Death in the dusk

The journal of Alfred Bannerlee, of Balzing (Kent), is at last to be published practically in full, and without the alteration of any name. I say “at last,” but I suppose there are some who would leap with joy if the closely-written pages of the Oxford antiquarian and athlete were utilized, like Carlyle’s first “French Revolution,” for building a cheery fire. Lord Ludlow certainly is one.

It seems incredible, but Mr. Bannerlee has requested Ludlow to write an introduction to the book. Perhaps Mr. Bannerlee was pulling the baronial leg. Of all the party of poor half-maddened people who emerged from Aidenn Vale after the powerful doings recorded in this Journal, I can imagine none less likely to perform this service for the diarist who clung faithfully to the task of recording terrors in the midst of terror and didn’t hesitate to display the baronial character at its craftiest. Small wonder, I should think, that on the eve of publication of what he himself admits is “an unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative” Lord Ludlow sails for unknown seas, and makes no secret of the fact that England’s loss is permanent.

Now, since his Lordship promises never to come back, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t publish his recent letter to me, and thereby, perhaps, satisfy Mr. Bannerlee.

“Brillig, Ambleside, Westmorland, December 27, 1927.

My dear Markham:

One can scarcely conjecture what maggot of audacity was in the brain of Alfred Bannerlee, Esq., when he forwarded me his diary with the request that I write a foreword to accompany it ‘to give the stamp of reality.’ When you perceive the light in which I am placed in this unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative, you will not need to reflect in order to understand why I decline to have anything to do with the document. In accordance with Mr. Bannerlee’s wish, I am sending the diary to you, ‘an obscure but ambitious author,’ and I do not suppose that you will object to having your name upon the title-page. The whole arrangement impresses me as asinine, but, after all, the manuscript is Mr. Bannerlee’s and he should be allowed full scope to play the fool with it.

In fairness to the author, however, I must abate the indictment. I do no more than allude to what seem to me distinct virtues in this account. They will appeal to others likewise, if they are virtues. In the first place, there is nothing of that grisly, putrid stuff going nowadays under the name of modern psychology, although a pedlar of this ‘science’ could have found no end of matter for his hole and corner methods. Second point: I am not a devotee of the enormous literature dealing with the hounding and capture of wrongdoers. But I will venture a pronouncement in my egregious innocence, to wit, that not in any half-dozen combined of these would-be ‘shockers’ published in a lifetime will be found as many trials and alarums and as much genuine mystification as make up this compendium of the bedevilment of Parson Lolly, the mad behaviour of the milkman, the invisible omnipresence of Sir Brooke Mortimer, the enigma of the mystic bone, the Legend of Sir Pharamond’s imperishable arm, and the machinations of the ultimate contriver, I will not call him ‘fiend,’ working through and behind all.