E.C.R. Lorac's Murder as a Fine Art (1953), as by "Carol Carnac," is the ninth, or possibly tenth, title in the Chief Detective-Inspector Julian Rivers series and a novel listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) describing an unusual impossible murder involving a marble statue – a statue "too heavy for anyone to have moved from its plinth." So it was added to the locked room/impossible crime wishlist, but Murder as a Fine Art had been out-of-print for decades until fairly recently.
Murder as a Fine Art takes place against the backdrop of the Ministry of Fine Arts, created "during that short period of optimism following World War Two," but, like so many fictitious British ministries, it was a bureaucratic disaster from the start. First of all, the ministry is roofed under "a white elephant of a building," Medici House, which had been vacated by another ministry ("you might have smelt a rat when the Ministry of Food agreed to vacate it"). Joyce-Lawrence, the first Minister of Fine Arts, wanted to put together a collection of art works of "National Importance," but he only had enough to rake together a collection of obscure, often unsigned contemporary paintings – referred to "the Minister's funnies." Joyce-Lawrence died in office and was replaced by an economic-minded, competent administrator who made a lot of cuts and trimmings to the ministry, before passing away himself. So the third and current minister, Humphry David, finds himself in charge of a bloated bureaucratic apparatus with an incomprehensible, practically worthless collection of modern paintings and an army of Civil Servants who don't know anything about art, but some pretend they do. Edwards aptly described this ministry as a "mildly Kafkaesque establishment" in his introduction.
One such Civil Servant is Edwin Pompfret, the Deputy to the Permanent Secretary, who likes modern art because it's modern to do so and dresses for the part. Pompfret has an artistic vendetta against the enormous, several tons weighing marble statue of Earl Manderby gracing the elegant stairway. Pompfret hates the marble monstrosity with a passion ("...labels us as Philistines") and has suggested more than once to topple it off its plinth, because it would be "a wonderful sight to see it bounce down the stairs." So when his broken, mangled body is found lying on the stairs surrounded by smashed, bloodstained chunks of marble, everyone assumed he had accidentally killed himself trying to topple Earl Manderby. Chief Detective-Inspector Julian Rivers arrives on the scene with Detective-Inspector Lancing in tow to announce Pompfret was murdered. How could anyone have moved that chunk of marble? Let alone tipping it down a staircase towards the obliging victim! This murder comes in the wake of Humphry David getting suspicious something very dodgy is going on, somewhere, in his ministry.
So an enticing premise to a story running along three different lines, neatly brought together. There is the well-realized backdrop and depiction of the fictitious, slightly satirical ministry and digs at modern art. Lorac basically smashed bureaucratic skulduggery together artistic shenanigans with amusing results. Not quite the Ministry of Administrative Affairs from Yes, Minister, but enjoyable nonetheless. And provides for an excellent backdrop for a good, old-fashioned and theatrically-staged impossible murder.
That impossible murder is the second line, or plot-thread, showing Lorac approached the detective story in her own way and the locked room mystery was no exception. Most of theorizing and proposing of false-solutions comes from gossip at the ministry with lunchroom theories covering everything from carjacks to vibrations from the basement accidentally toppling the statue. You know, the kind of solutions and tricks a normal person would suggest to such a problem, but Lorac provided a solution that's both bonkers and oddly practical (ROT13: “abj, zl znfgrecvrpr, Jvyr R. Pblbgr, Fhcre Travhf!”). Brutalism applied to the art of murder! What really deserves a chef's kiss is using such a trick inside a historical building housing the Ministry of Fine Arts. Even though the clueing is a touch spotty, simply as a long-overlooked impossible crime novel, Murder as a Fine Art is worth renewed attention from locked room aficionados. Lastly, arguably the weakest aspect of the story and plot, the rather plain procedural investigation from the dry, colorless Rivers and his many colleagues doing routine work, while Rivers and Lancing ask questions. They do a thorough, competent job showing Lorac's detective fiction can be classed as an ancestor of the post-WWII police procedural, but the investigative parts lacks the color and imagination of everything surrounding it. A routine approach to a decidedly non-routine case or ordinary murder. Something you simply notice while reading along, but not something to detract from the plot or diminish my enjoyment.
So, all in all, Murder as a Fine Art is a surprisingly good vintage mystery from the dying, twilight years of the Golden Age detective story and maybe my favorite Lorac, so far. Highly recommended!
By the way, I can already taste the disagreement in the air over the impossible crime, but, unlike Earl Manderby, I'm not budging an inch. Murder as a Fine Art is one of the ten best impossible crime novels from the 1950s!
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