The Moving Toyshop

The Moving Toyshop
Edmund Crispin

As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse - discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.Richard Cadogan, poet and would-be bon vivant, arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spires. Late one night, however, he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman lying in a toyshop and is coshed on the head. When he comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced with a grocery store. The police are understandably skeptical of this tale but Richard's former schoolmate, Gervase Fen (Oxford professor and amateur detective), knows that truth is stranger than fiction (in fiction, at least). Soon the intrepid duo are careening around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they understand what has happened, the disappearing-toyshop mystery takes a sharp turn…Erudite, eccentric and entirely delightful – Before Morse, Oxford's murders were solved by Gervase Fen, the most unpredictable detective in classic crime fiction.

EDMUND CRISPIN

The Moving Toyshop

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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by

Victor Gollancz 1946

Copyright © Rights Limited,

1946. All rights reserved

Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008124120

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124137

Version: 2017-10-27

For Philip Larkin in friendship and esteem

Contents

Cover (#u54ff471e-8413-58c9-8b49-61b8a4492188)

Title Page (#u6b84451b-d3d9-52db-a980-ca6065490890)

Copyright (#u66a5ea29-f77a-51ac-a165-f2360014c548)

Dedication (#u78686cfa-4cd0-5989-a780-3efd2834e33f)

Note (#ud47e8833-e827-56a4-a856-7645d62adabc)

Map (#u5e7a5487-2dab-528c-9e09-45fb45252911)

Chapter 1: The Episode of the Prowling Poet (#u725fbdc2-b7cb-59da-9242-bc0e27f48dd0)

Chapter 2: The Episode of the Dubious Don (#u24af4404-9f46-5e70-84cd-5e6e5337c7d9)

Chapter 3: The Episode of the Candid Solicitor (#ua4880796-600d-513b-aac7-0f9fd394039e)

Chapter 4: The Episode of the Indignant Janeite (#ud819081f-370a-5f53-a826-9c334fe86a39)

Chapter 5: The Episode of the Immaterial Witness (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6: The Episode of the Worthy Carman (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7: The Episode of the Nice Young Lady (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: The Episode of the Eccentric Millionairess (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: The Episode of the Malevolent Medium (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: The Episode of the Interrupted Seminar (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: The Episode of the Neurotic Physician (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12: The Episode of the Missing Link (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13: The Episode of the Rotating Professor (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: The Episode of the Prescient Satirist (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also in This Series (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

Note (#u6c4ce3a2-0ccc-5d2d-9eab-0d47445ddb38)

None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits

E.C.