More Work for the Undertaker

By Margery Allingham

‘I found a stiff in there once, down at the back just behind the arch,’ said Stanislaus Oates, pausing before the shop-window and peering in apparently to inspect a display of baby clothes. ‘I always recollect it because as I bent down and flashed my bull’s-eye—we had to carry oil lanterns in those days—it suddenly raised its arms and its cold hands closed round my throat. There was no power there, fortunately. He was just on gone and died while I clawed him off. It made me sweat, though. I was a Sergeant Detective, Second Class, then.’
He swung away from the window and swept on down the crowded pavement. His raincoat, which was blackish with flecks of grey in it, billowed out behind him like a schoolmaster’s gown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Librorium Editions
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9782383834540

Margery Allingham

Margery Louise Allingham is ranked among the most distinguished and beloved detective fiction writers of the Golden Age alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Allingham is J.K. Rowling's favourite Golden Age author and Agatha Christie said of Allingham that out of all the detective stories she remembers, Margery Allingham 'stands out like a shining light'. She was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a very literary family; her parents were both writers, and her aunt ran a magazine, so it was natural that Margery too would begin writing at an early age. She wrote steadily through her school days, first in Colchester and later as a boarder at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she wrote, produced, and performed in a costume play. After her return to London in 1920 she enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she studied drama and speech training in a successful attempt to overcome a childhood stammer. There she met Phillip Youngman Carter, who would become her husband and collaborator, designing the jackets for many of her future books. The Allingham family retained a house on Mersea Island, a few miles from Layer Breton, and it was here that Margery found the material for her first novel, the adventure story Blackkerchief Dick (1923), which was published when she was just nineteen. She went on to pen multiple novels, some of which dealt with occult themes and some with mystery, as well as writing plays and stories – her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, was serialized in the Daily Express in 1927. Allingham died at the age of 62, and her final novel, A Cargo of Eagles, was finished by her husband at her request and published posthumously in 1968.