The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) is the third, wintry-themed anthology published in the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards, collecting eleven festive stories about "unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow" and "the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations" – wrapped and presented to the reader like "a seasonal assortment box." This collection presents a wide variety of merry mayhem from the pens of some very well-known mystery writers to a few names who have only recently been rediscovered. But none of the stories have been, what you could call, anthologized to death. So let's pig on this suspicious looking, crime sprinkled Christmas pudding, shall we? Hmm, smells like bitter almonds! 

The collections opens with Baroness Orczy's "A Christmas Tragedy," originally published in the December, 1909, issue of Cassell's Magazine, which has a Christmas Eve party keeping an ear out for "the sound of a cart being driven at unusual speed." A sound that has lately become associated with a series of "dastardly outrages against innocent animals" in the neighborhood of Clevere Hall. So everyone is very keen to put a stop to these cattle-maiming outrages and the cart is heard that night, but this time it was followed by a terrible cry, "Murder! Help! Help!" Major Ceely, host of the party, is found on the garden steps with a knife wound between his shoulder blades. The local police gladly accepts the assistance of Lady Molly, of Scotland Yard, whose success or failure will decide the fate of an innocent man. Not a bad story for the time, but not one of my personal favorites. 

Selwyn Jepson's "By the Sword" first appeared in the December, 1930, issue of Cassell's Magazine and has claimed a place among my favorite seasonal mysteries. Alfred Caithness is spending Christmas with his cousin, Judge Herbert Caithness, who has an idyllic home life with a wife, Barbara, who's twenty-eight years his junior and a five-year-old son, Robert – who loves playing with his toy soldiers. So the perfect setting for an old-fashioned Christmas party, but Alfred has reasons to be more than a little envious of his cousin. He has loved Barbara ever since attending their wedding and sorely needs the kind of money Herbert has aplenty, which is why he decides his cousin has to go when he denies him another loan. So, inspired by the family legend saying that "a Caithness always dies by the sword," Alfred begins to plot the perfect murder with all the evidence pointing to an outsider. However, the entire universe, or the Ghosts of Christmas, appear to be against him as even the best-laid plans can go awry. A fantastic inverted mystery from the hoist-on-their-petards category.

John Pringle is perhaps best remembered today by his principle pseudonym, "Gerald Verner," who prolifically produced pulp-style detective and thriller novels during his lifetime. "The Christmas Card Crime," published as by “Donald Stuart,” originally appeared in the December, 1934, publication of Detective Weekly (No. 96). Trevor Lowe, a well-known dramatist and amateur detective, who you might remember from my reviews of Terror Tower (1935) and The Clue of the Green Candle (1938) is en route with his secretary Arnold White and Detective Inspector Shadgold to spend Christmas with a friend in a small Cornish village, but their train becomes stranded when the heavy snowfall blocks the line. So they have to walk back to the previous station along with seven other passengers, six men and a woman, but they have to go from the empty station to an old, gloomy inn of ill-repute. During the night, two people are murdered in short succession with the thick, undisturbed carpet of snow indicating "no one came from outside and no one has left from within." The only real clue Lowe has to work with is a torn Christmas card. A good and fun piece of Christmas pulp, but more memorable for its mise-en-scène than its plot. However, I have to give props for turning the last words of the second victim in a kind of dying message sort of pointing to the murderer.

The next two stories have been previously reviewed on this blog, here and here, but, needless to say, Carter Dickson's "Blind Man's Hood" (1937) and Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) can be counted among the best stories in the collection. Both come highly recommended! 

Francis Durbridge's "Paul Temple's White Christmas" first appeared in Radio Times on December 20, 1946, but reads more like vignette than a proper short-short story. Paul Temple's dream of a white Christmas in Switzerland is granted when he's asked to go there to identify the main suspect in that Luxembourg counterfeit business he had help to smash. So not much to say about this one with only half a dozen pages and a razor thin plot. 

Cyril Hare's "Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech" was originally published in the Evening Standard on December 23, 1949, which is another one of my personal favorites from this collection. Timothy Trent was brought up by his step family, the Grigsons, but Timothy was the only "one of that clinging, grasping clan" who "got on in the world" and made money – someone from that family has been annually blackmailing him. Every year, around Christmas time, he receives a payment notice signed by "From your old Leech." Timothy was actually surprised by the latest demand, because he assumed he had gotten rid of Leech last February. But here he was again. Or was it a she? Timothy goes to the Grigson family party determined to smoke out the blackmailer, but, once again, even the best-laid plans can go awry and here it comes with a particular dark, poisonous sting in the tail. An excellent crime story demonstrating why Hare was admired by both his contemporary brethren and modern crime writers like P.D. James and Martin Edwards. 

E.C.R. Lorac's "A Bit of Wire-Pulling" originally appeared under the title "Death at the Bridge Table" in the Evening Standard on October 11, 1950, which is another short-short. Inspector Lang, the old C.I.D. man, tells the story of the time he had to protect an important industrialist, Sir Charles Leighton, who received threatening letters promising he will be dead before the old year's out. So he accompanies him, incognito, to a New Year's Eve bridge party where's shot to death in front of Lang's eyes and the murderer apparently managed to escape. However, the sharp-eyed detective quickly begins to pick up the bits and pieces that tell an entirely different story. More importantly, he trusts the men he has personally trained. Lorac was somewhat of a female John Rhode, as she was very keen on technical trickery, but you can't help but feel the murderer was doomed from the start by employing such a ballsy method. A pretty decent short-short. Not especially memorable, but not bad either. 

John Bude's "Pattern of Revenge," another short-short, was first published in The London Mystery Magazine (No. 21) in 1954 and surprisingly turned out to be an impossible crime story set in Norway. The story is a retrospective of a rivalry between two men, Thord Jensen and Olaf Kinck, who vy for the attention of a beautiful woman, Karen Garborg, but one morning she found dead on the doorstep of her cottage – stabbed through the heart. There was "only one set of tracks in the fresh-fallen snow," single footprints alternating with deep pock-marks, "characteristic of the imprint left by a wooden leg." Olaf has a wooden leg and his fingerprints were on the knife. So he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a deathbed confession shed new light on the murder and attempts to right a wrong. A very well done short-short and a truly pleasant surprise to come across this unusual take on the footprints-in-the-snow impossible crime. 

John Bingham's "Crime at Lark Cottage" was originally published in the 1954 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News and brings a slice of domestic suspense to the family Christmas table. John Bradley gets lost on a dark, snowy evening while his car is on the verge of breaking down and ends up at a lonely cottage. There he finds a woman with her small daughter and asks to use the phone, but is offered to stay the night as there's not garage around who would come out to the cottage at that time of night in foul weather. But she appears to be frightened. And it looks like someone is prowling around the cottage. A very well done piece of crime fiction that would have served perfectly as a radio-play for Suspense.

The last story to round out this seasonal anthology is Julian Symons' "'Twix the Cup and Lip," but nothing he wrote interests me and skipped it. That brings me to the end of this collection.

So, on a whole, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories is a splendidly balanced anthology with Dickson, Hare, Jepson, Knox and Stuart delivering the standout stories of the collection with the other entries being a little too short or dated to leave an indelible impression on the reader. But not a single real dud or over anthologized story to be found. Two things that tend to be obligatory for these types of short story collections. Definitely recommended for those cold, shortening days of December.

The Logic of Lunacy: Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) and Isaac Asimov's "The Obvious Factor" (1973)

It seems that today Father Ronald A. Knox is mostly remembered as someone who helped shape the genre, codifying "The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) and becoming "a pioneer of Sherlockian criticism," whose only well-known piece of detective fiction is a short story, "Solved by Inspection" (1931) – collected in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (1990). This does Knox a great disservice as a not untalented mystery writer in his own right. The Three Taps (1927) can testify to this. A sparkling novel full with rivaling detectives, false-solutions and clues that possibly had a bigger hand in shaping the British detective story of the 1930s than it has received credit for over the decades. 

So I wanted to return to Knox's detective fiction before too long, but, before delving into his novel-length mysteries, I wanted to tale a look at his second, practically forgotten, short story. A satirical story-within-a-story published at the height of the genre's Golden Age. 

"The Motive" first appeared in The Illustrated London News, November 17, 1937, which was subsequently reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, MacKill's Mystery Magazine and The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018). Story begins in the Senior Common Room, or the smoking-room, of Simon Magus college where a "boorishly argumentative" drama critic, Penkridge, contrived to put Sir Leonard Huntercombe on his own defense. Sir Leonard is a defense lawyer and "probably responsible for more scoundrels being at large than any other man in England," which he considers to be "a kind of artistic gift" as you need to be imaginative "to throw yourself into the business of picturing the story happening as you want it to have happened" – always figuring a completely innocent client. So he tells them the story of a former client by the name of Westmacott.

Westmacott is a middle aged, restless and unhealthy looking man who retired early with more money than he knew what to do with and surprised his friends when he decides to spend Christmas holiday at "one of those filthy great luxury hotels in Cornwall." A place that attracts a modern, cosmopolitan and rather Bohemian crowd. Such as a modern novelist with a penchant for scandal, Smith, whose work "looked as if it was meant to be seized by the police." So not exactly the kind of holiday destination you expect someone to pick who's "well known to be old-fashioned in his views and conservative in his opinions." There's certainly something out-of-character about what happens next.

During the Christmas celebration, Westmacott suggests to play blind man's buff in the hotel swimming pool, but Smith and Westmacott eventually stayed behind to settle an argument with "a practical try-out and a bet." Westmacott argued that you couldn't know what direction you were swimming in when you were blindfolded, while Smith bragged it was perfectly easy. Smith is blindfolded and has "to swim ten lengths in the bath each way, touching the ends every time, but never touching the sides." So, when Smith did his ten lengths, he tried to touch the handrail, but it wasn't there! The whole place was dark and he pretty quickly figures out a lot of water had been let out of the pool, which effectively trapped and left him to drown when he got too exhausted to swim. A very observant night watchman saved him from potentially drowning over night. This naturally landed Westmacott in some hot water, but the lack of motive, the difficulty of proving he had tampered with the water supply and a handsome compensation ensured the case was hushed up. Sir Leonard had not seen the last of his curious client.

Less than a week later, "a seedy-looking fellow calling himself Robinson" became a regular visitor of Westmacott's home, always wearing dark spectacles, who evidently "got a hold of some kind over Westmacott" that frightened the wits out of him – arming himself with a revolver and even poison. Robinson even accompanies Westmacott on a train trip to his friends to celebrate the New Year, but Robinson mysteriously disappears from his (locked) sleeper compartment with the only entrance being the communicating door in Westmacott's compartment. Yes, this is kind of a locked room mystery. Sir Leonard has to defend Westmacott on an actual murder charge this time and he both confesses and denies to have murdered Robinson, but his motivation and behavior remain murky and incomprehensible. This is where the story becomes a minor gem!

You can easily poke through the locked room-trick in the sleeper compartment, but leaves you with an even bigger question of Chestertonian proportions! Why? Why in the hell would anyone do something like that? It makes no sense whatsoever. Sir Leonard explains "the logic of lunacy," which sounded perfectly logical, behind these two lunatic schemes. Only to pull the rug underneath the reader's feet with a very brazen, final twist. A twist that was beautifully clued and foreshadowed. I'm just left with one question: why, in God's name, did I neglect Knox for all these years?

I originally intended to only review Knox's "The Motive," but its final twist reminded me of another detective story, written more than thirty years later, which tried to do something very similar. So decided to pull my copy of Isaac Asimov's The Return of the Black Widowers (2003) from the shelf to reread that somewhat controversial impossible crime story. 

"The Obvious Factor" was originally published in the May, 1973, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and first collected in Tales of the Black Widowers (1974). Story is the sixth recorded meeting of an exclusive, men-only dinning club, the Black Widowers, who meet once a month in a private dinner room of an Italian restaurant in New York – discussing various subjects, solving puzzles and grilling the guest. Each month, one of the members brings along a guest who's always pestered with the same question, "how do you justify your existence?" However, this question always reveals that the guest has a problem or puzzle to solve, but it's always their personal waiter and honorary Black Widower, Henry, who comes up with the solution. Henry is the only armchair detective in fiction who never sits down as he works out a problem.

Thomas Trumbull is the host of "The Obvious Factor" and his guest of the evening is Dr. Voss Eldridge, Associate Professor of Abnormal Psychology, which turns the conversation from pulp magazines and Roger Halsted writing "a limerick for every book of the Iliad" to parapsychological phenomena. Dr. Eldridge tries to shine a light on telepathy, precognition and even ghosts. Not a month goes by without something crossing his desk that he can't explain, but the club of rationalists are naturally more than a little skeptical. Dr. Eldridge decides to tell them "a story that defies the principle of cause and effect" and thereby "the concept of the irreversible forward flow of time," which is "the very foundation stone on which all science is built."

Dr. Eldridge tells of young woman, Mary, who never finished school and worked behind the counter of a department store, but despite her odd, anti-social behavior, she kept her job. Mary has an uncanny knack to spot shoplifters and "losses quickly dropped to virtually nothing in that particular five-and-ten" despite being in a bad neighborhood. She eventually came to the attention of Dr. Eldridge and discovers "the background of her mind is a constant flickering of frightful images," occasionally lit up "as though by a momentary lightening flash," allowing her to see near future. During one particular session, Mary had a particular eerie premonition as she began to scream about a fire. And the details match a deadly house fire in San Francisco. Even more eerie, "the fire broke out at just about the minute Mary's fit died down" in New York.

Dr. Eldridge tells the Black Widowers that "a few minutes is as good as a century" as "cause and effect is violated and the flow of time is reversed," but the Black Widowers refuse to accept precognition as an answer. So they try to poke holes in the story, but every reasonable, logical answer is eliminated and the club members find themselves backed into a corner. If it wasn't precognition, what was it? Henry quickly comes to their rescue and explains what really happened as effortlessly as flashing a smile. The most obvious solution of all!

If I remember the comments on the old, now defunct Yahoo GAD list correctly, not everyone was particular charmed, or amused, with Asimov's solution/twist. I found it amusing enough to go along with it, however, there's an important and notable difference in quality between Asimov and Knox's stories. Knox's "The Motive" can still stand on its own, as a detective story, without that last, delicious twist, but Asimov's "The Obvious Factor" slyly used a very similar twist for somewhat of a cop out ending – which can strike some as lazy plotting or just plain unfair. But decide for yourself.

So, all in all, I very much enjoyed "The Motive," a glittering specimen of the short British detective story, which toyed with the same idea as "The Obvious Factor," but they came away being vastly different detective stories. It was a pretty good idea to read them back-to-back.

Six Against the Yard (1936) by The Detection Club

The members of that august body known as The Detection Club, a Who's Who of British Golden Age mystery writers, produced a number of experimental collaborations that, nearly a century later, are still practically unique in the genre's history – which too often get dismissed as mere trifles or curiosities. Sure, the Detection Club collaborations never produced a genuine genre classic, but their experiments are not entirely without merit or interest. 

The Floating Admiral (1931) is a round-robin mystery novel written by no less than thirteen  different authors with each one, like a potluck luncheon, bringing something new and unexpected to the story. An experiment that should have ended in an unmitigated disaster had it not been for Anthony Berkeley's last chapter, "Cleaning Up the Mess," which made it appear as if they had planned the whole thing from the beginning. No mean feat! Ask a Policeman (1933) is not only one of those exceedingly rare crossovers, but a very unique type of crossover in which the collaborating writers exchanged their series-detective characters. So you have Berkeley taking on Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and Sayers getting to work with Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. And they're all investigating the same murder! Something that was never done before or since. Not in our genre, anyway.

Not as experimental, but no less fascinating, is The Anatomy of Murder (1936). A collection of five true crime essays, penned by the likes of Berkeley, Sayers and E.R. Punshon, who shine their light on some infamous murderers and murder cases – such as Henri Landru and the Julia Wallace murder case. So you basically get a handful of mystery novelists who play armchair investigative journalists with real-life murder cases. Funnily enough, the Detection Club published a collection of short stories in which the roles are reversed with a former policeman nipping at their heels! 

Martin Edwards said Six Against the Yard (1936) is an ingenious and perhaps unique "variation on the conventional detective fiction anthology" with a half-a-dozen stories in which club members present their "potentially foolproof murders," but each chapter is followed by an analysis from ex-Superintendent Cornish of Scotland Yard. And it's his task to expose "the flaws in the criminal scheme" presented to him. A true battle-of-wits pitting theory against practice! Yes, I'll be keeping score throughout the review. 

Margery Allingham is the first in line to take a crack at devising the perfect murder with "It Didn't Work Out," a theatrical mystery of sorts, in which she kind of casts herself in the role of murderer, but not as Margery Allingham, the mystery writer – assuming the identity of a stage actress, "Polly Oliver." The story plays out over several decades during which Polly has to look on hopelessly as a close stage pal, Louie Lester, who married Frank Springer. A "four-flushing gasbag" with "such an inferiority complex" that "his whole life was spent trying to boost himself up to himself." And "the more weak and hopeless and inefficient he saw himself the wilder and more irritating his lies became." Over the years, decades even, he tore down his wife career and spirit. Until, many years later, they become lodgers of the now elderly and retired Polly who started her own boarding house. Polly decides enough is enough with Frank's charming personality and circumstances presenting her with an opportunity to stage a fatal accident.

Ex-Superintendent Cornish admits that Allingham's murder is "diabolically ingenious" and under favorable circumstances can be completely successful, but he can't be sure whether, or not, the murder truly represents a perfect crime. Because there are some avenues for the police to pursue. However, Cornish only gives a possible outcome of a more thorough police investigation, which depends the mentally unbalanced murderer confessing, but the altruistic motive and method would make securing a conviction a Herculean task. Cornish points out that a successful murder could emboldening Polly "to stage another apparent accident" when another situation arises that convinces her murder is "a reasonable and laudable act." But that's mere conjecture. So Allingham takes the first point for the Detection Club. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-0.

The very cheeky Father Ronald Knox presented with "The Fallen Idol" the most striking, unusual and non-inverted story of the bunch with a Ruritanian murder plot in Latin America. Somewhat reminiscent of Roger East's Twenty-Five Sanitary Inspectors (1935). Enrique Gamba, the Inspirer of the Magnolian Commonwealth, who emerged victorious from a coup and rules over the country with his right-hand man, General Almeda, but unpatriotic messages and threats are circulating the capitol city – promising to burn down Gamba's house with him in it. All of these threats were signed by "The Avenger." There's a fire at the house and Gamba is killed, shot through the head, before his body is flung out of an open window. Colonel Weinberg, the Chief of Police, has the unenviable task to find out who, how and why, which is a hazardous undertaking in a country like Magnolia. Fortunately, ex-Superintendent Cornish is in the luxurious position to not having to take the tinderbox politics of the country into consideration as he explains his case against the murderer and what probably happened after Knox ended the story. A very convincing account that evened the score. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-1.

So the previous story took place in an imaginary, cloud cuckoo-cuckoo land in South America, but Berkeley's "The Policeman Only Taps Once" imported a hardboiled confidence trickster from the United States to Jolly Old England. Eddie Tuffon managed to keep his record spotless, but the place was getting too hot and decided to go to England to give the marriage swindle the good old college try. A huge mistake! Eddie managed to get himself tied to an enormous, square-faced woman with numerous chins, Myrtle, who constantly bosses him around. Nor is she as rich as he had hoped. Myrtle constantly reminded him that her income is hardly enough "to keep an able-bodied husband in idleness" to the point where he "pretty near slugged her once or twice." Eddie comes to the conclusion that she has to go, but, even in an inverted mystery, there's always room for one of Berkeley's trademark twists. Unfortunately, Cornish points out in his analyses of the story, entitled "...And Then Come the Handcuffs," that Berkeley was "more successful in his clever and amusing parody of the new manner in American fiction than in his 'perfect murder''"– "ingeniously as he has worked it out." The twist in the story could very well end up being the one that tied the hangman's knot. Although he does admit that his case purely rests on a heap of circumstantial evidence, but, if there is enough of it, "circumstantial evidence is just as deadly as direct testimony." TDC vs. Cornish: 1-2. 

Russell Thorndike is a new name to me who warrants further investigation, because "The Strange Death of Major Scallion" is easily my favorite from this collection. Such a well written and imaginative story in which the narrator tells the reader about his intention to kill his cousin, of sorts, the titular Major Scallion. A "fat, full-blooded, loud-voiced, bearded and young" man full of conceit, self-satisfaction and tall tales who likely never served a day. Major Scallion has a hold over the narrator which he handily uses to make a claim on his purse and hospitality. Nothing more, nor less, than blackmail. Slowly, the narrator's disgust turned into a cold, terrible hatred and began "a close study of murder as an art" to concoct the perfect method to avoid scaffold. Interestingly, the murder that inspires the narrator comes from an account of Thorndike's anti-hero series-character, Doctor Syn, who's an 18th century parson and smuggler. He even name drops his off-page opponent ("that other enemy to murder, Mr. Cornish"). Eventually settling on a seemingly ingenious method involving Major Scallion's excessive smoking habit, homemade nicotine poison and "a sinister family of house beetles." Regrettably, for our narrator, the method is full of holes and you don't need Cornish to spot the fatal flaw that will deliver him into the capable hands of the public hangman. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-3.

Dorothy L. Sayers returns to the theater setting with "Blood Sacrifice" as a young playwright, John Scales, finally gets his big break when a well-known actor-manager, Garrick Drury, decides to put on his play, Bitter Laurel – which was intended to be cynical and shocking play. Drury slowly reshaped the play into something "revoltingly different" that appealed to the masses and not without success. Scales even wrote the new scenes and lines himself, because "his own lines would be less intolerable than the united efforts of cast and producer to write them for themselves." This killed him on the inside as his name is now associated with sob-stuff and ruined his reputation with his artistic friends, which made him think of murder. However, the inevitable death of Garrick Drury wasn't a premeditated murder or even an act in the heat of the moment. Drury was send flying through a shop window by a skidding car and cut an artery in his arm, which required a blood transfusion to safe his life. So while the doctor and ambulance men try to safe his life and test everyone to find the right blood group, Scales notices the test plate get mixed up. Drury likely got a deadly blood transfusion, or did he? Not even Scales is entirely sure what he saw, but he kept his mouth shut.

Ex-Superintendent Cornish admits he "could not hope to prove, either to a jury's satisfaction or to my own, that John Scales was guilty of the crime of murder," but points out that "neither could any other detective." Not even that distinguished amateur, Lord Peter Wimsey, because Sayers had "failed to establish the fact of murder." There's a case to be made that Scales is morally guilty, but nothing that can be brought home unless the police can prove that he knew the test plates were mixed up and said nothing. Something that's next to impossible. So, in spite of Cornish's objections, Sayers scored a much needed point for her team. TDC vs. Cornish: 2-3. 

Freeman Wills Crofts has the opportunity to end this battle-of-wits in a draw with his contribution, entitled "The Parcel," which is as simple as it's technical tricky and comes with a diagram of the murder weapon. The premise of the story is practically identical to Thorndike's "The Strange Death of Major Scallion" in which rehabilitated, one-time criminal, Stewart Haslar, returns to England with a wife and a modest fortune that he made when he sold his Australian chain of fruit stores. Only person who knows his real identity and past, Henry Blunt, returns to impose on Haslar's generosity. After nearly two years, Haslar comes to the conclusion Blunt has to go and devices, what he thinks, is a bombproof plan by sending his blackmailer a homemade explosive over the mail. A plan hinging entirely on the assumption that there's no traceable link between Blunt and Haslar, but, as Cornish pointed out, Blunt is unlikely to have covered his tracks as thoroughly as Haslar, which is one of the many paths the police can investigate in this murder – slowly building a complete case to present to the judge and jury. And "there is little doubt what the verdict will be." TDC vs Cornish: 2-4.

The 2013 reprint edition of Six Against the Yard closes with an afterword, or rather an introduction, to a 1929 true crime essay by Agatha Christie, but the only reason it was included was to emblazon her name on the cover. Why not include her own perfect murder story, “Wireless” (1926), with an analysis from a modern police inspector, or forensic detective, to show how the police could have brought the killer to justice. That would have given them a legitimate reason to plaster her name on the cover. Now it borders on false advertisement. Anyway, the introduction to the essay ended with this bummer of a line, "sadly, Superintendent Cornish, who died on 6th February 1959 at the age of 85, is unavailable for comment..." A salute to you, Superintendent Cornish! You were no Lestrade!

So, all in all, the Detection Club lost rather badly here with four of the six ending up in the docks, but the end score could have easily been flipped around had Berkeley and Knox showed off their plotting skills instead of their storytelling abilities. Nonetheless, I enjoyed these stories tremendously and particularly Cornish picking them apart that showed the police has one critical advantage over the amateur criminal: a ton of experience. Highly recommended! Particularly to mystery readers with a fondness for the inverted detective story.

The Three Taps (1927) by Ronald A. Knox

I obliquely referred to Father Ronald A. Knox's "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) in my review of Ton Vervoort's Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963), which played with one of his commandments without breaking it and suddenly reminded that Knox represents a glaring blind spot in my Golden Age reading – like Josephine Bell, R.A.J. Walling and the Coles. So far my sole exposure to Knox's detective fiction has been his Chestertonian short story "Solved by Inspection" (The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, 1990), but somehow, his novel-length mysteries never left the big pile. Why not do a little penance by reading his first Miles Bredon mystery? 

You can definitely chalk Knox's The Three Taps (1927) up as another detective novel I should have gotten to a lot sooner, because it was a fine and immensely enjoyable detective yarn. A detective yarn that possibly had some influence on such lauded mystery writers like Anthony Berkeley, Leo Bruce, Christopher Bush and J.J. Connington. 

The Three Taps could just as easily have been titled The Three Detectives, The Three Suspects or The Three Possibilities. All of which would give the reader a better idea what kind of game Knox has in store. Well, perhaps not in 1927, but 21st century Golden Age mystery reader certainly would prick reading a title like The Three Detectives or The Three Possibilities.

Knox sets the tone, right off the bat, with a humorous introduction to Miles Bredon's employer, Indescribable Insurance Company, whose fabulous reputation promises that "every step you take on this side of the grave" can be ensured with "handsome terms as the step which takes you into the grave" – guaranteeing "the man who is insured with the Indescribable walks the world in armour of proof." Even in the case of practical difficulties, the Indescribable would "somehow contrive to frank your passage into the world beyond." So many humorous wags have been made at the company's expense alleging "a burglar can insure himself against a haul of sham jewels" or "a client who murmured 'Thank God!' as he fell down a liftshaft." The whole story sparkles with witty and satirical descriptions and dialogue like that.

Indescribable Insurance Company most popular product is the so-called Euthanasia policy, which is potentially disastrous to any scheming relatives weary of waiting for nature to take its course. 

A Euthanasia policy comes with very heavy premiums ("that goes without saying") and, if the policy holder dies before the age of sixty-five, a small fortune is paid to the heirs. But, if the policy holder outlives that crucial age, he becomes a pensioner of the company with every breath they take being money in their pockets. Their heirs assigns, normally looking forward to cash-in their inheritance, conspire to keep their "body and soul together with every known artifice of modern medicine." I wish this Euthanasia policy had become a shared-universe object turning up in the works of other British mystery writers. Such a waste it was used only here. Anyway...

Jephthah Mottram is a successful and wealthy businessman from Pullford, a large Midland town, who, two weeks before sixty-fourth birthday, was told by a Harley Street specialist he's suffering from a malignant disease – giving him no more than two years with increasing pain. Mottram needs ready money to pay doctor's bills, treatment and foreign travel, but all his wealth is tied up and money is pretty tight. So he went to the Indescribable to try to negate on his Euthanasia policy with a business-like offer. Indescribable pays back half the premiums from the time the policy started and, if he dies before his sixty-fifth birthday, pay no insurance. And, if he lives, no annuity. Naturally, they refuse to cancel the original contract, but it would not be long until they have send out their in-house detective to investigate their clients untimely passing.

Indescribable retained its own private detective, Miles Bredon, who's introduced "a big, good-humoured, slightly lethargic creature still in the early thirties" whose excellent mind is "the victim of hobbies which perpetually diverted his attention." There were, however, two events, or interventions, that stirred his mind in the right direction. One is that his brilliant wartime record as an intelligence officer allowed him to accept the position as an insurance investigator on his own terms. Namely that he didn't have to sit in an office all day and play around at home until he was needed. Secondly was his marriage to Angela who had no illusions other than spending her life with "a large, untidy, absent-minded man who would frequently forget that she was in the room." A man who needed a nurse and chauffeur as much as a wife, but I don't think there was a better and funnier husband-and-wife detective until Kelley Roos' Jeff and Haila Troy arrived on the scene in the 1940s.

So, one day, Miles Bredon is asked to go with Angela to Chilthorpe, a small town, where Mottram always spends his annual, two-week fishing holiday and always stays at the same inn, the Load of Mischief. Mottram appears to have met with an unfortunate accident with the gas, but some of the silent witnesses suggest it could have also been suicide or murder.

Mottram went to bed the previous night, took his sleeping-draught and either turned on the gas-tap or forgot to turn it off, but, when the door was broken down, they discovered that the windows were wide open and held by its clasp – which means "there could have been no death." So that means a person or persons unknown interfered with the scene, but there are "iron bars on the inside to protect it from unauthorized approach" and the door was locked with the key on the inside. This adds another impossibility to the problem whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. When the body was discovered, the main gas-tap was turned off, but there were "no marks of fingers turning it off." A fact that in case of suicide is utterly impossible and in case of murder needlessly stupid and inexplicable.

So there you have thoroughly puzzling and inexplicable death buzzing with contradictory facts and evidence with the main question being whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. This approach strongly reminded me of Connington's The Case with Nine Solutions (1928) and Bush's The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938), which center on finding the right combination of accident, suicide or murder to explain double deaths. John Rhode turned this combination-lock style of plotting on its head in Death in Harley Street (1946) with a fatal poisoning that neither have been an accident, suicide or murder. You can see how Knox may have influenced Connington's 1928 novel which, in turn, provided a model for Bush's The Case of the Tudor Queen and Rhode added a twist to it. However, you can't really compare Knox or The Three Taps to any of those big bugs and giants of the so-called humdrum detective story.

There's a technical aspect to the plot typically associated with Crofts and Rhode, but The Three Taps stands much closer, in spirit, to Berkeley's The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936). A third detective enters the story when Bredon discovers that the investigating policeman is an old army friend, Inspector Leyland of Scotland Yard, who take opposite views of the case. Bredon naturally prefers "suicide masquerading as accident" while Leyland favors "murder masquerading as suicide," but there's a litany of clues and red herrings that keep messing with their pet theories. Most importantly, the gas-tap, the locked door and open windows, but there's also an half-finished document, a guestbook signed on arrival, a letter to a local rag attacking Mottram and a wound-up, eight-day watch – coming on top of shocking lack of motives or opportunity. Leyland and the Bredons have only three potential suspects to work with.

Firstly, there's the victim's anti-clerical, diminutive secretary, Brinkman, who may have been in the best position to have done some tampering, but lacked a motive. Simmonds is Mottram's disinherited nephew who disliked his uncle very much and possible had a foot inside the door of the inn, but would not have gotten a dime out of his uncle's death. Mr. Pulteney is a schoolmaster on holiday with no apparent link to the victim, except staying at the same inn, but "shows rather too much curiosity" as he acts almost like a fourth detective. Pulteney even draws an interesting comparison between schoolmasters and detectives as part of his function is having to figure out "who threw the butter at the ceiling, which boy cribbed from which, where the missing postage-stamp has got to." This was echoed more than a decade later by Dr. Gideon Fell in John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939).

There's an element to the story, a core component of the puzzle plot, clearly betraying the influence G.K. Chesterton had on Knox. Mottram had been pestering the local bishop whether it's "lawful to do evil in order that good might come." I don't think he handled this good-evil paradox as good as Chesterton would have done, but it was put to good use as an important puzzle-piece.

Miles, Angela and Leyland throw themselves at these contradictory problems with all the zest and zeal of spirited amateur detectives instead of salaried employers. A discussion of detective stories is used to check which brand of cigarettes everyone is smoking and a fake conversation is staged for the benefit of an eavesdropper, but some of their questions prove to have unexpected answers and even the best laid plans can backfire. Slowly, but surely, they work towards a solution. Well, there actually are three solutions with two of them being false-solutions in the tradition of Berkeley. However, the three solutions is also where the only flaw of the story is revealed. 

The Three Taps is one of those detective novels in which one of the false-solutions is better and more inspired than the correct solution. Not that the correct solution is bad, or unsatisfying, but not as clever or inspired as the first false-solution. What the solution lacked in brains was made up with guts, because it was very gutsy to use it as an explanation. And it worked!

So, all things considered, The Three Taps is a cut above the average, 1920s detective novel and portent of things to come with its sparkling dialogue, rich storytelling and a complicated, puzzle-driven plot – crammed with clues, detectives and false-solutions. And perhaps had a bigger hand in shaping the British detective story of the 1930s that it has gotten credit for. So, in short, a mystery reader's detective novel! 

A note for the curious: Robert Knox's older sister, Winifred Peck, wrote two detective novels herself, The Warrielaw Jewel (1933) and Arrest the Bishop? (1949), which were reissued in 2016 by Dean Street Press. She well worth a read to everyone who has a taste for those alternative Crime Queens who have been unearthed over the past few years. Another thing... did you know Knox may have influenced Orson Welles' 1938 radio-hoax with his January, 1926, broadcast of "a simulated live report of revolution sweeping across London." Knox was somewhat of an originalist, wasn't he?

"You are remembered for the rules you break"

After several rewrites, I have come to the conclusion that this isn't going to be one of my better critical pieces, but here we go anyway:  

During the waning years of the 1920s, a clique of notable mystery writers were starting to form a closely-knit gang, who called themselves The Detection Club, and codified a set of rules, which became known as "Father Knox's Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction," to lend an air of legitimacy to their mob. And it amuses me to no end to imagine Berkeley, Christie, Freeman, Sayers and Bailey restlessly waiting in the lobby of a hotel, when, all of a sudden, Knox comes strutting down the stairs, after a long and exhaustive conclave with Chesterton, triumphantly raising the ten commandments above his head. But I digress.

The stories collected in the volume Sins for Father Knox (1973), penned by the Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky, take the rules set forth by the clergyman and use them as a framework for a little less than a dozen diverting, offbeat mysteries that simply refuse to adhere to them. Skvorecky deliberately breaks one of Knox's commandments in each one of his stories and then directly challenges the reader to deduce, based on the clues given, which one he has disobeyed – as well as finding out who-and howdunit!

A short overview of the stories:

  

An Intimate Business

The first story serves as an introduction of the main protagonist, Eve Adam, a woman imprisoned for the poisoning of her former beau – a movie director of ill-repute. But the moonfaced, love-struck Lt. Boruvka believes her to be innocent and offers his services in clearing the blotch from her name. This is unfortunately a dull, but necessary, introductory for the stories to come. Just try to bear through it. 

The first challenge to the reader