The Curse of the Reckaviles (1927) by Walter S. Masterman

Walter S. Masterman was among the early British pulp writers who diligently worked on keeping the shelves of the lending libraries stocked with popular fiction running the gamut from horror, supernatural and science-fiction to thriller and detective novels – every subgenre in between. Masterman's twenty-six novels often embraced the more fantastical and outré elements of the pulps. So his Chief Inspector Arthur Sinclair, of Scotland Yard, has an incredibly strange career for a Golden Age detective character. Sinclair first appeared in a conventional locked room mystery, The Wrong Letter (1926), but would go to encounter strange creatures and lost races on faraway adventures.

I read The Wrong Letter last year on the recommendation of Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included it in his "A Locked Room Library: One Hundred Recommended Books." Jim has been fascinated with Masterman's work for years and reviewed a dozen of the Ramble House reprints. The Wrong Letter is not bad and, where genre history is concerned, not entirely without interest. Just not a great detective novel or classic locked room mystery. Overall decent enough to not ignore the second title in the series. That second novel is a bit strange when compared to its predecessor.

If The Wrong Letter looked towards the detective story's future, The Curse of the Reckaviles (1927) returned to its past. It's a pure imitation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle divided in two section like A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Valley of Fear (1914).

The first-half of The Curse of the Reckaviles, "Book I: The Curse," begins with Jack and Ena Sefton, brother and sister, who lost their father and "were left to face the world alone" with barely a penny to their name – nor a roof over their head. A school friend of Ena offers them the use of a summer bungalow at Portham-on-Sea on the South Coast. A so-called "bungalow town" that had sprung up when a speculative builder struck a deal with the current Lord Reckavile to bypass the town council and pesky inspectors. The bungalow town is now largely abandoned and bordered up, until the summer season, which only added to the already gloomy mood of Jack and Ena. Not to mention "the gruesome crime which had fallen on the village," the impossible murder of Lord Reckavile at his desolate, largely empty castle.

The butler of the castle, Giles, and the village constable, John Brown, overheard an angry quarrel, "never, never, only over my dead body," between Lord Reckavile and an unknown visitor in the library. Only the door is locked. When they hear the sound of a blow and "a horrible cry," they break down the door to find Lord Reckavile's body with a knife between his ribs. And nobody else! The door was locked and the key is missing, but Giles and Brown were standing outside the library listening at the door. The windows were fastened on the inside and "no trap doors or secret panels that can be found." So the vanishing murderer revives old stories of the Reckavile Curse in the village, while others believe there's madness in the family ("...they are probably nearer the truth").

Chief Inspector Sinclair tasks the young Inspector Fletcher to Portham-on-Sea to sort out the mess, which brings him into contact with Jack and Ena. Jack has withdrawn and is gone most of the time, but refuses to say where's going or what's he's doing. A lonely Ena befriends a mysterious gentleman, Mr. Halley, who has secrets of his own. A missing bank manager has been seen in the neighborhood and an apparently abandoned cottage is brightly lit at night. Fletcher even has a brush with the ghost of a long-dead ancestor of Lord Reckavile. A tangle of strange incidents, closely guarded secrets and leads is handled by Fletcher with all the skill and tact of a typical Lestrade, i.e. not very well. Half way through the story, Sinclair returns to gather everyone involved for a dramatic revelation. Not of the murderer, but something else requiring to take a step back into the past.

The second-half of The Curse of the Reckaviles, "Book II: The Reckaviles," retraces the steps of several Reckaviles covering decades and several lifetimes, before ending right back where the first-half ended – which shouldn't be skipped. It's naturally a character piece without much detective interest, however, it's actually better written than the first-half. And it has its moment. I more than enjoyed the Carrian challenge to settle a dispute in a duel ("he drew up the challenge with all the formality of a century ago") and appreciated Walterman tried to breath life in his characters. And think he did a better job than most would probably expect from a pulp writer or the first-half. More importantly, the character piece making up the second-half served an important plot purpose: it made solution acceptable. If the murderer and motive had been revealed at the end of the first-half, the whole thing would have collapsed and few probably would have bothered reading the second-half. Masterman produced (SPOILER/ROT13) n fhecevfvatyl npprcgnoyr rknzcyr bs gur-ohgyre-qvq-vg, orpnhfr bs jub gheaf bhg gb or oruvaq gur ohgyre crefban. Vg qbrfa'g rira oernx gur ehyr gung gur zheqrere zhfg or vagebqhprq rneyl ba va gur fgbel nf ur jnf zragvbarq va gur guveq puncgre.

It helped that the locked room-trick offered something a little different than what was still customary at the time. I don't think it will leave many of you baffled or stumped, but it was nice to see something slightly more elaborate than secret passages, returned keys or basic wire-tricks. That alone places the book above the average 1920s (locked room) mystery novel. Let me remind you The Curse of the Reckaviles was published in the same year as Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927) which is (ROT13) gur jbefg rknzcyr bs gur-ohgyre-qvq-vg pbzcyrgr jvgu n frperg cnffntrjnlf naq frperg gjvaf!

That being said, I have to echo one curiosity Jim pointed out in his review in how Masterman "throws out some casually brilliant ideas" during the first-half anticipating a plot point from a rather well-known detective novel. It's why I didn't discount the possibility that Constable Brown was a bastard Reckavile who was in a position to raise and pass for the ghost of a bearded, long-dead Reckavile for Fletcher. Those casually brilliant ideas all petered out as red herrings.

So, on a whole, The Curse of the Reckaviles ended better than it started, but only recommended as a very well-done homage and imitation of the Doylean detective story from the turn-of-the-century rather than as a Golden Age locked room mystery.