The Poisoned Chocolates Case

A review of The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley – 240221

It is fascinating to have one’s assumptions and, indeed, expectations of a murder mystery challenged from time to time. One of the attractions of the cosy style murder is that out of chaos order emerges as the sleuth uses their powers to assemble a convincing picture out of a multiplicity of clues, be they physical or chance remarks, to bring the malefactor to justice. Occasionally, the puzzle might be nuanced that there are a couple of solutions and the reader is left to use their own judgment as to what really happened. The underlying assumption is that each clue is really only capable of having one interpretation and it is that which the writer through their sleuth allows to settle in the reader’s mind.

Anthony Berkeley drives a coach and horses through these preconceptions in his enthralling and thought provoking The Poisoned Chocolates Case, the fifth in his Roger Sheringham series, originally published in 1929 and reissued, rightly, as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. The novel’s premise is simply brilliant. Give six people who have earned their “criminological spurs” the same set of facts and clues of a case which has to date baffled the police, represented by Chief Inspector Moresby, and give them a week to see what they make of it. Using a range of detective techniques, ranging from the deductive to the inductive and all points between, and pursuing their own investigations through a mixture of large tips to key informants and plundering their impressive lists of personal contacts, it is perhaps unsurprising that they come up with six different answers.

The six amateur detectives are members of Sheringham’s Crime Circle, a forerunner of the Detection Club which Berkeley was instrumental in establishing the following year, and the case presented to them is the murder of Joan Bendix who died after ingesting some chocolates, each of which had been injected with precisely six minims of nitrobenzene, a flavouring agent used in chocolate manufacturing and toxic in large doses. The chocolates had been given to her by her husband, Graham Bendix, who had received them in the Rainbow Club from Sir Eustace Pennefather, who, in turn, had unexpectedly received them in the post. Bendix had eaten a couple of the chocolates and was, like his wife, unwell but survived the experience.

Sir Eustace was an acknowledged womaniser who had, amusingly and somewhat embarrassingly for the Circle, had had a dalliance with the daughter of one of their own members, the lawyer Sir Charles Wildman, but his conquests were more extensive. As the investigations progress, it emerges that each of the protagonists have their own dark secrets that could be motive enough for committing murder most foul. The police’s working theory is that it is the work of a fanatic who wanted to rid the world of Pennefather in a plot that went wrong.

Sir Charles Wildman fingers Lady Pennefather, Mrs Fielder-Fleming Sir Charles, Bradley in his two attempts concludes logically that it could have been him before positing that it was a woman unknown, one of Pennefather’s discarded mistresses, Sheringham puts forward a case that the culprit is Bendix, Miss Dammers asserts that it is Sir Eustace, and the nervous ad unassuming Mr Chitterwick goes for Miss Dammers.

The reader, of course, is free to make up their own mind and the British Library reissue includes two further reconstructions, one from Christianna Brand and the other from Martin Edwards. I took the decision not to read these until a day after I had read Berkeley’s original so that I would not be overly influenced by the later suggestions.

Berkeley has produced an eye-opening experiment that shows that facts and clues can be manipulated to the creator’s own ends. It is brought off with some verve and panache in a well written and humorous novel. The word classic is bandied about too loosely these days but this book rightly wears that crown.

Just be careful what you eat this Easter!

Book Corner – September 2020 (2)

Resorting to Murder – edited by Martin Edwards

I am a sucker for these themed anthologies of crime tales in short story form from the so-called Golden Age of Detective fiction, drawing on the encyclopaedic knowledge of Martin Edwards and published under the imprint of British Library Crime Classics. As the title suggests, this is a collection of 14 stories with a common theme of holidaymaking and resorts, whether seaside or mountain. Even when we take a well-deserved break, the spectre of murder most foul and dastardly crime is never far away.

With a book like this, it is always a good idea to start proceedings off with a classic. Edwards does this in (buckets and) spades with one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, The Adventures of the Devil’s Foot. A woman is found dead and her two brothers are completely deranged. Holmes unravels the mystery with his usual aplomb.

Having opened the innings up on a sure footing, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, E.W Hornung keeps the pace moving with a wonderful story, A Schoolmaster Abroad, not involving Raffles but featuring John Dollar, his crime doctor whose interest is preventing crimes rather than solving them. A bit of a spoil sport, really. The story concerns a dissolute, wastrel of a youth and his teacher-guardian.

I have always thought Arnold Bennett an underrated writer, I blame the Bloomsbury set for dissing his rep, as they say, and I was slightly surprised to find that he wrote some detective fiction. His contribution, Murder!, is a well-crafted tale which inverts your natural sympathies. It is hard not to like the murderer and dislike their victim. By the same score, I have always found G K Chesterton a tad over-rated, probably because he rarely missed an opportunity to proselytise his new-found Catholicism. His Finger of Stone is the weakest of the stories.

One of the joys of these collections is encountering writers whom you would not otherwise have read. I can be excused for not coming across Gerald Findler before as he wrote so little and even less is now available. The House of Screams, though, is an excellent crossover between mystery and ghostly happenings and makes for a haunting and entertaining tale. One of my favourite stories of the lot, Michael Gilbert’s Cousin Once Removed, uses a delightful twist at the end and is not without a sense of irony. The perfect murder doesn’t quite seem as perfect after all.

Another story with a twist in its tail is Phyllis Bentley’s Where is Mr Manetot? The disappearance of the main character is quite a crime trope, Basil Thomson’s The Vanishing of Mrs Fraser also explores this theme less successfully, but Bentley pulls it from cliché with a well-written story. Another cliched plotline is a woman being forced to marry someone she despises, she has a beau on the side, and when he is murdered the young boyfriend is suspected. Fortunately, in McDonnell Bodkins’ The Murder on the Golf Links, Paul Beck is on hand to see that justice is done.

Edwards’ excellent anthology also has some stalwarts who, although never reaching the heights of a Conan Doyle, never fail to provide a dollop of solid entertainment. In A Mystery of the Sand-Hills by R Austin Freeman, Dr Thorndyke applies his scientific acumen to solve the cause of death and the identity of a victim, seemingly cause by drowning. H C Bailey’s The Hazel Ice is a delightfully tongue-in-cheek Reggie Fortune tale. Anthony Berkeley’s Razor Edge, though, lacks the writer’s usual sparkle.

The other stories, including Leo Bruce’s Holiday Task and Helen Simpson’s A Posteriori, are so-so but I found them unexceptional. That said, they did not spoil my enjoyment of what is overall a fine and interesting collection.   

Book Corner – October 2017 (3)

The Golden Age of Murder – Martin Edwards

Imagine the scene. There is a gathering of local worthies in a country house. There is a scream and one of the servants rushes in to the assembled company to announce that Colonel Blimp has been found dead in the library. Who could have committed the foul dead? Fortunately, amongst the guests is an amateur sleuth, much brighter than the local constabulary, who unmasks the culprit.

Murders and detectives are such staple fare of the written page and on our television screens, that it all seems a bit hackneyed now and, sad to say, all a bit too cosy. To make matters worse, many of the novels of the so-called Golden Age of detective writing – the period between the two World Wars – are imbued with social attitudes that many in today’s more politically correct environment find unpalatable. From today’s perspective it is hard to credit how innovative many of the stories were, as writers strove to push out the boundaries and tease the little grey cells of their avid reading public. And avid the readers were, seeking an escape from the economic and political uncertainties of the thirties but in a way that avoided the horrors many had to endure in the First World War.

Edwards writes an impassioned plea in defence of the genre and so convincing is his thesis that on hearing it a jury would dismiss all charges against detective stories out of hand. As a self-confessed detective fiction nut, I enjoyed this romp and have made many a note in the margins of its pages of books that I want to explore. Beware, this book could cost you serious money!

In essence, Edwards tells the story of the Detection Club, established in 1930 and meeting occasionally in London to provide a social network for crime writers. To be admitted to the club writers had to have produced work of “admitted merit” and there was an elaborate, slightly gothic and certainly bizarre initiation ceremony to be undergone. Principal luminaries of the club were Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, G K Chesterton and Anthony Berkeley and these take centre stage in Edwards’ narrative. Each in their own way had troubled personal lives and sought solace in writing. All the other 35 members in the inter-war period feature in the book and it is from their pen pictures that I have built up my reading list for the future.

There are some fascinating insights. I didn’t know, for example, during the Second World War Christie came under suspicion of being a German spy because she called a character Bletchley – the code-cracking centre was hush-hush at the time – in her novel N or M? and because she was living in a block of flats known to be frequented by spies. In a period of economic turmoil, bankers and inheritors of fortunes found themselves victims of murder plots and heinous murders of spouses sometimes reflected the desires and tortured love lives of their authors.

As the world moved inexorably towards a second major conflict, the genre explored the question of whether it was possible to commit a good murder, whether eliminating a Nazi or a prominent fascist was really a crime, a theme initially explored by Edgar Wallace in Four Just Men. Interestingly, neither Sayers – she had found religion – nor Berkeley – he had gone into deep depression – wrote detective fiction after the outbreak of the war and by the time peace had broken out, the emphasis was more on the psychological thriller.

If you are interested in the genre, this is a book you shouldn’t miss.

Book Corner – October 2017 (2)

Malice Aforethought – Francis Iles

First published in 1931, Malice Aforethought is an early example of what is known as an inverted narrative crime novel. What this means is that the focus is not on solving the crime a la Sherlock Holmes and Maigret but on seeing how the murder was carried out and to understand the motivation and psychological make-up of the murderer. After all, Iles aka Anthony Berkeley aka Anthony Berkeley Cox baldly states in the opening sentence that Doctor Bickleigh, a hen-pecked man with a pronounced inferiority complex, is going to do away with his wife. For the reader the principal interest is how he did it and whether he got away with it.

In some ways Bickleigh is a stereotypical murderer. He is trapped in a loveless marriage – Julia, his wife, is portrayed as an awful, domineering woman. Her bullying and unsympathetic manner is given full rein in the opening scenes of the book during the preparations for a tennis party to which the great and the good of Wyvern’s Cross are invited. Mind you, Bickleigh is no saint. He is a philanderer and has a string of lady friends, including the faithful Ivy whom Bickleigh treats with disdain. At the tennis party, Bickleigh’s advances are rebuffed by Gwynyfryd Rattery. A new woman, Madelaine Cranmere arrives in the village and when Bickleigh falls for his charms and demands a divorce which Julia refuses, you know her fate is sealed.

The other sense in which Bickleigh is a stereotypical murderer is that he is a Doctor, a profession which gives him easy access to drugs and poisons. I will not spoil the story but, suffice to say, that his chosen profession proves very helpful.

Iles’ approach allows us insights into Bickleigh’s mind and thought processes. He is characterised as a rather pompous man, self-satisfied and convinced that he has planned the perfect murder. But as events go somewhat out of control, the reader begins to realise that Bickleigh is not as clever as he thinks he is and is increasingly deluded about the natures and motives of those around him. He is not a sympathetic character and although I was drawn into the book, fascinated by the modus operandi of the murderer and the tensions around whether the crime would be detected, I found it mattered not to me whether he got away with or swung.

Iles is particularly good at painting quick character sketches and gets the insular and bitchy world of English country life down to a tee. The unsettling thought is that many of us find ourselves trapped in some aspects of our lives, desperate to find a way out. How easily would we be tipped towards a path which results in murder?

Iles presumably got his inspiration for the book in part from Dr Crippins and Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the so-called Hay poisoner and the only solicitor to be hanged for murder in England. The book takes an unexpected twist right at the end. If you are tempted to read it and have a battered second-hand copy, make sure that it contains the Epilogue. I may be old-fashioned but I much prefer a whodunit!

I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Forty

The Detection Club

I have made no secret of my love of detective fiction. Many observers regard the period between the two World Wars as the hey-day of this particular genre. In 1928 a group of the finest exponents of the art form, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Berkeley established a club, the Detection Club, although formal records were only established in 1930. Anthony Berkeley was the prime moving force behind the initiative and the early dinners were held at his house. G K Chesterton, of Father Brown fame, was its first president.

Although it was a wonderful excuse for a splendid repast every now and again, it had some more serious aims. It allowed writers to swap tips and help each other overcome the dreaded block or to develop even more ingenious and innovative twists and turns to keep the ever eager readership on the edge of their seats. Their latest works were critiqued – that must have been a nerve-wracking ordeal for even the most self-assured and oft-published author. Rather like any other pukka club, members were elected by secret ballot, giving the established members the opportunity to vet and, if necessary, black ball a potential recruit. Recruits were supposed to have published two detective novels of merit.

Once their membership had been approved, the neophyte underwent a rather bizarre initiation ceremony which involved black candles, a voluminous red robe, originally designed for the portly Chesterton and a skull named Eric, although later forensic examination showed it was that of a female – Erica perhaps. In addition the new entrant was required to swear an oath, possibly written by Sayers. The oath required a response to this rather ponderous question, “Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?” A simple assent would ensure entry into the hallowed ranks.

The Club, which acquired premises in London’s Gresham Street, sought to establish some rules of engagement to ensure that the reader was treated fairly, developing ten commandments which, on pain of expulsion, members were required to follow in their novels. These included mentioning the culprit in the early part of the story, precluding all supernatural and preternatural agencies and restricting the use of secret passages or rooms to one per story. The use of hitherto undiscovered poisons was verboten as was any appliance requiring a long and elaborate explanation. Cliché devices were to be avoided and the detective couldn’t commit the crime themselves.

The detective wasn’t allowed to be the beneficiary of any accident nor should they have some unaccountable insight which proves to be correct. Neither could they use clues which have not been brought to the reader’s attention when they are discovered. The detective’s accomplice cannot conceal any thoughts and should be of a lower intelligence than the reader. And twins or doubles can only be deployed if the reader had been carefully prepared to anticipate them.

As well as establishing this template, the Club members collaborated on a number of projects. The Floating Admiral, published in 1931, was a collaborative game of consequences with each of the twelve chapters written by a different member of the club. Each writer was required to write their portion with a definite solution to the crime in mind and couldn’t introduce new complications just to increase the complexity. To add to the fun, G K Chesterton wrote the prologue, Anthony Berkeley pulled the pieces together and each author was required to pen their solution to the mystery, each of which was published.

Ask a Policeman (1933) and Verdict of a Policeman followed a similar pattern and in 1930 radio audiences were entertained by The Scoop and Behind The Screen, which were collaborative detective serials.

The club is still in existence and continues to, sort of, police the genre.