Jacquelyn Visick (ed.) - London Tales Of Terror (Fontana, 1972)
Justin Todd
William Sansom - Various Temptations
Algernon Blackwood - Confession
John Keir Cross - 'Happy Birthday, Dear Alex'
Joan Fleming - Gone Is Gone
John Metcalfe - Time-Fuse
Graham Greene - A Little Place Off The Edgware Road
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared
Holloway Horn - The Old Man
Eleanor Farjeon - Spooner
Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) - Mrs. Manifold
L. P. Hartley - Someone In The Lift
Charles A. Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial For Murder
W. F. Harvey - August Heat
Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover
Rosemary Timperley - HarryWilliam Sansom - Various Temptations (Something Terrible, Something Lovely, 1948): Ronald Raikes, 31, is wanted for questioning in connection with the Victoria murders. Four London prostitutes have been strangled in a week and the known sex-offender has gone to ground. On impulse, he climbs a ladder and climbs in the open bedroom window of Clara, a plain and lonely woman who's just been reading about the slayings. Telling her not to be frightened, he finds himself pouring out a very diluted account of his life story. Despite suspecting him to be the murderer, still she shelters him, finding it all a great adventure and soon they are making arrangements for their wedding. To celebrate his 32nd birthday, Clara throws him a party and, much to her own amazement, dolls herself up for the occasion, getting her hair done, buying a new blouse and even applying a dash of lipstick which is probably not the most advisable course of action in the circumstances, though the creepy undercurrent suggests she had a death wish all along.
John Keir Cross - ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Alex’: The narrator wishes to buy his medical student a human skeleton for his birthday. He should know better than to approach the “general dealer” operating from a Sloane Square shop who trades under the name of W. Hare.
L. P. Hartley - Someone In The Lift: The Maldons are spending Christmas at the Brompton Court Hotel and six year old Peter is insistent that he can see a man in the lift, a still figure in shadow whose features he can't discern. oddly, the only times this mysterious individual is absent is when Peter tries to show him to his dad. His father tells him it must be Santa Claus.
On the 23rd the lift breaks down and the workmen go flat out to repair it. Peter is desperate for them to succeed but, come the big night, he has reason to wish they hadn't. L. P. Hartley: a good man to have around if you want to celebrate a really gloomy Christmas.
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared: "Public houses are the inventions of the devil, Mrs. Meacher". A Saint in his own mind, Mr. Cream is fastidious to a fault due to his strict upbringing and there's not a day goes by he doesn't thank his parents for instilling in him a strong streak of self-discipline. Indeed, loose women so annoy him that he invites them back to his lodgings for a damn good throttling. When Flossie Meacher stabs a fellow tenant after he makes drunken advances toward her, she turns to Cream to help her dispose of the body, pointing out that she's just seen Miss Colgrave's corpse propped up in his room.
Holloway Horn - The Old Man: Martin 'Knocker' Thompson, turf bandit, meets an old man in the Charing Cross Road who presses a newspaper on him. The paper is dated July 29 1926 ... and today is the 28th. Knocker turns to the racing results, gets his money on the winners - including a tasty 100-8 shot - and cleans up. On his way home from Garwick, he reads the rest of the newspaper. One headline is of particular significance ...
Joan Fleming - Gone is Gone: The ghostly voice of Clowd over the telephone shortly after his funeral is too much for the scheming Comfort to take. For years he's hated the man who was his partner in the antique shop because he would always outsmart him. Now, just as he's about to cheat Clowd's wife out of her estate, Comfort is turned over again - by a gramophone record.
William Fryer Harvey - August Heat: James Withencroft, artist sketches the impression of a man he's never met, " ... enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin: it creased his huge, stumpy neck ...He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers gripping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse."
Satisfied with his work, Withencroft goes for a stroll. Its a sweltering day and lost in thought, he wanders into a stone-masons, to be confronted with the original of his picture. The mason seems genial enough, working on a gravestone he's planning to enter for an exhibition. Withencroft reads the name he's inscribed and asked how he came by it. The mason tells him it's a funny thing, but he plucked it straight out of the air. It is, of course, Withencroft's, with his exact date of birth to boot.
Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover: Mrs. Drover returns to her boarded-up home in bomb-ravaged London in keeping with a promise she made her soldier fiance on the ever of his departure to France twenty-five years earlier. He never returned and was presumed missing in action. Mrs. Drover secretly saw this as a lucky escape - he was extremely hard going.
As the agreed hour arrives, her nerves overcome her - the letter from the "dead" lover awaiting her on the table didn't help - and Mrs. Drover rushes into the street to hail a taxi. Even if you guess the ending, this story packs one of the creepiest endings this side of Elizabeth Jane Howard's
Three Miles Up or Burrage's
One Who Saw.
Rosemary Timperley - Harry:
“There were newspaper stories of kidnapping, baby-snatching, child-murders….” Regarded by many to be Timperley’s finest ghost story. Mrs. James is anxious about her adopted daughter Christine’s growing attachment to an “imaginary” brother, Harry. When she refuses to begin infant school because Harry can’t accompany her - he’s fourteen - her Mum loses patience. A visit to the doctor doesn’t help so Mrs. James decides it’s time to find out what she can about Christine’s history before she and Jim adopted her. Whatever happened to her real parents?
Graham Greene - A Little Place Off The Edgware Road: North West London, 1939. Craven passes an afternoon in the decrepit little theatre in Culpar Road. Although there are no more than twenty people in the audience, a stranger takes the seat next to him and sporadically interrupts the film with a commentary on the Bayswater murder, a subject about which he seems worryingly well informed. When his hand brushes against Cravens it is wet and sticky. After the film, Craven telephones the police. They already have the killer in custody, but the victim has disappeared.
