Murder Among Virgins (1965) by Ton Vervoort

My previous blog-posts were reviews of translations of two non-English detective novels, Mika Waltari's Kuka murhasi rouva Skrofin? (Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll?, 1939) and Seimaru Amagi's Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), which annoy some of my readers as they tend to have availability issues – either being out-of-print or not on hand in English. So my apologies for rambling about three, non-English detective novels in a row, but wanted to do the hat-trick and end with a Dutch-language mystery. Rest assured, I'll return to the Anglo-American detective sphere in my next post. 

Peter Verstegen is a Dutch author, editor and translator who wrote half a dozen detective novels during the early 1960s under the name "Ton Vervoort."

I've recently discovered Vertegen began writing detectives at the time purely to make a living, which were published as Meulenhoff-pockets with a circulation of 12000 copies. But he only received a nickel per sold book. So he earned "1200 gulden if they sold out" or about a 1000 gulden if they didn't. That's roughly 3000 euros today.

Vervoort likely wasn't profitable enough for Verstegen to continue the series, which was a lost to the genre, because he wrote some authentic, plot-driven Dutch mystery novels penned in a deceivingly light and airy style – packed with all the potential to have been a serious rival to Appie Baantjer. Critic, poet and one-time mystery writer, C. Buddingh', said in the 1950s that if the detective story in the Netherlands wanted to have a personality of its own, it needs "to have a Dutch setting, populated with Dutch characters, where a murder committed by a Dutchman is solved." Vervoort checked all those boxes with novels like Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) and Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964), which also possessed many of qualities of his Anglo-American counterparts. Although not quite as good as some of the well-known American and British mystery novelists, but Vervoort unquestionable was a cut, or two, above most Dutch writers who tried their hands at the detective story.

The back cover of Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) says its Vervoort fourth novel, but this has to be a mistake as the publishing date and information online clearly places it as the fifth and final entry in the Floris Jansen series. Who's now a Chief Inspector of the Central Police in Amsterdam. 

Murder Among Virgins is Jansen's last recorded case, but appears only in the opening and closing chapters to begin and close the book on the "sordid history" surrounding a rich toothpaste magnate, Agnes Wels. A history that begins to slowly unravel on the morning after the Sinterklaasviering (St. Nicholas celebration), December 6, when Ton Vervoort reads in the paper about a "strange death" the previous night. Benno Haakman is a 20-year-old student who played Sinterklaas for the children of an orphanage in the Warmoesstraat, but collapsed while the children were singing a song and slipped into a diabetic coma – passing away later that night in hospital. There are, however, one or two aspects begging the attention of the police in the guise of the newly appointed Chief Inspector Floris Jansen. Vervoort gets a front row seat.

Benno had told the orphanage father he played Sinterklaas on behalf of a student-run Sinterklazencentrale, but they had stopped using the year prior. What happened to the man who played Zwarte Piet (Black Pete)? Why did they act so strangely? Doing "a sort of war dance with the sack and rod" and "pretending to take a little boy." Benno is the eccentric, overly sensitive son of the well-known toothpaste magnate, Agnes Wels, but it becomes "a brief investigation" when Jansen and Vervoort discover evidence of suicide. So they have to drop the case.

After only two chapters, Murder Among Virgins changes from a festive, seasonal December mystery into a travelogue with newlyweds Ton and Sannah Vervoort spending their honeymoon during the three-day carnival in Maastricht, Limburg. Same locality and carnival setting used by F. van Overvoorde's Moorden in Maastricht (Murders in Maastricht, 1937). Never imagined I would get an opportunity to reference that obscure mystery novel. Anyway, Vervoort has to be obnoxiously from Amsterdam by calling Maastricht a pleasant enough little town, but "it remains a fairly dozy place for Amsterdammers on honeymoon." But he becomes human again once the drinking and partying begins.

 

 

During their honeymoon they meet a "bilious antique dealer" at the hotel and a curious, old-fashioned, but kindly, priest who has a cabin in the wood, where he prays and meditate, but also enjoyed the brief excursion to the Sint Pietersberg – a "gigantic molehill of marl." A natural and historical labyrinth "where the first Christians hid from the heathens, later the heathens from the Christians, later the Protestants from the Catholics and then the Catholics from the Protestants." This part of the story is interspersed with entries from Sylvia Haakman's diary. Sylvia is the daughter of Agnes Wels and lives at an incredibly stern, Catholic convent boarding school in an old monastery, outside of Maastricht, but she's a rebellious teenager and constantly gets in trouble with the nuns. Ton and Sannah even get to witness one of the nuns hitting Sylvia during a walk in the woods.

I've to note here that, stylistically, Murder Among Virgins is very much a product of 1960s Dutch cultural revolution and secularization, which means that religion and the nuns are not cast in a very flattering light. Such as the morbidly obese Mother Superior who attempted to guilt Sylvia's mother in handing over 25000 gulden. The convent school becomes the scene of two "inexplicable murders" in the second-half of the novel.

Firstly, there's a cleverly done, wonderfully clued poisoning that came close to being a perfect murder and one of those things placing Vervoort among the top-ranked, second-tier mystery writers. Something not wholly unworthy of Agatha Christie or Gosho Aoyama. The second murder at the school surprised as it unexpectedly throw out a locked room mystery! A body is discovered in one of the toilets, locked from the inside, which is why everyone assumes it's the murderer who committed suicide, but don't expect too much from the routine trick. The locked room is only there to serve as a cheeky clue. But I didn't expect to come across one. So it was a nice surprise to add Vervoort's Murder Among Virgins to the growing list of Dutch locked room and impossible crime fiction.

Vervoort obviously tried to do something different with each novel. Murder Among Astrologists is an homage to the zanier, Alice in Wonderland-esque Ellery Queen mysteries with a dying message. Murder Under the Mantle of Love allowed a serial killer to escape from a closed-circle of suspects to wreak havoc on the invalids of the city. Murder Among Virgins mixes the seasonal and scholastic type of mystery novel with a travelogue, which were all written in a worryingly nonchalant, almost careless, style. A very light touch to the storytelling usually translates into a featherweight detective story with scant clueing, but, somehow, Vervoort always succeeded in pulling everything together in the last chapter – revealing an authentic, properly plotted and clued detective story. Murder Among Virgins is no exception in that regard.

There are, however, one or two flaws that places it slightly below Murder Among Astrologists and Murder Under the Mantle of Love. The murderer's motive is a huge gamble, which is acceptable enough (murder is a risky business anyway), but it turned the Sinterklaas murder into one big red herring. One that's not really fair. So don't pay too much attention to that murder. Having now read three of Vervoort's novels in short succession, I've begun to notice he has a preference for cloaking his murderers in a particular type of camouflage. And that made the murderer here standout with the locked room clue eventually confirming my suspicion.

So, overall, Murder Among Virgins is not the strongest entry in the short-lived Floris Jansen series, but certainly not a bad detective novel offering an ingenious poisoning-trick, a surprise impossible crime and dealt a generally fair hand to the reader. More importantly, it ensured Vervoort a permanent place among the troupe of mystery writers I affectionately refer to as my favorite second-stringers. Sadly, I only have to track down a copy of Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Stage Actors, 1963) to complete the series, unless some previously unpublished manuscripts (Moord onder detectives?) turn up somewhere. I can only hope.