Death's Mannikins (1937) by Max Afford

Malcolm Afford was an Australian newspaper reporter, playwright and radio scenarist, "considered somewhat of a pioneer of the whodunit in radio broadcasting," who had a brief as a mystery novelist during the 1930s and '40s – producing half a dozen novels and a few short stories under the name "Max Afford." Afford's novels and short stories were clearly aligned to Van Dine-Queen School with his series-detectives, Jeffery Blackburn and Chief Inspector William Read, closely resembling Ellery Queen and Inspector Richard Queen. Particularly during the first couple of novels. More importantly, the series is peppered with locked room murders and quasi-impossible crime material with The Dead Are Blind (1937) and his two short stories standing as his most notable contributions to the locked room sub-genre. So it was high time to return to Afford, Blackburn and Read. 

Death's Mannikins (1937), alternatively published as The Dolls of Death, is the second title in the series and carries the long subtitle, "being a sober account of certain diabolical happenings, not untinged with the odour of Brimstone, which befell a respectable family at Exmoor in this present year."

Jeffery Blackburn is a mathematician who had "relinquished the Chair of Higher Mathematics at Greymaster University in favour of the more fascinating pastime of criminology," which gave him a rising reputation as an amateur detective specialized in puzzling cases. One day, Blackburn meets an old friend, Rollo Morgan, in the lounge of the Akimbo Club. Morgan is the private secretary of Professor Cornelius Rochester, a demonology scholar, who lives with his family in an ancient, medieval looking house situated in a lonely, isolated valley – where "all the fogs in the world seem to roll up from the Bristol Channel." A three-story house complete with battlemented tower, a miniature observatory left by the previous cockamamie owner and a small, timeworn chapel on the grounds. The widowed Professor Rochester lives there with his two sons and daughter, Roger, Owen and Jan, who were taken care off by their aunt, Beatrice Rochester. Aunt Beatrice has "a bitter tongue" and "an almost uncanny faculty of prying into other people's business," but also the beating heart of the household as "she managed the business affairs, handled all finances, paid the bills, and acted as parent, housekeeper, and general adviser to the household." And at the time of the diabolical happenings, there are three guests staying at Rochester House. A journalist by the name of Philip Barrett and two of Jan's friends, Dr. Brian Austin and his fiancee, Camilla Ward.

Morgan tells Blackburn "there's been a death in the family," Aunt Beatrice, who tumbled down a flight of stairs and broke her neck, but strange incidents have occurred right before and after her death.

A year ago, a wood-carving friend of Professor Rochester presented him with six hand-carved miniatures of him, his family and the butler, Michael Prater. A set of six wooden dolls, which were placed in a box and forgotten about, but nearly a year later the box had vanished. Nobody knew what happened to the box or the dolls. And nobody claims responsibility when Aunt Beatrice receives a parcel with her replica in it, which is dismissed as a practical joke and ignored. Several days after the funeral, Roger receives a parcel containing his replica with "a thin, sharp spike" driven through the doll's back and now there's a private detective, Trevor Pimlott of the Argus Detective Agency, to guard and follow Roger around like a shadow – which turned the atmosphere in the house "rather turgid." Morgan has the feeling there's something ugly behind it all and came to London to pursued Blackburn to come back with him to Rochester House. But things have already been happening when they arrive.

Roger has gone missing and is not found until the following morning when the stone chapel is unlocked for the Sunday morning service. Roger lays sprawled in front of the altar with a knife thrust up to the hilt in his chest, but the details surrounding his death and the crime scene raises a ton of questions. 

Death's Mannikins is listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) and described the murder as "death by invisible agency," which is a fair description, but, plot-technically speaking, it's not an impossible crime. The murder of Roger Rochester is very reminiscent to the central murder from Rupert Penny's Policeman in Armour (1937) in which the scene of the crime wasn't locked or under close observation, but resembled an obstacle course that made murder appear like an impossible one. The obstacles in Death's Mannikins consists of "a patch of soggy clay some six inches deep" at the chapel entrance and Roger wearing slippers without a trace of mud. The availability of the chapel key in combination with the time of death and an unholy downpour on the night of the murder, which marooned a few members of the household in the nearby village. The murder weapon was taken from the professor's private museum of medieval weapons and the black arts, which is kept locked. And the powerful thrust needed to sink the knife up to the hilt into the body.

So, while not a proper locked room mystery, or impossible crime, there's definitely a touch of John Dickson Carr to the plot. However, I think that touch is much more notable in how the second murder is presented to the reader. The house has an unusual timepiece ("baroque ornamentation") with mechanical features and tiny figures popping out as it strikes away the hours. This clock is effectively put to use to announce the second murder as it strikes midnight. More often than not, Carr depicted clocks as harbingers of death or associates of the Grim Reaper. Death Watch (1935) and The Skeleton in the Clock (1948) come to mind, but there's also the shop window clock and church bells in The Three Coffins (1935) and the clock handle from the psychological experiment in The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939). So a very well done Carr-like scene and even better is how it was used (ROT13) ol gur zheqrere gb perngr n pnfg-veba nyvov gung jbhyq abg unir orra bhg-bs-cynpr va n Puevfgbcure Ohfu abiry.

Despite the comparisons to Carr, Penny and Queen, Death's Mannikins is not merely an imitation of the author's favorite mystery novels and detective characters. Afford tried to do something with the premise and cast of characters whom proved themselves to be one of the unwilling group of suspects and witnesses from a 1930s detective novel. Jeffery Blackburn realizes after while that "the people with whom he was dealing would yield more to the influence of the iron hand rather than the velvet glove." You can't imagine 1930s Ellery Queen heavy-handedly dragging the truth out of his suspects. Sgt. Velie? Yes. But not EQ. Or how the second murder generated a new puzzling question regarding the first murder. Why was Roger stabbed in the chest and the second victim in the back? I appreciated how the murderer managed to obtain the key to museum (clever and simple) and the last-minute attempt to throw sand in the eyes of the reader. So, while not batting in the same league as Carr or Queen, Death's Mannikins is not without some merit of its own.

Only reason why it failed to translate into a minor classic is Afford's shortcomings as a second-stringer. One of the better, more inspired and capable second-stringers of the period, but a second-stringer nonetheless. So the murder of Roger is not half as mysterious as he tried to present it (e.g. the knife wound) nor is the murderer as cleverly hidden as the solution likes you to believe. Death's Mannikins is an entertaining, spirited, but unmistakably second-string, detective novel that tried to live up to the greats of the genre. While it didn't success, plot-wise, the book succeeded in being a kindred spirit of Carr and Queen. And, to quote Jim, of The Invisible Event, to have your second detective novel "held favourably with those grand old men of the genre is no small feat." What do you know... he was right for once!