Dr. Morelle Meets Murder. Ernest Dudley
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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ERNEST DUDLEY
Department of Spooks: Stories of Suspense and Mystery
Dr. Morelle Meets Murder: Classic Crime Stories
Dr. Morelle Investigates: Two Classic Crime Tales
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1948 by Ernest Dudley
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Dudley-Allen
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Susan Dudley-Allen
MEET ERNEST DUDLEY, by Philip Harbottle
(ERNEST DUDLEY, 1908-2006)
Born in July 1908 in Dudley, Worcestershire as Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen, Ernest Dudley grew up in Cookham, Berkshire, where his father kept a hotel. Stanley Spencer lived next door, and was a friend of the family. Through Spencer’s patrons, the hotel became a meeting place for artists and actors. Ivor Novello was a weekend fixture. The comedian and film star Jack Buchanan helped the young Ernest rehearse a song for an amateur concert.
At the age of seventeen Ernest left boarding school and joined a theatre company touring Shakespeare through provincial Ireland, in village halls and cowsheds. From this he graduated to the more upscale Charles Doran Company, and performed in proper theatres, paying its actors the munificent sum of £2 a week. For the rest of life he used and was known by his stage name of Ernest Dudley
Always one with an eye for the ladies, Ernest soon met and teamed up with his late wife, the celebrated actress Jane Grahame.
Jane came from a theatrical family: her stepfather was Ellie Norwood, famous silent film actor who played Sherlock Holmes on stage. Through these family connections, Ernest secured work in the West End, appearing with Charles Laughton and Fay Compton, amongst others. When the original production of Noel Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES transferred to Broadway, it was he and his wife who were recruited to take over the Laurence Olivier and Gertrude Lawrence roles in the British touring production.
His wife regularly played leading roles in the stage plays of Edgar Wallace, and Ernest would later create for her the character of Miss Frayle, assistant to Dr. Morelle in his radio plays. Other actresses would later take over the role. Most notably Sylvia Sims. Amongst the actors who played the good Doctor was Cecil Parker.
In the 1930s and 1940s he worked regularly for the BBC. In July 1942 his famous detective character (modelled on the autocratic film actor Eric von Stronheim, who he had met in Paris in the 1930s) ‘Dr. Morelle’ made his radio debut on MONDAY NIGHT AT EIGHT. Dr. Morelle was a big hit with listeners, and engendered a long cycle of novels and short stories, a play and a film, and three series on radio. At around the same time, he launched another very successful radio programme, THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE, which ran for many years, and Ernest became known as “The BBC Armchair Detective.” In this weekly programme he reviewed the best of the current releases of detective novels, dramatising a chapter from each. They included his dramatization of John Russell Fearn’s 1947 novel ONE REMAINED SEATED, and it was this fact that would cause Fearn’s biographer Philip Harbottle to seek Dudley out some fifty years later, to become his friend and agent. Notable amongst his many other radio credits is the fact that he was the first-ever radio jazz critic. In the 1950s he transferred to BBC television with an early audience participation programme, Judge for Yourself.
Back in the 1930s Ernest also ran a parallel career as a newspaper journalist, specialising and pioneering in show business gossip, working for a time with Val Guest, with whom he had also earlier worked as a film scriptwriter in the British “quota” studio system. Amongst his many newspaper ‘scoops’ was how he had collaborated with actor Fred Astaire in a London night-club on the creation of a new dance-step.
All of which only gives the bare bones of an amazing career as, variously, an actor, sports correspondent, jazz critic, playwright, novelist, gossip columnist, screenwriter and crime reporter. Most amazing is the fact that he became a marathon runner at an age when other people were drawing their pensions and relaxing by the fireside, and competed in several New York Marathons, writing a best selling book on how he achieved his amazing feats, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Apart from some fourteen Dr. Morelle books, Ernest also published during his lifetime a dozen other detective novels, mostly notably THE HARASSED HERO (1951) which was subsequently filmed. He also appeared with short stories in leading detective periodicals such as John Creasey Mystery Magazine and, in the U.S.A., Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. In the 1960s, and the following decades, he became established as the author of a long series of “animal” books for children, including RANGI, the story of a Highland rescue dog, and RUFUS: THE STORY OF A FOX. Ernest has also written novelisations of a number of films, along with a range of best-selling non-fiction books on diverse subjects, most notably CHANCE AND THE FIRE HORSES (Harvill Press, 1972) bringing to life Victorian London and telling the story of a dog, famous at the time, called Chance, who became attached to the fire brigade, and a favourite of the Prince of Wales.
An expert and enthusiast on the exploits of Sherlock Holmes because of his wife’s family connections, Ernest wrote a two-act stage play, THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, which was successfully staged and taken on tour in 1993, with Michael Cashman as Holmes.
In 2002 a US publisher, Wildside Press, began to reprint some of his best detective novels, including a number of ‘Dr. Morelle’ adventures, in print on demand paperback format, available online. In 2005, the leading English publishers of ‘large print’ editions, F. A. Thorpe, began featuring Ernest’s detective novels, in their Linford Mystery series, including the ‘Dr. Morelle’ books. All fourteen Morelle titles were quickly reprinted, followed by a number of new posthumous short story collections compiled by his friend and agent Philip Harbottle. These contained several unpublished Morelle short stories discovered in the author’s effects, plus novelizations of radio and stage scripts.
Ernest continued writing right up to the end of his life. His last novelette ‘The Beetle’, featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s famous detective Auguste Dupin, was based on an earlier play broadcast on BBC radio, entitled The Flies of Isis. The new story was accepted for a Canadian anthology of Poe’s ‘Dupin’ stories, alongside pastiche stories by John Dickson Carr and Charles Dickens. Ernest was checking the proofs in hospital at the time of his death. The anthology was fated not to appear, but ‘The Beetle’ has now been included in his new posthumous detective story collection, DEPARTMENT OF SPOOKS.
He is survived by his only daughter, Susan Dudley-Allen, a resident of New York in the U.S.A., who is devotedly overseeing the restoration of an amazing literary career.
DR. MORELLE MEETS MURDER
There is no doubt that Doctor Morelle would have laughed to scorn any suggestion that Miss Frayle was in any way necessary to him in order to carry on his activities in a satisfactory way. Yet the fact remained that since she had left his employ nothing seemed to have gone right at the famous house in Harley Street. As for his present secretary, Miss Grimshaw, she was as disappointing as all the others who had filled the post since Miss Frayle’s unfortunate departure.
The work fell behind, he found himself often stumbling for words, and as a result it was necessary to ask Miss Grimshaw to stay late in order that he would be able to deliver the thesis on which he was engaged, with her assistance, for publication in The International Medical Journal at the agreed date.
On two nights she had agreed to remain after the hours which had been specified for her; on the third night, however, Miss Grimshaw jibbed.
“If you think that I’m going to stop till all hours of the night, every night of the week,” she declared, with a petulant toss of the head, “you’ve got another thing coming, Doctor Morelle. Look at the time! Twenty past ten, and I’ve been slaving away since nine o’clock this morning—”
“In point of fact,” he interrupted her suavely, “you arrived five minutes late.”
She ignored his thrust.
“No wonder,” she retorted, “that I’m