Murder of a Matriarch (1936) by Hugh Austin

Hugh Austin, a true enigma, was a mystery writer about whom very little, or anything, is known and what's known doesn't always appear to be correct as he was an American, but according to his GADWiki he was British – complete with an incomplete bibliography. What can be said for certain is that Austin wrote nine detective novels featuring either his New York lawyer Wm Sultan or Lieutenant Peter Quint of the Homicide Bureau of the city of Hudson. And two, or three, standalone mystery novels.

They were well enough received at the time. Curt Evans, of The Passing Tramp, mentioned in his review of Austin's Murder of a Matriarch (1936) that Anthony Boucher called for the Peter Quint series to be reprinted in the 1960s, but "sadly no one has heeded that call even today." However, Coachwhip has reprinted the Wm Sultan novels, Drink the Green Water (1948) and The Milkmaid's Millions (1948), as a twofer and the non-series Death Has Seven Faces (1949). His six detective novels and locked room mysteries from the 1930s remain out-of-print. Robert Adey highlighted Austin's quartet of impossible crime novels ("all competent") in the introduction of Locked Room Murders (1991), under "More Golden Age Contributions," which uncharacteristically spoils the solution of Austin's The Upside Down Murders (1937). But then again, the impossibility in that one concerns the murderer's fingerprints that "do not match up to any of the suspects in a guarded area." So it could only have been one of two tricks. What's left to say about Hugh Austin is a matter of opinion.

While not widely read today, some fanatics managed to dip into Austin's work from the thirties and appeared to have needed the first two books to find his footing in the genre. Nick Fuller abandoned It Couldn't Be Murder (1935) halfway through, because the style was "horribly clumsy, with short, jerky sentences alternating with bathetic purple prose" and Jason Half thought Murder in Triplicate (1935) delivered "a good plot and poor writing." Austin improved considerably on his third try judging from the general positive feedback on it. Curt Evans praised Murder of a Matriarch in the above mentioned review for its "lively characterization, pointed satire, a clever puzzle and credible police procedure." The book has also been mentioned on this blog a few times over the years, but more on that in a moment.

So the work of Austin, particularly his locked room mysteries, have been creeping up my wishlist for a while now and thought it would be a nice idea to ring in the New Year with a potentially long-lost, Golden Age classic from the 1930s – because it has been a while since I discussed a 1930s Golden Age locked room mystery. You have to go back exactly a year to last January.

Hugh Austin's Murder of a Matriarch takes place at the home of the titular matriarch, Mrs. Hortense Farcourt, who's a nasty, sanctimonious widow with "the confidence of seventy-one years of undenounced deceit." When her henpecked husband kicked the bucket, the family began to understand who had been pulling the purse strings tight behind the curtain. Her daughter, Clara Irving, now wants the money, clothes and social status that had been denied by having to live on the salary her father's company paid her husband, Dwight – who left a position at another company to come work for Farcourt Chemicals. Dwight never got his promised nor his wife all the things her mother had promised her ("...if it was in your power to give them"). They're not only one's who suffering under Mrs. Farcourt's stinginess and sadistic tendencies veiled with a nauseous air of feigned virtue. She has taken in her 20-year-old, orphaned grandniece, Nan Rogers, together with her ten years younger brother Jeddle "Jed" Rogers. Nan, of course, is put to work as a cheap, extra pair of hands around the house and Jed is just a 9-year-old boy who wants a puppy, but plays an important part in all that happens at the house.

So all of this still sounds fairly conventional, for a 1930s family whodunit, but the first-half is wholly dedicated to showing Mrs. Farcourt is not merely your typical family matriarch/patriarch who enjoy making their relatives dance like puppets on a purse-string. She's more than a genuinely despicable person. She's cruel in a way only a dumb, thoroughly selfish and self absorb person can be at the cost of everyone around them. Mrs. Farcourt is the reason why Murder of a Matriarch has been mentioned a couple of times on this blog over the years.

Last year, I cobbled together "The Hit List: Top 7 Most Murderable “Victims” in Detective Fiction" based on a discussion with Scott, a regular in the comments, about who would make the cut for a rogue's gallery of the most reprehensible, murderable villains-turned-victim. Scott regularly mentioned Mrs. Farcourt who's not unlike Mary Gregory (Anthony Wynne's The Silver Scale Mystery, 1931) and Miss Octavia Osborne (James Ronald's Murder in the Family, 1936). If I had read Murder of a Matriarch before making that list, Miss Octavia would have surrendered her spot to Mrs. Farcourt. However, what made Mrs. Farcourt a memorable character rather than another dime-a-dozen domestic tyrants is the character of her nine year old grandnephew, Jed. Just a lonely child without friends to play with and only his uncle, Hal Farcourt, as an ally who generally does what bored, nine year old kids did when they had no phones to play around with. That causes a lot of problems leading up to the murder, but what really made my blood boil were the scenes in which the old harridan tries to manipulate and mold Jed's behavior, even personality, by subjugating to the sugary, nauseating stories of Rose Girl and Billy Boy – writing to tell children how to be good boys and girls. Fortunately, these intolerable stories complete with personalized addition have no effect on Jed. Only one he enjoyed was Billy Boy and His Enemy, because Billy Boy got a teeth knocked clean out of his head.

You have to read for yourself to get an idea how malicious and damaging a person Mrs. Harcourt really is, but, to give a clear example, the first cracks in the sibling bond between Nan and Jed already appear under the stress. That sibling bond, of two orphans, is the one thing bridging that ten year gap between them. So damaging or even destroying it is just evil. And then two incidents happened that bring the police into the house.

Mrs. Farcourt nearly trips down a flight of stairs over one of her canes and her poor, long-suffering cat, mockingly named My Comfort, is poisoned. She believes these were attempts to murder her and calls the police, demanding the "head of the murder department," throwing such a row they eventually dispatch Lieutenant Peter Quint to see who's getting murdered. And even to Mrs. Farcourt surprise, Quint appears to take the case seriously. I think the readers who have taken a great dislike to Mrs. Farcourt will enjoy the scene in which Quint effortlessly gets her to reveal her true face without realizing it ("...she considered herself as inscrutable as the night, as deep as the sea"). Quint and his colleague have to return the house that same night when Mrs. Farcourt is shot dead while sitting in her chair at the window.

Murder of a Matriarch comes with an Ellery Queen-style "Challenge to the Reader," but the story following the long, eagerly anticipated shooting Gr'aunty Hortence is in the mold of an early police procedural. Quint naturally has a whole police department and laboratory at his back, but they take care of the routine police work in the background or off-page. So the investigation is mostly of Quint and Sergeant Hendricks questioning everyone at the house, while noting there were more motives than alibis going around. One character I forgot to mention is Mrs. Farcourt older, doddering brother, Willie Jeddle, who let's everyone (including the police) know he hated his sister ("she wasn't any more human than a leech") and "were act of human kindness to wish her dead." Plenty of motives and not enough alibis to pick apart is not the only complication. A problem arises from the murder weapon and ballistics. There's still that impossible crime that landed it a place in Adey's Locked Room Murders.

It's always a tricky thing to pull off a satisfying locked room murder or other impossible crime when the book is nearing its conclusion, because a good one generally needs time and consideration. So when an impossible crime is introduced late into a story, they tend to be minor and routine affairs. The locked room situations from James Ronald's Sealed Room Murder (1934) and Jonathan Latimer's Murder at the Madhouse (1935), but Murder of a Matriarch proved to be an exception to the rule. Austin deserves credit for how the locked room came as a result from everything preceded: a poisoning with prussic acid inside a watched kitchen and no trace of the poison to be found inside. I really liked Quint's false-solution preceding the correct one. This time, the false-solution didn't outshine the correct one. Although I had been playing with a similar idea for the locked room-trick, I preferred the much more practical correct solution. The false-solution was fun and clever in parts, but a bit pulpy and barely credible. So perfectly suited to throw out as a false-solution!

So, yes, I enjoyed my introduction to this obscure, unjustly forgotten Golden Age mystery writer. Murder of a Matriarch is perhaps not quite as crisply plotted as the best known mysteries from his better remembered contemporaries, but Austin played the Grandest Game with a lot of heart and respect. Most impressively, the story and plot largely concerned the actions of a convincingly, well-drawn nine year old boy who could have been written by Gladys Mitchell – only mystery writer who knew how to portray normal children. Jed Rogers would not have been out-of-place in a Mitchell novel and is the MVP of Murder of a Matriarch. A reprint is deserved and long overdue!

Well, that's the first of the year. Happy (belated) 2026 everyone!