The Collegian Bodies

"Sometimes you learn something you don't know is important until, when it fits in with everything else, it turns out to be the key piece of the puzzle."

- Ed Baer (Herbert Resnicow's The Dead Room, 1987) 

A month ago, I posted a review of Clifford Orr's second and last published mystery novel, The Wailing Rock Murders (1932), once a rare and highly collectible item, but has since been reissued by Coachwhip as a twofer edition alongside his genre debut – a college-set detective story entitled The Dartmouth Murders (1929). I did not want to wait too long with eliminating this two-in-one volume from the Big Pile. So here's the blog-post that’ll complete my overview of Orr's short-lived stint as a mystery novelist.  

The Dartmouth Murders was published in the same year as Ellery Queen's prize-winning debut novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), which introduced the eponymous series-character of Ellery Queen and his policeman father, Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Department. A remarkable coincidence for a number of reasons. 

First of all, The Dartmouth Murders also had a father and son poking around in a murder case in a semi-official capacity. Secondly, the father from Orr's novel, Joe Harris, is an amateur criminologist who authored several "so-called detective stories," which happens to be a pretty apt description of Ellery Queen – especially of his early incarnation from the international series. Finally, the victims from both books were missing a particular article of clothing: one of them was found in a theatre without his top hat, while the other had last been seen wearing a stripped pajama, but was found clad in a blue, rain-slicked pajama. So it was quite a coincidence these books were rolling off the press around roughly the same time (give or take a few months).

I was also surprised how few father-and-son detective teams followed in footsteps of the Queens and the Harrises. I'm sure there are a few of them, but I can honestly think of only two examples: Porterfield and Andy Adams from Robert Arthur's marvelous "The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice," which can be found in Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (1963) and Mystery and More Mystery (1966). And then there are Ed and Warren Baer from Herbert Resnicow's The Dead Room (1987) and The Hot Place (1990).

So far my shallow observations about the similarities between these two mysteries and now that I cut through all of the extraneous stuff, lets finally take a jab at the book itself. 

The Dartmouth Murders is told from the perspective of its main character, Kenneth "Ken" Harris, who is called away by his father from a fall house party on campus with the request to fetch from a hotel so he can spend the weekend with him – which takes a lot longer than planned. When he finally returned to the dormitory, "the clock on Dartmouth Hall was just striking three across the campus," he found the door to the dorm room he shared with his best friend locked and deadly silent. Nobody answered his knocking. So he decided to crash in Charlie Penlon's room on the floor below, but his sleep is repeatedly disturbed by the sound of dull thuds against the window. 

Kenneth finally ran up the window shade and saw the thumping came from two bare feet: the body of his best friend and roommate, Byron Coates, was hanging by his neck from the rope fire-escape that had been tossed out of their window. Back in those days, the fire escape could be a thick, stout piece of rope you had to slide down from in case of a house fire, but the rope is the first indication that Byron was murdered. A rope the size of the fire escape, "which must be large enough for a hand grip," is unfit for hanging and the bruises under the rope suggest Byron "was dead before it was even tied around his blessed neck." The final piece of evidence is a very peculiar murder weapon that is found inside his body during the post-mortem examination. An "instrument of death" that's used almost immediately after the first murder when a student suddenly drops dead in the college chapel during a service. 

The second death in the chapel came very close to being an impossible crime, but Orr never went the full distance with it. However, the method he employed did anticipate one of John Dickson Carr's earlier Sir Henry Merrivale novels, published as by "Carter Dickson," which demonstrated how this strange murder weapon could be used to stage a full-fledged impossible crime – which makes for an interesting link between both authors. However, the subsequent investigation is a bit of a hit and a miss for various reasons. 

Joe Harris practically takes over the entire investigation from the local sheriff, Ad Barker, who refuses to play the role of "the blundering up-county constable" that populate detective fiction and eagerly cooperates with the criminologist. This effectively gives Joe and Kenneth a free hand to act as they wish, which leads to some unusual developments: a "ghost" who looked like one of the victim was seen fleeing the chapel and Kenneth slowly begins to suspect that his father might be personally involved in the case. Why else would there be a photograph of his father in the picture album of the Coates family? 

All of these developments and Orr's ability to spin a good yarn keeps the reader engaged, but the plot begins to shake and rattle as the final chapter begins to loom on the horizon. 

The truth behind the college murders is firmly rooted in Byron's muddled family history. A history he learned about in a missing letter he received from his mother on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, which contained the motive for his murder, but you can hardly work out the (full) identity of the murderer from all of this information – even when you finally learn the content of the letter. I actually suspected the local inn keeper, because his personal ties to one of the students gave him a motive-by-proxy, but the eventual solution was an even less inspired play on the least-likely-suspect gambit. So that aspect of the plot left something to be desired. Still, I found it to be a well-written detective novel and loved the journey to that final chapter.

So, all in all, The Dartmouth Murders is a dark, moody tale of murder and hidden motives, which is noteworthy for being one of the first college-set mysteries, but plot-wise, the book is standard fare for the period. I agree with Curt Evans, who wrote an introduction for this twofer edition, that Orr's second detective novel, The Wailing Rock Murders, is "an altogether more original work."

A Scandal in New Orleans

"When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies,

and inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies –

When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay at the moon,

Then is the specters' holiday – then is the ghosts' high-noon!"
- Sir Roderic Murgatroyd (Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore, 1887)

Last week, one of my fellow locked room enthusiast, "JJ," posted a two-month notice, "John Dickson Carr is Going to Be 110 – Calling for Submissions," which is an open invitation to post Carr-related reviews and blog-posts on the day marking his 110th birthday – which is on November 30, 2016. I immediately called dibs on the criminally underrated Captain Cut-Throat (1955), but the notice still left me with an urge to return to Carr.

Fortunately, I still have about half a dozen of his (primarily) non-series work residing on my prodigious TBR-pile. And one of them promised a Last Hurrah for my all-time favorite mystery novelist, the great John Dickson Carr. 

The Ghosts' High Noon (1969) is a historical mystery and Carr's third-to-last novel, which would only be followed by penultimate Deadly Hall (1971) and the much-maligned The Hungry Goblin (1972). These titles were published during the last twelve years of Carr's life and this period showed a painful decline in the quality of his writing. A downturn that first overtly manifested itself in The House at Satan's Elbow (1965), but one of these last novels seemed to be relatively rot-free: the aforementioned The Ghosts' High Noon, which received some honest criticism, but never the abuse leveled against its contemporaries – e.g. the mediocre Panic in Box C (1966) and the tedious Dark of the Moon (1967).

On his excellent website, Mike Grost has shown the greatest amount of enthusiasm for the book, which he labeled as "a genuine mystery classic" with "a well done impossible crime."

So it has always struck me as a sudden, but briefly lived, revival during the final stage of Carr's literary career. I simply decided the time had come to take it off my TBR-pile. And I know, I know. I should've probably saved the book for November, but who asked you to drag common sense into my decisions? Get out!

Wooda Nicholas Carr

The Ghosts' High Noon is set during the early days of Carr's early childhood, 1912, when his own father, W.N. Carr of Pennsylvania, was elected to Congress and the United States was in the throes of "a three-cornered fight for the Presidency" – pitting the incumbent W.H. Thaft against Democratic Governor Wilson and the boisterous Teddy Roosevelt for the Progressives. There are references throughout the book to these three gentlemen, because the plot of the story is tinged with political intrigue.

The protagonist of the story is a newspaper reporter, Jim Blake, who wrote bestseller, The Count of Monte Carlo, which gave him new found prosperity and "freedom from the ancient shackles." But he's adverse to take on special assignments as a reporter. So when Colonel George Harvey, "president of the stately old publishing house in Franklin Square" and "the very active editor of Harper's Weekly," contacts him with a particular request he accepts. Colonel Harvey wants him to travel down to New Orleans to write an article on a promising Congressional candidate, James Clairborne "Clay" Blake.

James "Clay" Blake is a young lawyer and a colorful character, who's running for Congress, but he's unopposed and therefore can't help being elected. So the Colonel wants James "Jim" Blake to write a personality piece on his namesake, but there's also an underlying motive: the underground wire is reverberating with rumors "that some enemy is out to ruin him." As an investigative reporter, Blake immediately sets out to work and makes a stopover in Washington before traveling to New Orleans. There he learns from a legendary police reporter, Charley Emerson, what the tool of Clay Blake's potential downfall could be: a high-class courtesan, Yvonne Brissard, who captured the full attention of the future Congressman. In spite of their discreet conduct, it became very evident that "the Creole siren and the Anglo-Saxon lawyer" have "fell for each other like a ton of bricks." A scandal in the making, but could the courtesan be a part of "the alleged plot" against the budding politician?

On his way to New Orleans, Jim encounters a pair of mysterious figures: first of them is his love interest, Gillian "Jill" Matthews, who literary walks into his arms, but also vanishes when she wants to and her role in the overall story is a actually a genuine plot-thread – a pretty good one at that! The second figure is an unknown person on the train, who knocks at his compartment, but when he opened the door there was nobody outside. And the porters on either side of the corridor swear they saw nobody.

This incident is presented as an impossible problem, but the explanation is extremely bad and Robert Adey did not even deign it worthy of being mentioned in Locked Room Murders (1991). Luckily, there's a bone-fide locked room mystery in the second half of the book.

However, the pace of the story considerably slows down until the murder occurs and this section of the book has Jim encountering several characters in the New Orleans setting: the Colonel and Charley recommended Jim to ask Alec Laird for help, the high khan of the Sentinel newspaper, who is described as "an unredeemed puritan," but also someone you want to have in your corner. One of his relatives an elderly dowager, Mathilde Laird, a crusty aristocrat who inexplicably rented the village of her dead and beloved brother to Yvonne Brissard. She has a son, Pete, who she overly mothered and refused to even let him drive his own car. So he has his own personal chauffeur, Raoul. And then there's Flossie Yates. A woman who can discreetly be described as "the madam of a brothel."

Eventually, the plot begins to pick up the pace again. One of Jim's old classmates, Leo Shepley, "a rake and bon viveur," becomes entangled in the plot and this does not end well for him: there are several witnesses, including Jim, who saw him speeding like a devil out of hell in his two-seater Mercer – which ended with a crash and the sound of a gunshot inside a partially locked-and watched shed. Shepley had been shot through the head from close range, but the police fail to find a gun at the scene and nobody could've entered or left the shed without being seen. So how did the murderer or the murder weapon manage to vanish from the closely watched shed?

The seemingly impossibility of the murder frustrates Lieutenant Zack Trowbridge and wonders out loud "what kind of a murderer" vanished "like a soap-bubble as soon as he pulled the trigger," but Jim "pieced the whole thing together less'n twenty-four hours" after the murder. Admittedly, it's a pretty clever piece of work and showed how Carr was still capable of constructing an intricate locked room puzzle. Even if the execution required some low-conscience life forms (i.e. pawns) to make it work. And the motivation for making this an impossible crime is also noteworthy.

So the storytelling, characterization, setting and the plot were somewhat uneven, but, overall, The Ghosts' High Noon is a very consistent detective story. In any case, the plot and writing are far better than what most readers would expect from one of his novels from this late date. That being said, I've to point out one thing: by the late 1960s, Carr had sadly lost his ability to write historical fiction. Carr's writing used to be able to breath life into long-dead, dust covered periods of history (e.g. The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, 1937), but here he never came further than making some clunky (pop-culture) references. One of the characters even notes how long-distance phone calls would've been considered a miracle only a couple of years ago, which felt really, really forced.

I thought this was a sad aspect of the book, because Carr was not only the undisputed master of the locked room, but also an early champion of the historical mystery novel. And the historical mystery novel was also his retreat when began to tire of the modern world (i.e. post-WWII England). This allowed him to add a few additional classics to his resume when the quality of his regular series began to suffer. Nobody will deny that his post-1940s historical mysteries were better than any of the Dr. Gideon Fell or H.M. novel that appeared in the same period. So it was sad to see that by the late 1960s he was unable to bring the past back to life as once had done in such delightful works as The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fear is the Same (1956).

Well, look at me, I still managed to end this review on a depressing note! So, yes, The Ghosts' High Noon has some of expected flaws of later-day Carr, but not nearly as many as most would expect and large parts of the plot shows flashes of the old master. That alone should warrant investigation.

Let me end this overlong review by directing your attention to my previous review, which is of the excellent translation of Alice Arisugawa's Koto Pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989).

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.