A. V. LAIDER / DEATH IN THE HAND
[SHORT-STORY]
[The Times] “…based on an idea in Seven Men, by Max Beerbohm…”
[BBC Title Card] “Variation of a theme by Max Beerbohm: visitor in a hotel lounge hears
horrifying story from another visitor about results of palmistry, only to find afterwards it was all
fabrication.”
[Classic Horror Movies] “DEATH IN THE HAND (1947) 44mins. BW. UK. Credits: Dir: A. Barr-
Smith. From the novel "Seven Men" by Max Beerbohm. Cast: Esme Percy, Ernest Jay. A pianist
on board a train predicts the deaths of several passengers by reading their palms.Most notable for
it's similarity to DR. TERRORS HOUSE OF HORRORS (1964).”
Douglas Cleverdon adapted from his own radio script. Release date: 1948. A pianist aboard a
train reads the palms of passengers and predicts their deaths. Soon those deaths begin to happen.
Cast members included radio actors Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley (later famed as the
BBC’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson).
“Cosmo Vaughan, believer in palmistry, is travelling in a train with four other passengers all of
whose palms have revealed that their sudden and violent death is imminent. In an attempt to
prevent the deaths he pulls the communication cord...”
[Original press book] "Cosmo Vaughan, the palmist, is played by Esme Percy, who created the
part in the original radio play in 1939, and has played it on several occasions when it was re-
broadcast."
In addition to the stage and films, Esme Percy did extensive work in radio. He was
Mephistopheles in a 1932 broadcast of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (and Piers Gaveston in the
playwright’s Edward the Second), and also performed at the microphone in Chekhov’s Uncle
Vanya, Shaw’s The Man of Destiny, and Denis Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River. He
starred in several broadcasts of James Hilton’s radio adaptation of his novel Lost Horizon, and
was prominently in Lance Sieveking’s original script Wings of the Morning, “the story of a
fantastic crime committed in the fourth dimension.”
He was an actor of precise diction, and an eccentric personality bordering on camp. He knew
Shaw well and was entrusted with the production of his last play. He was a friend and admirer of
John Gielgud—his famous whispered “Isn’t he wonderful?” became a recorded part of Gielgud’s
definitive performance of Hamlet on the BBC in 1948. And, in another fabled moment on the
stage with Gielgud, his glass eye popped out of its socket during a scene of The Lady’s Not for
Burning and went flying across the stage. The entire play came to a standstill until it was found
again.
[“Beerbohm Story To Be Filmed, The Times, February 5, 1947] “Sir Max Beerbohm has at last
parted with one of his stories to the cinema…his story from Seven Men of a man met in a seaside
hotel who tells how he read in their palms the fate of his fellow-travellers in a train a few minutes
before the accident of which he was the sole survivor.
“In Seven Men, published in 1919, this story bears the simple title, ‘A. V. Laider.’ For the
purposes of the film this will be changed to Death in the Hand, and, inevitably, there will be other
changes. But in the engagement of Mr. Douglas Cleverdon to prepare the script there is some
assurance that care will be taken to retain much more than the bare outline of the story.
Incidentally, Mr. Cleverdon adapted this same story for broadcasting some four years ago. Except
for his occasional broadcast talks, Sir Max Beerbohm has fastidiously avoided the complex
machinery of the modern world, and knowing this, the small film company to whom he has
entrusted Laider’s story values all the more the concession he has made.”
[“Max on the Sinister Side of Palmistry,” The Times, November 16, 1955] “ ‘A. V. Laider’ is the
story of a man met in a seaside hotel who tells how he read in their palms the fate of his fellow-
travellers in a railway train a few minutes before the accident he had also foreseen; it has not one
characteristic Beerbohm ‘twist’ only, but two, and is full of the refinements of macabre comedy…
The same story, incidentally, was adapted for broadcasting some 12 years ago by Mr. Douglas
Cleverdon, who later also prepared it for the cinema screen under the title of Death in the Hand.”
[“Conversation Piece by Max,” The Times, December 5, 1955] “ ‘A. V. Laider’ opens, it will be
recalled, in a sleepy hotel by the sea, where for the second year running Max is convalescing from
influenza… A correspondence in a magazine Laider has borrowed about faith and reason takes
them on to palmistry, and from there to Laider’s bland confession that he is a murderer.”
[John Updike] “A.V. Laider’s “limpness of demeanor” is marked only by an incongruous shock
of white hair that gives him a touch of the charlatan; behind his bland reticence he is revealed to
be a compulsive story-spinner, a wildly inventive bard.”
[Bernard Levin, The Times, November 27, 1974] “The liar I love best, because of the magnificent
ingenuity of his lie, is Max Beerbohm’s A. V. Laider… On the spur of the moment, which is of
course the test of a really great liar…, Laider invents a tale of being in a railway-carriage with six
other people, where—dabbling as he does in palmistry—he is prevailed upon to read their hands,
and discovers to his horror that all their life-lines stop abruptly at almost exactly the age they are
at that moment, whereupon he realizes, to his deeper horror, that since, as he has learned, some
of them are going abroad for many years on the morrow, the simultaneous extinction of all of
them must be about to take place, with the crashing of the train. The narrator of the story
swallows it whole, and is much put out later to learn that it was only ben trovato. On his guard
thereafter, he falls into conversation with Laider while they are walking on the beach, and finds
him shudder at the thought of the seagulls. Max ends it beautifully. ‘They always remind me of
something—rather an awful thing—that once happened to me.’ It was a very awful thing indeed.’”
[A. V. LAIDER] “One of the first things I had seen in my own hand, as soon as I had learned to
read it, was that at about the age of twenty-six I should have a narrow escape from death--from a
violent death.
“There were other people staying there, and at the end of the week we all traveled back to
London together. There were six of us in the carriage: Colonel Elbourn and his wife and their
daughter, a girl of seventeen; and another married couple, the Bretts.
“The coincidence was curious, very. Here we all were together--here, they and I--I who was
narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to suffer. Oh, there was an
inference to be drawn. Not a sure inference, I told myself. And always I was talking, talking, and
the train was swinging and swaying noisily along--to what? It was a fast train. Our carriage was
near the engine. "We were near the outskirts of London. The air was gray, thickening; and
Dorothy Elbourn had said: 'Oh, this horrible old London! I suppose there's the same old fog!' And
presently I heard her father saying something about 'prevention' and 'a short act of Parliament'
and 'anthracite.' And I sat and listened and agreed and--"
“Laider closed his eyes. He passed his hand slowly through the air.
"I had a racking headache. And when I said so, I was told not to talk. I was in bed, and the
nurses were always telling me not to talk. I was in a hospital. I knew that; but I didn't know why I
was there. One day I thought I should like to know why, and so I asked. I was feeling much better
now. They told me by degrees that I had had concussion of the brain. I had been brought there
unconscious, and had remained unconscious for forty-eight hours. I had been in an accident—a
railway-accident. This seemed to me odd. I had arrived quite safely at my uncle's place, and I had
no memory of any journey since that. In cases of concussion, you know, it's not uncommon for the
patient to forget all that happened just before the accident; there may be a blank for several hours.
So it was in my case. One day my uncle was allowed to come and see me. And somehow, suddenly,
at sight of him, the blank was filled in. I remembered, in a flash, everything. I was quite calm,
though. Or I made myself seem so, for I wanted to know how the collision had happened. My
uncle told me that the engine-driver had failed to see a signal because of the fog, and our train had
crashed into a goods-train.
“In a way," he said, "your theory was quite right. But--it didn't go far enough. It's not only
possible, it's a fact, that I didn't see those signs in those hands. I never examined those hands.
They weren't there._I_ wasn't there. I haven't an uncle in Hampshire, even. I never had."
“I have, alas! a very strong imagination. At ordinary times my imagination allows itself to be
governed by my will. My will keeps it in check by constant nagging. But when my will isn't strong
enough even to nag, then my imagination stampedes. I become even as a little child. I tell myself
the most preposterous fables, and--the trouble is--I can't help telling them to my friends. Until
I've thoroughly shaken off influenza, I'm not fit company for any one.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
(NATIONAL PROGRAMME, LONDON)
[Tuesday—9:50-10:15 PM]
May 2, 1939 “Death in the Hand”
[Wednesday—3:25-3:50 PM]
May 3, 1939 “Death in the Hand”
PERSONNEL: Douglas Cleverdon (scriptwriter), Michael Goodwin (producer).
CAST: Edward Brandon, John Drummond, Hedley Goodall, George Holloway,
Alison Horstmann, Ross Hutchinson, Barry Kendall, Albert Nelmes, Esme Percy
(Cosmo Vaughan), Phyllis Smale, Jean Wickenden.
(HOME SERVICE)
[Friday—8:00-8:30 PM]
September 4, 1942 “Death in the Hand”
PERSONNEL: Douglas Cleverdon (scriptwriter, producer).
NELSON OLMSTED (
[
July 3, 1943 “A. V. Laider”
(HOME SERVICE)
[Wednesday—9:35-10:10 PM]
August 9, 1944 “At the Cross-in-Hand”
[BBC TITLE CARD: “Cosmo Vaughan staying at Cross-in-Hand tells guests
story of train disaster—how, on reading passengers hands he foresaw
death etc., so he pulled communication cord and caused following
express to crash into them. Story proves to be flight of imagination on his
part…”]
PERSONNEL: Douglas Cleverdon (scriptwriter, producer).
CAST: Vivienne Chatterton (The countrywoman), Belle Chrystall (Patricia
Mottram), Ernest Jay (Jenkins), Julian Orde (Sylvia Thorp), Esme Percy (Cosmo
Vaughan), Brian Powley (The business man), Norman Shelley (John Thorp),
William Trent (The chairman), Richard Williams (Captain Mottram).
(RADIO 4, LONDON)
[Wednesday—11:30 AM-12:00 NOON]
August 8, 1973 “A. V. Laider”
[“…At an Eastbourne hotel, Max sees in the rack a letter he had written to
a fellow guest (A. V. Laider) a year earlier. This reminds him what had
happened. The two men had discussed palmistry and A. V. Laider told
him he had foreseen the deaths of some companions in a railway accident
and felt guilt at not pulling the communication cord, although this might
not have prevented the tragedy. The letter disappears from the rack and
Max sees A. V. again. He admits that his story had been a fake. He has
had flu again and tells of a rather awful thing that happened to him
concerning seagulls…”]
PERSONNEL: Benny Green (scriptwriter), Bruce Montague (scriptwriter).
[GALLERY]
Max Beerbohm Douglas Cleverdon, book Esme Percy
publisher & radio writer-producer