H.C. Bailey was part of the first badge of British Golden Age mystery writers who made his name during the 1920s with a series of longish short stories, featuring his famous series-detective Reginald "Reggie" Fortune, before making transitioning to novel-length mysteries in 1930 – publishing his last novel two decades later (Shrouded Death, 1950). Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976) notes that Bailey's Reggie Fortune was "perhaps the most popular sleuth in England between the World Wars" and influenced S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance. Although not everyone's a fan of Vance mimicking Reggie Fortune's speech habits.
Bailey's most well-known detective is often linked to the foppish, upper class dilettantes like Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey, which is not an association that has always benefited Reggie Fortune. I guess the relative obscure status of his secondary series-detective, Joshua Clunk, is why "the crooks' solicitor" is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Anthony Gilbert's Arthur Crook and Craig Rice's John J. Malone. A cunning hypocrite who sucks sweets, hums hymns and preaches every Sunday at his own established place of worship, Gospel Hall – while Mrs. Clunk played the harmonium. Behind the pious mask, Clunk "knew more of what was going on underground than any man in London" and the police believed "he was up to the neck in most of it." And not afraid to get his hands dirty. So, while far less likable than either Crook or Malone, I actually remember Clunk clearer than the plot of The Sullen Sky Mystery. The Garston Murder Case convinced me Clunk ought to be much better known to detective fans today.
The Garston Murder Case starts with introducing the reader to Joshua Clunk and several small, but different, incidents eventually coming together at Bradstock Abbey. Ancestral home of Henry Garstons, the first Lord Croyland and head of the iron and steel giant Garstons & Garstons ("anything from a needle to a battleship").
Firstly, Clunk is visited by the son of an old client, Anthony "Tony" Wisberry, who's father mysteriously disappeared without a trace twenty years ago. Clunk took care of his mother's financial interest and, when she passed away, Tony found papers from his father indicating he had completed a then new process for making hard steel from vanadium, right before he disappeared. Coincidentally, the formula is exactly the same as the one Garstons & Garstons began to use and now Tony wants answers from Lord Croyland. Clunk tries to dissuade him, "great firms don't murder inventors," they "prefer to swindle 'em" ("...easy and legal"), but Tony is determined to get the truth. Secondly, a Miss Morrow has her room at the Victoria Hotel burglarized and the thief took away a jewelry case, but the case contained more than just jewelry. It contained personal letters from her long-dead fiance, Alfred Garston, who drowned decades ago and she's been perpetual mourning ever since – fluttering between hotels years round. Inspector Gunn and Superintendent Bell arrest a well-known hotel thief resulting in some amusing courtroom scenes in which Clunk gets his client off at the expense of poor Bell. Lastly. May Dean, a young nurse, is engaged by her old school friend and Lord Croyland's secretary, Gladys Hurst, to look after Lord Croyland's elderly mother. A job that's not as easy as it looks and Miss Morrow often comes to mourn Alfred with Mrs. Garston. As we say in my country, klinkt gezellig. :)
So the first-half of The Garston Murder Case is, plot-wise, a bit slow moving as Bailey has to introduce the various characters and plot pieces, but never bores or drags. Bailey knows how to write characters and how to make them talk which especially allows Clunk to shine in all his hypocritical glory. And establish him as a character as well as his relationship with Superintended Bell. Who warns Inspector Gunn "when Josh Clunk starts giving evidence anything may turn up—except the truth." Clunk comes through true to form, not only in the first-half. Around the halfway mark, Bradstock Abbey becomes the scene of murder when old Mrs. Garston is throttled during the night. And a village constable on patrol in the neighborhood is killed the same night.
Throughout the double murder investigation, Clunk is an ever persistent presence in the background of the case who's constantly giving lectures, sermons, hums hyms or tut-tut-tuting Bell's "unfortunate distrust" in him – distracting the superintedent from the obvious truth. So the characterization and storytelling is topnotch, but what about the plot? The Garston Murder Case reads like a parody, or serious satire, of the Gothic novel. Bailey even provided a secret passage to go with its turn-of-the-century trappings, but treated and handled with all the skill and ingenuity of the 1930s Golden Age detective story. Notably the identity of the well-hidden, well-clued murderer is a minor technical achievement. Something several mystery writers tried before, and since then, but recall only a handful of successes. Bailey came incredible close to having one such success story on his hands with The Garston Murder Case, had the solution not been so obvious. The plot is technically sound and more than fairly clued, but, by the halfway mark, it's pretty clear from which direction the wind is blowing. So seasoned armchair detectives won't be fooled for very long, however, it's competently executed inside a pleasingly readable story introducing one of the most odious, but strangely compelling, anti-heroes from this period of the genre. Clunk's part in The Garston Murder Case alone makes me want to hunt down one of his out-of-print cases or give The Sullen Sky Mystery another look. So... to be continued.
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