Haunts and Hants

I HAVE several more interesting methods of wooing sleep than the hoary one of counting sheep jumping over a fence. What these methods are I shall not here explain, because what seems entertaining and beneficial to one person very frequently strikes another as supremely foolish. Take stamp collecting, for example. . . . However, I must not digress. Suffice it to say, then, that on a recent night I found slumber difficult to cajole, and, casting about for a mental opiate, I lighted on one — for some time unused — that had on former occasions worked like a charm.

This method was to review my recollections of England — a country of which I am very fond — and to concentrate my attention on picturesque bits of scenery, such as ancient walled towns, wide sweeping moorlands, the mysterious fen country, the coombs and cliffs of Devon. Very well, said I, I will concentrate on York — that old gray town with the stately cathedral, Roman ruins, massive walls, huddles of little houses honeycombed with quaint lanes and secret passageways. I did so — and immediately found myself thinking of a murder that had been committed in a York draper’s shop; not a romantic, historical murder such as might lull the senses, but a peculiarly mean and despicable murder committed solely for greed. What’s this? I said, half starting from my pillow. Oh, yes, the body was found in a window seat, where it had been hidden for years, and the criminal when caught turned out to be a most respectable-seeming alderman. That’s one of J. S. Fletcher’s stories.

York evidently would n’t do. I searched for a more somnolent locale and focused on the Norfolk broads — aforetime a favorite hunting ground, with its little twisting streams by which the Norsemen wound their way to the Isle of Ely. This was better. . . . My eyelids drooped. Then abruptly I saw a small stone cottage, set on a lonely mud bank in the heart of the fens. An evil-faced woman was drinking gin in the kitchen while her husband sharpened a knife. Yes, they were going to do for the stranger in the front room and bury him in the rushes. They were going to kill half a dozen before they themselves were rounded up by cautious inspectors from New Scotland Yard. I thumped my pillow viciously. Norfolk, I realized, was now completely dominated by E. Phillips Oppenheim.

There was Devon, however — a lovely, idyllic country, especially on the south shore, where roses bloom all winter and the simple fisher folk sail their quaint yawls. That was good; that would soothe me, send me to sleep. I thought of Exmouth and Torquay. My hair began to stir. There was a red-bearded man leaning on a gate. Who was he? Why did he stare so fixedly at that jagged rock that thrust up from the bay? Of course—because it was there that he had sunk his half brother’s corpse, weighted with stones in the pockets. I remembered the story. Was it Eden Phillpotts or another who wrote it? Never mind, I groaned, now more wideawake than ever.

England — what had happened to England, that deliciously reposeful country? I would try another cast — the country houses of the fine old county families, hitherto sacrosanct. I walked up through the park, passed the yews, stepped jauntily across the terrace, opened the French windows, and set foot in the paneled library. I knew it! An exquisitely dressed man with a flower in his buttonhole was lying full length on the rug with a knife protruding from his shirt front. There would be a great outcry by all the guests at the house party, and presently the little Belgian, M. Poirot, would arrive and electrify everyone by his powers of ratiocination. The country house? Why, it had been taken over, lock, stock, and barrel, by Agatha Christie.

In desperation I thought of Charles Lamb’s old phrase, ‘The sweet security of city streets,’ — or something to that effect, — and turned my attention to the Strand, Fleet Street, the Inns of Court, the cloisters of the Temple. I saw barristers in their wigs, rabbitfaced clerks scurrying about. Then a distinguished-looking gentleman descended from a taxicab. No need to look at him twice — he was unquestionably the celebrated Dr. Thorndyke, lawyer and medico in one. He would be coming from the British Museum, where a superannuated antiquarian had just been found slain in front of a mummy case with an amulet in his hand. A difficult crime to unravel, but Dr. Thorndyke would do it, or R. Austin Freeman would want to know the reason why.

The little pubs by the river — No, no, they were the haunts of the gunmen of Edgar Wallace or Sax Rohmer’s Chinamen. I was startled, wide-awake with amazement. Was it possible that England — every part of it — had become to my mind simply the setting for the most stupendous crimes? I could n’t believe it. But on mature reflection I realize that it is largely so.

American travelers used to stand in Baker Street and look with a certain awe at the modest dwelling that once housed Sherlock Holmes. That was only one locality and the master detective was but a single individual among England’s millions. But to-day, what with Scotland Yard pouring its hordes of sleuths all over the place from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End— No, no, it won’t do. England’s reputation for law and order — and incidentally her power of lulling me to sleep — is being seriously jeopardized by her novelists.