BURIED FOR PLEASURE:
EDWIN'S SWAN SONG

Sadly, however, perhaps at Fen's insistence — who knows? — Mr Crispin's considerations for the biographer then vanished. Swan Song, published in 1947, is certainly obscure in its dating. True the events took place in January, true it was one of the first performances of Wagner since the ban had been lifted, but that still begs the questions: which January? A supplementary clue is given, however, as at one point Fen reads an article in the paper about the United Nations. This organisation was formed in 1945 and is, I feel, slightly more likely to be topical in January 1946 than '47. January '46, then, seems to be when the appalling Edwin Shorthouse met his doom.

There is, however, one spanner in the ointment: Mr Crispin insists, in his narrative, that Fen was forty-three at the time. This testimony is one which the historian must, I feel, reject.

If Fen was 43 in 1946, the following would have to hold true. He would have been born in 1903, leaving him aged 15 at the end of World War One, an affair in which he is supposed to have dabbled. He would have attained his professorship at the tender age of 34! He would have been 35 at the time of Moving Toyshop, yet Crispin tells us there that he was around 40. (The latter could possibly be ascribed to premature ageing caused by excessive smoking, one of Fen’s baser habits — and perhaps Crispin judged his subject’s age on looks — but I think not.) He could not have been 42, as Crispin stated, at the time of the Gilded Fly affair.