THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE -- 15 FEBRUARY 2020

According to the source consulted, it was either Anonymous or Aristotle who remarked it was necessary to stand in the cold to appreciate a snowflake's beauty. There's been plenty of opportunity this past couple of months to do so, preferably from inside the house. We are currently snowed-in, but this gives us more spare time to compose this latest Orphan Scrivener and we are grateful for that. Subscribers may however feel differently after reading it...

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MARY'S BIT or REFLECTIONS ON MIRRORS

There is something disturbing about mirrors, especially the way they reverse their image. A useful visual effect for mystery clues this may well be, but I find those common household artefacts to be, well, strange.

Alice was able to enter the looking glass world because, as Lewis Carroll relates, the mirror over the room's fireplace turned into an easily penetrated silvery mist. She certainly had an less fraught method of passing into another world than similar entrances and exits as presented in Jean Cocteau's Orphee. But then Alice did not meet Death -- or at least his messenger -- as portrayed by fashionably dressed Maria Casares to well-known poet played by Jean Marais in the title role.

Orphee and other characters pass between this world and the other by stepping through mirrors. To do so Orphee must first don a pair of gloves, extending his arms so his hands go through the reflective portal before the rest of him. I wondered at the time why gloves would be necessary but after the intertubes arrived Mr Google kindly provided the answer. Cocteau's technical wallah invented fairly simple special effects. Thus hands through the mirror images (no pun intended) were created by the actor dipping his gloved hands into a large container of mercury, followed by judicious cutting and tilting of the footage of the act which, combined with close-up focus camera work, apparently depicts his hands going through the mirror. Still unanswered: how did the producers got hold of the necessary amount of mercury to set up the shot?

Folk customs connect mirrors with entrances to another world. For example, when I was growing up mirrors were covered or turned to the wall when household deaths occurred, a custom usually explained as intended to prevent the soul of the deceased becoming trapped. In writing that, I am reminded Cocteau pointed out mirrors reflect our aging.

Local tradition in our area meant neighbours drew their curtains as a mark of respect when the funeral cortege left the bereaved household, whose curtains were closed when a death occurred. We might speculate the custom grew up from a wish to prevent reflections from window panes serving as a mirror, although there are those who point to its origins in the natural wish for privacy at a time when keeping the departed at home until the funeral was widespread. That custom was mentioned in Ruined Stones, as well as one I experienced: it was frowned upon for females to attend funerals, even a new widow and close family members.

I still run a search now and then for a radio presentation from some time ago but not being able to recall its title, I shall briefly describe its content and hope a subscriber recognises it and can provide that information. . The narrator visits a friend for a chat and to bring him fresh library books. The former relates his experience with an Indian curse whereby when looking into a mirror the viewer sees someone looking over their shoulder although there is nobody standing behind them. The sufferer can only free themselves from the curse by telling someone else, who then inherits the nasty thing. A moral dilemma if ever we heard one, no? And why is this fellow describing the curse to his friend, knowing full well what will result? No doubt subscribers have already guessed: the narrator eventually reveals the library books he has brought with him are written in braille.

Could the plot have been inspired by the old belief a girl will be able to see the face of her future husband by sitting in front of a candlelit mirror combing her hair and eating an apple -- presumably not at the same time -- causing an image of the man she will eventually marry to appear behind her? I have no idea, but for a time after that broadcast I felt uneasy if I passed a mirror in the dark. Talk about effective writing!

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

It's still quiet on the news front, as happens from time to time in even the best-ordered life. And speaking of time, today we celebrate our newsletter reaching a milestone. It was on February 15, 2000 we launched the good ship Orphan Scrivener for the first time, and since then every two months without fail we've been down at the docks waving our hankies to it as we sent it off to go a-voyaging. That debut issue was dedicated to the folks at Poisoned Pen, who as we put it rescued John from slush pile Hades. Subscribers who came on board later who are interested in taking a dip into the history of our writings and other assorted ramblings will find it archived on our website along with the whole run of issues at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/toc1.htm After that little speech, now's the time to throw handfuls of confetti about accompanied by good long blasts of tooting before the glasses of virtual champagne are brought around!

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ERIC'S BIT or LITERARY COMPANIONS OF THE SCOURGE OF RIVER CITY

When Mary said she was going to write about mirrors the first thing I thought of was The Hungry Glass, an episode of the television series Thriller, which scared my very young and sensitive self out of my overly active wits. A married couple moves into a house that is haunted by images reflected in glass and mirrors. Eventually the hazy phantom in an attic mirror reaches right through the glass to grab the inquisitive wife and draw her into the mirror. Well, I don't mind telling you, that just about did me in.

Okay, I was eleven. The Hungry Glass was not exactly Orphee, though it was written by Robert Bloch who was pretty darned good, and Donna Douglas and William Shatner were not quite Maria Casares and Jean Marais. Yes, the protagonist in the drama that scared me silly went on to play the only wooden Star Fleet captain in Federation history and the terrifying ghost in the mirror turned out to be Elly May Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Mirrors are disturbing. I never understood those diagrams showing how light enters a mirror and is reversed. They made it look like the light passes right through the mirror, only adding to the mystery. Thanks to mirrors I'm not even sure what I look like, since the image I see in the bathroom mirror is the reverse of what the world sees. Is that a good thing or bad? Do most people see themselves as looking like they do in photographs or in the mirror? I never look at photos of myself, if I can help it.

A few days ago I read Low Heights, a 2003 mystery by the French author Pascal Garnier. A character botches his impersonation of another man when he forgets about the perversity of mirrors and puts a distinguishing scar on the wrong side of his face. He'd had a stroke and maybe his mind was deteriorating. It is a strange book. The poor fellow retires to the mountains with his nurse. One day a man arrives claiming to be his long-lost son. Then the vultures show up. Literal as well as figurative.

"In the tradition of Simenon" the blurb said. As do the blurbs on most French mysteries in translation. Georges Simenon is far better known outside France than any other French mystery writer. He is one of my favorite authors, French or otherwise, not just for his mysteries but for the non-Maigret books he dubbed "hard novels" as well.

There are an immense number of Simenon books available in English, but not so many by other French mystery novelists. As far as I know publishers have not stampeded to translate them as they have Scandinavian works. A shame, because I developed a liking for French literature back in college when one of my courses introduced me to everything from Voltaire and Balzac (the scourge of River City, you might recall) up to Louis Ferdinand Celine and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

During the last couple of weeks I thought to read some French mystery authors. I mentioned Pascal Garnier. I also read Three to Kill, one of ten mysteries written by Jean-Patrick Manchette in the seventies and early eighties. He is said to have reinvigorated the French mystery. In Three to Kill businessman Georges Gerfaut witnesses a murder. He's a typical man on the run until he decides to turn the tables and track down his pursuers. The plot does not develop as formulaically as you might expect. Manchette's style and ironic perspective make for a different kind of reading experience than you would get from the usual English language bestseller.

Perhaps it is only the result of cultural differences but French writers have always struck me as rather eccentric in the way they write, the characters they write about, and the stories they tell. There is a certain (don't hate me for saying it) je ne sais quoi about their novels. For example, consider Fred Vargas (the archaeologist Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau) whose series sleuth Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg doesn't use deductive reasoning. Whereas Simenon's Inspector Maigret solves crimes by discovering the true natures and motivations of those involved at which point the murderer becomes clear, Adamsberg doesn't even do that. He purports to be able to sense the evil and cruelty oozing out of perpetrators. In The Chalk Circle Man this peculiar detective -- who still carries a flame for a vanished mistress who had a pet monkey named Richard III -- seeks a man who is drawing blue chalk circles at night around stray objects in Paris streets, sensing that a circle will soon surround a corpse.

Whether these French mysteries are representative or not I can't say. Next up on my list is a mystery by Patrick Modiano which ought to be good since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. At any rate it is sure to be different from what I'm used to and maybe that's why I enjoy French authors. They offer me a slightly disorienting view of the world, like looking at the reversed image in a mirror.

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AND FINALLY

Just to add to the cold collywobbles experienced by most of us when contemplating April 15th aka US Tax Return Day, a quick reminder the same date will also see the arrival of the next issue of Orphan Scrivener.

See you then!
Mary R & Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. It also hosts the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog, largely devoted to reviews of Golden Age of Mystery fiction, lurks about at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in some time!

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