Legendary Women Detectives

“And you can go on cashing his checks, Sir John,” she added sweetly, “and can henceforward reckon him the most scrupulously honourable client – so far as you’re concerned – whom you have on your books. You see, he knows that if he tries such a thing again well, we produce this paper!”

For some moments he gazed at her, too bewildered to speak.

“Miss Wrayne,” he said at length, “words simply fail me. How on earth have you managed this?”

For answer she lay back in her chair, merriment dancing in her hazel eyes.

“Ever play poker, Sir John?”

“Why, certainly, Miss Wrayne–” surprised.

“Ever been bluffed out and induced to chuck in a good hand?”

“Afraid I have once or twice,” he admitted, “and been a bit mad afterwards.”

Smiling she put out a slim hand to him.

“Oh, Sir John,” she exclaimed merrily, “if Richard Henry Gorleston ever knows what a good hand he threw in on, he’ll be a million times madder than you’ve ever been!”

THE TEA-LEAF

EDGAR JEPSON AND ROBERT EUSTACE

(Sleuth: Ruth Kelstern)

Ruth Kelstern is one of the few women ranked among the scientific detectives like Craig Kennedy, Dr. Thorndike, and Luther Trent. Her creators, Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace, were both prolific. Eustace collaborated with Dorothy L. Sayers on The Documents in the Case, and with L. T. Meade dozens of stories and novels, including Bell: Master of Mysteries (1898); Jepson, famous in his day for the “Lady Noggs” and “Poolyooly” wrote more than seventy-five books. Jepson’s son, Selwyn, a successful mystery author in his own right, also created one of the legendary women detectives, Eve Gill, who brings criminals to justice in such novels as The Golden Dart (1949) and The Hungry Spider (1950).

Arthur Kelstern and George Willoughton met in the Turkish bath in Duke Street, St. James’s, and rather more than a year later in that Turkish bath they parted. Both of them were bad-tempered men, Kelstern cantankerous and Willoughton violent. It was indeed difficult to decide which was the worse-tempered; and when I found that they had suddenly become friends, I gave that friendship three months. It lasted nearly a year.

When they did quarrel they quarrelled about Kelstern’s daughter Ruth. Willoughton fell in love with her and she with him and they became engaged to be married. Six months later, in spite of the fact that they were plainly very much in love with one another, the engagement was broken off. Neither of them gave any reason for breaking it off. My belief was that Willoughton had given Ruth a taste of his infernal temper and got as good as he gave.

Not that Ruth was at all a Kelstern to look at. Like the members of most of the old Lincolnshire families, descendants of the Vikings and the followers of Canute, one Kelstern is very like another Kelstern, fair-haired, clear-skinned, with light blue eyes and a good bridge to the nose. But Ruth had taken after her mother: she was dark with a straight nose, dark-brown eyes of the kind often described as liquid, dark-brown hair, and as kissable lips as ever I saw. She was a proud, rather self-sufficing, high-spirited girl, with a temper of her own. She needed it to live with that cantankerous old brute Kelstern. Oddly enough in spite of the fact that he always would try to bully her, she was fond of him; and I will say for him that he was very fond of her. Probably she was the only creature in the world of whom he was really fond. He was an expert in the application of scientific discoveries to industry; and she worked with him in his laboratory. He paid her five hundred a year, so that she must have been uncommonly good.