Back in May it was that I posted an inquiry from John Herrington about some records in North Carolina that should shed some light, he thought, on the true identity of British mystery writer A. Fielding, until recently thought to be a pseudonym of Lady Dorothy Feilding, 1889-1935.

   Catching up with what John’s learned since then, here are a couple of emails from him. From late July:

    “Just to say that I have managed to get the University of North Carolina to check some of those Fielding/Feilding papers. The main thing is that she was still alive in 1946, which I believe kills off the Lady Dorothy angle — if not the fact that she was living, at least some of the time, in Belgium in the 1920s.

    “I have an address for her in Staffordshire in 1945 and 1946, and am trying to see if I can trace her there.

    “It is interesting that she does not seem to have a permanent address. From 1925 to 1946, she seems to have had 10 addresses, some of them hotels or forwarding addresses like banks.”

   More recently, here’s an email from John that reached me a couple of days ago:

    “I have sent Geoff Bradley a review of what I know, which should appear in the next CADS. Basically, I now know she was in Belgium in the late 1920s and in a rest home in Staffordshire at the end of WW2.

    “Her birth, marriage and death are still a mystery. But there is a possibility that I may have found her marriage — but I need to prove the husband’s name is misspelled as Fielding in the records. (…) I also believe she had the middle initial of ‘M’, which she seems to have omitted later on. But it is all supposition till I can get certificates, etc.

    “There is one other thing you might ask on Mystery*File. Out of curiosity I looked the birth of ‘James Hadley Chase’ up on Freebmd. He was apparently born René Lodge P. Brabazon Raymond. But Steve Holland has never discovered what the ‘P’ stands for, if it stands for anything. Just wonder if anyone might know.”

   Just another reason for everyone with an interest in Golden Age and (mostly) traditional mysteries to anxiously await the next issue of CADS (short for Crime and Detective Stories).

   Geoff Bradley, the editor, doesn’t maintain an online presence, but information about issue 50 can be found here. The issue most recently mailed is #54. His email address is Geoffcads @ aol.com