In
my previous blog-post, "The
Ghost and the Canary," I covered two real-life examples of the
impossible crime story and decided it would be a nice touch to follow
it up with a look at two fictional locked room problems. There
happened to be two, relatively short, works lingering on my big pile.
So let's dig in!
Barry
Ergang is the former editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine
and received a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society
for the best flash story of 2006, titled "Vigilante," but on the
web Ergang is perhaps better known as a reviewer and member of
various mystery-themed groups – such as the now sadly erstwhile
JDCarr messageboard. You can find his reviews all over the web, like
the GADWiki,
which also hosts his parody of "Dr.
Gideon Fell, Hardboiled Sawbones" (2003).
I
think Ergang's hardboiled take on one of detective fiction's foremost
experts on the locked room puzzle foreshadowed a short story he would
come to write only a year later.
"The
Play of Light and Shadows" was originally published in Futures
Mysterious Anthology Magazine, vol. VII, Issue 35: Autumn 2004
and Patrick Ohl
accurately described this short story as "a traditionally-told
hardboiled story" in his 2011 review.
The story is narrated by Dr. Alan Driscoll, a university professor,
who's on a sabbatical to escape from department politics and "the
hermetic insularity of academia" at the City University of
Philadelphia. So to re-familiarize himself with the real world he
takes job as a bartender and there he strikes up an acquaintance with
a private-eye.
Darnell
is a stern man who has no time for small talk, but "discussions
about books pierced his reserve" and "evoked a veiled
passion." When the story opens, Darnell is sitting at the bar
reading The Sound and the Fury. This reminded me of Bill
Pronzini's popular private-eye, "Nameless," whose undying
love for pulp magazines has even driven the plots of some of his most
well-known, highly praised cases – like Hoodwinked
(1981) and Bones
(1985). Interestingly, they're are perhaps two of the best known
examples of the hardboiled locked room story.
However,
this story is only indirectly influenced by Darnell's veiled passion
for literature and comes about when Driscoll asks how business is
going. Darnell simply taps his book and says that he has "lots
of time to read."
Well,
Driscoll got a phone-call from a colleague, Dr. Barton Gaines, who's
the Chairman of the Art History Department and he could really use a
detective.
Dr.
Gaines is hosting a party the following Saturday afternoon to
celebrate the acquisition of a painting by Charles Riveau, entitled
Nomad, but the painting came with a back-story and concerns
the criminal past of its creator – who once acted as a master
forger to an Arséne Lupin-like thief, Paul Marchand. Riveau forged
masterpieces, but, instead of selling the forgeries, Marchand "stole
the originals from private collections or museums" and "substituted the fakes." However, the police eventually
caught up with Riveau and did a spell in prison. After his release,
Riveau continued to paint and his original work started to gain a
reputation. So he turned down Marchand when he wanted to revive their
old partnership, but this disagreement ended with Marchand promising
he would destroy all of his original work "to prevent him from
attaining the fame he desperately wanted."
Ever
since, paintings have disappeared from galleries, museums and the
homes of collectors. And this is exactly what happens during the
party.
The
gallery is a long, wide, white-walled and marble-floored room without
windows and the door offered its only way in or out of the gallery,
which can only be opened with a set of specially-made keys that can't
be duplicated. After the gallery is searched, the door is locked from
the outside and Darnell takes his place guarding the door, but when
the gallery is unlocked and guests stream in they make a startling
discovery – someone, somehow, spirited Nomad from a
hermetically sealed and guarded room! But this is not their only
problem.
A
photographer who was present at the unveiling of the painting, Derek
Trevor, is found with a camera-strap looped tightly around his throat
and the murderer has taken a 3.5" disk from his photo camera. On a
side-note, these diskettes were the predecessor of memory cards.
The
writing and characterization clearly shows the influence the
private-eye genre had on Ergang, who holds Raymond Chandler's The
Long Good-bye (1953) in very high regard, but the plotting
also betrays a weakness for cleverly clued, puzzle-oriented locked
room mysteries. Ergang planted clues and hints throughout the story
subtly nodding in the direction of the solution, which is always a
pleasant discovery in a modern detective story, and the excellent
writing and dialogue makes "The Play of Light and Shadow"
anthology material.
There
is, however, one (minor) problem I have with the premise and
explanation for the impossible theft, which seems to be indebted to
the Jonathan
Creek episode The Scented Room (1998). An episode that
had lifted its plot directly from Edgar
Wallace's "The Stolen Romney," collected in Four-Square
Jane (1929), which had been spoofed before by Robert Arthur in
The
Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (1966) – all four deal
with a very similar impossible theft and the explanations play around
with the same ideas. Only difference between the Jonathan Creek
episode and the novel and short story by Arthur and Ergang is
that they put their own spin on the ending of "The Stolen Romney."
So
I was glad to discover Ergang took a different direction with his
solution, but the close resemblance of the plot to those other
impossible crime stories took some of the shine off the story.
Regardless, "The Play of Light and Shadow" is a well-written,
tightly plotted detective story and a welcome addition to that
lamentably short list of hardboiled locked room mysteries.
The
second story, or rather a novella, comes from the hands of an
incredibly prolific British writer of detective and thriller novels,
named Gerald
Verner, who was frequently compared to the previously mentioned
Edgar Wallace and was noted for his "exiting, fast-action plots"
– some of them "recognized as classics of the locked room and
impossible crime genres." I don't remember anyone ever hailing
Verner as a long-overlooked locked room artisan, but any mention of
an impossible crime arouses my curiosity. And one of his impossible
crime stories just happened to be in print!
A
warning to the reader: my review necessitated something that
can be construed as a spoiler, because the plot warranted a
comparison with a fairly well-known detective novel by a very famous
mystery writer. So, if you have read that fairly well-known mystery,
you can probably guess the central idea behind the impossible murder
from this novella. The reader has been warned!
The
Beard of the Prophet (1937) was originally printed in a November,
1937 issue of Detective Weekly No. 246, later collected in
Mr. Budd Again (1939), but was curiously enough reprinted
separately in 2011 by Borgo Press. I believe our friend, Philip
Harbottle, had a hand in getting Verner's work back in print.
One
of Verner's series-character is Robert Budd, an obsese
Detective-Superintendent of Scotland Yard, who has deceptively
sleepy-eyes, a plodding mind and a taste for beer. Budd is assisted
by the melancholic, slow-witted Sergeant Leek and is often "the
butt of Mr. Budd's biting sarcasm." These two unassuming, now
long-forgotten detective-characters had a long shelf-live. Butt and
Leek appeared in more than twenty novels and short stories between
1934 and 1966.
The
Beard of the Prophet begins with a series of threatening letters
addressed to a celebrated archaeologist, Reuben Hayles, who claimed
to have discovered the tomb of Mohammed. One of the letters warned
Hayles that his "sacrilege will bring violent death in its
train," while another say that "every passing hour brings
your doom nearer," but the last letter told the archaeologist
"death will come to you on the night of the full moon" –
signed The Prophet. After this very specific threat, Budd and Leek
are installed in the household. A household filled the usual, and
some very unusual, suspects, but their protection proved to be
ineffective.
Budd
stationed himself in front of the bedroom door and Lees was standing
guard outside of the house, underneath the open bedroom window, but,
shortly after Hayles wished Budd a good night, a scream and a thud is
heard inside the room. Budd flung open the door and greeted by "a
deafening crash of thunder," which is hoary, but nice,
atmospheric touch. Hayles lay in the center of the room on ancient
rug, a gaping wound on the front of his head, clenching a false beard
in one of his hands!
Funnily
enough, The Beard of the Prophet shares exactly the same
strength and weaknesses as "The Play of Light and Shadow." After
the opening chapters, it becomes patently obvious Verner had looked
at Agatha Christie's Murder
in Mesopotamia (1936) for inspiration and the locked room
trick here mimics Christie's (semi) impossible alibi-trick. There's
even an archaeological background in Verner's story.
So
I doubt this was a mere coincidence, but Verner made the trick his
own by tinkering with it and giving it a nifty twist. You can almost
say this is the impossible crime version of the ingenious alibi-trick
from Christopher Bush's Cut
Throat (1932). And this alteration of the nature of the trick
neatly tied-in with the identity of the murderer. So this definitely
saved the novella from being nothing more than a shameless ripoff.
The
Beard of the Prophet is perhaps not very original as a detective
story, but Verner's treatment of the idea was transformative enough
to make for an enjoyable read with a new variation on a trick we've
seen before.
A
note for the curious: the trick from Murder in Mesopotamia was
also used in a 1950 short story by Charles
B. Child, titled "All
the Birds of the Air," which was collected in The Sleuth of
Baghdad (2002). There you have a short story, a novella and a
novel, which toy around with variations of the same (locked room)
trick and have a Middle Eastern theme. I'm convinced Verner borrowed
from Christie, but wonder how much of an influence she had on Child's
short story. In any case, I find it fascinating that this particular
trick turned up in stories with such similar backgrounds.
So,
a short story and novella, written in two very different periods of
time, but, when read back-to-back, turned out to strangely reflect
one another. They both resembled more well-known impossible crime
stories, which had preceded them, but the well-handled treatment of
these older ideas pulled the stories away from being disappointing –
especially the more original "The Play of Light of Shadow." Only
thing you can hold against these two stories is that they failed to
break new ground, but hey, I can easily forgive that.
You can find most of my friend, Barry Ergang's review on my blog, where he is a frequent contributor.
ReplyDeleteKevin
https://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the heads up, Kevin! :)
DeleteThanks for your kind and positive review of my novelette. I have to say for the record that I have not read either the Edgar Wallace or Robert Arthur stories, and that I first saw all of the Jonathan Creek episodes quite a few years after "The Play of Light and Shadow" was written. If I have "The Stolen Romney" in one of the anthologies on my shelf, I'll give it a read.
ReplyDeleteThat explains why premises were similar, but your solution differed from Creek/Wallace.
DeleteHowever, I don't believe David Renwick, creator and writer of Jonathan Creek, has the same excuse. You should re-watch The Scented Room right after reading Wallace's "The Stolen Romney." You'll be amazed, I promise.
That being said, I still think The Scented Room is good JC episode. Just not a particular original one.
DeleteI, naturally, have had both of these on my radar for a while, and I can't work out whether to be a) vexed that I didn't get to tell you about them first, or b) grateful for confirming that the Ergang story, at least, is definitely worth the time and money.
ReplyDeleteVerner seems to've blown hot and cold -- I think his story 'The Strange Affair of the Dancing Parson' is very good indeed, but the other Lattimer Shrive stories I've read are merely substandard Holmes rip-offs. But then The Grinning Man (a novella) is...atmospheric if not exactly distinguished (I'll confess I actually can't quite remember what happens).
Thanks, anyway, for the review of these; I shall get to the Ergang...eventually (still gotta read Christopher Bush yet), and I'll consider The Beard of the Prophet because I'm actually quite interested in Verner in spite (or possibly because) of his flaws.
"...vexed that I didn't get to tell you about them first..."
DeleteAllow me to relief your mind. If I haven't read a certain impossible crime story or novel, I probably have heard about it. There's a reason why they call me the next Robert Adey. Well, nobody actually calls me that, but give it some time.
Haha, oh, sure -- I didn't doubt that you knew about them, it was more a question of whether I'd be the one to let you know if they were worth reading, or if you'd be the one to let me know. Between us we'll get them all, I'm pretty sure, so it doesn't really matter...!
DeleteIt turns out I had a copy of "The Stolen Romney" in 101 YEARS' ENTERTAINMENT, edited by Ellery Queen. (It's also available at Project Gutenberg, I discovered.) I read it this afternoon, after which I watched "The Scented Room" even though I remembered it and its solution. (The first time I saw it, I worried that people familiar with it and "The Play of Light and Shadow" might think I deliberately used the Creek episode as a springboard for my novelette. As mentioned earlier, I didn't and couldn't have because I'd never seen a Creek episode until years after the novelette was written and published.)
ReplyDeleteAs you point out in your review, there is definitely a common denominator to the solution of those stories and mine. There's another element that the solutions of "The Scented Room" and my novelette have in common. I can't get into any of them here lest I spoil things for potential readers and viewers.
Should any of your blog followers care to read it, "The Play of Light and Shadow" is available in Kindle format at Amazon, and in multiple formats (including Kindle) at Smashwords.com.
What do you think of the similarities between "The Stolen Romney" and The Scented Room? And will you ever write a follow up to this story?
DeleteI can't say I was "amazed" by the similarities, but I certainly noticed them right away. As for a followup story, it depends entirely on whether I can come up with a premise. To date, obviously, I haven't.
ReplyDeleteThank you again for the thoughtful review.