Cynthia Asquith – The Black Cap

Cynthia Asquith (ed.) – The Black Cap: New Stories Of Murder & Mystery (Hutchinson, 1927)

J. M. Barrie – Shall We Join The Ladies?
L. P. Hartley – The Killing Bottle
Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes – An Unrecorded Instance
Barry Pain – A Considerable Murder
Hugh Walpole – The Tarn
Arthur Machen – The Islington Mystery
Edgar Wallace – Circumstantial Evidence
W. B. Maxwell – The Prince
Oliver Onions – The Smile Of Karen
D. H. Lawrence – The Lovely Lady
Shane Leslie – The Hospital Nurse
Elizabeth Bowen – Telling
W. Somerset Maugham – Footprints In The Jungle
Lady Cynthia Asquith – The Lovely Voice

Elizabeth Bowen – Telling: Downtrodden Terry always suspected that he must be capable of achieving something in his life and stabbing Jacqueline to death behind the chapel during a party probably qualifies. When it comes to confessing his deed to his family, however, it’s still the same old case of nobody listening to a word he says. As much a crime story as horror with Terry very much in the tradition of the blazer and flannels psycho popularised by L. P. Hartley.

Hugh Walpole – The Tarn: Ullswater. Fenwick despises Foster. He always makes a success of things while Fenwick flounders in his wake. A clear the air meeting – instigated by Foster who doesn’t like to upset anybody – gives Fenwick to do what he’s always wanted – murder that simpering, obscenely nice, non-swimming bastard by pushing him in the tarn, that fathomless lake at the back of his house. But the icy water that acted as his accomplice in ridding him of his enemy now comes hunting the murderer.

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