The Hand Of Cain - Martin Thomas

[nightreader]

The Hand Of Cain by Martin Thomas (Magnum Books 1967)

This originally looked to me like it should be one of those creeping ‘beast with five fingers’ kind of novels. But it isn’t. It’s more weird than that.

The book starts with the thoroughly unpleasant Mathew Lodway drunkenly stalking a very young girl he fancies. He follows her into the “With-It Amusement Arcade” full of hip young things, but he quickly loses sight of the girl. Frustrated and angry he takes cover in a booth run by “Madame Riva – Genuine Romany Palmiste”. The palmist looks at his hands and abruptly recoils in horror but not explaining what she’s seen there, she demands he leave and claims she is feeling unwell.

Mathew Lodway is one of three brothers, the triplet sons of Virgil Lodway, leading surgeon in the town of Stilford. Mathew is the youngest, the wastrel of the family, the reprobate ne’er-do-well. Timothy is his brother who is building a good reputation as a local GP, while the eldest brother Alan has a talent for music and plays violin in the Stilford Philharmonic. This turns out to be one of the most dysfunctional families ever.

Mad Mathew returns home after his visit to Madame Riva: “the bile of repetitive disappointment scalded hot in his throat”. Mathew then strangles his brother Alan in a fit of frustrated rage and jealousy, for Mathew lusts after Alan’s fiancée Alison. Virgil Lodway finds Mathew over the body of his brother but cannot bring himself to shop him to the Police, also thinking of the public scandal to himself and Timothy.

Then, in a bizarre freak accident, brother Timothy loses his hands, chopped to bits on a circular saw. Virgil the father even more bizarrely drugs Mathew, cuts off his hands and expertly grafts them on to Timothy's stumps. Well, he is a top surgeon with his own operating room after all. That’s when the trouble really begins…

Mathew gets false hands fitted and seethes with hatred for his father and brother. While getting drunk in the Nirvana Club he is approached by a midget Indian, the Swami Barham Lal Sivasan. The little swami offers Mathew revenge through the use of magic. They smoke a joint and Mathew agrees to pay the swami £200 (well it is 1967, that was a lot of money then) if he exacts a successful revenge on Mathew’s behalf.

Very soon Timothy undergoes a complete character change. He becomes an evil tempered homicidal maniac. He rapes Alison then strangles her and smashes her head in with a rock before hiding her body in the woods. Timothy goes on to strangle a drunk in an alleyway and a young boy he catches vandalising his car. It is as he is disposing of the boy’s body that Mathew discovers his brother is the Stilford Strangler.

The swami then turns up at Mathew’s flat, seeking his £200. He gives Mathew three days to come up with the money, hinting that the demons he set on Timothy might be re-directed on to him if payment does not occur. Mathew decides to blackmail Timothy for the money, not such a good idea as Timothy is completely barmy by now. He attacks Mathew, they struggle and fight but Timothy overpowers his brother and kills him. He looks up to see this father, who has seen and heard everything.

The book ends suddenly, with another death and plenty of bloodletting. The doorbell rings. It’s Inspector Russell from Stilford C.I.D…

This was such a strange book. A big stew of things chucked in and stirred up – palm reading, murder, amputation, black magic, blackmail, more murder, revenge, then more murder. There isn’t really a likeable character in it, the Lodways are all mad. But it does make for a good pulpy read…

[Dr Terror]

Read this one a while back - A gripping book!

[pulphack]

bit late picking this up, but... nice gag!

the book, needless to say, should be read by everyone onthis board. a sleazy classic of its sort.

[dem bones]

Martin Thomas - The Hand of Cain (Magnum, 1967; originally Press Editorial, 1966)

Blurb:


THE HANDS
WERE EVIL ...

When Madam Riva, the gypsy palmist, looked at the hands across the table, she shuddered and turned away. For the lines etched into those hands spelled horror and merciless death.
They were the hands of Matthew Lodway, reprobate and ne'er-do-well - they were accursed hands. And the evil that dwelt in them could not be resisted - not even a good man could fight their satanic beckoning to murder ...

Alan, Matthew, and Timothy, 28-year-old triplet sons of the famous surgeon, Virgil Lodway, all still living at home in Crestleigh, an exclusive suburb in the University town of Stilford. Timothy is a GP and Alan a concert pianist. Matthew, the black sheep, out earns both as a car salesman. The brightest of the three, Matthew has no degree on account of he was thrown out of college following an assault on a female student (it cost the old man plenty to placate the girl's parents). When first we meet, Matthew is stalking a teenage vision in skin-tight trousers and skinny sweater through the 'With-it Amusement Arcade.' He's in a particularly vile mood having suffered rare humiliation at the Nirvana Club — an opportunist waltzed off with his date - so she'd better be worth it!

Matthew Lodway hates the arcade. It doesn't much help that he sticks out so among these flower children and long-hair beatniks and in wrinkled drainpipe trousers.

"His expensive orthodox suit, fashionable as it was by the standards of his class and age, set him apart as an unconforming intruder. Conspicuous among these young social 'rebels' whose proudly proclaimed un orthodoxy consisted of a slavish, carbon-copy adherence to the crude and limited conventions of their dreary 'pop'-culture."

Losing sight of his prey, Matthew drops by the booth of Madam Riva — genuine Romany palmiste. Maybe she can tell him why his luck is so out this evening? Instead, she takes one look at his hand, shudders, makes her excuses — "I'll give you back your money. I ... I don't feel well" — and he's banished with instructions never to return.

But .... all is not lost! There's that girl again, leaving by the back door on to the street — alone! Just as Lodway is flexing to pounce, some motor-cycle hoodlum pulls up beside her. The bloody lousy boyfriend!
Matthew is attracted to this particular girl as she bears a resemblance to Alison, his musician brother's fiancée. He's been dying to give her one for ages, but somehow she seems oblivious to his great charm. As luck has it, he catches the lovers in the summer house going at it hammer and tongs. Later that night, he taunts Alan; "If I'd known little Alison was so forthcoming, I'd have tried my own luck with her." "You treacherous snake! I understand you already have!" "Only tentatively. But when I see Alison in a day or two she may be a little less frigid toward a man who's seen just how ... torrid you can be!"

The outcome of the coming together is that Alan lies dead on the floor, throttled by his lecherous brother. Virgil Lodway, fearing the scandal will finish his other son's career - it will hardly do wonders for his own, come to that - calls in a favour to have Alan certified dead through natural causes, a weak heart, you know, probably gave out due to something that caused him unusual excitement. Matthew's in the clear! And who better to console Alison over her tragic loss?

The one fly in the ointment is that wretched fortune-teller. Suppose she should see Alan's photo in the newspaper and note the resemblance to the young man whose palm caused her such revulsion? He'd best get rid of her, too.

TBC. P. 40 of 159

[dem bones]

Suddenly Matthew Lodway is not so in the clear as he thought after Timothy intervenes when he sees a little kid playing with an unattended circular saw. Timothy's heroics cost him his hands, severed. His father has no hesitation in performing an impromptu double transplant, replacing the good son's hands with those of his murdering brother. Matthew will have to make do with prosthetics and like it — it's not as though society will be worse off now he can't carry on strangling.

Matthew relocates to Bournemouth, where his old man keeps him in relative luxury in return for his silence. Timothy, too, is generous in this regard, but Matthew proves high maintenance, and regularly returns to Crestleigh for an emergency 'loan.' One night, awaiting his brother's return from the surgery, Matthew is knocking them back in the Nirvana Club, when he's approached by a midget — the ever-smiling Swami Barham Lal Sivasan, reefer-dispensing master of black sorcery. For a modest fee, the Swami can fix it that Lodway take exquisite revenge on those he hates most in this world. He requires little persuasion.

That same night, in Fratton Wood, Alison is raped and battered beyond recognition with a rock. A few days later, an eleven-year-old council estate kid is strangled and dumped in a pond on Westbrooke Farm. A tramp cops it in an alley. A French au pair does not long survive her meeting with a well-dressed fellow at Mrs. Claremont the medium's Healing Sanctuary — is no one safe from the Stilford fiend?

Loved this. For the first third or so, it seemed a straight Hands of Orlac knock off, very decent if not especially original, but introduction of the sinister Swami is the catalyst for increasingly weird and grisly goings on.