Death of a Frightened Editor Read online

  E. & M.A. Radford

  Death of a Frightened Editor

  Alexis Mortensen rose from his chair in the first-class Pullman and walked into the corridor.

  None of the remaining occupants noticed that he had left them until after Death, travelling at 60 miles an hour, had reached out for him . . .

  Seven men and a woman were in the first-class coach of a train from London to Brighton. They had travelled together each evening for months. That night one of them, Alexis Mortensen, editor of a scurrilous newspaper, died from strychnine poisoning. Strychnine acts inside fifteen minutes, but Mortensen had had nothing which could have contained the poison for an hour before his death. An unbelievably grotesque story from the past was to be uncovered before the case was solved.

  “Tip-top form” Coventry Evening Telegraph

  “One of their best books” Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Nigel Moss

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  About the Author

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  Doctor Harry Manson is a neglected figure, unjustly so, amongst Golden Age crime fiction detectives. The creation of husband and wife authors Edwin and Mona Radford, who wrote as E. & M.A. Radford, Manson was their leading series detective featuring in 35 of 38 mystery novels published between 1944 and 1972. He held dual roles as a senior police detective at Scotland Yard and Head of its Crime Forensics Research Laboratory. In 2019 Dean Street Press republished three early novels from the Doctor Manson series—Murder Jigsaw (1944), Murder Isn’t Cricket (1946), and Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947)—titles selected for their strong plots, clever detection and evocative settings. They are examples of Manson at his best, portraying the appealing combination of powerful intellect and reasoning with creative scientific methods of investigation, while never losing awareness and sensitivity concerning the human predicaments encountered.

  Having introduced the Radfords to a new readership, Dean Street Press have now released a further three titles, each quite different in approach and style, written during the authors’ middle period but retaining the traditions of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. They include two Manson novels: The Heel of Achilles (1950), an inverted murder mystery; and Death of a Frightened Editor (1959), a baffling murder by poisoning on a London-to-Brighton train. The third, Death and the Professor (1961), is a non-series title featuring an array of impossible crime puzzles and locked room murders solved by the formidable mind of logician Professor Marcus Stubbs.

  The Radfords sought to combine in Doctor Manson a leading police detective and scientific investigator in the same mould as R. Austin Freeman’s Dr John Thorndyke, whom Edwin Radford keenly admired. T.J. Binyon, in his study of fictional detectives Murder Will Out (1989), maintains that the Radfords were protesting against the idea that in Golden Age crime fiction science is always the preserve of the amateur detective, and were seeking to be different. In the preface to the first Manson novel Inspector Manson’s Success (1944), they announced: “We have had the audacity to present here the Almost Incredible: a detective story in which the scientific deduction by a police officer uncovers the crime and the criminal entirely without the aid of any outside assistance!”

  The first two Manson novels, Inspector Manson’s Success and Murder Jigsaw (both 1944), contain introductory prefaces which acquaint the reader with Doctor Manson in some detail. He is a man of many talents and qualifications: aged in his early 50s and a Cambridge MA (both attributes shared by Edwin Radford at the time), Manson is a Doctor of Science, Doctor of Laws, non-practising barrister and author of several standard works on medical jurisprudence (of which he is a Professor) and criminal pathology. Slightly over 6 feet in height, although he does not look it owing to the stoop of his shoulders, habitual in a scholar and scientist. He has interesting features and characteristics: a long face, with a broad and abnormally high forehead; grey eyes wide set, though lying deep in their sockets, which “have a habit of just passing over a person on introduction; but when that person chances to turn in the direction of the Inspector, he is disconcerted to find that the eyes have returned to his face and are seemingly engaged on long and careful scrutiny. There is left the impression that one’s face is being photographed on the Inspector’s mind.” Manson’s hands are often the first thing a stranger will notice. “The long delicate fingers are exceedingly restless—twisting and turning on anything which lies handy to them. While he stands, chatting, they are liable to stray to a waistcoat pocket and emerge with a tiny magnifying glass or a micrometer to occupy their energy.”

  During his long career at Scotland Yard, Manson rises from Chief Detective-Inspector to the rank of Commander. Reporting directly to Sir Edward Allen, the Assistant Commissioner, Manson is ably assisted by his Yard colleagues—Sergeant Merry, a science graduate and Deputy Lab Head, and Superintendent Jones and Detective-Inspector Kenway of the CID. Jones is weighty and ponderous, given to grunts and short staccato sentences, and with a habit of lapsing into American ’tec slang in moments of stress; but a stolid, determined detective and reliable fact searcher with an impressive memory. He often serves as a humorous foil to Manson and the Assistant Commissioner. By contrast, Kenway is volatile and imaginative. Together, Jones and Kenway make a powerful combination and an effective resource for the Doctor. In later books, Inspector Holroyd features as Manson’s regular assistant. Holroyd is the lead detective in the non-series title The Six Men (1958), a novelisation of the earlier British detective film of the same name released in 1951 and based on an original story idea and scenario developed by the Radfords. Their only other non-series police detective, Superintendent Carmichael, appeared in just two novels: Look in at Murder (1956, with Manson) and Married to Murder (1959).

  The first eight novels, all Manson series, were published by Andrew Melrose between 1944 to 1950. The early titles were slim volumes produced in accordance with authorised War Economy Standards. Many featured a distinctive motif on the front cover of the dust wrapper—a small white circle showing Manson’s head superimposed against that of Sherlock Holmes (in black silhouette), with the title ‘a Manson Mystery’. In these early novels, the Radfords made much of their practice of providing readers with all the facts and clues necessary to give them a fair opportunity of solving the mystery puzzles by deduction. They interspersed the investigations with ‘Challenges to the Reader’, a trope closely associated with leading Golden Age crime authors John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen. In Murder Isn’t Cricket they claimed: “We have never ‘pulled anything out of the bag’ at the last minute—a fact upon which three distinguished reviewers of books have commented and have commended.” Favourable critical reviews of their
early titles were received from Ralph Straus (Sunday Times) and George W. Bishop (Daily Telegraph), as well as novelist Elizabeth Bowen. The Radfords were held in sufficiently high regard by Sutherland Scott, in his study of the mystery novel Blood in their Ink (1953), to be highlighted alongside such distinguished Golden Age authors as Miles Burton, Richard Hull, Milward Kennedy and Vernon Loder.

  After 1950 there was a gap of six years before the Radfords’ next book. Mona’s mother died in 1953; she had been living with them at the time. Starting in 1956, with a new publisher John Long (like Melrose, another Hutchinson company), the Radfords released two Manson titles in successive years: Look in at Murder (1956) and Death on the Broads (1957). In 1958 they moved to the publisher Robert Hale, a prominent supplier to the public libraries. They began with The Six Men (1958), before returning to Manson with Death of a Frightened Editor (1959). Thereafter, Manson was to feature in all but two of their remaining 25 crime novels, all published by Hale; the exceptions being Married to Murder (1959) and Death of a Professor (1961). Curiously, a revised and abridged version of the third Manson series novel Crime Pays No Dividends (1945) was later released under the new title Death of a Peculiar Rabbit (1969).

  Edwin Isaac Radford (1891-1973) and Mona Augusta Radford (1894-1990) were married in Aldershot in 1939. Born in West Bromwich, Edwin had spent his working life entirely in journalism, latterly in London’s Fleet Street where he held various editorial roles, culminating as Arts Editor-in-Chief and Columnist for the Daily Mirror in 1937. Mona was the daughter of Irish poet and actor James Clarence Mangan and his actress wife Lily Johnson. Since childhood she had toured with her mother and performed on stage under the name ‘Mona Magnet’, and later was for many years a popular leading lady appearing in musical-comedies, revues and pantomime (including ‘Dick Whittington’) until her retirement from the stage. She first met Edwin while performing in Nottingham, where he was working as a local newspaper journalist. Mona also authored numerous short plays and sketches for the stage, in addition to writing verse, particularly for children.

  An article in Books & Bookmen magazine (1959) recounts how Edwin and Mona, already in their early 50s, became detective fiction writers by accident. During one of Edwin’s periodic attacks of lumbago, Mona trudged through snow and slush from their village home to a library for Dr Thorndyke detective stories by R. Austin Freeman, of which he was an avid reader. Unfortunately, Edwin had already read the three books with which she returned! Incensed at his grumbles, Mona retaliated with “Well for heaven’s sake, why don’t you write one instead of always reading them?”—and placed a writing pad and pencil on his bed. Within a month, Edwin had written six lengthy short stories, and with Mona’s help in revising the MS, submitted them to a leading publisher. The recommendation came back that each of the stories had the potential to make an excellent full-length novel. The first short story was duly turned into a novel, which was promptly accepted for publication. Thereafter, their practice was to work together on writing novels—first in longhand, then typed and read through by each of them, and revised as necessary. The plot was usually developed by Mona and added to by Edwin during the writing. According to Edwin, the formula was: “She kills them off, and I find out how she done it.” Mona would also act the characters and dialogue as outlined by Edwin for him to observe first-hand and then capture in the text.

  As husband-and-wife novelists, the Radfords were in the company of other Golden Age crime writing couples—G.D.H. (Douglas) and Margaret Cole in the UK, and Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, John and Emery Bonett, Audrey and Wiliam Roos (Kelley Roos), and Frances and Richard Lockridge in the USA. Their crime novels proved popular on the Continent and were published in translation in the major European languages. However, the US market eluded them and none of the Radford books was ever published in the USA. Aside from crime fiction, the Radfords collaborated on authoring a wide range of other works, most notably Crowther’s Encyclopaedia of Phrases and Origins, Encyclopaedia of Superstitions (a standard work on folklore), and a Dictionary of Allusions. Edwin was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of both the Authors’ Club and the Savage Club.

  The Radfords proved to be an enduring writing team, working into their 80s. Both were also enthusiastic amateur artists in oils and water colours. They travelled extensively, and invariably spent the winter months writing in the warmer climes of Southern Europe. An article by Edwin in John Creasey’s Mystery Bedside Book (1960) recounts his involvement in the late 1920s with an English society periodical for the winter set on the French Riviera, where he had socialised with such famous writers as Baroness Orczy, William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. He recollects Oppenheim dictating up to three novels at once! The Radfords spent their final years living in Worthing.

  Death of a Frightened Editor

  Death of a Frightened Editor (1959) has a classic Golden Age detective novel opening of a dead body in the first chapter. It begins with a group of passengers on a London-to-Brighton train (a familiar journey for Edwin Radford, who once worked in Fleet Street while living in Brighton). For some months seven men and a woman had travelled together five evenings a week in the First Class Pullman coach of the Brighton Belle. They were a diverse social mix, including a Harley Street surgeon, banker, insurance manager, bookmaker, charity worker and a newspaper crime reporter named Edwin Crispin (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous crime writer Edmund Crispin). During the journey on a Friday evening in October, one of them, Alexis Mortensen, editor and proprietor of a scurrilous gossip newspaper Society, dies from strychnine poisoning. Suicide seems impossible as strychnine acts inside fifteen minutes, and Mortensen had taken nothing which could have contained the poison in this period before his death. It appears to have been a perfect murder; brilliantly planned.

  By chance Doctor Manson is on the same train and immediately takes charge. Soon after the train arrives in Brighton, he is joined by his regular Scotland Yard colleagues, Detective-Inspector Merry, the Yard’s Deputy Scientist and close friend of the Doctor, and Detective-Inspector Kenway of the CID. After a careful examination of the body and the railway coach where the murdered man had been found, the team go to the block of flats at Black Rock on the coast at Brighton, where Mortensen lived, to start their investigation. It becomes evident that Mortensen had heavily guarded secrets. The following day Doctor Manson interviews the seven other passengers present when Mortensen died; he believes at least one of them to be lying—but why? He returns to London to search Mortensen’s office at the Society newspaper in Covent Garden. This leads to the discovery that Mortensen had another identity with a bank account where large sums in cash had been regularly deposited; it seems as if Society was a front for a blackmail operation. On a subsequent visit to the Brighton flat, Doctor Manson meets Mortensen’s lady friend and learns that for some time he had been a frightened man. She too turns out to be something of an enigma.

  The seemingly insoluble problem presented by the timing of the strychnine poisoning is eventually unravelled after some excellent scientific deduction work by Doctor Manson. There is also an inspired solo piece of detection involving family history by Superintendent Jones, the burly and ponderous Yard CID colleague who usually assists with the murder investigations, which proves to be pivotal to identifying the murderer. The denouement is reminiscent of an Agatha Christie Poirot novel. Doctor Manson gathers the seven suspects at the Police Headquarters in Brighton to unmask the murderer and to reveal the motive and the clever way in which the poison was administered. This is a skilfully constructed and fast paced story, with a well-conceived plot. The death method was hailed by the publishers as “new to modern whodunits”. The Radfords excelled in devising unique ways of committing murder in their crime fiction; other examples include It’s Murder to Live (1947), John Kyeling Died (1949), Death’s Inheritance (1961), Murder Magnified (1965) and The Middlefold Murders (1967), all featuring Doctor Manson.

  Death of a Frightened Editor, the eleventh in the se
ries of Doctor Manson detective novels, was the Radfords’ second book from Robert Hale, who from 1958 had become the authors’ regular publishers. The book was released in March 1959, with its dust wrapper depicting the scene where the passengers find the dead body of Alexis Mortensen behind the smashed door of the train lavatory compartment. It was the only book by the Radfords that Robert Hale reprinted, reissuing it in 1995. On its original publication, the book attracted positive reviews. ‘Bookmark’ in the Coventry Evening Telegraph felt that the authors were in “tip-top form”, the reviewer added “What I like most about the book is the absence of red herrings. The facts are given squarely, and the reader has the satisfaction of keeping, if not in step with Doctor Manson, at least close on his heels”. The review in the Yorkshire Evening News ended with the statement “How Doctor Manson unravels the mystery makes yet another entertaining tale by E. & M.A. Radford”. Herbert Harris, in his essay on the Radfords in Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers (1980) singled out the book for praise: “For one of their best books, Edwin drew upon his years as a newspaper reporter and editor. This was Death of a Frightened Editor”.

  Railways and railway trains have long been a popular background setting for crime fiction, with the atmospheric quality they bring. Having the murder take place during a train journey means there is the advantage of often having a ‘closed-circle’ of suspects, as with the Pullman coach occupants in Death of a Frightened Editor; a mise-en-scène also found in perhaps the most famous railway mystery of them all, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Two of the earliest crime novels with a railway background were both published in 1888: Eden Phillpotts My Adventure in the Flying Scotsman and H.F. Wood The Passenger from Scotland Yard. The recorded cases of Sherlock Holmes describe various train journeys. Other fictional detectives of the period also feature in stories with specific railway interest. The first specialist railway detective was the vegetarian, chain-smoking, amateur sleuth Thorpe Hazell, created by Victor L. Whitechurch. He appeared in nine stories between 1899 and 1905, later collected with six others in 1912 in Thrilling Stories of the Railway. Whitechurch also wrote about another amateur railway sleuth, Godfrey Page, whose six stories were published in Pearson’s Weekly in 1903 and 1904.