Reader, I Buried Them and Other Stories

Dedicated to my son, Phil, ideas man and short story Dagger winner, and my upbeat American daughter, Kathy, who reads every word and asks for more.

Together with Jax, my ever-inspiring wife, they keep me going.

Foreword by the Author

Let me tell you a story about a short story. It was called ‘The Bathroom’ and was my first in print, almost fifty years ago, in Winter’s Crimes, an annual collection from Macmillan, who had published my first novel. Soon after publication, a letter arrived from Ruth Rendell. As a novice author, I was thrilled to learn that a crime writer I admired but had never met had actually read my story and liked it enough to get in touch. The theme, a house with a sinister past and its influence on the current occupants, had interested Ruth and she wanted to see it for herself. The house was a real one and still existed, but the street had been given another name and I knew where to find it. Ruth, who lived in Highgate at the time and drew inspiration from long walks in London, went specially to see it and wrote back to tell me about the impression it made on her. Houses and the dark forces within them were a recurring theme in her writing. She had already written The Secret House of Death and later titles would include The House of Stairs and Thirteen Steps Down. We met and she generously encouraged me to write more short fiction and gave me a lovely quote for the cover of my next book.

I couldn’t have asked for a better start and I haven’t stopped since. This new collection reaches the landmark of my hundredth short story. Writing them is a treat I give myself between novels, trying out fresh ideas and new ways of developing them. Some approaches will work only in this short form, but others provide the impetus for longer books. For years my novels were set in the Victorian era because I wasn’t sure I could write about the modern police. Thanks to getting up confidence exploring contemporary themes in short stories, I finally made the switch to a modern-day Bath police series featuring Peter Diamond. He has bulldozed his way through twenty books and into this collection in ‘A Three Pie Problem.’

I looked for a common factor in the latest stories and found it. Almost all of them are about groups or individuals with an interest or a way of life that is unexpectedly visited by crime. Mostly they are unlikely protagonists: a romantic novelist, a dressmaker, a beekeeper, a brotherhood of monks, a bookseller, the cast of a play, an obituary writer, an entrant for a fancy hat contest and a lady seeking advice for a personal problem. In each, you will learn a little about their activities just as I did and I hope you will be surprised and entertained by discovering how the crime emerges.

One of the stories takes us right back to Edgar Allan Poe, who is generally regarded as the writer of the first modern detective story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ which was itself a short story. The history of crime writing shows how the earliest popular writers from Poe onwards concentrated mainly on short fiction. Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, is the obvious example, along with G.K. Chesterton (Father Brown), and E.W. Hornung (A.J. Raffles). In America, Black Mask magazine was a huge influence on writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich and John D. MacDonald. Black Mask ran from 1920 for about thirty years and after it ceased publication, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine became the main outlets for short mystery fiction, and continue to be so — which brings me back to my story.

Buoyed up by Ruth Rendell’s encouragement, I submitted ‘The Bathroom’ to Ellery Queen. My jubilation ended when they sent me a polite letter of rejection. Maybe it was too British for American readers, I decided.

Every writer must learn to accept disappointment. Six years after ‘The Bathroom,’ I wrote another story reworking the theme of a house and its past and sent it off to New York and this time it was accepted by the editor, Fred Dannay, one of the duo who wrote so many ingenious novels and short stories under the pseudonym of Ellery Queen. Mr Dannay actually encouraged me to write more. I was on a roll. I became a regular contributor. Then I did something that makes me cringe when I think of it. I dusted off my eight-year-old copy of ‘The Bathroom’ and resubmitted it to him in the hope that now I was getting known, he would take it.

I heard nothing back. That’s the end of your flirtation with EQMM, I told myself. How could you have been so stupid?

That same year of 1981 I registered for a crime writers’ conference in Stockholm. To my horror when I got there I saw they included Fred Dannay on the list of delegates. How embarrassing! I was tempted to take the first flight home.

I spent the first two days keeping at a distance from my nemesis. He was easy to spot in a crowd because he was bald and bearded with thick, dark-rimmed glasses. But he was also a short man who disappeared from view behind more substantial figures like Julian Symons and Christianna Brand. I was doing remarkably well at avoiding him until late on the Saturday when I stepped into the hotel lift. Two people were already inside: Fred Dannay and his wife, Rose.

The doors closed behind me.

No escape — and I was wearing my name tag. I tried not to appear as alarmed as I felt. He leaned forward for a closer look at the label.

He said, ‘Peter Lovesey. I know your name.’

Top of your blacklist, I thought.

‘We published some of your stories.’

I forget my stumbling reply. I waited for him to tell me only a scumbag would resubmit a story after it had already been rejected.

The eyes twinkled behind the heavy specs. He just said, ‘Keep them coming, won’t you?’ Then the doors opened and he and Rose stepped out.

I’m certain he knew.

Later that year, a letter arrived from Ellery Queen accepting ‘The Bathroom.’ It was published in the August issue, but with a different title.

And here I am, forty years after that reprieve, still writing short stories. As a tailpiece to this new volume, I have taken the liberty of including ‘The Bathroom,’ together with ‘The Tale of Three Tubs,’ my telling of the true story behind the story.