VII
Happy people have no history, isna€?t that the sayingWell, I was a happy person during this period. I did mostly the same things as usual: met my friends, went to stay away occasionallya€“but there was anxiety about my mothera€?s eyesight, which was getting progressively worse. She had great difficulty in reading now, and trouble seeing things in a bright light. Spectacles did not help. My grandmother at Ealing was also rather blind, and had to peer about for things. She was also getting, as elderly people do, progressively more suspicious of everybody: of her servants, of men who came to mend the pipes, of the piano tuner, and so on. I always remember Grannie leaning across the dining-table and saying, either to me or to my sister, a€?Ssh!a€?a€“a deep hissing sounda€“a€?Speak low, where is your bag?a€?
a€?In my room, Grannie.a€?
a€?Youa€?ve left it thereYou mustna€?t leave it there. I heard her, upstairs, just now.a€?
a€?Well, but thata€?s all right, isna€?t it?a€?
a€?You never know, dear, you never know. Go up and fetch it.a€?
It must have been about this time that my mothera€?s mother, Granny B., fell off a bus. She was addicted to riding on the top of buses, and I suppose by now must have been eighty. Anyway, the bus went on suddenly as she was coming downstairs, and she fell off; broke, I think, a rib, and possibly an arm as well. She sued the bus company with vigour, was awarded handsome compensationa€“and sternly forbidden by her doctor ever to ride on the top of a bus again. Naturally, being Granny B., she disobeyed him constantly. Up to the last Granny B. was always the old soldier. She had an operation, too, somewhere about this time. I imagine it was cancer of the uterus, but the operation was entirely successful, and she never had any recurrence. The only deep disappointment was her own. She had looked forward to having this a€?tumoura€?, or whatever it was, removed from her inside, because, she thought, she would be quite nice and slim after it. She was by this time an immense size, bigger than my other grandmother. The joke of the fat woman who was stuck in the bus door, with the bus conductor crying to her, a€?Try sideways, maa€?am, try sidewaysa€?a€“a€?Lor, young man, I aina€?t got no sideways!a€could have applied perfectly to her.
Though strictly forbidden to get out of bed by the nurses after she had come out of the anaesthetic, and they had left her to sleep, she rose from her bed and tiptoed to the pier-glass. What a disillusion. She appeared to be as stout as ever.
a€?I shall never get over the disappointment, Clara,a€she said to my mother. a€?Never. I counted on it! It carried me through that anaesthetic and everything. And look at me: just the same!a€?
It must have been about then that my sister Madge and I had a discussion which was to bear fruit later. We had been reading some detective story or other; I thinka€“I can only say I think because onea€?s remembrances are not always accurate: one is apt to rearrange them in onea€?s mind and get things in the wrong date and sometimes in the wrong placea€“I think it was The Mystery of the Yellow Room, which had just come out, by a new author, Gaston Le Roux, with an attractive young reporter as detectivea€“his name was Rouletabille. It was a particularly baffling mystery, well worked out and planned, of the type some call unfair and others have to admit is almost unfair, but not quite: one could just have seen a neat little clue cleverly slipped in.
We talked about it a lot, told each other our views, and agreed it was one of the best. We were connoisseurs of the detective story: Madge had initiated me young to Sherlock Holmes, and I had followed hot-foot on her trail, starting with The Levenworth Case, which had fascinated me when recounted to me by Madge at the age of eight. Then there was Arsene Lupina€“but I never quite considered that a proper detective story, though the stories were exciting and great fun. There were also the Paul Beck stories, highly approved, The Chronicles of Mark Hewitta€“and now The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Fired with all this, I said I should like to try my hand at a detective story.
a€?I dona€?t think you could do it,a€said Madge. a€?They are very difficult to do. Ia€?ve thought about it.a€?
a€?I should like to try.a€?
a€?Well, I bet you couldna€?t,a€said Madge.
There the matter rested. It was never a definite bet; we never set out the termsa€“but the words had been said. From that moment I was fired by the determination that I would write a detective story. It didna€?t go further than that. I didna€?t start to write it then, or plan it out; the seed had been sown. At the back of my mind, where the stories of the books I am going to write take their place long before the germination of the seed occurs, the idea had been planted: some day I would write a detective story.