his next play—Sylvia Greer—was a flop, which McAlister appears to have anticipated because he did not allow his name to appear in any advertisements or even outside the theatre. In 1913 there was a brief run of a one-act thriller, 13 Simon Street, and in 1915 A Guardian Angel and Benvenuto Cellini.
By this time McAlister was serving in France with the Motor Machine Gun Service of the British Army. He was wounded twice and in 1916, while he was lying in a Dublin hospital, his next play, inspired by the Maybrick case, was staged; the script of The Riddle was co-credited to another writer, Morley Roberts, although he had done little more than edit McAlister’s original script. The production had a strong cast—including the playwright Dion Boucicault as a Machiavellian barrister and, as a woman once accused of murder, the great Irene Vanbrugh. The notices were good but McAlister was unhappy with Roberts’ changes and, around a year later, the play was re-staged in Dublin in its original form, this time credited solely to ‘Anthony P. Wharton’ and with the original title, The Ledbetter Case. McAlister must have been very disappointed that this—the original version of his play—was less well received than The Riddle.
Although Irene Wycherley and other plays continued to be staged, McAlister’s reputation as a playwright was beginning to fade. He therefore began writing fiction again, with short stories appearing in Pearson’s Magazine and the Empire Review. His first novel, Joan of Overbarrow (1921) was a comedic romance—‘If I had to choose between marrying you and dying in a pigsty, I should prefer to die in a pigsty’. Later books were more serious. The Man on the Hill (1923) anticipates the General Strike of 1926 while Be Good, Sweet Maid (1924) is a viciously misogynistic study of a woman novelist. In a lighter vein, Evil Communications (1926) is a series of sketches providing ‘a rollicking study of village life’, and The Two of Diamonds (1926) is a historical romance set in Second Empire France.
In the 1920s, crime fiction was very much considered a lesser branch of literature and for his first mystery, McAlister—then working as a publican in Surrey—adopted a new pseudonym, ‘Lynn Brock’. His first Brock novel, The Deductions of Colonel Gore (1924), introduced Wickham Gore, a retired soldier turned explorer who returns from Africa to discover blackmail and murder among his friends. In an overcrowded market, Colonel Gore was an immediate success. His first case was followed up by a golfing mystery, Colonel Gore’s Second Case (1925), and the extraordinary Colonel Gore’s Third Case: The Kink (1925). Over the next twenty years, McAlister produced four more Colonel Gore books including The Mendip Mystery (1929), its sequel QED (1930) and the multiple murder mystery The Stoat (1940). The Lynn Brock name also appeared on some standalone novels, perhaps the best known being the revenge thriller Nightmare (1932).
At heart McAlister was always a playwright, and he wrote two final plays, presented as by Lynn Brock: in 1929 a farce called Needles and Pins, which received poor reviews; and in 1931, an adaptation of The Mendip Mystery.
One of only two uncollected short stories to feature Colonel Gore, ‘Some Little Things’ was first published in the Radio Times on 21 December 1928. I am grateful to the bookseller and archivist Jamie Sturgeon for drawing it to my attention.
Anthony Berkeley
‘’Itler wouldn’t ’arf give something for a sight of what you’re lookin’ at now,’ bawled the little foreman.
Amid the deafening din of a huge munition works, Roger Sheringham could hardly hear the words. He grinned amiably and nodded, saving his larynx.
‘Come and see what this lot’s doin’,’ invited the foreman.
Roger looked round for his host, saw that he had not re-appeared, and followed his deputy towards a little group of half-naked men who were wiping the sweat off their foreheads with the air of something accomplished.
Some kind of a lull in the general din made conversation possible, and Roger learned that they had been forging the barrel of a six-inch gun. He said the appropriate things.
‘And I expect Hitler would give something for the sight of that, too,’ he added with a smile.
The burly man nearest to him wiped his forehead again. ‘Well, sir, even ’itler must know we’re making guns in England by this time.’
To Roger this seemed a very reasonable remark, but the little foreman appeared to find it highly humorous. ‘Ah, it isn’t the barrels,’ he shouted. ‘It’s what’s in ’em.’
‘Shells, you mean?’ hazarded Roger, relieved to find that the burly workman appeared just as bewildered as himself before the foreman’s wit.
‘Shells?’ replied that humorist. ‘No, wot I mean, it all depends if you know what you’re lookin’ at.’
‘’E’s looking at a gun-forging, same as you are,’ rejoined the burly workman, with an air of finality. ‘Come on, mates.’
Roger was not sorry to be rescued at that moment by his host.
Arthur Luscombe at school had been a large, heavy boy, with a passion for imparting unwanted information in a ponderous manner. Now, as the managing director and virtual owner of Luscombe and Sons, he seemed to Roger to have altered very little. Leading his guest with measured footsteps towards his private office, he appeared determined on sacrificing his valuable time to pouring into Roger’s reluctant ears just about everything anyone could want to know about steel, and a good deal more than most did.
‘Austenite-alloy steels … low elasticity … manganese steels … toughness … resistance to abrasions … high-tensile alloy steels … gun-tubes … resistance to shock … nickel … chromium … molybdenum … you’re not listening, Sheringham!’
‘I am,’ Roger protested, as they turned in the managing director’s office. ‘You were talking about steel, I mean,’ he added hastily, after a glance at the other’s face. ‘You were saying that some—er—alloys were harder than others, and … and some not so hard … I mean, greater elasticity … yes, and … I say, though, wouldn’t Hitler give something to see what I’ve just seen?’
The managing director’s response to this artless query surprised its maker. It was with a positive start and a look of something remarkably like suspicion that he snapped: ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘Well … er … nothing,’ Roger returned lamely. ‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even original. Your foreman said it, so I thought—’
‘Johnson had no right to say anything of the sort.’
‘But it doesn’t matter, does it?’ Roger asked, still more surprised. ‘I mean, munition works and so on … naturally Hitler …’
‘Yes, yes. Of course. Naturally. Still, Johnson … However, it’s of no importance. Now, I can just spare another ten minutes, Sheringham. Would you care to see our sidings? I have to go there myself in any case.’
‘I should like to, above all things,’ Roger said agreeably.
Five minutes later he was trying to look intelligently at long lines of railway trucks, but over which Mr Luscombe threw the complacent eye of proprietorship.
‘Most
