Philip MacDonald

The Rasp


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      Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1924

      Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd 1932

      Copyright © Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1924

      Introduction © Tony Medawar 2015

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1932, 2015

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008148119

      Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008148126

      Version: 2015-10-20

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Chapter I: TOLLING THE BELL

       Chapter II: ANTHONY GETHRYN

       Chapter III: COCK ROBIN’S HOUSE

       Chapter IV: THE STUDY

       Chapter V: THE LADY OF THE SANDAL

      

       Chapter VI: THE SECRETARY AND THE SISTER

      

       Chapter VII: THE PREJUDICED DETECTIVE

      

       Chapter VIII: THE INEFFICIENCY OF MARGARET

      

       Chapter IX: THE INQUEST

      

       Chapter X: BIRDS OF THE AIR

      

       Chapter XI: THE BOW AND ARROW

      

       Chapter XII: EXHIBITS

      

       Chapter XIII: IRONS IN THE FIRE

      

       Chapter XIV: HAY-FEVER

      

       Chapter XV: ANTHONY’S BUSY DAY

      

       Chapter XVI: REVELATION AND THE SPARROW

      

       Chapter XVII: BY ‘THE OWL’S’ COMMISSIONER

      

       Chapter XVIII: ENTER FAIRY GODMOTHER

      

       The Detective Story Club

      

       About the Publisher

      

       Footnotes

       INTRODUCTION

      PHILIP MACDONALD was born in London on 5 November 1900. Writing was in his blood. His paternal grandfather was the Scottish novelist and poet George MacDonald and he was a direct descendant of the MacDonalds who were massacred in Glencoe in 1692. MacDonald’s parents were Constance Robertson, an actress, and Ronald MacDonald, a playwright and novelist. The MacDonalds lived in Chelsea before moving to Twickenham, where Philip attended St Paul’s between 1914 and 1915. His publishers later stated that, on leaving school, he ‘enlisted as a trooper in a famous cavalry regiment, and saw service in Mesopotamia’, now Iraq. While full details have not yet been established, his experiences led to the novel Patrol (1927), which was filmed in 1929 and again as The Lost Patrol in 1934 by director John Ford. MacDonald wrote the script for both films, and there are also echoes of Patrol in his script for another film Sahara (1943).

      Other than juvenilia, Philip MacDonald’s serious writing career began with a brace of Buchanesque thrillers, which he co-authored with his father. In the first, Ambrotox and Limping Dick (1920), a new drug ‘Ambrotox’ is stolen from a country house and an heiress is kidnapped. The second, The Spandau Quid (1923), is notable for the many small details that prefigure MacDonald’s most famous novel, The List of Adrian Messenger (1959). The Spandau Quid has a frenetic pace and a confusing plot involving smuggled gold, a sunken U-boat and ‘Germans, Sinn Feiners and Bolsheviks’. Both books feature Superintendent Finucane of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, but the policeman is drawn so sketchily that he cannot be considered a series detective.

      No doubt keen to capitalise on the burgeoning popularity of detective fiction, MacDonald decided to try his