clutching back the bed-curtains and grasping at his neck as though in dreadful pain..."  A low bed on casters, pushed under another bed when not in use.  Derived from ME trocle = roller, and thus related to trochlea (pulley/tendon).

"So none [of the plague victims] were suffered to go out into the air, save only within the enclosure of our wall; and these with myrrh and zedory in their mouths."  Also zedoary, an East Indian drug consisting of the rhizome of curcuma, whatever that is.

"... he grew to a thing shunned like the plague itself, nor would any tippling-house take him in."  Must refer to a tavern.

"... the noon editions broke their front pages open with a double column of leaded type." ?boldface

"... five minutes later we had swung left off the stolid, barrack-windowed dignity of the Be-British Street..."  Probably windows like an army barracks and therefore simple and repetitive?

"... if that girl hasn't tumbled off the apple-tree years before this, then somebody's been damned unenterprising."  In context clearly a reference to losing one's virginity, presumably an idiom of the era.

"How long has Joseph Dennis lived here?" "I believe it will be three years this quarter-day..."  In England, one of the four days marking the quarters of the year (Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas, Christmas) (in Scotland Candlemas, Whitsunday, Lammas, or Martinmas).

"She backed away and sat down in a horsehair chair behind the table."  I had assumed it referred to the stuffing in a comfy chair, but I found a reference from the 1760s comparing horsehair to a silk textile: "The chairs are plain horsehair and look as well as Paduasoy."  Next stop Wikipedia: "Horsehair fabrics are woven with wefts of tail hair from live horses and cotton or silk warps. Horsehair fabrics are sought for their lustre, durability and care properties and mainly used for upholstery and interiors."  So, perhaps a traditional way to "extend" a supply of silk, but maybe adds to the durability of a chair arm or bottom.  Probably worthy of a separate blog post.  You learn something every day.

"Well, I thought, they're pretty happy, those two.  They've been through hell and blight for some time..."  Blight - etymology Old Norse blikna (to become pale) - is a category of diseases familiar to gardeners.  Unusual usage here.

"... that she and Darworth should set up in this line of mulcting the gullible..."  To punish by fine or forfeiture, or by fraud/extortion.  From Latin mulct = a fine. 

The White Priory Murders (1934)
A variant of the "locked room."  The corpse (beaten to death) is found in a marble pavilion located on a small island in a lake on a historic estate.  It's winter - "A hundred straight feet of unmarked snow on every side of the 'ouse.  Not a tree, not a shrub.  And sixty feet of it thin ice on every side..."  The island is connected to the mainland by a causeway containing only one set of footprints in the newly-fallen snow, leading to the pavilion.  There is nobody hidden in the building, and no secret tunnels etc.

"Bennett remembered him craning and peering over the heads of smaller men: very lean, with one corded hand jabbing his umbrella at the concrete floor."  Stringy or ribbed, from the prominence of veins, muscles, etc.

"Bennett wondered whether he would see any of them again.  Ship's coteries break up immediately, and are forgotten."  A group of people who associate because of common social purposes, a clique.  From MF term for association of tenant-farmers.

"In the course of a starched evening, he had fallen in with a group of Young England who also felt restive."  Stiff, formal.

"In a square about it, extending out about sixty feet with the pavilion in the center, ran a low marble coping..."  A finishing course on an exterior masonry wall.  Related to cope as a long cloak or mantle of silk worn by ecclesiastics, and thus related to "cap" (and probably cape).

"I met your ostler or groom or somebody."  Hostler, one who takes care of horses at an inn.  Related to hosteler, hostel, and hospital.

"He lay back in an overstuffed chair and stared at the groined roof with the red firelight flickering on it."  In architecture, a groin is a curved line or edge where two vaults intersect.  From OE grynde = abyss.  Obvious relation to the human groin.

"... Masters' face had assumed a blank and tolerant sadness as of a teacher in an idiot-school, touched now by a satiric grimness."  Self-evident meaning for a word unlikely to resurface in public usage in modern society, except maybe by Donald Trump.

"There was an ancient topheavy geyser-bath in the dingy oilcloth [bath]room."  British instantaneous heated-water bath contraption.

"Maurice was in very high feather tonight; he had even issued orders that some special sherry was to be served, in place of cocktails..."  Idiom meaning to be in excellent form, health, or humor.  From a 15th-century referring to a healthy bird's plumage

"Well, we are to act our parts as of last night; we are to reënact the attempted murder of poor Marcia on the staircase in King Charles's Room."  See reënforced above.

The Red Widow Murders (1935)
"Red widow" in French history ("veuve rouge") was apparently a term applied to the guillotine, and this novel has an entire 20-page chapter devoted to a backstory involving the Terror, but the book has a contemporary setting in the 1930s, which involves the inevitable locked room:

The whole subject of this game to-night is a room in this house - a room at the end of a passage off the dining-room - a room whose door has been locked and sealed up with six-inch screws through the jamb since 1876, the year my grandfather died... The window is covered with locked steel shutters, and the door was watched by five people..."

And now on to the language:

"(the houses) were uniformly tall, with heavy bay-windows, areaways, and high steps."  Outdoor passage leading to a basement, typically under an arch (also archway).

"Tairlaine could see the link-brackets beside the door."  A link is a torch made of tar or pitch.  Ultimately derived from proto-Indo-European "leuk-" meaning light/brightness, whence also leukocyte for white blood cell.

"... I'm head of the house, and I'll open the ball." [in context: start the conversation, give the history].  I've not heard this phrase before.


"... coolest hand in an emergency, with or without express-rifle, I ever saw."  High-velocity rifle, especially used for big game hunts.

"All I've got to say is, it ought to have been scragged, anyhow.  I hate parrots."  To kill, especially by wringing the neck, strangling.  Danish skrog is a carcass.

(in the dining room) "Covers were set for nine on the long table..."  Here I beg ignorance of table settings for a formal dinner.  The Etiquette Scholar webpage on "table setting terms" says cover is "the space allotted the diner on which tableware is placed."  You learn something (useless) every day.

"He consciously interposed himself as a buckler."  A shield.  From Latin buccula = boss (of a shield).  Swashbuckler is related.

"Especially loony-doctors, as you put it.  I myself am on sufferance.  I am permitted to speak only of sport."  "a person who was not a member or official of the House of Commons was officially a stranger, who was allowed to be present at debates on sufferance. "

"By the light of the lamp on the desk, Ravelle and Carstairs were bending over a bagatelle board."  A table game of bar-billiards, played with cues and balls and obstacles.

"She sat propped up under the bed-canopy, the rush-light beside her shining greenish on a face without paint..."  A rushlight is a type of candle or miniature torch formed by soaking the dried pith of the rush plant in fat or grease. For several centuries rushlights were a common source of artificial light for poor people throughout the British Isles. They were extremely inexpensive to make. English essayist William Cobbett wrote, "This rushlight cost almost nothing to produce and was believed to give a better light than some poorly dipped candles.

"She sat in a big fat chair with cretonne on it..."  A fabric noted for its strength, made with hemp warf and linen weft.  The word derived either from a French village or a Frenchman in the textile business.

"And also he probably had a very long steel bodkin almost as thin as a needle..."  A dagger or a sewing needle with a large eyehole.  So I had to look up odds bodkins, and found the best answer at The Phrase Finder: This term borrows the early bodikin version of that word, not for its meaning but just because of the alliteration with body, to make a euphemistic version of the oath God's body. This would otherwise have been unacceptable to a pious audience. That is, odds bodkins is a minced oath.

"Then I'd see how Mr. Brave Hero felt when he wasn't swanking it, and thought he'd really been poisoned!"  Fashionably elegant, not rare as the swank adjective, but a bit odd as a verb "to swagger/ show off."

"... he found H.M. blinking at the menu and Masters warming his hands before the fire in a private room with a sanded floor."  When I lived in Dallas, some local (cheap) bars had floors sprinkled with sawdust, probably to sop up spilled beer or vomit, but I doubt sand would serve the same purpose.  And not likely for traction in a dining room.  I guess this refers to the boards being sanded smooth rather than left rough.  Apparently a chic feature of the 1930s.

"I'll give you five to one he's out of quod by tomorrow at the latest..."  British slang for prison - not sure why.

"Guy had threatened to split, and was in gay feather."  Maybe similar to high feather  above.

The Unicorn Murders (1935)
A variant of the locked room concept.  The victim dies on a stairway; neither the people on the floor at the base of the stairs, or the people on the floor at the head of the stairs, are able to see an attacker or the weapon (which makes a unicorn-horn-shaped hole in the front of the victim's skull).  The plot was too complicated for my simple mind (the penultimate chapter is entitled "The Triple Impersonation.")

"This girl - who has always struck you as rather a starched proposition, by the way..."  Like "starched evening" above.

"... and slid like a man on skiis." The OED gives the plural as skis (or ski), but not with a doubled i.  Probably a simple missppellinng by the printers.

"... there really had been two policemen waiting at that red car, and now they were on the view-halloo bellow after me."  Google search yields three usages - all by John Dickson Carr.  I'm guessing it refers to police instructions if you see the malefactor, yell out for others to join you in the chase. [Answered in the Comments, with a Mary Poppins video]

"We saw a lean man of probably sixty-odd, whose walk was saved from a dodder only by the humor in his eyes..."  The verb means to shake/tremble/totter while walking as in old age or infancy.  Straight from the Middle English.

"Ramsden, whose boiled eye had been wandering about the hall gave an almost guilty jump."  I have no clue.  Maybe a shortening of "hard-boiled" (callous, unsentimental).

"Without pity or bowels I described Harvey Drummond..."  Compassion, sympathy.  Apparently, just as the interior of a ship is its bowels, the innermost feelings are the "bowels" - the source of the gentlest emotions.  Bowelless means "without pity."  In The Devil in Velvet, Carr describes a character as "loud-mouthed, without pity or bowels, the dread of all sober men."  And again in Most Secret: "Towering, formidable, his every movement betraying the expert swordsman without pity or bowels, he circled catlike..."

"Would he, for instance, growl and retire beaten when Gasquet [cop] snaffled off Flamande [criminal] first?" A snaffle is a "broad-mouthed, loose-ringed bit (metal in a horse's mouth). It brings pressure to bear on the tongue and bars and corners of the mouth. Often used as a training bit."  From Dutch (snavel), German, and OE words referring to the nose.

"Ken, I don't like all this.  It's creepy, and it's muggy, and there's something wrong with it."  The humidity-related meaning doesn't fit.  Probably old English slang.

"Then all of a sudden she let out a skelloch that scared me half to death."  Scream (Scottish).

"H.M. seemed distrait."  (French) Absent-minded, distracted, troubled.  The third meaning might connect to distraught. 

"You agreed to coöperate." Third time on this post - see reënact and reënforced above. Somebody must know what the two dots are called (umlaut for German, what for English?).  [A tip of the blogging cap top reader Kniffler, who provided a link to the relevant info in Wikipedia]:

The diaeresis mark is sometimes used in English personal first and last names to indicate that two adjacent vowels should be pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. Examples include the given names Chloë and Zoë, which otherwise might be pronounced with a silent e. To discourage a similar mispronunciation, the mark is also used in the surname Brontë. It may be used optionally for words that do not have a morphological break at the diaeresis point, such as naïve, Boötes, and Noël. However, it is far less commonly used in words such as coöperate and reënter except in a very few publications—notably The New Yorker

"As for me, to say that I was getting the breeze up is to put it mildly."  I found a minor definition: "An excited or ruffled state of feeling; a flurry of excitement."  Maybe related to "getting the wind up" but I don't have time to look all this stuff up.

"Listen, Gasquet: this fellow's either innocent or bughouse..."  Crazy, insane from the use of the term for an asylum.

"Auguste whoomed, getting up out of his chair with indignant snortings and shakings of his head."  I couldn't find this.

Today I listed all four of these books on eBay, as a single lot.