The Dain curse; a weekend outside the house

Not a good novel, The Dain Curse (1929). Indeed, not really a novel. Mostly, self-contained stories, strung together.

(I wonder how often this sort of detective “novel” used to get published. Agatha Christie’s The Big Four [1927] is another specimen.)

Here’s a passage in which the detective recites a non-exhaustive version of the casualty list. (To reduce spoilage, I’ll replace the victims’ and perpetrators’ names with capital letters.)

“Are you sure,” Fitzstephan asked, “that you’re right in thinking there must be a connection?”

“Yeah. A’s father, step-mother, physician, and husband have been slaughtered in less than a handful of weeks – all the people closest to her. That’s enough to tie it all together for me. If you want more links, I can point them out to you. B and C were the apparent instigators of the first trouble, and got killed. D of the second, and got killed. E of the third, and got killed. Mrs. F killed her husband; G apparently killed his wife, and D would have killed his if I hadn’t blocked him. A, as a child, was made to kill her mother; A’s maid was made to kill H, and nearly me. F left behind him a statement explaining – not altogether satisfactorily – everything, and was killed. So did and was Mrs. G. Call any of these pairs coincidences. Call any couple of pairs coincidences. You’ll still have enough left to point at somebody who’s got a system he likes, and sticks to it.”

Fitzstephan squinted thoughtfully at me, agreeing:

“There may be something in that. It does, as you put it, look like the work of one mind.”

In the last two chapters, Hammett somehow makes good his detective’s hunch and ties all these crimes together as “the work of one mind.” He also wrings as much comedy as possible from his distressed damsel’s morphine withdrawal.

The ending almost makes the book worthwhile.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin’s dad & Carol took Samuel to Fort Wayne over the weekend. It went well enough until bedtime, when Samuel shrieked and shrieked that he wanted to walk home to be with Mommy & Daddy.

In South Bend, Karin & I took Daniel to get his hair cut. Later, we took him to a park. He loved it so well, he protested (shrieking) all the way home from the park.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Something’s wrong with how I’ve been sleeping. Today my head and shoulder and the back of my neck feel like somebody whacked them with a board.

A perfunctory update

Our air conditioner does seem to have died. Our furnace, too. The company that sold us our home warranty is figuring out what to do, or not do, for us.

It’s been a hot week. The temperature in the house was 89 degrees F for a long time.

Karin’s health improved. She worked the last two days.

Daniel has fallen ill with coughing and fever.

I also am ill now, with congestion and fever – and with the usual bleak thoughts about life, death, and trivia. What’s the best way to put mayonnaise in a sandwich? My fever-addled mind has been returning to this tedious question again and again.

During a semi-lucid spell, I read some chapters of The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett. The detective goes into a dark room. He breathes in a poisonous gas. He sees what appears to be a supernatural being hovering in a jet of colored steam. He tries to fight the supernatural being.

Happily, I never became as confused as that detective.

Samuel has been healthy, quiet, and considerate. Well done, Samuel!

Here is a photo of Daniel taken after he rocked himself to sleep on Moby the Whale.