here, Sheringham,’ pleaded the unfortunate man …
In the end Roger magnanimously promised to carry the matter no further. He decided that the managing director had learned his lesson—and it was quite certain that he would teach the others theirs.
Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971) is one of the most important writers of the Golden Age. Cox had a playful approach to the business of writing crime and detective fiction. His penchant for twisting tropes and confounding expectations undoubtedly played a major role in the genre’s development away from a simple linear narrative—in which characters are introduced, a crime is committed, clues are solved and the criminal is detected—into a more complex form in which almost anything can happen. Cox’s ‘great detective’, Roger Sheringham, is virtually the antithesis of Sherlock Holmes, arrogant rather than showily omniscient and unlikeable rather than unclubbable. Nonetheless, with only a few lapses from greatness, the detective stories that Cox wrote as ‘Anthony Berkeley’, as well as the smaller number of psychological thrillers published as by ‘Francis Iles’, should be on the bookshelf of anyone who professes to love crime fiction.
Cox was born in Watford, north of London, and educated at Sherborne, a boarding school in Dorset. After school he went to Oxford and after coming down in 1916 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College, Oxford, he enlisted in the British Army, serving in France. After being demobbed, Cox embarked on a career as a humourist, producing countless short stories and comic sketches for a huge range of magazines while, working with J. J. Sterling Hill, he expanded a twenty-minute vignette into a futuristic opera, The Merchant Prince. He also started to write crime fiction, exclusively so once he found it paid better than other genres. His earliest novels were published anonymously and Cox’s career took off with the publication as ‘Anthony Berkeley’ of Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (1927) and, as A. B. Cox, Mr Priestley’s Problem (1927), which he went on to adapt for the stage the following year as Mr Priestley’s Night Out. Cox was never without a sense of humour and in all of his Anthony Berkeley novels his tongue is firmly in his cheek, a tendency deplored by some contemporary reviewers. As well as incorporating humour and taking an iconoclastic approach to the genre’s ‘rules’, Cox found the history of crime a ready source of inspiration, using several infamous crimes as the starting point for a detective story. He also broadcast on the BBC and its predecessor 2LO. Finally, as the self-styled ‘first freeman’ of the Detection Club, the dining society for crime writers that he and others had created in 1929, Cox played a key role in developing ideas to raise funds, including an anthology of crime writing as well as the Club’s novel The Floating Admiral (1931) and other multi-authored stories.
Cox never made any secret of the fact that his motivation was money and at the end of the 1930s he stopped writing crime fiction when he found that he could be paid well for simply reviewing it, which he did up until shortly before his death in 1971. Since Cox’s death his books have drifted in and out of print, but many will be familiar with his Francis Iles book Before the Fact (1932) in the form of one of Hitchcock’s most successful films, Suspicion (1941) with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, as well as the late Philip Mackie’s superb 1979 serial for the BBC of Malice Aforethought (1931), starring Hywel Bennett.
‘Hot Steel’ was one of two syndicated stories written specially to raise awareness of the dangers of loose chatter during the Second World War. The story was published in the Gloucester Citizen on 27 April 1943, with the postscript: ‘Do you work in a munitions factory? If so, do you ever drop hints about the work you are doing? Don’t! What may seem only a hint to you may be a whole explanation to someone else. And there are dangerous people about, you know.’
Cyril Hare
CHARACTERS
LORD WARBECK, master of Warbeck Hall.
THE HON. ROBERT WARBECK, Lord Warbeck’s son.
SIR JULIUS PRENDERGAST, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Warbeck’s nephew.
LADY CAMILLA PRENDERGAST, Lord Warbeck’s step-niece by marriage.
MRS BARRETT, wife of John Barrett, M.P., a colleague of Sir Julius.
JAMES ROGERS, a detective sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, assigned to protect Sir Julius.
BRIGGS, the butler at Warbeck Hall.
SUSAN, the butler’s daughter.
Editor’s note: The British Parliament is a bicameral system: the lower house is the House of Commons and comprises elected members; the upper house is the House of Lords and comprises hereditary and appointed peers.
NARRATOR: It is the afternoon of Christmas Eve. In the library of Warbeck Hall, a large, dilapidated country house in the North of England, Lord Warbeck is reclining on a sofa, looking out at the steadily falling snow. He is a man of not much more than sixty, but with a face prematurely sharpened and aged by illness. Presently he rings a bell beside him. It is answered immediately by the butler.
BRIGGS: You rang, my lord?
LORD WARBECK: (his voice is rather thin and tired, but quite firm) Yes, Briggs, I thought I heard a car in the drive. Mr Robert arrived?
BRIGGS: Yes, my lord. He has just come in. I told him your lordship was asking for him. Shall I serve tea now, my lord, or wait for the ladies? They should have been here by now, but I expect the snow has delayed them.
LORD WARBECK: I think we’ll wait for tea until they come, Briggs. Where is Sir Julius?
BRIGGS: Sir Julius Warbeck, my lord, is writing in his room. From his expression I should judge that he is contemplating an increase in the income tax.
LORD WARBECK: (laughing) Let’s hope it isn’t as bad as that! It’s lucky for me, I’m not likely to live till next Budget Day, anyhow!
BRIGGS: Quite, my lord. That is—I’m sure, we all hope—
LORD WARBECK: That’s all right, Briggs. Say no more about it.
BRIGGS: No, my lord. Er—there was one further matter, my lord.
LORD WARBECK: Yes?
BRIGGS: The—the person Sir Julius brought with him, my lord. Will he be having his meals with the family or the staff?
LORD WARBECK: The person? Oh, you mean the detective? Well, I hardly think even a Chancellor of the Exchequer needs protecting at meals in this house. With the staff, certainly.
BRIGGS: Very good, my lord. And will it be in order for him to be asked to assist with the washing-up?
LORD WARBECK: From my limited experience of Scotland Yard, I should say, undoubtedly.
BRIGGS: I am glad to hear it, my lord. Here is Mr Robert, now.
ROBERT WARBECK: (a fresh, vigorous young man’s voice) Sorry I’m so late, father. I’ve had a simply poisonous journey here!
LORD WARBECK: Robert, dear boy, it’s good to see you! How well you’re looking!
ROBERT: And you’re looking—(he pauses, and then goes on in an anxious voice) How are you feeling, father?
LORD WARBECK: The same as usual, Robert. I’m feeling quietly expectant, waiting for the aneurysm to blow up or whatever aneurysms do. I was told three months ago that I should not live till Christmas, and now with only a few hours to go I think I should do it. Indeed, I’m relying on you to tide me over till Boxing Day. It would be very ill-bred to expire with guests in the house.
ROBERT: Guests! You never told me there was going