Review: The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode (1928)

by Mary

London's Praed Street is typical of thousands of unremarkable urban streets, narrow, not too attractive, and occupied by residents served by small shops a few steps away from their front doorsteps.

The case begins when James Tovey collapses outside local pub The Express Train at chucking-out time. He is the first to fall at the hands of a murderer using varied and occasionally exotic methods to kill. Investigation establishes the victims each received a numbered bone counter (token) before their deaths as if to inform them their numbers would soon be up. Tovey's death is swiftly followed by others, causing the case to resemble a deadly game of reverse Happy Families.

Differing methods of murder suggest more than one deadly hand is at work and include a couple of complicated affairs typical of the seemingly impossible murders often found in Golden Age of Detection fiction. If any connection between the dead men beyond their being neighbours could be established it would be of great assistance in narrowing the search for the culprit(s). Unfortunately a Bayswater resident subsequently falls dead in Praed Street, effectively destroying that theory. There's also a bearded sailor of notably savage visage apparently seen in the street the night of Tovey's murder. This sighting could be a fiction used to deflect accusation but even if the sailor was there, he's disappeared. Was he involved or is the perpetrator a resident of the street, and if so what could be behind the rash of murders?

Enter eccentric scientist Dr Priestley. He has previously assisted Inspector Hanslet, the officer now in charge of the stalled case, and does so again in the Praed Street puzzler. And a puzzler it is because, as the inspector observes, there's no rational motive for deaths of no possible benefit to the murderer.

My verdict: The Praed Street murders are based on what some may view as an understandable motive although no doubt arguments would break out about that over a pint at The Express Train. A couple of early hints may well alert readers to a possible culprit, while one or two of the murder methods are satisfyingly complex and yet workable with the right arrangements. I wavered on how to grade this novel and eventually settled on B+, always bearing in mind other readers' mileage will vary.

E-text: The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode (1928)

Review: Murder At Ravensthorpe by J. J. Connington (1927)

by Mary

Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield is being shown around the extensive grounds of Ravensthorpe, home to Cecil Chasewater and his siblings Maurice and Joan and their mother. It is Joan's 21st birthday that very day and a celebratory costume ball is to be held the following night.

As the two men walk around, Cecil points out an example of the miniature Fairy Houses scattered throughout the estate. Apparently every Ravensthorpe will includes a clause providing for these small dwellings to be kept in good repair for otherwise a curse will fall on the family. Or so legend has it.

On a more down-to-earth note, Driffield points out given ball guests will be masked it's possible outsiders with criminal tendencies might mingle with them and carry off valuable objects from the Ravensthorpe private museum, which will be open as part of the celebrations.

Cecil confides in Driffield that he's unhappy their father left everything to the oldest son Maurice, trusting him to provide for Cecil, Joan, and their mother. Unfortunately this was not specifically laid down in the will and Maurice has indicated he does not intend to subsidise Cecil forever. Tension between the brothers is further exacerbated because both have fallen for Una Rainhill, who favours Cecil. As a result he expects to be thrown out of Ravensthorpe at any moment without a bean to his name.

Furthermore, to the horror of those who hear of it, Maurice intends to sell off the Ravensworth collection of objets d'art, the most valuable of which is a set of Medusa Medallions created by da Vinci. In fact, a Mr Foss is currently a house guest as agent for Mr Kessock, an American millionaire wishing to purchase the medallions.

Bright Young Things that they are, Cecil, Una, and their friend Foxcroft "Foxy" Polgate decide to stage a jolly jape during the ball just to annoy Maurice, to wit, a sham burglary. Their plot includes plunging the house into darkness to allow them to mount a smash and grab of the medallions but events do not go as planned. There is a shot just as Una turns off all the lights in the house. A body is found in the museum, all the medallions have gone, and the perpetrator gets away despite being pursued and cornered by a number of male guests. More mayhem is to come.

There's a positive plethora of possible perpetrators. Was the culprit a family member wishing to thwart the sale of the medallions or an outside party who took advantage of the masked ball as Driffield had feared? It is unthinkable of course but could the thief be one of the ball guests? Even friend Foxy comes under suspicion, having made gold electrotypes of the da Vinci medallions for Maurice for display with the originals until the latter are sold. Apparently Maurice thinks copies will look just as well as the real ones.

The investigation comes to include an impossible escape, a sighting of the family's ghost, and a Japanese sword said to be unlucky plus a lesson on safe-cracking with the aid of a Marconi otophone. The case also involves a pair of trousers with peculiar pockets and a revelation via a childhood nickname.

My verdict: Connington is a master of misdirection. He presents a particular incident in plain sight but when the reader knows what it means, the new information puts a completely different complexion on what happened and explains much. I also admired his revelation of how what seems to be an impossible escape was accomplished and therefore award Tragedy At Ravensthorpe this week's Obfuscation Award, along with an A for its enjoyably devious plot.

NOTE: Alternate title is Tragedy at Ravensthorpe

E-text: Murder At Ravensthorpe by J. J. Connington

Review: The Case With Nine Solutions by J. J. Connington (1928)

by Mary

Dr Ringwood, serving as locum tenens for an old friend recovering from appendicitis, returns to his lodgings in a pea-souper so thick he can't even see the pavement. He is looking forward to a cosy evening by the fire with a cigar and the latest issue of the British Medical Journal but alas, it is not to be. Dr Trevor Markfield, a friend who lives locally, drops in for a chat and engages in a bit of gossip, hinting the marriage of Dr Silverdale, under whom he works at the Croft-Thornton Research Institute, is not all it should be. It seems Dr Silverdale's French wife Yvonne has taken up with Ronald Hassendean, an idler who works as little as possible at the Institute and is widely known as her permanent dancing-partner. Naturally there is scuttlebutt. At this point, Ringwood receives a call from a maid anxious about her fellow servant's worsening illness, given the family employing them is out for the evening. Markfield identifies the address she gives as Silverdale's house and guides Ringwood there through worsening fog before leaving for home. Ringwood discovers the house silent, lights on, and the front door unlocked. Venturing inside, he finds a young man shot twice bleeding to death. Then he realises he is in the wrong house. Silverdale's home is next door. The police are summoned and Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield arrives with Inspector Flamborough to investigate the matter. The deceased is identified as Ronald Hassendean, his dancing days done. Then the Hassendean's maid is found strangled and the other maid can't be interviewed as she is delirious with a bad attack of scarlatina.

Where to begin? Well, next morning Driffield receives a telegram advising him to visit the bungalow used as a summer residence by the Hassendean family. And what do they find there but Mrs Silverdale, lying dead in an armchair.

In talking to Flamborough about the case, Driffield notes three possibilities to explain these events: accident, suicide, or murder, various permutations of which total eight.

A rich stew of suspects forms. What about motives? Has Silverdale grown tired of his wife's open flirtation with young Hassendean? We might also note Silverdale beat Markfield for the post of head of department. Two other workers at the Institute also come under suspicion: Miss Hailsham, Hassendean's bitter and vindictive ex-fiancee, and Miss Deepcar, due to hints of mutual attraction between her and Silverdale

Then there's Mrs Silverdale's brother Mr Menard, who's attempting to get her to change her will to what he views as a fairer distribution of her recent inheritance. Meaning more should be left to him. But what if she becomes angry at his pressing her on the matter and leaves him nothing under a new will? After all, a small bequest is better than none. Nor should we overlook Spratton, a money lender holding an insurance policy on Hassendean's life as security for his loans to the dead man. Murder rather than suicide or accident would net Spratton a substantial amount.

Investigations are aided by subsequent tips received from the sender of the telegram -- but only if Driffield and Flamborough are able to decipher their informant's coded advertisements in the local papers.

My verdict: I raced through and enjoyed this novel. At times it assumes the polite air of a restrained police procedural during an investigation also featuring forgery, possible blackmail, burglary, impersonation, and a method of murder I believe most readers will find unique. Connington's title states the case has nine solutions and when the ninth is revealed it features a clever double twist. All in all, then, I award The Case With Nine Solutions an A.

E-text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72816

The Cat Who Saved a Lord Chamberlain's Life

by Eric

I'm reading a book by Georges Simenon, author of the Inspector Maigret mysteries. The Cat, however, isn't a mystery. It's one of Simenon's psychological novels. I'm pretty sure Maigret never had a cat (unlike so many modern detectives) although he might have seen a feral feline or two slinking through the alleys in the dark underbelly of Paris. He encountered stray dogs certainly, as evidenced by his novel Maigret and the Yellow Dog.

Our own detective, John the Lord Chamberlain, didn't own a cat either but our two cats, Rachel and Sabrina, made cameo appearances in our Byzantine mysteries. Both are gone now, having lived to ripe old cat ages.

I took Rachel in when he came to my door one bitterly cold November day. Yes -- Rachel was a he. My two children named him. I could never be sure of his age but he was a glutton until the end, thanks to his having nearly starved out in the wild. How could I forget the time he stole a pork chop off the kitchen counter? (In One for Sorrow "Rachel's" tendency to pounce frantically on food saves John's life...you'll have to read the book...)

Sabrina, our final cat, lived to be twenty-two. (Final because at some point you don't want to take responsibility for pets who might outlive you.) There's no doubt about her age. I rescued her as a kitten from a neighbor's garage during my first marriage and she stayed with me after the divorce. She bridged two very different phases of my life. A new marriage, new work, a move to another state. During twenty years of change, Sabrina was the only connecting thread so it was particularly upsetting when she died.

Unlike "final girls" in movies, our final cat didn't spend her life battling homicidal maniacs. Quite the contrary. She was a coddled house-cat. During her last few years she stuck to me like a barnacle. Well, a warm, furry barnacle. I suppose I was the only constant thing in her life and she became more clinging as she aged. She wouldn't let me out of her sight. She insisted on curling up on my lap when I sat at the computer. Which was a real show of loyalty since skinny as I am I offer very little in the way of a lap. I altered my way of sitting to accommodate her. When I got up to go downstairs for a cup of coffee she'd wait for me at the top of the stairs.

Eventually it got to the point that she couldn't make the leap from floor to lap and would sit by my chair and meow piteously until I lifted her up. Weirdly, this attachment was solely to me, and not to Mary although Sabrina had lived with her for nearly twenty years. "Sabrina's a one person cat," Mary said. "If I passed out and was lying on the floor she'd walk over me to get to you."

As the end approached, Sabrina found it difficult to walk so before going to bed we'd put her in the little nest we'd made from a fuzzy toilet seat cover placed on the bottom shelf of a bookcase. We daily expected she'd be gone overnight but instead one morning we found her sprawled part way out of it on the floor. I carried her the rest of the way to my chair and put her on my lap. It wasn't long before she gave a quiet sigh and died there.

It seems as if she managed to get through the night so she could die where she wanted to be. I can't say I am deserving of that kind of devotion.

I Always Wore My School Beret at a Truly Rakish Angle

by Mary

A couple of years before I left England I went to a fancy dress party disguised as a penguin, complete with beak hastily constructed from orange cardboard and string. A colleague from work was the hit of the evening when she sauntered in dressed in a gymslip, white shirt, striped tie, and black stockings, an ensemble immediately identifying her as a sixth-former attending St Trinian's School For Girls.

Not being certain if the series is as well-known in this country I shall scribble a line or two about their content. Here I am talking about the original films, not the remakes, so if you know the former, talk among yourselves until the next couple of paragraphs end.

Why does the British public have such affection for the St Trinian's films? Inspired by Ronald Searle's cartoons, they are set in a boarding school where anarchy rules and pupils run wild, tormenting teachers, each other, the residents of a nearby town or indeed anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with them Perhaps the appeal is to that little bit of wildness in all of us when we see chaos let loose in an educational setting, where traditionally (To Sir With Love notwithstanding) all is expected to be orderly and quiet and fourth-formers do not concoct spirituous liquors and create explosives in the lab, not to mention constructing deadly traps for the headmistress and staff. Drinking, smoking, and gambling are routine and so are melees during hockey matches. Indeed, the school song brazenly celebrates trampling on the weakest and declares might is always right. Whichever form was involved, however, there was some hope of reform -- none of the girls ever swore.

Every member of staff is depicted as not on the up and up and almost certainly involved in shady doings past and present while the fourth-formers (aged around fourteen) are spectacularly untidy with holes in their stockings, wild hair, and disreputable straw hats. They are capable of and glory in criminal behaviour -- one of Searle's cartoons shows a teacher grilling her class on who had burned the school's east wing down the previous night. Pupils are violent, their weapons of choice being various types of sports equipment, with hockey sticks a particular favourite. On the other hand, the seventeen or eighteen year old sixth-formers are more interested in higher matters, especially the opposite sex, having bloomed into bosomy young women wearing thigh-length gymslips, revealing glimpses of their suspenders. Note to young 'uns: you should know suspender belts and stocking tops were considered as racy as all get when the original films were made.

By contrast, the all-girl grammar school I attended had a strict dress code. Gymslips had to reach our knees and the hem of shorts worn for sports were required to touch the ground when we knelt. Observed on public byways eating or not wearing a school hat or beret while in uniform merited punishment. Urchins at a school lower down the hill from ours had discovered this and attempted to grab one or the other off our heads and run away with it on many occasions. Worse transgressions while abroad in uniform were smoking or talking to a boy. One year a rumour swept the lower forms claiming a pupil had been seen in one such conversation on the street and was punished for it. Even though the fellow in question was her brother -- or so it was said.

The only thing we had in common with St Trinian's were prefects, sixth-formers with the power to hand out penalties for breaking the rules of conduct. Generally they were tasks such as learning an extract from Shakespeare or writing a hundred lines declaring the miscreant must not do whatever it was they'd done. The only time I had to submit lines was because of running in the corridor. I still claim I was just walking fast and everyone else was slow-poking along. A touch of irony enters the picture at this point, given when I took my lines up to the sixth-formers' common room under the eaves of the Victorian building in which the school was housed, the opened door revealed a haze of cigarette smoke.

However, at this remove I feel it is safe to reveal I was guilty of a little bit of wildness myself since I always wore my school beret at a truly rakish angle. Provided of course one of the young hellions from down the hill had not made off with it.

REVIEW: Murder in the Maze by J. J. Connington (1927)

by Mary

Being particularly fond of mazes, this title naturally leapt out at me and indeed a maze plays a major part in the plot given at one time or another almost every character spends time in or near it for various reasons.

The reader first meets the Shandon brothers, an unlikely trio. There's King’s Counsel Neville, currently prosecuting an important breach of contract case, and his twin Roger, who's rich enough to own Whistlefield with its maze and tennis court. The source of his wealth is obscure and a man from his past is attempting to blackmail him. And then there's their younger brother, Ernest, basically a parasite living at Whistlefield on an income composed of an allowance from Roger plus a bit of betting on the side.

Also in residence: the brothers' niece Sylvia and nephew Arthur Hawkhurst. The latter is recuperating from encephalitis and spends much of his time playing the piano. Very badly. Roger's private secretary Ivor Stenness lives in Whistlefield as well and on this particular day there are a couple of visitors -- Vera Forrest, a friend of Sylvia's, and Howard Torrance, a decent young fellow fond of Vera.

As the novel opens Roger expresses fears Hackleton, the defendant in the case mentioned, will have Neville attacked but his brother dismisses the possibility. Meantime Arthur's dreadful piano-playing is so annoying Neville decides to go over his notes on the case by seeking solitude in the maze. Unusually, by the way, it has two centres. Later Roger decides to make his way to the other centre as he is sleepy and, given the distance of the maze from the house, it will be quiet and out of ear shot of that awful piano playing.

Much of the action takes place in or near the maze, described as covering about half an acre with thick twelve feet high hedges, more than one entrance, and a complex layout said to far exceed those at Hatfield House and Hampton Court. Then Howard and Vera make a bet on who would reach one of the centres first. As they blunder around the labyrinth out of sight of each other, ominous sounds are heard and Howard suddenly shouts "Murder!". Since he cannot reach Vera he instructs her to leave the maze as soon as possible.

There follows a tense sequence describing Vera's attempt to escape while expecting to turn a corner and meet a murderer any minute. Instead she finds Roger Shandon's body. Howard, meantime, cannot find his way out but by sheer chance Vera manages it and races off to the house to get people to rescue him, search for the intruder, and call the police.

Once rescued, Howard, accompanied by secretary Stenness and a gardener -- both armed and familiar with the layout of the maze -- return to it to guard the body until the police arrive. In the course of navigating their way to the dead man, they capture a suspicious stranger. The corpse they reach is identified by Stenness as Roger and they realise the first body was actually Neville's.

Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield soon arrives to investigate the matter and the reader is off to the races.

My verdict: Murder In The Maze rattles along well. I particularly enjoyed the description of Vera's terrified escape from the maze. The murder weapon is a novel pairing of two fairly common methods -- in detective fiction at least. All in all, an engaging read I award a B plus. Next on my TBR: Mr Connington's The Case With Nine Solutions, another tempting title!

E-text Murder in the Maze

A Trio of Teas

by Mary

During the last couple of weeks my eye was drawn to three stories with a common though unlikely element linking crime, WWII, and funeral catering.

Tea.

Last month I read about a scam whereby victims were tricked into purchasing Scottish-grown tea. The culprit made over £500,000 by selling foreign-grown tea under such names as Highland Green and Scottish Antlers plus other blends supposedly grown on the Wee Tea Plantation, located on a former sheep farm in Perthshire. As a sideline he also sold tea plants said to have been grown in Scotland to entrepreneurs who fancied trying their hands at growing materials for the cup that cheers but does not inebriate.

Scotland's Food Crime Unit brought him to justice last month. I'm now wondering if before too long we'll see an investigator from a similar unit as the protagonist in a mystery series. After all, with the current raging popularity of mysteries involving shops offering various kinds of comestibles it would seem a natural pairing, like a cuppa with a ginger bikky to dunk in it, Especially if it turned out the edibles were poisoned. We could call it Tart Noir.

Not long afterwards I stumbled over an unusual story from 1941. In occupied Holland RAF planes arrived one night and dropped hundreds of miniature parachutes carrying unexpected but most welcome cargoes -- small bags of tea. 75,000 of them, each containing an ounce of tea, a gift to the populace from unoccupied plantations in the Dutch East Indies. The message on their labels: "The Netherlands will rise again. Greetings from the free Dutch East Indies. Have courage." *

The third leaf of my tea-related trio of articles is my discovery of the what appears to be the newish custom -- at least to me -- of giving teabags in decorative envelopes to mourners at post-funeral gatherings. The minions of the Maywrite Research Bureau tell me traditional blends such as Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe are popular choices for these occasions, while special blends or herbal teas are also available if preferred. We'd have liked to include such remembrances for the funeral tea in Ruined Stones, had such offerings been practised at the time. However, even if it had, it would have been difficult to mention in that particular chapter due to wartime rationing. The novel is set in 1941 and the adult allowance per week at the time was two ounces, reckoned to be enough for 30 cuppas.

Speaking as a long time javaphile I was happy to subsequently learn that coffee, though sometimes difficult to obtain, was one of the few items not rationed in the UK at one time or another during the war.

* Photo of a parachute with a (presumably empty) teabag at https://x.com/PotteriesMuseum/status/962667786999910401