Edgar Lustgarten reading from "Death on the Crumbles (1924)", from the

BBC Radio show _Scales of Justice_:)



"Is your name Patrick Mahon? It is?"



"By strange coincidence, a thunderstorm had been brewing when Mahon, doing

his grisly work, was dealing with the most grisly job of all--the head,

the woman's head. He had severed it from the trunk, built a huge fire in

the sitting room, placed her head upon it, then (I owe a debt here to

Edgar Wallace, who edited the transcript of the Mahon trial), then the

storm broke with a violent flash of lightning and an appalling crash of

thunder. As the head of Emily Kaye lay upon the coals, the dead eyes

opened, and Mahon fled out to the deserted shore. When he nerved himself

to return, the fire had done its work. The head was never found..."



"You lost your head. And having lost your head, you left the lady's body

in the bungalow. Is that right? Yes?"

"Do you mean you wanted to go on having connection with her?"*



(*Actually said before the previous comment and spliced into a

necrophiliac context by Tom Ellard.)

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