More to the point, hopelessly obsessed.'
Otani paused, rubbed his eyes and blinked. 'A victim of circumstance, some
would say. I don't know. Anyway, I propose to suggest to her that her years
of—not dedicated exactly, calculated perhaps—her years of service to the
orphanage where she'd been brought up gave her such a position of trust there
that the time came when she could delve into their confidential records more or
less at will and turn up a name or names. Have you got a cigarette on you?'
Kimura gave him one and lit it for him. Otani looked tired, but soon began
to speak again. 'I'll point out that either when she was working in the
Consulate-General here in Kobe or when she went to the United States she was
able to check US Army records or hire an enquiry agent to do it for her. I'll
suggest that these confirmed—as we can find out for ourselves easily enough—that
a certain young GI was serving with the Occupation forces in Japan in 1949 and
1950. And I shall explain that we think her next step was to discover his
current whereabouts and circumstances and use her beauty and intelligence to
entrap him. Ah, I see it's beginning to dawn on you too, Kimura.'
'I don't believe it, Chief!'
'I don't want to myself, but I do, and I can't help feeling sorry for her.
It's a terrible burden she's borne for most of her life, Kimura. Bottling up
all that dark hatred from childhood onwards so successfully . . . then living
with the knowledge that she seduced her own father, murdered his wife and
married him with the intention of one day killing him too. A man who still
probably has no idea he even has a daughter, much less who she is.'
Back
to Table of Contents
4 - Herlock Sholmes's Christmas Case by PETER TODD
‘P ETER TODD' was just one of
the twenty-five or more pseudonyms employed by Charles Hamilton (1876-1961) in
a writing career that spanned nearly seven decades, during which he banged out
(mostly on a 1900s' Remington) upwards of an awesome 70 million words. That's
roughly 950 average-length novels. Or, to put it another way, fourteen books a
year, every year, for nearly
seventy years. Except Hamilton didn't much write books.
His forte was schoolboy fiction for weekly papers such as Pluck, Boys' Friend, Boys' Realm, Boys'
Herald, Popular, Modern Boy, Gem and, especially, Magnet. There were 1,683
issues of the Magnet-, Hamilton, under his best-known pen-name Frank Richards—the name he used
when writing about his most famous creation Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of
Greyfriars School—wrote nearly 1,400 of them. At the peak of his creative
powers (roughly, the 1920s) he was producing two 20,000-word stories a week as
well as an assortment of shorter material. He once wrote an 18,000-word story
in a single day. At a time when the average income was £180 a year, Hamilton
was earning well over £3,000. One could, if asked, continue to pile up Ripley-esque
one-liners about Charles Harold St John Hamilton till the cows come home.
But perhaps the most striking fact of all is that he was a very good
writer. To be sure, when reading his stories belief must to a great extent be
suspended (Hamilton wrote of great public schools, but had never been to one);
even so he had a fine grasp of character and an unusual understanding of the
darker, less agreeable side of a boy's nature; his dialogue was generally
excellent (read it aloud and it works), and he had the natural yarn-spinner's
priceless gift of being thumpingly readable. Too, having a short way with
humbug and a sharp eye for the absurdities of adult life he could at times be
an inspired comic writer (and only a man with a highly developed sense of
humour, after all, could have translated 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey'
into Latin). His school stories are full of mordant asides on politicians,
retired military men, elderly pedagogues, faddists, pettifogging bureaucrats,
tax inspectors (especially tax inspectors).
Hamilton used the 'Peter Todd'
Otani paused, rubbed his eyes and blinked. 'A victim of circumstance, some
would say. I don't know. Anyway, I propose to suggest to her that her years
of—not dedicated exactly, calculated perhaps—her years of service to the
orphanage where she'd been brought up gave her such a position of trust there
that the time came when she could delve into their confidential records more or
less at will and turn up a name or names. Have you got a cigarette on you?'
Kimura gave him one and lit it for him. Otani looked tired, but soon began
to speak again. 'I'll point out that either when she was working in the
Consulate-General here in Kobe or when she went to the United States she was
able to check US Army records or hire an enquiry agent to do it for her. I'll
suggest that these confirmed—as we can find out for ourselves easily enough—that
a certain young GI was serving with the Occupation forces in Japan in 1949 and
1950. And I shall explain that we think her next step was to discover his
current whereabouts and circumstances and use her beauty and intelligence to
entrap him. Ah, I see it's beginning to dawn on you too, Kimura.'
'I don't believe it, Chief!'
'I don't want to myself, but I do, and I can't help feeling sorry for her.
It's a terrible burden she's borne for most of her life, Kimura. Bottling up
all that dark hatred from childhood onwards so successfully . . . then living
with the knowledge that she seduced her own father, murdered his wife and
married him with the intention of one day killing him too. A man who still
probably has no idea he even has a daughter, much less who she is.'
Back
to Table of Contents
4 - Herlock Sholmes's Christmas Case by PETER TODD
‘P ETER TODD' was just one of
the twenty-five or more pseudonyms employed by Charles Hamilton (1876-1961) in
a writing career that spanned nearly seven decades, during which he banged out
(mostly on a 1900s' Remington) upwards of an awesome 70 million words. That's
roughly 950 average-length novels. Or, to put it another way, fourteen books a
year, every year, for nearly
seventy years. Except Hamilton didn't much write books.
His forte was schoolboy fiction for weekly papers such as Pluck, Boys' Friend, Boys' Realm, Boys'
Herald, Popular, Modern Boy, Gem and, especially, Magnet. There were 1,683
issues of the Magnet-, Hamilton, under his best-known pen-name Frank Richards—the name he used
when writing about his most famous creation Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of
Greyfriars School—wrote nearly 1,400 of them. At the peak of his creative
powers (roughly, the 1920s) he was producing two 20,000-word stories a week as
well as an assortment of shorter material. He once wrote an 18,000-word story
in a single day. At a time when the average income was £180 a year, Hamilton
was earning well over £3,000. One could, if asked, continue to pile up Ripley-esque
one-liners about Charles Harold St John Hamilton till the cows come home.
But perhaps the most striking fact of all is that he was a very good
writer. To be sure, when reading his stories belief must to a great extent be
suspended (Hamilton wrote of great public schools, but had never been to one);
even so he had a fine grasp of character and an unusual understanding of the
darker, less agreeable side of a boy's nature; his dialogue was generally
excellent (read it aloud and it works), and he had the natural yarn-spinner's
priceless gift of being thumpingly readable. Too, having a short way with
humbug and a sharp eye for the absurdities of adult life he could at times be
an inspired comic writer (and only a man with a highly developed sense of
humour, after all, could have translated 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey'
into Latin). His school stories are full of mordant asides on politicians,
retired military men, elderly pedagogues, faddists, pettifogging bureaucrats,
tax inspectors (especially tax inspectors).
Hamilton used the 'Peter Todd'
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