The Collegian Bodies

"Sometimes you learn something you don't know is important until, when it fits in with everything else, it turns out to be the key piece of the puzzle."

- Ed Baer (Herbert Resnicow's The Dead Room, 1987) 

A month ago, I posted a review of Clifford Orr's second and last published mystery novel, The Wailing Rock Murders (1932), once a rare and highly collectible item, but has since been reissued by Coachwhip as a twofer edition alongside his genre debut – a college-set detective story entitled The Dartmouth Murders (1929). I did not want to wait too long with eliminating this two-in-one volume from the Big Pile. So here's the blog-post that’ll complete my overview of Orr's short-lived stint as a mystery novelist.  

The Dartmouth Murders was published in the same year as Ellery Queen's prize-winning debut novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), which introduced the eponymous series-character of Ellery Queen and his policeman father, Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Department. A remarkable coincidence for a number of reasons. 

First of all, The Dartmouth Murders also had a father and son poking around in a murder case in a semi-official capacity. Secondly, the father from Orr's novel, Joe Harris, is an amateur criminologist who authored several "so-called detective stories," which happens to be a pretty apt description of Ellery Queen – especially of his early incarnation from the international series. Finally, the victims from both books were missing a particular article of clothing: one of them was found in a theatre without his top hat, while the other had last been seen wearing a stripped pajama, but was found clad in a blue, rain-slicked pajama. So it was quite a coincidence these books were rolling off the press around roughly the same time (give or take a few months).

I was also surprised how few father-and-son detective teams followed in footsteps of the Queens and the Harrises. I'm sure there are a few of them, but I can honestly think of only two examples: Porterfield and Andy Adams from Robert Arthur's marvelous "The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice," which can be found in Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (1963) and Mystery and More Mystery (1966). And then there are Ed and Warren Baer from Herbert Resnicow's The Dead Room (1987) and The Hot Place (1990).

So far my shallow observations about the similarities between these two mysteries and now that I cut through all of the extraneous stuff, lets finally take a jab at the book itself. 

The Dartmouth Murders is told from the perspective of its main character, Kenneth "Ken" Harris, who is called away by his father from a fall house party on campus with the request to fetch from a hotel so he can spend the weekend with him – which takes a lot longer than planned. When he finally returned to the dormitory, "the clock on Dartmouth Hall was just striking three across the campus," he found the door to the dorm room he shared with his best friend locked and deadly silent. Nobody answered his knocking. So he decided to crash in Charlie Penlon's room on the floor below, but his sleep is repeatedly disturbed by the sound of dull thuds against the window. 

Kenneth finally ran up the window shade and saw the thumping came from two bare feet: the body of his best friend and roommate, Byron Coates, was hanging by his neck from the rope fire-escape that had been tossed out of their window. Back in those days, the fire escape could be a thick, stout piece of rope you had to slide down from in case of a house fire, but the rope is the first indication that Byron was murdered. A rope the size of the fire escape, "which must be large enough for a hand grip," is unfit for hanging and the bruises under the rope suggest Byron "was dead before it was even tied around his blessed neck." The final piece of evidence is a very peculiar murder weapon that is found inside his body during the post-mortem examination. An "instrument of death" that's used almost immediately after the first murder when a student suddenly drops dead in the college chapel during a service. 

The second death in the chapel came very close to being an impossible crime, but Orr never went the full distance with it. However, the method he employed did anticipate one of John Dickson Carr's earlier Sir Henry Merrivale novels, published as by "Carter Dickson," which demonstrated how this strange murder weapon could be used to stage a full-fledged impossible crime – which makes for an interesting link between both authors. However, the subsequent investigation is a bit of a hit and a miss for various reasons. 

Joe Harris practically takes over the entire investigation from the local sheriff, Ad Barker, who refuses to play the role of "the blundering up-county constable" that populate detective fiction and eagerly cooperates with the criminologist. This effectively gives Joe and Kenneth a free hand to act as they wish, which leads to some unusual developments: a "ghost" who looked like one of the victim was seen fleeing the chapel and Kenneth slowly begins to suspect that his father might be personally involved in the case. Why else would there be a photograph of his father in the picture album of the Coates family? 

All of these developments and Orr's ability to spin a good yarn keeps the reader engaged, but the plot begins to shake and rattle as the final chapter begins to loom on the horizon. 

The truth behind the college murders is firmly rooted in Byron's muddled family history. A history he learned about in a missing letter he received from his mother on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, which contained the motive for his murder, but you can hardly work out the (full) identity of the murderer from all of this information – even when you finally learn the content of the letter. I actually suspected the local inn keeper, because his personal ties to one of the students gave him a motive-by-proxy, but the eventual solution was an even less inspired play on the least-likely-suspect gambit. So that aspect of the plot left something to be desired. Still, I found it to be a well-written detective novel and loved the journey to that final chapter.

So, all in all, The Dartmouth Murders is a dark, moody tale of murder and hidden motives, which is noteworthy for being one of the first college-set mysteries, but plot-wise, the book is standard fare for the period. I agree with Curt Evans, who wrote an introduction for this twofer edition, that Orr's second detective novel, The Wailing Rock Murders, is "an altogether more original work."

When the Wind Blows

"Will you walk into my parlor?
Said a spider to a fly
Tis the prettiest little parlor
That ever you did spy."
- Mary Howitt (The Spider and the Fly, 1829)

Clifford Orr hailed from Portland, Maine, and during his short time on this earth made a living by his pen, starting with writing and scoring musical comedies for his school's drama club, which portended his moderate success as an occasional lyricist – scoring a hit with "I May Be Wrong (But I Think Your Wonderful)," sung by Doris Day. He also worked for a Boston-based newspaper, managed a Wall Street bookshop and rounded out his career as a "Talk of the Town" columnist for The New Yorker magazine. 

A perfectly respectable and presentable résumé, but not entirely complete. It misses an important, if short, period from his career and that brief stint is of interest to the ferocious consumer of crime-fiction. 

During the late 1920s and early '30s, Orr wrote and published two mystery novels, The Dartmouth Murders (1929) and The Wailing Rock Murders (1932), which have since fallen into obscurity. A third book was announced, called The Cornell Murders, but it was never published. So there we have another entry for this lamentable list of lost and unpublished detective stories. Fortunately, the other two have emerged from literary oblivion and found their way back into print. 

Earlier this year, Curt Evans, genre-historian and mystery enthusiast, announced that a small publishing house, Coachwhip, was reissuing The Dartmouth Murders and The Wailing Rock Murders as a twofer volume – for which he penned a short, but insightful, introductory piece. On a side note, Evans seems to have a finger in a number of pies these days and it's starting to resemble the formation of a syndicate, but I love it when scarce, long-forgotten mystery novels get reissued. So I'll just pretend I did not see any syndicate forming going on here. 

Anyway, let's start with this review: I decided to begin with Orr's second mystery novel, The Wailing Rock Murders, which Evans described as an "original work" possessing "a strong element of terror" reminiscent of the "eerily atmospheric Thirties detective novels" by the John Dickson Carr – such as The Three Coffins (1935) and The Crooked Hinge (1938). Surprisingly, the book is not a locked room mystery. I say surprising, because it is listed in Locked Room Murders (1991) and secured a spot in the line-up for the "99 Novels for a Locked Room Library," but there's not a trace of a genuine impossibility to be found between its pages. Only the dark, moody atmosphere makes the book comparable to the work of Hake Talbot, Joel Townsley Rogers and Carter Dickson. 

So how it came to be labeled as a locked room novel is somewhat of a mystery, but let's not dwell on the lack of a miracle crime in the book. Anyway...

One of the first notable aspects of The Wailing Rock Murders is the detective-character, Spaton "Spider" Meech, who is a grotesque and deformed monstrosity: a twisted spine turned him into a hunchback and his long, gangling arms hang well below his knees, while his large head seems to lie on his chest when he walks – which earned him his nickname. He also prefers "to sit cross-legged on tables or on the floor" rather than rest his hump "against the unyielding back of a chair." This malformed image makes children laugh and old ladies cross themselves, but it has served him well when he started to make a name for himself as a Great Detective. After all, the press and public love stories with strange or unusual angles and characters.

The Wailing Rock Murders finds Meech in Ogunquit Beach, Maine, where his ward, Garda Lawrence, is a guest at the home of the Farnols and she invited her Uncle Spaton to join her there. 

Creamer Farnols is an amiable, twinkle-eyed host and his wife, Vera, was described by Garda as "a peach," but suffers from occasional "intervals of unconsciousness." They've a daughter, Patricia, who has invited Philip Masterson: a silent, moody and introspective young man. Garda also invited a young man, Victor Millard, but he has a forthcoming and good-humoredly personality. Finally, there is a holidaying chemist, Richard St. John, and his wife, Helen. 

All of them are packed inside a "scabrously ugly" house, a complete monstrosity, perched on a cliff, like "some strange foreign growth," which has "a many-angled cupola topping the whole abomination" – making it appear as "the head of some underworld king" protruding "from the rocky earth." The house has a twin structure perched on the rocks of a nearby cliff. Below them are the windswept and haunted beaches, which is where the cursed rocks of the book-title can be found: there's a curiously-shaped cavern down there and "whenever the wind blows across the opening in a certain way" a slight humming can be heard, but, every now and then, a tremendously heavy wind produces a heart-wrenching wail. A wail that, according to the legend, foretells of death. 

I found this to be somewhat reminiscent of the cursed, rocky protrusions from Arthur J. Rees' The Moon Rock (1922).

Well, the legend of the wailing rocks deliver on their promise and a gruesome murder occurs not longer after the arrival of Meech, which he discovers: Meech finds the body of his ward, "her throat most horribly, most hideously slit," inside the cupola room. So he immediately takes charge of the investigation and the local sheriff allows him to usurp all of the authority in the case. One of the criticisms often leveled against the Golden Age detective story is the freehand given to meddlesome amateurs and semi-official investigators, but Meech takes it to the next level – basically hijacking the office of sheriff. I do not recall having come across anything like this before. 

However, Meech does function as a proper investigator: drawing maps, compiling timetables and conducting interviews, but what really drives the narrative is stumbling from one situation into another. He angrily listens to the murderer's confession, which leads to a second throat-cutting in the cupola of the other house. A supposedly empty, deserted and boarded up place, but Meech discovers it houses an embarrassing family secret and leads him to a third murder – one that's buried deep into the past. It also becomes apparent that mental issues and twisted minds are a common feature among this small cast of characters. 

All of this takes place over the course of a single, sleep-deprived night and during the early morning following their nightmarish experience. And as the sun rises, Meech figures out the whole mess and comes to an unsettling conclusion. 

The explanation is surprisingly simplistic and you've got to admire the fine tight-rope Orr tried to traverse, but there's a problem or two: one of them is that the solution made nearly all of the plot-threads appear as irrelevant and only served as a distraction from the obvious. Secondly, the passing of time dulled the twist of the solution. It was not entirely new when the book was originally published, but Orr's application of it was unusual and noteworthy. I suspected such sort of game was being played, but kept being lured away from it by the other plot-threads. 

So, all in all, The Wailing Rock Murders is not one of the all-time greats from the genre's Golden Era, but still a good, fun and solid read. If you love such mystery writers as Carr and Talbot, you'll probably like this one. Regardless, I suspect The Dartmouth Murders will end up being my favorite of the two. It sounds like Patrick Quentin (college setting) meets Ellery Queen (father-and-son detective team). So you can expect a review of that one in the near future and I'll try to have a genuine locked room mystery for the next one.
 

By the way, is it just me or is there something different about this place?