I picked up The Vanishing Celebrities (1947) by Adrian Alington in Oxford a couple of years ago, partly because the title sounded fun, partly because I love the look of Albatross paperbacks and partly because I thought it would be a Golden Age detective novel. As it turned out, it was a lot more than that – and a total delight that sadly seems to have become almost completely forgotten. [Sidenote: this is number 5364 in the Albatross paperback series. Who knew they had so many, and how come I so seldom find them?]
The setting is Spindlesby Castle, and the opening chapter has ghostly figures from different periods of the castle’s past congregating – they know something is about to happen, but don’t know what. These ghosts only appear at the beginning and end of the novel and were rather a distraction than anything else – I’d have cut them, though they may have been a satire on something I don’t know about.
Because most of the other characters are clearly satires – either of real people or of types; I don’t know enough of popular culture from 1947 to be certain. But present at the houseparty, organised by the Duchess of the castle and reluctantly permitted by her husband, are…
- Trackless Butterworth, an explorer
- Olivia Hitchforth, an actress and Trackless’s wife
- Aurora Fairground, a tennis player, and her mother
- Carlotta Trott, a detective novelist who invented Sir Cecil Sweetlip and who is in a bitter rivalry with Fay Peabody, inventor of the detective Aristede Foufoupou
- Viola Ramshott, MP
- Virgil D. Schrenkenkraut, an American film magnate
- The Ambassador of Strubania
- Len Trooper, a handsome singer
- Mr Titterways, who is not famous but somehow always turns up where famous people are
You see that Alington has a way with names. Carlotta Trott and Fay Peabody are obviously spins on Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie, and there’s a later reference to Tenderly Jones, ‘the man who writes whimsically about gardens’, who I think must be Beverley Nichols. Whether the others are types or real people, they are a delight. My favourite to read was perhaps Aurora Fairground, whose reputation her mother is keen to preserve – whenever anybody asks her about her tennis career, she says that she would rather have babies of her own, and is just a girl who loves England and happens to be good at tennis.
An alternative title for The Vanishing Celebrities in some editions was The Room in the West Tower – put those two together, and you’ll work out happens. There are rumours that anybody who slept in a room in the West Tower disappeared by morning. Viola Ramshott, MP, has no time for such nonsense and says she’s will sleep there to no ill effect – and by morning, of course, she is gone.
In the silence which seemed inevitably to follow any observation put forward by Aurora, Carlotta Trott made her first contribution to the discussion. She had been listening to the others with a somewhat cynical smile. Now, thinking that a suitable moment had arrived for the kind of sensational intervention which Sir Cecil enjoyed, she said, adopting her best Sir Cecil drawl, ‘Have you tried draggin’ the lake?’
‘Er – no,’ said the Duke.
Carlotta’s smile became still more cynical.
‘Not a bad idea, what?’
‘A very interesting idea,’ replied the Duke, ‘really a very interesting idea indeed. But as a matter of fact, Miss Trott, there is no lake.
A succession of these celebrities decide to sleep in the room for increasingly unlikely reasons, and they disappear. Various policemen turn up, including people from Scotland Yard with ridiculous nicknames – my favourite was ‘What’s More You’ll Be A Man My Son’ Darby. Fay Peabody pops up to score one over her novelist nemesis.
As a detective novel, it’s not the most impressive. The solution is pretty laughable – but in the good sense as well as the bad. The whole thing is really funny. Alington has a great ear for witty dialogue and, having established the ludicrous characters, frequently made me laugh by dropping in just a few representative words from them. We don’t even have the usual straight man, watching on and being the reader’s perspective on the zany world. Everyone is absurd. It’s a delight.
I suppose the danger in any novel that draws on figures of the period, or even on types of the period, is that they are less relevant when those figures and types have faded. But I loved this even when I wasn’t sure who Alington was drawing on, and the whole thing was a total joy. If you can get your hands on a copy, do – otherwise I hope that it might catch the eye of the British Library Crime Classics series at some point…