Review: The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln

by Mary

Twins Helen and Barbara McIntyre arrive at court to give evidence against one John Smith, caught burgling the McIntyre mansion. In a peculiar move, lawyer Philip Rochester, who happens to be present, is passed a note by the sisters, asking him to defend Smith, which task he undertakes.

Smith is taken ill as he leaves the witness box and dies in an anteroom, whereupon he is discovered to be disguised. He is James Turnbull, cashier of the Metropolis Trust Company and Rochester's room mate. Incredibly, Rochester and the sisters -- and Helen is Turnbull's fiancee -- all claim not to have recognised him. Turnbull's angina pectoris is thought to have caused his death, but Helen insists on an autopsy.

The twins' father Colonel McIntyre is romantically involved with widowed Mrs Margaret Brewster. She's a guest of the McIntyres and reveals to her cousin Dr Stone, the family physician, Turnbull was burgling the house because of a silly wager made with Barbara that he could not pull it off.

We meet Harry Kent, Rochester's partner in a legal practice. Barbara asks Kent to find out who murdered Turnbull, for she and her sister are convinced his death was the result of foul play. Soon the deceased Turnbull is suspected of forgery, Rochester goes missing, an eavesdropper lurks at a window, and a handkerchief is suspected to be the murder weapon. To further the busy plot, various characters play pass the red-sealed envelope, whose contents turn out to be the last thing most readers will expect.

My verdict: While the initial pace is slow, it picks up after a few chapters. The solution is complicated, not to say outrageous, so don't try reading The Red Seal if there is anything to distract you from noting every nuance. Cleverly worked red herrings mislead, and the explanation of the characters' roles in the tragedy and subsequent events features what must be the largest number of culprits-named-and-then- it's-someone-else's-turn-to-be-accused many readers will have read -- and all in a single chapter! Or to put it another way, the plot features twists galore. I suspect not many readers will guess whodunnit.

Etext: The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln

Review: The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace

by Mary

Odette Rider loses her cashier job after she indignantly rejects a suggestion from Thornton Lyne, owner of the large store where she works, that they cohabit without benefit of clergy. As a result Lyne, a thoroughly mean-spirited man, plots to frame her for embezzlement of company funds even though he knows the real culprit is a departmental manager, Mr Milburgh.

Lyne's cousin Jack Tarling, late of the Shanghai Detective Service, has just opened an investigative agency in London's Bond Street and visits Lyne to discuss the Milburgh matter. When Tarling learns Lyne wants to pin Milburgh's defalcations on Miss Rider -- Milburgh of course being more than happy to go along with the idea -- he refuses to have anything to do with it.

Then Lyne is found murdered, his body laid out in Hyde Park with a pad formed from one of Miss Rider's nightgowns and some of her hankies used in an attempt to staunch his gunshot wound -- and a bunch of daffodils laid upon his chest. He is wearing slippers, and a small piece of red paper with Chinese characters written on it is in his waistcoat pocket, although that garment, his coat, and his boots are in his car a hundred yards away from his body. Tarling interprets the writing as saying Lyne brought trouble upon himself.

Then Miss Rider disappears...

My verdict: Readers' notions of likely suspects are cleverly led along until a plot twist turns them on their heads, while the machinations of Mr Milburgh will make some almost admire his cleverness -- until they learn the nasty depths of his nature. The murderer is the person most readers will least suspect. And will any of them be able to look a daffodil in the trumpet again without recalling their mental picture of the corpse in Hyde Park?

E-text: The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace

Review: Was It Murder? by James Hilton

by Mary

It is ten years after the Great War and Oxford graduate Colin Revell lives in London near the Caledonian Cattle Market. A somewhat irritating young man, he is engaged in writing "literary articles for a high-brow weekly" while composing a satirical epic. Fortunately he has private means.

Revell attended Oakington, a minor public school. One day he receives a letter from its current headmaster, Dr Robert Roseveare, inviting him to visit Oakington to solve a mystery. The two men do not know each other, but Dr Roseveare had heard from a mutual acquaintance at Oxford that Revell had recovered a manuscript stolen from his college library, and so hopes he can shed light on a tragedy that has taken place at the school.

Revell accepts Dr Roseveare's invitation and so learns the history of the Marshall brothers. The oldest died during the war, leaving Wilbraham, currently head prefect of Oakington, and their youngest brother, Robert. The latter was killed by a falling gas fitting in a freak accident in the dormitory of his school house.

Dr Roseveare reveals he had sent for Revell because Robert had written a just-discovered will, leaving all his possessions to his remaining brother -- apart from his three-speed bike, which was to go to a particular school chum. And the will was written the evening before Robert was killed. Dr Roseveare feels the situation is...suggestive....and wishes Revell to secretly look into the matter in the guise of a Old Boy back for a visit.

Revell goes about the school grounds talking to various masters and staff. He makes no progress, ultimately finding there does not seem to be anything suspicious to learn. Dr Roseveare admits to an attack of nerves about the matter and apologises for the wild good chase, so Revell returns to London.

But then there is another death at Oakington and Revell takes up his investigation again.

My verdict: Misdirection and red herrings abound as Revell invents well-reasoned theories fitting the available information and suspects, but is then forced to discard them as the novel progresses. I am a reader who likes to follow clues and solve the mystery before the author reveals whodunnit, but I could not guess the culprit, who turned out to be the third person I suspected, and a twist or two at the end also caught me by surprise.

Note: Originally published as Murder at School under the pseudonym James Trevor, this was James Hilton's only mystery novel.

Etext: Was It Murder? by James Hilton

Review: The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine

by Mary

It has been about l2 years since Tobias Greene died and under his will, if his children do not continue to live in the family mansion for 25 years after his death -- if they marry, their spouses must reside there also -- they will be disinherited. Naturally this has lead to disgruntlement and tension among the siblings, and interviews with their servants confirm there have been years of "daily clashes, complainings, bitter words, sullen silences, jealousies and threats" in the Greene family.

It all comes to boiling point when oldest daughter Julia is killed and her sister Ada wounded in what is initially thought to be a burglary gone wrong. It soon becomes obvious it was no such thing and the siblings do not hesitate to air their grievances against each other to DA John Markham, Philo Vance, and the usual company. In fact, when it comes to suspects, a third daughter, Sibella, declares flat out "If you're looking for possibilities you have them galore. There's no one under this ancestral roof who couldn't qualify."

The household consists of bedridden Mrs Greene, the four children left (Ada, Chester, Sibella, and Rex), German cook Gertrude Mannheim, given to going about muttering to herself, the maids Hemming, convinced God is smiting down the sinful Greenes, and Barton, who rightly reckons "There's something awful funny going on here", plus elderly butler Sproot who reads Martial, although only a snob would find that suspicious. Then there's Doctor Arthur Von Blon, who visits more often that caring for Mrs Greene would seem to necessitate.

Soon there is another death in the mansion....

My verdict: While I would not go so far as to observe that lying beneath the Greene case are what Van Dine in Lovecraftian mode describes as "obscure fetid chambers of the human soul. Black hatreds, unnatural desires, hideous impulses, obscene ambitions", the set-up is bizarre enough to make readers pay close attention to the details and the map of the house, and therefore one or two clues will probably be identifiable fairly easily. One vital to the solution is not presented in quite fair fashion unless you stretch your definition of fair, in which case I will begrudgingly agree that, well, perhaps it was. I wavered between three possible culprits and one of them was the right one -- but in all fairness, it was the last person I began to suspect. A dark novel.

E-text: The Greene Murder Case

Review: Till The Clock Stops by John J. Bell

by Mary

Published in 1917, this novel could well have been subtitled The Wandering Green Box, for said receptacle appears and disappears more than once. Add to that the peculiar instructions left by a man now dead concerning the titular timepiece and there's more than one mystery to solve.

It all begins when young, financially embarassed Alan Craig borrows a hefty sum, giving as security a will made in favour of the lenders, Francis Bullard and Robert Lancaster. Craig is about to depart on an Arctic expedition but before he leaves he goes to Scotland to visit his ailing uncle, Christopher Craig, who made a fortune in, and owns a staggeringly valuable number of diamonds from, South Africa.

Time passes but Alan Craig does not return from the Arctic. By then his uncle is dying, as he tells Bullard and Lancaster, who have been friends of his for some time. He also reveals he has willed his fortune to the missing, presumed dead, nephew. But nothing can be done about winding up his estate, including disposing of the diamonds, until the clock stops.

The clock was specially constructed with a mechanism that will stop it a year and a day after it has been started, a task given to a devoted servant to carry out once the master has died. It's a sinister sort of timepiece, for its bottom third is filled with a sluggish green liquid and the niche the clock occupies is labelled 'Dangerous". Is the strange matter gas or poison, explosives, or some sort of corrosive matter? What will happen when time runs out and the clock stops working?

Before the reader discovers the answer to that interesting conundrum, they will have contemplated a veritable Newgate Calendar of crimes including -- but not limited to -- breaking and entering, blackmail, and infernal engines. Toss in romantic entanglements and much to-ing and fro-ing between London and Scotland among other things, and the result is a novel in which the convoluted skein of events eventually works out smoothly and those that deserve it get their comeuppance in satisfactory fashion.

etext: Till The Clock Stops by John J. Bell

The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman

by Mary

Tom Pedley is a painter of landscapes. However, on this particular day in May the work on which he is engaged needs more than a little imagination, for he is in a small copse in Gravel Pit Wood, whose bosky dells are being rapidly gobbled up by developers. Concealed by shrubbery from the casual glance, he observes a woman creeping along the path through the wood. Her odd behaviour shows she is eavesdropping on a pair of men who have just walked past. One man returns and is furtively followed by the woman, and the intrigued Pedley checks the far end of the path but sees no sign of the second man.

Pedley lives in a studio in Jacob Street, which has a number of houses favoured by artistic types, and while eating his tea that afternoon decides to create a work based on the strange incident. He will call it The Eavesdropper and use his keen artistic eye to recreate the three strangers as actors in the scene. About a week later, he is working on the painting when his friend Mr Polton -- they first met in a Soho antique shop -- calls with a gift, a pewter tankard purchased in a shocking state from a Shoreditch junk stall and refurbished by the handy Mr P. Nor is this the only skill Mr Polton displays in the course of the mystery. Indeed, if he had ever turned to a life of crime he would have been difficult to catch.

It is from Mr Polton that the artist, who has no wireless and does not read the papers, learns a murder by forcible administration of poison was committed in the wood during the very time he was painting the sylvan scene, and that from a description circulated in print and on the airwaves he is obviously the man being sought for interview by the police.

Enter Inspector Blandy, not to mention the brassy Mrs Schiller, a modernist artist separated from her husband and now living next door to Pedley, and Mr William Vanderpuye. He is studying with Dr Thorndyke and thus known to Mr Polton, who introduces him to the artist. It is while visiting the studio to arrange for a portrait sitting that Mr Vanderpuye meets Mrs Schilling, who pops in for a visit most days. The pair strike up a close friendship and Mr Vanderpuye is the last person seen with her before her disappearance. For while a dead woman is found locked in Mrs Schiller's room, she is not its tenant.

We now leap forward a couple of years. Mrs Schiller is still missing, but Drs Thorndyke and Jervis become involved in the case due to a large bequest which would be hers if she is still alive. A presumption of death has been requested but the solicitor feels uneasy about the circumstances. Is she alive, and if she is, why has she not been found despite sterling efforts by the authorities and a vast amount of publicity in the press? Who is the woman found dead in her room and what is the connection between them?

My verdict: Readers of this book learn another way to open a door locked from the inside. Doubtless most if not all listees are familiar with at least two of them, the turn-key-from- the-outside-with-the-sugar-tongs and the push-key-out-on-to-a-piece-of-paper-shoved-under-the- door-and-pull-carefully-to-your-side. The latter works as I discovered when locked in my bedroom in a 1930s vintage flat as a witty jape, but you need a door with a gap under it. The method used in this case needs a particular type of key, common at the time so fair enough, and its use helps point up the fact that, despite appearances, the dead woman found in Mrs Schiller's room was not a suicide.

There are sufficient and fair clues, and the investigations are described in lively fashion. It turns out to be a more complicated case than it seems at first glance. I guessed part of the solution but not the whole, and all in all found this novel one of the better Thorndyke outings.

Etext: The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman

Review: The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts

by Mary

Scotland Yard Detective Mark Brendon is on holiday and while on his way to fish in an abandoned quarry on Dartmoor meets a lady whose looks strike him more than somewhat. Then a man appears, chats about fishing, and tells him about a couple building a bungalow not far from the quarry.

Four days later the husband of the bungalow couple is found murdered and the finger of suspicion is pointed at his uncle-in-law, a man fitting the description of Mr Fish Chatter. And what's more, the striking lady turns out to be the murdered man's widow.

Thus begins The Red Redmaynes, the title referring to a family so-called because they all have red hair -- or should I say red manes?

The novel opens at a stately, not to say sedate, pace, but by the closing chapters the characters whirl about in a lively mazurka.

Brendon's investigative method combines "the regulation methods of criminal research with the more modern deductive system", so here we have no leaps of faith or sudden intuitions but rather stolid police work followed on reasoned lines in a case puzzling for its leads that constantly go nowhere. For example, the trail of the red-haired uncle-in-law's mad ride on a motorbike with a suspicious sack strapped to its back vanishes into mid air -- as does the body from the bungalow.

Has Redmayne escaped abroad? Brendon suspects he may have killed himself from horror at what he did. But then another of the widow's uncles is murdered and again the body cannot be found.

Brendon meantime has fallen for the widow but has a rival for her hand in the form of an Italian servant who bids fair to sweep her off her feet -- and her husband not even officially declared dead yet!

The remaining chapters rattle along with criminal goings-on all over the place including abroad, and while readers may tumble to part of the solution perhaps a quarter way through, the twist at the end is striking and the place of concealment of a certain item caught me by surprise.

My verdict: Readers may find the early part slow going but may wish to keep reading as there are surprises ahead as the pace increases and Brendon dashes hither and yon, constantly thwarted despite some near-misses. The case is finally solved with assistance from a man who sees what Brendon does not, reminding readers not all investigators are all-seeing, even those who use the modern deductive system, which depends on established facts -- which are difficult to pin down in this particular case.

Etext: The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts