Hi Arthur,
Many thanks for the information on Captain Carden. It was good to know
he did exist, though with his first name being "Coldstream" it is
understandable that the author of the tale confused it with the name of the
Coldstream Guards Regiment. I will look out for him in future research.
I'm sorry to say I didn't keep the article, which appeared in the Liverpool
Echo over two weeks in January. As it primarily concerned a man named
Jones, I only have the beginning of it which mentions Captain Carden. It
states that, over a hundred years ago, on a stormy January afternoon, a
rather heated discussion was taking place within the reading room of the
Lyceum Club. The discussion concerned the "eternal subject" that of
ghosts. "Perhaps some who die have returned and they are the ghosts we
hear of," mused Carden, a captain in the Coldstream Guards. He lowered
his gaze as he sucked on his cigar stub and pretended to study The Times
newspaper, knowing full well his staged comments would stoke the debate.
Another member of the group persuades Jones to tell of his ghostly
experience which occurred one summer in the 1880s.
The remainder of the article only concerns Jones and his encountered with a
scantily clad young lady, whilst walking along the shore of the River
Mersey. She told him her name was Eleectra and she did not live in this
world...... So date-wise it could be the late 1880s or even later
when Jones recounted his experience.
Now, Arthur, I'm going to disappoint you again because it's a good while
since I read the Agatha Christie books containing the name Carden and I
can't remember which ones. They were minor characters and mentioned only
briefly. It was only when I was playing the computer game of "Evil under
the Sun" this week that the name Carden cropped up in an address. I
recalled that it was the third time she'd used the name in her stories, but
she did have a tendency to recycle names.
Lynn Bateman in Liverpool, Merseyside.