Weekend at Thrackley Read online

  Weekend at

  Thrackley

  With an Introduction

  by Martin Edwards

  Alan Melville

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Originally published in 1934 by Skeffington & Son, Ltd

  Copyright © 2018 by Estate of Alan Melville

  Introduction Copyright © 2018 by Martin Edwards

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with

  the British Library

  First Edition 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933805

  ISBN: 9781464209710 Trade Paperback

  ISBN: 9781464209727 Ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., #201

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Weekend at Thrackley

  Copyright

  Introduction

  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

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Introduction

  Weekend at Thrackley is a country house mystery in the classic tradition. Jim Henderson is a likeable young man typical of his time. Having left school to fight in the war, he has returned “with each limb intact but with neither business training nor experience.” As the story begins, he’s spent three years out of work before unexpectedly receiving an invitation to a country house party in Surrey.

  The summons to Thrackley is slightly mysterious. Edwin Carson, who owns the old house, says he recently returned to England from abroad, and claims to have been a very close friend of Jim’s father. In fact, Jim hasn’t heard of him, but the prospect of “a free weekend with free food and free drink” proves irresistible, and he accepts.

  Inevitably, this being a Golden Age mystery novel, Jim finds himself in the midst of a curiously assorted group of individuals, presided over by Carson and his sinister sidekick Jacobson. And it soon becomes clear that Carson’s motives for assembling his guests are not purely social.

  First published in 1934, Weekend at Thrackley was a debut novel, and—although the plot is very different—its style was clearly influenced by A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, which achieved enormous popularity after it appeared in 1922. Raymond Chandler, no less, described Milne’s novel as “an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks.” Melville was aiming for something similar. He admired Milne’s light touch as a writer, and says in his autobiography, Merely Melville (1970) that the only distinction of any kind that he achieved during his schooldays was winning a prize for English literature on the strength of a parody of Milne’s works.

  William Melville Caverhile (1910–83), who became much better known as Alan Melville, was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed. After leaving school, he started working for the family timber firm in Berwick. Hopelessly unsuited for business life, he showed stirrings of independence by deciding to move out of the family home and live in a local hotel, presided over by “an energetic saint called Miss Nellie Robinson”, who may just have inspired his affectionate portrayal of Jim Henderson’s landlady, Mrs Bertram, in this novel.

  Melville yearned to go on the stage, but recognized that “as it seemed unlikely that I would ever go direct from a back room in the Waterloo Hotel, Berwick-upon-Tweed, to stardom in the West End, there was a possible side-entrance through writing… the thing was obviously money for old rope”. He started to pound away on an old typewriter, working long into the night, much to the despair of commercial travellers in adjoining rooms who were trying to get some sleep. His earliest efforts, short stories for children, were accepted by the BBC, and Melville broadcast them himself. He followed up this initial success with a flurry of poems, stories, and news items for the Press, while continuing to work at the timber yard.

  The part-time author’s next venture was to write a whodunnit, and the result was Weekend at Thrackley. According to his light-hearted recollection, half a lifetime later, in Merely Melville, “it wasn’t very good… but to my amazement it was accepted first time out by a subsidiary of Hutchinson, sold rather well, went into paperback, and was subsequently made into a film called, for no reason that I could fathom, Hot Ice. The film was quite terrible and bore no relation at all to the original masterpiece.” This is not quite the full story, since the publisher, Skeffington, was a small independent firm, and Melville also wrote a play based on the book, which was then adapted for film. The movie, starring John Justin and Barbara Murray, was released in 1952, so in one guise or another, Weekend at Thrackley enjoyed a long life, although the original novel has been out of print for many years.

  Melville was modest about his crime writing, but Weekend at Thrackley changed his life: “I had earned much more during the three months it had taken me to write the whodunit in my spare time than I could have earned in three years at my present emolument in the timber business.” When his uncle proved reluctant to raise his pay, he resigned to become a freelance writer and performer. With the money from the sale of the film rights, he bought a bungalow, and called it Thrackley.

  He rapidly wrote five more crime novels, including Death of Anton and Quick Curtain, both of which have been given fresh life in the British Library’s Crime Classics series. But there were no more sales of film rights, and like many novelists before and since, he found that repeating an initial literary success, and earning a good long-term living from writing fiction, was at least as difficult as making the initial breakthrough. In 1936, he took a job as a scriptwriter in the Variety Department of the BBC, under Eric Maschwitz, who had himself dabbled with success in the crime genre, collaborating with Val Gielgud on several mysteries, the most successful of which was Death at Broadcasting House, published at around the same time as this book.

  Like many people who tried their hand at crime writing during the Golden Age of Murder between the world wars, Melville had other priorities. For all his gifts in the field of light entertainment, he did not have the commitment to the genre necessary for a lengthy run as a published crime writer. But it didn’t matter. After the Second World War, in addition to writing lyrics, plays and revues, he became a popular television personality. By then, Weekend at Thrackley was long forgotten. Its republication gives modern readers the chance to sample the first full-length novel by a young man who would, in later years, become a household name.

  —Martin Edwards

  www.martinedwar
dsbooks.com

  I

  The alarm clock at Mr. Henderson’s left ear gave a slight warning twitch and then went off with all its customary punctuality and power. It had not cost a great deal of money (to be exact, three shillings and elevenpence), but for all that it had a good bullying ring which could be calculated to waken most of Mrs. Bertram’s lodgers. Not, however, Mr. Henderson. In the flat below, Mrs. Twist heard the sound of the alarm and dispatched her several offsprings to their several schools. Even nearer the bowels of the earth, in the very bottom flat, Mr. Jackson started at the sound, bolted his second egg and his third cup of tea, snatched his umbrella and bowler hat from their places on the hallstand, kissed a good-bye to his wife, and departed at a steady trot in the direction of the 8.25 to town. But the alarm had very little effect on the person nearest to it. It rang uninterrupted for nearly a minute, and then a hand appeared slowly from beneath the bedclothes, stretched itself out in the direction of the clock, waggled for a second or two until it found the alarm-pointer, and disappeared again beneath the sheets. A strange stillness settled once more on Number 34, Ardgowan Mansions, N. And Jim Henderson turned over on his other side and went to sleep.

  His landlady, Mrs. Bertram, knew her business. Jim had given her strict orders on the early-morning procedure. At eight-fifteen, alarms but no excursions. At nine, breakfast. In the sitting-room if the sensational happened and Jim rallied to the alarm’s ringing. In bed if he didn’t. During his three years’ stay at Mrs. Bertram’s “establishment” (which was the official description given to the place whenever Mrs. Bertram put a two-line advertisement in the evening papers), Jim had had breakfast thrice in the sitting-room. Once out of sheer necessity in order to catch a train. Twice when the three-and-elevenpenny alarm clock had made unfortunate blots on its otherwise excellent record. On all other mornings, breakfast was brought to him in bed. It was brought there this morning.

  Mrs. Bertram brought it herself. A large and benevolent soul, this Mrs. Bertram; a woman who talked a great deal more than was necessary and who read the newspapers rather more than was good for her. Mrs. Bertram thrived on news. Each morning, before she began her round of duties in the house, she consumed the more important portions of three of the morning dailies. And then to each of her four lodgers she passed on those portions, amended and exaggerated as she thought fit, as a kind of free gift with their breakfast trays. On Christmas Day and Easter Monday and other paperless occasions Mrs. Bertram pined in agony from the lack of news. Breakfast served neat, without a spot of morning scandal, seemed a futile affair altogether.

  She laid Jim’s tray down on the table beside his bed, crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The sunlight had more effect on Mr. Henderson than the alarm clock, for he sat up in bed, propped himself on one elbow, and blinked first at his breakfast and then at Mrs. Bertram.

  “’Morning, Mr. Henderson,” said Mrs. Bertram. “Lovely morning. Sun and everything. Regular summer’s day, it is.”

  Mr. Henderson grunted.

  “There’s your breakfast, dearie. Kippers again, I’m afraid. Price of eggs is something shocking. It’s this here government with their tariffs and their duties and their whatnots.”

  Mr. Henderson thought for a moment of asking for further particulars of a government’s whatnots. Instead of doing which he grunted again.

  “And there’s the morning paper for you. Nothing much in it. Some sort of a how-d’you-do in Borneo, and a typist in Manchester got strangled coming home from a dance. That conference has bust up without doing nothing, as usual. And Lady Carter—her that was the actress—has had another baby. Five, that is. And that horse you gave me for the three o’clock yesterday was last by a quarter of a furlong.”

  Mr. Henderson (give the man his due) roused himself at this last piece of news. He said: “That’s a pity, Mrs. Bertram.”

  “It’s more than a pity, Mr. Henderson. Thank heaven I don’t know how long a furlong is—that’s some consolation.”

  “Any letters, Mrs. Bertram?”

  “Three. On top of your kippers, dearie.”

  “Thanks.”

  And Mrs. Bertram steered her large frame across the room and closed the door behind her. She scuttled back to the armchair at the side of the kitchen fireplace, found her spectacles, and continued the Daily Standard’s unnecessarily full details (with photograph on back page and cross marking the spot) of the Manchester strangle. She had not had time to digest the thing fully before the bells started ringing for their shaving-water. Done in with a length of picture cord, she was, poor girl. And such a nice-looking girl, too. Really nowadays you never could tell.

  In his bedroom Jim Henderson poured out coffee and began an attack on his kippers in a depressed silence. Usually at this time of the day he indulged in a fit of the blues. He reviewed the situation as he had done a hundred times before. Out of work. Been so for three years. And with every possibility of remaining so for the rest of his days. He had left school to join in the war, during which his mother had died. Had returned from the war with each limb intact but with neither business training nor experience. And since then things had not stopped going wrong. Letters, crisp and typewritten (“we regret very much that we are unable to accept your application for this post, but we have been forced to fill the vacancy with a rather more experienced man”) became as frequent as rejection slips to the budding author. He got a job, and very promptly lost it through telling the managing director, with a commendable but very rash frankness, exactly what he thought of him. And after that jobs were even harder to get. “So,” said Jim Henderson, picking the last vestiges of edible matter from his second kipper, “so here we are. Pleasant and extremely good-looking young man, aged thirty-four, possessing no talents or accomplishments beyond being able to give an imitation of Gracie Fields giving an imitation of Galli-Curci, with no relations and practically no money, seeks job.” He told himself that the subject of the sentence was much too far away from the verb to make the thing at all pleasant to the ear, and then proceeded to open his morning’s mail.

  Mrs. Bertram had been perfectly right when she said that there were three letters. She might, of course, have added that two of the three bore only halfpenny stamps, thus considerably reducing their interest. But the third was a real, live, honest affair with the full three-halfpenceworth of stampage in its top right-hand corner. Jim inspected it thoroughly. Felt it. Smelt it. Decided that he didn’t know the handwriting, and that he had never heard of the postmark. And then laid it down beside the remains of his kippers. Best to keep a thing like that to the last; much more satisfactory to deal with the riff-raff first. He dealt with the riff-raff. In the very remote chance of being able to get odds against one of the two halfpenny letters being a bill, Jim would have made money. A bill it certainly was. From Messrs. Smith, Hopkinson and Trevor, Ltd. “To account rendered, one lounge suit, £8 8s. od.” Jim swore, under his breath at first and then audibly. The other was an appeal from the old boys’ association of the public school at which he had learned the finer points of rugby football. Mr. James Lockhart, M.A., was resigning his post of Senior Science Master at the end of the summer term, and it was felt that all old boys should be given the opportunity of subscribing to some small token of their appreciation of Mr. Lockhart’s long and valued services. Jim swore, audibly at first and then under his breath, and remembered the classic occasion when he had lathered the seat of old Lockjaw’s desk with soft soap. He passed on to the third letter.

  He read it slowly, took a sip of his coffee, and read it again. He laid it down for a moment beside his coffee-cup and lay back to contemplate his bedroom ceiling. The ceiling was in need of dusting and whitewashing, and the soot from the gas-jet had made a dark circle in one corner. But for once Jim did not notice these things. He poured himself out a further supply of coffee while reading the letter for the third time, and sent most of the coffee into his saucer and very little into the cup. The
amazing thing was that the letter read exactly the same each time. He read:

  Thrackley,

  nr. Adderly, Surrey.

  21st.

  Dear Captain Henderson,

  I am not quite sure whether you will know me. I was a very close friend of your father and lived with him in South Africa for many years before he died. I met you once or twice in England when you were very young. I have recently returned to England from abroad and have taken this house in Surrey for a while. I wonder if you would care to come down next weekend and join in a little unofficial house-warming?

  I can promise you excellent fishing and fair shooting, and the company will be nearer your age than mine, so you need not worry on that account. There is an extremely bad train which leaves St. Pancras at 3.20, getting to Adderly at a quarter-past four. May I expect you down next Friday? I can send the car to meet you at Adderly station, if you will let me know when you are coming. I hope that I may have the pleasure of seeing you again.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Edwin Carson.

  “Well,” said Jim. “Never heard of the fellow in my life.” He pushed the bedclothes back, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and stretched himself. Then he crossed to his dressing-table and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He mentioned casually to the reflection that it would have been much better if he had been very fair instead of very dark, passed his hand over the offending scrubbiness of his chin, and said “What about it?”

  “What about what?” said the reflection.

  “This Thrackley business, of course.”

  “Oh, that,” said the reflection. “Accept it, you fool. You’ll probably be bored stiff, but it’s a free weekend with free food and free drink. You might even be able to get twelve-and-six knocked off Mother Bertram’s monthly bill for board, lodgings, and services. So why not?”