A Monster in the Closet

"If, in the unhealthy atmosphere of an old house, the inmates got talking of ghosts and goblins, it might be that the consequences would be dangerous..."

- Dr. Lascelles (Fergus Hume's "The Ghost's Touch," collected in The Dancer in Red, 1906)

Edward Gellibrand is one of those mystery writers from the early part of the previous century who had the misfortune to have his work obscured or even obliterated from popular memory by the passage of time.

I can only say for sure that the name of Edward Gellibrand appeared on the book-covers of two locked room mysteries, The End of a Cigarette (1924) and The Windblow Mystery (1926), which have the character of Kenneth O'Brien in common and both titles were listed by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991) – the sole reason I even knew these books existed. Even the comprehensive GADWiki has no references to either Gellibrand or any of his detective stories.

Consequently, the only known detective novels by Gellibrand have been all but forgotten today and secondhand copies, while not eye-gougingly expensive, tend to be scarce and not widely available to ordinary readers. So imagine my delight when I came across a dirt cheap reprint edition of The Windblow Mystery when I was sifting through the catalog of Black Heath Editions. Yes, that's the same publishing outfit that brought the wonderful Rev. Ebenezer Buckle mysteries by Nicholas Brady back into circulation.

The Windblow Mystery has a plot that plays on the "room that kills" motif and is comparable to John Dickson Carr's "The Devil's Saint" (The Dead Sleep Lightly, 1983) and Paul Halter's La chambre du fou (The Madman's Room, 1990), but Gellibrand wrote in the style and spirit of Conan Doyle and Fergus Hume. I think the late 19th century writing style greatly enhanced the atmosphere of the haunted bedroom that apparently possessed the terrifying power to persuade its occupants into taking their own lives.

The haunted room in question is the largest bedroom in a centuries old manor house, called Windblow, which is currently owned by an eccentric believer in the supernatural, Morden Croker, who's also a social creature with "a mania for having his house full" and one of the people he roped in is a no-nonsense oil millionaire, Alexander Caulfield – who had reluctantly accepted the invitation. A decision he had come to regret, because the first evening at the manor house were filled with discussions about "unaccountable noises, strange lights, mysterious footsteps in the dead of night" and the age-old legend of the haunted bedroom.

Whenever a man sleeps in the cursed room with "some strong, evil passion," nursed in secret, the ghost haunting the bedroom will appear to confront this person and the occupant, in a fit of fright or madness or even remorse, does away with himself. Only possible way to escape death is the prospected victim has "pluck enough to go and meet his ghostly enemy." The last victim of the ghost was the previous owner, Richard Henderson, who, one morning, was found hanging from a hook in the cupboard of the bedroom. And that cupboard was more of a large, spacious closet.

Croker placed Caulfield in the haunted bedroom, assuming that the "practical, level-headed business" lacked believe in ghosts nor nursed any secret vices, but the nighttime weakens Caulfield's skepticism and begins reflect on how his all consuming passion for accumulating wealth has destroyed his family – which is when he gets a glimpse of the ghost. Caulfield sees a light from his bedroom window in the deserted portion of the house. A light of a pale, bluish color. On the following morning, the body of the millionaire is found hanging by the cord of his dressing-gown in the big wall cupboard of the bedroom. Dead as a door-nail.

The next part of the story tells of the arrival of Kenneth O'Brien and Alan Dawson, who are on a walking tour as part of their summer holiday, but they decided to end their tour and stay in the charming hamlet of Drayton's Oak. Soon enough, they not only learned about the suicide room at the nearby house of Windblow, but were also invited by Croker to spend some time there. And there they get a front-row seat to two additional dramas in the cursed and haunted bedroom of Windblow.

One of the other guests is a popular actor, Edward Payton, who wants to prove to everyone that "a man can sleep in that room without coming to harm." However, the following morning he's found dead, hanging from the cord of his dressing-gown, in the cupboard. It turns out that Payton, just like the previous victims, nursed a secret vice. Henderson was a hypocritical drunkard who preached at temperance meetings. Caulfield was a money-grubber who had neglected his wife and became estranged from his own son. Payton was secretly addicted to cocaine.

A fourth, seemingly impossible, hanging occurs when a friend of the actor, Piers Logan, engages a private-investigator, named Theodore, who is willing to spend a night in the haunted room, while everyone else is locked inside their bedroom by the local police constable, who keeps all of the keys on his person – making it impossible for anyone in the house to move around the premise. Nevertheless, the private detective is found hanging inside the cupboard when the bedroom is entered on the following morning!

A quick note for the curious: the unusual impossible situation of the suspects, instead of the prospected victim, being locked inside their bedrooms anticipated the (unresolved) locked room problem from Kay Cleaver Strahan's Footprints (1929).

Kenneth O'Brien becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind the "ghostly hangman" of Windblow and begins his own investigation, which revealed that a number of locals had seen lights moving around in the disused wing of Windblow. Some even claim to have seen a horned figure with a beard and carrying a burning candle around. Personally, O'Brien witnessed the senior partner of the local estate agency, Sebastian Rowe, surreptitiously enter the by then abandoned manor house after nightfall. O'Brien even strongly suspect him of being the hangman.

So all of this makes for an well-written and genuinely engaging read, one that really transports you back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but, as a mystery novelist, Gellibrand was a holdover from a previous era of crime-fiction and he did not at all adhere to the rules and standards that were slowly emerging at the time this book was published. A notable aspect is that O'Brien's own investigation is best described as groping around in the dark rather than actual detective work. He does talk with people and receives relevant information from them, but his most important discoveries are made when he's literary stumbling around in the dark.

There's also the problem of the murderer's identity, which is obvious, and the reason behind this sequence of apparent suicides is not properly clued at all, but was ingenious for the time. A devious little criminal enterprise that was made all the more believable, because a number of things went wrong. One of them being the presence of the inquisitive O'Brien. Equally novel and diabolical is the murder method that partially explained the locked room angle of the plot. Once again, it betrayed that Gellibrand really belonged to a previous, much earlier, era of crime-fiction, but I simply could not help myself from liking it. Stuff of nightmares!

William Marwood, the Gentleman Hangman

That being said, I have to comment on the incompetent doctor who examined the victims, particularly Payton, because he could have prevented at least one murder. After the body of Payton is found, the reader is told that the medical examiner determined that "the neck had been dislocated," resulting in instant death, which apparently happened after the victim jumped off a small table with the cord tied around his neck. And here's the problem: a short drop inside a wall closet does not dislocate either the 2nd and 3rd or 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae, which requires a stretched rope (not a slip-knot cord) and a number of calculations that take the victim's weight and height into consideration – a method developed by a famous hangman, William Marwood.

If the doctor had pointed this out, the jury at the inquest would have returned a verdict of willful murder. The police, or even Scotland Yard, would have gotten involved and they would have looked into everyone's background, which would have revealed the connection that now only became apparent at the end of the story. This might have saved, at the very least, the life of the private detective, Theodore. I was annoyed his incompetence was never pointed out in the final chapter.

But enough of this nitpicking. The Windblow Mystery is, admittedly, a less than perfect detective novel that read like it was written twenty or thirty years before it was actually published, but this is what gave the story charm and character. On top of that, the explanation for the murders in the haunted bedroom reveal some flashes of ingenuity. Such as the how and why behind the hangings.

So, all in all, The Windblow Mystery is a well-written, engrossing detective story, but one you should read and enjoy on autopilot, because you'll not be able to piece together to full picture. And that'll only leave you frustrated.

On a final, semi-related note, I'll be sampling a handful of titles from Black Heath in the coming weeks. There were several detective novels in their catalog that looked promising enough to snap them up, but I'll probably return to Brady before tackling my newer acquisitions. So stay tuned everyone!

The Great Escape

"We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch this basket carefully."

- Colonel Von Luger (The Great Escape, 1963)

Recently, Dan of "The Reader is Warned" compiled a two-part list, titled "5 Impossible Crime 'Thrillers' to Try” and "5 More Impossible 'Thrillers' to Try," which made a decent attempt at listing all the notable, high-paced thrillers with a locked room or impossible crime element, but both lists omitted the best specimen of this particular blend of crime-fiction – namely Michael Gilbert's outstanding Death in Captivity (1952). After littering Dan's comment-section with recommendations for the book, I decided to take down my copy from the shelves to see if it could stand re-reading. And it absolutely did!

Death in Captivity was reprinted in 2007 by the now defunct Rue Morgue Press, under its US title The Danger Within, which came with a foreword by Tom and Enid Schantz briefly going over Gilbert's personal experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Italy during World War II.

The foreword is titled "The Escapes of Michael Gilbert" and gives the modern reader an idea just how extraordinary this piece of detective-and thriller fiction truly is. Not only are the plot and setting practically unique within the genre, but many of the events in the book were inspired by Gilbert's first-hand experiences as both a POW and an escapee in enemy territory – which gave everything a chilling veneer of authenticity. Particular the depictions of everyday life at the prison camp, the secret tunneling activities in the various huts and the occasional pestering of the Italian prison guards ("a bit of sentry-baiting").

Another aspect that sets this book apart from other World War II mystery-and thriller novels is that it deals primarily with the Fascisti of Italy rather than the Nazis of Germany.

The Danger Within takes place in Campo 127, "easily the best camp" one of the prisoners had been in, but perhaps the most "comfortably lodged" group of prisoners are the six men held in Room 10 in Hut C. As a rule, the rooms were designed to hold eight men and usually overflowed with "ten or even twelve less fortunate prisoners." Captain Benucci had ordered the men, all of them notorious escapees, to occupy the same room. Reasoning that if he had "six dangerous criminals to watch, it was easier, on a whole, to have them together," but that only pooled all of their knowledge and experience in one place – resulting in "the oldest of existing undiscovered tunnels in the camp." A tunnel Colonnello Aletti, Commandant of Campo 127, claimed simply could not exist.

The entrance to this tunnel lay in the kitchen of Hut C and in the middle of this cookery, set in a six-foot slab of concrete let into the tiled floor, stood a stove. A huge cauldron, shaped like "a laundry copper," which hid a trapdoor to the tunnel and could only be revealed by the combined effort of four strong men with assistance of double pulleys – effectively evading discovery by being "too big to see." I thought this was a nice little Chestertonian touch to the all-important secret tunnel that will play a key role throughout the entirety of the story.

One day, the protagonist of the story, Captain Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles, crawls down to the tunnel to continue work, but discovers that during the night part of the roof had come down. Inexplicably, there's a body underneath the pile of fallen sand at the end of the tunnel. Something that should not be possible, because this person could not have gained access to the tunnel on his own nor could an outside group have entered the locked Hut C after nightfall. Even more troublesome is that the victim is identified as a Greek POW, Cyriakos Coutoules, who's suspected by everyone of being a stool-pigeon for the Italians or even a double-agent in the employ of the Nazis.

Two of the special detainees in Hut C, Captain Roger Byles and Captain Alex Overstrand, had previously uttered threats to lynch Coutoules. However, their immediate problem of Hut C and Colonel Baird, head of the Escape Committee, is how to tackle the problem of a dead man cluttering the best tunnel they had. So they decide to dump the body in a smaller tunnel, located in Hut A, that had been "allotted low priority by the Escape Committee" and stage a roof collapse there, but how they move the body from one hut to another, under the nose of the guards, is one of my favorite and funniest scenes of the entire story – something of a cross between 'Allo, 'Allo (war-time setting) and Fawlty Towers (the episode Kipper and the Corpse, 1979).

You occasionally get these brief burst of typical British humor. Such as when some of the prisoners are preparing a stage-play and they pick one in which one of the characters, rapturously, exclaims "Italy! Oh, it's hard to take in even the bare possibility of going there. My promised land, Doctor, which I never thought to see otherwise than in dreams." Needless to say, that line brought the house down.

But, on a whole, the story-telling tends to be serious in tone, because the myriad of (potential) problems facing the POWs of Campo 127 are no laughing matter.

The events at the POW camp take place against the backdrop of the impending invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland by Allies, eventually culminating in the disposal of Benito Mussolini, but the consequences of an Allied victory in Italy is a double-edged knife for both parties at the camp. On the one hand, the POWs fully realize the Germans aren't going to set free the sixty thousand prisoners in Italy and that, one day, they could simply find themselves being put on a train "to Krautland." On the other hand, the card-carrying members of the Fascist Party, such as Captain Benucci and the sinister Mordaci of the Carabinieri Reali, know they'll be put in front of a military tribunal when the Allies arrive – which would probably end with them having to face a firing squad.

So the inexplicable death of Coutoules and the accompanying cloud of suspicions does very little to improve the slightly strained situation at the camp, but the situation becomes rather serious when Captain Byles is charged by Benucci with the murder of the Greek POW and is placed in solitary confinement – condemned to die in several days time. Captain "Cuckoo" Goyles is asked by the Escape Committee to investigate who killed Coutoules, why and where. And, most importantly, how his body ended up in the tunnel.

In my opinion, the explanation for the impossible appearance of a body in a hermetically sealed, air-tight and blocked tunnel is as simplistic and logical as it's original. A one-of-a-kind impossibility in a completely unique crime novel that performed a perfect juggling act with its detective story elements, thriller components and spy material. Gilbert never allowed one of those elements to overshadow the other, but neither were they diluted. They worked in perfect harmony with one another. For example, the clues that will help you solve the detective story elements are provided by some of the more gruesome, thriller-ish aspects of the plot. You'll know what I mean when you get to it.

The Danger Within is an impressive and perfect latticework of differing genres, which is what makes it impossible to pigeonhole the book, but the climax of the story is a fine piece of wartime fiction as the inmates of Campo 127 prepare themselves to make "The Great Crawl." A fitting end to this semi-autobiographical wartime crime story. An ending that fitted like the final piece of the puzzle that completed the whole picture of this marvelously clever and exciting story. I simply can't recommend this one enough.

I'll end this review by saying that re-reading The Danger Within has inspired me to finally airlift my other Gilbert titled from the snow-capped tops of Mt. To-Be-Read. I'm not sure which titles actually reside there, but I believe they were Close Quarters (1947), Death Has Deep Roots (1951) and The Killing of Katie Steelstock (1980). So you can look forward to a review of one of those titles in the hopefully not so distant future.

Finally, Kate at Cross Examining Crime and Mike of Only Detect also reviewed the book (here and here), while Sergio of Tipping My Fedora reviewed the 1959 movie based on the book (here).

Stratagems in the Snow

"But I'd much sooner have a jolly good murder in the village. A jolly good murder... would make Christmas jolly well worth it."

- Denis Lestrange (Gladys Mitchell's Dead Men's Morris, 1936)

Gladys Mitchell's Groaning Spinney (1950) is the fiftieth title in her series of wonderfully written, often unconventionally plotted, mystery novels about her cackling, basilisk-like psycho-analyst and criminologist, Mrs. Bradley – described by Mitchellites as a wintry story with "a vivid, picturesque seasonal backdrop" and one of her "most satisfyingly, well-clued solutions." Excitedly, this book is about to be reissued as a special Christmas edition, under the title Murder in the Snow, which is scheduled for release in early November.

So this fairly recent tradition of republishing classic, often obscure, Christmas-themed mystery novels continues to snowball ever larger. This year also saw the republication of Christopher Bush's Dancing Dead (1931), Anne Meredith's Portrait of a Murderer (1933) and Cyril Hare's An English Murder (1951). Curiously, the detective novel by Hare has not been reissued under its alternative title, The Christmas Murder, while Ellery Queen's The Finishing Stroke (1958) remains completely ignored in this category.

But who knows? Maybe next year some of these publishers will set their sights on these kind of holiday detective stories from the United States. But for now, I'll be looking at an earlier edition of Groaning Spinney.

Groaning Spinney takes place in the Cotswolds, nestled in south central England, which is famous for its ancient landscape with its rolling hills, rustic villages and charming hamlets. Jonathan Bradley and his wife, Deborah, had chosen the place to settle down and had purchased an old manor house, which came with a plot of land in a hilly, partially wooded area with "a dashing stream" and "a very well-authenticated ghost" of a nineteenth century parson, Rev. Horatius Pile – who can be seen hanging over a gate on moonlight nights. So the perfect place to raise a family.

Deborah had acted as a Mrs. Bradley's Sub-Warden at Cartaret College, in Laurels Are Poison (1943), where she was introduced to Mrs. Bradley's nephew, Jonathan, which led to their engagement by the end of the book. At the time, Mrs. Bradley had "greatly desired to find place in the family circle for the lovely Deborah" and her nephew had been "the vehicle for this inclusion." So Jonathan and Deborah invited their "Aunt Adela" to spend the Christmas holiday with them in their new home, but her arrival marked the beginning of a series of events that resulted in several deaths. And it all started very innocently.

On the morning after Christmas, the priestly ghost had left a trail of footprints, "like stockinged feet," in the snow and a witness claimed to have glimpsed the parson by "the snow-laden ghost-gate" at the top of the wood known as Groaning Spinney. But these locals stories of a ghost in the snow takes a macabre turn when Jonathan finds a corporeal form "slumped over the five-barred gate" and the body was "dusted over into ghostliness" by the last fall of the snow.

The body at the ghost-gate belonged to one of two cousins, Bill Fullalove, who lived with his relative, Tiny, as bachelors and according to the police examiner he had died of heart-failure due to cold and exposure, but a year ago he got himself medically examined for a life insurance policy and the company doctor had never seen a healthier man – or "tested a heart in better condition." So could the winter cold and snow have killed a healthy and robust man like Bill Fullalove?

It should be noted here that Mitchell was not necessarily a mystery novelist who was known for crafting elaborate, overly ingenious, murder methods, but she did come up with a couple of original gimmicks (e.g. The Man Who Grew Tomatoes, 1959) and this definitely one of them. A murder method as cold and clever as the one from Rex Stout's "A Window for Death" (collected in Three for the Chair, 1957).

Interestingly, the death of Bill Fullalove turns out to be nothing less than a perfect crime, because Mrs. Bradley admits that obtaining proof of murder is practically impossible. She does piece together how the murderer brought about heart-failure, based on such clues as dog-chains and trees, but dealing with the guilty party requires an unorthodox approach. Mrs. Bradley admits around the halfway mark that, "in this instance," revenge is her aim. And if you have read Speedy Death (1929), you know what she means by that.

There are, however, other problems complicating the matter of the dead man at the ghost-gate. An anonymous letter writer is littering the village with poison-pen letters and one of them suggests that the dead man had been murdered – even accusing the local doctor of "conspiring to hush it up." Another letter tells the cousin of the dead man, Tiny, that the police suspects murder and advises him to prepare for an exhumation. The doctor observed that this "sort of round-robin stuff can have serious consequences" and these words prove to be prophetic when the poisoned remains of the Fullaloves' missing housekeeper, Mrs. Dalby Whittier, is found in a deep dip in one of the farmer's fields.

And from these various plot-threads, Mitchell weaved an intricate, but discernible, tapestry of a potential insurance fraud, disputable identities, missing animals, wholesale blackmail and a double murderer. Mitchell really deserves praise here, not only for crafting a clever and well-imagined plot, but also for telling the story in clear and straightforward manner without getting entangled in a confusing web of plot-threads, which (admittedly) was not something she always succeeded in doing – c.f. Hangman's Curfew (1941) and The Worsted Viper (1943).

One other thing that has to be mentioned about the plot is that certain plot-strands evidently took their cue from Agatha Christie's Peril at End House (1932), which pertained to both the insurance policy and an attempt to use a "ghost" to bring the murderer to heel. Nevertheless, that should not be taken as criticism of Groaning Spinney, because the book by Christie had only been used as a source of inspiration. But you'll see what I mean when you get to it.

If Groaning Spinney has any flaws, particularly when measured against her own body of work, it is that the murderer's revelation does not come as an earth-shattering surprise and the ghost-element is not used to full-effect. Mitchell can do so much better with ghostly legends. I also missed the presence of one of her convincingly drawn, plucky children or teenage characters. Such as Mrs. Bradley's great-nephew, Denis, who provided the opening quote for this blog-post. I believe the presence of such a character would have greatly enhanced the already excellent atmosphere and cast-of-characters of the book.

Otherwise, Groaning Spinney is pleasantly lucid, well-written and lively entry in the Mrs. Bradley series with an ingenious murder method and an active detective with a sense of humor. But what is perhaps the strongest aspect of the book is its splendidly realized country-side setting. Whether it is the wintry, snow-laden landscape of the opening chapters or the approaching spring thaw of the later half, you have to admit that bringing a setting to life with mere words is a talent she shared with her Arthur W. Upfield.

So this was an auspicious, and early, beginning of my 2017 reading of the Yuletide Mystery Novel. There are three additional titles on my TBR-list and might add one or two more to that list. So stay tuned.

Tight Lines

"And keep your eye on that fisherman. Don't let him do any thing funny."

- Conan Edogawa (Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed a.k.a. Detective Conan, vol. 45)

Nearly two years ago, I read Harriet Rutland's splendid (and splashy) Bleeding Hooks (1940), which had been reprinted at the time by Dean Street Press and their new edition is introduced by our resident genre-historian and scholar, Curt Evans, who listed additional titles in his preface of detective novels with a fly fishing background – including John Haslette Vahey's Death by the Gaff (1932).

Secondhand copies of the Vahey title tend to be on the scarce side, but recently came across an inexpensive reprint edition in the catalog of Black Heath Edition and remembered Evans had mentioned it in his introduction to Bleeding Hooks. So I immediately reeled in a copy of the book.

This new edition of Death by the Gaff has been reissued under Vahey's most well-known pseudonym, "Vernon Loder," which is a name you might recognize from the recent Detective Club reprint of The Mystery at Stowe (1928). A pleasantly written, old-fashioned detective story about African blowpipes and poison-smeared thorns, but the plot was hardly innovative. Fortunately, the same can't be said about his fly fishing-themed mystery novel, which definitely had a touch of originality, inventiveness and some of the splendor of the 1930s, Golden Age detective story.

Death by the Gaff takes place in Cwyll, North Wales, where the Horn Hotel caters to ardent anglers, professional and amateur alike, but recently a particular unpleasant specimen of the fisherman had taken up residence at the hotel, Solomon Hayes – an "elderly Don Juan of an offensive sort." Hayes acted as "a perfect pig." A man who treated his fellow anglers as poachers and came close to trading blows with a local fisherman, Peter Hoad, who had accidentally taken one of his nets and was "practically stigmatised as a thief." Hayes also made two enemies at the hotel, Edward Bow and Robert Chance.

The latter of those two actually had a tussle with Hayes when tried to dissuade Chance from fishing in the same pool as he was trying his luck in, which is a discussion that ended with "a not too heavy uppercut." Hayes immediately consulted a lawyer and visited the local police station to press charges against Chance.

So pretty much everyone had enough of Hayes and a round-robin petition was signed, which demanded his removal from the hotel. On top of that, Caroline Hayes turns up one evening in response to an anonymous letter she received suggesting that her husband had been fooling around with a local girl. However, by the time she arrived, Hayes had gone missing. And he would not be found until the following day.

Hayes' body is spotted in the water of a natural pool, trapped beneath a jutting rock, just above the lip of a waterfall, but when the body is retrieved from the pool they find "a round, raw wound" in the left side of the throat – suggesting a blow from a steel gaff-hook. A gaff is a big steel hook on a stick and is used to land a salmon. Coincidentally, there was a lost gaff at the time Hayes went missing and the search for this potential murder weapon is what drives a large portion of the investigation, which is done by both a police inspector and two self-appointed amateur snoops.

 

Map of Cwyll

Inspector Parfitt is the policeman in charge of the official end of the investigation, but a good portion of the relevant detective work is done by two friends, Harry Wint and Joan Powis, who find traces of blood on one of the wooden sleepers (railway tie) in one of the train tunnels – which are used as a short cuts by the local fishermen and employed by Hayes, and his girl, as a secret rendezvous spot. I found that rather odd, because you would think the hillsides of Wales has better places to offer than a dark, soot-covered train tunnel for the purpose of clandestine, night-time meetings. But hey, that's just me.

Interestingly, Wint and Powis come to regret their involvement and even attempt to walk back on the evidence they uncovered, which they do on account of the person who got arrested and committed for trial at the assizes. Wint and Powis concoct a theory that would explain Hayes' death as an unfortunate accident. Surprisingly, their theory seemed to hold water when a diver found a gaff at the bottom of a pool.

On a historical side-note, the scenes with the old-time, hard-hat diver, complete with a bell-helmet and surface air-pump, were fascinating to read and not a "character" often encountered in vintage detective stories. I'm only aware of two detective stories in which a hard-hat diver plays a role or makes an appearance: Max Murray's The Neat Little Corpse (1950-51) and Joseph Commings' 1953 short story "Bones for Davy Jones" (collected in The Locked Room Reader, 1968). So I thought that was interesting.

Nevertheless, Inspector Parfitt, who's "a methodical and conscientious man," gets to redeem himself and carries out a careful, time consuming experiment behind that scenes that involves a zinc bathtub in his attic and gallons of water from the river Cwyll – an experiment that got results which "filled his mind with triumph." This patient, time-consuming, but scientific, approach to the problem and the various experiments (one of them involving a wax dummy) makes this book closely related to the work of R. Austin Freeman, Freeman Wills Crofts and even John Rhode. Only problem is that Vahey decided to take the humdrum route once the finish-line of the story came in sight. 

 

A vintage 1930s gaff

Death by the Gaff is full of local color and beautiful descriptions of the Welsh countryside, rivers, whirlpools and waterfalls with a pleasant concoction of professional police work and amateur detection, but the revelation of the truth felt like a dud. As if all the energy had gone out of the plot. The murderer's identity is logical enough (a bit obvious perhaps) and the motive of this person was signaled early on in the story, but the solution simply felt underwhelming and somewhat uninspired.

Even the murderer almost completely deflated when the inevitable knock on the door came and only made a halfhearted attempt at committing suicide, which was easily deflected by the inspector. After that, the murderer merely expressed his wish to be hanged as soon as possible. 

Once again, the solution makes sense and is competent enough, but the ending lacked the energy that was present in the preceding chapters of, what was until then, a very good sporting mystery. So this is really a story in need of a better ending and burdened with an anticlimactic ending. However, I'm probably selling the book short here by nitpicking the ending, because, on a whole, this was a really good read. It's just that the ending was not as impressive as the rest of the story. I really wish my enthusiasm had sustained itself into the final chapter and would not have to end this review with a splash of cold water, but that's what I got out of the story. 

So there you have it. Another hacky review I botched with my nitpickery. Oh, well, I'll try to do better with the next one. 

Finally, I mentioned in the opening of this blog-post a short list of mysteries with a fly fishing background and three of those titles are currently residing on my TBR-pile, which are Cyril Hare's Death is No Sportsman (1938) Josephine Tey's The Singing Sands (1951) and Ngiao Marsh's Scales of Justice (1955). A fourth title, Double Cross Purposes (1937) by Ronald A. Knox, is available as an ebook. That leaves only Nigel Orde-Powlett's The Cast of Death (1932) as one of those pesky, hard-to-get and out-of-print titles, but I can easily the knock the others of my list and I'm kind of tempted to do so. But we'll see. So stay tuned! 

Busybody, Beware!

"Blackmail is the most dastardly of crimes."

- Mrs. Bradley (Gladys Mitchell's The Echoing Stranger, 1952)

Margaret Lane van Patten was an American mystery novelist from Portland, Oregon, who moved to London, England, after her marriage to Frederick van Pattan in 1913 and used her adopted homeland as a backdrop for thirteen detective novels – eight of them reportedly star her cast of series-detectives. You read that correctly. She wrote a score of mystery novels, under the name of "Gret Lane," about a cadre of (semi) amateur detectives.

Kate Marsh is the protagonist of the series and the de facto ringleader of the group, who rubs her nose whenever she gets a hunch, which tells her mystery writing husband, Tony, that another body is waiting for them just around the corner. She has pair of partners-in-crime in John Barrin (late of Scotland Yard) and his homely wife, Jennie. This group is rounded out by their Chinese friend, Min Ling, who runs an antique store and Tony's foul-mouthed parrot, Blaster Murphy, who had "sailed the seas on tramps and whalers" and acquired a sailor's vocabulary – scandalizing people unaware of the bird's seafaring vernacular with a torrent of "explicit adjectives." I'm not going to the lie to you, the parrot was my favorite of the gang.

This eclectic group of detectives made their first appearance in The Curlew Coombe Mystery (1930) and would go on to appear in seven additional novels, such as The Lantern House Affair (1931), Death Visits the Summer-House (1939) and Death in Mermaid Lane (1940), but I decided to go with the last one in the series.

The Guest with the Scythe (1943) was not the only the last book about Kate Marsh and her close-knit group of friends, but also the final book Lane wrote during her lifetime as she passed away the following year. My reason for selecting this particular title was the backdrop of a residential spa, in rural England, which became a shelter for people who fled their towns and cities during the Blitz. And the war has a noticeable influence on the characters and events within this story.

White Owl Cove is the home-base of the series and the opening chapter tells how the war has affected that tiny village on the Devon coast.

All "the able-bodied men went to sea" and "the young women flocked daily to a near-by munition factory." The elderly people took care of the children and the children did their part by knotting nets for the purpose of camouflage. Barbed-wire, concealed gun emplacements and soldiers appeared on the shore and cliffs. Kate and Tony Marsh had handed over their semi-detached cottage to "six old ladies who had been blitzed from their Home for Needy Gentlewomen" and had temporarily moved in with their good friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Barrin – who live right next door. Tony had also gone to sea on a Plymouth minesweeper, but was invalided out of the army with a badly injured shoulder.

So this was an interesting snapshot of the effect the war has on a small, coastal community, but the story moves away from White Owl Cove after the first chapter. And the reason for the change in scenery is an unexpected visit from Inspector Smith, of Westbridge, who tells them they can stay at the small, but first-rate, guest house owned by his sister, Mrs. Carter. There is, however, a catch to this generous invitation.

Publicly, they'll be staying at the residential spa to get treatment for Tony's shoulder, but the reason why Mrs. Carter really wants them there is to bait a trap for a blackmailer. A ruthless specimen who drove one of her guests to take his own life. The victim was a young man, named Benson, who was terrified at the prospect of having to serve in the army and when papers were stolen from his room he went out to a field and shot himself. He was brought back in dying condition and confessed to Mrs. Carter that there was "a clever, wicked blackmailer" among her guests.

On a side note, the content of the blackmail material was never elaborated upon, but modern readers can make an educated guess based on the character description of Benson, which was of a "very handsome," effeminate young man "on whom blackmailers batten" – hinting at a personal preference that was not done at the time. Tragically, the public revelation of this secret would have probably kept him out of the army and away from the battle field. Anyway...

So the entire gang descends upon the guest-house of Waterside, in Wellwich, where they're confronted with a large, sprawling cast of potential suspects. There are, all together, sixteen guests and with all the side-and series characters you're looking at a playing field with roughly twenty-five pieces on it. What they find within this large, but closed, circle of people is more than just a blackmailer.

One of the guests they originally pegged as the blackmailer turned out to be merely "a curious busybody," who, like Don Quixote, "tilts at the windmills of rudeness in defense of civility," which he demonstrated when he employed, what could be construed as, blackmail material to publicly reprimand a pair of snobs, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. But they also come across a potentially amorous prowler, literal kissing cousins, an invalid, two elderly, devoted twins and an old-fashioned opium-addict. Oh, they also find the murdered remains of one of their fellow guests!

Back home, Tony had prophesied that they would "bag a brace of corpses," because they "always do." He was right on the money.

One night, Kate and Tony were awakened by their dog, Taffy, who heard something outside the french windows and what they found was the body of one of their fellow guests, Mrs. Lee, laying underneath her bedroom window – twisted, bloodied and evidently very murdered. Interestingly, what immediately eliminated the possibility of an accident or suicide were not the various head wounds, but the fact that the murderer had replaced the blackout curtain after Mrs. Lee was thrown out of the window. It's one of those little historical details I always love to find in detective stories from this period and here it has some relevance on the plot.

The second, brutally murdered victim is found when the opium-angle leads our group of detectives to the rooms of a fortune-teller, Ismar the Palmist, where they chance upon a dead man in the waiting room with an ominous worded note pinned to it, which is "a warning to the curious" and ended with "busybody, beware." Obviously, this note was meant as a hint to Kate to keep both her nose and her friends out of the murderer's business. A hint stubbornly ignored by Kate and this makes the murderer want to spray death "like a machine-gun" (i.e. mass murder) at the resort.

The Guest with the Scythe is a pleasantly written, engaging and occasionally amusing mystery, but as a story of detection and ratiocination the book is not all that impressive. One of these shortcomings is the thread-bare, almost non-existent, clueing. Kate stumbled to the truth when the murderer made a slip of the tongue, but this happened in the final twenty, or so, pages of the book. A second, very minor, clue was never shared with the reader. But the worst thing is that these scraps only gave her an idea who had committed the murder. She had to wait for a written confession by the murderer to fill in the gaps.

So the conclusion to the story leaves me in two places. On the one hand, I can't say this was an unpleasant or badly written book, but the overall plot turned out to be very poor indeed. I suppose this is one of those series you have to read for the characters rather than the plot (like the Lockridges).

However, the book was written shortly before Lane's passing and the whole dying process may have negatively impacted the quality of the plot. I'll probably try one of the earlier ones, such as The Lantern House Affair, before making up my mind about this series. Something that has become very easy, because Black Heath Editions reissued nearly all of Lane's work. So I'll come back to Lane, Kate Marsh and the gang sometime in the future for a second opinion. 

Finally, allow me to draw your attention to my previous review, which is very long rundown of all the short stories in a 430-page anthology, The Realm of the Impossible (2017), that gathered more than twenty impossible crime stories from all over the world.