The Z Murders
Authors: J Jefferson Farjeon
The Z Murders
J. Jefferson Farjeon
With an Introduction
by Martin Edwards
Poisoned Pen Press
Originally published in London in 1932 by Collins
Copyright © 2015 Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon
Introduction copyright © 2015 Martin Edwards
Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library
First E-book Edition 2015
ISBN: 9781464204920 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
The serial killer mystery featuring a sequence of macabre and seemingly motiveless murders is often assumed to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Not so. Serial killer stories date back to the nineteenth century, and John Oxenham's “A Mystery of the Underground” (included in the British Library anthology
Capital Crimes
) sparked such alarm that it led to a temporary decline in the number of passengers travelling on the Tube. Decades later, during the Golden Age of Murder between the two world wars, serial killer mystery novels enjoyed a vogue. Today the most famous example is Agatha Christie's
The ABC Murders
, but four years before Christie's book appeared, J. Jefferson Farjeon produced a fast-paced and entertaining serial killer thriller with a title and concept taken from the other end of the alphabetâ
The Z Murders
.
A passage shortly before the climactic scenes captures the appeal of the puzzle set in this kind of story: “There was not even any theory to work upon. The murdersâ¦occurred, apparently, at any time and at any place. They appeared to be motiveless and purposeless, and to form no settled scheme. Within thirty hours three tragedies had occurred, known already as âThe Z Murders' in thousands of homes, and countless anxious lips were voicing the questions, âHow many more?' âWhere will the next occur?' and âWho will the next victim be?' ”
The story opens with Richard Temperley's arrival back at Euston after a trip to the Lake District. It is early in the morning, and before moving on to his next destination, he takes refuge in a nearby hotel. So does an elderly and rather disagreeable fellow passenger, who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last timeâhe has been shot dead while sleeping in an armchair. Temperley has a brief encounter with a beautiful young woman, but she promptly flees the scene. When the police arrive, Detective-Inspector James questions Temperley, and then shows him a token that has been discovered at the crime scene: “a small piece of enamelled metal. Its colour was crimson, and it was in the shape of the letter Z.”
Fascinated by the woman, Temperley discovers that her name is Sylvia Wynne and that she lives in Chelsea. Instinct convinces him that, whatever she may have to hide, she is not a murderer. He goes in search of her, with the police (whose treatment of him throughout seems remarkably good-natured, in the circumstances) in hot pursuit. On after arriving at her studio, however, he discovers another crimson Z, lying on the carpet.
The villain, whoever he or she may be, is apparently some kind of “signature killer” (although that term had yet to be invented) but Sylvia's terrified refusal to tell Temperley what she knows, and her habit of disappearing from sight before he can save her from a mysterious fate, lead to further complications. We follow the pair on a bizarre cross-country chase, first by train and later by taxi, before Farjeon finally reveals the truth, and one of Golden Age fiction's most sinister culprits.
By compressing the action (of which there is plenty) into a day and a half, Farjeon makes sure that he never loses his grip on the reader's attention. The plotting is melodramatic, and the portrayal of the principal villain lurid, while there are regular cliff-hangers similar to those in the Paul Temple stories of Francis Durbridge, which enjoyed popularity from the mid-1930s onwards. But whereas Durbridge's approach to writing was strictly functional, Farjeon cared about his prose, and liked to spice his mysteries with dashes of humour and romance. Time and again, imaginative literary flourishes lift the writing out of the mundanity commonplace in thrillers of this period.
Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883â1955) published his first novel in 1924, and later in the 1920s created the character Detective X. Crook, who appeared in a long run of short stories. Crook is a reformed criminal who adopts a pseudonym to pursue a new career as a private detective. Farjeon soon became a prolific novelist, whose books are so numerous, and so varied in subject matter, that some of the genre's scholars have struggled to pin him down, while others have simply ignored him. Writing less than twenty years after Farjeon's death, Colin Watson, in his study of inter-war fiction
Snobbery with Violence
, referred to him merely as a critic and author of historical romances. Like his better-remembered sister Eleanor, Farjeon also wrote books for children. But his work had long been out of print prior to the reappearance in the British Library's Crime Classics series of
Mystery in White
, which promptly became an unexpected runaway best-seller.
Despite Farjeon's versatility, recurring patterns can be detected in some of his books. As one of his fervent admirers, Dorothy L. Sayers, said in her review of
The Windmill Mystery
: “When a young man sets out to hike through one of Mr. Jefferson Farjeon's stories he is certain of meeting (a) a girl and (b) a corpse.” She added that, in his best books, “every word is entertaining” â high praise from a habitually stringent critic.
Sayers was equally complimentary about
Sinister Inn
: “The plot is a little fantastic, but not too much so; the writing is, as usual, lively and atmospheric; romance is lightly and dexterously mingled with the thrills; and the nice people are as genuinely nice as the nasty ones are engagingly nasty.” Much the same might be said of
The Z Murders
, a classic serial killer mystery that until now has been unaccountably overlooked.
Martin Edwards
The Cold Grey Hour
Places, like people, have varying moods, and the moods of London are legion. Perhaps you know London best in a mood of restless toil and ceaseless purpose, or else in a spirit of nocturnal mirth and music. Perhaps your instinctive thought lingers in a dull and dreary street oppressed by the broodings of small happenings that never escape beyond front-doors; on the Embankment at dusk, with its gathering of human shadows; on the poverty of Mile End, the pathos of Regent Street, or the hard splendour of Park Lane's new palaces.
But there is one London which you may never or rarely have met. It is the London of the cold grey hour, and you are wise to miss it, for in its period of transition it has nothing gracious to offer you. The tail-end of a tired blackness. The gradual, grudging intrusion of a light not yet conscious of its purpose. The chill of empty spaces. The loneliness of eternity. Yesterday's newspaper slowly materialising on the pavement. Like a woman surprised before she has had a chance to shake off the night and beautify herself for the day, London gives no welcome to intruders at this hour. It pays them back heavily for having witnessed the ugly chaos of its re-creation.
Yet every day there are a few who, not from choice, flit silently through this ungracious hour, and nowhere is the hour more ungracious than at a railway station. If you really wish to test the depths of atmospheric depression, visit Platform No. 3 at Euston Station on an early autumn morning. The experience will try your faith, as it tried the faith of Richard Temperley when he alighted on that platform, 5 a.m., after a depressing all-night journey from the North.
It had been a peculiarly depressing journey. The earlier stages had not been enlivened by the murky Lancashire platforms through which they had glided. Shadows crept over the rowed-up milk-cans at Carnforth. Lancaster was reached in a moist gloaming; Preston, in drizzling night. At Preston, there had been a tedious change. Temperley had waited three hours for the Glasgow-London trainâthree hours at Preston Station on a damp Sunday evening!âand when the train had come in, it had been packed. It seemed to be suffering from a disease called People, the symptoms of which spotted the smoky, yellow-lit windows.
There had been one single minute of joy when, in the absence of a sleeper and damning the expense, Temperley had elevated his travelling status by transferring to a first-class compartment. It cost him seventeen shillings, but what was that? To stretch out fully from window to window, while elsewhere lolled the packed and perspiring humanity from which one had escapedâa sixpenny pillow behind one's head, a shilling rug over one's feetâyes, this was indeed sanctuary!
But then an elderly man had joined Temperley, occupying the other seat from window to window, and filling the newly-occupied space with grunts and snores. There had been a small dispute about fresh air. “That man and I are made of different chemicals,” reflected Temperley. “How pleasant it would be to murder him!”
The thought recurred to Temperley a few hours later. And so the train, with its unequal distribution of passengers, sped through the night, rattling, thudding, snoring. It was the elderly man who did the snoring. He snored incessantly. And here, at last, was Euston, that doubtful Mecca, reached at five o'clock; and people at their worst were dribbling out on to the ill-lit platform. Fortunately ill-lit, if one dwelt on personal vanity! But, at this cold grey hour, who did?
“Are we here?” grunted the elderly man, coming jerkily out of a snore.
It was an idiotic question. “How can we be anywhere else?” thought Temperley. But the criticism, at this unintelligent moment of the morning, was as idiotic as the cause of it; so, quelling his sarcastic impulse, Temperley paused in his scrappy toilet to assure his fellow-traveller that they were here, and then completed the refastening of his collar round his tired neck.
The elderly man was in an equally ungracious mood. He sat up suddenly, in a sort of tousled stupor, and gazed at Temperley as though the whole of creation were his fault. Then he bent down to find his boots, and, failing to find them, demanded where they were.
“
I
haven't got them!” retorted Temperley, worn out.
“No need to be rude, is there?” snapped the other. “Ah! There's one, under your seat!”
And, darting an indignant hand forward, he seized an unyielding hot-water-pipe. “Damn!” he roared.
Richard Temperley smiled maliciously. London at 5 a.m. had entered into his soul. They should both have been in bed and fast asleep.
Leaving his companion to his woes, Temperley stepped out on to the platform. Then he paused, wondering vaguely how a temporarily homeless man could fill in the awkward hours between five and eight in the morning. His bachelor flat at St. John's Wood was let, and would not be free for another week. The interim was to be spent with a married sister at Richmond. Could he appear at Richmond before the servants were up and about?
A porter, accustomed to people in predicaments, intruded on his hesitation and suggested a stock remedy. “'Otel across the road, sir,” he said. “You can get a shake-down there.”
“Bit late to book a bedroom, isn't it?” frowned Temperley.
“Finish your sleep in the smoke-room, if you like,” answered the porter. “They keep a fire going.”
At first the idea seemed absurd. Walk into a hotel smoking-room at 5 a.m. and go to sleep in a leather arm-chair? Then the idea lost its absurdity, and became the logical answer to the problem. Why not? A couple of hours in a leather arm-chair before a fire that had purposely been kept up, then a bath at seven, and then breakfast at eightâ¦
Someone went by, in the direction of the station exit. Went by with a rustle. Temperley raised his head. The faint light of a lamp glimmered momentarily upon a neat feminine back. The next instant, the back was gone. “Take your bag across, sir?” asked the porter.
Another figure went by. The elderly man. He had found his boots, and was using them. He seemed to be in a kind of fretful haste. The momentary peace evoked by the neat feminine back vanished irritably in the revived aura of those confounded boots and their confounded wearer!
The porter repeated his question. Temperley nodded. “Though why the devil,” he growled, as the porter possessed himself of his bag, “we're not allowed to finish our night in the train beats me!”
The porter donned an expression of intense sympathy and understanding. It said, “Ah, if
I
were a Director, sir, things would be run on very different lines! More humane, like.” The expression would have been worth an extra threepence if there had been any light to see it by.
They trooped along the platform in the wake of the lady with the neat back, and of the elderly man. Now they had reached the engine. For a moment, the engine seemed to tower above them like a tamed metal mammoth, incongruously passive. Now they had passed beyond the engine and the boundary of the buffers, and began groping their way across the broader, untenanted spaces of the station. By a silent office. A sleeping tobacco kiosk. A dead bookstall, full of little ghosts.
Suddenly Temperley shuddered. Then he turned his eyes inwards, and stared at himself. “I sayâwhat's the matter with you?” he asked himself, accusingly.
Outside the station, it was pitch dark. This filled Temperley with fresh annoyance. He had expected some faint indication of cheer once the station had been shaken off, and he vaguely resented the lack of it. Surely the dawn might forget time-tables, and hurry a little for the sake of an all-night traveller!
“Jest across 'ere, sir,” came the porter's voice. “You'll be quite comfortable.”
“I hope you're not an optimist,” answered Temperley.
The porter could not think of the right reply; so, with a wisdom all too rare, offered none.
A few seconds later the deserted road had been crossed, a dark square had been entered, the hotel door had been reached, and a sleepy night commissionaire was making it clear to the traveller that he was a perfectly acceptable proposition, if not a deliriously welcome one. The station porter had not lied about the smoking-room. “Lady gone in just before you,” said the commissionaire. “You'll find a fire.”
The luggage was stowed in the cloak-room. The porter was paid, and returned contentedly. “Along the passage, sir,” instructed the commissionaire.
As Temperley turned to go along the passage, he became suddenly conscious of a figure in a corner of the entrance hall. It was the figure of the elderly man. He was bending down, as though tying his bootlaces.
The passage proved rather a long one. It broadened and narrowed, and committed various irregularities, but it maintained its principal purpose of leading unerringly to the smoking-room at the end of it. The big door of the smoking-room stood wide. Light flickered from the interior of the room. Firelight.
Reaching the door, Richard Temperley paused. He wondered why he paused; and often, afterwards, he revived the wonder. Was it because the faint outline of the lady was silhouetted against the firelight across the room? It was a large room, and the lady did not appear to be conscious of his presence in the doorway. Was it because the big arm-chair near the window did not look quite so inviting as the arm-chair by the fire? Was it because a cock with too much imagination crowed somewhere beyond the window? The crowing came faintly. It would not have been heard at all if the window had not been open a crackâ¦No! Not these! These were not the reasons!
“But there's
some
reason” thought Temperley, unaccountably perplexed. “Otherwise I'd go straight to that chair by the window, andâ”
Ah! Now he knew the reason! He had not received any check for his luggage! And suppose there was another commissionaire on duty when he left? Of course, that was it! Queer how minds worked! He would go back to the night commissionaire and raise the point. Then he would return, and take the chair by the windowâ¦
He turned, and began to retrace his way along the passage. Footsteps came towards him, from the other end. He recognised them instinctively. Again, that fretful haste! The two men who had shared a first-class compartment from Preston passed each other in the dimness of the corridor. One went on to the smoking-room. The other returned to the entrance hall and spoke about his luggage.
The commissionaire seemed a little hurt. The luggage? That was safe enough! There was no need for any ticket. Of course, a receipt could be made out, if requiredâ¦
“All right,” said Temperley. “I'm not worrying. Just wanted to make sure of the procedure, that's all.”
He wondered why he had taken all this unnecessary trouble. His brain must be tired. Damn night journeys!
Oh, well, never mind. Here he was in the passage again, travelling its length for the third time, and soon he would be snoozing comfortably in an arm-chair. Which arm-chair? Not the one by the fire. The lady would be in that. The one by the window? The elderly man might be in that. In that case he'd have to find another somewhere. Now he came to think of it, he believed the room was bristling with arm-chairs! What a fuss over nothing!
Clang! The quarter-hour. A quarter-past five.
He neared the smoking-room door. As he did so, a figure appeared suddenly in the aperture. It was the lady. She was hurrying out. For an instant, as she passed him, they were within inches of each other. He caught a sense of fragrance, and also something far more interestingâa glimpse of her face. It was a beautiful face, and no less beautiful for the vague trouble in it.
Now she was gone, and Temperley was looking into the smoking-room again. This time the arm-chair by the window was occupied, and the arm-chair by the fire was empty. “Good!” thought Temperley. “I'm in luck!”
He tiptoed across to the arm-chair by the fire. He tiptoed quietly, with a ridiculous feeling that, if he made a noise, the elderly man in the arm-chair by the window would spring up and get to the better arm-chair first! The elderly man did not move, however. Already, he was asleep.
With a sigh of content, Temperley sank down in the comfortable leather. Yes, even though leather, it seemed comfortable. He was desperately tired. Why was he so tired? Why so oppressed? His health was generally proof against far more than he had been through during the past twelve hours. He had a queer sensation, however, that this night journey had been of a particularly nerve-racking kind, even though he could not discover any logical reason for the sensation. All he knew was that he wanted the light to comeâwanted to get the occasion behind himâand then, when the new day dawnedâ¦
All at once he sat up. The room was pressing him down. He discovered that he was bathed in perspiration. “
Why the devil isn't that chap snoring
?” He gasped.
But something whispered the answer as he asked the question. The elderly man in the arm-chair by the window was dead.