The Orphan Scrivener - Issue # One Hundred and Forty-Two - 15 August 2023

Longfellow referred to the great hour-glass of Time and as August draws on and nights draw in we're beginning to see flashes of yellow leaves, golden handkerchiefs fluttering goodbye to the waning days of summer. They also remind us it's time for another issue of Orphan Scrivener, so here it is...

---

MARY'S BIT or BLACK SAND AND BLEEZERS

We were among those affected by smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Considering it carried particulates of whatever materials they burnt and thus presented serious health affects, we at Maywrite Towers consider ourselves fortunate to have got away with scratchy throats, runny noses, and a touch of hoarseness.

What was intriguing was the sky turned dirty yellow but caused an eerie pinkish twilight all day, followed by spectacular tomato-coloured sunsets. Having grown up in an industrial city permanently swathed in smoke from satanic mills of all descriptions situated amid rows of terraced housing, I'd expected the same type of murky grey-black veil that hung above those long-ago streets, black stained brick rows much as depicted in a number of Lowry paintings, of which my favourite is https://www.lowry.co.uk/lowry-original-industriallandscape.html

Such brooding skies could not be laid solely at the feet of commercial enterprises, given homes were heated by coal and so many people and their coughing brothers smoked what locals call tabs indoors and out. Some started young. Classmates pinched a cigarette from home and smoked it behind the bike shed in elementary school. It was almost a rite of passage for boys in particular.

This was a time when homes might use a bleezer, a square piece of metal held against the kitchen fireplace to help the coals "catch" by improving the draught. Some, like my lot, used an opened newspaper page for the same purpose. A dangerous custom, given this sort of makeshift bleezer sometimes caught fire and had to be quickly thrown into the grate. Since anything that could be burnt was put in the kitchen fire, tainted smoke added to the dark cloud hanging over the city. No wonder peoples' lungs have been compared to kippers. Older films offer noticeable and to modern eyes shocking evidence of just how polluted the air had become, to the extent sheets hung out to dry were routinely taken in speckled with soot.

Speaking of which, a story often retold at family gatherings involves my niece and nephew. At a young age they were visiting with their mother and went out to play, investigating a long untenanted stable at the top of our back lane. On their return they announced they had been playing with black sand, a fact obvious at a glance given a local sweep stored bags of soot in it.

In England seeing a sweep or shaking their hand has long been considered lucky, as Dick Van Dyke points in Chim Chim Cher-ee. Couples have been known to engage a sweep to attend their wedding in full fig (top hat and neckerchief included), bringing along his brush and rods. He also brings good luck to the nuptial pair by kissing the bride and shaking the groom's hand.

While on the topic of romance, we're all familiar with cinematic interludes of that type involving cigarettes and soulful gazes. Tobacco has long assisted couples to meet. Smoking provides a chance to those -- particularly shy teens -- who wish to strike up a conversation with a stranger. He (or less commonly she) strikes a match and offers to light the other person's gasper, thus effecting the desired introduction in a socially acceptable fashion.

Though I observed such interactions numerous times while still in school I did not experience it directly because I had only a brief fling with Lady Nicotine. I tried a ciggy or two during those painfully awkward years we call the teens, scandalising my younger sister when she saw me puffing away trying to master the fine art of blowing smoke out through my nostrils. I never could master it but since I didn't care for the taste of tobacco and the way the smell of smoke clung to my hair and clothes, I soon abandoned tabs forever. Yet even at that age several girls in my class were already fully paid-up members of the Sisterhood Of The Saffron-Stained Digits. In fact, one already smoked so heavily her fingers felt cold and her fingertips were stained almost to the point of turning brown.

I recently learnt from an impeccable source (which is to say Mr Maywrite) that in grade school he made and painted a clay ashtray he described as being of "a strange shape", putting me in mind of Lovecraftian rooms with walls of singularly peculiar angles of a disturbing nature. There being far fewer smokers than there used to be, it seems fair to deduce making ashtrays would be an unlikely art project for youngsters to undertake nowadays.

---

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

As mentioned last time, Cat Mummies and Other Feline Tales is to appear in the autumn issue of Mystery Readers Journal. The essay deals with assorted felines who played significant roles in our John, Lord Chamberlain series to the extent of saving our protagonist's life on one occasion. Devoted to Animals in Mysteries, this issue will, we hear, be a two-parter. Interested parties will find more information soon at https://mysteryreaders.org/

---

ERIC'S BIT or THE PUZZLING CASE OF MY FAVORITE MYSTERIES

Who are your favorite mystery authors? What are your favorite genres? For me, the first answer is easy. There are authors whose work I've enjoyed for decades. The second question is much harder because my favorite authors' books are oddly divergent. For instance, both Agatha Christie and John D. MacDonald are among my favorites. But how can I like both the elderly spinster Miss Marple and rugged beach bum Travis McGee?

I've always been attracted to the intellectual nature of classic mysteries even though I rarely, if ever, solve the puzzles presented. In Death Comes as the End, Christie kills off her ancient Egyptian suspects one by one until there are only two left and even then I guessed wrong! I suppose I like being surprised and seeing how the author fit everything together and fooled me. Years ago Mary and I went to a fair where a strolling magician stood six inches from us and performed sleight of hand making coins appear and vanish. Even though I knew it had something to do with diverting our attention and sheer dexterity I couldn't spot the trick and Christie performs similar magic of a literary sort.

Then too as a kid I loved Golden Age science fiction from the thirties, forties, and early fifties where intellectual content (even if mostly pseudo science) far outweighed characterization, psychology, or any literary pretense. What would happen if you could travel back in time and meet yourself? What would life be like on a planet where gravity would crush humans? Later I discovered mystery novels where whodunnit was figured out logically in convoluted detail just as puzzles involving time and gravity were in science fiction.

Do I even have to say I love the locked room mysteries of John Dickson Carr and Ed Hoch? These are even more purely "scientific" than Agatha Christie.

However, I've also read all of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books more than once. The houseboat he lives on in Florida is wildly different from the English estates and manor houses which provide the settings for many Christie novels. And neither Miss Marple nor Poirot are likely to engage in fist fights with the bad guys. And talk about really "bad" bad guys. MacDonald depicted some of the most realistic nasty villains -- as opposed to cartoonish villains -- I've ever read about.

However, a Florida houseboat is to me as exotic a setting as an English estate. Christie's villains can be pretty diabolical in their own ways. And although Travis will use his fists when necessary the books mostly revolve around some elaborate con game he and his economist friend Meyer set up to retrieve whatever the villains have stolen from their victims. These schemes can be every bit as clever and surprising as the solution to a Christie murder mystery.

Certainly my liking for noir novels of the sort Gold Medal published in the fifties matches my liking for the Travis McGee stories, which can be quite black and bleak. But, when you think about it, Christie wrote some very noir stuff featuring greedy, evil sociopaths who kill innocents. Also, her mysteries can end as unhappily as any noir, I don't want to give anything away but if you are familiar with Christie you know what I mean. It irks me when I hear her work described as cozy because, settings aside, most of her books are not anything like those marketed as cozies today.

I haven't mentioned another of my all-time favorites, Georges Simenon's Maigret. The gloomy underbelly of Paris where Maigret usually operates is about as noir as it gets and though he may not be as physical as Travis he is not adverse to throwing his considerable weight around. But unlike the classic whodunnit with its elaborate maze of clues, Maigret focuses almost exclusively on the psychology of the murderers and victims. Or so we are told. To me, this isn't all that much different than a locked room mystery because what room is more tightly locked than the human mind? The tangle of intellect and emotion that might motivate a person to commit a crime is every bit as complicated and puzzling as a method for knifing someone in the back through a locked door. Once Maigret solves the characters he encounters he has solved the murder.

I'm sure I've left out some favorites and similarities between them all. But thinking about it, maybe different genres of mystery aren't as dissimilar as they might seem.

---

AND FINALLY

As the Swan of Avon noted, summer's lease is all too short. Alas, its lease will have expired by October 15th when the next issue of Orphan Scrivener is slated to show up in subscribers' in-boxes.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our names on the social site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!