The Tiger in the Smoke: Margery Allingham (Macmillan Collector's Library, 93)

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Havoc’s consumption with authenticity and with “not being soft” reminds me of three characters in Rowling’s work: Stuart “Fats” Wall in Casual Vacancy, Donald Laing of Career of Evil, and, yes, both Voldemort and his Death-Eaters because they take the Dark Lord as their role model. This is a recurring, baseline idea of human failing, sin, and evil in her work. Avril turned round in the dark. “Evil, be thou my Good – that is what you have discovered. It is the only sin which cannot be forgiven because when it has finished with you, you are not there to forgive. On your journey you certainly ‘get places.’ Naturally; you have no opposition. But in the process you die. The man who is with you when you are alone is dying. Fewer things delight him every day. If you attain the world, you cannot give him anything that will please him. In the end there will be no one with you.” She is sometimes cited as the source of the translation from the French, “flight from death.” I could not find verification of this ‘internet-fact,’ i.e., a seeming-truth that is believed because it is repeated in thousands of places. It is not in the accio-quote.org index of Rowling quotations about Voldemort. a) Taal’s eruptions seem to come in clusters: 1634-45 (VEI 3, 3, 3, 3), 1707-54 (VEI 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4, 4), 1873-8 (VEI 2, 2, 2), 1903-11 (VEI 2, 1, 3) and 1965-77 (VEI 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2) His interest aroused by the pictures sent to Meg, Leavitt follows Morrison and tries to question him about his sudden appearance masquerading as Meg’s dead husband. Morrison again refuses to talk, and tries to flee from Leavitt into an alley, but he is set upon by a group of street musicians who beat him to death, and also take Leavitt as a prisoner.

The only precursors to the September 28th – 30th eruption was a rise in the temperatures of the central crater lake on Volcano Island. During early July 1965, temperatures rose from the 1964 average of 31-33C to 45C on July 21st with temperatures slightly lower at 41C on September 25th. There was no noticeable change in seismic or tilt activity. Variety called it "An intriguing, nearly plausible Screenplay has been made... With a sterling cast, and not over complicated plot, the result is good Rowling reassured French readers that she had nothing against their country, as she received one of the country’s highest awards, the Legion d’honneur. It rained ashes in considerable quantity and that part of them that remained suspended in the air, formed a vast cloud which grew so dense as to cause real darkness during hours of broad daylight. I can assure you that no anti-French feeling was at the origin of this choice,” she said. “As a Francophile, I have always been proud of my French blood. But I needed a name that evokes both power and exoticism,” she said of Voldemort, Harry Potter’s nemesis in the seven episodes of the bestselling series.I received the two reports side by side, and then I had a word with Yeo and he told me what had come through from here on your interview with Duds this afternoon. I thought it over and presently I thought I’d come down myself. Havoc, I remember Havoc. Everyone is looking for him, and the chances are that he’ll be pulled in in two or three hours, but if he’s not, then I think you’ll be finding traces of him here in your manor, and I thought I’d like to talk to you about him. Both you and Campion were overseas when we jailed him last and so you missed him. You missed quite a phenomenon.” He repeated the words softly: “Quite a phenomenon.” Rowling has said publicly that the name‘Voldemort’ is French ( not Latin, Lexicon!); that she made it up, and that she pronounces it sans final ‘t:’“ Vol-de-mor.” And, no, “I didn’t base Voldemort on any real person!” (Though what about all the men named ‘Tom Riddle’?)

Illustration of the 1911 eruption (erroneously states 1910) based on a photograph from in Saderra Maso “The eruption of Taal Volcano, January 30, 1911” He also shared his notes on Williams’s letter to Margery Allingham of 30 July 1940 with me. Among interesting details are that she seems to have begun the correspondence, and he does not seem to know her well, personally. And that he replies to various things she has raised about “the young” and about prayer, including a striking observation (which reminds me of an earlier poem of his) about how he agrees with her “that if one prays one has got the consequences of prayer coming to one. And they may not be what one has contemplated.” He also adds a ‘shy’ remark about how much he like her “Murders”. (An interesting glimpse into his prolific reading – though he reviewed scads of detective stories, he seems never to have reviewed any of hers, yet here proves to have been an avid reader of them, in fact.) The main contention of “The Tiger in the Smoke” as a source name for Voldemort. On the whole, I’d say the theory more or less holds water. It’s highly doubtful that there are that many other alternative places to look for as an origin point for both the name and character. What I didn’t expect was to see the character brought up in connection with Sartre.This is an extraordinary book. Somehow I'd reached this stage in life without ever reading a Margery Allingham, and I wonder how that happened? Somehow I've missed something excellent. Following this research, a model has been proposed for Taal (Lowry et al: 2000) where there is a hydrothermal zone at ~2 to 7 km depth below Taal and that the periods of inflation can be related to the intrusion of magma into this reservoir. A plot of their data suggests that this area may be about 1 km across at 2 km and about 2 km at 5 km depth. Other research (Besana et al., 1995) has identified a ~15% reduction of shear wave velocity at 18 km depth beneath the northern caldera rim, interpreted to indicate partial melt at that depth. Should this turn out to be related to the magmatic system that directly feeds Taal / Volcano Island, the implications are grave. I have read in discussions of Margery Allingham that this is her masterpiece; it is certainly very different from any of her other books that I have encountered so far. Though there are some mysteries in this book, and a number of murders, it isn't really a murder mystery as I see it. Campion is of course in it, but it's not really about him, either. It seems to me to be a meditation on the second world war, and upon loss and grieving and change and how to accomplish these things well (or poorly). Also, and this grows as the story continues, it seems to be a meditation on the nature of good and evil, and upon what God is and what God isn't and most of all what a person becomes when God is lost to them. It's not surprising that someone who was born in 1904 in England would have thought extensively about these things, and their thinking about those points always speaks deeply to me, even though I was born in 1961 in the United States. Because it’s waiting for me.” The conviction in the tone was absolute and it impressed them. “I’m meant to find it. I knew that as soon as I heard of it, that night on the cliffs.” He laughed softly. “You won’t understand this, but I’ll tell you. Elginbrodde had to confide in me, and probably the blasted moon had to come out just at that moment to make him do it. We had to go on the trip together in the first place, and you can tell that’s true by the queer way it happened. I was special, see? There were half a million other sergeants in the Army who might have been chosen, but they had to find me for the job, and do you know how they did it?” I see why it’s regarded as perhaps her best mystery - the writing is very good and the descriptions of the London fog evocative. A young war widow is planning to remarry, but has been receiving fuzzy pictures of a man who looks like her dead husband in London crowd scenes - could he still be alive? Who would do such a thing? Meanwhile, a vicious prisoner has murdered several people and is on the run in the fog. There are a few close calls, where characters barely escape the dangerous psychopath, and I was on the edge of my seat!