Sherlock's Sisters by Nick Rennison

Author:Nick Rennison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2020-04-29T09:27:51+00:00

JUDITH LEE

Created by Richard Marsh (1857-1915)

Judith Lee is one of the most original characters to be found in the crime stories of the Edwardian era. When she made her first appearance in The Strand Magazine in 1911 the editor of that periodical, Herbert Greenhough-Smith, described her as ‘the fortunate possessor of a gift which gives her a place apart in detective fiction’. Judith Lee has the ability to read lips and, it sometimes seems, she can go nowhere without seeing people discussing wicked plots and outrageous crimes, blithely unaware that their words have been understood by the young woman on the far side of the room. The story I have chosen for this volume is taken from early in her career when her peculiar talent is all that saves her from an unfounded accusation that she is herself a thief. Judith Lee was the creation of Richard Marsh, one of the most interesting and prolific writers of genre fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marsh is best known for The Beetle, a tale of supernatural horror. First published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is an account of a shape-shifting devotee of ancient Egyptian gods who stalks the fog-shrouded streets of late Victorian London. It was a great commercial success, outselling Stoker’s work, and was made into a silent film in 1919, two years before Count Dracula made his debut on a cinema screen. Other horror novels followed, as well as crime fiction (Philip Bennion’s Death, The Datchet Diamonds) and collections of uncanny short stories with titles like The Seen and the Unseen and Both Sides of the Veil. Marsh’s work appeared in most of the well-known periodicals of the day.

EAVESDROPPING AT INTERLAKEN

I have sometimes thought that this gift of mine for reading words as they issue from people’s lips places me, with or without my will, in the position of the eavesdropper. There have been occasions on which, before I knew it, I have been made cognisant of conversations, of confidences, which were meant to be sacred; and, though such knowledge has been acquired through no fault of mine, I have felt ashamed, just as if I had been listening at a key-hole, and I have almost wished that the power which Nature gave me, and which years of practice have made perfect, was not mine at all. On the other hand, there have been times when I was very glad indeed that I was able to play the part of eavesdropper. As, to very strict purists, this may not sound a pleasant confession to make, I will give an instance of the kind of thing I mean.

I suppose I was about seventeen; I know I had just put my hair up, which had grown to something like a decent length since it had come in contact with the edge of that doughty Scottish chieftain’s – MacGregor’s – knife. My mother was not very well. My father was reluctant to leave her.

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