Friday’s Forgotten Book: Judy of Bunter’s Buildings by E. Phillips Oppenheim (1936)

Of all the sounds in this gathering darkness that was the one which she had dreaded most.

Judy is a dancer at a bar called the Green Man which is frequented by sailors. When the novel opens, Judy is at her room in Bunter’s Buildings when she hears another tenant making his way to the top-most floor but unable to do so because of his enfeebled condition. Judy knows that it is Mr. Loman who stays in an attic like room at the top. She helps him to his room and asks whether she can do anything else for him. He thanks her but wants nothing else. Judy then sees a telegram pinned to his door and passes it on to him. Loman becomes all the more agitated to have Judy out of the room while she is full of curiosity and wants him to open it in front of her. When she leaves she keeps a vigil in her room and then she hears somebody else going to Loman’s room. Soon she hears a terrible cry and now terrified herself tears out of the building and flees.

Meanwhile in another part of London, Lady Judith arrives with her friend, Sir Gregory at Ordino’s restaurant which is the talk of the town and greatly patronised by the fashionable set of London. Judith and Gregory had been away on a sailing trip and are welcomed profusely by Ordino. Later it seems that Judith and Gregory both have a stake in the restaurant and by a private conversation between Gregory and Ordino it becomes clear that the restaurant’s popularity is due to something else besides the food that they serve. Whatever it is, Gregory and Ordino are both happy at the financial success of the place though with Judith, who also knows about the way things are being run, Gregory talks about how it is nothing but an adventure which with its element of danger adds an edge to their life since quiet domesticity would bore both of them.

However Gregory’s feeling of well-being disappears when he realises that his own brother is becoming an addict (Oppenheim in fine form in this conversation) . Meanwhile Scotland Yard is working on how drugs being smuggled into England and the local police is investigating the murder of a lodger at Bunter’s Building. Judy is fighting off unwanted advances of a rough-neck sea captain and Judith is now getting tired of a life of adventure and just wants to settle down. How will it all end?

Oppenheim’s 100th novel is an interesting tale with a twist in the end though I feel the upper-class characters did get off a little easily.

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First Line: A HUMAN BEING, the shrunken shadow of a man he seemed, was toiling slowly and painfully up the stone steps of the gaunt tenement house.

First Published: 1936

Alternate Title: The Magnificent Hoax

Source: Faded Page

Other books read of the same author: (Among Others): The Double Traitor

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Submitted for Friday’s Forgotten Books @ Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom

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