What of Fletcher’s place within the period as one of its most prolific authors? Fletcher has accurately been described as ‘a journeyman writer … a true professional who knew what his readers wanted (and wanted in quantity) and produced what was needed’. His sleuths were mostly young inexperienced men in unexpected situations, who display energy, dedication and courage to solve problems and uncover hidden truths—quite different to the typical Golden Age professional detectives. His mysteries were well-constructed tales, written with zest and appealing spontaneity; they contain original, ingenious problems, often involving fraud and clever swindles as well as murder, with rapid-paced thrilling incidents and workmanlike storylines, leading to logical but often surprising conclusions. Barzun and Taylor praise Fletcher’s ‘true knack of storytelling and ability to create atmosphere’. Another commentator has written that ‘his stories and characters linger in the mind, his yarns are perfect for their period, and he writes with humour and compassion and not a little empathy and insight’.
Edward Powys Mather, better known as ‘Torquemada’, who reviewed mystery fiction and compiled cryptic crosswords for the Observer in the 1930s, completed Fletcher’s unfinished novel Todmanhawe Grange (1937) after the author’s death, and wrote an Introduction with this tribute: ‘It may be said that with the late J.S. Fletcher, Yorkshireman, journalist, historian and nature lover, the detective story was only a parergon; yet he played a considerable part in its literary development, and the earliest books on his long list of mystery stories were worthy pioneers in an army which has since invested England in its hundreds of thousands’. Fletcher’s novels were translated into fifteen European languages, and even Chinese. His considerable international success throughout the 1920s fuelled the demand for and growth of crime and detective fiction; it also encouraged many of the Golden Age writers who followed and, ironically, have outlasted him in popularity.
And the starting point for this achievement was The Middle Temple Murder.
NIGEL MOSS
June 2018
AS a rule, Spargo left the Watchman office at two o’clock. The paper had then gone to press. There was nothing for him, recently promoted to a sub-editorship, to do after he had passed the column for which he was responsible; as a matter of fact he could have gone home before the machines began their clatter. But he generally hung about, trifling, until two o’clock came. On this occasion, the morning of the 22nd of June, 1912, he stopped longer than usual, chatting with Hacket, who had charge of the foreign news, and who began telling him about a telegram which had just come through from Durazzo. What Hacket had to tell was interesting: Spargo lingered to hear all about it, and to discuss it. Altogether it was well beyond half-past two when he went out of the office, unconsciously puffing away from him as he reached the threshold the last breath of the atmosphere in which he had spent his midnight. In Fleet Street the air was fresh, almost to sweetness, and the first grey of the coming dawn was breaking faintly around the high silence of St Paul’s.
Spargo lived in Bloomsbury, on the west side of Russell Square. Every night and every morning he walked to and from the Watchman office by the same route—Southampton Row, Kingsway, the Strand, Fleet Street. He came to know several faces, especially amongst the police; he formed the habit of exchanging greetings with various officers whom he encountered at regular points as he went slowly homewards, smoking his pipe. And on this morning, as he drew near to Middle Temple Lane, he saw a policeman whom he knew, one Driscoll, standing at the entrance, looking about him. Further away another policeman appeared, sauntering. Driscoll raised an arm and signalled; then, turning, he saw Spargo. He moved a step or two towards him. Spargo saw news in his face.
‘What is it?’ asked Spargo.
Driscoll jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the partly open door of the lane. Within, Spargo saw a man hastily donning a waistcoat and jacket.
‘He says,’ answered Driscoll, ‘him, there—the porter—that there’s a man lying in one of them entries down the lane, and he thinks he’s dead. Likewise, he thinks he’s murdered.’
Spargo echoed the word.
‘But what makes him think that?’ he asked, peeping with curiosity beyond Driscoll’s burly form. ‘Why?’
‘He says there’s blood about him,’ answered Driscoll. He turned and glanced at the oncoming constable, and then turned again to Spargo. ‘You’re a newspaper man, sir?’ he suggested.
‘I am,’ replied Spargo.
‘You’d better walk down with us,’ said Driscoll, with a grin. ‘There’ll be something to write pieces in the paper about. At least, there may be.’ Spargo made no answer. He continued to look down the lane, wondering what secret it held, until the other policeman came up. At the same moment the porter, now fully clothed, came out.
‘Come on!’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll show you.’
Driscoll murmured a word or two to the newly-arrived constable, and then turned to the porter.
‘How came you to find him, then?’ he asked
The porter jerked his head at the door which they were leaving.
‘I heard that door slam,’ he replied, irritably, as if the fact which he mentioned caused him offence. ‘I know I did! So I got up to look around. Then—well, I saw that!’
He raised a hand, pointing down the lane. The three men followed his outstretched finger. And Spargo then saw a man’s foot, booted, grey-socked, protruding from an entry on the left hand.
‘Sticking out there, just as you see it now,’ said the porter. ‘I ain’t touched it. And so—’
He paused and made a grimace as if at the memory of some unpleasant thing. Driscoll nodded comprehendingly.
‘And so you went along and looked?’ he suggested. ‘Just so—just to see who it belonged to, as it might be.’
‘Just to see—what there was to see,’ agreed the porter. ‘Then I saw there was blood. And then—well, I made up the lane to tell one of you chaps.’
‘Best thing you could have done,’ said Driscoll. ‘Well, now then—’
The little procession came to a halt at the entry. The entry was a cold and formal thing of itself; not a nice place to lie dead in, having glazed white tiles for its walls and concrete for its flooring; something about its appearance in that grey morning air suggested to Spargo the idea of a mortuary. And that the man whose foot projected over the step was dead he had no doubt: the limpness of his pose certified to it.
For a moment none of the four men moved or spoke. The two policemen unconsciously stuck their thumbs in their belts and made play with their fingers; the porter rubbed his chin thoughtfully—Spargo remembered afterwards the rasping sound of this action; he himself put his hands in his pockets and began to jingle his money and his keys. Each man had his own thoughts as he contemplated the piece of human wreckage which lay before him.
‘You’ll notice,’ suddenly observed Driscoll, speaking in a hushed voice, ‘you’ll notice that he’s lying there in a queer way—same as if—as if he’d been put there. Sort of propped up against that wall, at first, and had slid down, like.’
Spargo was taking in all the details with a professional eye. He saw at his feet the body of an elderly man; the face was turned away from him, crushed in against the glaze of the wall, but he judged the man to be elderly because of grey hair and whitening whisker; it was clothed in a good, well-made suit of grey check cloth—tweed—and the boots were good: so, too, was the linen cuff which projected from the sleeve that hung so limply. One leg was half doubled under the body; the other was stretched straight out across the threshold; the trunk was twisted to the wall.