Two important writers have been added to the Rue Morgue Press reprint list ($14.95 each): John Dickson Carr with two classic locked-room puzzles from his peak year of 1938, The Crooked Hinge and The Judas Window, the latter written as Carter Dickson; and Colin Watson with the 1958 debut of his comic Flaxborough series, Coffin, Scarcely Used. As usual, publishers Tom and Enid Schantz provide informative introductions.
Shepard Rifkin’s excellent 1970 civil rights-era novel, The Murderer Vine ($6.99) is the latest in Hard Case Crime’s distinguished reprint line... In honor of Ian Fleming’s centenary, Penguin has all 14 James Bond books (twelve novels and two collections) in print in handsome trade paper editions. A rereading of the 1959 classic Goldfinger ($14) shows how good 007’s creator could be at his best.
An Object of Scandal and Concern
by Robert Barnard
© 2008 by Robert Barnard
The latest book from CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger recipient is a twisty stand-alone suspense novel entitled Last Post (Scribner, May 2008), in which a woman investigates hidden circumstances in her deceased mother’s life. Mr. Barnard is also a master short-story writer and we have several more of his tales to offer readers in coming months.
Well, this was one situation I hadn’t expected to find myself in! I had, in fact, been to church before. It was the funeral of Svein’s sister in Molde. He’d left me outside, but it was summer, and hot, and the church door had been left open. I walked into the lovely shade, lay down beside Svein in the aisle, and watched him while he tried to cope with the Lutheran church service, not knowing any of the hymns and struggling with any observance more challenging than reciting the Lord’s Prayer. He had not seen his sister for seventeen years, and it was a lot longer since he’d been to a service.
This was quite a lot different.
“O Dog, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come...”
They seemed to have the right ideas. Though how long I, a dog, in my prime at nine, was going to be Svein’s best hope in years to come when he, at sixty-four, was coasting blithely to senility remained in doubt. I was open to offers.
I was at the monthly service of the English community in Bergen — and of course the English have the right idea when it comes to dogs. The oldest members of the community are mostly Shetland wives — women who married the Norwegians who sailed over to Scotland from occupied Norway and joined the British war effort. Later immigrants came also by marriage, or were academics, businessmen, or workers in the oil fields, though church attendance among the oil workers was exclusively Northern Irish or Scots, or so I was told. And here we were: a well-attended service because the bishop, who served the whole of Northern Europe, was attending: He was giving the sermon, while the local priest was taking the rest of the service.
The vicar was short, pudgy, and impressive only in the power of his voice. Retired from his English parish, he had for a time lived with his daughter in Bergen. This job was usually filled if possible by a retired clergyman who acted part-time and was rewarded meagrely. The bishop, on the other hand, was decidedly impressive: He could have presided at a royal wedding or a media-attended memorial service. Tall, lean, sleek, Kenneth Rose was the very image of an acceptable modern bishop. My dog’s instinct told me that much of the effect he made was show.
“A thousand ages in thy sight
Are but an evening gone.”
Before long I was deciding that an evening was like a thousand ages, because the bishop’s sermon did go on. I wasn’t used to oratory on this scale, because Svein’s verbal advances tend to be monosyllabic or confined to commonplaces and fatuous queries. But eventually the whole thing was over, we were out in the sunlight, and the priest and the bishop were shaking hands, the latter being friendly without being condescending, and making enquiries about absent members of the congregation.
“Just wait and watch, Loyd old boy,” muttered Svein. “We’re old friends of the bishop, remember.”
It was lovely late summer sunshine and eventually everyone drove off home, the bishop said goodbye to Humbleby the vicar, and then, waving in their direction, he eventually came over to us.
“I’ve told him you’re an old friend who is going to drive me to the airport,” he said. “I hope I can be forgiven a white lie.”
“If you can’t be, then God help the rest of us,” said Svein. The bishop smiled neutrally and allowed himself to be led to the car. The moment the pair were strapped into their seats the bishop began his spiel. He had paid, and did pay, no attention to me, reminding me of an English dog who once told me, feelingly, that the English were not a nation of dog-lovers as their reputation has it, but a nation of dog-neglecters. Anyway the bish certainly had his material under closer control than he had had his sermon.
“Let me get straight down to business,” he began, “since we haven’t got long. Mr. Humbleby, the priest here, came to Bergen to live about three years ago, together with his daughter Ellen.”
“Was she at the service tonight?” Svein asked.
“No-o-o,” said the bishop meaningfully. He went on: “He was made priest for Bergen and the Western Coast a year ago, when the previous man died. We mostly have retired English priests in these jobs, which are to look after Anglicans and English speakers in general, and in this case we had one to hand. It’s always worked well till now.”
“But not this appointment?” asked Svein.
The bishop took a deep breath.
“I am entering into this matter most reluctantly. I have no personal knowledge of it, you understand. I am acting after complaints — no, perhaps I should just say approaches — from members of his congregation, which means Anglicans from the West Coast here in Norway — from Stavanger to Trondheim.”
“Big area,” said Svein. “Complaints from all over, then.”
“I would prefer to say approaches from several individuals. When the Reverend Humbleby came here he was a widower — looked after, as I said, by his daughter. She, not surprisingly, has been wooed and won by a young Norwegian. She is a pretty girl, and by all accounts he is an eligible man, but perhaps she has been eager to accept and get away because — because her father has married again.”
Svein left a silence, as if to say that remarriage was not, in Norwegian eyes, either a crime or a misdemeanour. When he spoke, he said, “You seem to find the daughter’s marriage perfectly natural and understandable but the father’s marriage somehow... deplorable. Is Humbleby’s wife Norwegian?”
“Norwegian? Oh, dear me, no. I don’t imagine there would be any... approaches if she were. No, she is French, she says.”
“But people doubt it?”
“She speaks it beautifully, but her complexion is such that people feel there is probably North African blood. But you mustn’t get the impression this is a racial question.”
“Funny — I was just beginning to get just that idea,” said Svein, who was really handling this rather well, and made me suspect he had had a bad experience with a bishop as a boy.
“No, no. The question is about the lady’s past. The rumour that is going round is that Chantal has been employed — I must speak frankly — in a brothel, or brothels, in the South of France.”