GAYLORD SABATINI - VORTEX OF HORROR

CONRAD HILL - SO MUCH WORK

HARRY TURNER - SHWARTZ

MYC HARRISON - THE RAT TRAP

GERALD ATKINS - PATENT NUMBER

DAVID CASE - STRANGE ROOTS

ALEX WHITE - THE CLINIC

MYC HARRISON - THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

JOHN SNELLINGS - CHANGE OF HEART

GILBERT PHELPS - THE HOOK

CONRAD HILL - THE MAN AND THE BOY

R. CHETWYND-HAYES - IT CAME TO DINNER

At the time I wrote THE RAT TRAP and THE SPIDER AND THE FLY, I was living in a small, rented house on Inkerman Road in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. My landlady, a fiery Italian greengrocer, had never given me a rent book, nor had she ever given me a receipt for the twenty-two pounds rent I paid, in cash, in advance, every month.

When I gave her a calendar month’s notice, she insisted I owed her an additional month’s rent. Which I didn’t. The first of several lawyers’ letters duly arrived a week later. I actually phoned her lawyer and told him the situation. He agreed - I didn’t owe her anything. But since she was paying him a pound a pop to write the letters, what could he do?

I moved to Stanford LeHope in Essex, along with Jan, who later became my wife (and still is, nearly forty years later.) There, I polished both short stories, crossed my fingers, and sent them off to Pan Books.

A month or so later, I received a formal looking letter from London Management and Representation Ltd, on Regent Street in London. I assumed my fiery landlady had changed lawyers and was still intent on collecting her twenty-two quid. I mean, London Management? Sounded like a property management law firm to me. So I did what any starving artist would do. I shoved it, unopened, behind the clock on the mantelpiece, where it remained for the next four months.

Finally, in a surge of good housekeeping, Jan decided it was time I made a decision regarding the offending letter. She wanted me to dispose of it. It was a cold Friday evening and I’d just lit the fire.

“Burn it!” I said.

But before she did, she opened it, just in case.

And went very quiet for a long moment.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

I imagined the worse. A four-figured, court ordered invoice that included her legal fees? Or maybe an arrest-warrant that included my mum and dad? Or, God forbid, a writ of execution?

“It’s from him,” she said.

Him?

My landlord was a landlady.

“It’s from Herbert van Thal.”

How did he know my landlady?

“He wants to buy your stories.”

The words echoed around the fireplace. Dear God, don’t burn it. Of course, she didn’t and I spent the entire weekend reading and re-reading Bertie’s letter, in between phoning his office (01-734-4192) every fifteen minutes, to no avail. When I finally got through on Monday morning, I gave him some awful, concocted story about being out of the country, and agreed to meet with him on Thursday, along with Jan.

We climbed an endless succession of stairs to his Regent Street office, a room stuffed full of sagging shelves, jam-packed with books. The great man wore a baggy black suit and a pair of bifocals that defied gravity, clinging precariously to the very tip of his nose.

He looked across his desk at me.

“Harrison,” he said and took a slow, wheezy breath. “Why are you here?”

And I thought he was a bit do-lally. That maybe the daft old coot had lost his marbles. Fortunately, I was holding hands with Jan below the level of his desk and she understood that one isn’t required to answer rhetorical questions. So before I did, she applied sufficient pressure to almost crack my knuckles.

“You’re here,” he said, “because you can write.”

Had Jan let go of my hand at that moment, I would have, without a doubt, floated all the way to the ceiling. And what a lovely feeling it was.

So, there you have it. Because I didn’t open Bertie’s letter on time, I missed being published in the Thirteenth Pan Book of Horror and had to wait a whole other year to see my name in print.

And it was worth the weight in spades.