Ambrotox and Limping Dick
By Oliver Fleming
Then she sighed and was quite sure she wanted to be alone. As she strolled down through the hazel copse towards the London road, she set herself to think seriously of Randal Bellamy and his offer.
But the trouble was that Miss Caldegard had never seen a hummingbird, and therefore, she found herself brooding on the blueness of all the blue things in her experience, from willow-pattern china to the waters of the Mediterranean, instead of considering the answer that she must give to Randal on Friday.
A quarter of a mile of winding path led her downward to the level of the road. When she reached the stile, her thoughts were still far from what she had promised to consider.
She turned to call her dog, and, knowing his insatiable curiosity, she was less surprised than annoyed to find that she had let him stray. She could not remember whether she had last seen him behind her, in front, or blundering through the undergrowth, still confident, despite the perpetual disappointment, in his power to overtake a rabbit.
Now, the dog’s temper, admirable with his friends, was uncertain with strangers, and Amaryllis was accustomed to keeping him close at heel in public places. So, having whistled and called in vain, she crossed the stile and looked down the road towards Bedingfield.
There was the tiresome beast, if you please, a hundred yards away, gambling clumsily around the legs of a man walking towards her.
Her second whistle gave the animal a sense of duty, and he trotted towards her with many pauses to look back reluctantly at his new friend.
She caught the dog’s collar with the crook of her stick and bent down, slapping his muzzle in mild reproof.
As the stranger passed, his glance was downward, toward the dog rather than the woman. As she stood erect, she saw him standing with his back towards her in the middle of the road, his face turned to the stile she had just crossed.
Then he swung round, raising his hat as he approached her.
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Oliver Fleming
Philip MacDonald, aka Oliver Fleming, Anthony Lawless, Martin Porlock, and W J Stuart (5 November 1900 – 10 December 1980), was a British-born writer of fiction and screenplays, best known for thrillers.
Biography.
MacDonald was born in London, the son of author Ronald MacDonald and actress Constance Robertson, and grandson of the fiction writer and Christian minister George MacDonald. During World War I, he served with the British cavalry in Mesopotamia, later trained horses for the army, and was a show jumper. He also raised Great Danes. After marrying the writer F. Ruth Howard, he moved to Hollywood in 1931. He was one of the most popular mystery writers of the 1930s, and between 1931 and 1963, he wrote many screenplays along with a few radio and television scripts.
His detective novels, particularly those featuring his series detective Anthony Gethryn, are primarily “whodunits” with the occasional locked room mystery. His novel X v. Rex (1933), aka The Mystery of The Dead Police, is an early example of what has become known as a serial killer novel (before the term “serial killer” was coined), in which an insane murderer is killing police officers one after the other. Perhaps his best-known novel is The List of Adrian Messenger.
His work in screenwriting included not only screenplays based on his works (such as The Mystery of Mr X in 1934, Who Killed John Savage? in 1937, based on The Rynox Mystery, and many others) but also original stories and screenplays for series characters such as Charlie Chan (Charlie Chan in London, 1934, and Charlie Chan in Paris, 1935) and Mr. Moto (Mysterious Mr. Moto in 1938, Mr Moto’s Last Warning and Mr Moto Take a Vacation in 1939). He received no screen credit for his work in adapting Bride of Frankenstein. He adapted a story written by Agatha Christie for the movie Love From A Stranger (1947). MacDonald and Michael Hogan adapted the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, from which Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison created the screenplay for Rebecca, the 1940 film. Sherwood and Harrison were nominated for an Academy Award.
MacDonald’s 1927 novel Patrol was issued as one of the first twenty Penguin Books in 1935. He won the annual Short Story Edgar Award twice 1953 for the collection Something to Hide and Other Stories (published in the UK as Fingers of Fear and Other Stories) and in 1956 for the individual short story “Dream No More”. He also wrote television scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Present (“Malice Domestic”, 1957) and Perry Mason (“The Case of the Terrified Typist”, 1958).
As “W.J. Stuart”, MacDonald wrote the novelization of the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet. He also dabbled in science fiction under his name, writing at least four SF short stories over decades. Two of them are frequently issued in anthologies (“Our Feathered Friends”, 1931, and “Private – Keep Out!”, 1949).
MacDonald died in Woodland Hills, California.
A critical essay on MacDonald’s crime novels appears in S. T. Joshi’s book Varieties of Crime Fiction (Wildside Press, 2019)
Oliver Fleming
