Bats in the Belfry (1937) by E.C.R. Lorac

Edith Rivett was a prolific mystery novelist who penned seventy-some detective novels and a handful of short stories, published under the pseudonyms "E.C.R. Lorac" and "Carol Carnac," which the British Library Crime Classics expanded with a long-lost novel, Two-Way Murder (2021) – originally intended to be published as by "Mary Le Bourne." Martin Edwards and the British Library have not only did a bang-up job in resurrecting Lorac from near-total obscurity, but they also helped rehabilitate her once tarnished reputation. Lorac used to be considered a dull, clunky and largely forgettable humdrum writer like a cross between the worst of John Rhode and Ngaio Marsh. She has a number of novels to her names, such as Death Came Softly (1943) and Murder by Matchlight (1945), which do nothing to dispel that notion. But the recent run of reprints revealed Lorac was an uneven mystery writer. Not a bad one. 

These Names Make Clues (1937) and Checkmate to Murder (1944) changed my views on Lorac as they turned out to be intelligently written, smartly plotted and well-characterized mysteries. And everything but dull or humdrum. Both novels are good examples of Lorac's tendency to plot her own route through a conventional detective story. I think Jim nailed it in his 2018 review of today's subject when he said Lorac didn't reinvent the wheel, but put "a different tread on the tyres." Since it was Jim who was ahead of the current Lorac Revival, why not take a gamble on one of his recommendations. So let's examine, what Martin Edwards called, "a hidden gem from the Golden Age of Murder."

The British Library edition of Lorac's Bats in the Belfry (1937) is subtitled "A London Mystery" and the theme of the story is "odd things do happen in London." A story that begins with a gathering at the home of "that distinguished ornament of the Authors' Club," Bruce Attleton, following the funeral of Anthony Fell – a "cousin of sorts" of Bruce who died in a car wreck. This gathering comprises of Bruce's glamorous wife and well-known actress, Sybilla. Bruce's 19-year-old ward, Elizabeth Leigh. A young, brash journalist, Robert Grenville, who wishes to marry Elizabeth, but Bruce refuses to give his guardian's consent as he believes it would be "a mistake for her to get tied up before she's seen enough of the world." A heavily-built, well-tailored and wealthy stockbroker, Thomas Burroughs. And another close friend of the Attletons, Neil Rockingham. So the conversation turns to murder or rather that age-old problem of how to get rid of a pesky corpse or "what method could you dispose of it so as to avoid any future liabilities." Once phrase from this discussion lingers throughout a large part of the story, "concrete him up into the permanent fabric of the establishment." But then another problem presents itself.

Bruce Attleton is informed by his butler that a gentleman named Debrette phoned while he was out and snaps to the butler, "if he rings up again, tell him I'll bash his bloody head in." Rockingham has noticed Attleton has something on his mind and suspects his friend might be blackmailed or even threatened by this mysterious Debrette. So he decides to form an alliance with Robert Grenville to draw on his journalistic expertise to get a line on Debrette, which leads him to a dark, rundown belfry studio known around the neighborhood by its cheery nickname, the Morgue – scheduled to be demolished. I suspect the scenes with Grenville trying to play the amateur sleuth was Lorac gently poking fun at the mystery thrillers of the 1920s with their young, smart alecky and love-struck heroes. What happens to him throughout the story and how the incidents began to escalate bordered sometimes on darkly comedic slapstick. And that tended to strike a false-note with the serious, even gruesome nature of the case. Bats in the Belfry is not a black, comedic spoof of the detective story, but one of the scenes with Grenville forced me to tag this review with the "locked room mysteries" toe-tag. That requires a brief explanation before getting to the meat of the story.

While on the hunt, Grenville rented the belfry studio and rigged the place with booby traps to give the alarm if anybody gets in, but Grenville is attacked by an intruder "who got in and got out through locked and bolted doors" without disturbing "Grenville's strategic arrangement of pails and tin trays." A very minor, utterly simplistic locked room mystery, which is not given much attention and easily explained away on the last page, but still qualifies as a locked room mystery. I didn't intend to add yet another locked room review to the blog, but those damned, infernal things haunt me like an Edgar Allan Poe creation.

Rockingham turns to Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, of Scotland Yard, when Bruce Attleton and Debrette simultaneously go missing. It doesn't take very long for Macdonald to uncover an otherwise craftily hidden, headless and handless corpse posing a tricky conundrum to the Scotsman. Whose body? Did the author dispose of a blackmailer or did Debrette have a motive to get rid of Attleton? Or is there another possibility? After all, Attleton apparently gave a sign of life and Debrette was spotted in Trafalgar Square. A case as murky as it's muddled and demonstrates Lorac's tendency to approach a fairly standard, straight forward problem in a roundabout way. So the plot can feel a little muddled in places and the ending revealed certain elements that were alluded to held less weight in the end and were kind of glossed over (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13: "abguvat zber pna or cebirq nobhg gur qrnguf bs Nggyrgba'f oebgure naq Nagubal Sryy" or gur ohgyre'f nppvqrag). Nonetheless, the story and plot is not without merit or some truly inspired touches.

Firstly, I thought the method Macdonald employed to identify the headless, handless corpse was quite clever. Back in those days, the police needed a head with an undamaged face and teeth, hands to take fingerprints or some distinctive mark on the body – like a scar or birthmark. And without any of those identifying factors, it would be next to impossible to identify a headless, handless body without any scars or birthmarks in the 1930s. So it was an inspired piece of thinking on Macdonald's part and very fortunate the victim used such a service. Secondly, while the murderer's "whole plan shows an effrontery which simply passes belief," the complicated scheme has an element I've never seen before. The murderer's (SPOILERS/ROT13) bevtvany cyna jnf gb yrnir qbhog nf gb jub xvyyrq jub (nf gur obql jbhyq unir orra orlbaq vqragvsvpngvba) naq hfr gur ynj gung “n zheqrere pnaabg cebsvg ol uvf pevzr” ntnvafg gur ivpgvzf gb frpher gur sbeghar, but the premature discovery of the body demolished that plan. To quote Jim again, Lorac is "not as rigorous as Christie, not as refined as Sayers, not as dull as Marsh," but she had undoubtedly something different to contribute to the British detective. Just like her ambiguously, pen-named contemporary, “Anthony Gilbert,” she did it in her own, slightly unusual way. What's not to be overlooked is Lorac's keen awareness and observations of the world around her, which gives a work today an odd historical flavor. For example, Lorac briefly described the loungers who were always to be found in Trafalgar Square, "wrecks of men, unemployed and unemployables, who spent wretched days and nights in streets and doss-houses, scavenging in the very gutters, living on the uncertain charity of passers-by." Not a passage you're likely to come across in most British mysteries of the 1930s.

Add to this the fact that Bats in the Belfry is Lorac's best clued mystery I've read to date, you can easily overlooked some of the muddling and smudges on this otherwise excellent and most of all fascinating Golden Age mystery. A much merited reprint!

I'll try to return to Lorac before too and think of doing three back-to-back. It would be a good way to get Carol Carnac's Crossed Skis (1952), the posthumous Two-Way Murder and another Chief Inspector Macdonald reprint off the pile.