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SANDERSON, CRAIG (1976 - ) Ventriloquist. When Sanderson introduced Hamilton Coe, Junior to the world at the Drumfeld Reach for the Stars charity evening, there were concerns that the joke might rebound. Investigators with less confidence in their abilities would have bridled at the affront. Had Sanderson attempted to introduce a Ronald Hawthorne puppet to its source he'd have provoked an immediate tantrum and received a lawyer's letter within the week. I'm made of sterner stuff. As anyone who knows me would have anticipated, I laughed louder than anyone and, at the skit's conclusion, applauded until my hands were raw. So pronounced, in fact, was my enjoyment that my sister and niece removed themselves from my vicinity and sat elsewhere. Nobody who has witnessed the extent to which I enjoy a good joke would ever accuse me of lacking a SENSE OF HUMOUR.
In the weeks following the Reach for the Stars event, I did everything possible to assist Craig in making his creation credible, sending case studies and suggestions for future performances. It occurred to me that Hamilton Coe, Junior might be an ideal means of conveying my message to youngsters, contacted schools and youth groups on Craig's behalf and even sent him some appropriate scripts for such a venture. Craig, unfortunately, thought he knew better. Having harnessed the essence of Hamilton Coe, he tried to channel it in directions from which it could only rebound against him. In subsequent performances, Hamilton Junior became increasingly objectionable as Sanderson capitulated to the demands of adult audiences. “Stop that right now, Hamilton!” became his catch-phrase as the puppet rubbed himself aggressively against whatever young woman had wandered into the vicinity, his hinged jaw fixed in a leer of idiot yearning. After cautioning Sanderson against the path he'd followed, I was compelled, as was my right, to demand the puppet's destruction thus establishing a legal precedent for others parodied in this fashion.
Craig Sanderson with 'Archie' , predecessor to Hamilton Coe, Jr
SAUNDERS, GAYLE (1960 - ) My housekeeper. Employed by Christine immediately after our mother's death, Gayle proved a staunch ally against the social service numbskulls whose ostensible purpose of attending to my father was neglected in favour of two hour coffee breaks and telephone misuse.
Shortly after Spencer's inglorious return to Drumfeld, Gayle threatened to resign on account of disgusting emissions with which she claimed my brother had clogged the shower. "We don't even need a housekeeper," snapped Spencer in response, attributing the cause of Gayle's complaint to excessive shower gel use on my part. Laboratory analysis (conducted at some expense) proved otherwise.
SERIAL KILLERS - We should be wary of flattering the boors, numbskulls and misfits responsible for such crimes with the notion that they are, in fact, intellectually superior to their victims. The source of this myth can be attributed to the creative imagination. Novelists and film-makers will, naturally, attempt to imbue their creations with emotional depth. "What manner of deep seated resentments," they wonder, "would cause a man to make a hobby of murder?" The fact is that so-called serial killers resent society no more (and in most cases a great deal less) than gluttons, poison pen writers or obsessive newspaper correspondents. Their personalities are unremarkable save for a lack of restraint and total absence of imagination.
SHEAD, TRACY (1976 - ) Glutton. Barred from the Star of India's Wednesday ‘all you can eat' buffet after embarking upon a series of three hour lunches over the course of which she devoured quantities consistent to parties of four, Sneddon, a local councillor, took legal action, accusing the restaurant of false advertising and injury to her reputation and feelings. When her claims were dismissed, she organised a campaign of harassment against the restaurant, sending groups of accomplices to consume such unreasonable quantities that the staff were compelled to pull down the buffet shutters. Armed with the testimonials of her fellow gluttons, Ms Shead argued that the 'All you can eat' gimmick was a sham and that the Star of India pursued a policy of discrimination against 'over-sized' people.
SHYNESS - The word ‘shy, applied to anyone over the age of twenty is invariably a euphemism for ‘dull', ‘inept' or ‘stupid'.
SICKERT, WALTER (Artist) See WHITECHAPEL MURDERER, THE
SILENCE - As someone of enhanced sensitivity, I'm particularly irked by the constant presence of small disruptions: music emanating from headphones like a cacophony of trapped flies, the inconsequential babble of a one sided cell-phone conversation. Many people are incapable of being alone with their thoughts: they're so overwhelmed by sensations of inadequacy that, without distractions, they're reduced to tears of anxiety. The silence of eternity is, however, so essential to me that I constantly find myself at odds with my fellows. However politely I request that someone switch off his Walkman or continue his conversation where no-one else can be disturbed by its meandering inanities, I elicit an abusive response.
SMELLIE, IAN (1937 - 1983) - In her Harrison Poe memoir, Pamela's narrator, Patsy, make a ruefully humorous allusion to the death of her dentist. 'Mr Adison' was driven to suicide by a series of adolescent pranks perpetrated by Patsy and her friend Megan. This apparently pointless digression struck a chord as I recalled that Pamela's childhood dentist had died in similar circumstances. Discreet enquiries revealed that the real life Ian Smellie, already afflicted by the dark moods common to members of his profession, took his own life after being besieged by prank callers. This brought to mind the a spate of phone calls I received at the same time. One, I recall, invited me to travel to Glasgow in order to be interviewed for Blue Peter. Others arranged meetings with non-existant informants in a variety of undesireable locations. On each occasion, the realisation that I had been duped was accompanied by suspicious skirls of distant laughter.
According to Smellie's surviving daughter, he was demoralised by the resurgance of taunts, based on his surname, that recollected the miseries of an unspeakable childhood. "Children can be cruel," she rationalised. This is undeniably the case, but how does it reflect upon a grown woman who reflects upon the offences of adolescence with such callous indifference?
SMITH, ELAINE C. Actress, Columnist, Voyeur. Displays symptoms of Munchausen's Syndrom by Proxy. While I was still active in criminal investigations it wasn't uncommon to arrive at a crime scene to find Smith already in attendance. Smith and I were both guests on the Jackie Park radio show discussing crime trends from the respective points of view of acknowledged expert and minor-celebrity. Miscalculating her own status, Smith reduced what might have been an informative interview to farce, contradicting me by repeating what I later discovered were her television catch phrases. The next week she referred to me as a ‘ghoul' in her Daily Record column an example, if I may say, of the pot calling the kettle black.
As a past winner, I objected to the inviation extended to Ms Smith to participate in the CHILDREN OF COURAGE AND ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS as jurist and presenter. Unfortunately, my reservations were ignored with disastrous results. Ms Smith, as any sensible person might have anticipated, completely hijacked the proceedings. Starting with a huskily bellowed rendition of 'Try a Little Tenderness', a song I often hear emanating from Spencer's room in the course of one of his binges, she then embarked upon a grisly bombardment of 'patter'. This was so excruciating that there was a gradual exodus of people unable to endure any more of her gormless observations. By the time she got round to tearfully acknowledging the nominees (all, incidentally, selected on the basis of misfortune) the hall was only half full and remaining audience members so heartily despised her that her every announcement was greeted with jeers.
Elaine C. Smith 'gies it laldy'.
SNEDDON, ALICE (1940 - ) My first chronicler, Aunt Alice carefully noted all of my early impressions, producing them, often years later, when their veracity became apparent. Without her constant support I would almost certainly have suffered the same fate of many other gifted children, subdued by discouragement and scepticism. While other members of my family might have preferred my silence, Alice was indefatigable in asserting my rights. “Let Hamilton speak!” she'd demand in a voice that brooked no dissent. Put to the test, she even had sufficient faith in me to break off her engagement to Vincent Christie when his presence caused me to collapse, stricken by a vivid impression of him clad in a suit of meat. This vision, incidentally, was subsequently vindicated in a manner I am currently unable to disclose.
When I was seven years old, Aunt Alice used her own savings to take me to the Gibson Institute in Florida where my faculties were tested under laboratory conditions. NINA KELLY, with the dogmatic insistence peculiar to numbskulls, dismisses the Gibson Institute as a “trailer park operation dispensing meaningless certificates.” It was, and remains, in fact, a recognised university of parapsychology whose “meaningless certificates” are internationally accepted guarantees of authenticity. While I've no desire to blow my own trumpet, I can refer anyone seeking my own credentials to the Institute's archive where he'll find an unparalleled succession of test results.
Later, it was Alice who distributed the first Hamilton Coe bulletins, keeping interested parties updated on what I was up to. She also transported me to investigations across Britain, often at her own expense. While the reader might think these excursions grim, I remember them as happy occasions filled with song and laughter. With hindsight, it's obvious that Aunt Alice, who negotiated with victims' families and often hostile police forces, was shielding me from negative responses to my presence. This pressure was exacerbated when I was demonised on THE PEOPLE WHO SAW TOMORROW television show, in the wake of which my parents were pressurised into curtailing my investigative activities, a capitulation Aunt Alice interpreted as a personal rebuke. She was further troubled by allegations that she embezzled the funds for trips from her employers. These allegations, I regret to say, while exaggerated, weren't entirely without foundation. The combined circumstances contributed to a breakdown in her health manifested by a facial twitch and episodes of uncontrollable sobbing.
Taking advantage of the situation, Vincent Christie reappeared on the scene. Despite my strenuous objections they were married within six months. A year later, they had a son of their own, FRAZER CHRISTIE, a simpleton.
SNEDDON, DONALD (1903 – 1980) My grandfather's character was borne of adversity. Relocated from his native Colonsay to Glasgow at the age of five, he was forced to endure the taunts of his new schoolmates who dubbed him ‘Island Boy' and ‘Rufus' on account of his red hair. Further scapegoated by teachers on account of his sense of fair-play, my grandfather was regularly tawsed for other people's misdemeanours (often ones to which he himself had drawn the teachers' attention). I remember lying stricken by one of the illnesses that dogged my childhood, listening him recounting these injustices from my bedside. If I close my eyes, I can still see him kneading his brow with his taut knuckles, tears of anger rolling down his cheeks.
Active throughout his life, in a professional capacity as a florist, recreationally as an author (see RALPH STEADFAST), poet and after dinner speaker, retirement caused my grandfather to brood over indignities he had previously confronted head on. I experienced a similar failure of will in the aftermath of the virus that depleted my powers. The man of calibre, however, is galvanised by adversity. "Pucker your lips, Donald, old son," my grandfather would say, wiping his eyes as he dragged himself from the depths of memory. As I watched him from my sickbed, he did just that, sending out a whistle, initially hesitant but gathering strength until the room was filled with a trill of celebration. "As long as I have enough breath in my lungs to whistle," he said, "and someone to whistle for, I feel like the luckiest man alive." Neither Spencer nor Christine enjoyed our grandfather's spontaneous melodies. "I wished he shut up," Christine once hissed as he accompanied a tune on the radio. "If they wanted some idiot whistling along, they'd have put it on the record." Within three months, he was dead. While we've never discussed it, I suspect that repressed guilt contributed to the peculiar virulence of her acne.
SNEDDON, GREGOR (1942 - 1990) - Indiscretion has proved the undoing of many otherwise accomplished investigators. The blessings of a keen eye are nullified when accompanied by a loose tongue. The informed reader might wonder as to gaps in the Case Book. "How," he or she might wonder, "can a history of Coe omit mention of the Kenneth Cowan scandal? And what about the Marion Hazard mystery?" Some might conjecture that I'm silenced by legal constraints or fear of the 'tap on the shoulder'. To the first of these I remind the reader that, unlike other psychics, I've never made a statement that wasn't backed by evidence. To the second, while hesitating to blow my trumpet, I point to my status as the world's leading exponent of the techniques of Gung-Coe, a mere novice of which might broach the darkest alley without trepidation.
Any omissions from the Glossary are accountable to my compassionate nature. In time, of course, established facts must be revealed, particularly when lies persist in their stead. Where-ever appropriate, though, I'll defer revelation until a time appropriate to reconciliation. In the instance of my Uncle Gregor, unfortunately, his unexpectedly sudden death, the consequence of a dissolute lifestyle, precluded the possibility of us discussing his various transgressions in a spirit of good-fellowship. Regrettably, he persisted in the hostility displayed tpward me throughout his life by requesting my exclusion from his funeral service. That his last wish had such negative connotations, I'm afraid, is indicative of a life dedicated to inversion and pettiness. When they are eventually released in 2020, my Gregor Sneddon file will present a portrait of boy whose struggle against nature consumed him as he entered manhood. Until then, however, in consideration to the surviving Sneddons, I'll keep my counsel.
SOCIAL SKILLS – A technique I learned from Grandpa Sneddon, one which continues to elicit Spencer's particular scorn, is to take the effort to remember things about people. Obviously, a good memory is an invaluable asset to any kind of investigator, but it's also a social skill. Today people tend to be self-absorbed. They're not interested in anyone else. Even the people they profess to love are only tolerated because they serve a purpose, be it emotional, sexual or whatever. Why should a busy businessman remember a waitress's name or hairstyle? Unless she's particularly attractive, he barely even looks at her. She serves no purpose other than to serve his food speedily and without spillage. I know the name of every waitress within a thirty mile radius of Drumfeld! Within seconds of entering an establishment, I can tell if any staff member has changed her hairstyle, bought new shoes or lost weight. People like to be remembered, so I then make sure I tell them. For some reason, when I'm with Spencer, which, admittedly, isn't a regular occurrence, this never fails to prompt groans and apologies. “Nobody wants you to notice them,” he says, a point of view one might expect from someone who recognises nobody's needs but his own. Of course, someone in Spencer's position, who frequently needs to shave and exhibits various tell-tale symptoms of a recent debauch might not want to be noticed. It's a habit of nonentity, I find, to project our own preferences onto everyone else.
I'm not being deliberately unkind when I say that my brother has zero social skills. He has no idea how to establish a rapport with someone. If I were to put this to him, of course, he'd bridle and say that he doesn't want to establish a rapport, thank you very much. This isn't true. Spencer yearns for affection more than anyone I know. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to talk to people. This has always been his problem. Unless people are talking about him, he's not interested. His eyes glaze over, his lip starts to curl. He can't help himself.
SOLITUDE – Prerequisite of genius in any human endeavour. The true man of destiny is condemned to walk alone.
SONS OF THE MORNING (a.k.a. THE LUCIFER SECT) – A Satanic cult of uncertain origin, its members, feckless members of the minor aristocracy alienated by Puritanism, became notorious in the seventeenth century. Their depredations ranged from the church desecration to the mutilation of livestock, offences punishable at the time by death. By the nineteenth century the group, still outlawed, had lost many of its anti-Christian associations and was primarily a networking group for well-to-do Hell-raisers. In the 1880's FRANCIS GIBB attempted to revive the society's former traditions, hosting black masses and initiating neophytes with missions. The WHITECHAPEL MURDERS of the period, wrongly associated with Freemasonry, were almost certainly linked to his offshoot of the society.
When Gibb disappeared in 1890, the Sons of the Morning ceased to operate in any capacity.
In 1905, however, they resurfaced in America as ‘The Rotary Club'.
SPINK, HEATHER (1968 - ) Witch. A fellow pupil at Drumfeld Primary School, Spink immediately attracted my notice as she skipped around the playground, her blonde fringe ringed by a garland of daisies. To the untrained eye, she gave impression of harmlessness. Softly spoken and shy, her imposture might have been effective anywhere else. She had not, however, reckoned on the presence of a classmate with enhanced intuition. A vivid, red birth-mark on the back of her left hand, throbbing with malign energy, alerted me to the fact that simpering Heather was not as she appeared. Later persistent impressions of semi-transluscent fat flies hovering around her, gorged on blood caused me further concern. The final, and as far as I was concerned, conclusive piece of evidence against Heather came in the vision of a tiny old woman who crawled behind her, dragging herself by her knuckles.
Naturally, I was eager to warn our classmates of these presentiments. One might argue that I acted rashly, but circumspection only comes with age. For Heather, the consequences of exposure were immediate: found guilty of witch-craft in a playground trial presided over by Judge Hamilton Coe, the first and last time I assumed such a role, she was immediately ostracised. This was never my intention. I'm not, by nature a cruel person, and despite the shadow that clouded her personality, the pain Heather endured on account of her isolation gave me no satisfaction. As far as I was concerned, it was sufficient for our classmates to be forewarned of the potential repercussions of her friendship.
By the time Heather's parents removed her from the school some of the other children had become dependent upon the presence of a scapegoat. After a week of simmering resentment, they turned on me. The trial of Hamilton Coe was brief and brutal, the verdict 'Guilty' and the sentence that I be tied to a tree and pelted with mud, the first of several mortifications that eventually led to my own removal from Drumfeld Primary.
Throughout my teens, I closely monitored the behaviour of Heather and her younger brother Declan. My early intuitions were entirely vindicated as their transgressive behaviour led to both being expelled from a succession of schools. Declan, with whom Spencer, always attracted to bad character, attempted to forge a friendship, attained notoriety as Drumfeld's first teenage Hitlerite, shaving his head and strutting around town in bovver boots. I suffered more than one pummelling at his hands, indignities reversed when my investigation was instrumental in his apprehension for substance abuse, assault and twenty seven separate counts of vandalism. Relocated to a residential school and surrounded by more accomplished thugs than himself, the menace was menaced and eventually broken, returning to Drumfeld a stammering advocate of sandals and non-confrontation.
Heather, however, persisted in transgressive behaviour. Formerly a member of KAREN GARDNER's set of promiscuous delinquents, she was almost certainly involved in Karen's disappearance. The last time Karen was seen in Drumfeld, she was with Heather and an unidentified man in the lounge bar of the Red Lion. (On that occasion, incidentally, Heather, irritated by a barman who refused to serve her alcohol, left a small effigy fashioned out of a beer mat attached to the underside of her table. Within a week, the barman was seriously injured in a car accident. Over the years, I've also received various items containing curses including mutilated animals.)
When she was eighteen, Heather moved to Glasgow, ostensibly to study but, as it turned out, to pursue a drug habit and immerse herself in the city's Satanic underworld. Ten years ago, I adopted the persona of 'Donald the Druid' in order to investigate her activities. After inadvertently rendering myself insensible with a drug-spiked cake, I came within seconds of being subjected to a facial tattoo, emerging from my trance as the needle whirred hideously over my left cheek.
Three years ago, Heather returned to Drumfeld suffering the effects of septicaemia caused by a profusion of bacteria on her numerous facial piercings. Rendered hideous by her seeping wounds, she is largely housebound.
STEADFAST, RALPH – My childhood was punctuated by the sort of metabolic collapses suffered by most clairvoyant children. The human immune system can only withstand so much and psychics are often as sensitive to germs as they are impressions. When I was twelve I embarked upon a regime of vitamins and stretching exercises that bolstered my constitution to the extent that, until I succumbed to the virus that virtually stripped me of my powers, I suffered nothing more than the occasional cold. Throughout my early childhood, though, my name was a by-word for sickliness. Between the ages of seven and ten, I spent successive Christmases in bed, listening to raucous laughter emanating from downstairs. The confinement might have been intolerable had my Grandfather Sneddon not introduced me to Ralph Steadfast, the hero of a series of stories he had written for publication in the boys' comics still popular at the time of my own childhood, but now sadly obsolete. The Ralph Steadfast stories, first illustrated by my grandfather's friend, Malcolm Crossley, and latterly my Aunt Alice, made such a profound impression on me that these Christmases spent in his company were possibly the happiest of my life.
Parapalegic from birth, Ralph, despite being confined to a wicker bath-chair, pitted his wits against sundry enemies of humanity. Assisted by slow-witted but able bodied accomplices, Timmy Rogers and Rosco Mulhearn, Ralph thwarted the machinations of Nazis, voodoo priests and cannibals, none of whom reckoned on his powers of persistence. At various times, Ralph was lowered into wells, attacked by wild dogs, fired from a cannon and, on one terrible occasion, cooked alive by the Kahuna magician Obu. Malcolm Crossley's illustrations, tragically destroyed in the course of one of Spencer's drunken rampages, perfectly captured the indefatigability with which Ralph confronted these ordeals. A glower of indignation from the simmering pot in which he was confined was all that was required to alert both the reader and Obu to the imminent triumph of good over evil, triumph assured on that occasion by the timely arrival of Rosco with a detachment of marines. It was this story, ‘Diving For Peril', incidentally, that prompted the Victor comic to express an interest in adopting Ralph Steadfast as a regular character, an offer withdrawn after a change of editor. I still have the letter rescinding the original agreement. The Steadfast stories, it asserts, are “too peculiar and sadistic for a modern readership.” Since this readership subsequently deserted the comic in droves, it would appear that the editor miscalculated. One can only imagine what sort of generation might have evolved had Steadfast been available as a role model.
Neither Christine nor Spencer shared my enthusiasm for the Ralph Steadfast stories. Spencer's loathing was obviously connected to his own justifiable feelings of inadequacy. Christine, however, claimed that the stories gave her nightmares and, several years ago, was so enraged by my reading them to Muriel that I was banned from the house until promising never to repeat the ‘offence'. I can't help but think that Steadfast's influence might have discouraged Muriel from her current life of loitering about churchyards with assorted undesirables.
SUICIDE - Suicides almost always reflect the personalities of those who commit them. While someone who has lived a life of recklessness might choose to end it by jumping to his death, an habitually cautious individual will make his way to eternity by an alternative route. Investigating the death of Peter Heller, I reasoned that, as a dentist, he had the means of a painless demise at his disposal making it unlikely that he would jump from the roof his hotel. As we have observed, however, American detectives, exhibiting a lack of initiative common to their British counterparts, will unquestioningly accept any scenario, however improbable, rather than confront the necessity of a full investigation.
SUICIDE, ATTEMPTED - I first encountered NINA KELLY several years after the disintegration of her acting career. She visited my home in her new role as a researcher for the television series The People Who Saw Tomorrow. My mother, expecting a camera crew, prepared a buffet. Instead a solitary fat woman appeared. Nina, who had bloated considerably since her Detective Wilson period, was unsteady and slurred her words, she devoured most of the food with her fingers, failed to ask a single intelligent question and responded to my answers with snorts of disparagement. As the interview developed, I was bombarded by images of a basement lit by a single bulb and a red-headed girl with plaintive eyes and flared nostrils. When I mentioned this to Nina, she recoiled, excused herself and went to the bath-room where she remained for fifteen minutes. On returning, she crammed some sandwiches into her bag and fled. The next morning we woke to find her car still parked outside the house. Nina was curled shivering and clutching her stomach on the back-seat. Further investigation revealed that she had pilfered and devoured the contents of our medicine cabinet. We complained to the production-company. It's very poor etiquette to turn up at someone's house and attempt to commit suicide. We didn't even know the woman.
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