Flat No.11 Massingham Mansions is vacant and locked up: yet each night gaslight is seen at the window and the bath is heard running, even though both gas and water are disconnected. Could it be the restless spirit of a former tenant who died in the bathroom some years earlier? Max Carrados, the blind detective, has one particular advantage over the other people who have investigated the affair: he's not afraid of the dark...
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
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Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) was born Ernest Bramah Smith, probably in or near Manchester, where he attended grammar school. An intensely private man, very little information is known about his personal life. His early career included a stint as assistant to Jerome K. Jerome; his first success as a writer came as a contributor of humorous sketches somewhat in the manner of Jerome, to newspapers and periodicals, and he later became editor of one of Jerome's magazines. As an author he is best remembered for creating two characters: Kai Lung, a Chinese storyteller who appeared in a number of humorous stories from 1900; and Max Carrados, the blind detective, created in 1913. He also wrote science fiction, and his 1907 novel 'What Might Have Been' (also known as 'The Secret of the League') is a dystopian story which was acknowledged by George Orwell as a major influence on his own 'Nineteen Eighty-four'. Orwell was also a great admirer of the Max Carrados stories, bracketing them with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Freeman's Dr Thorndyke as "the only detective stories since Poe that are worth re-reading". The character of Carrados appeared in more than 25 short stories and novels between 1913 and 1934, and by the 1920s was more popular than Sherlock Holmes (whose later cases appeared alongside Carrados in The Strand Magazine). His blindness proves no obstacle to his detective skills; indeed his other senses are heightened and he regularly outwits criminals and fellow detectives alike.
The first known publication of 'The Ghost at Massingham Mansions' came in 'The Eyes of Max Carrados', a 1923 collection of short stories. Most of the stories in that volume had appeared in 'The News of the World' in 1913, but I've not been able to find any evidence whether this story had previously had a newspaper publication. As a result the exact date of composition is uncertain.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.
