Legendary Women Detectives

“I read it all in another light, you see,” said Loveday. “I seemed to me that the mother, knowing her son’s evil proclivities, believed in his guilt, in spite, possibly, of his assertion of innocence. The son, most likely, on his way back to the house after pledging the family plate, had met old Mr. Craven with the hammer in his hand. Seeing, no doubt, how impossible it would be for him to clear himself without incriminating his father, he preferred flight to Natal to giving evidence at the inquest.”

“Now about his alias?” said Mr. Griffiths briskly, for the train was at that moment steaming into the station. “How did you know that Harold Cousins was identical with Harry Craven, and had sailed in the Bonnie Dundee?”

“Oh, that was easy enough,” said Loveday, as she stepped into the train; “a newspaper sent down to Mr. Craven by his wife, was folded so as to direct his attention to the shipping list. In it I saw that the Bonnie Dundee had sailed two days previously for Natal. Now it was only natural to connect Natal with Mrs. Craven, who had passed the greater part of her life there; and it was easy to understand her wish to get her scapegrace son among her early friends. The alias under which he sailed came readily enough to light. I found it scribbled all over one of Mr. Craven’s writing pads in his study; evidently it had been drummed into his ears by his wife as his son’s alias, and the old gentleman had taken this method of fixing it in his memory. We’ll hope that the young fellow, under his new name, will make a new reputation for himself – at any rate, he’ll have a better chance of doing so with the ocean between him and his evil companions. Now it’s good-bye, I think.”

“No,” said Mr. Griffiths; “it’s au revoir, for you’ll have to come back again for the assizes, and give the evidence that will shut old Mr. Craven in an asylum for the rest of his life.”

THE MAN WHO SCARED THE BANK“

VALENTINE

(Sleuth: Daphne Wrayne)

In the history of British male mystery fiction there are countless heroes of distinguished parentage and sporting nature, who put natural gifts to use detecting crime – Reggie Fortune and Peter Wimsey to name several. On the distaff side, there is Daphne Wrayne. The brainchild of the prolific and pseudonymous Valentine (Archibald Thomas Pechey), Daphne Wrayne is the youngest of all the female sleuths in this volume, whom the author describes in The Adjusters (1930), as “barely out of her teens.” But, she is no Nancy Drew – she is an adult detective and so are the cases that challenge her.

The editor of the Daily Monitor rang his bell.

“Send Mr. Mannering to me at once,” he said when the boy appeared.

He sat drumming on the table with his fingers and frowning at the letter in his hand until a knock sounded on the door. Then:

“Come in, Mannering. Read that letter–” thrusting it at him.

The other took it, scanned it, whistled softly.

“I know the Duchess, sir,” he said.

“Exactly. That’s why I sent for you. Go up and see her at once. Find out all you can about this story. Maybe she’ll get you an interview with these Adjusters people. Hitherto no one’s been able to get one. Get hold of every bit of news you can lay your hands on… The moment we publish the fact that they’ve recovered her necklace the public will be on its toes to know who and what they are. It’s over three months since the necklace was stolen from Hardington House, and the police have owned themselves beat.”

For four weeks the Adjusters had been intriguing public curiosity.

Who and what they were no one seemed to know. Four times had a full-page advertisement appeared in the Daily Monitor:

IF THE POLICE CANNOT HELP YOU

THE

ADJUSTERS

CAN

179, CONDUIT STREET, W.

Just that and no more. Interviewers and reporters had called, but had come away empty-handed. All that they could say was that the Adjusters occupied the whole of the first floor at 179, Conduit Street, that a stalwart commissionaire – an ex-army man with a string of ribbons across his chest – replied to all callers that “Miss Wrayne could see no one except by appointment, and no pressmen in any circumstances whatever.”

Now he gave the same reply when Mannering presented his card. But Mannering merely smiled and produced a letter.

“Perhaps you will be good enough to give that to Miss Wrayne,” he said. “It’s from the Duchess of Hardington.”

Five minutes later the commissionaire came back.