The Doors Open by Michael Gilbert

This book, also featuring Inspector Hazlerigg, was published in 1949.  I'm not sure what to say about it as I really have no idea what was going on in it.  It featured three heroes: a new guy, Paddy Yeatman-Carter who is recently out of the army, our friend "Nap" Rumbold who is firmly out of "Intelligence" and now doing boring law stuff, and Inspector Hazlerigg who, I think, meets Nap in this book.  Major McCann, who got established in the previous novel in this series, features briefly, but does not play a significant role.  (We do hear an update that he has gotten married to a woman who was running one of those dicy businesses in the shady part of town that we were introduced to in a previous novel and it it is hinted at that they are now running the place on the right side of the law.) The events that kick off the story are clear enough: Paddy has a job he hates and is coming home on the train late one cold, dark early Spring night and sees through the windows on his car into the next car, a guy who looks extremely morose and Paddy immediately gets the sense that the guy is going to do himself in. So, torn between thinking "it's none of my business" and "the problem with the world today is that everyone says everything is none of their business", Paddy decides to chum up and glom on to the guy until he's brought around to his senses. Once off the train (they get off at the same stop), Paddy realizes they are (sort of) neighbors.  He uses that as an excuse to greet the guy, make small talk, and then suggest they go out for a drink at the nearby pub. The guy agrees and within a few hours, it seems that Paddy's plan worked: the sad sack, Mr Britten, admits he is in a dark place because he's just been laid off, and also tells Paddy that he's convinced it's retaliation because he saw something suspect "in the books".  He shows Paddy some slips/receipts (that mean absolutely nothing to Paddy since they are enumerated transaction reports). But, after a few more beers, the slips are forgotten and they stumble to their separate homes. The next morning, when Paddy is leaving his apartment, he sees Mr Britten's lights are still on in his livingroom--even though it's sunny and almost noon. Then, Paddy sees a crowd of looky-loos and finds out that Mr Britten was just pulled from the river.  The police are saying that he'd been in the water a while and there was no evidence of foul play.  The preliminary conclusion is that he jumped.  Paddy finds this hard to swallow: so last night after cheering up, Mr Britten went into his dark apartment, turned on the lights, rested for a few hours, then got up, left his apartment (leaving the lights on), and toddled off to throw himself into the river?  Well, it's not IMPOSSIBLE, but it is ODD.  Or so Paddy tells the police--which puts Paddy at the top of the suspect list. And, because he was held over night in a police cell, Paddy loses his job.  Well, now he is really in a pickle.

From that point, things kind of spiral into really complicated weirdness: Paddy meets Nap (they don't know each other up to this point) and become roommates and Nap gets him a job as a journalist for a newspaper that specializes on business and the economy (I guess like the Wall Street Journal) which gives Paddy the excuse to be a Nosy Nelly, poking around businesses and asking impertinant questions. Paddy goes to Mr Britten's work place and sees a guy with one eye coked out of his mind (he's the accountant who generated the suspicious payment slips!) and Mr Britten's supervisor (who is all Crocodile Tears) pretends to care that Mr Britten is dead--until Paddy makes an anti-commie remark and THEN the mask slips!!!  Then there is another "suicide" and Paddy is again on the scene--and now the police are decidedly suspicous: why is Paddy relevant to two completlely unrelated suicides? THEN Nap goes to a swanky club run by mobsters and is surprised when they start threatening him--and, just in the nick of time, strangers (who turn out to be undercover detectives who are keeping an eye on the mobsters) cause a scene so Nap can escape before he gets himself killed.  At that point, Paddy, Nap and the police are working together.  And into all that Nap decides he wants to get married and Paddy decides HE wants to get married and a nurse (Paddy does spend a lot of time in the hospital after getting into fights with strangers when walking home late at night) and a secretary show up and start getting into the mix, playing Nancy Drew and Bess Marvin when the boys, Nap and Paddy, are off being the Hardy Boys:

[That's Bess up front with Nancy, always a red head, in the back, on the left.  The blond, I can't remember her name, is their client.]

As far as I can tell, the bad guy is a sleeper agent for Russia and is a fanatical communist in London  pretending to be a fanatical capitalist so he can (a) accumulate a lot of money while also (b) destroying the frail British economy from the inside, who occasionally partners with Italian-English (NOT Italian immigrants, we are assured) mobsters who (a) monopolize cocaine imports and sales and (b) kill people so it looks like suicide as a side hustle.    

I never did understand RICO laws when in law school--I'm not at all surprised that organized crime pays so well in this country because I doubt anyone actually understands where business ends and crime begins--and this novel is just a lengthy case study of two (and sometimes three) organized crime units in London with converging interests and fairly useless police using two hapless ex-army guys as their unwitting undercover agents. I would say the only people who need to read this are those completists who want to know everything that happens in the personal lives of our regular characters.

Meanwhile, after finishing that, I started Gilbert's Crack in the Teacup (published 1966) and it is (so far at least) BRILLIANT--Gilbert in true form. I intended just to read the first few pages to see if it was any good or if I needed to take a break from Gilbert and the next thing I knew it was 2 am and I was on page 122. 

Monster Vine and Melon Update

This morning I was SHOCKED at the size of a watermelon I had never seen before:

I have ordered some jute melon hammocks (as they are called) but they haven't arrived yet. As to the Vine Beast, it, too, grew in the night with a brand new 5' tall branch growing up the back fence, heading toward our neighbor's house:

Finally, I see some evidence of blossoms, soon to be squash or gourds or whatever:

 

Another Watermelon and a Monstrous Pumpkin (?) Vine

I hadn't seen this one before and suddenly it was a real mini-watermelon.  I'd guess there are about 15 at this point, from 1/2" to 2" diameter.  I believe this is the point that they need a lot of water so I've been watering them in the evenings.  Weather.com, now with access to weather balloons only because the powers that be in Washington decided last year that we no longer need to have access to information from weather sattelites, has been reporting a 79% chance of rain every day for the past week and we got nothing.  Then, this morning, exactly when it said there was a 0% chance of rain, it started to rain.

I remember when I was growing up people made fun of weather reporters because they were ALWAYS wrong.  Then, sometime in the 80s, every rinky dink TV station got access to the "Dopplar Radar" (whatever that is) and the weather reports became the most scientifically reliable part of the news, while everything else turned into entertainment.  (In the immortal words of KTLA's Hal Fishman, "I guess that's news.")  Now we are back in the 1970s in more ways than one and I don't like it. 

At the very back of the yard, between our stone wall and a raised garden bed a vine of somt sort sprouted up from where we used to have our compost pile.  I have no idea what it is but it is larger and more aggressive than any plant I've ever grown before. You can't see it well from this picture, but it is about 2' tall, and runs along the wall for about 6'.  The leaves are the size of dinner plates and yesterday one blossom appeared, and it is larger than my hand:

And here it is growing over and between two raised beds, and taking over the entire path I need to use to get to my strawberries and tomatos.  To be honest, I'm slightly afraid of it.  Its stems are 2" thick and too tough to bend to comply with my trellis supports--it's going to do what it's going to do and that's all there is to it.  Even the ground hog leaves it alone.  

Hummingbirds and Bees continued

Here are the hummingbird vine blossoms mentioned in the previous post.  Each flower is between 5-6" long and each branch has buds for 12-15 blossoms which bloom in succession so they last for many weeks once it gets piping hot every day.

1

 

Butterflies and Strawberries

 I was outside yesterday evening, just at dusk, at noticed this fellow/gal flitting among my echinaceas.  According to google, it is a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail and I believe it: 

At Thomas's insistance, I planted a butterfly and hummingbird zone in our yard probably 20 years ago and it has always floundered, producing a whole lot of not much. But this year, after doing absolutely nothing for it, it is going great guns: the echinaceas (which are normally 3' tall here at most) are ridiculously robust--one is over 6' tall!--and a hummingbird vine that has languished ever since we had a deadly freeze a few years ago has decided it really does have a will to live and has pumped out dozens of blossoms specially designed for hummingbirds ONLY--no bees allowed.  So far I haven't seen any hummingbirds as I don't get up early enough in the morning but what is Simon's excuse, I'd like to know?  And, meanwhile, we have this bounty on the Lettuce Grow hydroponic device (which I just topped up with water and nutrients a few days ago after doing absolutely nothing for it for weeks and weeks):

I can testify that the one strawberry I ate was delicious. And there are more on the way:

It's a whopper!

There are now THREE watermelon babies growing on this one plant.  At some point (if that damned ground hog doesn't get to them first) I'm going to have to rig up some sort of sling operation to hold them up so they don't break off the stem and smash to the ground.  If they double in size every day, I've not got a whole lot of time to engineer something.

The Magic-Lantern Murders by Carter Dickson

 

After The Unicorn Murders I was hesitant to take on another Carter Dickson book as that one was just too complicated for me: by the time I had reached the end, I had no idea what had and what had not taken place.  And the fact that The Magic-Lantern Murders (published in 1936) features the same two heros as The Unicorn Murders, Ken Blake and Evelyn Cheyne (the spy-world's version of Tommy and Tuppence) only added to my concerns.  But no worry, this was a ripping yarn and I'm giving it two murder weapons up, WAY up!

This story starts with Ken on the day before his marriage to Evelyn--both having wanted to get married for ages but the over-involvement of Evelyn's parents delayed things as they had strong views about what was necessary for The Perfect Day (big church, famous chaplain, important wedding party participants, expensive food and outfits...). We find Ken packing up his things, getting ready to head for London, when he gets an awkwardly coded telegram from H.M. (who is still in "Intelligence" at this point in his career) instructing Ken to head out to Torquay under the alias of "Butler". (Or is he instrucing Ken to act like HM's butler?)  Ken wires back a pointed message informing HM that he had no interest in going to Torquay or anywhere else as he is going to London so he can participate in a wedding dinner this evening and get married tomorrow morning. Well, HM doesn't give a flying fig about weddings and no one refuses HM, not even Ken--and with the national security of England hanging in the balance, HM promises Ken he can take care of business this evening and be back into London by 10:30 am tomorrow--PLENTY of time to get cleaned up, dressed and on the church steps in time for an 11:00 ceremony.  Ken is skeptical but decides to leave it in Evelyn's hands--if she doesn't mind, he won't mind.  And she doesn't--she doesn't want a big church wedding and is looking for any excuse to elope.  She encourages Ken to get to work and promises to smooth things out with the wedding party--only to put the phone down and head out to Torquay herself to get in on the excitement.

So what is going on in Torquay that has HM in a state?  Well, it isn't immediately clear: he's staying at the home of a retired frenemy (the status of their frenemy-ship hasn't retired, but the frenemy has recently retired from working in government and so from making HM's life needlessly difficult) who has concerns about a German neighbor, Hogenaur, who claims that he is putting the finishing touches on mastering the ability of mind-induced teleportation.  Crank or German physicist gathering English military secrets all while pretending to be a crank? We don't know. And if that isn't suspicious enough, Hogenaur has daily klatsch sessions with another physicist, Keller (who is also German), who is also involved in military weapon development. (Or is he?) (And why were so many important scientists allowed to work in laboratories in their country homes that have no locking windows or doors?)  Ok, so far so good, but what does that have to do with Ken, he wants to know?  Well, explains HM, they (he and his frenemy, Colonal Charters), want Ken to break into Hogenaur's home and see what he's been up to. At this point, Charters hands him a massive supply of house-breaking and lock picking tools--none of which it turns out he needs because (a) the house isn't locked and (b) Hogenaur is dead as a doornail having drunk enough strynchnine to kill 10 people. Ok, well that takes care of that, right?  No. Because hiding in a closet in the room in which Hogenaur died is Mrs. Altrim, another neighbor, who claimed she got stuck inside when she tried to flee the room but the doorknob broke off.  So why was she there and why did she "flee" into a closet? Because, she claims, she was trying to retrieve the strychnine that she had given to Hogenaur by mistake (!) when he went to consult her husband (who is a physician who keeps massive bottles of strychnine unlocked in his "consulting room" in his house, which is just next to Charters' house) and she wanted to retrieve it before Hogenaur took it by mistake.  Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, while Ken was breaking into Hogenaur's house, a character named Serpos (who was working for Charters) broke into Charters' house safe and stole giant fistfulls of £100 that he (Serpos) stuffed into a black valise and was last seen in Charters' car heading for the train station. So assured that HM and Charters will call the police, Ken is ordered to bring Mrs. Antrim back with him to be questioned by Charters and HM, and then to head to the train station to catch up with Serpos--but also, then, to head out to to Keller's hotel room in Bristol, break in, and see what he's been up to as he was expected to visit Hogenaur that very evening that Hogenaur died.

So the local police start arriving and assume that Ken, who is running at top speed towards the train station so he can finish this damned business and get back to London to get married, is either the thief or a murderer or both. And the chase begins! At this point, the book turns into a blend of the very best Cary Grant movies: a mix of North by Northwest and Charade with a bit of Michael Redgrave ala The Lady Vanishes thrown in (because of the train ride). I can't possibly lay out in a coherent manner all the escapades that ensue, but it includes: Ken running into Serpos (who has disguised himself as a chaplain) in the train station bathroom as both are hiding from police while waiting for the train for Bristol to arrive--beats and ties up Serpos, steals his clothes and black valise, and questions him but gets only whimpering and sneering. Ken then (now a chaplain on the run), races to the train and jumps on as it speeds out of the station.  He finds Evelyn--sick with worry about him on the train with an identical black valise filled with a more appropriate outfit for him. They hug and smooch and whisper a few suggestive comments only to realize they have shocked their compartment mates--an American who knows way too much about what they are up to and a chaplain who is extremely offended by Ken's lack of reverency for the cloth to the point that he storms off to get the ticketmaster, insisting that Ken be tossed off the train. Meanwhile, who is the American? Mr. Johnson Stone.  And what's his angle?  He says he has no angle as he's in England on vacation to visit his daughter--but it turns out he actually knows a lot about Hogenaur and another character who goes by "L"--a notorious spy who has never been caught and who is (according to Hogenaur according to Charters--this conversation came up at the start of the novel--pay attention) working in England and after Hogenaur's secrets.  But Johnson claims L is dead and encourages both Ken and Evelyn to give up on their ridiculous japes. Into all this the chaplain comes back and demands that the ticketmaster examine Ken's valise which he is convinced contains salacious materials. Nope, only clothes that Evelyn has brought.  But, insists Ken, let's see inside YOUR valise--and opens up the one he brought on the train--lettting lose thousands of pound notes to fly around the room and out the open windows.  Into this chaos, the train pulls into Bristol and Ken and Evelyn jump off the train befor the ticketmaster can collect his thoughts.

Ok, now on to the Bristol hotel to speak to Keller.  Nope, can't do that as he's also dead--died of strychnine overdose, too, at exactly the same second Hogenaur did. Ok...and then in their hotel room arrive two over zealous hotel workers with one revolver between them that hasn't seen action since WWI who (a) recognized the money Ken used to pay for the room as counterfeit (wait--so Serpos stole fake money--is that even a crime?), (b) don't believe that Ken and Evelyn were a professor and secretary as claimed, and (c) dont' believe they had an appointment with Keller at 2 am as alleged. If they are this mad about the little lies Ken and Evelyn told, imagine what they'll do when they discover Keller's corpse and that Ken and Evelyn broke into Keller's room to search Keller's paper! And into all THAT, in steps that mysterious Mr. Johnson again who, with his son who is a detective, manages to hustle Ken and Evelyn out of the hotel, into a car, and head back to Torquay just as the sun is rising.  It really doesn't look like Ken and Evelyn are going to get to a church in London by 11 am....

Waiting for them is HM who has assembled all the suspects (Serpos, Mr and Mrs Antrim, Borrows (Hogenaur's servant) as well as Sergeant Davis (a police officer who has been working for HM for weeks, keeping an eye on all the relevant households in the area). While interrogating each, HM encourages his team (Ken, Evelyn, Johnson, and Charters) to place bets on who they think the guilty party is. Each picks someone different and each has either a story that identifies a really strong motive or a plausible opportunity, but none have both. But even if someone is guilty, guilty of what--both Keller and Hogenaur took the strychnine voluntarily while alone and it seems that Mrs. Antrim didn't even give them strychnine but sodium bromide to help each fall asleep.  And all that money was fake so where is the crime there? And is L alive or not and, if he is alive, who is he and where is he and what is he doing?  And were Keller and/or Hogenaur involved in military weapon development--for England or Germany or anyone else---or not?  I won't give any spoilers but: (a) yes, serious crimes were committed that would have destablized the English government if not prevented; and (b) HM solves all the mysteries leaving plenty of time to get to London by car with Ken driving like a demon on 0 hours of sleep...YET, despite all best efforts, Ken and Evelyn do not have a church wedding that neither wants.  

An incredibly exciting, sweet and funny novel--and I'm going to say it again: it's a damned crying shame that Alfred Hitchcock didn't turn this into a movie.

Garden Update

 It begins...

Yesterday I noticed these hiding among the leaves.  According to YouTube experts, yellow zuchini should be picked when they are 4-6" long so I missed that window.  I'm not sure how I could have caught them as they didn't exist yesterday. The tiny orange/clemantine (or whatever it claims to be) is there for size comparison: