"The lamps are going out all over Europe..."- Edward Grey
The first conflict of interests on a
global scale, usually referred to as The Great War or The First World War, is
often cited as the start of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, however, there
are barely any war-time set mysteries from the period – unlike the abundance of
World War II mysteries from twenty odd years later.
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| "The Signaling from Scarthoe Hill..." |
Well, I found a rare World War I
spy/detective story when thumbing through my copy of Locked Room Mysteries
and Other Impossible Crimes (1991), "Flashlights" by Laurence Clarke,
published in the May issue of The Strand Magazine of 1918. The story is
illustrated by Warwick Reynolds. I had flicked pass the entry of the story
before, but it was an uncollected, stand-alone story and only just noticed the
publication date. It was a public domain story and available, fully
illustrated, here as part of the collected issues from January to June.
The impossibility of "Flashlights" are
the streaks of magnesium-lights being sent up to the sky from Scarthoe Hill,
signals to German submarines, and they've cost to British navy two ships as a
consequence. To stop the signals, Captain of the Coastguard, Evan Carlton,
hermitically sealed off the hillside with a cordon of troops, but the flares
persevere. Carlton himself witnessed, through a telescope, the flares being
sent up and the barrier of soldiers closing in on the spot where the light
emanated from – only to discover the place completely deserted. No. The
solution has more originality than revealing the spy was wearing a soldier's
uniform and blended in with the cordon sanitaire, but the answer does own some
debt to ideas from its time and its predecessors.
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| A Military Draft (Get it!?) |
A special-agent attached to the Admiralty
Secret Service, Terrence Milner, is dropped from the sea on the land in a
one-man amphibious landing and takes cover in an abandoned house. Milner
expects to be staking out for days or even weeks, but the flares are soon
lighting up Scarthoe Hill again and the manor is suddenly everything but
deserted. Laughter is heard. And Milner is confronted with an unusual homely
picture. Milner's landing and investigation of the house are the best portions
of the story. It's a nice bit of suspense with a wartime setting with an
impossible problem lurking in the background and reminded me somewhat of John Dickson Carr's excellent Captain Cut-Throat (1955), which is a
historical spy/mystery set during the Napoleonic Wars. I wonder if Carr was
aware of Clarke's story.
The last part of "Flashlights" slightly
diminishes the overall quality of the story with some Victorian love-friction
between Milner and a woman, whom he tries to third-degree from her German
husband – who's unflattering depiction can be attributed to the "Down with
the Hun" position of the Brits at the time. Overall, "Flashlights" is
noteworthy as both a detective-and locked room story, because of its unique
setting, impossible problem and (historical) ties to the Scientific School of Detection. It's a short story that's more than worth the few minutes it takes you
to read it and can be found (again) here.
