Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard MEGAPACK®. Josephine Tey. Читать онлайн. MREADZ.NET

“Josephine Tey” was one of several pseudonyms used by Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896–1952), a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. I have chosen to release this volume under this particular pseudonym since 5 of the 6 volumes were first published under it. (She published the first book as by “Gordon Daviot,” a name she primarily used for plays with historical themes.)

In five of six novels in this series, the hero is Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. (Grant appears in a sixth, The Franchise Affair, as a minor character—but it is included here for completeness.) The most famous of these is The Daughter of Time, in which Inspector Grant, while laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes, in the Tower.

The Daughter of Time was the last of Tey's books to be published during her lifetime. In 1990, the British Crime Writers' Association selected it as the greatest mystery novel of all time. One final crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously. It is last in this collection.

The Franchise Affair also has a historical context: although set in the 1940s, it is based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning. It also placed on the British Crime Writers' Association list of the 100 greatest mystery novels of all, taking 11th place.

About a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays were written under the name of Gordon Daviot. How she chose the name of Gordon is unknown, but Daviot was the name of a scenic locale near Inverness where she had spent many happy holidays with her family. Only four of her plays were produced during her lifetime. Richard of Bordeaux was particularly successful, running for 14 months and making a household name of its young leading man and director, John Gielgud. (Showing some self-referential humor, Tey writes of Inspector Alan Grant that “he had in his youth seen Richard of Bordeaux; four times he had seen it.”)

Enjoy one of the great mystery series of all time!

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

ABOUT THE SERIES

Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This has included John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

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THE MAN IN THE QUEUE

First published in 1929 under the byline “Gordon Deviot.”

DEDICATION

To BRISENA

WHO ACTUALLY WROTE IT

Chapter 1

MURDER

It was between seven and eight o’clock on a March evening, and all over London the bars were being drawn back from pit and gallery doors. Bang, thud, and clank. Grim sounds to preface an evening’s amusement. But no last trump could have so galvanized the weary attendants on Thespis and Terpsichore standing in patient column of four before the gates of promise. Here and there, of course, there was no column. At the Irving, five people spread themselves over the two steps and sacrificed in warmth what they gained in comfort; Greek tragedy was not popular. At the Playbox there was no one; the Playbox was exclusive, and ignored the existence of pits. At the Arena, which had a three weeks’ ballet season, there were ten persons for the gallery and a long queue for the pit. But at the Woffington both human strings tailed away apparently into infinity. Long ago a lordly official had come down the pit queue and, with a gesture of his outstretched arm that seemed to guillotine hope, had said, “All after here standing room only.” Having thus, with a mere contraction of his deltoid muscle, separated the sheep from the goats, he retired in Olympian state to the front of the theatre, where beyond the glass doors there was warmth and shelter. But no one moved away from the long line. Those who were doomed to stand for three hours more seemed indifferent to their martyrdom. They laughed and chattered, and passed each other sustaining bits of chocolate in torn silver paper. Standing room only, was it? Well, who would not stand, and be pleased to, in the last week of Didn’t You Know? Nearly two years it had run now, London’s own musical comedy, and this was its swan song. The stalls and the circle had been booked up weeks ago, and many foolish virgins, not used to queues, had swelled the waiting throng at the barred doors because bribery and corruption had proved unsuccessful at the box office. Every soul in London, it seemed, was trying to crowd into the Woffington to cheer the show just once again. To see if Golly Gollan had put a new gag into his triumph of foolery—Gollan who had been rescued from a life on the road by a daring manager, and had been given his chance and had taken it. To sun themselves yet once more in the loveliness and sparkle of Ray Marcable, that comet that two years ago had blazed out of the void into the zenith and had dimmed the known and constant stars. Ray danced like a blown leaf, and her little aloof smile had killed the fashion for dentifrice advertisements in six months. “Her indefinable charm,” the critics called it, but her followers called it many extravagant things, and defined it to each other with hand-wavings and facial contortions when words proved inadequate to convey the whole of her faery quality. Now she was going to America, like all the good things, and after the last two years London without Ray Marcable would be an unthinkable desert. Who would not stand for ever just to see her once more?

It had been drizzling since five o’clock, and every now and then a light chill air lifted the drizzle

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