Amelia B. Edwards - All Saints Eve

[dem bones]

Amelia B. Edwards - All Saints Eve: The Murder Mysteries (Wordsworth, 2008)

Richard Dalby - Introduction

The Four Fifteen Express
Cain
Number Three (aka, How The Third Floor Knew The Potteries)
In The Confessional
The Tragedy Of The Palazza Bardello
A Night On The Borders Of The Black Forest
Sister Johanna's Story
A Railway Panic
The Guard Ship Of The Aire
The Professor's Story
Was It An Illusion?
All Saint's Eve

When I used to do my totally gurly marking system, Amelia B. Edwards received two red asterisks (i.e., absolute top marks!) against The Phantom Coach (aka, The North Mail) and reds against nine other stories, half of which feature in All Saint's Eve. Slightly disappointed that this isn't a The Collected Ghost Stories of ... (has there been one?), but if you enjoy Victorian terror tales, Ms. Edwards, traveller, noted Egyptologist and early Suffragette, is a must.

Cain:Paris. The narrator, a young art student, is obsessed with a monstrous painting depicting 'Cain after the murder of Abel' which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery. Determined to copy it in every detail, he sits before it, day in day out, losing his health and sanity along the way. Seeing the way things are heading, a local artist, Achille Leroy, tells him the history of the artist, Camille Prevost. Ten years ago, Prevost had been set to wed his beloved cousin Mademoiselle Dumesnil, but while he was away studying in Italy, his snide brother, Hippolyte, stepped in. Hippolyte was murdered shortly after Camille's return, but the killer was never found. Still the narrator can't tear himself from the hateful painting, so Achille takes him to meet the artist ...

In the Confessional: Rheinfelden, Switzerland. The narrator visits a church by the Rhine and, stepping into the Confessional booth, is startled to find a hateful face glaring back at him from behind the grid. The spectre is that of a farmer, Caspar Rufenacht, who murdered a priest so that he could listen to his flirtatious wife's confession. Evidently her sins weren't to his liking as he later stalked her from room, slowly hacking her to pieces with a hatchet before giving himself into custody.

.... more to follow (am planning to stick with this one) ...

[dem bones]

.... sort of.

A Night On The Borders Of The Black Forest. The narrator, Chandos Hamilton - "I am an idle man - of very little use to myself, and of none to my country" - and a friendly German brewer, Gustav Bergham, fall foul of two brothers who own a remote farmhouse-cum-inn on the borders of ...., etc. This surly pair make it their business to drug, rob then murder guests in their beds. This one takes a while to get going, but shifts up a gear for a suspenseful climax as the farmhouse is set ablaze. Also notable for some masterly highly improbable "it was the work of an instant" moments. The 'supernatural' content is scant - a nightmare leads to the discovery of several corpses - but if it's full on Victorian melodrama you're after, this should do the trick.

The Third Floor. A ghost story set in the Worcester potteries which is some departure from Edwards' usual exotic locations . George Barnard, 38, a kindly foreman at the plant, is madly in love with Leah Payne, 20. Despite the age gap, the pair are inseparable .... until a sinister Frenchman shows up on the scene. Louis 'The Count' Laroche is a gifted painter of porcelain, and everyone hates him - coming over here, taking our jobs, running off with our women, etc. - except Leah who he effortlessly seduces. The heartbroken George threatens to kill him, and the blast furnace is put to satisfyingly unpleasant use. But who has murdered who?

A very slightly edited version of How The Third Floor Knew The Potteries.

[allthingshorror]

I just read ...Third Floor Knew the Potteries yesterday, courtesy of Summers' The Supernatural Omnibus. Out of all of Edwards' stories I've had the pleasure of reading, it's the one of the best.

[dem bones]

The Supernatural Omnibus is probably the best place to enjoy the story. I rate it far and away the best of Summers' three anthologies and nowadays it also doubles as a brilliant Wordsworth sampler (adds Roger Pater to the list of recommendations). I always had a bit of a soft spot for 'Jasper John' who, under her real name, Rosalie Muspratt, contributed two stories to the Not At Night's, although if David G. Rowlands is to be believed, not all of 'Jasper's Sinister Stories were quite up there with The Seeker Of Souls.

“The collection is rubbish .... I suppose if I were pressed I could say that The Secret Of The Red Room is quite effectively narrated by a spirited heroine, given a simplistic plot in which she dreams of imprisonment and of being diced for by drunken ruffians. Even though this is one of the longest tales no attempt is made to account for the phenomenon.The Man With The Cut Throat tells you as much in the title as the author otherwise takes four and a half pages to narrate: if one wants real excitement, try “The Hound From Hell” in which a black boar-hound comes into a cottage parlour and then goes out again! And these are the better tales." (Ghosts & Scholars 11, 1989)

Before, as I was about to, we all start clamouring for a reprint, Rosalie Muspratt died in 1976, thereby falling foul of the 70 year rule. Bollocks.