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

Jonathan Stagge : Death, My Darling Daughters, 1945

Jonathan Stagge : Death, My Darling Daughters (aka Death and the Dear Girls), 1945

Jonathan Stagge as Patrick Quentin or Quentin Patrick, was not only pseudonym, but also firm, formed in turn by the union of four pairs of writers, which is signed otherwise: the most prolific was formed by Richard Wilson Webb (1901 - 1966) and Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912 - 1987), who signed all novels with Jonathan Stagge, from their first novel, Murder Gone to Earth - 1936, Aka The Dogs Do Bark, until the last The Three Fears, 1949. Of the nine novels published under this pseudonym, Death, My Darling Daughters (also Death and the Dear Girls) is the seventh and dates back to 1945.
The war ends and Kenmore, the town where Dr. Westlake is doctor, comes back to life. Especially is reopened the historic residence, where a vice-president of the United States of the century, Benjamin Hilton was staying in the summer
Hilton's daughter, Emily, and her two daughters, Loss and Rosalind, are staying and so they have  invited other relatives and friends: the aim is that the residence of the deceased Benjamin comes back to being the symbol of Kenmore. Among them, the other two sons of Benjamin's: the Emily’s sister, Belle, with her husband, the famous toxicologist Kenton-Oakes, and especially his brother George, scientist, with his wife Janie and his daughter Helen . Then there are friends, including Dr. Stahl, Austrian woman refugee who is studying a series of cyanide-based poisons against mouses, who is working in the barn. the assistant of George Hilton, Vic Roberts, and Dr. Westlake with his daughter Dawn.
Between dinners and concerts, it would seem that life in the residence of Hilton ran placid and smiling, and instead in the ashes the hatred is hatching: the testament of the patriarch ruled by the testament legacies of the two sisters and favored only a son who became heir to the fortune by  Hilton. Only he is rich. If he died, the money would be divided between his wife and daughter, sister and nephews. But without that he would die, if he was a bit more generous, no one would feel hatred for him. But the fact is that George is in love only of his work, of his discoveries: he became famous for his study on the possibilities of synthetic penicillin and other antibiotics. Only no one knows the truth: he was not to make the discovery, but his assistant Vic Roberts, who takes only his crumbs.

George has many people who hate him and want him dead.
It must be said that before he gets in Kenmore, perhaps someone has already in the past tried to eliminate him, mixing crushed glass to starch administered to him after a gastric congestion: only the old Nanny, the housekeeper, realized who he/she was . And it seems she has alerted the subject not to make other attempts: it is no coincidence that the day after Nanny dies, drinking tea corrected with cyanide.
Who may have been? But it was really murder or accident? Yes, because was Nanny who was polishing the silverware in the house, and to do it, used products containing cyanide. It is possible that the teapot, especially on the edge has not been cleaned properly and the residue killed the poor Nanny? Everyone thinks.
But the death of Nanny did not happen by accident: she was murdered. This is proved by the fact that Nanny drinking tea with Belle,  if it was really so, both the women would have fatally intoxicated and the teapot to be an instrument of death of both;  instead Belle was no intoxicated. So the poisoning had been made after, not before: if it was the product to clean the silverware the cause of death of Nanny, the two women should have to die, because Nanny had cleaned the silverware before and no after. So someone, after, he had voluntarily sprinkled the poison on the edge of the teapot in order to kill her. Nanny knew the intentions of the murderer, she knew the starch mixed with glass, and the starch she had not thrown: she always kept it with her, the proof the bomber in the past had tried to suppress George, and it is clear that if Nanny had not told anyone about her suspicions it is because the alleged bomber was one of the family of George, and in that house, the house of the Hilton, the aristocratic house of the Hilton, the scandals were not allowed.

Nanny died, it would seem that the murderess could try to kill George, because if he dies, the others become rich. And so ...
The toxicologist Austrian earns his paltry money by giving private music lessons to his two daughters Emily, and daughter of Westlake, Dawn, promising musician. One day, it organized a concert, a kind of essay in which the three can demonstrate improvements musical actually feel dissonance only to that concert. George, who plays the flute, he tries to give his personal contribution and then he just started to make sounds, that one more strong, distorted is lost in the air when he staggers and collapses on the floor. Dead. Poisoned. With cyanide. It turns out that the mouthpiece of the flute had been impregnated with cyanide. But also had not been cleaned it with the product for the silverware? Misfortune, for the murderer, Westlake realizes incongruity of the story of the poisoning of Nanny and as Belle should have died, if indeed the hypothesis of product for the silverware murderer was true. So when they are faced with the truth, also they understand a murderer, one by family, killed the two persons.
But where he/she get the cyanide? The fact is that there is one tide, available in the barn, to study the reactions in mouses, and then if someone took a bit no one can say, because precautions to ensure that the removal was prevented, were not put in place.
So Dr.Westlake will trap the evil murderer, not before he/she struck again, simulating a murder to suicide and blaming the suicide about the murder of his victims. The fact is that the murderer will die suicide, for cyanide, in a tragic and memorable ending.
A massacre, this!

The idea of ​​the family where they hatch hatred, jealousy and envy, when the brothers hate each other, where there is hatred behind the money, and a testament geezer by an equally quirky patriarch, are not new : S.S.Van Dine more than fifteen years before, he had sown well the seeds of hatred family in his masterpiece about the murders in the Greene family!
Stagge, however, takes the towel already developed by Van Dine and varies with great skill, playing on the psychology of the characters, highlighting the details that will be discovered, however, in their light left at the end, concealing and highlighting, in a proud of obviousness and subterfuge, more driving, along with loves lost and found, for lovers scoundrels: Vic has an extramarital relationship with Janie, he is loved by Helen and together by Dr. Stahl. George knew nothing until Helen refused had not told her: it turns out in the end that she had been the cause of the break between George and Vic. But the murderess is a man or woman? Was Vic who wanted to take revenge on George who had stolen the success, or Helen, who wanted to inherit his father's money, hating her stepmother? O Janie who would like to get rid of her husband and live with Vic? O Stahl who wants to avenge Vic? Or Emily and her two daughters?

It 'a pretty classic mystery novel, written with great skill: the reason lies in the plot, who is apparently based on a matter of course. He does everything to bring together the suspicions about certain subjects, then here and there, that's Stagge dangles other ideas, however, concealing the real rehearsal, the evidence of guilt to the end.
It is good to say: they are overwhelming rehearsals only if interpreted psychologically from Westlake, otherwise they would not be. Wetlake employs two flashes of genius to reverse the recent guilty suicide, in murder of an innocent: the clues are two disks on which the false killer suicide would affect his/her confession and an interview that there would have not been.
Even though the final twist, about the name, is a bit melodramatic and quite built: you do not understand why a person would have to call in a way, and his parents give that name, only in order to play with his destiny.
Mysteries of a novel in which, once again, Dawn makes her contribution to the success of his father, Dr. Westlake.

Pietro De Palma