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; “’phone” is retained for the shortened form of “telephone” instead of “phone”; “will” is capitalised when referring to a last will; stops are retained (or, if absent, inserted) in the initialism C.I.D. and stops are included with such abbreviations as “Dr.”, “Mr.” and “St.”; and hyphens are retained (or, if absent, inserted) in “armchair” “weekend” and “beach-hut” but are removed from “finger-prints”, “to-morrow”, “to-night” and “to-day”—in all texts; furthermore, in Death of Cold these additional changes occur:
the superscript numbers for footnotes (Chapter Two, page 13 and Ch. Twenty-Eight, p. 215) were replaced with asterisks and, within the first footnote,—“At Death’s Door, by Leo Bruce. (Hamish Hamilton, 1955)”—the full stop after “Bruce” was removed;
“wopper” (Ch. Two, p. 18) was slightly altered to “whopper”;
“if”, in “Carolus wondered if he dared to ask one question of fact” (Ch. Four, p. 31), in “waited to see if she would remember his previous visit” (Ch. Twelve, p. 87), in “Before he even asked her if she had brought the key” (Ch. Twenty, p. 152), and in “This youth also asked if Carolus wanted Len and his mother to be present” (Ch. Twenty-Six, p. 199) was altered to “whether”;
“duosyllable” (Ch. Four, p. 32) was corrected to “disyllable”;
“a hotel” (Ch. Six, p. 45, twice) was altered to “an hotel”;
each subjunctive “was” (other than within speech)—in “If either of the latter was the case” (Ch. Seven, p. 48), in “not if he was to offer her a hundred pounds” and “It was as though there was a conspiracy of silence” (Ch. Ten, p. 79), in “And you began to wonder whether it was worthwhile” and “If she was dead, was he justified?” (Ch. Twenty, p. 148), in “if the night was moonless” (Ch. Twenty, p. 149), in “If it was some small matter” and “But if it was some more formal occasion” (Ch. Twenty-Three, p. 174), and in “if it was revealed to someone” (Ch. Twenty-Five, p. 189)—was altered to “were”;
Carolus Deene’s recapitulation of Mr. Slicker’s speech, “not actually, no” (Ch. Ten, p. 79), was repunctuated to match the sppech as reported on the preceding page: “Not actually. No.”
“women” in “The women who had spoken to him” (Ch. Ten, p. 79) was altered to “woman”;
“geyser” in “I was the last to see the poor old geyser” (Ch. Twelve, p. 87) was corrected to “geezer”;
in “Pier Theatre box-office” (Ch. Thirteen, p. 99) the hyphen was removed from “box-office” for consistency’s sake (though, later in the paragraph, when “box-office” was used adjectivally, the hyphen was retained);
the hyphen was removed from “hang-overs” (Ch. Thirteen, p. 99);
“contradictorially” (Ch. Fourteen, p. 105) was altered slightly to “contradictorily”;
a comma was inserted after “language” in “This is shameful language Priggley” (Ch. Seventeen, p. 123);
the oddly inclusive “us”—which could refer only to Carolus Deene or, perhaps, to him and Rupert Priggley—in “then, turning to us when the girl had gone” (Ch. Seventeen, p. 126) was corrected to “Carolus”;since Violette Bonner’s thought, “in that strange, cruel time we could do nothing but promise one another. . . .” (Ch. Seventeen, p. 129), seems incomplete, the period before the ellipsis was removed;“gas fire” (Ch. Seventeen, p. 130), to be consistent with “gas-fire” earlier in the chapter (p. 124), was hyphenated;
“whisky and soda” (Ch. Twenty, p. 148) was hyphenated;
a full stop was inserted after “Quite” in “Quite Why?” (Ch. Twenty, p. 151);
when Mr. Gorringer twice interrupts Carolus Deene in the middle of a word—“res . . .” (Ch. Twenty-Three, p. 178) and “resig . . .” (Ch. Twenty-Three, p. 174)—each ellipsis is replaced by a long dash;
“ten per cent” (Ch. Twenty-Six, p. 201) was altered to “ten per cent.”;
“twice cooked” and “blanc-mange” (Ch. Twenty-Six, p. 201) respectively had a hyphen inserted and a hyphen removed;
after Carolus Deene says “I suppose the only one”, a separate paragraph was provided for the subsequent words, “The headmaster masticated vigorously for some moments” (Ch. Twenty-Six, p. 202);
the comma after “it” in “if I could solve it, all other questions” (Ch. Twenty-Seven, p. 202) was removed;
the hyphen was removed from “non-committal” (Ch. Twenty-Seven, p. 203); and
the seemingly superfluous definite article in “Then there was the Mr. Tiplock” (Ch. Twenty-Seven, p. 207) was removed.
Page references are to the first (and, alas, only) edition of Death of Cold by Leo Bruce, published by Peter Davies (London, 1956).
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