First swim of 2026

Yesterday all sorts of alarms and sirens went off all over Flint because supposedly a Tornado was about to form.  We were told to head to the basement, put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye.  Well, the basement part, anyway.  But it never happened, which meant that the sickly, oppressive sultriness never went away.  This persuaded me to risk a swim today.  And actually, once you were in the water, it was perfect.

This is Frederick after emerging from the dip, nary a shiver to be seen.

Sky High by Michael Gilbert

I'd not heard of Michael Gilbert before reading this book and since I generally do not enjoy turning to face the strange, I had put off reading this despite the sunny cover design.  But I am determined to plow through the backlog of these British mystery books I have piled up next to my side of the bed. I am still a member of that "club" that sends me a new book of a heretofore out of print book every month and it doesn't take long to get snowed under. PLUS, once I discover a new (good) author I feel compelled to check out other works of theirs which just adds to the stack(s).

Michael Gilbert squeezed a lot of living out of the time he was alive: born in 1912 in Lincolnshire, he went off to study law at London University, but dropped out because of money troubles. He then became a schoolmaster, saved up funds, finished law school and got his degree.  He also published his first book during this time which was extremely popular (Close Quarters). Then WWII started and he joined the military and rose to the rank of major.  He was captured in northern Italy in 1943. He, along with a few other British officers escaped and trudged over 500 miles to the south to cross Allied lines. Once the war was over he joined a law firm and practiced law there from the time he was 36 years old until he retired at age 71. He was married for almost 60 years, had five children, and wrote all his books while riding on trains to and from work every day.  He wrote twenty-nine mystery books, fourteen collections of short stories and non-fiction books about law and (in)famous court cases. He was widely regarded by other mystery writers as top drawer. So why haven't I heard of him?  Many of his books are now out of print, which is a shame because if they are as good as Sky High, they're worth reading.

Sky High was published in 1955 and is set in that time.  The protagonist is Tim, a broody 30-something year old who uses his widowed mother's house (which is in the fictional village of Bimberley) as a base while he does secret work that takes him all over England, over to Europe and beyond.  Is he a spy or an international criminal?  He won't say. Tim never knew he father who was a Lt Colonel tasked with preventing the embezzlement of government property in Germany after the war ended, including weapons, when he died in a mysterious (and suspicious) explosion in Köln. Tim was also in the military but was sent to Palestine where he was quickly moved into "special forces" where he operated alone, learned how to hunt and kill particularly nasty people and specialized in planting and defusing explosives with highly complicated triggers. Apparently England's Palestine is not too unlike the U.S.'s Vietnam experience as Tim is frequently accused of having killed Palestinians ignobly. It isn't surprising that he keeps to himself.  But he does have a soft spot for Sue who expresses her affection for him by cutting him cold and flirting with other people. He thinks that means she hates him and they have many unproductive conversations throughout the book--until the very last few pages when things finally go his way and words are not needed to express their mutual affection for one another.

Liz, Tim's mother, is a choir master who is very self-reliant and hates the vicar whom she believes is nasty and mean (in the British sense). Apparently people in small villages really go in for choir practice because everyone involved in this mystery is part of the choir, even two meddlesome teen boys who hang around dangerous places and spy on dangerous people. If only they would tell the GROWN UPS what they see...Another significant character is Major MacMorris who likes to flirt with Sue to piss Tim off.  After the two hurl insults at one another, Tim is persuaded by his mother to apologize--the village is too small to tolerate stupid grudges, she tells him. So off Tim goes (not because he likes MacMorris--nobody does, not even Sue--but because he wants Sue to find  out that he took the moral high ground. Not only does MacMorris accept the apology, he asks Tim for help, wanting to hire him as a sort of body guard. Apparently MacMorris has been getting threatening letters (he shows one to Tim), which tell him to "clear off if you know what's good for you". Tim doesn't think it means all that much (and suspects MacMorris wrote the letter himself to get attention), particularly since MacMorris claims to have no idea who it could possibly be from or what he did to piss someone off that much.  Tim recommends taking the letter to the police and not worrying about it after that point. The whole time he is talking with MacMorris, Tim's hindbrain is on high alert, noticing the people in photos (all military sorts but different units, different wars...all very odd), the noises the house is making (the water cistern in the attic is clinking as it fills back up with water), and an oddly familiar acrid smell coming down the stairs into the living room. Oh well, best to forget all these weird things and go home--only to hear an astonishing explosion come from MacMorris's house as the top half of the house (including MacMorris's bedroom in which MacMorris was reading a book) is blown to smithereens. Well, it seems MacMorris really did have an enemy.

The local police are useless (or are they pretending to be useless to stave off panic and interfering?) and claim that MacMorris likely stored vast quantities of explosives in his attic, forgot about them, they decayed, and then they "went off." Yeah, that makes sense. (Explosives play a really big role in the lives of the people in this novel.) Tim and Liz don't believe it and set about to find out what is really going on. And in the course of their amateur sleuthing, they discover that Major MacMorris was no "Major",  and that "MacMorris isn't his name: he was never in the army but was actually a two-bit actor that got insignificant non-speaking roles in small theaters (one role being a major), and supplemented his income by "fencing goods" for a really scary individual that special investigators within Scotland Yard have been trying to nab for years. As if that isn't enough, Liz and Tim uncover a notorious cat burglar who lives in their village who has been relieving wealthy old ladies of their heavy diamond necklaces for decades. Very quickly Tim and Liz make a lot of dangerous enemies and three times narrowly escape very creative and improbable attempts on their lives. But what the hell do either of those matters have to do with "MacMorris"?

But, as with all cozy mysteries, all the messy threads eventually weave together into a very delicate tapestry in which the bad are punished and the good are rewarded: all those odd casual remarks we read at the start of the book turn out to be important clues which tell us exactly what happened; all the  crates of explosives found tucked into secret sheds and attics successfully clear out all the bad eggs thereby allowing us to sidestep the plodding police and the problematic criminal justice system. And, as I wrote above, Tim gets less broody and Sue who gets less prickly and both figure out how to be with each other without arguing.

Garden Update

Note, first, that all five barrels are covered in yellow enamel ("rust fighting") paint.  Yes, it's the same paint I complained energetically about in an earlier blog entry.  But, in the end, the thought of buying new paint and going through all that palaver was too much so I just suffered through the original plan.  I still think it's too garish but it'll soon be hidden behind plants (one hopes) so it won't matter.  And maybe in Winter when there is nothing alive in the backyard it will look cheerful. Yesterday I reattached the spigots on the bottom of each barrel.  When it isn't ungodly hot out I will reset each of the barrels so that each is .5" lower than the barrel to its left so as each one fills up the surplus water moves on to the next barrel.  Then I can finally attach the hoses and wait for rain--which is predicted to arrive next Wednesday.  Given that we actually haven't had a drought in Flint in the past 20 years (nothing like when we first moved here), I'm not sure anymore why I even bothered creating such a set up.  But it seemed important at the time.

See the blueberries planted in their own private raised bed right in front of the barrels.  So for none have lost either flowers or baby berries from the trauma of being knocked loose from the buckets they have been in for going on 10 years at least. I loaded the soil up with cedar chips and will just have to hope that that makes the soil acidic enough.  

Note, too, the potato bags are filling up.  Each time the plant grows a few inches taller I pile more dirt in. YouTube experts claim that that forces the plant to put more energy into tubers rather than leaves. Believe that if you want. I'm only 4" from the top at this point and once we get to that point the leaves will be left to do their thing while the roots and tubers do theirs out of sight but not out of mind. At the right edge of the photo in the middle you can see the raised beds with arches have been planted out.  I'll take a better photo when they've grown a bit.  I bought an eclectic mix of pumpkins, watermelon, beans and zucchini since everyone claims they are all extremely easy to grow in Michigan and result in dramatically large vines with loads of food.  I actually do not like zucchini and I don't believe anyone does, but everyone grows it here because otherwise it's just too horrible to have a garden be an utter failure.

Most importantly note the Lettuce Grow hydroponics set up.  It is one of two (the other is still in our dining room) and I grow lettuce in it in the winter.  It worked fantastically when I first got it but slowly it's produced less and less fantastic results (leaves drying up, Romaine lettuce tasting bitter).  I wondered if I had just become annoyed with it and was aiming those feelings at the lettuce but decided to give one of the towers one last burst of love.  I took it apart, cleaned all the pieces which is not fun as each section is larger than it looks and JUST BIG ENOUGH to not fit in our kitchen sink. Mud and water sprayed everywhere, but Simon wasn't home so no one is the wiser of how badly it went.  The worst part was schlepping the bottom (shaped like a chemist's beaker) out to the backyard so I could dump out all the brackish water that was sloshing around.  Once I could see all the rotten root pieces and old, funky water that was inside, it became pretty obvious why nothing was growing well or tasted right. The directions clearly state it must be completely cleaned once a year (between winter and spring cycles is recommended).  But I never have as it is, as I just wrote, a really big pain in the ass and bigger pain in the lower back.  Since I went through all the work of cleaning it, moving it, setting it back up, filling it with clean water (which is WAY easier when you have a garden hose to do it rather than using a one gallon pitcher of water filled at the kitchen sink) and fertilizer, I put strawberry plant plugs in each of the plant ports.  Unlike greens, strawberries need to be fertilized and so, since the thing is outside, I decided to take advantage of the willing pollinators in our backyard and grow something that can't grow in our dining room.

You can see a smallish (5" across) circular port hole in the lower half in front. That's a small window you use to top up more water and fertilizer.  Also, that cord coming out is the electric cord that has a timer on it (about 10' from the tower) and plugs into the outlet on the outside of our garage just next to the left most water barrel.  I've tried explaining this before but apparently I didn't do a good job so I'll try again: in the bottom of the tower is a small water pump, the sort you see in fish tanks.  That has a water intake on the side and an output on the top.  Stuck into the pump output hole is a 1" diameter pvc pipe that runs from the top of the pump, up inside the tower, to the very top of the tower--so about 5' up.  At the top of the pipe--INSIDE THE TOWER (and that fact is key)--is a tiny plastic "hat" that stops the water from spouting upward and instead forces the water to spray out, 360 degrees, to the side.  That water then hits the top inside of the tower (the widest part) and then drips down, wiggling down the curvy sides, until it gets back to the bottom of the tower. WHILE it is trailing down the curvy sides, the water runs THROUGH the bundles of plant roots, which grow inside the tower, behind the little port holes--the plant leaves outside the tower getting sunshine and the roots all tucked inside the tower getting water and fertilizer.  Why does the water stick to the curvy sides and not just fall straight down, missing the roots?  I have no idea, but it really does stick to the sides.  With the pump only running for 10 mins every 6 hours in every 24 hour period, why don't the roots dry out and the plants die? Because the plants are growing in a tiny dirt "plug" that fills up the porthole so very little air gets inside the tower--but some air gets in, and that is good because otherwise the plant roots would get soggy and rot, and the plants would be oxygen deprived and die.  Amazing, isn't it?  If only it wasn't so damned annoying to clean. Or, if only it wouldn't freeze solid in winter so that we could leave it outside all year and clean it quickly and easily using a garden hose.  Well, if wishes were horses....

Here is a fig tree I bought for pennies on the dollar at the end of last summer when it was dramatically marked down for clearance. I have no idea what possessed me to do that as figs cannot survive outside in Michigan.  Last winter it was tiny (about 1' tall and 1' wide) and lived in a tiny pot. I brought it inside in October and all the leaves fell off within a few hours. I was certain it was dead and sort of forgot about it.  But then it sprung to life in January, when we have extremely cold but extremely sunny days and the fig branches felt the sunshine, thought it was summer and went to work, growing and leafing out very early--way too early to be put outside. Once I did move it outside I had no idea what to do with it. Finally, yesterday, I resigned myself to the fact that it needed a larger (therefore heavier and harder to move in October) pot.  Figs don't like the kind of soil we have here--too wet and heavy--so it also needed a special mix of cedar mulch, coconut hair (the latest thing which works like peat but is environmentally beneficial because hairy coconut shells populate the Earth in fantastic numbers) and potting soil. Sheesh. In THEORY, the plan is that I let it do its thing all summer and then cut it off at its knees in November, stick it in a dark corner of the basement until April, then put it in the sunroom to warm up in May, and then move it outside in June.  And in THEORY it will get bigger and bigger faster and faster every year until it grows 20' tall and is covered with figs every summer. Seems hard to credit, but that's what other people in Michigan claim.  And I believe them because they have YouTube channels. [The little yellow thing in the middle of the bottom of the picture is a glass shaped mushroom that glows at night because it is wired to a teeny weeny solar panel. It actually looks kind of cool and Simon noted that, not long after I got several of them, the neighbor lady behind us suddenly had her own set of glow in the dark shapes in her backyard.] 

Film review: After Hours (1985)

This is always described as "atypical" for a Martin Scorsese film.  I'll say - it's like some kind of Woody Allen-David Lynch Frankenstein's monster.  As Thomas said of Uncut Gems, it's "thrillingly unpleasant," in that it's just one awkward and exasperating thing after another for the hapless protagonist Paul (Griffin Dunne, whose face is seared in my brain from too-young viewings of American Werewolf in London.  He's perfect in that and this - why wasn't he a bigger star?).  The adjective "Kafkaesque" is overused, but the inexplicable and downright unfair behavior Paul faces throughout the long and exhausting night 

certainly fits the bill.  Everyone has a thin surface layer of normalcy that hides mostly raging narcissism.  The film is the darkest of black comedies, too, as the death of a character who looked like the second romantic lead of the picture is passed off very quickly for laughs.  And at one moment, late in the film, as Paul is hiding on a fire escape from a mob that's tracking him down for something he didn't do, he sees through a window nearby a wife shoot her husband repeatedly in the chest.  After taking just a beat to be aghast (at this point he has very little ghast left), Paul just mutters to himself "I'll probably get blamed for that too."

I'm not going to try to summarize the plot, because there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing (adding to the frustration - it's not even an Odyssey, he just bounces around among the same four or so locations), and while there are repeated strange coincidences, and the ending ties up neatly to the beginning, it really is a lot of "and then..."  I will give you the opening, though, as we see Paul assist a newbie at his wordprocessing job (this film really is a time capsule of early-to-mid 80's technology, alongside a lot of indoor smoking), only to hear the newbie make it clear that this job is shit and he has no intention of staying with it.  This seems to trigger something of an existential crisis for Paul, as he wanders rather dazedly out of the (for some reason) ornate gates in front of the building, only just missing being shut in for the night.  (He will quickly have reason to heartily wish that he had been.)  He seems a bit aimless, and after kicking round his apartment a bit, he goes out to a coffee shop to read Tropic of Cancer.  

It is while he is doing this that a pretty young woman (Rosanna "not Patricia" Arquette, whom I get mixed up with Isabella Rosellini and Natasha Kinski, for some reason) comments on the book, claiming to love it.  She comes over and strikes up a conversation, in the course of which she tells him about her sculptor friend's papier-mâché bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweights.  He says he'd be interested and she gives him her friend's number and leaves.  Back at his apartment, still aimless, he gives the number a call.  Turns out that the young woman (Marcy) is at the sculptor's (Kiki) place, and invites Paul over.  Despite it being nearly midnight, and the place being 40 minutes away by taxi, Paul happily agrees.

The first indication that this is not his night is that the taxi driver is a complete maniac.  This is comically conveyed by literally cartoon-level sped-up footage of the journey, as the cab weaves in and out of traffic.  And, calamity! the one $20 bill Paul has brought with him blows out of the window.  When he tries to tell the taxi driver about this, he squeals off, leaving Paul in the decidedly sketchy part of downtown that the artist's loft is in.  And when he gets to the place, only Kiki is there, a decidedly cool customer, working on her sculpture (which Paul remarks looks like a 3-D version of Munch's "Shriek") in just her bra and a skirt.  Turns out Marcy is out buying some kind of medication (which turns out to be a real McGuffin) and by the time she returns Kiki has passed out in the middle of Paul massaging her shoulders 

while telling her about a traumatic experience in a burn ward.  From there, we bounce among various women - Terri Garr's anachronistic waitress 

(who has another job in a copy store, that is weaponized against Paul), Catherine O'Hara's punky ice cream van owner/operator 

and finally a different papier-mâché sculptor who first saves and then imprisons Paul. 

(As Jami commented, what was with papier-mâché in the 80s?) There are also several barmen/Diner owners/Club doormen that pass in and out of Paul's life, as well as a sizeable portion of what is obviously the gay neighborhood of New York, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes threatening.  Oh, and Cheech and Chong pop up periodically as "friends" of Kiki's whom Paul thinks are thieves, and then turn out to be.  Meanwhile Paul repeatedly takes respite in various bathrooms, 

splashing water on his face as he gets more and more disheveled and wild-eyed (something Dunne certainly has the eyes for), and I felt his pain, as watching the movie really makes you feel like it's the middle of the night and you just really want to get home.

Will Paul get home?  Will he avoid the angry mob?  Will Tom, who was so kind to him, find out that it's sort of Paul's fault that his girlfriend is dead?  Pay attention for not one but two little snit-fits from Paul about papier-mâché bagel paperweights.  Honestly, there's no pleasing some people.  Verdict: why aren't all Scorsese films like this?

The Ten Teacups by Carter Dickson

It's Carter Dickson again with one of his favorite heroes, Sir Henry Merrivale (H.M. to friends--and when did he become a "Sir"? The cost of reading these out of order is that I don't know his story arc), who is acting as an advisor to the London's Metropolitan Police.  (He wears many hats.)  It goes without saying that this is one of those locked room mysteries though a non-standard one--it even features a lecture by H.M. telling us that there are three canonical categories of "locked room mysteries" and this one isn't any of those but a "whole new breed of locked room mysteries"!  Good to have Dickson instruct us to admire his ingenuity through the voice of his most popular character.  This was published in 1937 and is set in that period, but troubles in Europe are never mentioned. What is mentioned frequently is the dramatic class change taking place in London at that time--and no one is happy about it.. [That complaint featured in one of the mysteries by Lorac I reviewed in an earlier blog (with the Scottish Scotland Yard detetective MacDonald), too, so it must have been a big part of the zeitgeist then.]  Here all the characters mention that fantastically gorgeous Victorian homes have been abandoned, have been sittting empty for years, and are going to ruin.  Meanwhile their "back buildings" which face nearby streets (stables, servant houses, carriage houses and so on) are being converted to single family homes and, since those 4, 5 or even larger person families are shoved into tiny buildings, the implication is clear that they are of a lower class and so likely criminal.  Pollution is a theme, too: the old, empty houses are covered in dust to the point that you can't see inside them even with your face pressed up against the glass and the empty streets they line look haunted. Meanwhile the newly occupied "back building" houses are grimy, cheaply renovated by shyster landlords and are predicted to be in a shambles before long. WORSE the city is building the underground and setting up stops RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF FORMERLY WEALTHY STREETS!  Imagine the idea of people who use the underground walking around previously wealthy neighborhoods!  It doesn't bear thinking about, really.  Another theme: the awfulness of police not being allowed to carry guns even though the "Lord Minister knows damned well the criminals have guns--probably bought from Americans!!".  

So this story starts with us meeting a competant albeit loud Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters in his office, sitting at his desk, harrumphing to his side kick, Sergeant Pollard, about his latest large headache: he received an odd letter in the mail which instructs him to be at Number 18 Pendragon Gardens on April 30th at 9:30 pm.  It also states there will be "ten teacups".  While certainly odd on its face we find out that it connects back to a notorious unsolved murder from two years earlier, when the police were also sent a letter that instructed them to be at a different address on a specific date at a specific time where there would be 10 teacups. And (rather unbelievably) the police had staked out the house--seeing no one go in or out--then heard gunshots and found a dead body inside an entirely empty (abandoned) house except for a small table with 10 tea cups arranged in a perfect circle on the table.  The man, a guy named Dartley who matters not a jot for our story other than that he was killed in a locked room, had been shot twice in the back of the head. And, stranger still, these tea cups were no ordinary teacups--they were hundreds of years old, covered in gold and worth (in 1937 money) £2,500!  Obviously robbery wasn't the motive. So if no one was in the building and no one got in or out and (of course) the room was locked from the inside at the time of the murder, how was it done?  The mystery was too much for everyone and thus it stayed unsolved.  And now, it seems, that same crazed murderer is up to his hijinks again!  

At this point, when Masters instructs Pollard to get a hold of Merrivale, we leave the police station and bob in and out of homes to meet various characters that figure in our story:

1. Vance Keating: Our next murder victim.  A young man who is a bit of a blowhard, likes to drink and smoke with his male friends and seduce and drop his women friends.  His main vice (and ultimate Achilles heel) is that he is certain he is more clever than everyone else. (All together, say "Nobody's smart but me!" in a Rumplestiltskin voice ala Shrek 4.)

2. Frances Gale: Vance's girlfriend/fiancee/wife (depending on who you talk to).  Does she love him?  Well, not really, but she loves the idea of being loved. Does Vance love her?  No, not at all. Does she know that?  Yes. She's the kind of female that gets extremely angry, stamps her foot, and storms off when being questioned by police.

3. Philip Keating: Vance's dull cousin: Philip parties less hard and less frequently than Vance does, works more, gambles less, invests more and, generally, watches Vance get all the attention from the sidelines. Philip and Vance both rent rooms in the same apartment building and are in and out of each other's apartments all the time, borrowing things and eavesdropping on secret conversations.  They fight, then get drunk, and then forgive each other--or do they?

4. Ronald Gardner: A friend of both Keating boys, a gun collector (!!), a bit of a shit-stirrer, and desperately pining for Frances Gale.  Does she love him?  Not in the slightest. In fact, she's pretty damned rude to him at every opportunity.

5. Mr. and Mrs. Derwent: Mr. Derwent is an elderly, retired lawyer who married unwisely. His skin and voice are papery but his mind is sharp--even though his much younger (but by no means young) wife tells everyone who will listen to her that his "mind wanders terribly".  He doesn't love his wife (and perhaps never did) but he puts up with her for no obvious reason.  Mrs. Derwent is described as being "curvy" "fulsome" "voluptuous" and "large".  She wears low cut dresses and has an unrealistic pile of surprisingly blonde hair "for someone her age".  She acts (and sometimes speaks) like a baby, but can also have a frightening glint in her eye.  She's also someone who thinks she's smarter than everyone else. She's the character that screams, faints and then surrounds herself with forceful doctors to avoid talking to police. She wants to have a torrid affair with Vance and he wants to have a torrid affair with her--the problem is that both are so busy trying to take advantage of the other financially, that the torrid  affair never happens.

6. Elder Mr. Soar and Young Mr Soar: The owners of a massive premier art and auction house.  They specialize in acquiring valuable items illegally and passing them on to people with a clean title.  Soar senior was also in the blackmailing business which is why he met an untimely end before the events in this book. Young Soar claims he wants to "run a straight business" but is burdened with hundreds of documents collected by his father that reveal all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors of wealthy and influential people. He denies their existence but those in the know know that he has many, many hiding places inside objets d'art.

7. Alfred Bartlet, Vance's valet:  This guy is extremely old and is always peeking into rooms so he can hear what is being said.  But he's also closed-lipped and gives the police the bare minimum when answering their questions, thereby leaving out a LOT of important information--which is going to cost him.

8. W. G. Hawkins, another servant of Vance's: He's less old, less curious and therefore out of danger.  But he also knows nothing and advances the case not at all.

There is a whole slew of police officers that we meet so we can hear phrases like "Lord love a duck!" but they aren't individuals and so I won't get into them.

Two events that occur before Vance's murder are worth mentioning: 

(1) On Monday afternoon, Vance and Gardner are messing around in Vance's apartment with one of Gardner's guns, a western style (American) "shooter" that has a "hair trigger" and needs to be cocked before it is fired each time.  And, because Vance is a putz, he loses control of the gun and it fires wildly knocking the tray of drinks Hawkins was bringing to them.  The gun did not have bullets in it but blanks, yet it needs "wadding" to fire and the wadding (which can be just as deadly if fired close enough to a person) was what knocked the tray and smashed the glasses. This is significant because it tells us about Vance's character (that he's a putz) and that Gardner's gun is deadly dangerous even if it doesn't have bullets in it.

(2) On Tuesday evening, the Derwents have a "murder" party and all those mentioned above who are not servants are invited.  The idea is that, once it is dark out, they turn out all the lights and one person who is "the murderer" has to find and tap a person with a murder "weapon".  Then, the victim waits to a count of 20 or something and screams, and then lays on the floor "dead."  Vance is supposed to go and is intended to be the "murderer." But just hours before the party is set to start he calls Frances and tells her he won't be going, but won't give a reason. Three weapons are placed on the mantle--a paper "knife" covered with aluminum foil, a string shaped into a "noose," and Gardner's gun with blanks in it.  A new murderer is appointed but the party is a drag and everyone leaves early claiming they have headaches.  Everyone sees the gun on the mantle up to 11:00 pm and then after that point no one sees the gun on the mantle.  Since that's the time people are getting coats on and saying their goodbyes, everyone assumes Ronald has collected his gun when he was leaving. Ronald later claims he was too drunk to think about it and so didn't collect it and had no idea where it ended up.

That brings us to Wednesday afternoon: the police surround the appointed "10 teacup house" (they want to catch the would-be murderer, not merely prevent a murder) and watch as Vance goes inside with a song in his heart and a spring in his step. This house, too, is abandoned and empty except for a few items of furniture that were delivered earlier in the day.  Watching and waiting, the police see no one else enter.  Then, at precisely 9:30, a gun is fired, they hear a scream, and then a second shot is fired.  They race in and AGAIN find a locked room.  They burst in and see pretty much the identical scene they saw when they found Dartley's corpse a few years ago: Vance's dead body on the floor with two bullet holes in the back of his neck, a small table with a fancy (and extremely expensive) gold silk cloth on it and 10 teacups on that.  One chair at the table and a divan off to the side, under a window.  And there on the floor, next to Vance, is Gardner's gun last seen on the Derwent's mantle the night before.

Well!  Needless to say the police are stumped.  Even H.M is stumped!  Then the bulk of the rest of the book is spent getting to know these rather unlikable people while seemingly getting no closer to solving the riddle: everyone has an alibi and, anyway, no one could have gotten into the room or left after the murder without the police seeing them! And what does Vance have to do with Dartley anyway? It looks very much like another Dartley embarrassment for the police of London. THEN Masters gets a third letter, again, telling him to be at a certain house at a certain time and to plan to see, you guessed it, 10 teacups. Now it looks like the murderer is just toying with the police.  So, once again, we have the same set up: an abandoned house surrounded by police hiding in bushes, covering all exits and entrances.  Then, later that afternoon Young Mr. Soar enters the building.  (Why would he do that given all everyone knows about the Ten Teacups?) After dark, but before 9:30, another person enters the backdoor. Then a THIRD person enters the backdoor just seconds before 9:30 pm. So the police rush the house and find Mr. Soar alive and well, talking with Mr Dermant. They don't like each other, but each has information the other wants. Both seem completely stymied to see the police, claiming (a) neither knows anything about a "third person", (b) there have been no gun shots, and (c) no one has killed anyone and no one has been killed.  

Well, unsurprisingly, the police aren't buying that and search the house stem to stern--tapping on walls, pulling up loose floor boards and checking loose wallpaper.  NOTHING!  Until, one police officer finds a freshly bloodied knife wrapped up in newspaper and shoved into a crevice between baseboards.  Ok, that looks bad...but where is the corpse? 

So everyone significant assembles in the almost empty parlor: there are two chairs, both covered with white sheets and a small table.  No tea cups. Masters, Pollard and H.M. stand about taking turns asking questions.  Soar sits on one chair and Derwent on the other. Eventually all sorts of secrets come out but nothing that brings them closer to solving any of the murders. One point of interest, though, is that as Derwent reveals all his sordid secrets, he gets calmer and (seemingly) more at ease--like the weight of the world is lifting. But Soar gets sweatier and sweatier, until his eyes are wildly darting about and he's fidgeting madly.  Finally he jumps up screaming, "I can't take it anymore!", pulls the sheet off the "chair" he's been sitting on and reveals the fresh corpse (secured into a chair shape with ropes and boards) of Hawkins who had been stabbed to death.

Well! Does that mean Soar killed Dartley, Vance and Hawkins?  Nope.  Did he kill any of them? Nope.  So who did?  Well, that's so complicated and bizarre you just have to read it for yourself.  And, as with all Dickson books, make sure you take copious notes as you do.

[This time Dickson does us the favor of footnoting previous pages that prove we were told all the relevant facts we need to solve the murders ourselves. The book ends with H.M. explaining everything, as he always does, to Pollard and Masters as they sit in his favorite pub having a drink and a large meal.  Every time H.M. says, "And when XX said YY..." there is the footnote number referring us to the page on which that character said exactly that. Dickson said he was accused so many times of making up facts to support impossible solutions that he started this footnote system to prove to people that, if they simply weren't so stupid, then could figure out the "mysteries", too.]

Garden Update

So these are the raised beds in the backyard with the arches assembled (finally--and I agree with everyone on Instagram who gripes: "Man, these things are overpriced!"). Now I have to fill each bed with seemingly endless loads of potting soil and mulch and compost ...  Officially, the first day of planting where we live is June 1st so I'm not actually too far behind schedule, which is sort of amazing all things considered.

Here are some of my growing bags filled with sweet potato "slips"--I have no idea why they are called that.  Growing potatoes really couldn't be simpler: you forget about them in the back of your fridge and when they have long stems you either (for white potatoes) cut them into small pieces, each of which should have an "eye" or stem growing from it or (for sweet potatoes) pluck the stem from the tato, stick it in water until roots form, and then plop that rooted stem into dirt.  Potatoes love crappy, rocky, clay soil so even better.  And since you have to "hill up" white potato stems and leaves, the bags are good because you can just top it up as the plants get bigger and bigger. And the black bags get nice and warm in the sunshine, so the tatos think it's July.

And here are the white potatoes (with leaves that look nothing like sweet potatoes) in bags about half filled with dirt.  They were doing absolutely nothing until about 3 days ago and suddenly each plant was about 4" taller every time I looked at it.  It wasn't even that hot--but it was just after June 1st and the potatoes know such things.  The really cool thing about sweet potatoes is that, if you do not pluck off the stems but just leave them on the potato, you can stick the whole thing into an aquarium (suspended so the potato is only about halfway into the water, the roots are in the water and the leaves out of the water) and the roots will oxygenate the water, clean out nitrogen (which kills fish) and also gives the fish something to nibble on, keeping the roots under control and prompting the tato to grow new roots. Isn't nature amazing?  

The rain collection system thus far.  Yes, I wrote a few weeks ago that I hated the yellow color. I still don't love it. But the thought of going to Home Depot and dealing with the place was worse than dealing with the paint.  And, anyway, with all the stuff growing back there, it won't be long before no one can see the things anyway.  So three are ready for set up.  I have two left, both primed, and waiting for yellow paint--which I ran out of and should get more from tomorrow's Amazon delivery.  For those with discerning eyes, yes, that is rhubarb in front of barrel #2.  And, yes, that is a blueberry bush inside the raised bed but in an orange bucket because I haven't yet gotten enough dirt to fill in the bed yet. The plan for those bushes is to get more dirt and then transfer the bushes out of the buckets and into their very own blueberry exclusive bed.  Blueberries are  super hardy but they require extremely boggy, acidic soil--which we absolutely do not have in our yard.  So about 8 or 10 years ago I got TINY sprigs and put them into those buckets and filled the buckets with pine chips, sand, straw and a BIT of potting soil.  Amazingly, they did all right.  But they really need a lot more love than I've given them. I've never pruned them, which (people on YouTube tell me) they "like" occasionally.  The trick is how "occasionally"--not every year as they flower on old growth.  But not too infrequently as then the old growth stops flowering and you have a bundle of useless sticks.  Why is everything so hard? I still can't keep straight which clematis vines need to be cut down to the ground each year and which need to be LEFT ALONE.

The Mysterious Badman: A Yorkshire Bibliomystery by W. F. Harvey

I decided to go with the pulp fiction sort of cover again because Why Not?

This is my first W. F. Harvey book.  Apparently Harvey only dabbled in mystery books and mainly wrote scary/horror/ghost stories that sold huge numbers. One extremely popular short story was "The Beast With Five Fingers," written in 1919, and made into an immensely successful movie (has a 95% Rotten Tomatos approval rating) starring Robert Alda (yes, Alan Alda's dad) and Peter Lorre.  

So what about this novel?  In short, it's pretty good but not amazing.  It has all the right elements: a very odd beginning, a mysterious death that the police put down as caused by suicide, followed by another death the police call an "accident," and a trio of amateur investigators who are certain that both deaths were murder and that another might soon occur as well. The trio are: Mr. Digby, a justice of the peace (not sure that that is, now that I think about it), who is, I'd guess, in his 40s and has a lot of permanent bachelor sort of hobbies: he collects underappreciated landscape paintings that increase in value eventually, he likes to go on walking holidays, and he stuffs his pockets with an extremely odd assortment of items that always end up being useful (compass, string, pocket knife--you get the idea); Mr. Digby's nephew, Jim, who is (I would guess) in his late 20s as he is a physician/surgeon but "junior" to a senior surgeon who dumps the weekend and middle-of-the-night cases onto Jim; Diana, eventual love interest for Jim (of course) and daughter of local powerful and much resented politician, Sir Richard Mottram. (So the cover: that's Jim and Diana in front, Mr. Digby in the upper center and the first corpse in the middle right.)

Ok, backstory: Sir Richard has a son, unimaginitively named Richard.  Richard jr had "an issue" (never explained in detail) with a woman and so killed her.  If convicted of murder he would be executed.  To avoid that (because he loved Richard jr?  Probably not.  But certainly to avoid scandal that would ruin his political career) Sir Richard intervenes behind the scenes and convinces people that Richard is "insane" and so cannot be arrested. He can be, however, locked up in an insane asylum for the rest of his life. However THAT could incur another sort of scandal so what Sir Richard did was set up a story that Richard jr got a bad case of wanderlust and went off to Africa or somewhere where no one cares whether or not murderous white people go there, legally changed Richard jr.'s name to Neville Monkbarns (!) and then had "Neville" institutionalized in a hospital the next town over. Ok, that was years ago--who cares now? Well...

So here is how the novel starts: Mr. Digby is on a walking holiday and soon to be joined by his nephew, Jim, for part of it (not longer because Jim can't get time off from work).  He's renting a room owned by a bookseller and his wife in a little town up north. The bookstore is below the house and Mr. Digby has a small but comfortable room on the second floor in the back. He is fed bacon and eggs every day for breakfast. One day Mrs. Lavender (that's the book store owner's wife) tells him that they would desperately love to go to the funeral of an old dear friend, but they daren't leave the store unattended. Mr. Digby instantly steps in and says he'll do it for fun. They set off just before lunch and Mr. Digby gets comfortable in the bookstore, browsing for a book that appeals. A few people step in looking for cheap novels to read while on busses and such, nothing complicated.  Around 4:00, a lean and mean looking man comes in and marches straight up to Mr. Digby and asks if he has a copy of The Mysterious Mr. Badman by John Bunyan.  Mr. Digby has never heard of it and they search the shelves together, not finding it. Mr. Digby explains he's just an interim bookstore employee and promises to ask Mr. Lavender to see if he can find a copy. The guy grumbles and leaves. An hour later in comes a fat, red-faced sneering sort of fellow.  He makes a show of looking around but then approaches the counter and asks, as if he's not really interested, "Do you have The Mysterious Mr. Badman by John Bunyan?"  Amazed, Digby says he knows they do not as another person just asked for it and they couldn't find it. This news seems to alarm the guy and he does a quick 180 and trots out of the store.  Then, some time after that, a happy go-lucky guy dressed as a chauffer comes in, pulls out a note, and reads, "Do you have a copy of The Mysterious Mr. Badman--" "By John Bunyan," interupts Digby.  Astonished and amused, the chauffer says, "Yeah! That's right, guv!"  By now Digby has moved beyond amasement to mystification and asks, "Why does everyone suddenly want this book?"  Of course the chauffer has no idea, he was sent on an errand by his boss. 

THEN not 30 minutes later a young kid comes in with a stack of books and asks if he can have money for them.  And, to no one's surprise but Digby's, there among the stack is a copy of The Mysterious Mr. Badman by John Bunyan.  Digby pays far more than the books are worth out of his own pocket and finds out from the boy that a Miss Diana, up from the Mottram house, is cleaning stuff out and told him he could keep whatever he could get for the books.  Ok, fair enough, thinks Digby.  He looks through the book, reads a bit, but can see NOTHING remotely interesting about the printing, cover, or the story.

All right a few days go by and Jim is on his way.  Digby is gearing up to hit the trails with him and while he waits, he walks around the edge of town a bit--and runs into an extremely distraught Diana.  She says she's seen a body and--oops, she's weak with faint.  Digby goes to where she points and finds a man--the same lean and mean looking guy who asked for a copy of Mr. Badman--dead as a doornail.  The local doctor isn't around so Jim, who has shown up to town by now, offers to help the coronor and local police.  He examines the body--yes, it could be suicide but it also could be murder (he was shot plumb in the middle of his forehead) but since the gun is loosely placed in his hand, the police go with suicide.  Anyway, there is only one set of tracks (excusing Digby's of course--and, no, the tracks that are there aren't Diana's). So Digby and Jim spend the day going over what they both know, but can't make any sense of it.  They examine the book again and THIS time find that two pages have been glued together just at the edges. Once separated, a small, handwritten note pops out--and it's a confession by Richard jr!  What does it all mean?

At this point, Digby suggests meeting up with Diana--the daughter of Sir Richard, remember--to ask what it could be about. And they do.  And Jim and Diana lock eyes.  And she tells the story of her brother.  And the three decide that somehow three men hell bent on blackmailing Sir Richard found out about the note (but how?). And then they decide to do a Scooby Doo and solve the murder mystery.  Barely are the words out of their mouths when they find out that Fat Angry man was "accidentally" hit by a car and died of his serious wounds after being taken to a hospital.  Well, if they had doubts before, they don't now.

The story at that point gets incredibly complicated with our three heroes running off into three different directions to gather clues, meet up at various inns and cafes to have coffee and catch each other up, get kidnapped by a Bad Guy, escape, plot revenge, get kidnapped again but this time by the Bad Guy's henchman, escape, plot some more...THEN Digby runs into a very angry man running across some boggy park area and, taking a leap of faith, asks if he is Richard jr.  He is!! Say what???  Well, not only did Bad Guy intend to blackmail Sir Richard for facilitating his son from escaping the hangman's noose, but Bad Man arranged an "escape" for Richard jr with the idea that Bad Man would then notify the plice, Richard Jr would get caught, and then (finally) have to face the consequences of his (by now) many crimes.  (Why does Bad Guy hate Sir Richard so much?  And why did the other two hate Sir Richard?  Well, one guy was the poor murdered girl's father and the other a greedy blackmailer--it wasn't personal. Why did the third guy hate Sir Richard? Never explained.) 

How are we to get out of this mess?  Don't worry, Mr. Digby uses reason and common sense and all is set right--and Bad Guy has an "unfortunate accident" which means the police never need find out what  crime(s) he, or Sir Richard, committed. And then Jim and Diana get engaged to be married and Mr. Digby gets excited at the thought of teaching Jim's future sons all his (Mr. Digby's) knowledge about fishing, walking tours and landscape paintings.

In many ways the book is absolutely typical: murders, uninterested local police, brilliant amateurs at hand, evil plotting, ingenious escapes, love, marriage...blah, blah.  But none of the bad people are punished for their crimes--indeed, the criminal justice system is entirely irrelevant to the story. But, like a good Greek tragedy, bad schemes are punished--unless you are Sir Richard who suffers no harm whatsoever (unless having a murderous son IS the punishment) and, we find out at the very end of the book, goes on to win the next election by a landslide.  

Jack on the Gallows Tree by Leo Bruce

 

I've not read anything by Leo Bruce before--another author who wrote under several different names and published LOADS of books--so I went in skeptical that he could live up to the likes of Cristianna Brand or Carter Dickson.  But having finished this, I think he's easily on a par with them.  Apparently Leo Bruce was hugely successful until the public discovered he was homosexual and from that point on he became extremely private, choosing to not publish any more books. There are no overt "homosexual tones" in this book, but the main character is a single, young man who seemingly has no interest in women and who has a younger male student as his sidekick and lackey. If that is a signal to gay readers that Bruce thinks they are morally acceptable, they are more sensitive readers than I am since I only thought about that once I read a bit of Bruce's life history.

Ok, so what's going on here? The book was published in 1960 events take place at that time. The main character is Carolus Deene (yes, really) who has solved many mysteries before so by the time this book starts his methods and personality are assumed to be known by the readers.  He's a senior history master at a fictional school or university for males only and, to the shame and humilation of his adminstrators, solves murder mysteries for intellectual exercise. Indeed he works murder into every history lesson and that's why his students adore him. Carolus works with a police detective who tolerates him well enough and this enables Carolus to attain a perfect success record, but that doesn't make it an acceptable pastime according to the headmaster. The novel begins with Carolus having jaundice just before the end of the term. The headmaster, eating breakfast and reading his newspaper, sees headlines refer to a crime wave that is "sweeping" the nation--and (horror) one murder just happened in the same spa town that Carolus has been ordered to go to for his jaundice treatments. Imagining the negative publicity as Carolus attempts to solve yet another murder, the headmaster leaps into action and convinces the school doctor to order Carolus to a "less murdery" spa town. And off Carolus goes to a boring town where no one ever gets murdered. BUT just after Carolus arrives, an especially grusome pair of murders occur and Carolus is delighted to have something to fill his boring days spent in large rooms with territorial old people who gobble up all the tea treats. And into this situation arrives Rupert Priggley, one of the older boys, who is supposed to be staying with a retired teacher to get desperately needed tutoring, but decides to assist Carolus in his investigations instead.  Carolus doesn't actually want Priggely getting under his feet, particularly since Priggley's contributions to conversations focus on how little progress Carolus has made and griping about how many errands Carolus orders Priggley to complete in a day. But, Priggley gives Carolus an opportunity to explain things which immensely helps us readers see into his thinking.

Carolus sets to work by pumping the locals for information. Bruce's description of all the characters in this book is masterful: while the novel is told from Carolus's point of view (slightly--we aren't actually in his head but are seeing the world through him), the personalities of the characters are entirely revealed through their conversations--by their speech patterns, word choices, resentments, hints and allegations. One parking lot attendant is a hopeless hypochondriac and an older couple are nudists who eat nothing but seaweed stew and "nutloaf".  According to them, everything, from television and movies to having pets to attending church "poison minds and bodies."  Excellent story telling.  And, of course, none of their stories fit together as everyone has their own perspective on what happened and why.  What did happen?  Well, two elderly ladies were strangled in one night, their dead bodies arranged in a sort of funereal pose, and each holding one long stemmed white lily. One lady was killed in her own living room and the other in her car, and then carried to a local quarry where she was laid out to be discovered. Ok, that's grisly, so what's the deal with these two ladies?  Nothing.  That's the mystery part: neither are rich, neither have huge inheritances, neither have enemies or remotely interesting histories, and neither even has anything to do with the other!  None of the prime suspects for one are prime suspects for the other. So who would possibly do this?  Of course the local police and everyone in town think it's a madman from the city who acted on inexplicable impulse--because that's the way the world is now. (It's the 1960's after all.)

For the next two weeks Carolus and Priggley travel hither and yon all around the tiny spa town, interviewing witnesses, eavedropping on gossip in the local bar, checking footprints and exchanging information with his old friend, Inspector John Moore, who was assigned to the case by London. I won't give it away as it's actually an incredibly simple and straightforward solution, only mysterious because the town is full of cranks and rubes who don't understand the significance of anything in front of their eyes and so are TERRIBLE witnesses to events--exactly what a cozy murder mystery should be.