Her name was Lucy Beatrice Malleson, cousin of the great British actor and playwright Miles Malleson, and she was a crime novelist by profession. However, no one knew her under this name because she was more famous under the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert. Under this pseudonym (others included J. Kilmeny Kaith and Anne Meredith), she published 69 novels, 51 of which featured detective lawyer Arthur Crook. It should be noted, however, that the writer had attempted to write just over a dozen other novels under the same pseudonym, starting in 1927: in fact, her very first novel was The Tragedy At Freyne. From his first novel, Murder by Experts, in 1936, this new detective was immediately popular. Also because, unlike his other colleagues, he introduced a unique way of appearing on the scene: instead of playing the usual role of a 1930s detective—that is, bringing the culprit to justice after a sharp analysis—he enters the scene when his client has been accused of a crime or is otherwise involved in some kind of trouble. Even in this novel, Don't Open the Door, from 1945 (in U.S. published like Death Lifts the Latch), Arthur Crook enters the scene after at least half a book, and he does so because his client has been singled out as the kidnapper of the beauty of the moment. But...let's take it in order.
Nora Deane is a beautiful orphan who lived with her aunt in Scotland until she died. Alone and with little money, she goes to England to work as a nurse, putting her experience at the service of those in need of domestic assistance. This is what happens when she is sent to the home of Alfred and Adele Newstead. The evening itself, with a fog so thick it could make anyone unfamiliar with the place apprehensive, bodes ill. Moreover, after a delay of over three hours due to a blocked train line, Nora happens to be greeted by an extremely suspicious and unpleasant Alfred Newstead, who barely conceals his distaste for anyone in the house. Thankfully, at least she had been accompanied to the house by a handsome young man she had met on the street, Sammy Parker, who had suggested they have lunch the next day.
She immediately realizes something is wrong: his wife, who according to her husband is suffering only from a nervous disorder, is actually very ill. And although he, after assigning her the terrifyingly ugly and shabby room, warns her not to listen to his wife, she approaches her, just to understand from the woman's tone of voice that Adele is afraid of her husband; so much so that she implores the girl to take a small book from the desk and give it to the woman's brother, Herbert. She barely has time to pocket the notebook when her husband appears, bringing her a cup of tea. After drinking the drink, she suddenly realizes she's been drugged, and when she wakes up, at after 6 a.m., Adele is dead.
The doctor, called by her husband, despite suspecting him of uxoricide by means of an enormous dose of sleeping pills (three more pills than prescribed were missing from a tube of pills provided by the doctor), decides not to intervene and nevertheless signs the death certificate. This is also because the girl's testimony, while raising doubts and uncertainties about the actual behavior of her husband, who claims innocence, proves nothing more than a simple clue. And he, who in the past has caused the arrest of a person for uxoricide, who was later declared innocent and who nevertheless committed suicide, does not want to have anyone else on his conscience.
So Nora returns home, to be sent to another house. Meanwhile, the funeral has taken place, and Alfred has disappeared, disappearing without a trace.
Nora contacts Herbert to deliver the booklet and discovers that the dead woman's brother also suspects his brother-in-law of uxoricide, especially since his wife had long suspected her husband of cheating on her with prostitutes: one of them is Hattie Forbes, the couple's neighbor. Then the lawyer also disappears.
One day, while Nora is working at the home of an elderly spinster, she reads in the newspaper that a decomposing body has been found in a quarry. A watch on his wrist identifies it as Alfred Newstead. The investigation then points to Herbert. Could he have avenged his sister? But when the old woman reveals everything to her nephew, Roger Trentham, a journalist, Nora becomes a danger to the killer, creating front-page scoops about the nurse and her alleged revelations. And so it happens that on the basis of two fake telegrams, she falls into the arms of the murderer, who has planned a fake car accident for her death.
At this point, Arthur Croock enters the picture, summoned by Sammy Parker, who instantly fell in love with the beautiful girl, whose fictitious name appears on the two telegrams sent to her. Everyone thinks it's Sammy who kidnapped her, but instead...
Don't Open the Door (published in the US in 1946 under the other title Death Lifts the Latch) is a good thriller, which thrives solely on suspense and not on the identity of the murderer, who is very easy to identify. And the author's attempt to invent a fake death and mistaken identity (there's another murder) isn't enough to distract the reader from the confirmed or quasi-confessional killer: after all, the novel doesn't have a vast pool of suspects, something found, for example, in the novels of Ngaio Marsh or Georgette Heyer or Agatha Christie, but an extremely limited one: whether it's the husband, an unrepentant, untrustworthy womanizer; or the brother, avid for money; or the beautiful and easy-going Hattie, it's a short step. This is because Anthony Gilbert doesn't use psychology as his winning weapon, but rather tension, of which he is master: he uses the old trick of atmosphere (thick fog, dark evening, deserted places, a gloomy house lit by candles, dust everywhere) and combines it with a story with dark undertones: a depressed wife, who has already attempted suicide once, in the hands of a husband who would be very happy if she were dead, and who has entrusted her defense to a brother who cares not about his sister's happiness but about her money, and who would be very happy if he could prove his brother-in-law's guilt; sleeping pills used too easily; secret letters; the presence of another woman, who would return to take her place, declared by the sick woman to Nora; the woman's death under extremely suspicious circumstances. And then everything that follows, with the nurse, who, according to the killer's intentions, should have been minding her own business but who, instead, finds herself the target of an ideal newspaper article. And the race against time to save her. The novel has a fairly high level of tension, not because the killer's identity is unknown, which is obvious, but because the heroine, who is about to be killed as an eyewitness, must be found as quickly as possible. However, the moment the heroine is saved, the novel loses its edge, because everyone has figured out who the killer is.
The novel, which dates back to 1945, sets the story after the war ended, even though it hadn't yet: in this case, the way the story is structured (the darkness, the fog, the death contrasted with the girl's liberation and with love) would also make me think of a reference to the war that was being fought and was coming to an end, a representation of contrasting states of mind (fear, terror, courage, serenity).
It also, in my opinion, pays tribute to the entire cinema that was alive in those years: how can we not think of films like Suspicion, 1941, based on Berkeley's novel, Before The Fact, 1932, in which Cary Grant is suspected by his wife, Joan Fontaine, of wanting to poison her to steal her money, a resounding box office success? The film's famous shot of Cary Grant walking up the stairs carrying a glass of milk that is suspected to be poisoned, in which Hitchcock placed a light to focus the audience's attention. Moreover, in the novel, it is as if the reader's frame were focused on the glass and the sleeping pills placed near the patient's bedside.
It is also interesting to note how the writer had invented her own main character who is not, as was customary at the time, a dandy (Philo Vance), an aristocrat (Lord Wimsey), a cultured policeman (Inspector Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard), the son of a New York police inspector (Ellery Queen), a New York High Commissioner of Police (Thatcher Colt), but a small-time lawyer, always balancing honesty and dishonesty, who uses unorthodox methods, a bit like Perry Mason to nail the guilty, who to us resembles, but a lot, John J. Malone, a lawyer very fond of alcohol and cigars and very unrefined in his dress!
After all, Craig Rice's first novel with Malone dates back to 1939, and so it could also be that it was the ideal reference for Malleson.
Pietro De Palma
No comments:
Post a Comment