Peter Haining – Tales From The Rogues’ Gallery

[dem bones]

Peter Haining (ed.) – Tales From The Rogues’ Gallery: A Guided Tour (Little Brown, 1994)

Introduction – Peter Haining
Section One: The Roll of Infamy

Clive Barker – Down, Satan!
V.S. Pritchett – A Story of Don Juan
August Derleth – The Philosopher’s Stone
J.C. Moore – The Proof
H.P. Lovecraft – The Unnamable
M.R. James – Martin’s Close
Anthony Shaffer – The Cold-Blooded Tigress of London
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Body Snatcher
John Dickson Carr – The Black Cabinet
Anthony Boucher – A Kind of Madness
Angela Carter – The Fall River Axe Murders
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Fiend
Aleister Crowley – At the Fork of the Roads
Miriam Allen deFord – The Moors Murders

Section Two: The Evil Lives On

William Waldorf Astor – Monsieur de Neron
A.N.L. Munby – Herodes Redivivus
Julian Symons – The Borgia Heirloom
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Silver Mirror
Henry Herring – The Late Eugene Aram
Robert Arthur – The Mirror of Cagliostro
Robert Bloch – The Skull of the Marquis de Sade
Kirk Mashburn – The Sword of Jean Lafitte
Ramsey Campbell – Jack’s Little Friend
Anthony Berkely – Was Crippen a Murderer?
Ray Bradbury – Darling Adolf
Peter Lovesey – A Bride in the Bath
Bernard Taylor – Forget-Me-Not
Ruth Rendell – A Case of Coincidence

Blurb:

Enter, if you dare, the world of rogues. In this delectable celebration of the darker side of man's nature Peter Haining presents a collection of short stories guaranteed to chill and intrigue: tales of infamy, crimes unpunishable and horrors unspeakable. All inhuman life is here – an ominous vision of Hell on earth; a convincing argument that some terrors are simply unnamable; and the twisted logic of the Witch-Finder General in J.C. Moore's 'The Proof' – here are tales from rogues throughout the ages.

True crime provides another rich seam of material which Peter Haining has mined thoroughly, offering both fictional and documentary discourses on such cases as Dr.Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Gilles de Retz, the notorious fifteenth-century pederast and mass murderer. The dark deeds of Reginald Christie at 10, Rillington Place are chillingly documented, and Robert Bloch relates the gruesome tale of the legacy of 'The Skull of the Marquis de Sade', showing that if proof were needed, some collector's items are better left uncollected...

Peter Haining guides us through this literary chamber of horrors with obvious relish, and draws on a truly eclectic range of authors, from acknowledged masters such as F.Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Louis Stevenson – represented here by 'The Body Snatcher', his classic study of the perils of grave-robbing – through to more contemporary writers such as Angela Carter and Ray Bradbury. Specialist in the fields of crime and horror are also well served, with grisly samples from Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft, among others.

Tales from the Rogues' Gallery is a delightfully creepy exploration of the soft underbelly of man's psyche; diverse and hugely entertaining, the stories are sometimes frightening, always fascinating – but be warned: it is a brave reader indeed who delves into the Rogues' Gallery after the witching hour...

Mr. Haining states in his introduction that 'Tales From The Rogues Gallery' was conceived as a tribute to mark the 110th anniversary of Madame Tussuad's famous 'Chamber of Horrors' on the Marylebone Road. To commemorate the occasion, here he recycles material from anthologies past (including his own Black Magic Omnibus and Michel Parry's Jack The Knife) to arrive at a bumper sequel to The Evil People. What a terribly dull cover!

Have met a number of the stories elsewhere. Bernard Taylor's horrific Forget Me Not details the supernatural revenge of Dr. Crippen's wallpaper. Robert Louis Stevenson pays tribute to the Penny Dreadfuls in The Body-snatchers . At the Fork of the Roads is Crowley revelling in a black magician's sadistic revenge. M. R. James's Martin's Close exhumes Jugde Jeffries. Conan-Doyle watches an action replay of an infamous Scottish murder via The Silver Mirror. And The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade is the Bloch story you get when an anthologist belatedly decides they'd best not give you Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper yet again.

Clive Barker - Down, Satan!: To restore his faith in God, any God, Gregorius liberates a mad architect from a Florentine asylum and, inspired by the writings of deSade, Dante, Freud and Krafft Ebing, builds a theme Hell on earth in the hope of luring Satan to South Africa.

John Cecil Moore - The Proof: Matthew Hopkins required little by way of "evidence" to pronounce a woman who had fallen foul of her neighbours a witch, and such is the case with the luckless heroine of this grim vignette.

August Derleth - The Philosophers’ Stone: (Weird Tales, Jun 1928). Spies loyal to the Duke Di Orsini inform him that Cesare Borgia's troops are abroad in preparation of a midnight attack on those disloyal to the Pope. Of course, now Orsini has finally acquired the Philosophers’ Stone he has nothing to fear from even the most diabolical black magician.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Fiend: In 1895, on a country road in Minnesota, Mrs. Crenshaw Engels and her seven year old son Mark are brutally and senselessly slain. The bereaved husband swears revenge and, at the subsequent trial, requires forcible restraint to prevent his killing the accused. With the fiend sentenced to life imprisonment, Crenshaw changes tack. Convincing the governor that he is now driven by compassion and forgiveness, he takes to visiting the prisoner on a fortnightly basis with a view to inflicting unrelenting mental torture - by vile literature. The visits continue for decades.

Anthony Shaffer - The Cold-Blooded Tigress of London: Non-fiction account of the brutal hatchet murder of John Hayes by two lodgers manipulated by the victim's conniving wife, Catherine, on March 1st 1776. The protracted disposal and discovery of the dismembered body parts and Catherine's eventual punishment at the stake are every bit as horrific as the crime.

[dem bones]

Julian Symons – The Borgia Heirloom: The young man suspects that it was Lady X of Gratchen Manor who poisoned her beloved son's "unsuitable" fiancée all those years ago. But how could she possibly have administered the fatal dose?

Angela Carter - The Fall River Axe Murders: Sympathy for Lizzie Borden, quite the opposite for her parents, the one a "fabulously misanthropic miser," the other an ineffectual fat slob.

Miriam Allen deFord - The Moors Murders: (The Saint Magazine, Aug. 1967). Straight reportage from a very liberal viewpoint on the despicable crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. "This is a sick world in a sick age." Author is of opinion that the society which so neglected Brady in his childhood is to blame.

Anthony Berkely – Was Crippen a Murderer?: The author accepts that the "doctor" poisoned his horrible wife, dismembered the corpse, and fled to the States with his mistress (who was disguised as a man), but, hey, he didn't mean to! On this form, author was born to be O. J. Simpson's defence lawyer.

John Dickson Carr - The Black Cabinet: Miss Nina Bennett has been brainwashed from childhood to loathe the Emporer Napoleon III. Now aged nineteen, she returns to Paris from America with her mother's cackling hag of a maid, intent on blowing Napoleon's brains out. The unlikeliest of intermediaries - clue: he's arguably the most infamous murderer in America's history - saves the day.

[dem bones]

Ramsey Campbell – Jack’s Little Friend (Michel Parry [ed.], Jack The Knife, Mayflower, 1975). Author is demoniacally possessed by the same entity responsible for the Ripper murders of 1888. This reader is a bit thick so still mystified by concluding paragraph, specifically the reference to Egypt. And who - or what - is the "little friend" released from the box?

Peter Lovesey – A Bride in the Bath (aka The Bathroom; Virginia Whitaker [ed.], Winter Crimes: 5, Macmillan, 1973). Bismark Road, Highgate. Meet newly-wed, newly insured Melanie Lloyd, relaxing with a copy of Murder Is Methodical in a brand new luxury bath, installed by husband William at considerable expense. William is still something of an unknown quantity, not one to discuss his background, but that's likely because he's an adopted child. Melanie reads on. She's now reached the entry on the notorious 'brides in the bath' murderer, George Joseph Smith, who went to the gallows in 1915 .....

A. N. L. Munby - Herodes Redivivus: Bristol. A fifteen year old schoolboy is befriended by Mr. Race, the deathly pale, lanked haired proprietor of a bookshop in the shadow of St. Mary Redcliffe church. These being more innocent times, the lad is not the least suspicious of his temperamental new acquaintance, even when he turns off the lights while the boy is washing his hands in the pitch dark cellar. He is saved by the intervention of a mysterious cleric, but Race's next pupil, Roger Weland, is not so fortunate. Mr. Race, a disciple of alleged serial child-killer Gilles de Rais, has taken to re-enacting his hero's grisliest rituals.

[dem bones]

Dan Adkins

Robert Arthur - The Mirror Of Cagliostro: (Fantastic, June 1963). "Jacques the Ripper. Never was caught, this Jaques. He froze to death in the gutter one winters night - but only after the spirit of Cagliostro had safely quitted his mortal flesh .... One has heard of the Marquis de Sade ...."

Young Bostonian Harry Langham travels to Paris while researching his thesis on Cagliostro, reputedly the most powerful black magician of the eighteenth century, although equally likely to have been a clever charlatan. Professor Thibaut, a leading authority on Cagliostro, warns against following up on his information as "evil never dies", but Langham isn't to be dissuaded. In the catacombs below St. Martins church he is given a private viewing of the tomb of Yvette Dulaine, the woman who spurned the magician and whose perfectly preserved body is neither dead nor alive. Harry furiously berates the curator for showing him a "wax model" but the face of Yvette haunts him in the night.

Back in London Langham purchases an antique mirror from Bob's Odds & Ends in Soho. Genial stage cockney Bob explains that the previous owner, the Duke of Burchester, met his end as a result of it falling on him while he was attacking it with an axe. Harry isn't listening. Although the glass is concealed behind a layer of black paint, a strip has peeled away, and briefly he catches a glimpse of the terrified Yvette crying out to him in silent scream.

Having cleaned the mirror, Harry learns to his cost that Cagliostro is still a force to be reckoned with as he finds himself trapped in the mirror, the magician commandeering his body to indulge his insatiable passion for rape and murder.

Ruth Rendell - A Case of Coincidence : (Ellery Queen Mystery, June 1980). "There were jokes about Wrexlade, sick jokes for the utterance of one of which a famous comedian was banned by the BBC. Something on the lines of what a good idea it would be to take one's mother-in-law to Wrexlade ..."

Chelmsford, 1953. On throttling his wife Norah for her serial infidelities, Sir Michael Lestrange confesses all to the police, only to be humoured as a fantasist. Nobody believes his testimony. Poor fellow must be suffering from severe mental strain. We already have the local halfwit, Kenneth 'The Wrexlade Strangler' Brannel in custody for this and four previous murders of equal savagery ....

Henry A. Hering - The Late Eugene Aram: (Adventure And Fantasy, Wright & Brown, 1930). Mr. Smilax rents a remote property on the Yorkshire Moors which - he hopes - will afford him the peace and tranquillity to finish his paper on Druidical Vestiges. The atypically honest landlord forewarns him that he'll be sharing with the ghost of local 'celebrity,' Eugene Aram, schoolmaster and etymologyst, executed at Knavesmire in August 1759 for the murder of a friend he claimed was sleeping with his wife. Initially Smilax and his spectral squatter get along famously, but then Aram persuades him to "borrow" some Old English manuscripts from a neighbour's library ....

[helrunar]

Very cool.  I think The Mirror of Cagliostro was dramatized in Boris Karloff's Thriller series in the early 1960s--with Lloyd Bochner as the hapless Harry?  It was either this, or a story very closely modeled upon it (to coin a phrase... rip-off is such an ugly word, isn't it?).

Thanks, Dem!

cheers, H.

[helrunar]

And yes, the Cagliostro story was dramatized by Mr. Arthur as "The Prisoner in the Mirror" during the first season (or series) of Karloff's THRILLER.  Fabulous Henry Daniell had a bit part in a flashback sequence, as I recall.  It might be on youtube...

cheers, H.

[dem bones]

Peter Haining writes in his introduction that Tales From The Rogues Gallery was inspired by visiting the Chamber of Horrors at Madam Tussauds and similar morbid establishments. It's taken me until now to realise that ... Rogue's Gallery also makes for a decent sequel to 1968's The Evil People when Haining-the-anthologist was beginning to hit his stride.

Hugh Rankin

Kirk Mashburn – The Sword of Jean Lafitte: (Weird Tales, December 1927). The shade of the old pirate returns to wreak vengeance upon the last descendant of his enemy's family. Mr. Stuart is separated from his party while hunting duck in the swamplands near Barataria Bay. Hopelessly lost, he's delighted to bump into Lafitte, the grocer, from back home in New Orleans. But this version of Lafitte has evidently arrived straight from a Pirates of the Caribbean theme party, and why does he give himself such ridiculous airs and graces? Emerging from the swamp, Lafitte warns Stuart against boarding the Tampico as he has business with its captain, de Ruiz. Our narrator blithely ignores the advice, and lives to witness an extraordinary sword fight between man and invisible opponent.

Ray Bradbury – Darling Adolf: Dear God, what's this? Ray Bradbury's The Producers? To mark the 40th anniversary of the Nuremberg Rally, a Jewish production team hit upon the bright idea of a new Hitler bio-pic. Unfortunately for all, the male lead ultimately finds it impossible to snap out of character. 'Darling Adolf' is kidnapped by out-of-work actors dressed as Goring, Goebbels and Hess intent on launching the Fourth Reich ....