The Corpse with the Grimy Glove (1938) by R.A.J. Walling

R.A.J. Walling was a British journalist, magistrate and writer who, like his contemporary E.R. Punshon, "did not begin to write mysteries until he was nearly sixty" and spend the last two decades of his life writing detective fiction as a hobby – producing nearly thirty novels until his death in 1949. Walling enjoyed some popularity and critical acclaim during his lifetime and counted Ogden Nash, Alexander Woollcott and reportedly the Queen of Spain among his loyal readers. But, as so often is the case, his print-run and reputation fell into neglect following his passing. Most of his work remained out-of-print for decades. 

A situation that remained unaltered until last year when Black Heath Editions reissued the lion's share of Walling's detective novels as inexpensive ebooks. Since his work represents a huge gap in my Golden Age reading, it was about time I got around to giving Walling a shot.

Unfortunately, one of the titles Black Heath neglected to bring back into circulation is Walling's only known impossible crime novel, Murder at the Keyhole (1929), but "D for Doom," of Vintage Pop Fiction, is the only person who has been reading and reviewing Walling for many years now – which provided me with some good recommendations. My eye fell on The Corpse with the Grimy Glove (1938). 

The Corpse with Grimy Glove was published in the US as More Than One Serpent and is the thirteenth or twenty-two novels in Walling's Philip Tolefree series. An insurance agent who acts as a private investigator with his friend and ship-broker, James Farrar, narrating his exploits. It's an old acquaintance of Farrar who draws the two in a dark, murky case when he writes a letter asking about his friend with "some skill in puzzling out mysteries."

Arthur Treglohan is the parson of Bosenna Rectory, of Bosenna, which is a small, seaside town and "a corner of unspoiled beauty within a semi-feudal ring-fence" where Sir James Lanivet is the local "chief man." Sir James practically owned the entire village, the Rectory, selected the landlord of the inn and was "the patron of the living," but recently crossed paths with a city shark, Albert Tenterton, whose "crookedness has cost him a packet" and "mixed up his name in an unsavory transaction." So why did Sir James, having been robbed by this bandit, invite him and his retinue to his home in Bosenna. This is what worries his sister, Miss Victoria Lanivet. So the parson wrote to Farrar to invite him and Tolefree to find out what Tenterton doing there and "what he and James are cockering up between them."

Sir James has gathered a very curious house party at Lanivet Castle. There's the Lanivets brother-in-law, Colonel Mellows, who's "a devastating gun who annually did great havoc among the birds at Bosenna." The veritable Charles Michael, a freelance member of Parliament, who has a long list of pet dislikes headed by the financiers of Tenterton's ilk. Lionel Lawry is "the pianist of the day" and a victim of one of Tenterton's swindles. Alec Schuster is an American whose family Sir James encountered abroad and warmed to the personable and likable young man. Tenterton is accompanied to Bosenna by his secretary, Mr. Sherbery, his local lawyer, Mr. Peter Thuell, and his daughter-in-law and young widow to his late son, Mrs. Eva Tenterton – who lives "somewhat under his thumb." But, when they arrive in Bosenna, Tolefree's attention is immediately drawn to four persons who fall outside the closely-drawn circle at Lanivet Castle.

Firstly, there's the landlord of the Bosenna Arms, Mr. Murch, who Tolefree notices has "an observant eye." Secondly, the three-men crew of the yacht Guillemot, Martin Masterman, George Cray and Robert Melbourne, anchored in the middle of the land-locked creek under Mr. Murch's windows. They were very interested in the arrival of Tolefree and Farrar.

When they come to the party, Tolefree concludes that they're merely "onlookers at a private war" as "a stray shot from a gun during a partridge drive" hit a tree quite close to Sir James and someone "emptied a clip at the gallant young sailors," which forced them to abandon ship. A situation that ends dramatically during a firework fête when various members of the party go missing and frightened footman reports he saw the body of the financier inside the Tennis Court by the light of a rocket. But when they go there to look, the body has vanished and is not found until the police gets involved. The body is found lying between two shrubs with his arms tied behind his back, marks on his throat and "a bullet wound in the exact center of his forehead," but, most curiously, his right hand was covered with a white, stained dress glove.

On the surface, I can see why Walling invited comparisons with Freeman Wills Crofts and other craftsmen of the so-called Humdrum detective story, but he was a kindred spirit of Conan Doyle and Punshon.

The crime scene and circumstances of the body suggests everything you would expect from a detective novel of the Humdrum or adjacent Realist school, but physical evidence is not the primary focus of the investigation with the titular glove playing a significantly smaller role than the title suggests – which makes place for simple observations and deductions. Tolefree simply observes, deduces and soaks up the historic atmosphere of, what he called, "the Bosenna secrecy." That's where The Corpse with the Grimy Glove became somewhat reminiscent of Punshon's detective fiction. The setting is living with history from the moss-grown tombstones of long-gone Lanivets dotting the graveyard to a creek where Hereward the Wake "is supposed to have sailed up a thousand years ago." Even the disused Tennis Court is "an ancient arena" fitted "up as it might have been in the eighteenth century" with a spectators' gallery raised above the floor. Tolefree remarked that it was perhaps foolish to expect such an "ancient place to deliver up all its secrets in three or four days." You really get the idea this story is merely another chapter in its history.

It's interesting to note Walling was born in 1869 and Punshon in 1872, which means they up in the gaslight era with the age of (household) electricity still being a few decades in the future. So you have to wonder if that had any influence on how they portrait the world in the stories.

Another thing Walling has in common with Punshon is that neither were throwbacks to the 19th century and they applied some of that Golden Age ingenuity to their old-world detective stories. But, here at least, there was an important difference between the two. The plot of The Corpse with the Grimy Glove can be boiled down to a simple, Doylean crime story that took its cue from one of the short stories collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), but Walling managed to strike two very original notes. Firstly, he found a perfectly acceptable excuse to have the crime scene resemble a busy thoroughfare at the time of the murder. Secondly, Tolefree's positions becomes a very interesting one as he's sort of sucked into a conspiracy, but not because he either approved of the murder or throwing dust in the eyes of the police. But to lay his hands on Tenterton's murderer "before any of these people know a thing about it." I thought that made his position a very interesting one. And he even stages a mock inquest to show his fellow conspirators how much trouble a curious-minded coroner could present them. I don't remember having ever come across a better way to use the inquest scene than in The Corpse with the Grimy Glove.

Regrettably, the ending to this otherwise typical specimen of the British Golden Age mystery fell a little flat with a solution that has some serious fair play issues, which largely pertains to the motive. Not all. A complete "absence of alibis" and other hooks makes an educated, genre-savvy guess your only chance to identify the opportunistic murderer. So a mostly good, well written second-string mystery novel with some original touches, here and there, but a novel that can only be recommended to seasoned mystery readers.

I'm not giving up on "the ingenious Mr. R.A.J. Walling." Not yet anyway. The Corpse with the Floating Foot (1937) is currently on the big pile, which was highly praised by "D for Doom," Nick Fuller and Torquemada. So another story that will be continued sometime in the not so distant future.