Deep Waters by Martin Edwards

Author:Martin Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

The Turn of the Tide

C. S. Forester

Few authors are as closely associated with sea stories as Cecil Scott Forester (1899–1966), creator of Horatio Hornblower, an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era. The success of the Hornblower series has meant that it is sometimes forgotten that Forester, whose real name was Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, also wrote three notable crime novels. Payment Deferred (1926) anticipates the ironic tone and plotting of Malice Aforethought, a more famous novel by Francis Iles which was published five years later. Plain Murder (1930), about advertising men who turn to crime, has a similar flavour. Astonishingly, The Pursued, a fascinating novel written in 1935, was lost and forgotten, as Forester concentrated on Hornblower. The manuscript resurfaced in the twenty-first century, and the book was finally published in 2011.

Forester’s occasional ventures into the crime short story are well worth reading. A good example is ‘The Letters in Evidence’, also known as ‘The Editor Regrets’, first published in 1937. ‘The Turn of the Tide’ originally appeared in The Story-Teller in April 1936. For all Hornblower’s popularity, it is a matter for regret that this talented writer did not contribute more to the crime genre.

‘What always beats them in the end,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘is how to dispose of the body. But, of course, you know that as well as I do.’

‘Yes,’ said Slade. He had, in fact, been devoting far more thought to what Dr Matthews believed to be this accidental subject of conversation than Dr Matthews could ever guess.

‘As a matter of fact,’ went on Dr Matthews, warming to the subject to which Slade had so tactfully led him, ‘it’s a terribly knotty problem. It’s so difficult, in fact, that I always wonder why anyone is fool enough to commit murder.’

All very well for you, thought Slade, but he did not allow his thoughts to alter his expression. You smug, self-satisfied old ass! You don’t know the sort of difficulties a man can be up against.

‘I’ve often thought the same,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ went on Dr Matthews, ‘it’s the body that does it, every time. To use poison calls for special facilities, which are good enough to hang you as soon as suspicion is roused. And that suspicion—well, of course, part of my job is to detect poisoning. I don’t think anyone can get away with it, nowadays, even with the most dunderheaded general practitioner.’

‘I quite agree with you,’ said Slade. He had no intention of using poison.

‘Well,’ went on Dr Matthews, developing his logical argument, ‘if you rule out poison, you rule out the chance of getting the body disposed of under the impression that the victim died a natural death. The only other way, if a man cares to stand the racket of having the body to give evidence against him, is to fake things to look like suicide. But you know, and I know, that it just can’t be done.

‘The mere fact of suicide calls for a close examination, and no one has ever been able to fix things so well as to get away with it.

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