角落里的老人 (1908)

《角落里的老人》（英语：The Old Man In the Corner）是匈牙利裔英国女性小说家艾玛·奥希兹（Emma Orczy）所创作的一系列短篇推理小说，亦可以指小说中一位坐在咖啡室解谜的虚构的角色，此角色开创了推理小说的一种新创作模式，被称为安乐椅神探，意指故事中的神探不会亲自到案发现场搜集证据及审问证人，又不会与疑犯正面交锋，只会透过报章及法庭新闻的资料，从而推理出犯罪者是谁。

故事简介

全系列小说共有12个短篇故事，分别是《芬雀曲街谜案》、《菲力犘尔街窃案》、《约克郡谜案》、《地下铁神秘命案》、《利物浦谜案》、《爱丁堡谜案》、《英伦银行窃案》、《都柏林谜案》、《布莱顿暴力事件》、《总督公园谋杀案》、《吉尼维尔贵族系谱》及《柏西街神秘命案》。观察家晚报的记者波顿小姐一日在咖啡室的角落遇到一个老人，这个角落里的老人主动向波顿小姐破解新闻上的谜案，波顿小姐被角落里的老人破案的过程吸引，经常到咖啡室留连，角落里的老人每次都会一面解绳结，一面向波顿小姐讲解案情。到了第十二次见面的柏西街神秘命案中，波顿小姐怀疑角落里的老人就是凶手，自此波顿小姐就再没见过角落里的老人。

The Old Man in the Corner is an unnamed armchair detective who appears in a series of short stories written by Baroness Orczy. He examines and solves crimes while sitting in the corner of a genteel London tea-room in conversation with a female journalist. He was one of the first of this character-type created in the wake of the huge popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The character's moniker is used as the title of the collection of the earliest stories featuring the character.

Publishing history

The character first appeared in The Royal Magazine in 1901 in a series of six "Mysteries of London". The following year he returned in seven "Mysteries of Great Cities" set in large provincial centers of the British Isles. The stories are told by an unnamed lady journalist who reports the conversation of the 'man in the corner' who sits at the same table in the A.B.C. teashop. For the book, twelve were rewritten in the third person, with the lady journalist now named Polly Burton. The title, The Old Man in the Corner (U.S. edition: The Man in the Corner) was given to one of the book collections of the earliest stories. Although it contains the earliest written stories in the series, they were not collected in book form until four years after the chronologically later stories in The Case of Miss Elliott (1905). The last book in the series is the much later Unravelled Knots (1925).

Scenario

The Old Man concentrates mostly upon sensationalistic newspaper accounts, with the occasional courtroom visit, and relates all this while tying complicated knots in a piece of string. The plots themselves are typical of Edwardian crime fiction, resting on a foundation of unhappy marriages and the inequitable division of family property. Other period details include a murder in the London Underground, the murder of a female doctor, and two cases involving artists living in "bohemian" lodgings. Another new and noteworthy feature is that no one is ever brought to justice. Though the villains are identified by the narrator (who disdains to inform the police), most cannot be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The final story reveals that the Old Man himself is a criminal, due to some of his trademark knotted rope being found at crime scene, and thereby implies that he may be the mysterious "Bill Owen" the police are unable to locate.

Stories

The stories included in this volume are:

The Fenchurch Street Mystery

The Robbery in Phillimore Terrace

The York Mystery

The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway

The Liverpool Mystery

The Edinburgh Mystery

The Theft at the English Provident Bank

The Dublin Mystery

An Unparalleled Outrage (The Brighton Mystery)

The Regent's Park Murder

The De Genneville Peerage (The Birmingham Mystery)

The Mysterious Death in Percy Street

Film and other media

The Old Man in the Corner was featured in a series of twelve British two-reel silent films, made by Stoll Pictures in 1924, written and directed by Hugh Croise and starring Rolf Leslie as The Old Man and Renee Wakefield as journalist Mary Hatley (Polly Burton in the book). These featured mysteries from each of the three collections:

The Kensington Mystery (The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace)

The Affair at the Novelty Theatre

The Tragedy at Barnsdale Manor

The York Mystery

The Brighton Mystery

The Northern Mystery (?)

The Regent's Park Mystery

The Mystery of Dogstooth Cliff

The Mystery of Brudenell Court

The Mystery of the Khaki Tunic

The Tremarne Case

The Hocussing of Cigarette

In the early 1970s Thames TV presented The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes based on the anthologies by Hugh Greene. The second series (1973) began with "The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway" featuring Judy Geeson as Polly Burton. In this dramatization, the Old Man is replaced by the character of Polly's uncle, Sir Arthur Inglewood.

The radio series The Teahouse Detective was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 starring Bernard Hepton as "The Man in the Corner" and Suzanne Burdon as Polly Burton. The stories in the series were adapted for radio by Michael Butt and included:

1998