The Inventor of the Country House Mystery?

 

            Lord Gorell was one of the lesser-known members of the famous Detection Club, even though he served as its co-president. The fact that he did the work while Agatha Christie, his co-president, got the glory helps explain his lesser fame, but so does the fact that he only wrote half a dozen mysteries, and none seems to be still in print, while he is not even mentioned in Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler’s Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976). And yet, he certainly anticipated the genre of the country-house mystery; his In the Night (1917) begins with a map of Salting Towers, and Ronald Gorell Barnes (who was already the third Baron Gorell when this book was published, though the title page has his common name only) tells us in a preface that he intends to play fair with the reader, who will be given all the clues necessary to solve the mystery, or at least all those his detective has in hand at the solution. For me, the book is most notable for its young woman character, Evelyn Temple, who out-detects the detective, though she misses the solution. But so does he.

At Salting Towers Sir Roger Penterton has been murdered. Inspector Emmanuel Humblethorne is on holiday in the “picturesque and unexciting” village of Salting, at the Rose and Crown, where he tries to speak to a fellow guest and is rebuffed. He joins the investigation; Sergeant Birts is happy to have someone take the responsibility. Humblethorne soon realizes from the family faces at Salting Towers that the rude guest at the Rose and Crown is the son of the family, John Penterton, whom his father sent packing ten years previously for having married against Sir Roger’s wishes. John Penterton left the inn immediately after his rebuff of Humblethorne, who begins to theorize, with John as the villain, when he discovers that someone has let an outsider into the house, through the drawing room doors, the night before.

            Actually it is not he that makes that discovery, but Evelyn Temple, close friend of the Penterton daughter Celia. Evelyn also discovers that the silver cigarette case lying near the body is not the murder weapon, but was thrown, missing Sir Roger and hitting the wainscoting on the stairs and leaving a mark. It was only later placed in the position she finds it, close enough to the body to have a bloodstain on its underside. Evelyn believes that Celia or Sir Roger’s secretary, Philip Castle, must have let John in, and either Philip or John committed the murder. She does not wish to believe any of this, but it is clearly the theory that Humblethorne is working on.

            Evelyn also discovers the murder weapon, a statuette in a niche on the stair landing, ready at hand to drop on the head of Sir Roger. There is blood on it, and fingerprints that Evelyn matches to the butler’s after a little unwitting instruction about revealing latent prints by Humblethorne and a clever ruse to get the butler to handle a glass.

            Of course the butler didn’t do it and Evelyn was mistaken in thinking so, but Humblethorne was even farther out in his ideas about how the murder was done and who did it. Neither can take credit for discovering the murderer, but Evelyn clearly did more of the detective work than Humblethorne. Yet it is the inspector who condescendingly mansplains to Evelyn at the end, indicting himself without knowing it:

            “If you don’t mind taking a tip from me, Miss Temple,” she heard Humblethorne saying in her ear as they went along the passage, “you have a real gift, but you make one mistake.”

            “What is that?” she asked without the least interest.

            “In thinking that there can be only one explanation of any set of facts,” he replied. “Now I have had years of experience and I know that the same facts can often be explained in several different ways. And you see now that I’m right.”

            “Yes,” she answered slowly, “I see now: it is wonderful to see at last, isn’t it?”

An Oxford Tragedy

 

 

            For almost a hundred years now, according to Martin Edwards in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, there’s been a “seemingly never-ending fictional crime wave among the dreaming spires” of Oxford. According to Edwards, the mayhem began with Adam Broome’s The Oxford Murders in 1929. But many agree that the best of the early academic mysteries is J. C. Masterman’s An Oxford Tragedy (1933).

            Here the fictional Oxford college is St. Thomas’s, thirteen of whose fellows, attending dinner in the Hall on the evening of the murder, constitute the closed suspect pool. The story is told to us by Francis Winn, Senior Tutor in history, who has the narrative advantage of having been around long enough (as he often reminds us) to know all the fellows as well as the physical setup of the Dean’s rooms on the Quad where the murder takes place. The geography of Quad and Common Room, Hall and High Table, is the book’s territory and seldom strayed from. The lingo takes some getting used to if you’re not a product of Oxford. “I have sported the oak in my rooms,” says the Dean, meaning “I’ve closed the outer door.” Bumpers and toggers and Bump Suppers to celebrate victory in the former (boat races) are topics of conversation at the High Table, when they condescend to talk about the undergraduates. Another is a revolver the Dean has confiscated from an undergraduate and left lying, loaded, in his rooms. As Chekhov said of the shotgun on the wall in the first act, we know that revolver’s going to be used before long. When it is, one of the thirteen is dead, and then comes an interesting twist. Neither the ineffectual Winn nor the thorough, methodical Inspector Cotter of the local force will solve this one. The detective is a visiting lecturer in law from Vienna, Ernst Brendel, who has something of a reputation as a crime-solving amateur in his native city. Winn begs Brendel to investigate, and he does.

            Masterman gives us the solution to the puzzle three quarters of the way through, so that this quiet book has only a brief climax, and then a dying fall. Winn himself is a weak character, too prone to introspection, too hesitant and self-critical to act. But all this makes the book just the sort of mystery we might like to read when the world is too much with us and the times too interesting.