Hymn to Murder (2020) by Paul Doherty

Paul Doherty's Hymn to Murder (2020) is the twenty-first medieval detective novel starring Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal and Edward II's personal envoy, which has an intricate, many-stranded plot woven around the "strange journey" of the Lacrima Christi – a magnificent, lustrous ruby considered to be "the most beautiful jewel the world had ever seen." A royal gift from the Caliph of Egypt to Prince Edward of England that came with a gold, bejeweled casket and were locked away in the great crypt at Westminster Abbey.

A decade before the events in Hymn to Murder, the crypt was burglarized and looted of its treasures. A real-life heist that was the subject of Doherty's non-fiction book The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303: The Extraordinary Story of the First Big Bank Raid in History (2005) and the historical figure behind the crime, Richard Puddlicot, previously appeared in Murder Wears a Cowl (1992). Richard Puddlicot forged an alliance with a corrupted order of Benedictine monks, the Blackrobes of Westminster, who were "firmly under the rule of a false shepherd, the powerful and resolute Adam Warfeld." The chief sacristan of the abbey directly responsible for its security. So the robbery was a howling success and the mob reveled as they openly ridiculed and taunted the King.

Sir Hugh Corbett, Ranulf-atte-Newgate and a retinue of mailed clerks were dispatched and "swept Westminster like God's own storm." Some thieves were beheaded, while others were hanged or turned king's evidence. Richard Puddlicot was captured, tried and sentenced to hang as close as possible "to where he had committed his outrageous crimes." Adam Warfeld and his monks pleaded benefit of clergy, under the protection of Holy Mother Church, which got them banished to the desolate, derelict priory of St Benet – hidden away "deep in the wilds of Dartmoor." However, the Lacrima Christi was not recovered and eventually turned in Rome as the coveted possession of Pope Boniface VIII. This was only short-lived as the ruby vanished again during the coronation of Pope Clement V. Lord Simon Malmaison was assigned to find and return the ruby, but it would take until 1312 before Lord Simon and the Secret Chancery received anonymous letters that "the casket and possibly the jewel could be acquired by the English Crown."

This is only the prologue! When Sir Hugh and Ranulf arrive at Malmaison Manor, high on Doone Moor, they find a nest of thievery, treason and wholesale murder.

Lord Simon and another former mailed clerk, John Wodeford, served with Sir Hugh in the Secret Chancery and they were tasked with finding the stolen pieces of jewelry that were never recovered. So when the anonymous letters arrived, Wodeford visited Sir Simon and retreated into a private chamber, which they securely locked and double-bolted. But neither came out. When the door is broken down, it opens onto the scene of a gruesome, double crossbow murder. Lord Simon's body is sprawled in a chair and "the stark black feathers of a crossbow quarrel made it look as if a small, angry bird had smashed into his temple." Wodeford was lying on the floor with a crossbow bolt embedded deep in his chest. So where did the murderer go? This is not the only, apparently impossible, murder committed within the walls of Malmaison Manor. Sir Ralph Hengham, principal tax collector in the shires of Devon and Cornwall, who had the right to investigate the murders as a servant of the Crown. He was given the murder room and also ended up with a crossbow bolt in his chest behind the locked, recently refurbished, door with the key still sticking in the lock on the inside. The murderer took the money the victims had on them in both cases.

Still this is only the beginning of Sir Hugh and Ranulf problems. On the night of the double murder, Lord Simon's two pet leopards were freed from their underground pens to roam the dark, misty moors. A place dangerous enough without "great cats roaming, roaring and seeking prey" as a band of outlaws, the Sagittarius and his Scarecrows, stalk those same moors and locals believe them responsible for the recent wrecking of ships along the coast – as well as the deaths of Lord Simon, Sir Ralph and Wodeford. And numerous people have disappeared on the moors. You could "hide a legion of corpses in the deep quagmires and marshes" where "the dead sink like stones." What about the mass disappearance of the twelve members of the Guild of Fleshers and Tanners who simply vanished into thin air on their way home from an evening of drinking and feasting. And, yet again, this is only the beginning as they merely constitute the problems confronting Sir Hugh upon his arrival in the region.

The murders and blood shedding go on unmercifully, of which two more occur inside a locked and bolted rooms. However, the more interesting of these crimes is the regrettably gruesome death of Grease-hair, spit-boy at the manor, who spotted something amiss when he peered into the first locked room without being able to put his finger on it and "he must have voiced his concerns, repeating them time and again, so he had to be silenced." Grease-hair was turned into "a living torch," but left behind a sort of dying message ("...drew a crude diagram of parallel lines"). The ship wrecking also continue unabated and has brief, but interesting, passage on 13th and 14th century English law (the First Statute of Westminster) that "tried to define what is a legitimate wreck as opposed to what could be defined as deliberate destruction and murder." The wording of the law basically handed any ethically challenged person a motive to dispose of any "hapless survivor" who crawls from the sea near a wreck. A pity Doherty didn't elaborate on that in his Author's Note at the end of the book.

So, as you can probably tell, Hymn to Murder has an extremely busy, complicated plot that keeps twisting and turning with every passing chapter, which can be tricky to pull-off. Doherty can pull it off. And he did, to a certain extend, in Hymn to Murder. This story is more about Sir Hugh "imposing order on the mysterious events swirling around them" and, as one review mentioned, exposing who-did-what-to-whom rather than creating a genuine who-and howdunit pull. Firstly, the culprits eventually stand out and not because only a few characters remain standing come the end of the story. Secondly, two of the locked rooms have extremely disappointing solutions (ROT13: svqqyvat jvgu snyfr xrlf), while the third murder in the locked larder showed a little more imagination in how it handled an otherwise routine trick. The double murder of Lord Simon and Wodeford is the center piece of the locked room elements, but the trick is, once again, nothing particularly worthy of note. Admittedly, I failed to spot how it was done because a bloodstained crossbow bolt had been driven into the inside of the locked door (the insignia of the Sagittariu). Simply assumed that very conveniently placed crossbow bolt was used to pull a string around to help drive home the bolts and turning the key. But how the double murder of the lord of the manor and his special guest relates to the other murders at the mansion was nicely tied together. Same can be said about the other, numerous plot-strands drawn across "the treacherous bogs, quagmires, morasses and marshes" of Dartmoor. 

Hymn to Murder reads like a historical suspense-thriller in the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and Seishi Yokomizo's Yatsuhakamura (The Village of Eight Graves, 1949/50) rather than a traditional, fair play locked room mystery. While the who-did-what-to-whom style plot might lack that genuine whodunit pull, the whole complicated tapestry is tightly woven together in a clear, logical and recognizable pattern enhanced by Doherty's haunting depiction of those lonely, isolated moors and an unforgiving sense of time-and place. Doherty never shielded his readers from the darker, grimier parts of history, but found the depiction of how power was wielded at a time when weak leadership was not respected and a recipe for disaster. So even just rulers and administrators had to govern with a strong arm. Sir Hugh has always been presented as typical agent of order who honestly cares about his fellow human beings and the suffering of the innocent. This is exemplified towards the end when he tells the Lord Sheriff not to weep for the culprits, who were about to receive justice, but weep for "the likes of my dear comrade and his crew on The Angel of the Dawn," their widows, children and their other poor victims. Not a single tear for those whose hands have been stained with the blood of good, innocent people. Sir Hugh takes no personal pleasure in handing out the often horrific, terrifying punishments that were the norm in his days, but, in order to prevent chaos and lawlessness, he does what he does best – "hunting murderers, trapping them and sending them to God." What he does at the end is not so much restoring law and order as it's cleansing the region of its festering evil and old, buried sins.

So, a long story short, Hymn to Murder is another great and engrossing read from the dark historian, Paul Doherty. And a reminder to return to his work more often in the future.