That Thing Upstairs: "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

I recently reviewed Fear of Fear (1931) and Blind Man's Buff (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, a husband-and-wife writing team, which I liked enough to bump the other two Jimmy Lane novels, Seven Suspects (1930) and Shadows (1934), up a few places on my wishlist – except that both remain obscurely out-of-print as of this writing. So turned my attention to their short stories to see if they wrote anything for my liking. Well, I definitely found something.

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements' "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" was published in the December, 1933, issue of Mystery and concerns an unnamed, two-year-old boy who's behavior has been disturbing his father ("...been going on for weeks").

Gessler has been to several, highly paid pediatrics and other specialists, but the boy is perfectly healthy and "normal in every respect." So why has the nurse packed her bags ("...she won't stay another day") and what was the reason for the changing the nursery twice? Gressler, tired and nervous, eventually finds his way to another specialist, Hallowell, tells him the boy plays Pease Porridge Hot after he's put to bed ("and other games like Peekaboo and Simon Says Tumbs Up"). Hallowell tries to assure him there's nothing abnormal about two-year-olds playing games, or prattling to themselves, but Gessler's convinced the boy is talking and playing games with his dead mother – who died six months ago. Gessler begs Hallowell to come to his home to witness the baby's unsettling behavior for himself.

So not a bad premise at all, but, considering the short length of the story, I expected the ending to take one of two directions: Gessler murdered his wife and the guilt is driving him out of his mind or the nurse has some sort of connection to his wife and is avenging her by making Gessler believe her ghost is talking and singing songs to their son. The implied threat there is making Gessler fear what her ghost might tell the boy when he gets old enough to understand. I personally preferred the latter as fear is an important driving factor and theme running through both Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff. It fitted both the tone of the story and the authors other work, but then the ending revealed I had been reading a ghost story all along. A better twist than the one the story threw up!

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements' "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" is exactly as described on tin. But, in my defense, Mystery is a detective fiction magazine and the December 1933 issue even carries a short story from Stuart Palmer's Miss Withers series. So assumed it had to be a detective story, not a ghost yarn, maybe even a detective story with a supernatural flavoring. That didn't turn out to be the case. That leaves only Ryerson's solo short story, "The Purple Shadow" (1925), as of possible interest. In the meanwhile, I'll keep an eye out for Seven Suspects and Shadows.

Blind Man's Buff (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

Back in March, I reviewed Fear of Fear (1931) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, a husband-and-wife writing team, who collaborated on novels, short stories, plays and movie scripts – notably several movie adaptations of S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance mysteries. Ryerson and Clements wrote a handful of detective and thrillers themselves, published between 1930 and 1937, starring playwright and amateur sleuth Jimmy Lane. Their detective novels had been out-of-print for nearly a century, until Coachwhip Publications reprinted two of the Jimmy Lane novels and the standalone mystery-thriller The Borgia Blade (1937).

I was interested in Fear of Fear ever since coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the story and plot has more to like than just a well-handled impossible crime. A must-read for fans of the Van Dinean detective story and writers like Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett. So picked up the reprint of Blind Man's Buff (1933).

Ryerson and Clements' Blind Man's Buff takes a different track by moving away from the brownstones and mansions that usually provide a backdrop for these Van Dinean detective novels. Instead, the story brings Jimmy Lane and his chronicler, Philip Carter, to Sycamore Island in New York – private domain of the Conroy clan. Lane and Lucia Conroy, a rising novelist, were working on a stage adaptation of one of her novels when she dropped their work to announce she has to leave for a month. A short while later, Lane receives a telegram from Lucia imploring him to come to Sycamore Island and bring "Northwest Mounted." Lane's nickname for Carter dating back to their college days. So it must be serious!

When they arrive, Lucia seems fine and tries to dismiss the telegram as a ploy to lure them away for a much deserved holiday. However, Lucia quickly admits to Lane she had reason to suspect her cousin Sally had been murdered the previous year.

Sycamore Island was the property of the late family patriarch, Nathan Conroy, who's tomb stands on top of the hill overlooking the Conroy home below. Nathan Conroy's slightly peculiar will shackled the Conroys to the island as the prospective legatees are required to spend "the month between September fifteenth and October fifteenth out of every year" on the island. At the end of the ten year period, Nathan's property and fortune will be divided among the surviving legatees. Last year, on their ninth reunion, Sally dies on the veranda after drinking tea-punch dosed with chloral hydrate. Sally's death was dismissed as a suicide, but this year, Lucia "discovers a note scribbled on the fly-leaf of the book she was reading the afternoon of her death" reading "MURDERED." Dr. Mark Dietrich, Sally's brother, convinced Lucia the note was written while she was in a delirium. Lane and Carter remain suspicion, which is why they decide to stay on. And, of course, murder is in the offing. But what happens before is just as fascinating. Not only for its introduction of the eccentric family full of "brilliance and charm."

First of all, let's get the family out of the way first (is what the murderer said). There is Lucia's drinking twin brother Lee and her fiance/adopted cousin, Douglas, who's a broker and sports fan. Dr. Dietrich's wife, Connie, who flirts with their Italian cousin, Count Roberto Patri. Tony Patri is half-brother and came along for the ride. Judith Conroy is their aunt and Hagar Conroy is their batty, mystery loving great-aunt. Finally, there's the grotesque caretaker, Henry Harker, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Prill, who both have a stake in the inheritance question. So, en route to the first murder, the topic of detective stories and fair play comes up.

Great-aunt Hagar has a temper tantrum over a mystery novel she has been reading, "swindling cheat," which amused everyone as "this was by no means the first time she had burst out." She had been reading a mystery in which a man is shot on page 12 and "along about a hundred and forty you're told the murdered man once had a brother who quarreled with him and went to Borneo in 1885," only to arrive "on page three hundred and fourteen" to "discover he did the killing" – basically robbing the reader of his time and money ("...writers oughtn't to be allowed to cheat like that"). So they have a spirited debate about fair play in detective stories ("all I ask is that the murderer be prominent in the story"), suggesting an International Code for Detective Fiction ("...death penalty for infringement") and agree to do a short story contest. Everyone is to write a short story following the agreed upon code of conduct to be submitted before eight the following night.

So, the next night, the short story contest is preceded by a game of blind man's buff while a storm was brewing outside. A not unimportant link in the chain of events, which becomes clear when they get to the stories. There's an extra, tenth story in the pile titled "Murder in the Conroy Clan" describing the gruesome murder of Roberto Patri. According to the story, Roberto's body will be found, hands and feet tied, lying on the floor of the breakfast room "shirt covered in blood" with "a gaping wound in his throat" and "a gory knife at his feet." The scene described in the story is exactly what they find when they go to investigate the breakfast room. And, of course, the raging storm cuts them off from the outside world for the next day or two. However, isolating the small island here is not merely a convenient plot-device to create a very tight, closed-circle situation without any possible outside meddling. More on that in a moment.

Jimmy Lane and Philip Carter, once again, have to play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but even the brilliant Lane is struggling with the multitude of puzzling aspects, possibilities and rising body count. Who wrote that tenth short story? Why was Roberto wearing Tony's torn, stained shirt? What is the connection between Roberto's murder and Sally's presumed suicide? Who wore the slicker? What happened to the dog, Truffles, when he briefly disappeared without a trace from the tiny island? Lane tries to take a strictly logical approach to these countless problems and demonstrates a pleasing ability to consider ideas that are the extreme opposite of each other. At one point, Lane compares himself with "a scientist in a laboratory who has a culture containing a thousand different germs and knows that one of them is responsible for a disease," only "by a process of elimination that he can find the culprit." This cold, clinical and logical approach is hampered by the murderer keeping a steady pace. Every murder is preceded by the discovery of a new, short chapter "Murder in the Conroy Clan" identifying the next victim. Curiously, this leads to several locked rooms and impossible crimes being teased, but never executed or immediately dispelled. Like the snoring corpse! Not that Blind Man's Buff needed any locked room murders or impossible poisonings as it has more than enough going for itself. Most has been barely touched upon or mentioned in this review. You can discover that for yourself.

So, there are a few things that stand out, having now read Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff. Firstly, Ryerson and Clements clearly understood what makes a detective story tick giving particularly this novel an Ellery Queen-like, meta-fictional quality (c.f. The Greek Coffin Mystery, 1932). I suspect EQ was in their mind when plotting and writing Blind Man's Buff. Lane even winked "A Challenge to the Reader" when telling Carter, "you're in possession of every fact" and "seen every clew" needed to come to the same conclusion. Blind Man's Buff could have just as easily been titled The Italian Shirt Mystery. More importantly, Ryerson and Clements had a knack for inconspicuously hiding their murderers among a small cast of characters. Neither the murderer from Fear of Fear nor the one from this novel had any right to be this inconspicuous. I eventually cottoned on the murderer, but even then had some things incorrect or not exactly correct. Either way, I had fun trying to put all the pieces together myself and got pretty far, before the final chapters rolled around. So, purely as a whodunit, Blind Man's Buff can more than hold its own against its contemporaries, but one aspect pushed it to be something more than a solid round of the Grandest Game in the World.

What earned Blind Man's Buff the status of minor classic, arguably one of the best stuck-on-a-island mysteries from the period, is the secret of the island itself and how it relates to Nathan Conroy's strange will. Now that's (ROT13) nccylvat gur neg bs zheqre gb pbzcyrgr, hggre znqarff. Honestly, something I have come to expect from Japanese mystery writers of today rather than from a good, old-fashioned Golden Age detective novel from the Van Dine-Queen School. I can recommend Blind Man's Buff for that part alone with the detective story surrounding it being quality bonus content. So, hopefully, Coachwhip decides to followup their 2023 reprints with reprints of the remaining two Jimmy Lane mysteries, Seven Suspects (1930) and Shadows (1934).

Fear of Fear (1931) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements were an American husband-and-wife writing tandem, "of varied and prodigious talent," whose output included novels, short stories, stage plays and film scripts like the 1930s Philo Vance movies – which lead to a brief friendship between Ryerson and S.S. van Dine. Van Dine credited her with saving the screen adaptation of The Canary Murder Case (1927) from the "Hollywood morons" and their propensity to mutilate the source material. However, they had a falling out years later when Ryerson suggested "Hammettizing" Vance for The Casino Murder Case (1934) to go for that Nick and Nora Charles movie charm. Van Dine was not thrilled as he "loathed the character Nick Charles."

Ryerson not only worked on some very popular detective movies, but also collaborated with her husband on a handful of Van Dine-style mystery novels. The fifth novel, The Borgia Blade (1937), is a standalone thriller.

Their first four novels, Seven Suspects (1930), Fear of Fear (1931), Blind Man's Buff (1933) and Shadows (1934), star author, playwright and amateur sleuth, Jimmy Lane, whose Van Dinean chronicler is Philip Carter – all out-of-print for over 90 years. Until a few years ago, when Coachwhip Publications reissued Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff with an always insightful introduction from Curt Evans. Ryerson and Clements' Fear of Fear happened to be on my specialized wish list ever coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). That and I really like the Van Dine-Queen School of detective fiction. Let's dig in.

Fear of Fear begins with Carter telling the reader "the time has come to tell the truth about the murders on Russian Hill" almost two years ago. Jimmy Lane had already achieved his first success as an amateur detective "during the ghastly week of the Lopez murders" (probably a reference to Seven Suspects) when he receives a message from Lane to come to dinner ("...bring pistols for two"). Lane had a chance meeting with Miss Norah Fallon, a film actress, who had a big problem. She had fallen into the clutches of a blackmailer and famed spiritualist, Harlan Grant, who "advised on business deals, drew up horoscopes and arranged love-affairs" at his house on Russian Hill. And, of course, raising the spirits inside his private séance room. Grant has "gone nutty" about Norah Fallon and is determined to drive a wedge between her and her fiance, Dick Stoddard. He's gotten hold of some "awful stuff" from her past that looks worse than it is depending on how it's explained. Lane, ever the gentleman, promises to help, but then the unexpected news breaks that Grant died from cerebral hemorrhage in his locked séance room. However, the promise still stands to retrieve the blackmail material.

Lane and Carter go to the trio of tilted, adjacent houses on the slope of Russian Hill where Grant lived with his family and next door to a long-time friend. There's his older brother, the Colonel, whose daughter Chanda is married to the wheelchair bound chemist Otto Steeb. They have two Indian servants, Singh and his wife Lalah. Dr. Waverly, a physician and spiritualist, lives next door. Lane worms his way into the household under the guise of writing an article for the Occult Review, but, before too long, Captain Hemming and Sergeant McCarthy return to the house to begin a murder investigation. A keen-eyed undertaker at the funeral parlor noticed an irregularity, called the police and an autopsy was performed revealing "Grant did not die a natural death" – although the doctors are "unable to agree upon the cause." So now they have a seemingly impossible murder on their hands!

First of all, Ryerson and Clements deserve a ton of credit for how they handled the locked room and attention given to the finer details. The only door to the séance room was bolted tight from the inside with Lane remarking "I don't believe even Philo Vance could figure out a way of locked it from the outside," but the floor plan of the crime scene included something immediately aroused my suspicion and a bit of preemptive, uncalled for disappointment. A subsequent and very thorough investigation of said something eliminated one possible disappointing solution to the locked room. Ryerson and Clements allow the curious and suspicious armchair detective to examine the whole room and everything bound to get them suspicious through characters, which allows for a series of false-solutions to be proposed and demolished. I should mention here, a little less than halfway through the story, it's revealed Grant was not entirely alone in the room. Mowgli, a tiny marmoset, was beside the body, but the authors had a very practical use the tiny monkey. Mowgli is "too small to have committed a murder" and not strong enough to have drawn the bolt. And Mowgli being unharmed disposed of another potential locked room-trick. A detail that should have been mentioned earlier, but very well and cleverly handled once it was brought up.

This is, technically, not the last impossible crime of the story. Adey listed only Grant's death in Locked Room Murders, but the second murder can be categorized as a (borderline) impossible crime and there's a mysterious incident involving Lane's wire-haired terrier, Ruggles ("...his little whiskered face showed horror...") – coinciding with an uptick in so-called paranormal activity. All the astrology, table tapping and even spirit photography started out as plain cover and background decoration for a common conman and blackmailer, but second-half leaned into its supernatural trappings with sightings of the yellow ghost. One witness was a police officer who described the entity as "like a yellow veil" between the curtains, while another witness called it a light. Another witnesses comes forth to tell he has seen a full body apparition. That adds a new dimension to some of the puzzling aspects and clues from the first-half "such as the faint, elusive fragrance of jasmine" and the phrase "fear of fear" that plagued Grant for the past two weeks. Or why he can only manifest spirits of certain people.

So both the first and second-half are full of interest, but for different reasons. The first-half for the investigation of the locked room and the second-half for going the John Dickson Carr-Hake Talbot route, atmosphere-wise. Ryerson and Clements tie everything together wrapped with an unusual motive and a murderer who didn't stand as much as they should have in this small cast-of-characters. There's a trace amount of pulp to the over solution, like the locked room-trick, but never anywhere near lurid levels of bad pulp fiction. Just a small dusting. Ryerson and Clements kept the story in detective story territory unmistakably belonging to the Van Dine-Queen School. Going by Fear of Fear, I would place Ryerson and Clements between Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett with this one being comparable to their best locked room mystery novels. A highly enjoyable and satisfying locked room mystery that should be better known among impossible crime enthusiasts. The reprint of Blind Man's Buff has been jotted down on the wishlist.

Note for the curious: Ryerson and Clements dedicated Fear to Fear to “Our Friend Willard Huntington Wright and His Friend S.S. van Dine.”