A review of The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes – 230720
The Abbey Court Murder, the first in Annie Haynes’ Inspector Furnival series, was originally published in 1923 and has been reissued by Dean Street Press. A century has passed since this story first hit the streets and it does show its age. There is something quaint about the police and other leading protagonists travelling around in horse-drawn carriages and as a story it is nothing if not melodramatic.
The nub of the story is a woman with a past that threatens to catch up with her and her desperate attempts to stop it from ruining her happiness. Judith aka Lady Carew is approached by a man from her past who demands that she sees him at 9.30 pm that evening at Abbey Court. She deceives her husband to make the appointment but is so discombobulated by the thought of her nemesis’ return that she drops a vital piece of paper that alerts Lord Carew to what she is up to.
At Abbey Court with feelings running high – naturally she has taken Lord Carew’s revolver -she tussles with the man who turns out to be a ne’er do well whom she married some years earlier, bigamously, the lights go out, a shot is heard, the man is killed, and in a panic she flees the scene, meeting a man, whom she also recognises from her past, on the stairs.
Having got home, she discovers that her dress is covered in blood, and she tries to dispose of the potentially incriminating evidence only to be thwarted by her less than trustworthy maid, Celestine. Judith has left enough clues for the dimmest of policemen to establish that she had been on the scene at the time of the murder and so afraid that she could be arrested at any minute is she that her health deteriorates and her once idyllic relationship with her husband deteriorates.
Then enter Lord Westerham who has eyes on Peggy, Lord Carew’s half-sister, but Lord Carew is set against the marriage. Westerham uses his knowledge of Judith’s past and her visit to Abbey Court – of course, he was the man she encountered on the staircase – to further his cause and Carew reluctantly agrees.
Furnival of the Yard is set the task of solving the murder at Abbey Court. While his superiors see it as an open and shut case and expect him to bring the Carews in, Furnival, not one to jump to conclusions, is not so sure. His diligent investigations reveal that there is more to the case than meets the eye. While the resolution of the case is fairly evident to the seasoned reader of these types of fiction, Haynes does a good job in keeping the story going with enough twists and turns to keep her audience engaged, and the scenes describing the murder are excellent, atmospheric, and creepy.
Crime fiction in the 1920s was just cutting its teeth and it is fascinating to see how serious practitioners of the genre were struggling to establish a writing style suitable for the genre and for the mass audience they were hoping to attract. Haynes’ style shows the hallmarks of a battle to emerge from the sensationalism of the pot boilers and penny dreadfuls, with swooning, trembling hands, and faces affected by creeping pallor aplenty, and a certain floridity of style to a plainer, more workmanlike prose that became commonplace a decade later. This sense of transition also shows itself in the plot itself, part romantic melodrama, part sensationalist fiction, part murder mystery stocked with villains straight out of central casting.
Even though it shows its age, it is well worth a read and I hope in the next two stories Furnival emerges from the shadows to become a much more rounded figure.
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