Then last week we happened to watch 'A Pocketful of Rye' - in the 2009 McKenzie version - on ITV3, and as is my wont, I wanted to read the book in order to compare and contrast. Was it one of those stories into which Miss. Marple had been intruded by the marketing people? Careful inspection of our slightly incomplete Heron Christie - bought on ebay some years previously - revealed that this story must be in one of the missing volumes. So back to ebay to see what could be done.
I ask ebay for 'pockeful of rye agatha' or some such and up comes lots of them, the first few hits being of the Fontana-Collins edition of 1967. But, feeling a bit too clever by half, I thought to push on and see if I could pick up an odd Heron, so going towards completion as well as meeting the immediate need. Some way down the list, sure enough, was a small red book called two thrillers. Fair enough I thought, the Herons are red and do generally come two stories to the book - so buy for £2.50 or so.
A few days later the book turns up and turns out to be from the Daily Express Fiction Library: were they once given away free with the Sunday Express? The book was undated, but, judging from the editor's forward, appeared to date from before the second world war. Almost collectible, had it not been in a slightly smaller format than the Heron, so would not sit well on the shelf with the others.
At which point I discovered that it was not 'A Pocketful of Rye' at all, rather a Poirot story called 'The Underdog', paired up with a short story by one E. Phillips Oppenheim, apparently a very successful writer of the time, called 'Blackman's Wood'. What had happened, and what had not occurred to me in my eagerness to buy, was that the ebay query worked rather like a google query and did not just return exact hits. It did the best it could with what you asked for and what it had got, a system which worked for them on this occasion as they did bag the sale. And which when was not buying books would be entirely reasonable. Caveat emptor!
The book came with a pro-forma which I could have used to return the book to sender at no cost to myself, but that seemed far too much bother. Far easier just to read them than to return them. The Poirot turns out to be an entirely satisfactory short story, silly enough afterwards, but carrying you along well enough at the time. And written with enough art not to need the layers of complications and red-herrings that festoon the average 'Midsomer Murders', complications and red-herrings which can be taxing for the older brain. The Oppenheim story is even shorter, but satisfies the same description. It also reflects the description of the author as a keen shooting man, as the story revolves around a shooting party, the sort of thing which one supposes to have gone on outside the sort of country houses in which so many Christie stories were set - so a perfect pairing in that sense. Also demonstrating that the then readers of the daily Express were as keen to do a bit of vicarious living among their betters as the now viewers of 'Downton Abbey'. I don't suppose many of them would have had a clue how to load a shotgun, never mind kill a pheasant with one.
Sobering to think that Oppenheim wrote over a hundred novels before dying in 1946 at the then respectable age of 80. According to wikipedia, lots of his books were made into films in the 20's and 30's and he looks to have been as rich and famous in his day as Simenon or Christie. But now unheard of. Sic transit gloria mundi!
PS: we have now sourced 'A Pocketful of Rye' from elsewhere and I am pleased to report that it is a genuine Miss. Marple story. She had not been intruded.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/simenon-1.html.
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