"If You Want My Opinion, It's a Fake from Start to Finish"

OVER the course of twenty years, today's sleuth appeared in seventeen novels, but here 

he makes a rare appearance in a short story with the baffling (but soon to be made clear) 

title of . . .

"Before Insulin."

By J. J. Connington (Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947; Wikipedia HERE; the SFE HERE; about Sir Clinton Driffield, Wikipedia HERE; the Roy Glashan Library J. J. Connington page HERE and a complete bibliography at RGL HERE; and Mike Grost's megasite HERE).

First appearance: The Evening Standard, September 1, 1936 as "Beyond Insulin."

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Other reprints:

  Fifty Masterpieces of Mystery, 1937, as "Before Insulin" (today's text via RGL).

 

  The Orion Book of Murder, 1996.

  The Edinburgh Mystery and Other Tales of Scottish Crime, 2002.

  Bodies from the Library, 2018.

Short story (14 pages as a PDF).

Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HERE).

   "The boy fell in love with one of the nurses, who happened to be under the influence of the doctor, Sir Clinton went on. If he lived to make a will, there was little doubt that he would leave the fortune to the nurse. A considerable temptation for any girl, I think you'll agree."

IT'S a sad commentary on human nature that some of us are willing to take advantage of somebody else's infirmities for gain. Such is the situation in our story, which seems to confirm that ancient verse a lot of people know in part but seldom in full. The guardian of righteousness (although he would balk at the term) in this case is first described elsewhere like this:

  "Sir Clinton was a slight man who looked about thirty-five. His sun-tanned face, the firm mouth under the close-clipped moustache, the beautifully-kept teeth and hands, might have attracted a second glance in a crowd; but to counter this there was a deliberate ordinariness about his appearance. Had a stranger, meeting him casually, been asked later on to describe him, it would have been difficult; for Sir Clinton designedly refrained from anything characteristic in his dress. Only his eyes failed to fit in with the rest of his conventional appearance; and even them he had disciplined as far as possible. Normally, they had a bored expression; but at times the mask slipped aside and betrayed the activity of the brain behind them. When fixed on a man they gave a curious impression as though they saw, not the physical exterior of the subject, but instead the real personality concealed below the facial lineaments."

  Heaven help anyone who has to contend with an adversary like that.

Principal characters:

~ Squire Wendover ("It's a matter of an estate for which I happen to be sole trustee, worse luck. The other two have died since the will was made"), Sir Clinton Driffield ("I'm Chief Constable of the county, you know—I should probably have had to prosecute that unfortunate nurse for attempted fraud"), Robin Ashby ("was worn to a shadow, simply skin and bone and hardly able to walk with weakness"), Dr. Prevost ("about thirty, black torpedo beard, very brisk and well-got-up, with any amount of belief in himself. He spoke English fluently, which gave him a pull with Robin, out there among foreigners"), Harringay ("was a taciturn man by nature, and his pride had been slightly ruffled"), and Sydney Eastcote ("I was very very sorry for him, and I'd have done anything to make him feel happier").

References:

- "young Robin took diabetes, a bad case, poor fellow"; "the usual diabetic coma":

  "Diabetes accounts for approximately 4.2 million deaths every year, with an estimated 1.5 million caused by either untreated or poorly treated diabetes." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "quarto size, ten inches by eight":

  "Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves." (Wikipedia HERE.)

 - "All we did was to put the envelope into a printing-frame with a bit of photographic printing paper behind it and expose it to light for a while"; "that little defect shows up when one exposes the envelope over a sheet of photographic paper":

  "In forensic science, questioned document examination (QDE) is the examination of documents potentially disputed in a court of law. Its primary purpose is to provide evidence about a suspicious or questionable document using scientific processes and methods. Evidence might include alterations, the chain of possession, damage to the document, forgery, origin, authenticity, or other questions that come up when a document is challenged in court." (Wikipedia HERE; also see Forensic Sciences Simplified HERE and Robson Forensic HERE.)

- "like a sort of St Andrew's Cross":

  "A saltire, also called Saint Andrew's Cross or the crux decussata, is a heraldic symbol in the form of a diagonal cross. The word comes from the Middle French sautoir, Medieval Latin saltatoria ('stirrup')." (Wikipedia HERE.)

Resources:

- We first communed with J. J. Connington with respect to his novel, The Tau Cross Mystery (HERE), and later with what appears to be his only science fiction story, "The Thinking Machine" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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