The book of Bookish

Thursdays. Never could get the hang of them, as someone once said. Anyway, my good lady wife Trottie and I decided to test the young turks on their knowledge of The Trade, as I persist in calling my vocation (bookselling, not crime-solving). In the midst of much quizzing on “foxing” and “duodecimo”, in walks Mr Baseheart, erstwhile Air Raid Warden of this parish, with a bit of a conundrum. Can I help a mutual friend who has fallen into the clutches of a – deep breath – spiritualist?

Well, you dear diary or dear future reader know my feelings on this matter. Unrepeatable. So I’ll repeat them. Such people are grief-leeches. Unconscionable rogues whose shroud-waving and tatty Victorian tricks continue (bafflingly) to beguile millions. The latest in this long line of velvet-swaddled poseurs rejoices in the name of Harold Terence Sneed. The name rang a bell (ding-dong) and, having accepted Mr Baseheart’s plea to help, Trottie, Jack, Nora and I set out to find the truth.

The truth, though, has a nasty habit of proving elusive…

Saturday

A much better day all round, I’ve always thought, coming off the back of the Mardi Gras that is Friday evening and refulgent with possibilities. A dance at the Locarno, a Bette Davis picture at the Rialto, a sidecar at the Walsingham. And perhaps if one is lucky, a stolen glance on the Northern Line. A glance held too long. A certain liquidity of the eye…

None such this particular Saturday, alas. Much street-tramping and inquiring into the habits of Harold Sneed Esq. Did I mention the séance? Oh yes, there was a séance. Even for such a disreputable profession as Sneed’s, this was a corker. The full works on display: heavy breathing, twittering birdsong, vocalisation of the dear departed who, in time-honoured fashion, never has much that is profound to say.

But there we were, hands clasped – or rather wrists – around the table, the lights dimmed, the atmosphere sepulchral. And then – revelations! For us all, but particularly for young Jack, who suddenly found his memento mori having more impact than he’d bargained for. It was, as they used to say, a bit of a facer. But more of that anon.

Wednesday

I am a terrible diarist. I don’t mean the contents themselves, which I pride myself veer from the pleasingly domestic to the pleasingly outré – as Oscar Wilde said, one should always have something sensational to read in the train. No, rather it’s the commitment that eludes me. The desire to sit, like Proust in his cork-lined room on Boulevard Haussmann, and record the minutiae. Better a full life and an empty diary, I always say. But occasionally I manage to drag out my Conway Stewart and scribble a few lines, this time to record the curious business of the Kleinmann family of (off-) Savile Row.

A search for a Bulgarian edition of Moby-Dick successfully concluded (hidden, it transpired under some pre-war tins of whale meat; Whale Meat Again, as Vera Lynn might sing), into the shop marched Inspector Ernest Bliss of Bow Street on the horns of a dilemma. He’s always on the horns of one dilemma or another, which is why he likes to pop in and consult me from time to time. Well, a lot if truth be told. This is not down to any deficiencies as a policeman. Far from it. E Bliss Esq is one of the stoutest and most reliable of His Majesty’s Constabulary. I would happily trust body and soul to his care and have done on many occasions, not least that extraordinary business in Switzerland, 1940. But I’ve written about that elsewhere, I think.

But today, the inspector brought a conundrum – a 75-year-old tailor, Max Kleinmann, who claimed to have killed a stranger in his shop. According to the Inspector, the tailor’s story didn’t add up, and I had to agree. But on the floor of that shop lay a gentleman called Martin Eden. A perfect English gentleman. Dead as a turbot…

Thursday

Another Thursday. And into this strange brew we can add India Flynn, a unidextrous photographer who seems to have an unhealthy interest in the dead body on the floor of Kleinmann Ltd. And also the queer, tweedy presence of a Mrs Calthrop (not her real name, one suspects), who has a look of Dietrich and a duck-handled umbrella which serves many purposes. As I said to Mrs Book and my other partners in crime-solving, an east wind seems to be blowing across this case and a special present for Jack looks like having explosive consequences. Nora is already writing this up as “Double Breasted Death”, but I told her to wait until everything was worked out. It all comes out in the wash, after all…

Tuesday

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Christmas, it feels, is always coming. Faster and faster as the years race by. But after the privations and the horror of war, lord how delightful is the prospect of this Yule. Before that, however, owing to the labours of a certain man with an eye patch and a great deal of string-pulling, young Jack Blunt and I are able to travel abroad. And not just to anywhere. To Germany! There, God willing, to answer some long-pondered mysteries and to lay a few ghosts. For in the picturesque village of Würl (for which picture postcards might have been invented) stands the imposing Schloss Von Bode, ancestral home of… well, all that is recorded elsewhere. But it seems I might finally be able to solve the mystery off what befell my darling Felix all those years ago. Jack says he’s ready to confront the truth. But am I? Am I?

Monday

And not just any old Monday. St Nicholas’ Eve, which, in this part of the world (in Germany now in case you hadn’t realised, a shattered and shabby land through which Jack and I steamed but lately) is a big deal, bigger perhaps than Christmas itself. And even if there has been a war, the ancient traditions adhere. What we hadn’t reckoned on as we tramped through the snow towards the castle (incognito of course) was murder. And murder in the apparent form of a creature from a German fairy tale. It seems our little sojourn to the former Fatherland is a going to be a Grimm tale indeed…

Sunday

And here I am, not keeping up with the diary again. So I suppose I’ll have to go back and fill in the fiddly bits, about the Duchess Alberta and the Second Folio. “Of coal then sack then switch of birch.” And the quality of mercy which, if not strained, was certainly tested to breaking point…

What an eventful year 1946 has been! The contents page of one’s life, it seems, is in a perpetual state of re-editing. Erratum slips aplenty. But perhaps, in the end, a book well worth savouring…