The Case Of The Faithful Heart

In memoriam, Rupert Heath – the man who helped ignite my love for Golden Age Detective Fiction.

Exegit monumentum aere perennius

Requiescat in pacem.

A review of The Case of the Faithful Heart by Brian Flynn – 230213

There are some fascinating themes in The Case of the Faithful Heart, originally published in 1939 and now reissued by Dean Street Press. It must be a tad disconcerting to open the papers and find that your death has been reported. At least, if you are a public figure, you have the opportunity to see what people really thought of you. This is what happened to novelist, Keith Annesley, on the fateful day of June 8^th. He shared his name with an American politician and due to a mix-up on the editorial floor was to have serious and tragic consequences for Annesley and others.

Authors can be tricky characters, always prone to reinventing themselves to cover up a backstory. Flynn, exploring a theme used by ECR Lorac in Death of an Author where two writers assume different personae, gives his representative of the writing community a backstory that goes to the nub of Anthony Bathurst’s twenty-fourth case.

Alfred Lord Tennyson has rather gone out of fashion these days, but a feature of Golden Age detective fiction is how often his poetry comes up, whether it be Miss Silver who quotes the poet at the drop of a stitch or, here, where the knowledge of Aylmer’s Field provides Bathurst with a clue to the psychology of the person he is seeking. At least the reference is directly relevant here, in that Aylmer is also the surname of the vicar and the strewing of one grave with violets and another with yellow roses mimics the actions in the poem.

It is another case of an amateur sleuth having a busman’s holiday, Bathurst taking a well-deserved break in the Glebeshire village of Lanrebel. However, disaster follows him as does his reputation and it is not long before he is engaged by Ann Hillier to investigate the tragedies that have beset her family at Hillearys. Firstly, her mother, Jacqueline, returns in the car, bloodied and bruised, clothing ripped and grass-stained, only to expire from an overdose of chloral hydrate. She mutters “The Mile Cliff. Two” before she dies. The day after her funeral her grave is strewn with violets.

Then Ann’s brother, Neill, is found dead on a stormy night with his head stoved in – his grave is subsequently strewn with yellow roses – and then father, Paul, is found in his study, strangled, although he had a revolver with him. Bathurst investigates as a private citizen rather than as an adjunct to the police, although his calling card with its reference to Scotland Yard opens a few doors and he avails himself of his relationship with Sir Austin Kemble, Commissioner of Police, to find some valuable information about a photographic studio. The bumptious attitude of the local Inspector, Rockingham, makes it less likely that Bathurst will cooperate with the official investigation.

Acting as Bathurst’s Watson is Annesley who has also come down to Lanrebel for a holiday and, initially, it is a baffling set of circumstances, with precious little in the way of clues or motive. However, Bathurst begins to see some light when the family physic, Pakenham, indicates that Jacqueline seemed to hold a candle for someone, and when Ann brings him her mother’s personal diaries which offer some clues about a long-lost love. A trip to an eminent public school in Trinket which, coupled with the reference made by the Reverend Septimus Aylmer to the Tennysn poem, provides him with the proof that he needs.

Annesley returns to Lanrebel to see the conclusion of the case and the duo wait in the graveyard at midnight to see whether the culprit will take Bathurst’s bait. No one turns up and there is a very good reason for that.

The story is fairly clued and I realised what was going on as soon as Bathurst found a vital piece of evidence amongst Jacqueline’s effects. The final resolution, though, left a few too many loose ends for my liking, the explanation of Jacqueline’s state of dress a little unconvincing and the explanation of Neill’s death too improbable. There was a feeling of a shaggy dog tale to the book, and the style smacks of a pastiche, but it is entertaining enough and the twist at the end makes it all worthwhile.

Crook O’Lune

A review of Crook O’Lune by ECR Lorac

What a wonderful book this is, the 38^th in Lorac’s Robert Macdonald series, originally published in 1953 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. It is less of a crime mystery and more of a love letter to the beautiful countryside around the river Lune in north Lancashire. Lorac’s title is well chosen and nuanced, referencing the name of the river’s bend, a shepherd’s crook which has an instrumental part to play in the mystery, and the criminal whom Macgonald is hunting, a subtlety which is lost in the book’s alternative title of Shepherd’s Crook.

Chief Inspector Macdonald of the Yard is up in the Lune valley on vacation, scouting for a farm to which to spend his soon to be well-earned retirement, but, inevitably, the presence of an eminent detective means that there is a crime to solve turning it into a busman’s holiday. There is a welcome return for Giles and Kate Hoggett, whom we encountered in Lorac’s 1946 novel, The Theft of the Iron Pigs aka Murderer’s Mistake. Although Scottish by birth, there is a sense that Macdonald is returning to a place he loves and where the locals respect him, albeit in a typically restrained and dour way.

Lorac chooses to open her story in a low key, investing time to paint her glorious word pictures of the area and its stunning, if stark, scenery, to introduce the principal characters and to explain a rather complex web of ancient agreements which are at the heart of the mystery. Aikengill has recently fallen into the hands of a northern industrialist, Gilbert Woolfall, following the death of his uncle, Thomas, who had conducted some research into the family history and has uncovered a 17^th century arrangement that created a fund, to be administered by trustees, to fund a church and a school in the area.

Woolfall, who is undecided whether to live in the house or sell it, discovers there are a number of people keen to buy it, including the farmer who rents Woolfalls’ land, and a young couple keen to get married. The local rector, a Mr Tupper, an unpleasant individual, voices his concern to Gilbert that Thomas’ will has omitted the endowment to the church, an omission that seems justified from Thomas’ research, but one that rankles. To complete the set-up there is a housekeeper at Aikengill who is about to leave Woolfall’s employment but is hesitating to take the final step.

There is death, murder, and rum goings on but there is a rustic, almost pastoral, edge to it all. What piques Macdonald’s interest when he gets there are the stories of sheep rustling. There is a fire at Aikengill in which Woolfall’s papers are destroyed but, tragically, the housekeeper, who stayed unexpectedly overnight there after Tupper had impatiently refused to wait for her and give her a lift, is found asphyxiated in her room. A stranger, who might have been implicated in the sheep stealing is spotted in the neighbourhood and then on a dramatic evening he is found injured on the fells, having been tripped by a shepherd’s crook while Rutter is lured to an assignation and his study is ransacked. Finally, the old shepherd, Tegg, is murdered confronting the culprit.

The resolution of the mystery ties in the sheep rustling with the financial arrangements in the Woolfall settlement. While the culprit is not difficult to spot and Lorac sprinkles enough clues in her narrative for the attentive reader to deduce the motivation, there are enough red herrings and misdirections to make it an entertaining and enthralling read. What makes the book for me is Lorac’s lyric style, her oneness with the environment, her appreciation of a people whose life is hard but one attuned to nature and who fight to protect what is theirs. It is a homage for an England that was fast disappearing in her time and one that we neglect at our peril.

Murder By Matchlight

A review of Murder by Matchlight by E C R Lorac

Published in 1945 and reissued as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series, this is Lorac’s twenty-sixth novel to feature Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald of the Yard and an excellent one it is too. Cleverly written, it keeps the suspense going until the end, the plot twists and turns, and although Lorac is careful to play fairly with her readers with the clues, the reader is never quite sure how it will end until the finale. Masterful stuff.

One of Lorac’s strengths is her sense of atmosphere and this book has it in spades. Anyone who has a romantic vision of wartime London should read this, just for the compelling descriptions of London during wartime, the darkness of the black out, the destruction of properties, the loss of human life, the impossibility of living a normal life, the constant fear that your home will be hit by a bomb and destroyed, the anxiety of where you would go if you lost your accommodation.

Cleverly, Lorac uses the blackness of the London streets in the set up of the murder. A match struck to light a cigarette illuminates the murderer standing behind, allowing Bruce Mallaig just a flicker of a glimpse of the culprit’s face before the victim is despatched. Mallaig reports the murder to the police, his story is collaborated by another witness who was standing underneath the bridge where the murder was committed, but are they telling the truth? Who was the victim and why was he using false identification? Why was a respected London physician walking his dog close to the murder site? Why were the murderer’s footsteps not heard by the witnesses?

Robert Macdonald has his hands full in investigating a case which might have been a political thriller – the victim had served with Sinn Fein – but it really is about a picaresque facet of London life. The victim is a wastrel, living off his wits, a spot of blackmail here, a bit of black market dealing there, and constantly borrowing money. He is looking after a flat in a block peopled with a motley and colourful cast of theatrics and looked after by a wonderfully comic landlady straight out of Dickens.

The plot takes another twist to reveal the motivation for the murder, one that involves an ill-advised marriage, bigamy, and a Peter Pan-like antiques expert. The motivation is perhaps the weakest part of the plot. The reader may well identify the murderer but precisely why the victim was killed is more difficult to deduce.

Macdonald comes as a warm, caring human being, determined to do his duty but in a way that shows empathy for those whom he encounters. He is full of compassion for the eccentrically colourful landlady, even arranging her a job after her block of flats was bombed out and working side by side with one of the potential culprits in clearing the bomb site, an episode that leads him to see another side of the suspect’s character. He uses a couple of reconstructions, one to confirm his theory about how the murderer got to the scene without being heard, and the other to smoke out the culprit.

An interesting sub-theme of the book is whether the quality of the victim should influence the degree to which the investigation is conducted. Macdonald is firmly of the opinion that the law is the law and no matter how deserving the victim’s end may be, it is society’s duty to pursue the culprit with full vigour. Any other approach leads to a form of Fascism, an argument that resonates today.

Lorac is a much and sadly underrated writer and deserves to find a new and modern audience.

Checkmate To Murder

Checkmate to Murder – E C R Lorac

Edith Caroline Rivett was a prolific author whose career spanned from 1931 until her death in 1959, before languishing in obscurity, only for British Library Crime Classics to begin the long job of reissuing her works to be rediscovered by a modern readership. A long job it is too, as she wrote forty-eight murder mysteries under the nom de plume of E C R Lorac (her initials and Lorac being an inversion of her abbreviated middle name), twenty-three as Carol Carnac and several others as Mary Le Bourne. Checkmate to Murder fits almost in the middle of her literary career, published in 1944, and is the 24^th in the Inspector Macdonald series.

I found this a very satisfying, neat and enjoyable murder mystery which seemed to go out of its way to play scrupulously fair with its readership. For those who want to pit their wits against the author, some of the clues to the solution are revealed in the narrative, some as Macdonald reveals what the police investigations are uncovering and the remainder in what the witnesses are telling the Inspector. Those who do not want to strain their little grey cells will find that they will be absorbed in what is an engrossing and initially baffling mystery.

On a foggy night in Hampstead a disparate group has met at a flat for a party. Two of the guests, a civil servant and a government scientist are there to play a game of chess while Bruce Manaton paints the portrait of an actor who is dressed in a striking cardinal’s red robe. In the kitchen Rosie is pottering about and steps out of the flat to ensure that a troublesome black out screen is in place. This rather cosy domestic scene is interrupted when a special constable arrives with a young Canadian infantryman whom he has found in the neighbouring flat of Mr Folliner, a secretive miser.

Folliner, naturally, has been murdered and prima facie it looks as though the soldier, who happens to be Folliner’s nephew, is the guilty party as he was found at the scene of the crime by the policeman. The prisoner is, surprisingly, left with the Manaton party, while the policeman goes off to summon assistance. This is the cue for Inspector Macdonald to take control of the investigations. He is not convinced of the veracity of the special constable’s version of events nor that the young soldier is guilty. As the investigation unfolds there is more behind the seemingly callous slaying of an old, helpless man than initially meets the eye, not least because the ramshackle property he inhabits is standing in the way of progress.

In what reads as a quasi-locked room mystery, there is only a very small list of suspects, but all with the exception of the soldier and Rosie, have solid alibis. Part of the solution lies in the phenomenal powers of concentration that the two chess players deploy when they are playing and to their horror, they realise that they might have been pawns in a bigger game. Rivett comes up with an ingenious plan to commit a murder and a motive that initially seems far from obvious.

The book is engaging from start to finish, with some lacings of humour, much of which is provided by Folliner’s deluded but kind-hearted charlady, and one that is credible and a delight to read. I shall certainly read more of Rivett’s work in all her guises.