There Came Both Mist and Snow (1940) by Michael Innes

Last year, I posted "The Naughty List: Top 12 Favorite Christmas Mystery Novels & Short Stories" ranging from a few celebrated classics (Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas, 1938) and a couple of recent reprints (Rupert Latimer's Murder After Christmas, 1944) to more modern titles (James Yaffe's Mom Meets Her Maker, 1990) and even a fresh one (A. Carver's The Christmas Miracle Crimes, 2023) – sprinkled with a few short stories (Herbert Resnicow's "The Christmas Bear," 1990). Nick Fuller, of the Grandest Game in the World, turned up in the comments to suggest a few alternatives like G.K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars" (1911), Gladys Mitchell's Dead Men's Morris (1936) and Michael Innes' There Came Both Mist and Snow (1940). I had read the Chesterton story and Mitchell novel, but not the Innes novel. So tossed it on the December pile for this year.

There Came Both Mist and Snow, published in the US as A Comedy of Terrors, is the fifth novel in the Inspector John Appleby series and the first to establish a formula. The late Wyatt James wrote on the GADWiki that There Came Both Mist and Snow was the first Innes "cloned over and over again" with "odd folks in a decayed, or not so decaying but threatened, fancy house" tucked away somewhere in rural England. A formula that nonetheless lends itself perfectly for a family Christimas mystery, which just so happened to be mentioned in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). Not that it influenced my choice, of course. It's not even an impossible crime at all. So, really, this one is for you, Nick!

Arthur Ferryman, "fashionable contemporary novelist," is on his way to Belrive Priory to spend Christmas with his cousin Sir Basil Roper and their extended family, mostly "cousinly relationships," while doing narration duty. So the first half dozen chapters has Ferryman describing the surroundings, introducing the family and indulges, in what can be deemed, literary flourishes – peppered with archaic words and pretentious phrases ("...desuetude of agriculture"). Not exactly a good beginning to convince those who find Innes too dense and at times pedantic to be truly enjoyable. A style, I think, worked best in his early, magniloquent detective fantasies like Hamlet, Revenge! (1937) and Lament for a Maker (1938), but its effectiveness varies in a conventional country house mystery. So the chapters leading up to the crime can be a slog to get through, but even then the preamble was not without its moments. In the first chapter, Ferryman gives a description of the historical surroundings, "park, mansion and ruins," where the modern world is already taking root. Notably the giant, flickering mechanical neon sign of Horace Cudbird's brewery, "Cudbird's Beers are Best," which has become something of a local attraction and landmark. Casting a futuristic play of light, color and moving shadows on its surroundings that people watch from their terrace.

One other scene worth mentioning is the ill-fated attempt at an impromptu parlor game, Shakespeare's bells, which revolves around quotations from Shakespeare involving bells ("who can keep Shakespeare's bells ringing longest?"). Since most of Shakespeare's bells toll for the departed, this "literary competition" lost its lighthearted touch to a funereal atmosphere. It probably also didn't help that revolver shooting was picked as another game to living up the Christmas party. So, yes, the first-half moves very slowly and feels directionless, until one of the cousins is shot and wounded. Wilfred Foxcroft, a banker, is shot while writing a letter in his uncle's study shortly before the arrival of Sir Basil's mystery guest, Inspector John Appleby, who immediately takes charge of the case.

The attempted murder gives the story and plot some much needed focus and direction, because the shooting poses a number of tricky questions besides the routine ones. Who was the intended target, Wilfred or Sir Basil? Could the shooter have mistaken Wilfred for his uncle when he was sitting at his desk? Both were dressed in "the sort of uniform that a dinner-jacket constitutes." Why was Wilfred so imperfectly shot and what happened to the gun? Like I said, the problem of the gun is not an impossible crime as reported, it could have been tweaked into an impossible crime, but it would have neither been good nor particular satisfying – underwhelming at best. Innes smartly invested in another aspect of the plot that allowed the story to largely pull itself together in the second-half.

Ferryman gets roped in by Appleby to help, "as a sort of Watson," who gets to hear "seven principal theories sponsored by seven different people" in the tradition of Anthony Berkeley and Christianna Brand. Not all of the false-solutions are worthy of the comparison as they merely more than accusations or simplicity itself, but the last four, or so, are an exercise in the art of plotting and writing in giving original explanations for the all-important, imperfect shot. Even more impressively, Innes clued or foreshadowed every one of these false-solutions. I gladly would have accepted either Cudbird or Appleby's false-solution as correct solution to the case. Unfortunately, the correct solution is disappointing lacking the imaginative originality of the false-solutions preceding it. Not the first time one, or more, false-solutions undermine the ending of a detective story, but here it was more damaging as it needed a punchy conclusion after a rough, directionless first-half and the promise of its second-half pulling itself together.

There Came Both Mist and Snow is not without its moments, qualities or flashes of ingenuity, but, on a whole, too uneven to be truly good or recommend. The problem is in the first-half and the ending. The crawl that is the first-half is a test patience, which is deadly for a lighthearted country house mystery, but following up that parade of imaginative false-solutions with an explanation lacking all of their qualities is bound to disappoint – especially one (ROT13) erqhpvat gur fubbgvat vg gb n qhzo nppvqrag. Innes should have gone with Appleby's false-solution and called it a day. I suggest trying What Happened at Hazelwood (1946) instead.

I don't want to give up on Innes and Stop Press (1939) sounds like a trip, but Nick Fuller added a warning to his review that somehow feels directed at me. Stop Press is according to Nick an acquired taste and some readers might hate it, "particulary those who read little but detective fiction, and who read only for plot." That's not entirely true, but wholly incorrect either. So maybe A Private View (1952) or The Bloody Wood (1966) next?

What Happened at Hazelwood (1946) by Michael Innes

"Michael Innes" was the pseudonym of J.I.M. Stewart, Professor of English Literature, who penned nearly fifty erudite, gently humorous and outright fantastical academic mysteries teeming with literary allusions – often credited with popularizing the donnish detective novel. A popularity that lasts to this day and not entirely without reason.

Innes enjoyed a long-lived career as a mystery novelist who debuted in the middle of the detective story's golden decade (Death at the President's Lodging, 1936) and ended his career by penning the last country house mystery from the hands of a Golden Age writer (Appleby and the Ospreys, 1986). During that five-decade writing career, Innes produced some undeniable, highly imaginative and ambitious classics of the genre (e.g. Lament for a Maker, 1938). Particularly, the first three novels standout as nothing less than first-rate detective stories. Nick Fuller, of The Grandest Game in the World, agrees that "the early books are brilliantly imaginative phantasmagorias" and "show what a really first-class mind can do with the detective story." Regrettably, as Nick observes in "Michael Innes: A Critique," the genius shown in those first novels "only lasted a decade or so before fading" as Innes began to place style over substance. So the wildly imaginative and witty became artificial, unconvincing and tedious while the once dense, carefully constructed plots were turned "vehicles for weak puns."

If you have purist tendencies, when it comes to plots, Innes is uneven at best and frustrating at worst. The reason why the unceasing flood of reprints, translations and an inexplicable fascinating with locked room mysteries so easily directed my attention away from Innes and Inspector John Appleby. However, the fact remained that Innes produced some genuinely good and excellent detective fiction. A perk of reading Golden Age detective fiction in 2023 is how easy it has become to pick and choose. Innes is not exactly obscure nor are copies difficult to find as never appeared to fully gone out-of-print (except, maybe, for the 1990s).

Back in 2018, I tackled Appleby's Other Story (1974) and Nick dropped by in the comments to recommend What Happened at Hazelwood (1946), a comedic melodrama à la Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore, which goes out of its way to be an australiaoutrageous, deliberately improbable spoof of the country house mystery – delivering a "thoroughly bizarre, but, on the story's own logic, quite convincing" solution. Nick left a second comment in 2022 to remind me it has been "three and a half years later and I'm waiting." Well, it took a couple of years, but What Happened at Hazelwood recently made its long-awaited arrival at the peak of Mt. to-be-read.

What Happened at Hazelwood is a parody of the British country house mystery and there are some hints in the story suggesting Innes wrote it with Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) in mind. The backdrop of the story is the ancestral home of the disreputable Simney clan, Hazelwood Hall, whose current master is the most disreputable of the lot, Sir George Simney. When he was a young lad, the then still George Simney was up to no good in Australia, "very likely he had killed a fellow prospector on the gold diggings or drowned in a billabong some rival in a lewd love," until his father and two brothers died in a railway smash. So the baronetcy unexpectedly fell to him. Sir George promptly returned home to take charge of the estate, but did his dark, unsavory Australian past eventually caught up with him? It would explain "the fact that the master of Hazelwood slept with a shotgun at his side" and when his end came it had been "sudden, unaccountable and violent." But he had departed according to tradition: "mysteriously in his library, at midnight, while a great deal of snow was falling in the park outside." The features of the dead baronet "displayed that expression of astounded and incredulous terror only assumed by persons who see that they are about to be murdered in the most pronouncedly bizarre way."

However, to quote the narrator of the first-half, "there will be no corpse available for your inspection, Gentle Reader, until you have struggled on some way ahead" as the first-half necessarily has to introduce the horrid family and recounting all of the ghastly incidents – which immediately preceded the murder of their patriarch. Firstly, there's the unhappy lady of manor, Nicolette, who came from a long-line of actors and actresses which made her "a scarlet woman" in the eyes of the local vicar and her husband's unmarried sister, Grace. The permanents of Hazelwood Hall are Sir George's widowed sister, Lucy Cockayne, who has a 19-year-old son, Mervyn, who plays the role of "beastly little son" known for his "nauseous wit." Sir George also brought back to England a one-eyed butler, Afred Owdon, "who looked much more like a retired pirate than a respectable upper servant." Curiously, Owdon has a 16-year-old son and houseboy, Timmy, who not only looks like a Simney every inch, but is the split image of Mervyn Cockayne ("...possibly because his mother was a Simney..."). Sir George took great pleasure in parading Timmy around the house as one of the family scandals. That would have been a strong enough composition to thicken the plot, but What Happened at Hazelwood is something of family reunion as Hazelwood Hall opened its doors to a number of relatives. I say opened its doors as saying their warmly welcomed would be a lie. Sir George's younger brother, Bevis, has come to stay and nothing bring the brothers together quite like "the ritual business of shooting over each other's land." Bevis brought along his son and aspiring painter, Willoughby, who has designs on the blacksmith's fair-haired. Not just on canvas. But what really disrupted an already disagreeable family get together is the unexpected arrival of their antipodean cousins.

Hippias Simney is a cousin and turned up "loudly declaring that George had in some way cheated or defrauded them," which has something to do with a place called Dismal Swamp back in Australia. Cousin Hippias brought along his young son Gerard and his wife, Joyleen. Sir George and Joyleen immediately get each others attention.

Yes, as the narrator observes, "a crowded stage at the start," but absolutely necessary as the characterization of the dysfunctional Simneys is key to the plot. It has been noted elsewhere Innes depicted not entirely without a glee a whole family worth of suitable murder victims and its to his credit not one of the characters can be described as a theatrical puppet completely devoid of humanity. Some more than others. For example, the victim-in-waiting is a boorish brute, but Sir George showed he had a grasp on the concept of humor in how he, uhm, decorated the walls of his study ("one of his rather offensive jokes"). So the unfolding melodrama remains strangely believable as the drinks and bottles begin to fly across the dinner table, obnoxious cousins get dumped out of windows and secret trysts in the park – while others spy among the trees. This act ends when the body of Sir George is found bizarrely sprawled on the table in his study, like "some preternaturally powerful force from behind had picked him up and flung him across the table," only his toes touched the floor.

It's not Inspector John Appleby who arrives at Hazelwood Hall to take charge of the investigation, but a colleague, Inspector Cadover, who mentions Appleby in passing ("what would Appleby have done?"). Cadover's handling of the case is narrated by a young detective, Harold, who compared Cadover's methods to Darwin's "extraordinary fertility in hypotheses." Going from one hypothesis, or guess, to another until "one of these would look sufficiently promising to be called a theory." The messy murder of Sir George provided fertile grounds for boundless hypothesizing. Such as tracks in the snow below the windows and an unlikely hiding place for a pair of boots, the murky details of the family's Australian past and scandals like the question of Timmy's parentage. Among many other odds and ends, usual and unusual, that continue to complicate the case.

What Happened at Hazelwood threatened to become a little long-winded by the end and really needed to deliver something extraordinarily good or truly exceptional to make it all worthwhile, which gave rise to some skepticism on my part. Somehow, the story came through in the end and delivered something that can be truly called either extraordinarily or exceptional. Either way, the solution certainly is original, but whether, or not, it's any good left me divided. On the one hand, the solution is ingenious, strikingly beautifully in its imagery and logically linked everything together, but, on the other hand, it's hardly a credible explanation. I think it would have been better suited as a false-solution that sounds very pleasing in theory, but falls apart under a critical examination. I suppose you have to take What Happened at Hazelwood on its own terms as a fantastic, melodramatic parody of the country house mystery and according to its own internal logic (the kind of logic you find in a mad dream) the ending makes perfect sense. That in itself is something of a success story. Recommended, if you're looking for something a little different in a thoroughly traditional British country house mystery.

Appleby and the Ospreys (1986) by Michael Innes

I recently returned to the detective novels of "Michael Innes," a nom-de-plume of Oxford don J.I.M. Stewart, by plucking Appleby's Other Story (1974) from my bookshelves and mentioned in my review that he penned the last published mystery novel by a big name from the genre's Golden Age – namely Appleby and the Ospreys (1986). A swansong that came fifty years after Death at the President's Lodging (1936) and has two years on Gladys Mitchell's posthumously published The Crozier Pharaohs (1984).

So this fairly minor work not only retired a well-known detective-character, Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard, but it closed the book on an entire era of the genre!

Appleby and the Ospreys was published in the year Innes turned eighty and laid down his pen for good, passing away eight years later in 1994, but he had lived a long life that covered one of the most turbulent centuries in human history and you can find some reflections in this book – like an attempt to link the past with the present. There are references to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," C. Auguste Dupin and Mycroft Holmes, but the "properly developed" constabulary is armed with "wireless telephones, electric typewriters, cameras" and "the computers that have become so indispensable."

Despite these present-day intrusions, Appleby and the Ospreys has a plot deeply rooted in the genre's past and reads like a grandfatherly reminiscence ("I was a much better policeman... than I am the country gentleman"). But with more lucidity than Agatha Christie's doddering Postern of Fate (1973).

The book opens with the retired Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Appleby, lunching with his wife at the ancestral seat of the Ospreys, Clusters, where they attempt to consult him on a local problem pertaining a colony of bats – who made the church their roost and frighten the village children in the choir. Bats in the belfry!

Ten days later, Detective-Inspector Ringwood telephones Appleby on behalf of Lady Osprey to inform him that her husband, Lord Osprey, had been "stabbed in the throat" in the library of Clusters ("the venue must be said to be a little lacking in originality"). Lady Ospreys wants Appleby to consult with Ringwood on the matter and the retired Commissioner reluctantly agrees.

The key to the case lies in a set of very specific questions. What happened to the murder weapon? Where did Lord Osprey his elusive Osprey Collection of coins? Who was the lurking person spotted outside the manor house on the day preceding the murder? A murder mystery with all the trappings of a traditional country house mystery from a bygone era, but, as said before, there are occasional reminders that the book was written in the 1980s. One of these reminders is a rape accusation leveled against the victim's son, Adrian Osprey, who got mixed up with an "obstinately uncompliant" village girl and this is a rare crime to find in a traditionally-styled mystery novel of the old school. The only other examples I can think of are Robert van Gulik's The Chinese Bell Murders (1958), Soji Shimada's Senseijutsu satsunjinjinken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981) and John Bakkenhoven's Moord op de Keizersgracht (Murder on the Emperor's Channel, 2003).

However, my impression is that Innes was rather lost with these modern components and they either remained unused or were brushed aside. I fear many readers today will take exception to the way this plot-thread was disposed of without a second look.

Anyway, the plot logically sticks together and can be considered fairly clued, but the problem is that the whole scheme has the transparency of a plate of glass and everyone should be able to arrive at the same conclusions as Appleby and Ringwood – who reached it independently of one another. Nonetheless, the plot had some nice touches. Such as where Lord Osprey had hidden his coin collection, obvious as it may have been, or the fitting motive to murder a collector. Not to mention the amusingly false solution proffered by the butler that turned the murder into an unfortunate accident or how the bats were used as the Hand of God in the final chapter, but this is all I can say about the story without giving away anything really vital. You have to find it out for yourself.

Appleby and the Ospreys is a short, easy to solve detective novel and had it not been for the fact that it was the last in an illustrious line that stretched all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century, it would have been a unremarkable country house mystery. Appleby and the Ospreys was the last of its kind. And with the reminiscent story-telling, it was a bit of a melancholic read. As if you're listening to your grandfather telling a story from his past for the umpteenth time, but you pretend to hear it for the first time, because it's probably the last time you'll hear him tell it.

I want to continue chipping away at my pile of Appleby novels and the next one might be Appleby and Honeybath (1983), which is a crossover with Innes' secondary series-detective, Charles Honeybath, who appeared in The Mysterious Commission (1974) and Honeybath's Haven (1977). Apparently, it also happens to be a locked room mystery!

Appleby's Other Story (1974) by Michael Innes

J.I.M. Stewart was an Oxford don and a professor of English literature who, under the name of "Michael Innes," wrote close to fifty mystery novels and a passel of short stories from 1936 to 1986, which gave Appleby and the Ospreys (1986) the honor of being the last detective story to be published by a big name from the genre's Golden Age – published two full years after Gladys Mitchell's last book (The Crozier Pharaohs, 1984). So he outlived all of his contemporaries and was among the first to be brought back in print during the early 2000s.

Amazingly, I have only read a handful of mostly his earlier mysteries, such as Death at the President's Lodging (1936), Hamlet, Revenge! (1937) and Lament for a Maker (1938), while having a whole bunch of them on my shelves. So I decided to finally return to this series and randomly picked a title. You can say I hit the bulls-eye with my pick.

Appleby's Other Story (1974) is a late entry in the series, however, the story is excellent with a well put together plot and one hell of an alibi-trick!

This story begins when Sir John Appleby, retired Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, accompanies Colonel Pride, Chief Constable, to the lofty abode of Maurice Typherton. Elvedon Court lies "confidently aloof" behind a spreading lawn with two stories superimposed upon "a heavily rusticated ground floor" and the basement level had been dug deep into the ground – giving the effect of "the Perfect Cube." Two years ago, "a number of not-all-that important pictures" disappeared from the place and Typherton wanted to consult Appleby, who's "the country's acknowledged authority on art robberies," but, when they arrive at Elvedon Court, there are police cars parked outside. Maurice Typherton was shot dead following a house party.

Initially, Appleby had no inclination to get involved, but then he recognizes one of the house guests, Egon Raffaello, who's an art-dealer of ill-repute and the conversation he has with this old acquaintance convinces to get involved. A tête-à-tête interrupted by the Prodigal son, Mark Typherton, who returned home in secrecy. And now practically inherits the entire estate. Appleby begins to wander the hallways of Elvedon Courts and interviews all of the suspects.

So the story largely consists of a series of conversations and this is somewhat reminiscent of Ngiao Marsh, but this didn't result in, what is known as, "Dragging the Marsh." More importantly, Innes actually managed to achieve a very unusual effect through these wanderings and conversations.

Nick Fuller correctly observed in his review that the story has "a sense of time-warp." During the interviews, Appleby uncovers that Elvedon Court is a homely, cozier incarnation of Sodom and Gomorra with a lot bed-hopping. There's a reference to loud pop-music coming from "a domestic juke-box" during the house party and one of the characters acknowledge the story place "in the nineteen-seventies," but this makes for a weird contrast with the classical, country-house setting and ingenious plot – giving you the idea a cast of modern-day characters were transported to a 1930s country house mystery. And the alibi-trick is everything you'd expect from a great thirties detective novel.

The alibi-trick can be qualified as a quasi-impossible crime and could have been dreamed up by John Dickson Carr or Paul Halter. A particular technique, or misdirection, was used here that could have easily been used for a locked room mystery. You could argue it came close enough here to label it as one, but promised in my previous post that this would be a non-impossible crime review. But, as you can see, I can't seem to escape from those

I think this one was close enough that some would probably label it as one, but promised in my previous review that this would be a non-impossible crime review and this was part of the reason why I returned to Innes. But, as you can see, I can't seem to escape from them.

Well, this is all that can really be said about the book. Appleby's Other Story is a relatively short, conversational-style mystery novel, but has a pleasantly unusual, slightly surreal atmosphere with a plot worthy of the best from the past. A necessary reminder that Innes was better than I remember him and will try to return to him sooner rather than later. Probably with Appleby and the Ospreys.