AustLit

'MR. E. V. TIMMS, in "DARK INTERLUDE" (Angus and Robertson) fills a railway carriage with solidified ghosts to make his reader's flesh creep. He tells how Ann Harper, accompanied by her fiance, Roger Balcombe. and her brother, Joe, boarded a train at dusk one evening, against the wishes of the guard. It was a wicked night. The train had only one passenger carriage at the end of a long line of goods trucks. The carriage was unlighted when the three took their seats and the train started.

'They were apparently the only passengers but one. He proved to be a corpse with a knife in his heart. They lit matches and searched, but the carriage was empty but for themselves and the corpse. There was a legend that 20 years earlier a train, similarly made up, had been wrecked on the line and all its passengers had been killed. Then, from nowhere, the carriage begins to fill up with the ghosts of the dead passengers. It also comes out that there had been: a spot of murder on the train before the accident had happened. Ann and her friends gather that the ghosts were re-enacting the crime of 20 years ago. Those who care to accept a trainload of ghosts will find Mr. Timms's story interesting. The idea is well carried out, but his denouement is not very skilfully handled, and detracts considerably from its entertainment value.'

Source:

Erle Cox, 'Survey of a Chinese Philosopher' [book reviews], The Australasian, 9 December 1939, p.34.