The Lives of Carruthers
Read the previous chapters:
V. Lone Hands
Sydney Horler’s novel In the Dark, published by Hodder & Stoughton in Britain in 1927, introduced a new hero. Bearing the improbable name of Buncombe ‘Bunny’ Chipstead, we are told he is forty-four years old, has a slight, wiry build, and is very wealthy – when in London he lives in a luxurious bachelor flat overlooking St James Street. But despite the extravagant name and lifestyle, Chipstead is no fop:
‘At first glance he might have been taken for a soldier of fortune come into a rich inheritance, or a big-game hunter home on holiday after completing a hazardous trip. As a matter of fact, Chipstead was a little of both. He had soldiered in many countries, whilst the big-game he had hunted had included many men who were more desperate than any wild beasts. His lean face, that had a wind-swept, bleak expression, was redeemed from utter grimness by humorous grey eyes. He was tanned almost to a leather hue; he weighed exactly one hundred and thirty-five pounds, could use his fists or a revolver with equal facility, had once half-killed an Apache in a back-alley of Paris by a simple ju-jitsu trick, and owed his nickname of Bunny to a curious circumstance.’
There is an almost identical passage to this in the second novel in the series, Chipstead of the Lone Hand (1928), with a few tiny adjustments: there, Chipstead’s face is said to be ‘clean-cut’ rather than lean, and there is no mention of the Apache in Paris. However, that incident is mentioned in the third novel, Secret Agent, published in 1934, where the passage is repeated with another few adjustments. Chipstead has become a little younger – he is thirty-eight – and a touch more ruthless: instead of having once half-killed an Apache in a Paris back-alley we are told he ‘neatly killed’ him, and in addition that he learned the trick ‘from a Maori chief’.
I am as certain as I can be that Eric Ambler was parodying this passage and other elements of Horler’s Chipstead novels in The Dark Frontier, as well as using them to inform the book’s narrative. As discussed in the previous chapter, he had noted that this was the technique employed by Stella Gibbons in her parody of another genre, Cold Comfort Farm.
So let me first present my case for Chipstead being the blueprint for Conway Carruthers.
First there is the name, of course. Both first names, Buncombe and Conway, are extremely rare in real life, while the surnames are more solid: Chipstead and Carruthers both sound like dependable upper-class British chaps.
Both characters are secret agents of the heroic type. Chipstead operates as an agent for both British and American intelligence without pay, ‘for the love of the job alone’ and, armed with gloves made of steel mesh that allow him to climb walls without lacerating his hands as well as a trusty swordstick, saves the day. In In The Dark, he is recruited into a newly formed special branch of British intelligence, ‘a sort of Secret Service of the Secret Service’. In Chipstead of the Lone Hand (1928), this is known as ‘X2’, and by The Secret Agent (1934), he is working for ‘Department Y.2’ of the British Secret Service. Carruthers works for ‘Department Y’ of the British Secret Service. So we’re already pretty close.
Unlike many fictional secret agents, Chipstead is not a young man but is in his late thirties to mid-forties, depending on which version you take: he is nevertheless supremely confident and fit. He is apt to find himself in life-endangering situations, but is often able to escape from them by drawing on a raft of improbable tricks and skills he has learned over the years, usually from exotic-sounding foreigners.
Ambler poked fun at these elements in this passage in which Professor Barstow reflects on Carruthers, mimicking Horler’s passage introducing Chipstead:
‘Nothing was beyond the powers of this remarkable man. His age, judging by his relations with other character in the book, might have been in the neighbourhood of forty. Against this evidence, however, must be set the evidence of his physical prowess which would have done credit to an Olympian athlete of twenty-five. On the other hand, he had somehow found the time during his adult lifetime to save the lives of, or otherwise befriend, natives of a remarkable number of countries. The gratitude of these fortunates contributed largely to his success. Certain death might stare him in the face and he would extricate himself from his predicament by means of a trick learnt from a Patagonian Indian or a Bessarabian moujik. The outcome of a humanitarian encounter with a Chinese juggler or a Batavian stevedore would retrieve an apparently hopeless situation from disaster.’
Ambler also noted Horler’s attempts to position Chipstead as a great heroic figure. Chipstead, we are told, is ‘a modern d’Artagnan’ who belongs ‘to that small army of present-day adventurers’. Horler was trying to place Chipstead in the canon of great fictional adventure heroes. Ambler makes this explicit: Carruthers is ‘of that illustrious company which numbers Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, Bulldog Drummond and Sexton Blake among its members’.
Ambler also drew on Horler for the plot of The Dark Frontier. When Professor Barstow reads the opening of ‘Conway Carruthers, Dept. Y’, we are given the following plot summary:
‘In London he saw an attempt on Carruthers’ life foiled; in Paris he saw the Chef de la Sûreté welcome Carruthers as an old friend; in a suburb of Berlin he saw Carruthers fight his way out of a den of international crooks. The ever-competent Carruthers, a grim smile on his thin lips, a steely glint in his eye, pursued his quarry with the Professor at his elbow and a smiling fate to guide him for forty-three pages before reality intervened.’
After Barstow has knocked his head and woken up believing himself to be Carruthers, he starts by enacting out the first part of this plot: catching a train to Paris to see his old friend, the Chef de la Sûreté.
The idea of the great French detective at the Paris Sûreté had been popularised following the publication of Eugène François Vidocq’s memoirs in 1828, leading to a rash of fictional French detectives, such as Émile Gaboriau’s series about Monsieur Lecoq in the 1860s and British writer A.E.W. Mason’s Inspector Hanaud series, the first entry of which, At The Villa Rose, was published in 1910.
However, the target of the parody in both ‘Conway Carruthers, Dept. Y’ and The Dark Frontier is not so much the conventions about French detectives themselves, but rather this very precise idea of a British hero travelling to Paris to meet with his friendly French counterpart at the Sûreté to further his mission. And here Ambler was specifically drawing on Sydney Horler – including, oddly enough, Horler’s own parody of this idea.
Horler’s heroes were invariably British, but like any popular author of the time he was well aware of the major French detectives in the thriller genre. A.E.W. Mason was one of his favourite novelists, ‘such a finished master of his art that one can always re-read him’:
‘What a character, for example, is his Hanaud! This famous French detective is to me as real and as full of life as any character in contemporary fiction.’[i]
(At a slight tangent, Horler commented that he thought Mason ‘one of the handsomest men now living’.[ii])
Émile Gaboriau’s character was also clearly on his radar: in Tiger Standish Comes Back (1934), Standish visits the Sûreté to meet up with ‘Paul Gaboreau, the famous Chief of Paris Police.’
Horler detested France and the French, devoting a whole chapter to the subject in Now Let Us Hate, but he largely left this aside in his fiction, perhaps because he realised that readers of thrillers appreciated scenes set there. Moving the action to Paris allowed for a chapter of travel, and both the journey and the fine dining in the city, sprinkled with a few street names and landmarks, could add a dash of sophistication while giving the reader a change of scene and pace. A meeting with a French ally also made his British hero seem more competent and comradely, part of an international establishment of senior intelligence and police officials, as well as allowing for some exposition recapping the action so far between the two men over a cigar or two. So, like a mid-thriller mini-break, several of Horler’s novels feature such a scene. In Princess After Dark, the British protagonists, Philip Wendover and Scotland Yard detective George Lomax, head for Paris to meet with Lomax’s friend, Inspector Jalabert:
‘“He’s something of a wonder as a detective, and he knows every inch of Paris.”’
But once they arrive at the Sureté, they are told that Jalabert is away and they must deal with another official instead. Later on, we learn that Jalabert was away because he was conducting an investigation that ties up with their own.
This is a similar scene in Chipstead of the Lone Hand: Chipstead sets off for Paris to meet ‘his old friend, Cuvilier of the Counter-Espionage Service’, but when he arrives Cuvilier unaccountably isn’t there to meet him at the station. Puzzled, Chipstead heads out to have dinner at a fancy restaurant with his sister, where he manages to secure a table by invoking the name of Paul Fouquières, Chief of the Sûreté. The restaurant is then raided by gangsters stealing the clientele’s jewels, and Fouquières turns up and disperses the crowd. He is delighted to see Chipstead:
‘“To find you here, mon ami!” he exclaimed, his eyes twinkling.’
The next morning, Chipstead heads to Fouquières’ office to gather some advice and support on his mission, which he is more than happy to provide:
‘“Both my time and my assistance are at your disposal, my friend. It is not necessary for me to recall the services you have rendered to France.”’
Compare this to the potted plot we are given of the first part of ‘Conway Carruthers, Dept. Y’, in which the Chef de la Sûreté welcomes Carruthers as an old friend. Ambler was obviously parodying the familiar love-in scene between the British hero and his old ami in Paris – but he had Horler in mind when doing so, and specifically this novel.
How can I be so sure of that? Because there is an earlier scene in Horler’s novel that makes this clear. It takes place at Scotland Yard in London rather than at the Sûreté in Paris, and is the scene that gives Chipstead of The Lone Hand its title. But it is also the pistolet fumant Ambler left behind to show that it is Horler he had in his sights.
The scene is in Chapter Six of Chipstead of The Lone Hand. Chipstead is summoned to Scotland Yard, where he is met by the Deputy Commissioner, Sir Reginald Barclay. Barclay wants to investigate a murder in Hyde Park that Chipstead recently witnessed, but Chipstead says he won’t answer questions at the inquest because it will force him into perjuring himself, as he’s on a mission for a branch of the Secret Service. Barclay is furious at this and says he will inform his chief, Sir Robert Heddingly – unaware that it is Heddingly’s kidnap Chipstead is investigating. Chipstead tells Barclay that his chief is indisposed but he can take it up with the Secretary of State if he likes. The meeting ends sourly, and Chipstead reflects that he has made an enemy of Barclay and will not be able to find any support from that quarter:
‘In what lay ahead, Bunny realised that he would be in every sense of the term a lone hand.
But he preferred to work in that way; he was used to it.’
So hence the title of the novel, but hence also the following in The Dark Frontier:
‘A great bitterness filled his heart. Durand had betrayed him. Then he pulled himself together; his eyes had a steely glint, his mouth tightened. Very well, he would do without Durand’s help. He had always played a lone hand before – he would play a lone hand again.’
This comes at the end of the scene parodying the convention of the British agent meeting his counterpart in the Sûreté. Durand hasn’t betrayed him, because there is no Durand – Professor Barstow is delusional and has turned up at the Paris police headquarters asking to see a character from a thriller. It’s an amusing parody of the convention used by Horler and others – but this is where it gets stranger still. This is something Horler parodied himself, and Ambler also clearly drew on that, too.
That scene takes place in The Secret Service Man, published in 1929, so a year after Chipstead of The Lone Hand. Our protagonist is Martin Huish, a wealthy but bored young Englishman living in Paris. His best friend in the city is a suave Frenchman, Victor Durandy. In the early part of the novel, Huish is unaware that Durandy is in fact a secret agent and, despite his nationality, is reporting to Huish’s own uncle, who happens to be a British intelligence chief in London. As Huish becomes embroiled in increasingly sinister goings on in Paris, Durandy takes him into his confidence and reveals his espionage role – but he then suddenly vanishes. Huish panics that he is out of his depth and has no way of getting hold of his friend, who is his only link with the world of intelligence. He has no idea where his offices are, but then has a brainwave:
‘He’d got it – he’s hoot off to the Police. The Sûreté would be certain to know where Durandy might be found.’[iii]
But it doesn’t go as he hopes. He is granted an audience with the Chief of the Sûreté, M. Chantrier, ‘a slightly built, elderly man with an Imperial, and wearing the ribbon of the Legion d’Honneur in his buttonhole’, but he denies all knowledge of Durandy of the French Secret Service, saying ‘this particular matter does not come under my jurisdiction’. Huish has to leave none the wiser and angry at being ‘treated like an impostor with a tendency to delusions’.[iv]
Horler was making a joke here at his own and other thriller-writers’ expense, presumably to try to add a touch of realism and tension. Secret agents in thrillers often just waltz into the Sûreté and have pow-wows that get them information and resources. But he’s pointing out that in ‘real’ life – i.e. the story of The Secret Service Man – if you tried to do that as a civilian you would meet a stone wall and get nowhere.
Now let’s go back to the scene in The Dark Frontier in which Professor Barstow, believing himself to be Conway Carruthers, turns up at the headquarters of the Paris Sûreté . He asks the first agent he encounters if he can see Monsieur Durand:
‘“Monsieur Durand,” repeated the man, “but which one? There are here four of that name.”
Carruthers was nonplussed. Four Durands? But he had never known that before; he had just asked for his friend Monsieur Durand and Durand had come, his eyes beaming with delighted recognition, his arms outstretched to greet him with an “Ah, the good Carruthers!” and a kiss for both cheeks. What had happened?
He tried again. He explained to the increasingly suspicious agent that it was his friend the great Durand that he sought, the Durand of a hundred daring exploits, the Durand whom France had rewarded with the red button of the Legion of Honour, the famous Chef de la Sûreté.’
But of course, he is treated like a lunatic and it is soon made clear he must leave. So then:
‘Very well, he would do without Durand’s help. He had always played a lone hand before – he would play a lone hand again.’
From this, I think we can conclude that Ambler drew directly on the scenes in both Horler books. He must have drawn on Chipstead of the Lone Hand because otherwise a novel that has just such a meeting at Sûreté as the one Ambler was parodying coincidentally also includes a passage where the agent angrily leaves a different meeting with a police official vowing to play a ‘lone hand’. This already seems exceptionally unlikely, but then add in ‘Department Y’ of the Secret Service and a middle-aged agent avoiding certain death through tricks he has learned from a Patagonian Indian or a Bessarabian moujik and it’s clear he modelled Carruthers as a whole on Chipstead.
But Ambler must have drawn on The Secret Service Man as well, because not only was that also sending up and subverting the scene in which the protagonist goes to the Sûreté as a safe haven for help and information, there are very specific similarities. In Horler’s novel, the protagonist is turned away from the Sûreté as delusional for asking about a man named Durandy, while in Ambler’s he is turned away from the Sûreté as delusional for asking about a man named Durand. Also note that Barstow/Carruthers is looking for his friend, the Chef de la Sûreté who has been rewarded with the red button of the Legion d’Honneur, while Martin Huish is turned away by a Chef de la Sûreté with the Legion d’Honneur in his buttonhole.
Phew.
Now I’m not going to claim that the inspiration for a parody from nearly a century ago is the greatest discovery ever made in literary criticism, but I think it is nevertheless a discovery, and that it opens up several fascinating unexplored aspects of Ambler’s work, including how else Horler might have influenced it, both in The Dark Frontier and subsequent novels. And that’s our next stop in the journey. See you there.
