Trouble on the Thames
Trouble on
the Thames
Victor Bridges
With an Introduction
by Martin Edwards
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
Copyright © Friends of the Elderly 2015
Introduction copyright © Martin Edwards 2015
Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library
First E-book Edition 2015
ISBN: 9781464204944 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
Trouble on the Thames
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
More from this Author
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Introduction
Trouble on the Thames is a short, fast-moving spy thriller written during the Second World War, but set shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. The hero, Owen Bradwell, is a courageous naval officer who fears that his career will be blighted because he has become colour-blind, but the threat from Hitler’s Germany is such that the authorities are keen to deploy him on a special mission.
A former acquaintance of Bradwell’s, called Medlicot, has shot himself, shortly before he was due to be arrested for treason. Medlicot had been trapped into betraying his country’s secrets by Mark Craig, an American night club owner in the pay of the Nazis. Bradwell is sent to spy on the spy, but things take an unexpected turn when he is coshed, and wakes up to find himself in the company of a dead man, and a pretty young interior decorator called Sally. The plot is thickened with classic thrillerish elements: amnesia, blackmail, and a convict’s escape from Dartmoor. Will Bradwell triumph over the villains, and will he and Sally fall in love? The answers to these questions are not hard to predict, but the journey to the story’s resolution is lively and entertaining.
Today, the name of Victor Bridges is unfamiliar to most readers, but he enjoyed considerable success in his prime, and in 1980, his gifts as a writer were celebrated in an admiring essay in the encyclopaedic Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. Harald Curjel pointed out that Bridges’s best stories often share common ingredients: “Always there is a thrilling chase down river after the villains or to escape from them…Bridges’ plots are fairly and adroitly woven, and his prose is crisp and flowing in the John Buchan style.” Curjel defined “Victor Bridges country” as lying “among the tidal estuaries and rivers of Kent, Essex and Suffolk…Here he created for us a ‘Tir-Nan-Og.’”
High praise – yet Curjel’s essay had been dropped by the time the third edition of the encyclopaedia appeared eleven years later. Like so many other once-popular wordsmiths, Bridges faded from view. The republication of this book by the British Library gives twenty-first-century readers an opportunity to make up their own minds about his abilities as a story-teller. For too long, apart from the work of Fleming, Le Carré, and Deighton, few pre-1980 espionage books have been readily available in print editions, and the Crime Classics series helps to redress the balance.
Victor George de Freyne Bridges (1878–1972) was born in Clifton, Bristol, and educated at Haileybury. A versatile writer, he was also so prolific that his bibliography is uncertain, details varying from source to source. In addition to novels, he turned out books of verse, short stories, and plays, as well as a book called Camping Out for Boy Scouts and Others, which appeared in 1910.
That interest in scouting and camping out hints at a boyish enthusiasm for adventure, and Bridges liked to describe his thrillers as “adventure stories.” According to The Times, he started work on The Man from Nowhere, his first novel, in 1911 to beguile an illness. Another Man’s Shoes appeared in 1913, and after that he was published for fifteen years by Mills and Boon, who were not at that time stereotyped as publishers of romantic fiction for women. A Rogue by Compulsion, subtitled An Affair of the Secret Service, typifies an interest in stories about espionage which continued throughout his career.
Success came quite early, and the spy story Mr Lyndon at Liberty was made into a silent film in 1915. A year later, Bridges wrote the screenplay for a Dutch film, Sparrows. Another Man’s Shoes was filmed twice within a decade of publication, as was The Lady from Longacre. His most popular book, Greensea Island, appeared in 1922, sold over 300,000 copies, and was filmed as Through Fire and Water, starring the renowned Clive Brook. The Times described it as “an exciting tale of love and buried treasure; but the excitement is never allowed to become strained or unnatural.” Despite this success, Bridges’ connection with the movie business does not seem to have survived the advent of the talkies.
Bridges co-wrote a comedy play, The Backsliders, with a fellow member of the Savage Club, Edgar Jepson, who was not only a prolific novelist (and co-author of the famous impossible crime short story “The Tea Leaf”) but also founder of a literary dynasty whose members include his grand-daughter, Fay Weldon. The play appears not to have been staged, but Jepson adapted it into a novel. Bridges developed into a reliable purveyor of action and adventure; of the splendidly titled It Happened in Essex, the Sunday Times reviewer enthused: “I read it with goggle eyes and bated breath.”
Bridges enjoyed a lengthy literary career, and lived to the age of 94. When he died, his work was recalled by an obituarist in The Times as “graced by a pleasing sense of style.…Much that Bridges wrote was cast in a conventional mould and intended for unexacting eyes, but he always remained a literary craftsman, who could spring surprises with his humour and sense of suspense.” It is not a bad epitaph.
Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
Chapter I
The manservant who had been waiting in the hall opened the front door, and with a muttered word of thanks Lieutenant-Commander Owen Bradwell stepped out on to the sun-warmed pavement of Harley Street. Except for a slight tightening of the lips his clean-cut, deeply tanned face betrayed no sign of the desolating bitterness which was creeping through his heart. It was a moment when twelve years’ naval training were not without their spiritual advantage.
A waiting taxi pulled up in front of him, and directing the man to drive to the New Century Club, he clambered in and sank back wearily against the cushion. His hand went to his pocket, and with a purely mechanical movement he pulled out a silver case and lighted a cigarette.
On that particularly fine September morning London was at the height of its form. The stream of traffic up and down Oxford Street appeared to be even more dense than usual, while both pavements were crowded with a throng of loitering pedestrians gaping into the shop windows and resolutely obstructing each other’s progress. At frequent intervals a party of crutch-supported vocalists, shepherded by an importunate gentleman with a collecting-box, competed gallantly against the roar of the motor-buses.
Although it was over two years since he had last been in Town, Owen sat gazing out on the animated scene with a fixed, unseeing stare.
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