The Tragedy at Freyne (1927) by Anthony Gilbert

"Anthony Gilbert" was the penname of Lucy Malleson, an inventive, productive and a shade unconventional mystery writer, who wrote over sixty novels, dozens of short stories and a number of radio-plays – mostly starring her series-detective, Arthur Crook. A London-based lawyer of ill-repute and dubious ethics who lived up to his name. So a tremendously fun character deliberately made vulgar to counter the popular image of the debonair, sophisticated and meddlesome sleuth a la Philo Vance. However, the first novel published under the "Anthony Gilbert" name introduced her first, short-lived detective-character, Scott Egerton.

Scott Egerton is "a member of the least democratic body on this earth, the British House of Commons," who's predicted to have a bright future in politics ("he's the type that's cut out for leadership"). Beside being a rising young politician, Egerton got to play detective in ten novel before getting replaced by Crook. That's one of the reasons why Crook eclipsed his predecessor, but not the only one as nearly the entire series had been out-of-print for decades. Even today, the likes of The Mystery of the Open Window (1929) and The Night of the Fog (1930) remain out-of-print and somewhat elusive. Nor does it help that the easiest accessible, most well-known title in the series, The Body on the Beam (1932), reputedly is a dud ("do people really enjoy this sort of the book?"). So never paid much attention to the Scott Egerton series except for the first novel.

The Tragedy at Freyne (1927) introduced both the "Anthony Gilbert" penname and the Scott Egerton character mystery readers, which has an entry in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). So, on the special impossible crime wish list it went, but The Tragedy at Freyne was one of those annoyingly obscure, long out-of-print and scarce titles – hard to come by until recently. The Tragedy at Freyne was reprinted twice in the past two years. First by a small, independent outfit named Spitfire Publishers, but their editions aren't available in my country. If you ask me, that reeks suspiciously of Dutchphobia! Fortunately, Dover Publications added their own edition of The Tragedy at Freyne to the Dover Mystery Classics last April.

Alan Ravenswood, narrator of the story, is one of the people who make up the house party at Freyne Abbey. The home of his cousin, Lady Catherine Chandos, and her husband, Sir Simon Chandos, who are entertaining a small crowd. There's Sir Simon's ward, Rosemary St. Claire, who's about to be engaged to the rising young politician, Scott Egerton. Guy Bannister is a well-known war correspondent, scientific journalist and generally considered to be a charming party guess. Captain Rupert Dacre is the Chandos' reclusive, shell shocked neighbor who lives at Dacre Court "like a monk, with three ex-servicemen." Lastly, Sir Chandos' odd secretary, Miss Althea Dennis. Ravenswood finds everyone at Freyne Abbey on edge. Not without reason or consequences.

After the house party, Sir Simon Chandon apparently retreated to his study to commit suicide by taking an overdose of morphine. The door was locked from the inside with the key found inside his pocket and the windows were securely shuttered. A rambling suicide note is found on the desk with Sir Simon still tightly holding a pen in his right hand, which Egerton knows is the wrong hand. Sir Simon was left handed. So murder cleverly disguised as suicide and the police pounce on Dacre, because he was having an affair with Lady Chandos.

The Tragedy at Freyne has all the hallmarks of a fairly standard, 1920s mystery novel, but even this early in her career, Gilbert tried to mix different styles and upturning certain conventions – which resulted in a very different type of twenties locked room mystery. First of all, the victim is not a tyrannical patriarch who commonly end up murdered in these type of mysteries, but a tragic figure and truly blameless victim. Sir Simon is an immense ugly man, "a shambling, inhuman figure," who moved with "a leaning-forward pose of body that suggested the ape" and features that were "a throw-back to monkey ancestors." Before he was murdered, Sir Simon was already “dying by inches of cancer.” However, the story is still streaked with "inexcusable melodrama" from the Victorian-era, but Gilbert already showed a talent for handling dramatics and employed the dramatics to weave some pleasing patterns into the plot. It's almost a shame the arrest of Dacre didn't explode into a full-blown courtroom dramatics. Another notable difference is how the introduction of the detective is handled.

After pointing out the murderer's mistake, Egerton is largely absent and only spoken about until reappearing during the final leg of the story. Egerton is given something of a backstory during his absence concerning a sordid episode from his youth that could cast a dark cloud over both his career opportunities and engagement. So, if you read The Tragedy at Freyne in 1927, you can't be blamed for thinking Egerton is just one of the more suspicious characters in the cast of suspects. When the police arrested Dacre, the defense hires a private detective, "Stuart will get the truth if any man can," to ferret out information. The detective work through out the story is mix of humdrum detection and Sherlock Holmes (donning disguises) with the highlight being Gilbert's brilliant take on the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.

The Tragedy at Freyne presents Gilbert as a mystery writer full of promise and potential, but how she handled the ending shows she still had some work and fine-tuning to do. Egerton returns to the story with an admittedly pretty good and satisfying solution in hand, which then turns into "a race against time" to gather evidence before the murderer boards a ship. It deflated and undermined the clever, twisty solution when it follows by evidence collecting. Regrettably, the locked room-trick is simple and routine, but enjoyed the police being convinced the murderer exited the locked room through a secret passage they were unable to find. So don't get it solely for its impossible crime element.

So while the ending could have been handled better, The Tragedy at Freyne is still a cut, or two, above the average, 1920s mystery novel and stands as a promising debut from a diamond-in-the-rough full with potential – only needing further cutting and polishing. Which is fortunately exactly what happened as Gilbert would go on the pen the Agatha Christie-worthy The Clock in the Hat Box (1939) and the late, but excellent, She Shall Die (1961). The Tragedy at Freyne comes recommended as a herald of the 1930s Golden Age detective novel.

Note for the curious: Amazingly, The Tragedy at Freyne was published in the same year as Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927). One of the worst Golden Age detective novels ever written and likely the book that drove Ronald A. Knox to write down "The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929).