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Arts, Drama

DCI Darvel investigates: The Miser

WHODUNNIT DRAMA

Whodunnit

. General synopsis of case –

WALKING briskly through the park, DCI Darvel took a long draw on his pipe and tried to clear his mind. Fact: Karson Meyers was dead and, apparently, almost completely unlamented. Fact: Meyers had been stabbed through the throat with a poker snatched from beside the fire in his sitting room. Fact: Time of death looked to be somewhere between 7pm and 11pm. Fact: The maid had caught sight of Meyers lying on the floor in a pool of blood shortly before breakfast and raised the alarm. Fact: She told a few curious enquirers that the murder weapon had been a poker before Darvel had a chance to ask her to stop. Fact: Half a dozen people had motive to want the old miser dead, the opportunity to have done it, and a reasonable if flimsy alibi. Fact: Having interviewed all six, he didn’t seem to be any closer to identifying a suspect.

SCENE

SUCH A STATE OF AFFAIRS irked the proud Darvel. Puffing on his pipe, he reflected on the various interviews he had conducted in trying to bring this case to a close.

Michael Knight was a lumber distributor, and one of Meyers’ most vocal creditors. The two had been doing business for several years, but Meyers now owed him a substantial sum of money. According to Knight, Meyers had steadfastly refused to settle the debt. “I’m not surprised someone did him in,” Knight had said. “He was infuriating. It wasn’t me, though. I was at home with my wife all evening. Besides, I don’t hold out hope of getting any money out of his estate. Unfortunately, he owed me the money personally, rather than through his firm.”

Susan Hugo was Meyers’ long-estranged daughter, his only child. She was having a difficult time of it financially, and might possibly have hoped that she would be the main beneficiary of whatever her father had to leave. “I’d love to feel sad that he’s dead,” she had said. “One ought to feel sad when one’s father dies. But the truth is that he was never pleasant to me or my mother. I haven’t been alone in a room with him since mother died, and that was fifteen years ago. But being murdered with a poker, that’s horrible. I suppose I feel a bit sad about that. My husband, Paul, is sick at the moment. I was looking after him. I understand that you have to ask. He’ll confirm my alibi.”

Ian Goddard, one of Meyers’ managers, was unusually forthright in his interview. “I’m absolutely delighted that the old son of a bitch is dead. He was a coward, a bully and a skinflint, and he made my life miserable. Maybe now we’ll have a chance of getting the business back onto a firm footing. I thought about killing him myself, you know. Repeatedly. But he wasn’t worth it. I was playing bridge last night, with three friends. I can even give you a run-down of how the hands played out, if you want.”

Evan Patterson was the other manager. He seemed more reflective than bitter about the victim. “It’s difficult to think of him as dead, let alone stabbed. He was such a dominating presence. He only had to walk into a room, and it seemed as though all the air vanished. We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but God help me, I won’t miss him. The firm won’t miss him, either. I suppose we’ll have to put out some regretful-sounding statement and have an official day of mourning or something. I had dinner with my brother last night.”

Emma Moss was Meyers’ housekeeper. Her interview was short and to the point. “Heard he was dead.” Pressed on her whereabouts for the evening in question, she grudgingly added “Home, of course, with my family.”

Jerrold Stanton was Meyers’ butler. “I never had an employer like Mr Meyers. Oh, my. What a broken man. I tried to leave, six years ago, as soon as a I realised exactly what sort of person he was. He made it clear that if I did, he’d accuse me of theft and bribe the judge to send me to prison. I never dared even hint of leaving again. It’s been hard, but I kept my head down, and did as I was told. It’s time for a new chapter in my life. I was at the bar last night, having a beer or two.”

Darvel suddenly stopped dead. “Stupid of me,” he said. “Stupid!” he immediately turned on his heel and hurried back towards the station.

Who is the killer, and how does DCI Darvel know?

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Enthusiasm

Arts

Enthusiasm

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Arts, Britain, Broadcasting, History, Society, United States

The Beginning of Radio Broadcasting

SHORT ESSAY

THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL radio broadcasts were made in Britain in 1921. They led to the formation a few months later of the British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation). This was at the instigation of the General Post Office (GPO), who wanted to see the formation of a single consortium of wireless equipment manufacturers and broadcasters, specifically to avoid the major confusion that had arisen in America, where there were 500 rival stations. The new Company worked under John Reith, an engineer from Aberdeen who was the company’s general manager for its first 16 years. Under Reith’s leadership, the BBC became a major national institution. The broadcasts were entirely live, and Reith insisted on a high level of formality, in spoken English, behaviour and dress, traditions which have unfortunately been thrown to the four winds in recent years.

The London broadcasting station, known as 2LO, went on the air on 14 November 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company. A news bulletin was read by Arthur Burrows of the Marconi Company. The initial broadcasts were fairly short, but soon lengthened to four hours a day of news, talks and concerts.

The BBC was supported financially by licence fees paid for by the users. They had to pay ten shillings a year (50 pence) for the privilege of operating a receiver. The same system was used when television was introduced, also by the BBC.

At the same time in America, the first commercial radio was being broadcast. The New York Station, WEAF, broadcast the first radio commercials. This different approach to broadcasting was to become the set pattern in America – private control of the airwaves and programmes dominated by sponsors. The radio pioneer Lee Dee Forest asked, “What have you done with my child? You have sent him out on the street in rags of ragtime to collect money from all and sundry. You have made of him a laughing stock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere.”

In 1923, the BBC began publishing its magazine, the Radio Times, so that listeners would know in advance what programmes were to be broadcast; this too became a long-continuing practice.

By 1926, radio ownership in the United States reached 3 million; most of these radios required listeners to wear earphones. In 1926, NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) was founded by David Sarnoff; this ambitious project had nine stations.

John Reith

Sir John Reith, Lord Reith of Stonehaven (1889-1971) was General Manager/ Managing Director, British Broadcasting Company 1922-1927 and then the first Director-General of the newly-incorporated British Broadcasting Corporation.

The first experiments with television followed hard on the heels of radio. It was in 1926 that John Logie Baird gave his first public demonstration of television, but the system he used was based on the rotating disc invented by van Nipkov in 1886 and had serious limitations. Television had its first American demonstration in 1927 in the auditorium of New York’s Bell Telephone Laboratories. Walter Gifford showed a large audience commerce secretary Herbert Hoover while at work in his Washington office while Hoover’s voice was transmitted over telephone wires. The development of television was seriously inhibited by the fact that it needed a frequency band of 4 million cycles compared with only 400 for a radio. This was because of the need to transmit 250,000 elements required to build a clear picture on the screen.

The first regularly scheduled TV programmes started on 11 May 1928. General Electric’s station in New York broadcast the first programmes.

Another contributing development was the invention of the first tape recorder. The Blattnerphone designed by the German film producer Louis Blattner used magnetised steel tape. Blattner himself used his invention to supply synchronised soundtracks to the films he was making at Elstree Studios. The BBC saw straight away that the tape recorder was going to be invaluable to them, not least for making recorded programmes, and acquired the first commercially produced Blattnerphone in 1931.

Both radio and television continued to develop. In America, 75,000 radio sets were sold in 1921; by the end of the decade sales had increased to over 13 million. It had become a major communicator. It had also become big business. US advertisers were spending an incredible 60 million dollars on radio commercials alone.

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