Eight To Nine

A review of Eight to Nine by R A J Walling – 240321

The curiously titled sixth novel in Robert Walling’s Philip Tolefree series, also known as The Bachelor Flat Mystery, originally published in 1934, is another story where the movements of suspects at a particular time hold the keys to the mystery. The hour in question is between eight and nine, when housekeeper Mrs Pilling is off duty at Elford Mansions, hence the title, and seasoned readers of the detective fiction genre will soon realise that the empirical evidence of time is not necessarily to be trusted.

The story also centres around a femme fatale, an actress by the name of Millicent Vane, a woman with a past and to whom several rich and eligible bachelors are attracted like bees to a honeypot. One such is Bill Chance, son of Lord Greenwood, and the worried nobleman engages Tolefree, insurance broker and amateur sleuth, to dig around and find if there is any scandal attached to the woman. Curiously, we never meet Miss vane. Despite his distaste for the task, Tolefree accepts the brief and accompanied by his faithful Watson, a ship broker by the name of Farrar, begins his investigations.

Acting on a hunch to visit rich playboy, Howard Klick, at Elworth mansions, Tolefree finds that the comedic Mrs Pilling has fainted and that there is a body of a murdered man in the flat occupied by North. Despite the assumption that the murdered man is North, Tolefree discovers, courtesy of a feather and an Australian penny, that the victim is Australian and that he is Pendleton, the husband of Miss Vane whom, when he was imprisoned for fraud down under, she left to come to England and seek her fame and fortune. Understandably, Pendleton was a bit miffed and when he was released sought his revenge.

The police investigation is led by Pierce and while he and Tolefree have perfectly amiable relations, they approach the case from radically different angles, coming up with two different culprits. Tolefree engages in a masterful piece of filibustering to prevent Pierce making a fol of himself and incurring the wrath of his fierce Scottish boss.

It is a tale of timetables and alibis with a reasonable number of red herrings and witnesses whose accounts are not entirely reliable. One credible suspect is summarily dismissed because he sailed from Australia to London in the Orlando second class and second and first class passengers never mix.     

After much toing and froing, including a nighttime expedition to the wilds of the Fens, much to the discomfort of Farrar who had to tail a car at a speed above which he was comfortable driving at, Tolefree concludes that the culprit is someone who sailed on the Orlando at the time Miss Vane did, lives in Elford Mansions, maintained a flat for Miss Vane in Kilburn, and who had a rendezvous with Pendleton on the Thursday night in question.

These criteria together with the disappearance of the feather and Aussie penny from the scene of the crime seals the identity of the culprit. In Poirot style he lays out his findings before Lord Greenwood and an assembled group of suspects, demonstrating that Pendleton’s death was committed in self-defence rather than a premeditated act of murder.

It is a complex plot and the story is well told in an engaging style, Walling uses short burst of staccato-like sentences to inject some urgency into the narrative. I could not help thinking, though, that a chat with Miss Vane would have saved a lot of time.

Follow The Blue Car

A review of Follow The Blue Car by R A J Walling – 240105

It is normally cherchez la femme that will solve a mystery but in the second in Robert Walling’s Philip Tolefree series, originally published in 1933, the mysterious peregrinations of a blue car draw the insurance investigator and his sidekick and the story’s narrator, Farrar, into an adventure that involves a web of intrigue. In what is as much a thriller as a murder mystery, there are several red herrings, twists and turns, and a surprising outcome.

Structurally, the book is split into three unequal parts, a prologue in which Trinnery, the CEO of Navigators Ltd and Winsey discuss their suspicions of a blue car and their arrangements for the transportation of £10,000 to pay workers at Paybury Harbour, the narrative of James Farrar which describes the mystery and makes up the bulk of the story, and an epilogue, an exchange of letters between two principal characters which clears up the loose ends of the case.       

Tolefree is a curious character, rather colourless and one who barely comes alive on the page. He is clever, dogged, thorough, commands the respect of both the police and his opponents and yet seems devoid of any personality or humour. His skills are ideal for an auditor or investigator but his character is not strong enough to carry a book on its own. It is as if Walling realizes that and invests much of his energy in developing a complex plot which is designed to confound and perplex the reader. He also has a curious relationship with the police, the official investigators, Murdoch and Fiddick being more than happy to take subordinate roles and allow the amateur his head.

James Farrar, too, is little more than a stereotypical cipher, a faithful recorder of events and his friend’s triumphs, but too dim to grasp the reality of what is unfolding around him. His role in the action is restricted to being another pair of hands upon which Tolefree can rely and the possessor of a car which, in this tale, which includes a mystery tour around southern England comes in handy.  

After being led on this wild goose chase following a blue car and arriving at Pitway House, the home of Major Cramb, the Chairman of Navigators Ltd, Tolefree and Farrar find that they have missed a crucial event by a matter of minutes. Cramb’s secretary, Harley, has been shot, and by his body is his gun. Peter Hurst and Jane Bellairs are on the scene and prior to entering the house through an unlocked door, Tolefree has heard them engaged in a suspicious conversation. To make matters worse, Peter escapes and is thought to have been killed in a plane crash and Jane, the archetypal maiden in distress, is captured by ruffians and has to be rescued.

As the prologue suggests, getting their hands on the cash being transported is the motive behind the series of events that unfold, but who is the eminence grise, who shot Harley, and what was his role in the affair? Tolefree is not content with one reconstruction of the scene at Pitway House but two, the second unmasking the culprit who, after the sleuth’s exhaustive enquiries, is really the last credible suspect standing. This seemed the only way to get out of their financial difficulties.

The book was a tad overlong and Walling’s style is a little old fashioned but with a little perseverance there is an interesting puzzle hidden in there.

The Fatal Five Minutes

A review of The Fatal Five Minutes by R A J Walling – 231216

This is the first book by Robert Walling that I have read and published in 1932 introduces his amateur sleuth, Philip Tolefree, for the first of ultimately twenty-four adventures running though to 1949. It can be fairly described as almost an impossible mystery where the crime, the bludgeoning to death of Wellington Burnet with a candlestick, takes place within a time gap of five minutes, although no one seems to have heard anything, there is no weapon to be found, and it is not clear how the culprit left the room. As any seasoned reader of detective fiction will know, crimes are committed in a universe where the concept of time is elastic.

The set up for the story is fairly conventional in that it features a relatively wealthy businessman, Wellington Burnet, who has fallen for and married a younger woman, a move he has come to regret. There is a house party to which a variety of people are invited including a leading KC and a theatrical director. Tolefree, who works in insurance and does a bit of rooting out of deception and embezzlement on the side, has been invited down by a worried Burnet but has been asked to go incognito. His cover is almost immediately blown as one of the other guests is Farrar, Burnet’s oldest friend and fellow broker. Farrar acts as Tolefree’s Dr Watson and narrates the story as they try to solve who killed their host and why.

One of the interesting features of the book is the relationship between Tolefree and the police investigator, Inspector Catterick. The two never officially join forces nor work against each other, but their investigations go along parallel lines with the policeman being the more dramatic and flashier than the quieter, unassuming but determined amateur. At the end Catterick is content to give Tolefree his head to flush out the truth.

There are moments of high drama, not least Elford’s dramatic exit, during the resumed coroner’s inquest into the death of Burnet, and Tolefree’s verbal reconstruction in an attempt to flush out the culprit who in the end prefers the taste of veronal to the hemp jig, and much creeping along corridors at night. However, much of the book adopts a slower pace, content to meander along a number of paths before the pieces begin to fit together. Walling’s style, in comparison with other writers in the 1930s, seems a tad old-fashioned and his choice of using a narrator means that some of the breakthroughs that Tolefree makes on his own initiative happen off stage and do not receive the detailed treatment they deserve.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting enough puzzle to keep the reader entertained and the solution is ingenious. There are two plausible sets of suspects and Walling does well in keeping the various possibilities in play until the end. Blackmail, marital infidelities and hidden identities are at the centre of a tale which has spurred me on to read more of Walling this year. My TBR pile is groaning!