Peter Lovesey : A Case of Spirits, 1975

 

 

By Peter Lovesey, today we will talk about another of his novels, A Case of Spirits (1975), which won the Prix du Roman d’Aventures in 1987 with the French title Le Médium a perdu ses esprits, and in which two other recurring characters of Lovesey are in action: Sergeant Cribb and Agent Thackeray.
The action is moved back in time, to England at the end of the nineteenth century, Victorian age

WARNING: SPOILERS !!!

Peter Brand is a young medium, introduced into the English aristocracy, constantly rising in popularity, since he participated in a séance at the house of Sir Harley Bratt. Both Miss Laetritia Crush, an aristocrat, and Henry Strathmore, a well-known craniologist and also a member of the Occult Society, believe they are not in the presence of a charlatan, but of an extraordinary medium. However, there were circumstances, indirectly linked to Brand's activity, which required the police's interest: both in the home of Miss Crush, and in that of Dr. Probert, a well-known physiologist from the University of London, where Brand performed his specialty, strange thefts occurred: in the first, a vase of absolutely negligible value disappeared, from a collection that instead included pieces of decidedly higher value; in the second, a canvas, depicting a nude nymph, by a well-known painter, disappeared, a painting that due to the subject and the pose, was hidden under a curtain (of which both the wife and daughter were unaware) and which must be recovered, without however risking making the theft public.
This is why he turns to Inspector Jowett of Scotland Yard, to help him recover the canvas. In turn, however, the latter passes the ball of the actual investigation to Sergeant Cribb assisted by Agent Thackeray.

 

From the investigations, it turns out that Brand could never have stolen the vase, precisely because the medium has a considerable knowledge of antiques and if he had been the one to commit the theft, he certainly would not have been wrong in stealing a vase of very modest value if compared to the inestimable ones nearby. Therefore, someone else must have been guilty of that crime, but surely the circumstance of Brand's presence there, precisely in the places where the misdeeds then occurred, suggests that the investigations should be deepened, especially since at yet another performance of the medium, at which Jowett, Cribb and Thackeray are present together with other people, the presence of a pair of handcuffs in a bag causes Brand to react with fear, so much so as to suggest to Cribb and Thackeray a further investigation.

 However, both Strathmore and Miss Crush say they are absolutely convinced of the good faith of the medium, especially since he speaks of Uncle Walter, of whom no one except her knows anything. Therefore, a further séance is organized at the Proberts' house, by Strathmore himself, in which Brand will not only call a spirit but will also try to make it materialize. The séance is composed of two distinct parts: the first in which the materialization of something is attempted, but the medium is connected, by means of the chain of hands, to a small table, in the presence of Miss Crush, Miss Probert, the doctor's daughter, the inspector, the medium, Miss Probert's fiancé, Mr. Nye and Henry Strathmore. During the session noises are heard, then someone senses a certain presence in the room, and suddenly a hand is seen floating in the air, then both Miss Crush and Alice Probert declare that the hand (which they think belongs to their uncle Walter, a well-known joker) has grazed them if not touched them, and when William Nye protests against who, even if from the other world, is touching his girlfriend, oranges are thrown at him. After a while the second part begins in which an experiment never attempted before is put into practice: to confirm the seriousness of the measurement and the sincerity of the result, and to attempt a complete materialization of the spirit, a measurement has been prepared that will involve electrical energy: it will be applied to a throne through two lateral arms screwed to each two poles connected to gauze soaked in a saline solution; it will be Peter Brand himself, sitting there, who will act as an intermediary for the electrical energy and close the contact; obviously a transformer will reduce the alternating current to a 20 volts sufficient to produce a very slight tingling, otherwise it would have had the effect of an Electric Chair. But in the end this is what happens, and Brand is electrocuted. Nothing is found that could have caused the death, especially since the transformer is perfectly functional.
Cribb and Thackeray's investigations reveal however that all those present, who in one way or another, had reasons to wish Brand's death, because he had blackmailed them to confirm his qualities as a medium and help him defraud the bystanders during specially set up séances.
In a spectacular finale, Cribb will demonstrate Brand's death by murder, how Brand had managed to invent a unique way to materialize a spirit, using everyday objects and how the murderer could have used Brand's trick to kill him in turn. He will do it in a triple finale, accusing first one, then another and finally nailing the third of those present to his responsibilities, in a crescendo of tension.

THE END OF SPOILERS!!!

We are faced with another beautiful novel, there is no doubt about it! It seemed to me that Lovesey has changed the quality of his writing and descriptions, in the different time compared to the contemporary one. In other words, you immediately perceive, in the slowness with which the action proceeds, how the story is set in another time: however, as the investigation progresses, albeit wearily, as it is not possible to understand if and why they want to necessarily catalogue the medium's death as murder since there is no evidence that it is precisely that, the interest increases, by virtue of a very patient dosage of clues. In short, there is a crescendo of situations that legitimise a grand finale, which suddenly raises the level of narrative tension to an unstoppable climax, given that first Probert is nailed, then his daughter, then... the murderer. And in which Lovesey through his character Cribb, finally clarifies how the poor (a real stinker!) Brand died, not by virtue of an object that is there but of one that is missing from his pockets and that instead should have been there. An absolutely insignificant object, but that the quality of Lovesey's narrative invention re-evaluates for the first time I believe, in the history of detective fiction, as a deadly weapon.
Furthermore, the descriptions of London, and of the occult environments, the recreation of the fashion of spiritualism typical of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (remember that for example Conan Doyle was a famous scholar of the occult and spiritualism) make the novel an authentic pearl, as do the descriptions of the first machines to generate electricity. In short, the novel immerses us in a real atmosphere, as if for a moment we too belonged to that world and dedicated ourselves to the same tasks.
The most indicative characteristic of Lovesey's narrative quality, however, seems to me to be the ability to break the heavy greyness that a certain period setting can produce, almost the black and white of a silent film, with flashes of humour and desecration: the pornographic photo of the models from the beginning of the century; Miss Laetitia Crush, a very respectable Victorian lady, a friend of the Proberts, who is not known to have had sex with a tight-fisted cabman, in a carriage instead of on a perfumed bed; Doctor Probert, a member of the Royal Society, respected for his moral virtues, who is not known to indulge in lewd visions (like watching a porno film today) of paintings with female models in undressed poses and situations; the wife, Winifred Probert, who while her husband indulges in his pleasures and occupations, furtively and secretly meets in her room with Doctor Quayle, her old friend and drinking companion (and in other things!); finally the daughter Alice, engaged to the upright Nye, who says she is involved in charity work and instead agrees to be portrayed completely naked. And finally Nye who, knowing nothing (happy and cuckolded!) but suspecting something, follows his girlfriend and ends up not surprising her, but the poor agent Thackeray sent by Cribb to follow her, hanging from the gutter, who doesn't want to say what he saw (Alice's buttocks in an eviscerated state) and therefore for chivalrous honor gets a punch in the eye from Nye, who considers him a voyeur. In short, feuelliton situations that break up the action when it is or seems too unnerving and by giving pauses here and there, make it more lively. Moreover, the solution is truly extraordinary. It is not an impossible crime, but the trick invented by Lovesey / Brand and exploited by the killer demonstrates once again an unparalleled wealth of imagination: in a certain way it reminds me of The Black Spectacles by John Dickson Carr: how a person should have been in one place and instead found himself elsewhere, while convincing the bystanders that he had not moved from his seat. In fact, in my opinion, this novel by Carr is the springboard from which Lovesey may have taken his cue!

Pietro De Palma

Peter Lovesey : Mad Hatter's Holiday, 1973

 

 

Mad Hatter's Holiday, by Peter Lovesey was the first to be translated in Italy: it was published strangely by Publishing House Sonzogno in 1975. I emphasize "strangely" because this book came out alone, among other examples of novels by forgotten or little-known authors, such as The Scorpio Letters, by Victor Canning . At the time, in 1975, none of Peter Lovesey's novels had been published so we must recognize that whoever discovered it in the distant 1975 had quite a flair.
Mad Hatter's Holiday is a delightful novel.

WARNING: SPOILERS!!!

The time is that of Queen Victoria. The first sixty pages flow placidly, even a little too much I would say, all focused on the holiday obsessions of Mr. Moscrop, a dealer in optical instruments, especially telescopes and binoculars, who spends his holidays observing people with his powerful binoculars. Not just any people, but the kind of holidaymakers who crowd Brighton beach in the summer: a humanity made up of ladies with umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun, gentlemen with bowler hats or straw hats, children, nannies, fishmongers (even those on the beach), holidaymakers attracted by the baths or the aquarium with the famous crocodiles, and as a corollary, soldiers, maids, prostitutes, customers. In short, a very vivid setting, even if sixty pages focused on Moscrop's obsessions would be a little too many. And I must say that those sixty pages are difficult to read, precisely because of the richness of the descriptions, but also because it is impossible to understand what these obsessions have to do with a detective novel. They would seem useless, if instead they were not crucial for the story that will unfold from that moment on.
Moscrop among the many people in the frame, has spotted a beautiful lady, Zena, with a very small child, Jason, accompanied by a fifteen-sixteen year old boy, Guy, her stepson, and the nanny, Bridget. The four are used to staying on the beach: the nanny should take care of little Jason, but instead she bathes with Guy, weaning him underwater with erotic practices; to the rescue of the noblewoman, who would do better to take care of the child before he runs the risk of falling and hurting himself, comes Moscrop himself, eager to make himself useful and at the same time eager to make friends with someone, since he is alone, in his world made of telescopes.

 

 

By striking up a conversation, he realizes that the woman is far from giving him a kick in the ass, something that any respectable woman would have reserved for a busybody, but is actually quite willing to establish a friendship with a stranger, given that she too is alone in her familiar world. It is not an affair that is born but a certain friendship, made up of walks and chats, and so the optician learns that the woman is married to Dr. Prothero, a doctor, and that Guy, her son, is there, in Brighton, for treatment and rest, in view of resuming his schooling at a private institute. She is the doctor's latest wife, who has changed a few. This strange behavior, and having discovered that the doctor is courting the beautiful red-headed daughter of Colonel Wittingham, a young girl, and that in order to have a better chance of meeting the young woman, with the excuse of treating his wife's alleged nervousness, he treats her by giving her a dose of sleeping pills, convinces Moscrop to be alert. And he asks the woman to give him a sample of the liquid that is being given to her in the evening, in order to have it analyzed.
The next day, when he is supposed to meet the woman to reveal whether it is poison or not, the nanny appears before him, who informs him of the latest movements of her master and the red-headed Wittingham, and also of his "courtships" of Mrs. Prothero. A servant who is certainly not only licentious, but also cunning.
It is the evening of the fireworks, offered to the citizens to celebrate the arrival in the city of an army regiment. Moscrop allegedly told the lady that the liquid was an extremely mild dose of chloral, a drug to put her to sleep and relax her.
A few days later, by chance, a visitor to the aquarium saw, beyond the glass of the crocodile cave, a female hand, cut off at the wrist. The existence of sand residues convinced the police to excavate the beach in order to find the missing parts of a female body to which the hand belonged, to finally find, wrapped in newspaper pages, the pieces of a female body, which however was missing the head and some other pieces.

The fact that they also found a sealskin jacket, owned by the victim, from which a popped button had been sewn back on, convinces Scotland Yard, where Sergeant Cribb and Agent Thackeray were sent to the scene following the initial investigations, that everything revolves around Dr. Prothero's family, and that the pieces of the woman found under 30 cm of sand did not belong to a prostitute chopped up with a cleaver, as the good young Guy suggests, but to a known person. It is Moscrop himself who remembers how a button had popped off the sealskin jacket during a walk with Mrs. Prothero, and since the police found a slip of paper with a receipt for chemical analysis of chloral in a sleeve of the jacket, it is clear that the body is that of Mrs. Prothero. The number one suspect becomes the husband, who however has an unassailable alibi, having spent the night of the crime with Miss Wittingham; and Guy himself, who revealed that he spent the night at his stepmother's house, has an alibi validated by Moscrop himself; the nanny would remain, who according to the woman's husband, would have accompanied his wife and Jason to the city, but she would have had no motive to kill the mistress; provided that it is not Moscrop, for an obscure interest. Moscrop would then pretend to help Scotland Yard. But... everything changes when Moscrop, having observed a suspicious behavior of Dr. Prothero, convinced that he is hiding something, follows him out of town, just to discover that he is meeting with a woman, his wife. Who then is not dead at all.
The doctor has with him a backpack that he passed to his wife and which is then confiscated by the police: it contains the clothes of... Bridget. She is the victim. Everything changes then!
Who is the murderer?
The great thing is that when Sergeant Cribb has framed him and is about to arrest him, the murderer will be killed in turn. And discovering the second murderer will be damned difficult and above all difficult to prove that it was murder, as it is disguised as an asthma attack.

 THE END OF SPOILERS

A beautiful novel, let's say it right away. His descriptions of places, times and people belonging to distant times are fascinating. Lovesey has a characteristic, which is also peculiar to Doherty: when he inserts a story in a context different from the contemporary one, he has the particularity of making it familiar, so well described is this environment. And to remove that patina of old, he manages to temper the various atmospheres with a certain sacrilege, with jokes and a typically English spirit. If there are colonels and discipline, there will also be daughters who end up in bed with elderly gentlemen, wives who cheerfully cheat on their husbands and husbands who cheat on their wives, nannies and maids who instead of being with children, end up making them, accompanying themselves with stablemen and drivers. All this in a whirlwind of situations and events that fascinates and entertains. As mentioned, the first sixty-seventy pages are flat, and also difficult to read. You have to wait and be patient: after all, the style also respects the character or characters treated. The first part of the novel is in fact dominated by Moscrop who is an ordinary, precise, fussy guy, and therefore the narrative part dominated by him is also; when Cribb and Thackeray arrive, two lively and not at all ordinary types, whose manners also clearly contrast with convention (Cribb who slaughters doughnuts and who eats while he talks, as opposed for example to Dr. Prothero, the image of education and refinement), here begins the second part (there is no difference between parts in the novel, but between chapters, and yet the caesura between the first and the second is very strong and clear, precisely because the first part, which is also the one in which the crime is committed, is deliberately more leaden, while in the second, in which the crime has already been committed, we witness a relaxation of the atmosphere that sometimes becomes even laughable. For example when Cribb, in order to hook Prothero who is using a public sauna, grabs the former's bath towel, claiming it is his, and this only for the purpose of apologizing later and having the opportunity to offer him a lunch to apologize, so as to hook him and his son, and question them informally. 

It will not escape anyone who wants to get the novel, how Moscrop imitates the attitude of the man in a wheelchair who scrutinizes his neighbors with binoculars, the protagonist of Cornell Woolrich's story, It Had to Be Murder, which was adapted into the famous film by Alfred Hitchcock, "Rear Window". The attitude of the two is very similar: there is the will to take possession of other people's reality, to insinuate oneself into everyday life through the binoculars, a sort of fetish, rather than peering through the keyhole. In Moscrop there is no voyeuristic pleasure of secretly watching a woman undress, but watching a woman with an interested but alert eye, commenting and reflecting on why someone framed by the binoculars behaves in one way rather than another. At a certain point one would expect him to be the one to discover the body; instead it is up to him to observe the amorous evolutions of a fifteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old nanny, in chaste early twentieth-century costumes, in the sea, and wonder what that child is doing there nearby. And then to insinuate himself into the story of a woman betrayed by her husband and put to sleep by him every night, in order to gain the time to lure and court another, so as to steal her friendship. He and the man in the wheelchair are lonely men, prisoners of a reality that has necessarily been accepted, but that in the moment in which it is observed is reflected in that of others. But they are also borrowed detectives: it is no coincidence that Moscrop is the amateur detective, borrowed, who dominates the first part of the novel with his observations; while in the second there are other professional detectives, Cribb above all, who will solve the matter.

Lovesey is careful with the pace, and the upheavals follow one another without stopping: when you expect something to be confirmed, a short time later a new detail shows it in a different light. And even the murder and murderer themselves become changing and fleeting realities.
Finally, all the examples on asthmatic diseases, on the remedies and on the various practices aimed at simulating their effects, leading to sudden death, are extremely precise.
A book that is a great pleasure to read.
And that in the last fifteen pages transforms from a classic Mystery into a very sustained Thriller, since first we must discover who the second murderer is and then how he can be nailed to his responsibilities, given that the cause of death is pollen, of which no trace was found, nor even signs of injections.
There is also a moment of nostalgia at the end of the novel, when Cribb goes to Moscrop's shop to say hello, and then we see the optician putting aside in a wooden box a beautiful brass telescope to send as a gift to Jason, Zena Prothero's little son, a sudden sun in the dull daily life of poor Moscrop who has not realized that the fact of addressing him of the Lady calling him "darling" was not a personal, exclusive sympathy, as he thought, but a very extroverted way of addressing anyone.
He who lives on hope will die in despair.
That's what I thought about Mr. Moscrop.

Pietro De Palma

Philip MacDonald : The List of Adrian Messenger, 1959

 

Philip MacDonald, one of the best writers of GAD, wrote, in 1959, this novel, the last of his literary production.

General Firth, deputy head of the CID at Scotland Yard, accepts a rather unusual request from his friend Adrian Messenger, an English writer, with a military past, and related to the Marquises De Gleneyre: to discreetly investigate a list of ten names, collecting material on them. The reason behind it would be an alleged guilt "far older than any political machination". Adrian leaves for America (California) and Canada, where he should find answers to his suspicions, but on his return, he is the victim of an attack on the plane he is traveling on: the plane crashes into the sea, but he, a woman, and a journalist, Raoul St. Denis, are saved. However, after Messenger, as if in a trance, has repeated several times some nonsense words, he dies at sea, while Raoul is saved and with him the woman. Firth then turns to his direct superior at the CID, the commander of the CID, Sir Egbert Lucas, submitting to him what Messenger had asked of him, especially since more than one source claims that Messenger was the target of the attack (which however killed 43 other people). In turn, Lucas turns to Anthony Gethryn, who has worked successfully at the CID several times, and they unravel more than one skein. With the results already collected by Firth, and with the help of several subordinates (the journalist Flood, the Superintendent of the CID Pyke and Sergeant Seymour) he manages to give an explanation of the list: almost all of them, 9 of the list, all died in accidental circumstances (elevator, car, train derailment, shipwreck, etc..) except one, Slattery, who despite being disabled in war, is alive. Slattery is the only one who fought in France, while all the other 9 fought in India and Burma. When they are trying to protect Slattery thinking that he could be the last victim, it happens that they realize that this Slattery is not the one Messenger had indicated, but his cousin: the real Slattery had also died in accidental circumstances, and he had also fought in Burma, against the Japanese. Having established a connection between the 10, it is learned that Messenger had also fought with them in Burma. Who on earth had an interest in killing 11 people, and to kill them did not take care to suppress about 60 other innocent people?

Gethryn will begin a 360° detective investigation, which by deciphering the last words spoken at sea by Messenger, will lead him to the trail of a military life novel that Messenger was completing to publish it, and to compromising photos, which will have as consequences, another victim (Messenger's typist-secretary). It will be discovered that a member of the regiment in which the 11 killed had served, had betrayed them by selling them to the Japanese. then after years he had killed them: why? One would have expected the opposite, as Sir Lucas reproaches Gethryn: that the betrayed had decided to take revenge on the traitor, and instead... But why does this happen? Gethryn will discover the real reason. a hereditary succession that would have led the criminal to become a Marquis, after having also eliminated the old Marquis and tried to eliminate the fifteen-year-old Viscount, heir to the Marquisate, if Gethryn had not discovered it and in a convulsive finale, forced to flee with no return.
This is a sort of summa of MacDonald: he who can be said to have invented the serial killer, in Murder Gone Mad, and in X v. Rex, creates in this novel, the perfect murder and the perfect murderer, when it had only been hypothesized many times but never realized: the result of a superfine plan built at the table, carried out over several years, with the sole purpose of returning to hold that power that his father had lost. Yes because, in this novel, in addition to there being what seems to be a serial killer but is not, and instead is a supercriminal, for whom five, ten, twenty, fifty, sixty victims are nothing, perhaps just a number (to paraphrase an old famous phrase: one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic), there is also the return of the heir, one of the most recurring motifs of the most classic British mystery. But there is also the love story between Raoul St Denis, a French journalist, and Jocelyn Messenger, Adrian's sister-in-law and his brother's widower. And also a tight police investigation (should we say a classic precedural?), which makes use of Gethryn's acumen, but also of the collaboration of his closest aides, who also go to various places in Great Britain, to gather information. It will be Gethryn, who in the hypotheses of resolution of the sentences said by Messenger and misunderstood by Raoul who is French, who has also forgotten other vital ones for the resolution of the meaning, to gradually decipher the true meaning, until he discovers a diabolical plan. In which all the carnage had no other purpose than to eliminate possible witnesses of a terrible event that occurred about fifteen years before, who perhaps would never have known of the existence of their informer, but who if they had known, could have become very dangerous witnesses and derail the rise to the marquisate of their former comrade in arms.

And what could have become, according to the murderer's plans, the last act, that is, the death of the very young heir, due to a fatal accident, turns into a resounding victory for Gethryn, with the disorderly escape of the murderer who then dies in a car accident. Which, however, does not seem to be a casual accident: Gethryn, with the help of his French partisan friends, makes sure that someone who could never have been convicted for his numerous crimes, because he had taken care not to leave traces of his passage, disappears forever? Philip MacDonald does not say it clearly. It seems to me, however, that he, at the conclusion of his literary experience, imitating Christie who had the perfect murderer killed, by a Poirot much older in Curtain, arrives at the same conclusions, or rather seems to arrive at them. I repeat. The interpretation of the kiler's death is entrusted to the reader's sensitivity. In other words, to defeat the perfect murderer, and stop him and make him pay for what no earthly judge could ever do, MacDonald, unlike Agatha who clearly says that Poirot kills the perfect murderer, is more diplomatic, we would say more sly, and does not say that Gethryn causes his death, but he implies it. He does not even say how it happened.

After all, Gethryn and his old Maquis allies, wait until they can hear the roar of the car driving away, and then not hear it anymore: "It was Raoul who broke the silence which followed. He said, “So
his death is through explosive accident——” He was philosophical.
“What you would call, I think, a justice poetic. . .” . He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
So his death occurred in an explosive accident, says Raoul. But did the jeep explode before falling into the ravine, as a boy testified, or did it explode after falling?
The novel is MacDonald's last masterpiece, I would almost say his true masterpiece: a book that after almost seventy years is still a great read, and has its own catalyzing energy. A mystery that gradually becomes a thriller. And that has a thriller ending.
From this novel, moreover, an unforgettable film by John Huston was made, in 1963, The List of Adrian Messenger, with a stellar cast for the time: Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Dana Wynter, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, George G. Scott (who played Anthony Gethryn).

 

Pietro De Palma 

Roger Scarlett : The Beacon Hill Murders, 1930

 

 

Roger Scarlett is a pseudonym behind which there were two writers, a 4-handed couple like Ellery Queen. The writers were called Dorothy Blair (1903-1975) and Evelyn Page (1902-1976). They had not grown up together as one might easily guess, but in two quite different places. In fact, the first, originally from Montana, even though her parents came from Massachussets, had graduated from the State of New York; the second came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The two girls met by the same publisher “Houghton Mifflin, based in Boston's Back Bay, where the two women met. The couple left Houghton, Mifflin in 1929 ”to create their own character and business name Roger Scarlett. After some time spent writing their 5 novels together, the couple retired to a remote farm in Abington, Connecticut, where they lived together for 50 years (they were a lesbian couple, like Curtis confirmed to me).

The 5 novels in question, written and published from 1930 to 1933 are:

The Beacon Hill Murders (1930)

The Back Bay Murders (1930)

Cat's Paw (1931)

Murder Among the Angells (1932)

In the First Degree (1933)

 

Warning : Spoilers

 

Inspector Norton Kane of the Boston Police Department is dealing with a double murder that has taken place at the Sutton house.

He is advised by his friend Underwood, an indirect witness to the murder of Alfred Sutton, to go to the victim's house. And this is where the whole investigation unfolds.

In essence, Alfred Sutton, the patriarch of the family, an unscrupulous man who has created a solid position in the city's jet set from nothing and who has the reputation of being a rich parvenu, is killed in his living room, while he is conversing amiably with the beautiful and well-connected in the city's living rooms, Mrs. Anceney, a rich widow, with whom he seems to have fallen in love. For the occasion of the dinner at his house, he gave her a pendant with a unique piece of Chinese jade, engraved. While they are talking, Sutton is killed by a gunshot to the heart, fired by someone who is reasonably supposed, based on the trajectory of the bullet, to be where Anceney was, who is therefore suspected of the murder. A relatively short time passes, and Mrs. Anceney is killed, her throat slit with a razor in her bedroom,

The problem is that it is not clear how this happened. Because a guard of the beautiful Mrs. Anceney, suspected of the first murder, is placed by an agent, who watches the door. Who left his post of guard only when he brought wine to her room (but the victim was alive), when he went to the bathroom for a moment (a minute) and when he went to open the door: but still very short times, in which the murderer should have killed the victim, left the razor in full view and escaped without anyone seeing him. It should be added that in both the first and second murders, the windows were hermetically closed. And that the second murder is a direct consequence of the first: perhaps that the victim of the second had seen something he shouldn't have seen? But then again, how is it possible that Sutton had been killed, if it wasn't Anceney who killed him? Ballistics dictates that the killer had been where Anceney was, because the trajectory of the bullet had such an angle that the shot had necessarily been fired near the left corner of the fireplace.

And where do the disappearance of the jade pendant and the chance discovery by Kane of a piece of bloody cloth in the folds of the curtain of Anceney's bedroom window lead?

And in addition to the ambiguous movements of the relatives (Sutton's wife, his daughter Katherine who loved her father very much, his son James who couldn't wait to become heir, his brother-in-law Walton, a little touched, who complained about the little condescension with which Sutton treated him), we must consider the ambiguous presence of Sutton's friend, Gilroy, who seems to have interests in the affair: he had forged checks with his friend's signature, and was hoping to regain possession of a note in which he accused himself of the affair, kept in a small wall safe. Gilroy was later discovered to be the brother of the second victim. They were all together on the evening in which Underwood, Kane's friend, had also been invited. And it is Underwood, together with Moran, detective sergeant, assisted in the investigations Kane, who after finding the jade pendant in a secret drawer of a desk, and a piece of lead removable from one of the windows, will elaborate a theory, and also using a reconstruction of the second murder, will nail the murderer to his responsibilities.

The end of the spoilers

This first debut, should have been with a bang, as they say, because the two co-authors had thought of a story that unfolded having as two key points, two crimes that occurred in impossible circumstances. And in fact a good part of the novel, the one that supports the murder of the two victims, until Kane begins to elaborate his theories, is constructed in a spectacular way, even using three maps: one of the bedroom plan, one of the room where Sutton was killed and one of the bedroom of the Anceney. The problem of this first novel, however, is in the abundance of meat on the fire: there is too much of it. Too many clues, and what's more some are found or thought of without being explained (the bloodstained cloth hidden by the window curtains: why it was there will be understood, but why a bloodstained cloth, and where it came from, is not explained).

But then also the gun and razor that are found in the bedrooms, and whose presence is explained as a sleight of hand, but without their presence being immediately felt: they appear, as if fallen from the sky), can be explained as the desire to create a spectacular plot, but the two co-authors do not yet have the literary experience to be able to explain everything they put in. It is in other words, a wonderful immature work, which sets in motion two spectacular crimes, which have points of contact with other previous and subsequent works.

Surely, the ballistics that comes into play to explain the modus operandi of the first crime, is a consequence of Van Dine's debut, in The Benson Murder Case: there too, ballistics plays an important role in explaining the dynamics of the murder. But also the explanation of the second murder, has points of contact with other novels: for example, the explanation of a novel from a few decades ago by Paul Halter, A 139 pas de la mort, comes to mind.

As I said when reviewing Roger Scarlett's second work, Norton Kane is certainly a Vandinian hero, but one who does not have all the encyclopedic culture of Philo Vance. He is more of a hybrid detective, a Holmesian Vandinian, I would say very close to Abbot's Thatcher Colt, or Daly King's Michael Lord. Other data that affirm the Vandinian paternity of the work is the Kane-Underwood couple, which recalls the Colt-Abbot or Vance-Van Dine couple, in which the lawyer Underwood, in our case present at the Sutton house as the executor of the victim's will, narrates in the first person, as he also does in his Van Dine novels. While Moran plays Van Dine's Sergeant Heath. And The Greene Murder Case, from 1928, is too close in time not to affirm the filiation of Beacon Hill from Van Dine's novel, which also has another very evident point of contact with its parent, which concerns the murderer. And always with van Dine's novel, this one by Scarlett also shares the existence of secret drawers: there was one that hid the gun, here one in the desk that contains the jade pendant.

The style that the two co-authors impress makes the narration flow, despite the many situations narrated, but it is certainly not the sumptuous style of S.S. Van Dine. I must say in all honesty, that about 80 pages before the revelation, I guessed who the murderer could be and the motive (which is not easy to imagine), based on an abstraction for what is said at the beginning of the novel. Is it possible that...? Yes, that's exactly how it is. While the modus of the first and second are a stroke of genius by the writer of the novel (even if the second seems a bit far-fetched to me: if this was really the case, one would have had to think that people are normally blind and deaf, or very impressionable as happens in the case of the gun and razor that magically appear where they were not there before). In short, it is expected that things go this way because they have to go that way.

However, even if it is an immature work, it manages to outline the characters in the round, from the treacherous Gilroy, to the malevolent and ridiculous Walton, from the passionate Katherine, to the submissive Mrs. Sutton, from the self-important landlord, to his flame, Mrs. Anceney who risks her virtues to help her stinking brother. And it also manages to give a well-defined image of both Underwwod, the first-person narrator, even too little of a lion to stand next to the great Norton Kane, who instead manages to give the right light to events that, taken in themselves, would not say much.

A good novel, but not a masterpiece.

Pietro De Palma

Jonathan Stagge : The Scarlet Circle, 1943

 

 

Today we return to the author couple Webb & Wheeler, who signed all the great Patrick Quentis from 1934 until 1953, and all the Jonathan Stagges. And today we will talk about a novel from this series, perhaps the best of the entire series, a recognized masterpiece, with Carrian atmospheres: The Scarlet Circle, 1943.

Let's start by saying right away that there are two slightly different editions of this work, and this is already strange: normally, in fact, the text of a novel is the same, proposed in the editions foreseen in the various States. But as strange as it may seem, it is so: in fact, the second edition, the British one that has a different title (Light From a Lantern, 1944) is slightly different (it means that there are some extra things that are not in the original American edition): for example, it is said that Westlake and his wife Paula, before she died and he became a widower, had already been there fifteen years earlier, on their honeymoon, particular that doesn't exist in the US edition.

WARNING: SPOILERS !

Cape Talisman is a seaside place, where sea fishing is practiced, but which has a beautiful beach that favors tourism: but it also has a promontory, and a little inside the old cemetery that underlies an ancient church.

Westlake is there with his daughter Dawn, resting at the local Hotel, owned by Mitchell, when during a walk, they see the pink light of a lantern that comes from the old cemetery. Weslake ventures there and finds a freshly dug grave at the bottom of which the surface of an old coffin can be seen. The atmosphere is gloomy, and is enriched by spectral echoes when the doctor thinks he sees a shadow that vanishes behind the trees. Shortly thereafter the pink light of another lantern is found near the body of Nellie Wood, a very beautiful girl who poses as a model for the painter Virgil Fanshawe, also working for him and his wife Marion as a nanny for their little son Bobby: Nellie was strangled with a thin cord, and placed in a praying position with her arms folded, near a rock. But the most horrible thing is that the killer drew a red circle with lipstick around a mole that the victim has on one cheek. The autopsy performed by Dr. Gilchrist, a local doctor as well as the doctor of the nearby women's prison, does not reveal anything new. Gilchrist's revelation that one of his patients who had died in childbirth years before, Mrs. Casey, had a large mole on her face, leads everyone present to think of the actions of a madman, of someone who wants to somehow connect the crime to that death far away in time. Mrs. Casey's coffin also rests in the old cemetery. Dr. Gilchrist, being the doctor of all the local people, has a map on the basis of which he can recognize whose grave was dug first: Casey's! And then nearby the graves of old De Silva, Fanshawe and then Mitchell's father. It is the beginning of a series of murders, in which the victims (three) will be outraged after being strangled, with a circle around a mole: the second victim is one of the Hotel's waitresses, Maggie Hillman, in love with the Hotel's swimming instructor, Buck Valentine. Strange that Nellie also seems to have been in Buck's range. And what's more, she was found in the swimming instructor's white dinghy, lit by a pink lantern: the mole this time is on a leg, just above the knee, in a very intimate part of the leg. A sign that the killer must have had a very private relationship with the victim. But it's the third victim that leaves you speechless: this time the victim is Miss Heywood, a cocaine dealer, who supplied the painter's wife with white powder. Heywood is found next to a pink lantern, in the old cemetery, in a freshly dug grave, to bring old Mitchell's coffin back to light: strangled, her arms crossed on her chest, and a sketch of a red circle on her shoulder but around nothing, no mole this time. All this after Westlake had found her the day before next to Buck Valentine digging near Mitchell's grave. Why? What is hidden in the old cemetery?

To figure out who the killer might be, Westlake will have to start a 360° investigation involving Mitchell's daughter, Cora, a jewel thief and wife of a thief and murderer who ended up in the electric chair, a huge black diamond, a cellmate of Cora's who had changed her name and features, a child who strangely resembled someone, Cora's son; Cora's arrest by Officer Barnes, who had allowed her to kiss the face of her father who died two days earlier; what and if Usher, the undertaker, who wanders among the graves, and who has supervised all the funerals in the area, has to do with it. Who could have known that Maggie had a mole on a portion of her leg that was not visible (considering that Mitchell absolutely did not want his female staff to show off their legs) and who could have known that on Heywood's shoulder there was originally a mole, later removed?

Westlake will find the killer but the decisive proof that he is the killer will be provided by his daughter Dawn, who was missing along with Bobby.

END OF SPOILERS

The book is an absolute masterpiece, imbued from beginning to end with an oppressive and macabre atmosphere, which culminates in a heart-stopping finale, in which Westlake and Fanshawe find the missing children in the old church of the cemetery, reduced to a swamp, by a violent hurricane that has redrawn the promontory and torn the coffins of the old inhabitants from the graves, which are floating on the sea.

 

 

 

The novel has a unique atmosphere, which beyond the thick veil on the series of murders, makes use of the location: a village in ruins, an old almost abandoned cemetery, someone digging to unearth old coffins. A tribute to many great contemporary authors and not, of its two authors: first of all Carr (and how can we forget The Three Coffins or The Sleeping Sphinx), while the series of murders is based on A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie, which old Wheeler knew very well along with many other novels by the British writer: after all A.B.C. Murders in turn was based on The Silk Stocking Murders by Anthony Berkeley Cox. To what famous text from the past can old Usher, the undertaker and undertaker, allude if not to The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe? And then a very specific reference to one of the very first novels by Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery: we do not say what, so that the reader who has not read the book yet, does not lose the pleasure of discovering or guessing it.

As for the structure of the novel, one can notice how next to the plot on which the novel is based, there is another, which I would not risk defining as they say, a subplot, because the excavation in the old cemetery and the unearthing of the coffins buried there, constitutes a plot motif I would say of equal if not greater importance: the quid around which everything revolves, is based on what happens in the old cemetery and if anything the chain of murders, serves if not to distract, at least to help those responsible, to continue to do so, aided by the sacred terror of the inhabitants of the place, for that place full of sinister echoes, in which it is said that a gray ghost wanders (which we will see later, is in flesh and blood). And the same corpses when they are discovered, refer, if you look carefully, to the corpses when they are buried: with their arms folded on their chests. And the dinghy with Maggie’s body inside, isn’t that a coffin for her, floating on the sea, like the coffins in the old cemetery float on the sea once the hurricane has swept it away? It’s as if everything, even unconsciously, refers to the old cemetery, it’s as if the killer’s unconscious also indicates that place as the key to the mystery.

But there are not only references to novels by previous or contemporary authors; there is also what seems to me to be a reference to a famous Broadway theatrical success, later adapted to the cinema by Frank Capra: Arsenic and Old Lace, when Westlake visits Ruth Mallory, a murderer sentenced to life for uxoricide with poison, in the women’s prison, a confidant years before of Cora Lansky Mitchell and Lena Darnell (original name of another character who moves in the novel with a fictitious name). Ruth and her cellmate Doris are two very sweet old ladies, like those in Capra's film, who don't seem like the murderers they turned out to be.

Wonderful.

 

Pietro De Palma

Anthony Berkeley : The Piccadilly Murder, 1929

The Piccadilly Murder is a novel with an impossible crime, the second masterpiece of 1929, when the first, I remember, was the very famous The Poisoned Chocolates Case. And with the latter, The Piccadilly Murder, it shares characters and methods of committing the crime, and therefore it can be considered that the two novels form an inseparable pair. The characters are: Ambrose Chitterwick, one of the six members of the Crime Club, an imaginary club, but not so much, that seems to echo The Detection Club, founded by Berkeley in 1928, which concludes with its hypothesis, the series of six that form the basis of the novel, identifying the murderer (who would seem to be just an insignificant character) and Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard; while the method of committing the murder, in both, is the administration of poison (in the first nitrobenzene, here prussic acid). In essence, The Piccadilly Murder, gives the leading role, and the spotlight throughout the novel, to Sherringham's friend, the mild and awkward Chitterwick, who had been able to solve The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates. And the demonstration of his ingenuity is precisely this novel (and Trial and Error): it is as if Berkeley, not wanting to overinflate the figure of Sherringham, had wanted to replace it with that of Chitterwick, recognizing its importance and value.

Ambrose Chitterwick, is in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel (one of the most luxurious hotels in London), and is intent on sipping a coffee, when his attention is fixed on an elderly lady, and on her guest, a guy with red hair, who responds to Chitterwick's interest with malicious glances. Among other things, he seems to be fiddling with a cup of coffee. At a certain point Chitterwick is contacted by a waitress because of a phone call for him, which turns out to be false. When he returns to his place, the man has disappeared, and the woman is asleep. As if guided by a sixth sense, Chitterwick goes to see if she feels ill, realizing that instead she is dead, and from the fact that a smell of bitter almonds hovers, he hypothesizes a poisoning with hydrocyanic acid. He insistently asks for the director, and orders him to contact the police, or rather Scotland Yard, and since they would like to call the Metropolitan Police thinking of a suicide, given that on the table there is only his cup of coffee, he calls Moresby, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard who he had already met in The Poisoned Chocolates Case. Obviously Moresby also remembers him, Roger Sherringham's friend. And so Ambrose expresses his doubts, about the presence of a man at the lady's table and a missing coffee cup. Furthermore, a vial was found in the victim's hand, but not tightly but lying down, as if it had been placed after death. Who is the mysterious man? From a letter found in the purse, through reasoning one is led to think that it is Lynn Sinclair, granddaughter of Miss Sinclair, the victim, a woman who had inherited a considerable fortune, whose only heir is Lynn. 

Lynn is arrested in the room: he is the red-haired companion. Following a whole series of evidence, the testimonial one of Chitterwick, and then of four other witnesses who swear they did not see other people approach the table, and the factual one (the very clear fingerprints of the man on the vial containing remains of prussic acid). Lynn is arrested and charged with premeditated murder. The witness for the prosecution is Chitterwick. At a certain point, however, unexpectedly, after being invited to the house of a Duchess, Lady Milborne, who lures him by falsely saying that she was the companion of Ambrose's aunt, he meets her brother, called Pulcino, who is a very close friend of Judy Sinclair, and Lynn's wife. Cornered, and implored by both Lord Milborne and Lady Milborne and Pulcino and obviously by Judy, Chitterwick, even knowing that he will have to testify to what he saw, begins an investigation, aided by Judy and Pulcino (Pulcino is in love with Judy and would do anything to make her happy, even save her husband's life), to demonstrate Lynn's innocence, in a strenuous battle against windmills.

He soon manages to discover from the testimony of a maid, that a small glass of liquor had also been seen on the table, which then disappeared; that Miss Groole, Miss Sinclair's lady-in-waiting, uses a pair of false glasses without optical lenses; that coffee had not been the means used to kill, because otherwise the lady would have died before his eyes in the presence of the man, the poison being in such quantity as to cause death in a very rapid time; that the maid who had come to call him, did not exist; that someone must have taken a room in the hotel to disguise themselves.

There are therefore two people who contributed to the murder. One would seem clear, and also the other at a certain point. But after the only nephew besides Lynn of the victim returned from America, with the aim of defending his cousin, Chitterwick, first thinks of one person, and then backtracks and identifies the diabolical mind who killed Miss Synclair, and who probably if she had not been stopped would have killed again, until reaching his ultimate goal.

The novel is one of Berkeley's best novels ever. It is immediately noticeable that among Berkeley's inspiring readings, there was a story by Chesterton (The Invisible Man). Why? The story is based on an impossible crime, and the explanation of The Invisible Man is then at the basis of Chitterwick's reasoning, which demolishes the testimony of four witnesses found by Moresby in the Piccadilly room, who swear that no one approached the victim's table after the man who was with her left. Precisely because whoever approached was part of the context of the room and therefore it is as if he had been invisible to the eyes of the witnesses, who claimed that no one (other than the staff that they did not consider) had approached the table. The problem is however: who is the waitress in disguise who brought the liquor to the table? And who then took it away?

 

Chitterwick's character is nicely outlined, in his clumsiness and in the dimension of an ordinary man, who has only one hobby: being an amateur detective, with a personal collection of data from the most famous murder cases and murderers, also to escape the grayness of a life spent with a pestiferous aunt. As long as he lives this hobby, he is mocked by his aunt, but when he begins his reconstruction of the events in order to save the alleged murderer from the gallows, for the sole fact that he was welcomed by the nobility, he is revalued by his aunt, and lives his greatest moment of glory, when he actually saves Lynn. Stylistically, Ambrose is the antithesis of Roger Sherringham: where Sherringham is the amateur detective à la page, a famous writer in the beau monde, but who with Berkeley's pen is described as a detective who is not at all infallible, Chitterwick in turn, who is the caricature of a bachelor of the wealthy bourgeoisie, clumsy and awkward, in the reality of the police investigation, proves to be a character of great caliber. It is a bit of a revenge, of the gentle man, who lives in the anonymity of a life that is always the same, but who at a certain moment knows how to show off the hidden part of himself, which qualifies him as a Superman.

The novel is divided into two distinct parts: a first part, very substantial, corresponding to 4/5 of the plot, dominated by Chitterwick's investigation and the deductions he makes based on the clues he has collected about how the crime must have been conceived, and a second part, much more streamlined, in which the suppositions concern the culprits. In essence, it would seem until the beginning of the second part that the novel is not a whodunnit, but a howdunnit, since in the case that the murderer is not Judy's husband, it is clear (but it is not said) that the most likely person to have killed Miss Sinclair to inherit (the famous Cui Prodest), is the other cousin, the one who verbally rejects the inheritance because he wants to save Lynn. And so, we conjecture and hypothesize what the modus operandi of the murderer might have been, reconstructing a crime that seemed impossible: how could he have died only after Chitterwick had been removed from the room under some pretext, if the poison, as Ambrose himself said and the police maintain, had been put in the coffee? In this case, death would have been almost instantaneous, and instead, until Ambrose had left, the lady was sipping her coffee without showing signs of feeling ill. So how was it possible? And who had put the vial of the now dead lady? And where had the phantom glass of liqueur ended up?
Only then, in the last pages, we understand that the murderer is not him at all.

The novel is the apotheosis of misdirection and multiple solutions.
Ultimately, it is the same procedure adopted by Berkeley for the first of the 1929 novels: in both, multiple solutions are contemplated. A bit like what will be said for Christianna Brand, much later: the queen of novels with multiple solutions. It is no coincidence that I mention Brand, because many do not know that she tries, as a member of the Detection Club (and therefore in fantasy of the Crime Club), to give a seventh deduction in relation to The Poisoned Chocolates Case, which was anticipated by the story The Avenging Chance (which however curiously was published after the novel), whose plot was the same as the novel but whose solution was based only on Sherringham's deduction (the seventh deduction by Christiana Brand and an eighth one in which Martin Edwards himself, who signs the Introduction to the novel, tried his hand at it, are contained as attachments to the British Library Crime Classics edition of The Poisoned Chocolates Case). With a style that mixes irony, lightness and superfine acumen, Berkeley manages to bring the reader to the end, surprising him with a solution, which identifies not one, not two but three characters involved in the staging, who act in two different ways and times, in which one of the three constitutes a sort of hinge between the other two: he is essentially a double agent who transforms a certain representation into another, but without his knowledge.

A masterpiece of inventiveness.

Pietro De Palma