Secret of the Moai

"All of us love the game called mystery fiction and we're gathered on an island with a bloody back story."

- Poe (Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders, 1987)

During the Summer of 2015, John Pugmire of Locked Room International published an English edition of Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987), translated by our very own Ho-Ling Wong, which was a landmark mystery novel in Japan by Yukito Ayatsuji – ushering in the era of shin honkaku (i.e. their golden period). This neo-orthodox movement succeeded the social school, known for emphasizing "natural realism," which had dominated the scene since the 1950s. A dominance that was finally broken in the 1980s with the publication of a handful of plot-oriented mysteries that helped turn the tide against the social menace of so-called respectable crime-fiction.

One of these watershed publications was Senseijutsu satsujinjiken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981) by Soji Shimada, which even managed to carve out a reputation for itself here in the West. However, that famous and bloody tour-de-force is not the subject of this blog-post. I only mentioned Shimada, "the doyen of the Japanese form of Golden Age detective fiction," because he wrote an insightful introduction for the latest translation by Ho-Ling and LRI.

Alice Arisugawa wandered on the scene with "one clearly defined ambition," which was to become "the successor to Ellery Queen." It's a lofty goal, to be sure, but his first shot at writing a detective story, Gekko Gemu (Moonlight Game, 1988), failed to convince Ayatsuji the new EQ had emerged in Japan – which, however, changed when Arisugawa wrote his second novel, Koto Pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989). And that's the one that was peddled across the language barrier by LRI.

If you want to know more about the background of Arisugawa or his work, I recommend you read Ho-Ling's blog-post about the series, "Rebuild: The Student Alice Series," or simply check out all of the posts he made under the "Alice Arisugawa" tag. So now we got that out of the way, let's get this long overdue review on the road.

A law student, named Alice Arisugawa, who, in spite of his feminine name, is actually a guy, narrates The Moai Island Puzzle. I'm not entirely sure why the name of Alice was chosen as both a nom-de-plume and as a name for the character, but I imagine the reason is somewhat similar as to why the protagonist from Eoin Colfer's work, Artemis Fowl, shares his name with a Greek goddess – i.e. sounds kind of nifty (?).

In any case, Alice is a member of the Eito University Mystery Club and a recent addition to the club, Maria Arima, invites him and the club president, Jiro Egami, to an island villa that used to belong to her late grandfather, Tetsunosuke Arima. The place now belongs to her uncle, Ryuichi Arima, but her invitation entails more than just a summer holiday. During his lifetime, Tetsunosuke was a successful businessman and leisure activity of choice was solving all kind of puzzles: jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, mathematical puzzles and mazes. Before he passed away, he created a particular alluring puzzle himself. A treasure hunt he referred to as "an evolving puzzle."

On the small, horseshoe-shaped island, called Kashikijima Island, the old businessman planted twenty-five moai statues. However, these carvings are very different from the ones found on Easter Island. The moai faces on this island were chopped and chiseled out of wood, which are as wide as a telephone-pole and about one meter high, but unlike their stone counterparts, these "wooden moais are all looking in different directions" – which Maria suspects "might be the key to unlocking the secret." One that will reveal where her grandfather has hidden a stash of diamonds. So would the Mystery Club not take up the challenge and solve the mystery? 

Japanese Edition

How difficult can it be? It's only a tiny island with two main buildings: Panorama Villa on the Western Low Tide Cape and Happy Fish Villa on the Eastern High Tide Cape. The former is the holiday residence of the Arima family, while the latter is the retreat of a small-time artist, Itaru Hirakawa. In addition to these buildings, there's a small arbor and an observation platform tucked away in the lush and wild vegetation of the island. A seemingly peaceful and benign place, but, early on in the story, the reader learns of a tragedy that has taken place there. Maria's cousin, Hideto, attempted to solve the intricate moai puzzle, but tragically drowned at sea. This happened three years ago and pretty much sets the stage to the tragedies that are about to unfold on the isolated island. 
 

The stretch between the prologue and the chapters that lay the groundwork for the first murders take up a significant portion of the first half of the book, which is told in leisurely pace and might test the patience of reader who prefer the introduction of a body at the earliest moment possible. However, this part of the book does an excellent job in sketching an image of the story's surrounding and introducing all of the characters. This all lead up to one of the more curious, but well handled, locked room mysteries I have encountered in a long time. I should remind you that I say that with John Russell Fearn's extraordinary Thy Arm Alone (1947) still fresh in mind.

Somewhere around the 80-page mark, the bodies of two family members are found behind the bolted door of a bedroom: the first one belongs Ryuichi's brother-in-law, Kango Makihara, whose body is covered by that of his daughter, Sumako. The murderer shot both father and daughter with a rifle that was kept illegally on the island for target practice. However, the rifle was not found when they broke into the bedroom. So how did the shooter manage to leave two bodies inside a sealed bedroom with a stiff, rusty latch on the door?

On the back cover, the impossible situation is described as "brilliant and worthy of John Dickson Carr." Personally, I would not draw a comparison between this locked room and those conjured up by the Grand Master himself, because the explanation offered by Arisugawa took a deconstructionist's approach. That being said, this still has to be one of the most solidly motivated locked room murders in all of detective fiction. There was a good and original reason as to why the room had to be locked from the inside. I remember Sir Henry Merrivale lectured in Carter Dickson's The White Priory Murders (1934) and The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) about all of the motives for creating a locked room scenario, but this one was not mentioned. So The Moai Island Puzzle might have actually broken new ground in the genre. No mean feat!

This is not the only puzzle facing Alice, Maria and Egami: a third murder is committed on the other side of the island, which seemed to have involved a dying message, but it turned out that the murderer obliterated this tell-tale clue – which is a real pity. I'm always surprised at how few genuine dying message novels there really are. Ellery Queen's The Tragedy of X (1937) is seen as an iconic example of this ploy, but really, the dying message is only a minor part of the overall plot. One that was not introduced until the novel was nearing its final chapter. So the only real example I can think of is Murder Points a Finger (1953) by David Alexander. Anyway...

Alice Arisugawa

A final problem is presented in the guise of a supposed suicide: the alleged killer shoots himself and leaves a suicide note behind, but this incident is swiftly revealed to have been staged. However, where the story really excelled, as an exercise in deductive reasoning, is the impressive chain of deduction and how all of the aspects of the plot seemed to come together naturally – beautifully dovetailing into a cohesive pattern. Egami is able to reconstruct the murderers movement, during the third murder, based largely around a tire-mark on a piece of piece (a map of the island) that was found along the road between the two villas. It effectively demonstrated how serious Arisugawa was when he said he was going to pick up the mantle of Ellery Queen. A message he punctuated by including "A Challenge to the Reader" towards the end of the novel. Lastly, there's how everything fitted together. The Moai Island Puzzle could've easily degenerated into a convoluted mess, but the way in which the events played out gave the plot a glimmer of realism. You could bring yourself to believe events could actually unfold in the way they were described and coherently explained here.

Sadly, I was too slow and thick to have reached the same conclusion. I instinctively guessed (shame!) the murderer's identity, but my deductions were far from stellar. Not my finest hour as a conceited armchair detective who sees himself as being on par with Mycroft Holmes. Oh well!

So what else can I say in this overlong review except that, based on this novel, Arisugawa seems worthy to ascend to the throne of Ellery Queen. Hopefully, we've not seen the last of him on this side of our beloved genre.

On a final, semi-related note: some of the long-time readers of this blog know, when I began blogging, I shamelessly copied Ho-Ling's blog. I use blog-titles and opening quotes that are only vaguely related to the blog-post, which annoyed or confused some readers. But there's no way back now. Anyhow, Ho-Ling is fond of using episode titles from Scooby-Doo for his blog-posts. So for this blog-post, reviewing a book he translated, I decided to look for an applicable Scoody-Doo title, but without much success. Luckily, there was another Hanna-Barbera produced cartoon show, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, which had a perfect episode title for this blog-post. So hopefully JQ can also carry his approval.

Once in a Lifetime

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet," collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891)

Back in June, I posted a review of John Russell Fearn's Black Maria, M.A. (1944), originally published as by "John Slate," which was brought to my attention in a blog-post penned by John Norris – titled "Neglected Detectives: Maria Black, MA." The post closed with some enticing comments about the fourth book in the series.

In his blog-post, Norris described the central plot point of Thy Arm Alone (1947) as "one of the most bizarrely executed" and "ingeniously planned murders in all of detective fiction." I agree Fearn constructed a very imaginative and practically unique plot. One that would force Sherlock Holmes to eat his own words when he proclaimed there "was nothing new under the sun" and how "it has all been done before."

Betty Shapley is "the belle of the village," a small English place called Langhorn, where she "assumed the position of sub-post-mistress" in the general store-cum-post office owned by her parents – which she felt was a comedown from her education at Roseway College. However, Betty is very beautiful and always basks in male attention, but she three principle admirers vying for her affection: Vincent Grey, Tom Clayton and Herbert "Herby" Pollitt. She played "one against the other with sublime disregard for their feelings."

So you would expect Betty Shapley to fulfill the role of lovely murder victim, while her three beaus assume the part of suspects, but, instead, a cruel turn of fortune teaches her "a costly lesson."

During a late-evening date, the car of Herby broke down underneath a deep purple sky, heralding the approaching night, which is streaked that evening with the tails of shooting stars, but Betty finds that her companion is not exactly in a romantic mood. He does not even want to make a wish. So they decide that she goes back to the village to fetch Tom, who runs a garage, to tow the stranded car from that dangerous spot in the road, but that's where one of the strangest sequence of events begin to unfold – something she gets a first glimpse of when she sees Vincent cycling "like a madman." A madman "who has seen unimaginable horror" and is "fleeing from it as fast as he can go," which happened to be from the spot where she left Herby. But she does not learn what took place on that dark stretch of road until a pair of coppers appears on her doorstep.

Inspector Morgan and Sergeant Claythorne tell her that, upon his arrival, Clayton found the car ablaze and had to drag the body of Herby out of the flames of the burning wreckage, but he had been dead before being positioned in the car – top and left side of his skull had been battered to a gruesome pulp. It was an injury that had obliterated or scorched half of his face, which is what provided the murder with an impossible angle: what kind of heavy and jagged weapon could do so much damage with a single blow?

In any case, the police want to know the whereabouts of Vincent Grey, which is when Betty decides Vincent is the one she always loved. Only problem is that he's now a wanted man. Regardless, Vincent manages to get a message to Betty, which resulted in a minor cat-and-mouse game between Betty and Police-Constable Rogers, but her most important move was returning to Roseway College for Young Ladies – to ask help from her old school teacher and amateur criminologist, Maria Black. A woman often referred to as "Black Maria." Or a nosy old dragon. Depending on who you ask.

Maria Black has (successfully) meddled in murder cases and Betty wants her to interfere in the investigation, which she does in a number of different ways: she consults her collection of scientific literature in the hope of finding a possible explanation for a bunch of peculiar clues. Some of these strange pieces of evidence include inexplicable "traces of a metallic element in the wound," a blackened patch of soil not far from the blazing car and a pier of burned pliers. She also employs the services of an old friend, "Pulp" Martin, who pokes around the house and ash-cans of one of the suspects, which pretty much took care of the required legwork in the case. And the pages are scattered with Maria's helpful case-notes.

All of this makes for a very lively and interesting mystery novel, but the genuine star of the story is Fearn's ingenuity and originality. I'm very proud of myself for having figured out the general idea behind the death of Pollitt very early on in the story (there was some nice foreshadowing), but I was craftily lead away from the simple, but unbelievable, truth by the layers of subterfuge – wickedly spun around the problem by the guilty party.

Admittedly, not everyone is going to swallow the root-cause of Pollitt's death, which I can understand, but you've to admire how Fearn took the ball and ran with it. As the culprit explained towards the end, "a chance like that only happens once in a lifetime" and "I made full use of it." I agree! If there's anything to be said against this story, it’s that it lacked a Carrian-style notes for the curious. The last sentence of the book kind of begged for such a feature, but other than that, I absolutely loved it. Thy Arm Alone is an original piece of work. Even after seven decades! 

So if you think you've seen all the dirty tricks... you should definitely give this one a shot.

The Jewel That Was Ours

"And that means murder..." 

- Miles Bredon (Ronald A. Knox's "Solved by Inspection," collected in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, 1990)

During her lifetime, Winifred Peck (née Knox) gained critical and popular recognition as an author of mainstream fiction and biographical literature, which began with the publication of The Court of a Saint (1909), when she was 27, followed by twenty-five novels and memoirs over the next four decades – including a pair of long-forgotten mystery novels. But some of her equally talented relatives always seem to cast a shadow over her accomplishments.

One of these relatives was her younger brother, Ronald A. Knox, who was a founding member of the London-based Detection Club and concocted the Detective's Decalogue: The Ten Rules of Detective Fiction. Reportedly, Knox also authored some excellent detective stories, such as the much-touted Still Dead (1934), but I’ve only read one of his short stories, the Chestertonian "Solved by Inspection." However, I was aware of Knox and the legacy he had left behind, but I think most of us were oblivious of his sister and her brief participation in the Grandest Game in the World – which changed for me when Curt Evans wrote a 2012 blog-post, "Murder in the Family," about her first mystery novel. 

It was (sort of) a repost of an article that had been previously published on Mystery*File, but it was on Evans' blog that I first learned about Peck.

In any case, The Warrielaw Jewel (1933) impressed me as a potentially interesting detective story, which can be counted as one of the earliest examples of a historical mystery. During the Golden Age, the historical detective story were not the rage it is today. So I was very curious about that aspect of the story. I was not as thrilled about the comparison with Margery Allingham or how the book supposedly presaged the "shifting of emphasis from pure puzzles to the study of character and setting," which "helped mark that gradual transition from detective story to crime novel," but I was left intrigued nonetheless – sharing Evans' hope that the book would, one day, be republished. Well, that day is finally upon us!

Dean Street Press is reissuing The Warrielaw Jewel and Arrest the Bishop? (1949), which are prefaced by award-winning crime novelist and anthologist, Martin Edwards, who reviewed the book back in 2011. At the time, Edwards' called the plot and prose well constructed, but ponderous and lacking excitement. These are valid points of criticism. However, I was not bothered by the leisurely pace of the storytelling or the strong emphasis on characterization, because the overall structure of the story was pretty solid. Peck essentially penned the kind of character-driven detective story that Ellery Queen attempted to create in Calamity Town (1942), but Peck actually succeeded were Queen failed. On top of that, Peck even included a "Challenge to the Reader" at the end of the twelfth chapter. But I'm getting ahead of the story here.

The Warrielaw Jewel is narrated by Betty Morrison, who relates the details of a murder case she was involved twenty years previously, when she had just married her husband, John Morrison, who's an attorney to an old, eccentric and moldering Edinburgh family – the Warrielaws. The events of Betty's narrative took place in 1909, "when King Edward VII lived" and "the term Victorian was not yet a reproach," which began to move after she and her husband moved into the house that was vacated by his parents.

In those days, Edinburgh was not a city, but "a fortuitous collection of clans" and beneath the surface "lurked a history of old hatreds" and "feuds as old as the Black Douglas." Betty is about to discover this first-hand when she comes into contact with the Warrielaw. One of the favorite economy of her husband's clients is saving six shillings and eight pence by extracting legal advice from him in an ordinary social setting, which is why he find several members of the family on his doorstep: Miss Mary Warrielaw and Miss Rhoda MacPherson. Officially, they wanted John's advice about a burglary at the home, but Mary also hints about the ill will towards her sister, Jessica, who is sort of the matriarch of the family and she has been slowly selling off the family jewels, pictures and antique furniture.

She was taken to the court over this by a cousin, Cora Murray, but the law decided in Jessica favors. So she has continued liquidating family assets ever since. But now she wants to get rid of the last family heirloom, the fairy jewel!

According to the family legend, the only known fairy relic in the world came into their possession during the reign of James II of Scotland. One night, the dark lair of their clan strayed out into his dark woods and there he encountered a genuine fairy – a small, fair and glittering lady. He took the fairy to his castle and married here there. As a dowry, she gave him a jewel, taken from "the dim caverns of elf lands," but there's an interesting aspect about this legend that was not acknowledged. The family legend states that the fairy, a dutiful wife, bore the lord of the manor ten children and they were all bequeathed with "her fair hair and gold-green eyes." It is noted how strange these gold-green eyes are, because, besides the peculiar color, they also have small pupil that rarely contract or expend. These eyes are the most defining trait of all the Warrielaws. I can imagine the early Warrielaws dreamed up this fairy tale to explain the mutation in their bloodline, which made them standout from the other dark Borderers of the 15th century.

Winifred Peck

Anyway, the first half of the book lay the groundwork for the second half and takes the time to introduce all of the characters, which also includes other relatives such as Neil Logan, "a queer fish," who's an artist and one of the few family members who profited from Jessica. Alison is Rhoda's younger stepsister and she's getting involved with Betty's brother, Dennis. The reader is also shown around the rundown mansion of the family with its rabbit warren of dark corridors, ageless library, overstuffed rooms and large, overgrown garden. This narrative is punctuated with comments from Betty about the changes that have taken place between 1909 and 1933. It equips the book not only with a strong sense of place and time, but also gives off the impression that time is moving all around the characters. Peck succeeded admirably in penning a story that looked back on events from a previous era.

Well, these events really begin to move when Jessica Warrielaw vanishes from the face of the Earth and leave the household without a dime to draw on. She stays gone for seven weeks, but then a gruesome discovery is made in one of the outhouses a stone's-throw from the Warrielaw estate: Jessica's badly decomposed body was found underneath several sacks, battered and stabbed to death, which quickly places her eccentric nephew, Neil, in a precarious position – who benefited under her will and had the means to carry out the murder. So he's charged with the murder of his aunt and hauled in front of a judge.

Luckily, for Neil, a retired policeman and a long-time friend of Betty's husband, Bob Stuart, decided to poke around in the case. And he stumbles to the truth when the sight of what could've been Jessica's ghost startles someone. However, the explanation for the murder is not another variation or imitation of the Birlstone Gambit. It's a surprisingly easy, straightforward and workable explanation, which feels like an inevitability through Peck's excellent characterization and depiction of the various family members.

I should note here that a large chunk of the plot does not necessarily revolve around correctly identifying the murderer or motive, but placing the sequence of events in the correct order. So, plot-wise, this might not have been the most ideal crime novel to have a Queen-ish "Challenge to the Reader" inserted, which belongs between the pages of a thoroughbred whodunit, but you can definitely work towards the solution based on the given information.

A case of gimmick infringement?

All in all, The Warrielaw Jewel placed a great deal of emphasis on characterization and setting, but the end result was a dark, moody and memorable detective story. And, as I said earlier, Peck succeeded in this book where Ellery Queen failed with their character-driven-and psychology driven Wrightsville novels. Well, that really all I've say about this book. It's a really good, engrossing and solid read in spite of the plot taking a backseat in favor of the characters and setting.

I'll try to scratch her second mystery novel from TBR-list before the end of the month, but, for my next blog-post, I'll try find something that’s heavy on plot. Perhaps a locked room mystery or something. I haven't discussed one of those for ages on here, right?

Whose Body?

"The one thing I do know about murderers is that they can never let well alone."

- Miss Marple (Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington, 1957) 

The Conqueror Inn (1943) is the eighteenth entrée in E.R. Punshon's decades-long series about a rising policeman, Inspector Bobby Owen of the Wychshire County Police, which was praised by Anthony Boucher in The San Francisco Chronicle as "rewarding for its solid construction" and "the distinguished characterization" of an Irish patriot. It's definitely an interesting and noteworthy addition to the shelf of war-time mystery and crime novels from the 1940s.

At this point in his career, Bobby Owen is doubling his role as the chief of the Midwych County C.I.D. with the post of secretary to the chief constable, Colonel Glynne, who was growing "more and more used to leaving everything to the young man already recognized as his successor" – which should have bound him to a paper-strewn desk. The key word here is "should," because Owen is on an errand that should have been confided to a subordinate. This errand leads him to a remote watering hole in a lonely, desolate spot of his district.

Mr. Christopherson is the philosophical-minded, but taciturn, proprietor of the Conqueror Inn, which alleges "to be the oldest licensed house in England" and legend tells how William the Conqueror was served wine there. However, the building was torched to the ground, during a skirmish between Highlanders and Dragoons, after which a new structure was erected in 1750. So none of the subsequent owners possessed the paperwork necessary to substantiate their historic claim.

What brought Owen to this remote and desolate place was a strange phone call from the present landlord: Mr. Christopherson placed a phone call to the police, requesting an experienced officer, because he had found a wooden box crammed with "tightly packed bundles of one-pound notes" – a grand total of two thousand pounds. A nice chunk of money in those days, but that’s not all the landlord stumbles across. Not far from the road where he found the box is "a new dug grave." So they open the grave, but even Bobby is shocked by what he unearthed.

The makeshift grave contains the body of a man, "stripped of every shred of clothing," with a single bullet hole directly over the heart, but the horrifying aspect is that "the dead man's face had been battered out of all resemblance to human features." As a result, Bobby finds himself faced with an unusual kind of problem: having to figure out who had been killed?

There are a number of possibilities: one of them is the son of the landlord, Derek, who went missing on the battlefield of Dunkirk, presumably killed, but evidence surfaced suggesting he might have survived. If this is the case, it becomes obvious that his family has been hiding him from the authorities, which also gives rise to another possibility: might the confused, shell-shocked young man might have shot the faceless man? After all, Bobby found evidence of an attempted burglary at the inn. Another candidate for the role of corpse is a young Irishman, Larry Connor, who came over from the Emerald Isle to enlist, but was rejected by the R.A.F. and seems to have gone missing not long thereafter – which is disputed by his uncooperative uncle, Micky Burke.

Bobby finds that nearly everyone involved in the case is annoyingly unaccommodating: the landlord and his daughter, Rachel, talk about as much as a brick wall. Rachel even openly defies Bobby and this throws the prowling policeman in a sulky mood ("women never play fair"). Bobby also encounters a military man, Captain Peter Wintle, who sustained a black eye around the same time as the victim received a sound thrashing, which was two days before the murder, but the captain refuses to slip any information to the inspector. It's noted at the end of the book that this needlessly complicated the case. Finally, there are Mr. Merton Kram and his daughter, owners of a lorry company, who seem to have a marked interest in the outbuildings of the inn. But are they involved in the murder?

So the slightly frustrated police-inspector has to piece to truth together from allusions, half-stated truths, a forged letter, a buried service revolver and burning candle on a mantel piece – all of them, somehow, tied to the box full of one-pound notes, black marketeering and a possible plot from Irish revolutionaries. This makes for one of Punshon's typically complicated, but niftily executed, detective stories that run all over the place. But his plots always seem to manage to land on their feet.

So I was very pleased with the overall story, but the reader has to be warned about one aspect of the plot: the revelation of the murderer’s identity and motivation is anti-climatic, because it turns out to be a rather simple, sordid and even modern kind of crime. One that was complicated by the mutilation, burial and the other aforementioned plot-threads. Some of you might respond with: "What? That's all?" It makes The Conqueror Inn perhaps more of a crime novel than a proper mystery, but I really liked the story as a whole. As you've probably noticed by now, I have a huge soft spot for these war-time detective stories and there was enough here to forgive that weak spot.

Note for the curious: Dean Street Press has previously reissued two other very interesting and excellent World War II mysteries, which are respectively Harriet Rutland's Blue Murder (1942) and Ianthe Jerrold's There May Be Danger (1948). Both of them come highly recommended.

If You Lie Down With Dogs...

"Sometimes... I think that the War has had a bad effect on some of our young men."

- Colonel Marchbanks (Dorothy L. Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928) 

Annie Haynes' The Crow's Inn Tragedy (1927) is the third installment in a short-lived series of mystery novels, which marked the final appearance of Detective-Inspector Furnival, who previously helmed The Abbey Court Murder (1923) and The House in Charlton Crescent (1926), but he was given an early retirement in favor of Detective-Inspector William Stoddart – who burst on the scene in The Man with the Dark Beard (1928).

The Crow's Inn Tragedy can also be read as the end of the first phase of Haynes' career as a mystery novelist, which covered five standalones and the Furnival trilogy. After those seven detective stories, Haynes appended her bibliography with four additional titles about Detective-Inspector Stoddart and the last two were published posthumously. 

So the subject of today's blog-post is an overlooked, but important, milestone in the life and career of Haynes. Let's get started! 

One of the primary backdrops of the story is an old-fashioned, dingy and worn solicitor's office, located on the first floor of a corner house of Crow's Inn Square, which "evidently not had a coat of paint for years" and bare of any modern innovations or conveniences – making the place feel like a holdout from the late 19th century or early 1900s. It's in this "indescribable air of gloom" that the head of legal firm, Mr. Luke Bechcombe, receives his brother-in-law, Reverend James Collyer.

Occasionally, Mr. Bechcombe provides some of his clients with a special and discrete service: he disposes of their valuable stones and substitutes them with paste. As a rule, these clients consist of society women, who overdrawn on their allowance, but refuse to tell their affluent husbands that they raked up a debt that their pocket money can't cover. But now his brother-in-law wants to dispose of a valuable and precious family heirloom, the Collyer Cross. 

The emerald studded cross is a treasured and precious religious artifact, "gleaming with baleful, green fire," which the clergyman wants to convert in cash in order to payoff the debts incurred by his son, Tony. 

Tony Collyer served in the trenches of the First World War, but the war "played ruination with the young men just beginning life" and England, "the home of heroes," had "no use for her heroes now" – which is why his father does not want to be too hard on the boy. Rev. Collyer wants to give his son a clean start, because he has "an inducement now that he has never had before." Tony is, sort of, engaged to Mr. Bechcombe's secretary, Cecily Hoyle. 

However, Mr. Bechcombe has some bad news for his brother-in-law: the emeralds are a paste substitute and this is when an important plot-thread is introduced: Bechcombe tells there have been "as many jewels stolen in the past year in London" as "in twenty years previously." The suspected party in these thefts is a well-organized group of criminals, known as the Yellow Gang, who are headed by a figure referred to as the Yellow Dog. This plot-thread dangles inconspicuously in the background of the story and only takes the center-stage during the final chapters, but more on this gang-related plot-thread later. 

In the meantime, there's another problem requiring the attention of both the police and the reader: Mr. Bechcombe is strangled to death in his private office and his death is surrounded by questions. Why had his managing clerk, Mr. Amos Thompson, disappeared? Who was the lady who had left a white, expensive-looking glove at the scene of the crime? How is it possible that one of the witnesses, who eventually came forward, claimed to have spoken with the solicitor when the medical examiner said he was dead at that time? Detective-Inspector Furnival of the Yard, known in the force as "The Ferret," is placed on the case, but the inspector seems to be doomed to play second fiddle in every instance of his last recorded case. 

The questions surrounding the murder are easily answered, especially after the halfway mark of the book, but Furnival takes forever to catch up with the reader and Haynes' storytelling is far more memorable than the characterization of her policeman – a gray, colorless character who hardly stands out against the background of the plot. He's practically swallowed by it. Even his last opportunity to shine is stolen by Mr. John Steadman, a barrister and criminologist, who accompanies Furnival on his investigation as an amateur snoop, of sorts, and takes the lead in escaping from the Yellow Gang in the final chapters of the book. So the poor inspector is not given an opportunity to bow out as a hero. 

I suspect those final chapters, describing the showdown with the Yellow Gang, is not to everyone's taste, which tinges the story with Victorian-era sensationalism and have seen this sequence being compared to Agatha Christie's The Big Four (1927). However, I found these scenes to be far more reminiscent of Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba," which can be found in Lord Peter Views the Body (1928).

Personally, I found these scenes to be mildly amusing, but they did turn a dark, moody whodunit (as easy as it may've been) into a gaudy thriller from an era that preceded the Golden Age. So not everyone might appreciate this last turn of events. 

On the whole, I feel somewhat divided about The Crow's Inn Tragedy: I liked Haynes storytelling and how the pall of the war hung over the story, but the plot hardly posed a challenge to the reader. And then there was the thriller-ish ending. The journey to the easily perceived and anticipated ending was much better than the eventual arrival there. So not exactly on the same level as the excellent The House in Charlton Crescent and The Crime at Tattenham Corner (1929), but it was a quick, fairly good read.

So far this lukewarm review. Hopefully, I'll have something really good again for the next one.

The Link in Between

"After all, most people... when confronted with a case of murder, have little but their knowledge of detective stories to guide them."

- Malcolm Warren (C.H.B. Kitchin's Death of My Aunt, 1929)  

Over the past six months, I reviewed a brace of mystery novels by Leo Bruce, Nothing Like Blood (1962) and Death at St. Asprey's School (1967), but they were about his secondary detective-character, Carolus Deene, who never reached the same heights as his original creation – a former village constable, turned private-investigator, named Sgt. Beef.

The boorish, beer-chugging and dart-loving sergeant is a personal favorite of mine, but Beef only appeared in eight novels and a dozen, or so, short stories. It's one of those great series that was too short-lived. Luckily, I still had two full-length mystery novels from this series residing on the mountainous region of my TBR-pile. So after two very uneven detective stories from the Deene series, I decided to eliminate one of the remaining Beef novels from my seemingly never-ending list of unread detective stories.

Neck and Neck (1951) is the seventh, penultimate, entry in this series and the plot offers a personal problem for the serious, long-suffering narrator, Lionel Townsend, who regularly gets ragged on by Sgt. Beef for his dearth of literary success or lack of confidence in his ability – which is why he has "to play second fiddle to all these other clever detectives."

Or so the sergeant assumes. But his personal biographer confides in the reader that he could no longer blind himself "to the fact that Beef was a genius." Townsend had known him first "as a heavy-footed policeman," blunt and boorish, whose methods seemed outwardly slapdash, but he had "prevailed too often to leave any doubt about his really profound cleverness." Now he wants Beef to apply his uncouth methods to clear up the murky circumstances surrounding the sudden passing of his favorite aunt.

The story opens with an urgent telegram from Townsend's brother, Vincent, who appeared previously in Case with Rings and Ropes (1940). It informs him that their "Aunt Aurora died suddenly this afternoon," but the telegram is quickly followed by a telephone call, in which Vincent shakily tells his brother that the doctor refuses to sign a death certificate and a police doctor is now on the case. There were also several policemen at the home of their aunt.

Apparently, Aunt Aurora "felt terribly ill just after lunch," excused herself, but "by tea-time she was dead," which did not sit well with her doctor and he called in the police – who shared his suspicion and an investigation was started – eventually revealing "a large quantity of morphia" in her system. So she was undoubtedly murdered, but the only viable motive to kill this beloved woman was her money.

The bulk of her money was divided between Lionel and Vincent, while a distant cousin, Hilton Gupp, had been cut out of her will. This came as both a surprise and shock to Gupp, because he really needed the money. However, Gupp has an apparently unshakable alibi. Some of the other beneficiaries included a thousand pounds for the Misses Graves, "Aunt Aurora's great friends," who were living well above their means and the local vicar, obsessed with the restoration of church murals, for which Aunt Aurora left five hundred pounds to the St. Luke's Restoration Fund.

So Townsend decides to call in Beef and this gives Bruce an opportunity to do a bit of knocking on the fourth wall. Vincent reproachfully remarks how surprise he is at his brother for trying "to make a detective-story-fan’s holiday out of Aunt Aurora's death" and, sarcastically, added that "it will make an excellent novel." After all, Beef usually get to the bottom of it.

After his arrival, Sgt. Beef approaches the case with his brash oafishness and blunt questions. For example, he asks the family solicitor, after the funeral, in the presence of everyone else how money "there was in the kitty" and hinting he may need "a new biographer in any case" – since Townsend is as much as suspect as anyone else. It would not be the first time the narrator turned out to be the murderer. However, where Beef genuinely shines in this outing is as the only person to notice an obscure link between the poisoning of Aunt Aurora and "a little affair in the Cotswolds."

Before he even appeared in the case, Beef told Townsend he was working on a second case: an unpleasant bibliophile, collector and publisher, Edwin Ridley, was found hanging from a beam in his gloomy home. At first glance, it seemed to be a case of suicide and this worried his brother, a clergyman, because Ridley had taken out a large insurance and this was supposed to go into a trust fund for the children of his clergyman brother – which would not be paid out if it turned out that he taken his own life.

So the Reverend Alfred Ridley engaged the services of Beef, but it was the police who figured out the publisher was strangled first and then hung up on a rope.

There are more than enough potential suspects: Ridley used his small publishing house to wrench money from aspiring authors by letting them share in the printing costs, but the result was usually no more than a handful of cheaply printed and badly bound volumes. This spelled the premature death of many literary careers. One of these young writers, named Greenleaf, attempted to kill himself over such a "gag" and this makes him an obvious suspect.

But that's not all: the secretary of the victim discovers someone has been "monkeying with one or two of the more valuable books" from his late employer’s collection.

So there are more than enough potential motives to go around on this second investigation and Beef suggests Townsend makes "one book of the two of them" by letting both cases run neck and neck. Having parallel investigation, which eventually come together, is not an unusual approach to plotting a mystery novel (c.f. Robert van Gulik), but the hidden connection that links both murders is the crux of this plot – which made for niftily constructed plot.

Granted, the idea did not originate with Bruce, but Neck and Neck is a good, early example of this plot-device. Only thing that can be said against is that modern readers probably will not be entirely taken in by the trick. You can both guess and deduce the identity of the murderer and how the murders were connected. Nevertheless, Neck and Neck is a genuine detective story with a fine plot and nicely written, which effectively ended on a serious and human note. Overall, this made for a pretty good read from one of my favorite series of detective stories. 

Sadly, I've only one Sgt. Beef novel left on the big pile: Case Without a Corpse (1937). Guess I'll save that one for next year or so.

A Bolt from the Blue

"What was that somebody said about a bolt from the blue and death coming out of the sky?"

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Arrow of Heaven," from The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926) 

Ernest C. Elmore was a theatrical producer, stage director and playwright, who wrote half a dozen fantasy novels, but abandoned both the stage and the fantasy genre to become a prolific writer of detective stories – which he did under the alias "John Bude." Over a period of twenty-five years, the penname of John Bude appeared on the book covers of thirty mystery novels. A literary legacy that, until now, consisted entirely of very rare, often expensive and highly collectible editions. So these detective stories were long overdue for a second trip through the innards of a printing press!

Thankfully, the British Library Crime Classics, an imprint of the Poisoned Pen Press, have made a dedicated effort to pull his work from the bog of obscurity, five of them so far, of which two have been reviewed on this blog – namely The Cornish Coast Murder (1935) and Death on the Riviera (1952). I found them both to be pleasantly written and highly entertaining mystery novels, but the plots were, alas, not of the same grade as the writing or characterization.

However, the latest book to make a reappearance in this series of reissues, The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937), received some good notices and the plot sounded solid enough. I was not entirely wrong in my presumption.

The Cheltenham Square Murder is Bude's fourth mystery novel, but only the third one to feature his series character: Superintendent Meredith of the Sussex County Police. During his third recorded case, Meredith finds himself in a textbook example of the proverbial busman's holiday. Meredith is invited to spend a portion of his holiday in the company of a well-known crime writer and personal friend, Aldous Barnet, who wants draw on the expertise of the superintendent for the book he's writing. As luck would have it, Barnet's sister went abroad and she placed her home at the disposal of her famous brother. So he could work in peace.

The home of Miss Barnet is situated in Regency Square, one of the iconic squares of Cheltenham Spa, "that famous and lovely town," which exhales "an atmosphere of leisure, culture and almost rural tranquility."

Regency Square consists of ten houses, "erected in the form of a flattened U," but the architecture of these exclusive looking abodes is not uniform. However, the effect is not disharmonious and gives the impression "of a quiet, residential backwater," where old people can grow becomingly older, undisturbed "by the rush and clatter" of the modern world – which has left them nothing more than "the memories of a past epoch." As noted in the opening chapter, outward appearance can be very deceiving and the inhabitants have their fair share of problems. Problems that range from small annoyances to the kind of intrusions that could bring someone to murder.

The scene of the crime

Some of the small annoyances consist of "a minor war" about an elm tree, which divided the square in two camps: one side wants the tree removed, while the others wants to the tree to remain where it has stood for over a century. Other irritations include the insistent hymn-singing of the Watt sisters, the yapping of Miss Boon's pack of dogs and the eternal ringing of Dr. Pratt's telephone-bell, but the real trouble can be found in the household of Arthur West – who was deserted by his wife, lost most of his money and had to put his house up for sale. There are two people at the heart of West's precarious situation: a retired stockbroker, Mr. Edward Buller, who made money off his bad advice to West and a really villainous character, Captain Cotton, who had been swarming around his wife.

So you can almost understand when the news reaches that a murder has occurred at the home of Buller, but the true surprise comes when everyone learns the victim is Captain Cotton and the manner in which he died. After all, it did not occur very often that a policeman was confronted, these days, with "the dead body of a man with an arrow embedded in the back of his head." The shaft had entered the room through an open window and the murder weapon, in this instance, does not decrease the pool of potential suspects, because the square is teeming with fervent (amateur) archers – half of them members of the Wellington Archery Club.

This aspect of the plot reminded me of Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey’s School (1964), which uses a similar craze for archery, at a boy's boarding school, as a convenient excuse to use the classic bow-and-arrow as a murder weapon. It saddles the detectives of both books with a similar type of problem: who was in a position to loosen the fatal arrow and, in the case of this story, how did this person manage to lug around a cumbersome, six-feet bow. But we're getting ahead of the story.

First of all, the congenial Inspector Long is the man officially assigned to the case, but he's aware of Meredith's past successes and of the opinion that "two heads are better than one," which makes for a pleasant makeshift investigative duo. Long and Meredith have a mish-mash of case to untangle: such as unearthing all of the potential motives and figuring out who knew Cotton was dropping by Buller. Or if the murderer took out the wrong man by accident. However, the wall safe in Cotton's home was opened and sifted through after his death and this puts both policemen on a small trail of blackmail. They also have to consider if the felled tree had to make way, so the murderer could have a clear shot, and who had access to the empty home of West.

So, all of this, makes for a pleasantly busy and engaging mystery novel, but the strongest and weakest point of the plot is the how-aspect of the murders: there are two identical murders, which pose a number of questions to Meredith and Long, but they clever and deceptively presented – only smudge on this is the lack of fair play. You can figure out who the murderer is, but the, admittedly clever, methods this person employed can only be really guessed at. I made a fairly accurate stab in the dark, but only because a pair of short stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman, kept popping into my head.

Well, I guess John Bude was one of those writers who wrote stories about detectives instead of detective stories. Regardless, I still found The Cheltenham Square Murder to be a pleasantly written, well characterized and reasonably plotted. It was perhaps not one of the fairest mysteries ever conceived, but the plot was noticeable cleverer and stronger than those from the previous two I've read. So I was not entirely dissatisfied with the end result and would recommend new readers, if they're interested, to start with this one.