Model for Murder (1952) by Derek Smith

On December 20, 1893, The Half-Penny Marvel published "The Missing Millionaire" by "Hal Meredeth," a penname of Harry Blythe, which marked the first appearance of the most prolific Sherlock Holmes imitators in all of popular fiction, Sexton Blake, whose bibliography comprises of an astonishing 4,000 stories – written by over 200 different writers. A prolific run of eight decades that ended up encompassing short stories, novels, stage plays, comic books, silent movies, talkies, radio serials and even a TV-series in the 1960s.

So the sheer size and volume of the Sexton Blake Library has earned the series its own separate wing in the crime-genre, but, as everyone knows, quantity is rarely a substitute for quality. And this series is no exception.

Sexton Blake is synonymous with tawdry, formulaic thrillers with run-of-the-mill action scenes, pulpy gangsters and super-human villains (i.e. Waldo the Wonderman). That may be why I was never compelled to explore this series. A chronic lack of interest that persisted even when I learned that one of the greatest authorities on the impossible crime story, Derek Smith, had tried his hands at one that faced Blake with "a sealed room murder," which is usually more than enough to get my full attention – except that this time even that didn't work. A Sexton Blake novel simply did not appeal to me. No matter who wrote it.

That is, until that infernal nuisance, "JJ," posted a review on his blog claiming Smith's wrote "a legitimate excellent" Blake story filled "lovely clues." Showing what could have been had the writers not turned Blake in bargain basement cross between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond.

So I decided to get myself a copy of Model for Murder (1952), which went unpublished during Smith's lifetime, but was finally printed in The Derek Smith Omnibus (2014) along with Whistle Up the Devil (1954), Come to Paddington Fair (1997) and a short story – titled "The Imperfect Crime." Admittedly, the story was better than I expected even after the positive review from JJ. Most notably the opening chapters and a conclusion that resembles a contortion act!

John Pugmire's Locked Room International published The Derek Smith Omnibus and speculated Model for Murder was probably "too cerebral for the audience," which would explain why it collected dust for sixty years. Anyway...

Model for Murder, or Model Murder, begins when an artist's model, Linda Martin, hurries to Baker Street on behalf of her employer, Leo Garvary, a once well-known sculptor who has been receiving anonymous letters of a threatening nature. That morning, Garvary received another threatening letter, but this he confided in Martin that he finally guessed who sent him and asked her to fetch Blake – who happens to be abroad on a case of national importance. So the task falls on the shoulders of his assistant, Tinker, whose role in this story genuinely surprised me.

Tinker is definitely not your regular Dr. Watson or Capt. Hastings, more of an Archie Goodwin-type of character, who actually solves the locked room problem before Blake officially enters the picture. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When Tinker and Martin arrive at the studio, they see the eccentric Garvary standing by the door of his soundproof studio. He looks at them, enters the studio, slams and locks the door behind him and that's the last time they see him alive, because when a spare key from the desk clerk opens the door they find an empty studio. All of the windows are "securely latched" from the inside. A transom was secured by a triple notched bar and a second door was locked and bolted on the studio side. After a brief search, they find Garvary's body in one of the cupboards lining the left and right hand wall, but not an atom of proof someone had been present in the room to fire the gun.

Firstly, the locked room trick is not as ingenious as the one from Whistle Up the Devil and basically reuses an age-old technique to leave behind a locked crime-scene. So you should not go into the book expecting a knock-out classic like his second impossible crime novel, but admittedly, Smith used this technique with the expertise of locked room expert. Smith mentioned two potential explanations, trick-windows that slide into the wall and a hollow statue, which gave me an idea for an alternative explanation.

When the possibility of a hollow statue was mentioned, my mind immediately conjured up the image of a Russian nesting doll. You see, there were three cupboards on each side of the room.

Just imagine the studio used to have two, large storage closets, but these closets were converted into six, separate cupboards and this would open the possibility that the walls separating the middle cupboard from the first and third cupboard is very thin, no more than wooden panels, which perhaps consists of two halves that can slide into one another – to make more room when needed. So the murderer could have been hidden in the second cupboard and, when this person heard Tinker close the door of the first cupboard, crawled into it through the sliding wall panel. Like a human shell game. And simply slip out of the room when everyone's attention was somewhere else (like inspecting the inner room).

However, the solution to the locked room murder turned out to be very different. Surprisingly, Tinker not only worked out the locked room trick, but demonstrated the trick to a baffled police constable, who demanded answers, which he refused to do until he had spoken to his employer – only to get shot and seriously wounded a short time later. A shooting briefly presented as a (semi) impossibility, but this aspect is quickly dispelled by a discovery in the hearth.

In any case, this murderous attempt effectively removed Tinker from the stage and left Blake with the daunting task to work out an explanation based on the breadcrumbs of information his assistant left behind. However, the pure detective elements from the opening chapters began to dilute in the middle section.

The reader knows by this point who shot Tinker and that this person has a connection with a shadowy underworld figure, but, more importantly, the gunman is determined to get his hands on a little black book filled with information of his criminal enterprise. So the seedy thriller elements really kick in here and this person even kidnaps and physically abuses Martin. This portion of the plot is the part that adheres to the formula of the series.

Luckily, Smith came back strong in the final stages of the story by serving a triple-layered solution to the reader. A solution that volleyed the guilt of the murder between two characters. This is likely the part that was too cerebral for its intended audience, because the conclusion is everything you'd expect from a legitimate expert on the traditional detective story. Model for Murder should have been a model for this series during its twilight years. It would be funny if this series had gone against the trend

In summation, Model for Murder is an interesting experiment of a traditional-minded mystery writer attempting to worm a puzzle-plot into the formula of a cheap, action-oriented series of pulp-thrillers and defied expectations by succeeding – better than he had any right to. I probably will never read another Sexton Blake story in my life, but glad I took a change on this one. I really like Smith and this world is a poorer place for the fact that he only wrote three (locked room) novels.

Finally, I referred to JJ's review earlier and in it he mentioned a confusing fact regarding the locked door of the studio. JJ said that the door was described as not having a keyhole, but was unlocked with a key a few pages later. I think JJ misunderstood this. The door didn't have an old-fashioned keyhole that you can look through, which were still common (indoors) in the fifties, but there was a modern lock on the door. A yale lock. So Smith didn't make a sloppy mistake there.

Gun Play

"Murder isn’t like love, it doesn't happen at first sight."

- Jeff Troy (Kelley Roos' Made Up to Kill, 1940)

Several years ago, I reviewed Whistle Up the Devil (1954) by Derek "Howe-Dun-It" Smith, a beloved book collector and crime-fiction enthusiast, who wrote a handful of detective novels in the vein of John Dickson Carr – which were consigned to obscurity for over half a century. As obscure as the book may be, Whistle Up the Devil has always enjoyed a solid reputation among the connoisseurs of the impossible crime stories and could be obtained on the secondhand book market. But its sequel became one of the scarcest collectibles in the genre.

Smith failed to secure a publisher for his second Algy Lawrence mystery, Come to Paddington Fair (1997), but a Japanese collector, Mori Hideo (?), took the manuscript home and financed a limited print-run of less than one hundred copies – published by Murder by the Press in English. So you could, technically, get hold of a copy, but I assume the book was not widely read upon its initial publication. Still, I bet collectors had an easier time acquiring one of these limited editions than finding copies of Ayresome Johns' Pattern of Terror (1987) and A Spectre-Room of Fancy (1989). 

John Pugmire of Locked Room International rescued Smith from the dreaded fate of biblioblivion and published The Derek Smith Omnibus (2014), which consisted of three novels and one short story. As well as an introduction by one of the genre's most noted locked room experts, Robert Adey, who knew Smith personally. A year later, Pugmire published Whistle Up the Devil and Come to Paddington Fair separately. However, the third novel from the omnibus edition, Model for Murder (1952), was branded by reviewers as mediocre and was not reissued by itself. 

But all of Smith's impossible crime fiction is finally available and the twosome of Algy Lawrence mysteries are a feast for everyone who loves traditional detective stories. 

Come to Paddington Fair is dedicated to the memory of John Dickson Carr, "Lord of the Sorcerers," but the structure of the plot resembles the work of another Golden Ager, namely Ngaio Marsh, who was the undisputed Queen of the Theatrical Mystery and wrote a score of detective stories set in the spotlight of the stage – such as Enter a Murderer (1935), Swing, Brother, Swing (1949) and Off with His Head (1957). However, the book (IMHO) still qualifies as an impossible crime story, but Algy and Chief Inspector Castle do not realize, until right before the end, they were trying to solve "the mystery of yet another crime which couldn't possible have been committed." 

So we have an impossible crime novel posing as a Marsh-style theatrical mystery, but the opening of the book tore a page from the hardboiled playbook.

Chinese edition

Richard Mervan is a low-grade bank clerk and one who briefly became a hero when he fought off a street mugger, which left him with a blood-stained shirt and a sore neck. His assailant attempted to snatch his briefcase, belonging to the bank, but Mervan never felt his employers appreciated what he did and this planted the seed for an audacious crime – which ended with a stretch in prison for looting the bank's strong-room. And his capture and imprisonment was the result of a double-cross by his partner in crime and love interest, Miss Lesley Barre. This made Mervan very, very resentful and a bit murderous. 

Chief Inspector Steve Castle pays a visit to Mervan in his prison cell and offers him a final opportunity to come clean, because he likes "to tie up all the loose ends neatly." Castle knew he had an accomplice, who betrayed him and took the money, but Mervan refused to take a reduced sentence in exchange for the whole story and this worried the inspector. He knows the prisoner is a broken man with an obsession and that makes him very dangerous. However, Mervan remains stalwart in his silence and only the readers hears him muttering an oath that he'll find and kill Lesley.

Skip ahead several years and Castle received and Castle received, anonymously send, "tickets for the matinee at the Janus," which are for a mystery play, entitled The Final Trophy, but the theatre tickets came with "a curious message" printed on a piece of pasteboard: "COME TO PADDINGTON FAIR." So he consults Algy Lawrence, a bright young man with "lazy blue eyes," who gained a reputation as an amateur detective and they decide to attend the play. However, the play was given a slightly different ending by the hand of an unknown murderer and this person effectively gave them a front row seat to the on-stage murder of the lead actress, Lesley Christopher. 

During the third act, the character played by Lesley, "Marilyn," is shot by "Regan," played by Philip Trent, but this time a real bullet struck her in the chest and laughter is heard coming from one of the theatre boxes – as "the lights faded in a complete black-out." 

Luckily, Algy immediately sprang to action and helped apprehend Mervan. He was the one who laughed and found to be in possession of the proverbial smoking gun, but the case is not as easily solved as all that. The fatal bullet was not fired with Mervan's gun and this forces the detectives to poke around behind the stage-set, because it seems that someone had tempered with the stage revolver. Someone, "an unknown hand," had taken out the blank cartridges and had "filled it with six shiny messengers of death." 

A Packed House!

So one of the main questions is who was in a position to switch the blanks for live rounds, but they also have to wade through the undercurrents and cut a pathway through the dense web of cross-relationships dominating the world behind the stage – which keeps them both occupied for the better part of the book. Once they removed all of the extraneous matter, they're confronted witness who turns this fairly strange shooting into "a dark miracle." It was an impossible crime all along! Several pages later, the reader is confronted with an Ellery Queen-style "Challenge to the Reader," which is a request to the reader to "PAUSE FOR REFLECTION" and "play the great game of WHODUNIT? and HOW?"

The final twist, that turned this into an impossible murder, is very clever and tricky, which showed Smith's talent for crafting multi-layered plots, but I was able to (roughly) work out how the shooting was pulled off – because the shooting resembled an impossibility from one of Carr's stage-plays from the early 1940s (c.f. 13 to the Gallows, 2008). Whereas Carr's trick is simple and elegant, Smith opted for pure intricacy and got a lot of mileage out of it. 

Granted, the impossible angle should probably have been introduced earlier on in the story, but regardless, the book is an excellent specimen of the theatrical mystery and the impossibility should be seen as the cherry on top. Only thing that can be really said against Come to Paddington Fair is that it doesn't bat in the same league as its predecessor, Whistle Up the Devil, but both novels make you mourn the fact that Smith was never allowed to expand the series pass those two superb mystery novels. 

Finally, if you, like me, enjoyed Come to Paddington Fair, you might find the following theatrical mysteries equally appealing, because they also happen to feature a locked room problem:  Christianna Brand's Death of Jezebel (1948), Ngaio Marsh's Off with His Head, Herbert Resnicow's The Gold Deadline (1984), The Gold Curse (1986) and The Gold Gamble (1989).
 

By the way, the title of this blog-post is a reference to another theatrical mystery. Can you guess which novel I'm referencing? 

So far this blog-post and I'll try to pick a non-impossible crime story for the next one.

Where the Devil Slumbered

"The candle flame flutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."

- Carl Sagan. 

Ghosts, goblins and other grotesque imaginations that pried themselves loose from the human mind have proven themselves prone to sudden bursts of stage fright, whenever they are expected to perform under controlled conditions and the cold discerning eye of reason, but what if you have a reputedly haunted room with a malevolent ghost as a permanent tenant... who's not shy at all?

Well, that's the plot of Derek Smith's Whistle Up the Devil (1954), an ingenious locked room novel that has been on my wish list for years but got top-priority when Patrick posted a mouthwatering review of the book and spiced it up with lots of background information on the author of this little gem. I won't reproduce it here, but from it a picture emerged of a man we all would've loved unconditionally. Derek Smith was apparently a kind and generous man who was above all a mystery fan, and a clever one as that. Patrick began his review with his concluding opinion of the book and it's one I would like to echo before I begin to look for the words to shape mine: Whistle Up the Devil is one of the most ingeniously concocted and worked out impossible crimes that I have read and you almost wonder if Satan himself sat down with Smith to plot the story.

The story opens with an early phone call from Chief Inspector Castle to his friend and dilettante sleuth, Algy Lawrence, with a request to go to home of personal friend, Roger Querrin, who's determined to keep an appointment with the family ghost in a locked and haunted room – giving a perfect cover for an assassin to strike and unburden the guilt on a ghostly murderer who can't be cuffed or hanged for it. Everyone in his household is trying to keep Roger from spending the evening with a long dead relative, like his fiancé and his brother, who's worrying himself into a straightjacket, but he stands firm and guards are posted outside the room to stand guard. (including a policeman outside who keeps a hawk's eye on the window). But naturally a piercing scream shatters the peaceful night. And as the door is taken down, they're only just in time to see Roger taking his last breath as he collapses. A dagger that was in a sheath on the wall was sticking out of his back like a well-fed parasite.

Unfortunately, the supernatural elements are not played up as one would expect from a premise like the one I just sketched and this was perhaps most notable in the Querrin family legend, which gets a brief and a guess of an explanation towards the end, however, this is merely a stylistic flaw and one that's more than compensated with an intricate plot that is woven like a mesh of hex netting. There is, for example, the obligatory "Locked Room Lecture," nearly all these novels with a grand status seems to have one, but here's its not just to show-off the authors knowledge of the genre but to drive the reader (and Castle) up the wall by demonstrating just how impossible this murder really is – simply by eliminating every known trick in the book.

Whistle Up the Devil is also scattered with references to other detective stories and they're not the usual bunch of suspects, like The Hanshews The Man of the Forty Faces (1910), Rupert Penny's Sealed Room Murder (1951), which had a good trick but was tedious to read, and Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938), showing the individual taste of Smith.

As one of those celebrated, but obscure, monuments of the locked room sub-genre, there's also the second obligatory murder that mimics the maddening impossibilities of the first one and this time the backdrop is between the walls of a room supposedly a stronghold of safety: a prison cell in an occupied police station. A man named Simon Turner was deposited in one of their jails after assaulting Algy and sergeant Hardinge during a nightly prowl on the Querrin premise, but prying any information from him on what he may have seen is another impossibility dropped in the lap of our investigators – followed by another one when the murderer made sure he stays as quiet as humanly possible. The lock of the cell door was picked and Turner had been expertly strangled and according to the medical evidence the murder took place when Algy and Hardinge were talking in the Charge Room, which you have to pass if you want to go the cells. Guess what... they didn't saw a soul! Not a visible one, anyway.

The murders are pulled off with the routine a stage magician saws a woman in half, but, surprisingly, it did not lack any believability because Smith dovetails every snippet of plot together to form a coherent sequence of events that you can’t help but believe it could be pulled-off like that. I also loved how he continuously made me switch between two suspects only to show me what a fool I have been in the end. This makes it very heart to care for a few not so well drawn characters, ghosts who prefer to keep snoring in their graves or tip-toeing poltergeists. Whistle Up the Devil simply is a collaborative labor of love between the enthusiastic heart and sharp brain of a very big mystery fan. So much is obvious from reading this book.

Smith did wrote a follow-up novel, Come to Paddington Fair (1997), but he was unable to find a publisher until a fan published it in a limited release of 100 copies in Japan (published in English) and is impossible to find. If you want to know about Smith, I urge you to read Patrick's in-depth post of this book and the man who penned it. Oh, and Patrick... Damn you! You were not suppose to tempt me with our tempting reviews. Aim for the unenlightened masses!