Dr.
Robert McNair Wilson was a Scottish-born physician and surgeon, who
was the House Surgeon of Glasgow Western Infirmary, Consulting
Physician of the Ministry of Pensions and editor of Oxford Medical
Publications, but more importantly, Wilson was the author of
twenty-seven mystery novels – published as by "Anthony
Wynne." A penname closely associated with the impossible crime
sub-genre with twenty-one novels and two short stories listed by
Robert Adey in Locked Room Mysteries (1991).
Unfortunately,
the lion's share of his work are rare, out-of-print and often very
hard-to-get titles. Only two or three of them are relatively easy to
get your hands on.
British
Library Crime Classics reissued The
Silver Scale Mystery (1931) in 2015 under its alternative
title, Murder of a Lady, and there appears to be a
print-on-demand edition available of The
Red Scar (1928). The last item that's not too hard to find is
a very well-known, often anthologized short story.
"The
Cyprian Bees" originally appeared in the February 6, 1926, issue of
Flynn's and was first collected in Wynne's only collection of
short stories, entitled Sinners Go Secretly (1927), but has
appeared in many anthologies ever since – such as Great Short
Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928), The Omnibus
of Crime (1929) and Great Detective Stories About Doctors
(1965). Ellery
Queen even included the story in their landmark anthology 101
Years' Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories, 1841-1941
(1943).
A
hefty tome that happened to be on my shelves and thought a review of
Wynne's "The Cyprian Bees" would make for a nice extension of my
previous blog-post, which discussed Francis Vivian's bee-themed The
Singing Masons (1950).
"The
Cyprian Bees" is not one of Wynne's numerous locked room tales, but
still has his long-time series-detective, Dr.
Eustace Hailey, who's a Harley Street nerve specialist and a
dilettante in the detection of the crime. An unofficial consulting
detective with a predilection for impossible crimes, bizarre murders
and abnormal criminals. This story has not, as said above, a locked
room puzzle, but the plot has a bizarre murder and abnormal murderer.
Or, at least, the plot the murderer had hatched qualifies as
something out of the ordinary.
Inspector
Biles, of Scotland Yard, came to Harley Street to consult Dr. Hailey
and brought with him "a small wooden box" that had been
found by a police constable in a gutter in Piccadilly Circus. There
are three live bees in the box of a special breed, the Cyprian,
described by experts as "notoriously very ill-natured" and
a fourth specimen had been found inside a parked car, in Leicester
Square, with a dead woman behind the wheel – who had been "stung
by a bee just before her death." So what's the connection
between the dead woman, the bees and an apparently harmless
bee-sting?
Dr.
Hailey right away identifies the death of the woman as "a clear
case of anaphylaxis" and explains to Biles how a
medically-minded killer, like a physician, could induce a fatal,
allergic reaction with doctored inoculations. But he also gets to
play psycho-analyst when visiting the victim's apartment and forms "a
mental picture" of the dead woman. Or when he gives a
pyschological interpretation to a shop receipt for a copy of The
Love Songs of Robert Browning.
However, "The Cyprian Bees" is more a story of crime than detection. The
murderer only makes an on-stage appearance after being identified by
Dr. Hailey, who correctly pegged this character as a doctor and
bee-keeper, which did provide the story with harrowing ending when
the murderer attempts to execute the second phase of his murderous
plan. Only to be foiled by the quick-acting Dr. Hailey.
I
think Wynne wrote "The Cyprian Bees" with Conan Doyle in mind,
because certain plot elements are somewhat reminiscent of such
stories as "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892) and "The Adventure of the
Devil's Foot" (His Last Bow, 1910). Let's not forgot Holmes
retired from detective work to become a bee-keeper.
So
not the all-time classic I hoped from a frequently anthologized
story, but not too bad for a throwback, or homage, to such Sherlock
Holmes stories as "The Speckled Band." The only genuine problem
here, one commonly found in Wynne's detective-fiction, is that the
medical or psychological aspects can be a bit dated or inaccurate,
but even that's in keeping with such stories as "The Speckled
Band." My advice is to read this story as a homage to Doyle and
Holmes.
Have you got bees in your bonnet? ;)
ReplyDeleteI've only read Death of a Banker, which was bad enough to make me not try Wynne again. Not Wynne, but a loss!
No bees in the bonnet. ;) Just thought it would be a nice follow up to my review of The Singing Masons.
DeleteYou might want to give the recently reissued Murder of a Lady a shot. I liked it a lot and is generally regarded as one of hist best. I have only read three of his novels, but it was far better written than the melodramatic, Victorian throwback that was The Green Knife. Although I did admire Wynne's ability in that one to come up with one impossible situation and false solution after another. But has a strong, turn-of-the-century feeling and the melodramatic ending was incredibly cringy.
I would stand with the many anthologists who have selected this story for reprinting as a pioneering story in 2 respects. 1) This is probably the first time anaphylactic shock was used as a murder weapon. 2) This is probably the first time that psychological profiling was used as an investigatory technique to detect an unknown criminal. (The early scientific types like Luther Trant and Craig Kennedy tended to use psychological techniques on persons who had already been determined to be of interest.) Also, I didn't see anything dated or incorrect about the medical science in this story, which is what I would expect from a physician.
ReplyDeleteThere was some time between the writing and posting of this review. I can't remember exactly what aspect of the solution me as outdated, but it had do with the cause of death (something about the inoculation or something). Although I might have been wrong there. In any case, I remain that this is a nice homage to Doyle rather than a classic.
DeleteI liked Murder of a Lady so much better than several other books by Wynne that it gave me hope for others by him, and there are some I liked. Bill Pronzini likes some of his too, and he has stringent standards.
ReplyDeleteNice look at Cyprian Bees. There's just something about bee mysteries, maybe it's the Holmesian provenance.
Do you happen to know whether or not the British Library is planning to do more Wynne reprints in the future? A double edition, like they did with George Bellairs, would be nice.
Delete