When Mal Verne

Was Cut Up

There is a wide streak of the macabre in most of West Indian Edgar Mittelholzer’s novels, but the latest of them, Eltonsbrody, is a really juicy number complete with old creak ing houses, grave robbsrs and dismembered bodies.

NOT all Mittelholzer’s stories are about the West Indies—at present he lives in England— but this one is.

Eltonsbrody is an old house, with atmosphere, in the hilly north eastern corner of Barbados. But the atmosphere of the house is insig nificant besides the personalities of its inhabitants, and particularly that of Mrs. Scaife, its owner.

She is an elderly, sweet-seeming little woman; white, but the widow of a negro doctor. Her preoccupa tion and hobby is death and she collects it and its appurtenances as other people do postage stamps.

Not only can she foretell death, but she likes to keep the physical remains of her nearest and dearest at hand —and for this purpose makes good use of her late hus band’s surgical kit.

There is much action with skele tons in locked rooms, and lumps of human flesh in hidden trunks.

The old house, therefore, not only had odd creaks but some odd odours as well, as young Mr. Woodsley, the English artist who tells the story, finds out.

He was taken in by Mrs. Scaife when he found the two local hotels full up over Easter. He lingered on to paint the old house —then lin gered some more as his curiosity got the better of him.

Some of Mrs. Scaife’s servants are almost as peculiar as she is.

Particularly Malverne, the upstairs maid.

She was of poor white parentage, had a long sad face that never smiled, and a good figure.

As soon as she found herself alone with a man, she would undo her bodice—or take it right off —and ex pose her bosom.

Woodsley came to accept this as standard practice, and when he of fered to “haul her behind one of the oleander bushes in the front garden and give her what she really wanted”, her stock reply was: “Oi don’t do no nastiness with men.”

But poor Malverne was to have a short life. She died—more or less of natural causes—and Mrs. Scaife immediately shut herself up with the corpse.

Finally Woodsley had to force his way in, whereupon he was imme

diately invited by his hostess to look at the pretty sight. He goes on: “The pretty sight was what the corpse of Malverne had been con verted into.

“The marble-topped washstand had been cleared of the toilet recep tacles. Now it was piled with human remains—two legs cut up neatly and expertly into sections and ar ranged in an orderly clump at one end of the washstand. At the other end, as though for symmetrical ef fect, sections of arms stood in an other clump.

“In the middle lay the torso dis embowelled and with the shaven head of the girl set in the middle of the glistening coiled mass of intes tines. The mouth gaped rigidly, the eyes stared blue and glassy,”

Malverne, unfortunately, was only one of a number on which Mrs.

Scaife practised her unusual art.

A good book to read on a hot day when it acts like an air conditioner.

But definitely not recommended for lone reading on a dark, windy night. (ELTONSBRODY. Published by Seeker and Warburg. Australian price, 15/6.)