The Case of the Faithful Heart (1939) by Brian Flynn

The Case of the Faithful Heart (1939) is Brian Flynn's twenty-fourth Anthony Bathurst mystery and picked this particular title as the next stop in the series to see how different it's from the previous novel, Black Edged (1939), which braided an inverted mystery and chase thriller into a single narrative – forming a fun, pulp-style romp with detective interruptions. So, as to be expected, the always versatile Flynn shifted style for his next novel by doing a complete 180 as there's nothing pulpy or thriller-ish about The Case of the Faithful Heart. 

The Case of the Faithful Heart is best described as a scintillating, character-driven whodunit reminiscent of some of the alternative Crime Queens, like Moray Dalton, who were also brought back into print by Dean Street Press. But with a sturdier puzzle-plot at the heart of the story.

The story takes place in the village of Lanrebel, in Glebeshire, where two incidents happened on the 8th of June, but the incidents is an evening dinner party at one of the two houses of any real size within the village, "Hillearys." Paul and Jacqueline Hillier are the hosts of the party and the table is filled by their son and daughter, Neill and Ann Hillier. The hosts brother, Maurice Hillier, and his wife, Belle. The dinner party is rounded out by the Vicar of Lanrebel, the Rev. Septimus Aylmer, who's accompanied by his wife, Mildred. So a normal dinner party with family and friends without any dark, palpable undercurrents except that the hostess is not her usual self, but that was explained away by "a wretched head" – retreating from the rest of the party until she feels a bit better. Flynn ends the chapter by pointing out to reader that the state of the household at half past eight is an important fact.

Later that evening, Neill notices a car standing at the front gates of "Hillearys" and goes out to investigate, but is shocked to find his dying mother sitting behind the wheel. Jacqueline's face was bruised and bloody, her wrists were "scratched and torn" and her clothes ripped, muddy and looked as though it was grass-stained. She used her last breath to utter a cryptic sentence, "the Mile Cliff. Two...," before dying in the arms of her son. An autopsy revealed Jacqueline had died from an overdose of chloral hydrate.

Fortunately, the well-known "human magnet" of crime, Anthony Bathurst, is on holiday in the village. Wherever he goes, even in a tranquil place like Lanrebel, murder has a habit of running him down to earth and pinning him down – guaranteeing he always gets "a sort of 'busman's holiday.''' Bathurst calls it punishment for having dipped his fingers "so often into the crime pie." This makes The Case of the Faithful Heart the earliest example to date of the detective being referred to as a "murder magnet," which predates Anthony Webb's Murder in Reverse (1945) and Francis Duncan's Mordecai Tremaine series from the late 1940s and '50s. But that's just an aside for the curious.

This time, Bathurst is accompanied on his unofficial investigation by a holidaying novelist from Blackstock, Keith Annesley. So the detection is very much in the detective-on-hobbyhorse tradition, but the strange death of Jacqueline Hillier doesn't provide them with a routine village mystery with more suspects, motives and dodgy alibis than you can shake a truncheon at. There's an almost unsettling lack of serious suspects ("we all liked each other") and no discernible motives ("...there are no shadows in her life"), but who strewn her grave with violets? And why? What's the link between Jacqueline's dying words and the pieces of burned cardboard found at place known locally as One Mile Cliff? However, the case takes an unexpected, dramatic turn when another member of the family dies under suspicious circumstances followed by another "floral tribute" on the freshly filled grave. Just like the last time, there's no hint of a motive or serious suspect to be found. 

The Case of the Faithful Heart is not your typical whodunit and nowhere is this better demonstrated than by the weird, uneven kind of clueing and misdirection. One part of the story almost plays too fair with the (suspicious-minded) reader as it makes a certain something, or someone, standout before it was really necessary. Another part of the plot, which concerned the hidden pattern between the death, is played almost perfectly and I didn't begin to see the light until the third murder – clicking perfectly with the part that played it a little too fairly. Even if you piece together the larger parts of the plot, what happened, why and by whom, you still need Bathurst to fill in the finer details. For example, Jacqueline's dying message is unsolvable and one or two points about the solution raises an eyebrow. Such as how the second death happened or why Jacqueline was found all bloody with torn, muddy clothing. Something that conveniently needed to happen to obscure something else.

So the story and plot The Case of the Faithful Heart comes with its fair share of flaws, but a flawed gem is still a gem. This is a small gem as it found a fresh angle with emotional depth to tell the village mystery with the hidden pattern formed by the deaths being a novel, perhaps even original idea in 1939. This all translated into a compelling detective story that had my full attention from beginning to end. While some details remained obscure until the end, Flynn provided the reader with more than enough information and clues to draw the same conclusions as Bathurst. That made it easy to forgive its imperfections. An honest candidate for my top 10 favorite Brian Flynn mysteries.