Cyril Hare Introduces Francis Pettigrew

            I read another of the classic mysteries, Cyril Hare’s Tragedy at Law (1942). Hare is plodding and exact, reminding me of my wife’s family’s long-time lawyer in his long-winded thoroughness, one to trust not to forget or overlook anything. Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard solves the crime though he has a little bit of help from Francis Pettigrew, a disillusioned, not-very-successful barrister whom Hare here introduces as his detective, though he is only glancingly that. Pettigrew does have a unique insight into the situation of William Barber, the judge who is murdered very late in the action, because Pettigrew was once the lover of Barber’s wife Hilda, and he was present when Barber, drunk at the wheel, hit a man whose later action against the judge threatened to end the judge’s career. This threatened action turns out to be the motive of the murder by way of an obscure piece of law that says the action had to be put in motion within six months of the purported wrong, unless the perpetrator was dead, in which case the action could still be brought. Hare introduces several subplots, including the case of the judge’s clerk Beamish, a high flying clubber and darts player, the judge’s marshall, Derek Marshall, and his fiancée Sheila Bartram, whose father, involved in a case similar to the judge’s “auto-da-fé” and coming up before Barber, gets the book thrown at him.