As has been our policy in previous publications of Leo Bruce texts, we have, for the sake of consistency, mostly (though not always) followed the spelling and punctuation of the earliest novels—“shew” is used instead of “show” (when a verb), for example, direct speech is enclosed within double quotation marks, “’phone” is used for the shortened form of “telephone” instead of “phone”, stops are included with such abbreviations as “Dr.” and “Mr.”, and “weekend” is hyphenated but “fingerprint” is unhyphenated—in all texts.
In Death by the Lake, these additional changes occur:
“brought”, in “brought himself a lakeside house” (Chapter One, p. 16), was corrected to “bought”;
the comma in “But the sheer hopelessness of picking his wits against professional investigators in a matter of this kind, struck him as absurd” (Ch. One, p. 17) was removed;
commas were added before and after “looking back” in “She seemed fascinated and looking back I suppose he had a sort of cobra attractiveness” (Ch. Two, p. 22);
four instances of “Julia” (Ch. Two, p. 26 and Ch. Nine, pp. 106 & 107) were corrected to “Julie”;“He was always there or with them there or with them in the pub” (Ch. Two, p. 27), though it may have been intended thus, was altered to “He was always there or with them in the pub”;
“was” has been altered to “were” in “as though there was unseen menace” (Ch. Two, p. 29), in “If the summons was to leave the farm” (Ch. Three, p. 35), in “as though he was unconscious” (Ch. Three, p. 37), in “If his tank was nearly empty” (Ch. Four, p. 46), in two cases of “if it was” (Ch. Five, pp. 53 & 58); in “How could he invite her as though his mission was a pleasurable drive” (Ch. Six, p. 70), in “as though that was all the explanation” (Ch. Six, p. 71); in “Perhaps the promise that he should see her was itself a lie” (Ch. Seven, p. 83); and in “whether she was conscious” (Ch. Eleven, p. 132); similarly, “loses” and “tries” in “loses his head and tries to stuggle” were altered to the subjunctive “lose” and “try” (Ch. Eleven, p. 132);both instances of “twelve bore” (Ch. Three, pp. 31 & 34) were altered to “twelve-bore”;
an “a” was inserted after “bungalow” in “who lives in a bungalow quarter of a mile away” (Ch. Three, p. 31);“any where” (Ch. Three, p. 34) was altered to “anywhere”;the words “of the murder” were added to “They were all fairly calm about it though for a moment, when Elsie first heard, after the long worrying wait for Ben, Carolus feared that she might break down” (Ch. Three, p. 39) in order to make a more easily understandable “They were all fairly calm about it though for a moment, when Elsie first heard of the murder, after the long worrying wait for Ben, Carolus feared that she might break down”;punctuation and capitalisation were slightly altered in order to make two sentences, ‘ “Let us suppose,” Carolus said. “That whoever came…” ’ (Ch. Three, p. 40), one sentence;
“He’d have said no” and “George always said no” (Ch. Three, p. 40) were altered to “He’d have said ‘no’ ” and “George always said ‘no’ ”;
a colon replaced a semicolon in “compounded of two elements; suspicion and fear” (Ch. Five, p. 53);
a comma was inserted after “On the other hand” (Ch. Five, p. 55);
“the” was corrected to “then” in “Marie was silent for a moment, the turned to Carolus with a bright smile.” (Ch. Five, p. 59);
“Mrs. Stick, to her surprise, gave her approval, at least his interpretation of her attitude” (Ch. Five, p. 61) was altered to “Mrs. Stick, to his surprise, gave her approval, or so at least was his interpretation of her attitude”;
the full stop was removed from “Then quietly she added.” (Ch. Five, p. 62);
a comma was added after “However” in “However if you want to ask me…” (Ch. Six, p. 72);
“yewman framework” was altered to “human frame” (Ch. Six, p. 73);
“road construction” was hyphenated (Ch. Six, p. 73);
“a” was altered to “the” in “the candle which had awakened him was the only light in a room” (Ch. Seven, p. 82);
“25 per cent” was altered to “twenty-five per cent” (Ch. Seven, p. 85);
“one” was altered to “once” in “We leave quietly and at one in our car” (Ch. Seven, p. 87);
“the” was altered to “that” in “At the moment Marie walked into the room” (Ch. Seven, p. 87);
a comma was inserted after “have” in “But other people have and Marie talks quite freely about her” (Ch. Eight, p. 95);
a colon was exchanged for the first comma, and a semicolon for the fourth, in “He was faced with the gruelling problem of two murders, one of five years ago for which he had a suspect but knew little or nothing, except by hearsay, of the circumstances, the second of less than a fortnight back of which he knew almost everything about the circumstances but had no logical suspect” (Ch. Eight, pp. 96-97);
“My dear Deene, wrote Mr. Gorringer” is altered to “My dear Deene (wrote Mr. Gorringer),” and Mr. Gorringer’s whole letter is indented and in roman instead of italic type (Ch. Eight, pp. 97-98);
the assessment of Mr. Gorringer—“a princely repast, my dear Deene. I see that your good Mrs. Stick has lost none of her cunning”—has been placed between long dashes instead of within parentheses, and a semicolon replaced the full stop therein (Ch. Eight, p. 98);
a comma was inserted after “thought” in “I little thought when I proposed to visit your rustic retreat” (Ch. Eight, p. 100);
a colon replaced the semicolon, and a comma was inserted after “flexible”, in “a blackjack; a flexible loaded life-preserver.” (Ch. Eight, p. 100);
“whisky and soda” was, for consistency’s sake, hyphenated (Ch. Eight, p. 101);
capitalisation was removed from “Even” (Ch. Nine, p. 106);
punctuation and capitalisation were slightly altered in order to make two sentences, ‘“And in any case,” said Julie. “Since they have never arrested Desmond…”’ (Ch. Nine, p. 110), one sentence;
“your’s” (Chapter Ten, p. 120), was corrected to “yours”;
“its”, in “its only for forty-eight hours” (Chapter Ten, p. 121), was corrected to “it’s”;
“cissy” was altered to “sissy” (Chapter Ten, p. 122);
“a” in “home within a hour” (Ch. Eleven, p. 126) was corrected to “an”;
“providence” was changed to “Providence” to match the second instance thereof (Ch. Eleven, p. 128);
“jewelry” (Ch. Eleven, p. 130) was altered to “jewellery”;
“And she did so, she laughed” was altered to “As she did so, she laughed” (Ch. Eleven, p. 131);
the comma was removed from “the only person (except perforce George Garrison), whom Jessie took into her confidence” (Ch. Twelve, p. 138);
a second em dash was added, after “details”, in “Julie said nothing—expressed no incredulity, asked for no details but sat as though slowly realizing things” (Ch. Twelve, p. 138).
Page references are to the first (and, unfortunately, only) edition of Death by the Lake by Leo Bruce, published by W. H. Allen (London, 1971).
