S2E9 A Craven's Tale

Note: The audio says this is episode 10. It isn’t. It’s #9. Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you at the heart of mystery, murder, and mayhem. Some episodes will be my own stories, others will be classics that helped shape the mystery genre we know today. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes (unless it's really bad)This is Season 2. This season contains adaptations of stories published in the 1800s. These stories are some of the first considered to be mysteries. For that reason, this season is called The Originators.Today’s story is about blackmail, a spoiled child, and bats in the belfry. This is the Episode 10 Craven’s Tale, an adaptation of The Murder at Troyte’s Hill by Catherine Louisa Pirkis. Tina: The story today is set in Cumberland, England, which was a county on the southwestern border of Scotland. In 1974, there was a bit of clean up and a new county, Cumbria, was formed encompassing Cumberland, West Moreland and parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It’s always fascinating where the real places in fictional stories don’t exist anymore. We know our fictional village is located not far off a rail line, is in the former Cumberland county, and, well that’s it. That gives us quite a bit of latitude picking a real place to stand in for our fictional place. Let’s drop the pin today on Heads Nook, England. Heads Nook is a village outside the city of Carlisle. A search on Trip Advisor found Heads Nook Hall, a B&B that must be a real treat. 366 review and 342 Excellent ratings, which is over 93%. Looking at the pictures, I’m ready to pack my bags, Jack. Heads Nook is a 6 hour drive from the Royal Conservancy, where the Prime Meridian is set and is 3 hours from Ravescar, which is where we dropped the pin for our last English mystery in Episode 5 Sergeant Cuff and the Moonstone Diamond.This episode’s story was a short story in a collection called The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective. The collection has 151 ratings on Goodreads with an average score of 3.54. Here’s a 4-star review: Miss Brooke’s cases range from theft to missing persons to murder. They are interesting and illustrate the views of women’s proper activities and places in the society of the day. Loveday works for a private detective agency, and her employer is the person who is most astounded by her clever unraveling if the clues in her cases. Unlike Holmes she doesn’t have a sidekick who assists her, no Watson for her.The stories are a nice afternoon entertainment!!Here’s a 3-star review: I probably enjoyed this a bit more than 3 stars worth. An interesting short collection of seven loosely linked mystery stories, nearly all of which don't involve murders, so in that sense they are pleasant. Pirkis's formula seems to be that we follow the protagonist, watch what happens as she solves the mystery in a kind of mysterious manner, and then we get her detailed account of how she did it, or what was behind it... Probably the stories and protagonist were more remarkable for their time than nowadays, but they hold up well and the book is quite worth reading. And it's short.I’ll save my own thoughts for after.Jack: Our original author today is Catherine Louisa Pirkis, who published as C.L. Pirkis and Mrs. Fred E. Pirkis. She was born in 1839 to middle-class parents. Her father was an accountant and according to Victorian Research.org, her father’s obituary said he died from “consequences of excessive exertion of the brain.” So, there’s that. Catherine’s husband, Fred, was a captain for the English Royal Navy. Fred’s brother married Catherine’s sister, which is just confusing. And weird. The families lived together, which I guess was a thing back then. Catherine died in 1910 after a long illness and Fred passed over two days later. None of this has anything to do with Catherine’s stories, it was just interesting. Catherine wrote 14 novels from 1877 to 1894 and while that was pretty incredible, she did something else. Catherine and her Navy husband Fred were big into animal rights. They started the National Canine Defense League in 1891, which today is known as Dogs Trust.  They work to find dogs their forever homes and do other advocacy work. We put the link in the show notes. That’s pretty cool. Catherine and Allan Pinkerton are the only author’s we’ve had so far who created organizations back in their day that exist in our day.Tina: We are nearly ready to begin our story. While Jack resets his microphone and warms up his fingers, I’ll explain why are we doing adaptations of these early stories instead of performing them as written. Two main reasons. The language from the 1800s is hard and can be difficult to understand with our modern ear. The speech cadence is just different.Second, the style and length of the stories were not created for listening. With these adaptations, we keep the heart of the story, preserving the ground- breaking narrative, but update the packaging for easier digestion. Character names are in the show notes.And so we are ready for A Craven’s Tale. Jack, if you will, take us in.Episode MaterialsThere are several places where you can find the original. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/pirkis/brooke/brooke.htmlReference linksCatherin Louisa Pirkis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Louisa_PirkisDogs Trust https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/ Cast of charactersLoveday Brooke: Lady detective, our heroEbenezer Dyer: Owner of detective agency, Loveday’s employerSgt William Griffiths of the Newcastle Constabulary: the Client “Sandy” Henderson: Craven’s Nest groundskeeper. The Body. Locals suspect an outsider, Griffiths disagrees.Edward Craven: Master of Head’s Nook. Friends with Sandy since university and brought him to Craven’s Nest when he inherited.Harry Craven: Edward’s 19-yr old son. A wild child, he was known to publicly argue with Sandy over handling of the estate.Mrs. Fanny Craven: Edward’s wife who self-educated her daughter. Nina Craven: Edward’s 17-yr old daughter.John Hales: Craven’s Nest butler. His salary was cut to pay Sandy’s. He owed Sandy money and was known to disagree with him on the management of Craven’s Nest.Mrs. Honeydukes: The cook. Not a fan of old Sandy but too much of a lady to say anything.Maggie: Fanny Craven’s maid. Kept to herself. My two centsLet’s talk about this story. Does the logic work? Yes, as far as insanity ever does. Catherine did a nice job in what was originally a 10,000 word story giving us three credible suspects and a valid sequence of events.One very minor point for me was how old Craven senior and Sandy were. Harry’s age is specifically named at 19. No other character received that level of detail. Craven and Sandy are described as being “old” but Craven has teen age children. Perhaps “old” was more a reflection of one being insane and the other a crotchety blackmailer. I know it was more common for older men to have younger wives in this time period and social circle. I put then in their mid-sixties, meaning he was near 40 when Harry was born.Some more literary reviews I read said or implied that the story had much deeper meaning, drawing the parallels between the dog and people. Maybe, maybe not. I know academics love to speculate on that sort of thing. The only person who can tell us has been dead for 110 years.Loveday Brooke is a great character. She is the master of her own story and quietly goes about unraveling the mystery. That being said, the original format of the story is one of my least favorite for mysteries. As many of you know, I love mysteries because I love to attempt to solve the puzzle, not that I’m often successful. Not the point. The original form of this story was more like Jeopardy, when the author gave you the answer without letting you see the event. Reading this story, or any of Loveday’s experience, you do not get to see what she sees. You are instead left waiting for her to explain. Here’s an example. The scene where Loveday had dinner with the butler and the cook was not in the original story. Instead, this is how you hear about the butler owing money: On the evening of the first of those days Detective Griffiths received, through the trustworthy post-boy, the following brief note from her:"I have found out that Hales owed Sandy close upon a hundred pounds, which he had borrowed at various times. I don't know whether you will think this fact of any importance.–L. B." I am not a fan of being spoon fed answers and I’m not a fan of not “seeing” events firsthand. Hence, I inverted the story when creating the adaptation, turning it into a mystery for you. My ratings: 5 for leading character, 5 for mystery logic, 2 for storytelling, which yes is totally subjective. After the StoryThat wraps this...