1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Elephant Never Forgets," Ethel Lina White weaves a gripping narrative that deftly combines elements of psychological thriller and mystery. Set against the backdrop of a seemingly tranquil town, the novel unravels the complexities of memory and past trauma, exploring how deeply buried secrets can resurface with devastating effects. White's prose is taut and suspenseful, skillfully employing vivid imagery and intricate character development to draw readers into a world where the boundaries between innocence and guilt blur. This work stands as a compelling contribution to the crime genre of the early 20th century, reflecting the period's fascination with the darker aspects of human psychology. Ethel Lina White, a notable figure of her time, was influenced by her profound interest in human behavior and the psychological intricacies of her characters. Her experience in writing detective fiction, along with her keen observations on societal norms, allowed her to create compelling characters trapped in moral dilemmas. White's own experiences with isolation and the complexities of trust likely informed the haunting themes presented in this novel, drawing readers to consider the implications of memory and accountability. Recommended for fans of psychological suspense and classic mystery alike, "The Elephant Never Forgets" offers a thought-provoking exploration of the human psyche. Readers will find themselves captivated by White's masterful storytelling, as she invites them to examine how the past irrevocably shapes the present. This novel is a must-read for those who appreciate intricately plotted narratives that challenge perceptions and provoke critical thought. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
The Elephant Never Forgets
Table of Contents
Introduction
Memory can be a refuge, but it can also become the most dangerous witness when certainty is demanded and the past refuses to stay quiet.
The Elephant Never Forgets is a mystery novel by Ethel Lina White, a writer associated with twentieth-century crime and suspense fiction. It belongs to the tradition of psychological mystery in which clues are as likely to be hidden in temperament and recollection as in physical evidence. White’s work is often discussed alongside interwar and mid-century suspense writing, and this novel draws on that atmosphere of unease and moral ambiguity. Readers can expect a tightly controlled narrative that privileges tension and inference over spectacle, and that treats domestic and social spaces as sites of genuine peril.
The premise turns on the uneasy relationship between what is remembered and what can be proved. A set of uncertainties from earlier events persists into the present, shaping relationships and decisions long after the surface details have faded. As the story progresses, apparent certainties are tested by new information and by the unreliable ways people retell what they have seen, heard, or assumed. The novel is designed to pull the reader into that process of testing and revision, inviting careful attention to what is said, what is withheld, and what is misunderstood. Suspense builds through implication and through the slow tightening of interpretive options.
White’s narrative approach favors close observation and a measured, formal clarity, with tension emerging from the gap between outward composure and inner disturbance. The reading experience is marked by an attentive focus on motive, perception, and the small pressures that can turn ordinary choices into consequential ones. Rather than relying on elaborate action, the novel creates momentum through the accumulating weight of detail and through the reader’s growing awareness that not every account deserves equal trust. The tone remains serious and controlled, allowing dread to gather gradually. This restraint helps the psychological elements land with particular force and makes the mystery feel personal as well as puzzling.
A central theme is the fallibility of memory, not simply as forgetting, but as the mind’s tendency to shape experience into a coherent story. The novel examines how reputations form, how communities preserve certain versions of events, and how individuals protect themselves through selective recall. It also considers the ethics of knowing: what it means to seek the truth when the pursuit may harm the living or unsettle hard-won stability. White is attentive to the social pressures that govern what can be spoken aloud, and to the ways fear and propriety can collaborate to keep crucial knowledge in circulation only as rumor or half-confession.
The Elephant Never Forgets matters because its questions about evidence and belief have only grown more pressing. Contemporary readers live amid competing narratives, fragmented sources, and the temptation to treat confidence as proof; White’s novel encourages a slower, more disciplined skepticism. It shows how easily people can mistake repetition for reliability and how a plausible story can crowd out a true one. At the same time, it emphasizes that truth is not merely an abstract prize but a force with consequences for identity and responsibility. The novel’s suspense arises from that ethical pressure as much as from the mechanics of detection.
Read today, the book offers both the pleasures of classic mystery and a study in how fear and memory govern human behavior. White’s controlled style rewards attentive reading, inviting the audience to weigh each implication without being rushed into premature conclusions. The story’s enduring appeal lies in its insistence that the past is never finished business, especially when it has been simplified for comfort or convenience. By focusing on the tensions between recollection and reality, private knowledge and public narrative, the novel remains a sharp, relevant exploration of how people live with what they think they know—and what they cannot bear to remember.
Synopsis
Ethel Lina White’s The Elephant Never Forgets is a suspense novel that turns on memory, misdirection, and the uneasy gap between what is known and what is merely believed. Set in an atmosphere shaped by domestic routine and social observation, the narrative introduces a troubling situation that cannot be resolved by surface appearances alone. Early scenes establish an ordinary world interrupted by details that feel slightly out of place, prompting questions about motive, reliability, and the meaning of a few carefully noticed facts. The central tension grows from the sense that something important has been overlooked, yet cannot be easily named.
paragraphs
As the story advances, attention shifts from immediate impressions to the longer shadows cast by earlier events. Characters begin to reassess familiar relationships, and small discoveries nudge them toward a larger pattern. White’s plot emphasizes how quickly certainty can harden into assumption, especially when people rely on reputation or habit to interpret what they see. The investigation that emerges is not purely official or procedural; it is driven as much by personal concern and circumstantial observation as by any formal inquiry. Each new piece of information clarifies one point while complicating another, sustaining an anxious, incremental momentum.
paragraphs
White develops the conflict through a succession of interviews, encounters, and recollections, showing how memory can be both a tool and a trap. Some figures appear confident in their understanding of the past, while others reveal gaps, evasions, or selective recall. The book repeatedly tests whether remembrance is accurate record, self-protective narrative, or social performance. The title’s suggestion that certain minds retain what others forget becomes a guiding question: who remembers, what is remembered, and why does it matter now? The prose keeps the focus on practical details—times, places, objects—while hinting at emotional undercurrents.
paragraphs
As suspicion and uncertainty spread, the stakes become clearer, and the consequences of error feel increasingly serious. The narrative explores how quickly communities and families can close ranks around convenient explanations, especially when alternative accounts threaten comfort or status. White’s suspense relies on the interplay between public surfaces and private knowledge, and on the way ordinary settings can conceal danger. Characters must decide whom to trust and which inconsistencies are meaningful. The reader is led to weigh competing interpretations without being offered immediate reassurance, sustaining a tense balance between what is plausible and what is provable at each stage of the unfolding inquiry.
Historical Context
Ethel Lina White (1876–1944) wrote primarily in the interwar period, when British popular fiction expanded rapidly through cheap reprints, circulating libraries, and magazine serialization. Crime and suspense novels flourished alongside the codification of the “Golden Age” detective story, supported by publishers such as Collins and by organizations like the Detection Club (founded 1930). White’s work belongs to a strand of psychological and domestic suspense that ran parallel to puzzle detection. The Elephant Never Forgets emerges from a culture attentive to secrecy, respectability, and the hidden pressures of middle-class life in early twentieth-century Britain.
The story’s world reflects Britain after the First World War, a society marked by demographic loss, social readjustment, and shifts in gender roles. Wartime service and postwar employment broadened women’s public presence, while the 1918 and 1928 Representation of the People Acts expanded women’s suffrage. At the same time, social conventions around marriage, inheritance, and reputation remained powerful, shaping the kinds of private conflicts that suspense fiction frequently explored. Interwar readers were familiar with narratives where apparently orderly homes concealed destabilizing memories and moral dilemmas rooted in earlier family decisions and wartime disruption.
Between the wars, British policing and forensic practice were increasingly professionalized, influencing fictional depictions of investigation even when stories centered on amateurs. The Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department had been established in the nineteenth century, and the interwar decades saw wider public awareness of fingerprinting, scientific evidence, and structured record-keeping. Yet criminal justice also depended on witness testimony, class assumptions, and informal community knowledge, creating tensions suspense writers could exploit. White’s fiction often draws energy from the gap between institutional authority and the private spaces where crucial knowledge is stored, forgotten, or deliberately withheld by individuals and families.
Mass media helped shape the atmosphere in which such novels circulated. Newspapers reported sensational trials and inquests, while radio broadcasting expanded through the British Broadcasting Company (1922) and British Broadcasting Corporation (1927), making crime and public controversy more immediate in everyday life. Film adaptations of thrillers and melodramas also popularized plots involving mistaken identity, concealed histories, and psychological strain. These developments encouraged writers to craft tight, clue-driven narratives with vivid settings and dramatic reversals, while remaining anchored in recognizably British localities. The Elephant Never Forgets reflects a readership trained to notice detail and to distrust appearances.
Interwar Britain also saw heightened attention to psychology and memory in public discourse. The aftermath of the First World War brought wider recognition of “shell shock” and debates about trauma and mental health, while popular and clinical interest in the workings of the mind increased. Although terminology and treatment differed from modern practice, the period’s fascination with recollection, repression, and the reliability of testimony fed directly into suspense fiction’s preoccupation with what people remember and what they cannot—or will not—say. A plot organized around persistent memory and buried knowledge aligns with this cultural context without requiring technical clinical framing.
Class relations and domestic service remained central to British life in the early twentieth century, even as their contours began to change. Large numbers of women were employed as servants in the interwar years, and household hierarchies structured what could be seen, overheard, or reported. Country houses, boarding establishments, and respectable suburban homes all functioned as micro-societies where reputation mattered and movement was monitored. Fiction of the period frequently uses these settings to explore how information travels: through gossip, observation, and the selective discretion of staff and neighbors. White’s suspense relies on these realistic social mechanisms to generate tension and concealment.
Economic instability and political uncertainty formed an important background to interwar reading habits. The General Strike of 1926, the Great Depression’s impact after 1929, and persistent unemployment contributed to anxieties about security and status. Such pressures often appeared in popular fiction as threats to households, inheritances, and personal autonomy, rather than as overt political commentary. Publishers benefited from strong demand for escapist but emotionally charged narratives, and crime fiction offered both order-restoring investigation and a controlled encounter with danger. The Elephant Never Forgets draws on these conditions by situating personal risk within the ostensibly stable routines of everyday life.
White’s novel participates in an era when British suspense examined the fragility of respectability and the moral costs of secrecy. Interwar fiction frequently contrasted public propriety with private motives, making memory, family history, and hidden wrongdoing central engines of plot. Without relying on grand historical events as set pieces, the work reflects a society shaped by postwar change, media fascination with crime, and evolving ideas about psychology, while still constrained by entrenched class and gender expectations. By focusing on what is remembered, misremembered, or suppressed, the novel critiques the period’s reliance on appearances and the institutional limits of knowing the truth.
The Elephant Never Forgets
CHAPTER I
AS Anna looked through the double windows of her bedroom at the hotel, she became suddenly conscious of the passage of time. Although the port was not yet sealed, winter had gripped the small northern town almost overnight. The sky was purple-dark with snow-clouds, and the old stunted trees opposite were blown forward by the wind until they rapped the wall with knobby knuckles.
"Time I went back to England," she told herself. "There's nothing to stop for now."
Time. It was curious how this element was to dominate the situation. Anna often had the impression of being imprisoned within a maze, five minutes before closing-time. Its windings were neither numerous nor complicated; but, if she lost her head and took a wrong turning in her haste, she might reach the outlet—only to find the door locked.
The weather that morning corresponded with her own bitter mood. She was feeling bleakly disillusioned as the aftermath of an unpleasant scene with Otto yesterday, when she had broken with him finally, on the score of his disloyalty.
While she had no real ground for complaint because his so-called secretary—Olga—occupied a position in his scheme which she herself had declined to fill—she was appalled by the wholesale scale of his operations in the love-market, and also by his admission that she had helped to finance his romance.
In fact, the only redeeming feature of a bad business was her ability to swear in Russian.
Notwithstanding her fluency, the final score was his, because she could not assail the logic of his defence.
"You know that here we believe in collectivisation," he reminded her. "Since you are a monopolist, what are you doing in Russia?"
The reason was that she was a victim of glamour. Ever since she had met Otto at a debating society in the east end of London, she had been ensnared by his personality. He had not only the golden beard of a Viking and dark-blue eyes which were chill as polar seas, but he was essentially a spell-binder.
Whenever he talked, shoals of bright words bubbled up responsively in her own brain. He became her star and she followed, or rather, accompanied him to Russia, where she helped to finance his new venture—a non-political paper, confined to art, literature and science.
As long as the dream lasted, her surroundings were misted with illusion. It is doubtful whether she ever saw the dim grey northern town as it was in reality. To her, there was glamour in the tall cramped houses and the stone steps leading down to the olive water of the port; glamour in the green-grape twilight; glamour in the blaze of starlight.
Above all, there was glamour in the communal life in Otto's newspaper-office, where violent young men and women gathered around the stove, to talk of everything—from the stratosphere above to the drains which were under the earth.
And now the dream was ended—slain by Olga and the first frost.
As she looked around her, Anna was aware, for the first time, of the dingy purple-pink wallpaper—the colour of pickled cabbage—and the shabby painted furniture of her bedroom.
"Mother would think this pretty grim," she thought.
She was gazing pensively at the fluff under her bed, when the door opened and the middle-aged chambermaid entered, carrying a mop and pail.
She had an impoverished white skin which was dry as rice-paper, and a coronet of black hair.
Crossing to the window, she stood beside Anna and pointed to certain dark blotches on the opposite wall.
"You see those marks," she said. "They put the Guards there and shot them down."
Anna suppressed a shudder as she made a consciously enlightened comment.
"A bad means to a good end, comrade. But it was inevitable to progress."
"Inevitable," agreed the chambermaid. "If the worms are allowed to nibble the cabbage, loyal citizens would have no bortsch[1]...In the prisons they serve grey-eyes soup. And when the tide is high, the water trickles through the gratings of the cells."
In spite of her academic agreement that the penalties of disloyalty should be stringent, Anna changed the subject.
"Shall we play chess to-night?" she asked. "It will be my last chance to try to beat you. I'm going back to England to-morrow."
"Why?" asked the chambermaid.
"Why not? After all, I'm English."
"You? Anna Stephanovitch? Then why do you speak Russian so well?"
As the woman stared at her with sceptical eyes, Anna began to explain.
"Because, when I was a baby, my mother married a Russian. He was a naturalised British subject, and I've always been called by his name. He took the place of my own father who was killed in the War, before I was born. After he died, my mother married again. She's good at it. And now she's living in the Argentine...But I loved my stepfather and when I came to Russia, it was like coming home."
The chambermaid nodded approval, for she appreciated the double obituary notice in the autobiography.
"So you have lost two fathers. And now you have lost your lover," she remarked. "It is said that Otto is spending money on the woman Olga, who works in the newspaper office. He has bought her a fine new fur coat."
Anna's anger flared up again as she listened, for she guessed that, indirectly, she was the real donor of the coat.
"Otto is not my lover," she said hotly. "And I don't need presents."
"Then you are rich like all the English? At home, do you have white bread, and sugar instead of a toffee apple dip?"
"Yes," replied Anna bitterly. "At my home, there was always too much of everything, while people were starving."
Her eyes were sombre as she gazed down at the line of wind-tormented trees. In spite of his flash of spirit in response to her every mood, her stepfather had been a gross-looking, bearded man, who was too fond of creature comforts.
"My stepfather was very stout," she told the chambermaid. "But inside, he was thin. His mind was like a pure flame. He ate too much and he died, at dinner, from a stroke. He choked and was dead in one minute."
"His food burst him," declared the chambermaid.
She was enchanted with the anecdote, but Anna's face was tragic as she thought of the Hampstead mansion—that over-stuffed nest of domestic luxury—and the extravagant meals.
At the time she was too young to understand that her mother's lavish housekeeping was supplementary to her fundamental determination—to keep a good husband happy to the day of his death.
Filled with a sense of angry frustration at the social inequality, the girl divided society into a chronically overfed middle-class and an eternally hungry proletariat—while she used the adjective "bourgeois" to cover every insult the most fertile imagination could invent.
Her own protest took the form of rebellion, when she ran away from school and got a job in a draper's shop.
She soon came back, but her mutiny persisted. After her stepfather's death, her pent-up energy found relief in a series of social experiments.
"Anna's broken out again," her mother would confide to the expensive scented ladies who accompanied her to the cinema—which met every intellectual need. "I'm told she's selling flowers in High Holborn. So anti-social to the other poor flower-girls, with so much competition in everything...But it amuses her, and she's not brought home any 'little things' yet."
Selling flowers in the street...Sleeping under an archway...The shop...A pickle factory...As the pictures flitted across Anna's mind, the chambermaid caught her arm.
"Look who's here," she said.
With a strange thrill of excitement, Anna gazed down at a woman who was striding across the road. In a brutal and debased manner she was beautiful, with blonde colouring and vivid blue eyes. Her bobbed flaxen hair was cut in a straight fringe across her forehead and her loose lips were scarlet. She wore breeches, a sheepskin coat, and men's boots, which made her feet appear enormous.
Anna was struck by the fact that the few pedestrians shrank away from her, as though they wished to escape her notice.
"That is Hirsch," said the chambermaid. "She is the People's Prosecutor."
"I've not seen her before," said Anna. "I wonder what she has come for."
"Business." The chambermaid lowered her voice as she added, "Business which is transacted in cellars."
"You mean—executions?"
"Surely. She has shot hundreds down in the cellars. It is a patriotic duty and the pay is handsome. But they say that so much killing has turned her crazy."
Anna could not understand her sudden spurt of terror.
"I'm a British subject," she reminded herself. "My passport is in order. I have money. And I'm going back to England to-morrow."
At that moment, she was so close to the outlet of the maze, that one step would take her through the door.
CHAPTER II
THE town looked different when Anna left the hotel, in order[1q] to buy her ticket for a soft place in the train. The change was actual and not the effect of lost illusions. During the night, the wind had stripped the trees and the streets were carpeted with layers of leaves.
They covered every surface so thickly that they blotted out inequalities and outlines. Unable to see where the pavement ended, Anna side-stepped off the kerb, caught her heel in a crack, and slipped to her knees in the gutter.
This time, she swore in English.
"Thank goodness, I'll soon be walking on a decent pavement again," she told herself as she scrambled to her feet.
She did not know it, but the moment was epic...When she ran away from school, to earn her living in a shop, her stepfather had refused to interfere.
"No," he said to his wife's hysterical pleading. "I will not send detectives after her as if she were criminal. The little one has intelligence and will come to no harm. Let her stand on her own feet for a while. Presently she will return."
But Anna had never come back...It is true that a subdued schoolgirl of the same name and appearance was soon in residence again at the Hampstead mansion; but she—herself—was still wandering in the rebel territory of her mind.
It was not until she paid tribute to the good offices of the L.C.C[2]. that she took her first step back to the home which was no longer there.
Just then, London seemed so near that she could almost see the buses inside Victoria Station yard and the scarlet electric signs quivering through a dun transparency. These lights stood for safety even if they conjured up no thrill.
Her feelings were mixed as she scuffled through the fallen leaves. Common sense made her realise the futility of regret, which was partly due to season.
She could not recall the summer, when the salt mist veiled the old buildings of the port to the dim beauty of faded tapestry, and the trees in the avenue told stories in husky whispers. Impossible, too, to recapture the fraternity spirit of those endless, unlicensed talks around the stove in Otto's office, when the only convention was always to use the unexpurgated word.
Of all these wild men and girls, there were only three persons with whom she came into more than casual contact. These were Otto, Olga and Conrad Stern.
Now, only Conrad remained.
"I must say 'Good-bye' to him," she thought regretfully. "Pity. Sheer waste of an interesting man."
Yet although he was one of those who counted, she did not want to stay in this strange town, which was all that remained of the dark enchanted city of her dream. The tall thin houses seemed to have shrunk as though they were frost-bitten to their foundations, while their fronts were grey as clinkered ash. Involuntarily she thought of their cellars, as the People's Prosecutor, in her blonde brutality, tramped across her mind.
This was a town where people disappeared. To-day you spoke to a man and arranged to meet him on the morrow. If he did not keep his appointment, you asked no questions. And you might not see him again.
In her eagerness to identify herself with the Komsomol, or communal youth of the country, Anna shared their enthusiasm for an experiment so stupendous, that it stunned—even while it stirred—her imagination. Yet while she agreed that its enemies must be destroyed, she shrank from a method of espionage where the individual was at the mercy of his fellow.
As a rule, she hurried by the prison, where the tidal river, which swept one side, was now in flood. It rushed past the wall in a swift brown wave which appeared almost level with the lowest line of windows.
Drawn by a morbid fascination, she lingered for a minute. The wind had piled up an enormous drift of leaves against an iron door. It imparted an air of desuetude, as though people had gone inside, but had never pushed the portal outwards again.
She walked on quickly before she could think too vividly of the fate of any prisoners inside. Cells weeping with river water. The grey eyes of fish floating in soup. A last appointment to meet a lady—a blonde with a taste for cellars.
When she reached the square, on her way to the post office—it had an air of desertion. There were no market-stalls to dwarf its size to-day. The giant equestrian statue in the middle seemed magnified to a symbol of civic authority. As she passed beneath the pedestal, his rearing horse appeared on the point of crashing down upon her skull.
Her intention was, as usual, first to collect any mail, and then to go to the café. That morning, the woman official did not disappoint her, for she handed her a letter from a pigeon-hole.
She recognised the handwriting on the envelope, and stuffed it into her bag, unopened. Her community spirit did not extend to former school friends—and Gloria James could wait.
When she was inside the double doors of the café, she stood looking for Conrad Stern. The room was overheated by an enormous stove, but, apart from its atmosphere, it was a pleasant refuge from the grey outside world. A brass samovar bubbled cheerfully and each indiarubber plant wore its jacket of coloured, plaited paper. Above all rose the thrum of talk, like the whir of a myriad spinning-tops.
Conrad Stern was seated at a small table—by a window. Closely-shorn, clean-shaven and monocled, his appearance was in strong contrast with most of the shaggy company, although he would have been a striking personality in other circumstances. There was distinction in his tall thin figure and the moulding of his face which always made Anna curious to unveil the mystery of his origin.
When she drew nearer, he rose to meet her.
"I rather hoped you might come here," he said.
"I wanted to meet you too," Anna told him. "I'm going back to England."
"Then—" he hesitated before he added, "then you know about Otto?"
"Yes. I've heard also that Olga has a new fur."
Humiliated by the knowledge that their quarrel was already in circulation, Anna tried to speak lightly.
"I'm not quite blind," she said. "Of course, just at first I thought he was rather splendid. But lately I've realised how cheap he really is. In fact, we had a row."
She remembered the essential adjective and added hastily, "we had a bloody row."
Conrad Stern smiled slightly as he crossed to the buffet to get tea for her. When he returned with the cup of weak, scalding fluid, he asked an abrupt question.
"How are you off for money?"
"I've enough for my journey," she told him.
"Good." His voice held relief. "Passport in order?"
"Yes. The original visa expired, but Otto got it renewed, the other day. Whenever they wanted to see my papers at the hotel, he wangled things for me. A man can always slip his mistress through when he can't take his wife."
Anna laughed as she spoke, for she had been rather flattered by the general assumption of a freedom of which she had never availed herself. It made her feel definitely Russian. Aware, however, of Conrad's silence, she denied the rumour, for the first time.
"Of course, I was never that," she said.
The frost of his face relaxed as he smote the table with his palm.
"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked. "As long as you were Otto's friend, you were not in my landscape. We've wasted too much time. We might have been—comrades."
