Category: Fiction

An English Murder by Cyril Hare

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At first glance, Cyril Hare’s 1951 novel An English Murder, seems to be a fairly typical example of a certain type of golden age detective story. A group of guests are snowed in at an isolated country house over Christmas when a mysterious death occurs and they find themselves involved in a murder mystery. The murderer can only be one of the occupants of the house. So far, so familiar, with a hint of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

What sets this apart is the more realistic tone, the deeper characterisation and the political theme of the story, which is set during the years of the 1940s Labour government. Hare was a lawyer who became a judge and his precise, dry and ironic prose style means that although the novel is only some 200 pages, an awful lot is packed in and it does not feel short. 

Lord Warbeck is ill, so this small gathering of family and friends over Christmas may be his last. The guests include his son, Robert, who is the leader of a Mosley-style fascist party, and Lady Camilla, Robert’s on–off girlfriend, who would like their relationship to be resolved one way or the other. Then there is his cousin Sir Julius, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is responsible for the punitive tax regime making post-war country-house life so difficult. Also present is Mrs Carstairs, daughter of the local vicar and wife to the man who would like to succeed Julius as Chancellor. The stage is set for tension and disagreement.

The party is completed by Dr Botwink, a Czech academic historian and survivor of the concentration camps. He is present in the house because he has been carrying out research on historical documents held there. Botwink is a fascinating character, with a keen interest in the nuances of the English language and the distinctive English way of doing things. In both these fields he proves rather more knowledgeable than his hosts.

After the death that at first appears to be suicide and is then confirmed as murder, the investigation is carried out by Sergeant Rogers, the Special Branch detective assigned to Sir Julius, because the local police are unable to get through the snow to reach the house. However, it is Botwink who is the real investigator here, and who is led to the solution of the case by something he finds in a book from the library.

Another crucial clue is provided by his outsider’s ear for the oddness of English expressions, and the precise meaning of the phrase “to have words with someone”.

The explanation of what has taken place is a comment on the England of that time, which is described as a curious mixture of modernisation and anachronistic survivals. An ancient legal oddity means that the crime could not have happened the way it did in another European country, hence the appropriateness of the title. This is almost a “state of the nation” novel, rather than simply a detective story.

The character of the butler, Briggs, is developed in more detail than is usual in this sort of story. He is a man who has devoted his life to the old way of doing things and must now try to adapt to changing times, struggling to keep up standards with a much-reduced complement of staff. He is rather reminiscent of the butler in Kazuo Ishoguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day.

One thing puzzled me, though. Was it normal in upper-class households at that time to have the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve?    

Precipice by Robert Harris

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Robert Harris’ 2024 novel Precipice is a clever mixture of history and fiction. Britain’s prime minister in 1914, Henry Asquith, married with grown-up children, had some sort of relationship with a much younger woman, Venetia Stanley. That much is fact, because his letters to her survive. Her replies do not and that is what gives Harris the space to create a story about what may have been going on. Asquith’s letters make clear that he had got into the habit of confiding in her about government business and even sending her confidential documents.

Asquith was also in the habit of taking her for drives in his car, the blinds drawn and the chauffeur unaware of what was happening just behind him. He screws up an official telegram and casually throws it out of the window. It is found and handed in by a member of the public and an investigation into a possible security breach is started by the early version of what is now MI5.

There is a powerful sense of the pressure Asquith was under, first to try and find a solution for Ireland and then as events led inexorably to Britain’s involvement in the first world war.

The sheer number of letters and their frequency is staggering. This was made possible by the efficiency of the postal service at that time, with several deliveries each day. It feels like a present-day couple communicating by text message. The question being asked here is whether Venetia Stanley was a necessary support to Asquith when he was under huge pressure or a distraction when his mind should have been on other things.

It’s quite astonishing that Asquith might have been so distracted over Venetia that he wasn’t paying full attention when the cabinet was debating whether the Gallipoli operation should go ahead. No less astonishing is that he couldn’t be quite sure what general Sir John French had actually said about the shell supply situation on the western front because he had sent Lord Kitchener’s letter to Venetia.  

It’s a bit similar to Harris’ earlier novel, Munich, in that it’s more of a character study of a prime minister than anything else. Like that novel, it’s packaged as a thriller but it isn’t really, as the spy plot involving a completely fictional character is rather less convincing and seems a bit “bolted on”. The part where the investigator goes undercover to infiltrate the Stanley family home is the most fictional and the least convincing, I feel.

Harris is on firmer ground with his depiction of a time and a particular class of people. Did Asquith and Venetia actually have a physical affair? Harris hints that upper-class girls knew exactly how to go so far and no further. The suggestion is that whatever they were doing in the back of that car, it wasn’t full intercourse.

There are a couple of historical details that I particularly liked. When Venetia takes a job as a nurse, the artist Sir John Lavery comes to the hospital to do a painting in the ward, featuring Venetia and a wounded soldier. This is a description of a real painting. And I hadn’t realised the extent of the anti-German riots after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Apparently, in Southend, the army was called out to restore order.

Harris is an established and well-connected author, a former Times journalist and something of a political insider. Only someone like that could get the access and necessary permissions from the characters’ descendants to tell a story like this one. I think some of the dialogue seems a bit too modern, but this may be deliberate. The whole situation between Asquith and Venetia feels rather modern. I wondered whether Harris might be trying to draw a parallel with more recent events. Does he have any particular current politician in mind?

But the great strength of this novel is the depiction of how people of that class lived at that time, which is very convincing. When the novel opens, Venetia is a member of a loose group of wealthy young people known as the Coterie. Their cavalier attitude to life is revealed by their reaction to a drowning in the Thames during that carefree summer of 1914.

This world is created so vividly that the historical note at the end about the decline of the Stanley family is rather sad: “Venetia died in 1948 at the age of sixty. By then, the Stanley family’s fortunes were in steep decline. Today, Alderley Park no longer exists; all that remains of Penrhos House are parts of the walls and corner towers, mostly overgrown with ivy, hidden in the woods.”

He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr

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John Dickson Carr was one of those crime writers I had been aware of for years but never got round to reading. For one thing his books were not readily available. When I did read The Hollow Man, often considered to be his masterpiece, I found it rather disappointing. Then I heard the radio versions of the Gideon Fell novels. I was impressed with the plotting and the atmosphere and I decided to give him another go. I’m very glad I did because He Who Whispers is, for me, on a different level to The Hollow Man. It’s an atmospheric and intense read. In fact, I think it’s one of the best stories of this type that I have ever come across.

Carr lived in England for many years and most of his best novels are set here. His work feels as if it belongs more in the English golden age tradition than the American hard-boiled one. He was one of the only American members of the Detection Club and a version of that appears in He Who Whispers, which was published in 1945.    

The war has finally ended and the Murder Club is to hold its first meeting in five years. Miles Harding is the guest of detective Dr Gideon Fell. When he arrives at the Soho restaurant where the meeting is to take place, he finds that none of the members have turned up. There is another guest, Barbara Morell, and the speaker for the evening, Professor Rigaud. Rigaud tells the story he had prepared anyway.

It is the tale of a seemingly impossible murder that took place in rural France in 1939. The victim was found at the top of a ruined tower and there are plenty of witnesses to confirm that no-one else was seen entering the tower during the relevant time. The victim was English and there was a young woman called Fay Seton who was staying with the family. She was romantically involved with the victim’s son and a cloud of suspicion has hung over her ever since. Rigaud shows her photograph to Miles who is fascinated by her.

Miles is looking for someone to help him catalogue his uncle’s book collection in the country house he has inherited. He is living there with his sister Marion who is about to be married to her fiancé Stephen Curtis. The candidate that the employment agency sends is none other than Fay Seton, who has just been repatriated from France and Miles takes her on.  

At the house in the New Forest, another seemingly inexplicable crime takes place. Just who or what is Fay Seton? It is then that Gideon Fell, accompanied by Professor Rigaud, arrives at the house and the investigation begins.

The two mysteries and the non-appearance of the Murder Club members all turn out to be connected of course, but it will be a very astute reader indeed who disentangles all the threads before Dr Fell does. There are many twists and turns along the way and it is a compelling, page-turning read. This is not a conventional whodunnit. There is even a hint of the supernatural. To explain the title would be to give too much away.  

What makes it so special I think, is the quality of Carr’s descriptive writing. He is able to summon up the mood or feel of a place in a few words so that it does not interrupt the pace of the plot. The three main locations come vividly alive. Shabby and exhausted post-war London, a world of back-street flats and overcrowded railway trains, contrasts with the rural peace of pre-war France. The New Forest is seen mostly by moonlight, quiet but almost haunted, unchanged for centuries. Everything feels realistic yet slightly heightened, dovetailing perfectly with the carefully crafted artificiality of the story.

That’s not to say that character or psychology are overlooked. More than one of the people here is not quite what they appear to be at first. The shadow of the war looms large and underneath everything is the mysterious personality of Fay Seton.  

This is ingenious golden age detective fiction at its best, by the acknowledged master of the impossible crime mystery. It is perhaps most similar to the Father Brown stories by G K Chesterton. You either like this sort of thing or you don’t. I very much do and I’ll be on the lookout for more books by John Dickson Carr.    

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

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I first read Raymond Chandler when I was barely out of my teens and now I’ve come to the end of my re-read of his novels with The Long Goodbye. This was the sixth novel featuring his Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1953 and won the Edgar award in 1955. I know a lot of people think it is Chandler’s masterpiece. It is certainly a bit different to the others. It’s longer, moves more slowly and is sadder, somehow. There is more social comment and it’s as much a portrait of a corrupt society as anything Dickens ever wrote.

It’s something of a self-portrait as well with two characters who have elements of Chandler himself about them. If Terry Lennox is damaged by his war experiences, Roger Wade is a writer with a drink problem, who feels that his books are underrated because he writes genre fiction. The overall mood of the book feels as if F Scott Fitzgerald had decided to write a detective story. There are quite a lot of literary references as well, with quotes from T S Eliot, Shakespeare, and Christopher Marlowe.

I think the central theme in the book and what gives it that air of melancholy is Philip Marlowe’s friendship with Terry Lennox, who is introduced in that striking opening sentence: “The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers.”

Later on, Marlowe helps Lennox escape to Mexico without asking too many questions and then comes under suspicion himself when it turns out that Lennox was a suspect in a murder case.

That seems to be that and then Marlowe is asked by a concerned publisher to help the alcoholic writer Roger Wade, who is struggling to finish a novel. Rather against his will, Marlowe finds himself drawn further into the lives of the wealthy inhabitants of the appropriately named Idle Valley.

This appears to be a second story, totally unconnected to the first but slowly and surely the connection between the two becomes apparent.

A good example of the atmosphere of the book is the scene where Marlowe stands by the lake at the back of Wade’s house and watches the speedboat and the surfer on the water. This has a kind of poetic resonance but also functions as part of the plot because we later find out that the noise of the engine masked a gunshot.

One thing that strikes me is how modern the book still feels, given that it was published in 1953. It seems to have influenced every depiction of Los Angeles since that time. There are drug-dealing doctors, mysterious out-of-town medical establishments and it all feels rather familiar from later books and films. Press magnate Harlan Potter seems to be the original for the John Huston character in Chinatown. The notorious Los Angeles smog is mentioned quite a lot, twenty years before the photo on the cover of Tim Buckley’s record Greetings from L A.

But then Chandler was a very influential writer in other ways. He didn’t invent the first-person, sardonic, private eye narrator (that was Dashiell Hammett) but he did refine and perfect the idea, giving a model to follow to many later writers such as Len Deighton and, more recently, Philip Kerr.

The phrase the “long goodbye” was mentioned in the news the other day, because of the death of Gene Hackman. It is now used to refer to cases of Alzheimer’s, apparently. That theme is in the book, though almost hidden in what appears to be a sub-plot. When Marlowe is trying to find Roger Wade, his only clue is that the doctor’s name begins with the letter “v”. He finds three such doctors and one of them runs a rather sinister old people’s home, where the frail elderly are kept sedated and presumably fleeced of their money. Later on, a character writes something in their suicide note about not wanting to live to be old so “the long goodbye” does not just refer to Terry Lennox. Did I notice that theme when I was younger? I don’t remember that I did. A really good book reveals more and deeper meanings with the passage of time and re-reading.       

There is also a fascinating connection with the recent TV drama about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, in 1955. One of the detectives explains to Marlowe why the police have not looked further into a murder. “You don’t fool around with an open-shut case, even if there’s no heat to get it finalized and forgotten [. . .] No police department in the world has the men or the time to question the obvious.” This is exactly what happened in the Ruth Ellis case, I think.

Two years later, Chandler wrote a letter to the London Evening Standard criticising the decision to execute Ruth Ellis. He wrote that it was barbaric and that no other country would have done it.

I’ve never seen the 1970s film of The Long Goodbye and I don’t think I want to. It isn’t supposed to have much to do with the book, as it has been updated to the 1970s and the plot has been altered. It’s a pity, because a decent film, done in the correct period, could have been quite something.

Is The Long Goodbye Chandler’s masterpiece? I don’t know, but it does have a haunting quality, with the characters lingering long in the mind. I liked it when I first read it all those years ago and I like it even more now. One of those “books of a lifetime”, I guess.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

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The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins was published in 1860 and has often been regarded as the first mystery novel. It is a combination of gothic romance and detective story and still highly readable today, although it does perhaps rely a little too heavily on coincidence. It stays just this side of melodrama, though, and Collins manipulates suspense in ways that would not be out of place in a modern novel. Even at 600 pages, it’s pretty well unputdownable, what we would today call an “immersive” read. It is very intense and very atmospheric.

Collins makes use of an original narrative technique. There are several different narrators, who, as the story progresses, tell the reader about the events that they were actually present at, thorough their journals and legal statements. It’s rather as if they are witnesses in court, as the first narrator, the art tutor Walter Hartright, tells us and it may reflect Collins’ legal background.

The striking scene near the beginning, Walter’s late-night encounter with the woman of the title while he is walking across a lonely Hampstead Heath is deservedly famous. He has just learned that he is to be employed as a tutor at Limmeridge House in Cumberland. The strange and distracted woman who appears suddenly on the road seems to have some connection with the place. This meeting sets the whole complex and intricate plot in motion. Just who she is and what her connection to Cumberland is are key parts of a mystery that is very much concerned with identity and family secrets. There is also a great deal in the book about the position of women in relation to men in the Victorian era.

In Cumberland, Walter finds himself tutor to two young women, Laura Fairlie and her half-sister, Marian Halcombe. He falls in love with Laura and the feeling is mutual but Laura is engaged to Sir Percival Glyde and feels obliged to marry him as it was her late father’s wish. A heartbroken Walter goes abroad and the story is continued by Marian.

Things take a darker turn after the marriage when the scene shifts to Glyde’s country estate in Hampshire. Marian is part of the household as are Glyde’s friend Count Fosco and his wife, who is Laura’s aunt. Glyde turns out not to be quite as charming as he appeared during his courtship of Laura. He insisted on a pre-nuptial arrangement under which Laura’s money would pass to him on her death and he is soon trying to get access to her fortune while she is still alive. To say much more about how things develop would be to spoil the book for those who have not read it. There are plenty of twists and turns that are not easy to predict, even today.

Apart from the unusual narrative structure, Collins shows other great strengths as a writer in this novel. His superb visual sense places the scene right before our eyes. This is used to great effect with the transition from Cumberland to Hampshire, to the gloomy house and grounds named, rather appropriately, Blackwater.

It is perhaps the depth of the characterisation that keeps the reader turning the pages as much as the mystery element. The women are particularly interesting, especially Marian, who is a fascinating character. When Walter first sees her, he admires her figure, but thinks her face “ugly” when she turns round. That does not seem to deter Count Fosco’s admiration of her at all. What is going on here? Is it because she is described as “dark” and he is Italian? It is the blonde, more passive, Laura that Walter falls for. Is Collins just going along with the standard Victorian idea of what is desirable, or is this intended as a subtle criticism of Walter, an indication that he is a bit superficial? I suspect modern readers are likely to think he has chosen the wrong woman and that it is rather unfair for Marian to end up as a sort of perpetual aunt.

Several of the women refer to their limitations as women. Is this to do with their physical strength or their legal position in relation to men? Or is Collins being a bit ironic here, particularly in relation to Marian, given her forcefulness and determination?

The malevolent Mrs Catherick, with her insistence on hard-won respectability, is another interesting character, but perhaps the most fascinating of the female characters is Madame Fosco. The change in her personality after her marriage and Fosco’s utter dominance of her is never really explained although there are hints of something sinister on his part. It feels like an example of what we would now call “coercive control”.

It is in the third part of the novel that the detective element becomes strongest, when Walter has returned from abroad and sets to work to unravel the mystery. Collins is careful to plant details that justify later events in a way that is still used in crime novels now. Perhaps that is the secret of the book’s enduring appeal, the curious combination of things that are very Victorian and things that are timeless or modern. And given some of the stories that make the news these days, has that much really changed since the nineteenth century?

The Twelve Best Sherlock Holmes Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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In 1927, for a competition in the Strand magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chose his own favourite twelve Sherlock Holmes stories. The reader who most closely matched his selection would win the prize. He omitted the later stories that would appear in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, as these had not yet been published in book form. When the result of the competition was announced, he published an article that gave his list and the reason for each choice.

Since I spent part of last summer working my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, I thought it would be interesting to follow in Sir Arthur’s footsteps, by selecting my own favourites and justifying their inclusion on my list.

It seems to me that there are four stories that simply demand to be included.

A Scandal in Bohemia was the first to be published. It’s memorable for the strong female character of Irene Adler and the choreography of the scene where everyone in the street has been employed by Holmes to create a decoy.

The Final Problem is dramatic, fast-moving and ultimately tragic. It raises Holmes’ moral authority because of his willingness to sacrifice himself to rid the world of the evil of Moriarty. The story made the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland famous.

The Empty House is one of the strongest of all the stories, I think, almost three stories in one. There is the dramatic return of Holmes and the story of his survival, Colonel Moran’s attempt to assassinate him, and the locked room murder mystery, all neatly wrapped up together.

His Last Bow was not the last to be published but is the last chronologically. It’s told in the third person, rather than by Watson. Holmes comes out of retirement to crack a German spy ring on the eve of the great war. His moving speech at the end brings the curtain down on their partnership.

So now I have the general shape of my list, what other stories should be included? Doyle himself, in his introduction to The Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, refuted the idea that the quality declined after Holmes returned. I agree, so I will be including some of the later ones.

The Speckled Band is so famous that it has to be on the list. It’s a locked-room mystery to rival Edgar Allan Poe and has the connection to India that features in several other stories.

The Musgrave Ritual is an early case of Holmes’, from the days before he knew Watson, the client being one of Holmes’ former fellow students. It has a rather gothic atmosphere with the country house and missing ancient relics and is also notable for being told largely by Holmes himself.

The Reigate Squires has Holmes at his most ingenious in working out the solution to the mystery. We also get an insight into his health. 

The Norwood Builder differs from the usual formula, because the client who comes to Baker Street is then arrested for murder and Holmes must prove his innocence. There is also Holmes’ friendly rivalry with Inspector Lestrade of the Yard. Holmes spots a crucial clue that the police miss, to do with the manipulation of evidence.

Charles Augustus Milverton features the fascinating character of Milverton, a heartless professional blackmailer who is oblivious to the damage he does. Holmes finds him repulsive, and lets natural justice, rather than the law, deal with him.

The Bruce-Partington Plans is a spy story, perhaps a bit similar to the earlier The Naval Treaty, but more complex and better, I think. It starts with that familiar London smog outside the window of Baker Street, but also makes clever use of the London Underground, rather than Hackney Carriages.      

The Illustrious Client is one of the later stories that Doyle did not include on his list. It takes the theme of violence against women that is often there under the surface to a new level. Baron Gruner is truly loathsome, another example of Doyles’ ability to conjure evil on the page. This one is a suitable riposte to anyone who thinks the Holmes stories are a bit “cosy”.

So now I have eleven, I must select another to bring my list up to twelve. The Red Headed League is notable for its sheer absurdity, that makes Holmes and Watson laugh out loud. The Greek Interpreter has the first appearance of Holmes’ brother Mycroft and the Diogenes Club, for the “most unsociable and unclubbable men in London”. Thor Bridge is Holmes at his most ingenious again, but I think The Reigate Squires has the edge, somehow. Doyle excluded Silver Blaze because he said that the racing detail was wrong. That has not affected its fame or popularity with readers, though, so it has to be this one, for the Devon setting and the curious incident of the dog in the night time, which has entered the language.

So here is my full list, in order of publication date, except for His Last Bow, as already explained.

A Scandal in Bohemia   (1891)
The Speckled Band   (1892)
Silver Blaze   (1892)
The Musgrave Ritual   (1893)
The Reigate Squires   (1893)
The Final Problem   (1893)
The Empty House   (1903)
The Norwood Builder   (1903)
Charles Augustus Milverton   (1904)
The Bruce-Partington Plans   (1908)
The Illustrious Client   (1924)
His Last Bow   (1917)

I suspect that every reader of these stories will have their own likes and dislikes. I see that I have only included six that are on Sir Arthur’s list.

Anyone new to Holmes who wants to find out more would find the stories I have chosen a good starting point.  

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L Sayers and Robert Eustace

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I was very excited when I found out about The Documents in the Case, published in 1930. I have read and enjoyed several of Dorothy L Sayers’ other books, but I did not realise she had written this, the only one not to feature Lord Peter Wimsey. It is a crime novel written in epistolary form, based to a certain extent on the real-life Edith Thompson case. I was hoping it would be another Trent’s Last Case or Malice Aforethought but despite being a compelling read, I was left with a slight feeling of disappointment at the end.

The beginning is the most interesting part, where we gradually learn about the slightly odd Harrison household. It’s rather reminiscent of Patrick Hamilton’s boarding house tales. Margaret Harrison is the much younger second wife of George Harrison, who has a grown-up son, Paul, working abroad. John Munting, a writer, and Harwood Lathom, a painter, rent the flat upstairs and since the hallways adjoin, come into contact with the Harrisons. Agatha Milsom is a sort of paid companion to Mrs Harrison. Mr Harrison is keen on his hobbies of painting and the study of wild mushrooms. It is his sudden death, supposedly from eating the wrong kind of mushroom, that is the case of the title.         

One picture of the Harrisons’ marriage emerges through Agatha Milsom’s letters to her sister. Another view comes from Munting’s letters to his fiancé. Mr Harrison seems quite a different character in his own letters to his son Paul. Miss Milsom thinks that Harrison is an unfeeling brute and his wife is a victim, but she inadvertently reveals that Margaret Harrison is a rather self-dramatising character, perhaps as much the cause of the rows as Mr Harrison. Munting has quite a low opinion of Mrs Harrison and is sure that the marital discord is her fault. Is Harrison the bullying husband that Agatha Milsom takes him to be, or simply older and rather set in his ways with fixed ideas of how a wife should behave? If Margaret Harrison is based to a certain extent on Edith Thompson, I got the feeling that Sayers did not altogether approve of her.

Agatha Milsom, the spinster companion who is mentally troubled and obsessed with sex is the most interesting character, but she disappears from the narrative too early on, after having played a crucial role in how events unfold. The later part of the book features the statements of John Munting and Paul Harrison. These are much longer than the letters and it begins to feel more like a conventional novel.

Munting’s letters to his fiancé, Elizabeth Drake, who is also a writer, convey something of the intellectual climate of the late 1920s, when old certainties had been shattered by the first world war and the ideas of Freud and Einstein were becoming known. His obsession with how life came into being is rather irritating, though. How are we supposed to take all this? It does rather neatly set up the discussion among the scientists at the end that leads to the solution. This chapter is very irritating, but more of that later.

Paul Harrison does not believe his father’s death was an accident and becomes the main investigator into what really happened. It’s very well worked out how he has gathered all the documents together. He also says that Munting’s letters to his wife were the work of a writer with one eye on future publication, giving us a clue as to how to read them. Some of Munting’s comments about publishers probably come from Sayers’ own experience, rather like the advertising agency background she used in Murder Must Advertise.

I was slightly irritated by Sir Gilbert Pugh only being named as the Director of Public Prosecutions right at the end of the book. Since it begins with Paul Harrison sending the bundle of documents to him, it would make the whole story much clearer if Pugh’s role was identified at the beginning.

It’s also slightly frustrating that once the poison is proved to be artificial, that is the rather abrupt end of the novel. Yet Paul Harrison spent a great deal of time trying and failing to work out exactly how the poison was administered and we never learn that.

The book was written as a collaboration between Dorothy L Sayers and Robert Eustace. He was a doctor who had worked with other crime writers before, so I assume the science came from him. I suspect that the science versus religion debate might have appealed to the religious Sayers and her desire to write something that would be seen as more than a detective story. The penultimate chapter, in which the scientists discuss the method of proving whether a substance occurred naturally or was artificially synthesised is far too long and tedious in the extreme.

The novel as a whole reads like a cross between a golden-age detective story and a “highbrow” novel of the 1920s, by an author such as Aldous Huxley, whose Point Counter Point gets a mention. It is full of references to writers of the time. John Munting is rather dismissive about A High Wind in Jamaica, and Agatha Milsom is a bit puzzled by the work of D H Lawrence.

Sayers even refers to one of her own novels, because the pathologist Sir James Lubbock says he is working on an arsenic case, presumably that of Harriet Vane in Strong Poison, published around the same time as The Documents in the Case.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie’s novels are rather unfairly seen as “cosy” these days. Anyone who wants to find out just how dark her work can be should take a look at And Then There Were None, published in 1939.

An author’s note reveals what a technical challenge it was for her to write. It’s also a challenge for me to convey something of the flavour of the book without giving too much away.

The set-up is very simple. A group of ten strangers are lured to a house on the mysterious Soldier Island, off the Devon coast. During dinner on the first night, a voice rings out and accuses each of the guests of a crime. These are mostly the sort of crimes that are beyond the reach of the law, because no-one realises that any crime has actually been committed.

The voice turns out to be a recording that one of the servants has been tricked into playing.  

In each guest’s room there is a framed inscription of the old nursery rhyme which begins “Ten little soldier boys went out to dine” and ends with “and then there were none”. On the dining room table are ten china figurines. The guests begin to die, one by one, in ways that resemble the rhyme. Then they realise that each death is a murder. Every time someone dies the others find that one of the figures has disappeared from the table.

Someone is exacting retribution for the crimes that went undetected and unpunished.

A thorough search of the island reveals that there is no-one else there. The killer must be one of the guests.

The tension ramps up as the number of people left alive dwindles and the survivors become extremely suspicious of each other. Each of them is now trapped in a nightmare of doubt, believing one of the others to be the killer.

It would be unfair to anyone who has not read the book to say any more. It’s all very well worked out by Christie so that even the arrival of the police at the end does not clear up the mystery. That is revealed right at the end in a note by the perpetrator explaining how they set the whole thing up.

A quick resume of the plot may make the book sound like a rather soulless and mechanical exercise in suspense, but it’s much more than that. There is a crucial point at the very end that seems to go missing in the numerous film and TV adaptations. The guests die in the order of seriousness of their crimes. This makes the reader think back over what they have just read. There are different degrees of moral responsibility and guilt. There are also different ways of betraying trust. And Christie makes clear just what is the most serious crime of all, for which the punishment must be suicide not murder.

The characters are introduced skilfully so that the reader has little difficultly telling them apart. The introductory part of the novel is reasonably realistic. As the tension rises, this gives way to something different. The island is bleak and treeless and the only building on it is the house, a nineteen-thirties modernist structure. There are no gothic trappings here and much of the action takes place in broad daylight.

Everything is stripped back to focus the reader’s attention on the characters and their situation. There is a sort of double suspense, as to just what each did in the past, as well as who might be the killer now. As the survivors begin to contemplate the possibility of death, and their different attitudes to it are revealed, the novel takes on something of an existential atmosphere.

I wonder if this was because it was written at the beginning of the second world war. I detected a similar contemplation of mortality in Eric Ambler’s Journey Into Fear, written around the same time.

In the latter stages, the bleak setting gives the feeling that the characters are in a sort of hell. More than once, there is a hint of the supernatural, as if they are being punished by God. There is a touch of “the voice of God” about the recording. Indeed, the whole story has a rather parable-like feel to it.

For Esmé, with Love and Squalor by J D Salinger

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There are two good reasons for writing about J D Salinger’s 1950 short story, For Esmé, with Love and Squalor. First, 6th June 2024 will be the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. And second, I recently heard a BBC radio programme about Salinger’s time as an American serviceman in England during the war, which forms the background to this story.

The story is in two distinct parts, or perhaps three, because a short introductory section makes it clear that the narrator is looking back from a happy and settled present day at events that took place sometime earlier.

A bored and lonely American soldier stationed in England in the run-up to D-Day is spending his day off wandering round the town in the rain. The church notice board catches his eye and he goes inside to watch the children’s choir practice. It strikes him that one particular young girl in the choir seems a bit different to the other children.

He meets the girl again later when she comes into the teashop with her governess and small brother. She detaches herself from the governess, comes over to the table where the narrator is sitting alone and strikes up a conversation. Esmé is poised and perfectly mannered in the English upper-class style. She is slightly precocious in her use of language, using words that are a bit beyond her years and not always quite correct. We find out that her father has been killed in the war. Her mother is also dead, but that is not explained.

The narrator has already told us that his fellow soldiers are solitary types and Esmé instantly says, to his surprise, “you’re at that intelligence school, aren’t you?”, perhaps explaining why that should be.

She gets the narrator to admit that in civilian life he is a short-story writer. She hopes that he will write a story for her. As we read on, we realise that the story we are reading is, as the title tells us, that very story. She hopes that he will return from the war “with all his faculties intact” and promises to write to him.

If that is the “before” part of the story, there is now an abrupt switch to “after”. The scene changes to occupied Germany at the end of the war. The narrator identifies himself as “Sergeant X”. A page of description makes clear that his war experiences have left him a dreadful state. He has spent some time in hospital. He chain-smokes but can’t taste the cigarettes, his gums are bleeding, and he can’t sleep. He has what we call today PTSD: “Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter like insecure luggage on an overhead rack.”

He contemplates a book by Goebbels left behind in the house the American soldiers live in. It belonged to a woman, an official in the Nazi party who the narrator himself arrested. There is an inscription in her handwriting: “Dear God, life is hell.”  

There is a fleeting reference to the Hurtgen forest. This was in fact the gruelling battle that Salinger himself was involved in. It’s also made clear that the narrator and his jeep-mate, “Corporal Z”, have been involved in the whole campaign, from D-Day to VE day.  

He takes out a letter from a pile of correspondence that he has put on one side and not read. It is letter from Esmé, enclosing the gift of her father’s watch, with its smashed face. This loving gesture from the young girl he befriended is the beginning of healing for him. He has been unable to sleep and suddenly feels very tired. The nightmare is over. He realises that his faculties are, despite everything he has been through, intact.

The story is only twenty-eight pages long, beautifully written and profoundly moving. It appears to be quite autobiographical, closely based on Salinger’s real-life wartime experiences. It makes its meaning as much by what is understated or not quite stated as much as by what is said directly. It brings home the very real human cost of the liberation of Europe, both for soldiers and civilians.

It’s also worth noting that Salinger’s state of mind after his experiences in the war influenced his descriptions of Holden’s mental troubles in his famous novel The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951.

Mrs Bathurst by Rudyard Kipling

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Rudyard Kipling’s story Mrs Bathurst was published in 1904 and reveals Kipling as a rather more modern writer than he is usually considered to be.

The plot makes use of the cinema and it may well be the first piece of fiction to do so. The fractured style of the story may be modelled on the cinema, rather in the way that one can see the early poetry of T S Eliot making use of cinematic imagery.  

The term “It” to describe a woman’s appeal to men appears here, a usage that Kipling is thought to have invented, to go alongside the many phrases he added to the language. What makes the story feel modern is the way it is told and it may be that part of what Kipling is telling us here is the impossibility of ever really knowing anyone else.

On the South African coast, just after the Boer war, the narrator is sitting and talking to his railwayman friend, Hooper. They are then joined by a royal marine, Pritchard, and a sailor, Petty Officer Pyecroft, who is a recurring Kipling character. At first the story seems to be going nowhere, as the four men chat about the idea of going absent without leave, as opposed to desertion.

But as the tale progresses, the first-person narrative gives way to dialogue. The narrator is merely a convenient device to set the scene for the anecdote that follows. There is no authorial voice or viewpoint. The tale is told in a fragmented way, mostly by Pyecroft, who does not quite understand the events he is recounting. As he says “all I know is second-hand so to speak” and there is no help given to the reader to interpret any of this.

He tells of his shipmate Vickery’s obsession with a Mrs Bathurst who kept a small hotel for sailors in Auckland, New Zealand. It’s never made clear exactly what the relationship between Vickery and Mrs Bathurst might have been in the past. The marine, Pritchard, is also familiar with her and the hotel and he describes to the others what she is like.

The finale with its striking visual image of two charred corpses is provided by Hooper, who has dropped hints about this earlier in the tale. One body can only be identified by false teeth and a tattoo, and the identity of the other remains a mystery. Different parts of the story have been told by Pyecroft, Hooper and Pritchard, who were more witnesses to events than participants, and the reader must piece it all together as best they can. Everything has been seen from the outside.

Not every question raised by the story is answered at the end. What exactly took place in the meeting between Vickery and the captain of his ship before he was sent ashore? And at the very end it appears that Hooper is going to remove the false teeth from his pocket but thinks better of it.    

The use of the film image of Mrs Bathurst herself is very interesting. It’s mentioned that someone in the audience jumps when they see the image of the train pulling into the station. Was Kipling familiar with the story about the audience reaction to the Lumiere Brothers’ first showing of their film or was this the true source of it?

There is also the question of just why Vickery is so obsessed with the film of Mrs Bathurst. He thinks it was taken in London, gets drunk after seeing it, then insists on going back to see it again four nights in a row, with Pyecroft in tow to confirm that it is indeed her on the screen. It has been suggested by Dr Oliver Tearle that Mrs Bathurst is dead. There are hints in the story that this may be so. That interpretation would make it a sort of ghost story. On the other hand, it is very difficult now when we are surrounded by moving images of people both alive and dead, to feel the impact that early films made on their first audiences.

However one reads it, this is certainly one of Kipling’s most cryptic tales. In his memoirs he wrote about his method of writing, which was to cut, lay the story aside for a while then go back to it and cut some more. He considered that what had been cut would have a lingering influence on the words that remained. One can see how this story might have been written in that way.

Rather ironically perhaps, there is no known surviving film footage or audio recording of Rudyard Kipling himself.