New crime short story by Val Culley

 

Shelved in Shepshed

 

By Val Culley

 

Sallie knew it was going to be ‘one of those days’ before the library had even opened to customers that cold Thursday afternoon.

She was kneeling in the entrance porch, emptying the returned books customers had posted into the drop box, when she became aware of a large woman standing over her. “Can you look a book up for me on your computer system? I can’t see it on the shelves,” the woman asked.

Sallie had never been a big fan of the concept of the Smart Library, which was introduced soon after she started work at Shepshed Library. It had taken her a while to find another job after being made redundant from the library she had worked at previously. She had then encouraged her former colleague, Jo, to apply for a job at Shepshed Library as well.  

Sallie and Jo had both now got used to the customers, with their little quirks, such as Mr Austin, who used the computers but never took a book out, who would come up and mutter things to them. They would smile and nod but feel uneasy, knowing neither what he had said nor what they were smiling about.

"Sallie and Jo had both now got used to the
customers, with their little quirks"

Then they were told that their hours and pay, along with those of their colleagues, were to be cut by the local authority that employed them, as a result of the introduction of the Smart Library.

Sallie didn’t like the thought of customers letting themselves into the library when there were no staff present and doing whatever they liked, having simply signed a vague agreement  to ‘look after the library,’ but she had no choice other than to go along with it.

She occasionally had clashes with Smart customers, who pounced on her as soon as she arrived and vented their frustration at her, because they had been unable to work the computer, or print documents, with no staff present. When she pointed out they had signed up to use the library without staff assistance, they would unleash a tirade of abuse at her.

On this occasion, she stood up, in as dignified manner as possible, but found she was still at a disadvantage, looking up at the tall woman, who had long, untidy grey hair and large glasses.

“We’re not actually open yet,” Sallie pointed out.

The woman gestured impatiently. “I’m sorry! All I’m asking is for you to do your job! But I’m not surprised by your attitude really, because, can I just say, I have never felt any warmth in this library.”

“That’s strange because I just found a note on the counter from a customer complaining the library was too hot while she was using it in Smart this morning.”

“I didn’t mean that! I meant that the staff here are not at all friendly.”

“None of them?”

“Yes, none of them. I’ve never felt any warmth from any of the staff.”

Sallie looked at her carefully. She was sure she had never seen the woman before. “Do you perhaps only use the library when there are no staff present?”

“Oh, for goodness sake. You’re useless. I’m wasting my time talking to you. I shall complain to the manager.” She marched to the doors, which opened automatically to let her out.

"The usual wave of people approached the
desk, clutching their phones"

After the library had opened to all the customers at two pm, the usual wave of people approached the desk, clutching their phones, which were all showing labels that needed to be printed urgently. Most of them weren’t library members, but they couldn’t join because they had no ID with them, and wouldn’t be able to print anyway, because they weren’t carrying any money. Sallie and Jo were kept busy at the counter dealing with them, and had no time to discharge the contents of the drop box.

They made a good team. Jo was petite with short dark hair and an elfin face and was very kind, while Sallie was taller and more generously built, with blonde hair and blue eyes and the ability to be firm but fair with customers. The third girl on duty, Lauren, a young, library assistant with long, glossy, brown hair, was doing her best to try to shelve the mountain of books in danger of falling off the returns trolley, flicking her hair out of the way constantly.

Sallie noticed Paula was waiting in the queue. Paula was a Reading for Community Health volunteer, who had started to use the meeting room at the library to help adults with literacy problems. The staff had agreed to keep an eye on her when she was in the meeting room with a client and she could call on them for assistance if she had any problems.

Sallie unlocked the door of the meeting room for her and propped it open with a door stop so they would be able to see Paula when they were shelving non-fiction returns. She noticed that Paula, whose long, mousey hair was scraped back into a pony tail, looked thinner than ever and her eyes were red rimmed as though she had been crying.

“Are you okay, Paula?”

“Yeah, I’m all right, thanks,” she replied listlessly

An old man barred Sallie’s way as she attempted to walk back to the counter. “Do you have a book called ‘The Soldiers of Shepshed’?”

“Yes, it’s with the local history books along here,” Sallie said

But when she searched the shelf where it was kept, she couldn’t find it. Worryingly, the book appeared to be missing. There were only two copies of ‘The Soldiers of Shepshed’ in the entire county. Sallie had made the Shepshed copy available as Reference only, so that it couldn’t be taken out of the library. It seemed to have disappeared and she was concerned someone might have stolen it. A customer had told her the book was now out of print and there was only one copy left on Amazon, for which the seller was charging £150.

"But when she searched the shelf where it
was kept, she couldn't find it"

As the afternoon wore on, the three girls were all run off their feet. At one point, while Sallie was shelving fiction, she noticed a smartly-dressed young man bending down and studying the Mary Balogh novels. She was just about to ask if she could help him, when an old man appeared in front of her and asked, “What’s this Smart thingamajig?”

Sallie sighed. “Do you mean the Smart Library?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be able to get in.”

“Get in where?”

“The library.”

“You’re in it now.”

“I know that, but this morning there were people inside when I went past and when I tried to get in, I couldn’t.”

“Have you joined the Smart Library.”

“Yes, of course.”

Sallie took the man’s card and went to the desk and after checking on the computer found he wasn’t yet registered as Smart.

“Can I become Smart?” he asked.

Sallie was just about to say that she thought it highly unlikely, when a shrill scream came from non-fiction. Then Lauren ran to the counter looking terrified. ‘It’s Paula! She’s dead!”

Sallie and Jo raced to the meeting room where they found Paula, slumped lifelessly in her chair with red marks on her neck.

The next hour seemed to go by in a blur. They closed the door of the meeting room, called the police, and rang their supervisor. Two uniformed officers arrived and said it looked as if Paula had been strangled. There was no murder weapon in the meeting room, but they could see that a length of cord had been cut from one of the window blinds.

The first detective to arrive was taken to the meeting room by Sallie to join his uniformed colleagues. He said: “I expect your prints will be all over everything by now. Why haven’t you sent all the customers home and closed for the day?”

"Two uniformed officers arrived and said it
looked as if Paula had been strangled"

“I’ve read enough crime fiction to know not to touch anything, and I didn’t ask anyone to leave because I thought you might want to interview them. We closed the door of the meeting room so no one could go in, and put the front door on exit only.”

Lauren was still very shocked, so Jo made her a cup of tea. They all sat in the office together and thought back about the events of that afternoon.

Sallie remembered opening the door of the meeting room to admit poor Paula. Jo remembered seeing Paula’s client arrive. She said he was tall and looked as though he was dressed for going skiing and was wearing a hat and had a scarf over his face. He had walked towards the counter purposefully, but then suddenly turned right and gone straight to the meeting room. None of them had seen the client come out afterwards.

Later, an older detective arrived to take over, and said Sallie could open the front door again. He put one of the uniformed men on the door and asked him to take the names of customers as they left and he sent the other uniformed officer and the patronising, young detective away to make further enquiries.

Sallie showed him the crime scene and explained what Paula was doing in the meeting room. The detective was tall and thin, with grey hair, and Sallie thought he had an intelligent face. She relayed her version of events to him, and then he spoke to Jo and Lauren in turn.

When the pathologist arrived, the detective took him into meeting room and they viewed the body behind closed doors.

Later, Sallie and Jo were both behind the counter when they saw Paula’s client come back in and walk purposefully towards them. They both gasped with excitement, but he just asked calmly if he had left his bag next to the kiosk. Jo recovered quickly and told him a bag had been handed in. She asked him to describe his bag and Sallie offered to fetch it from lost property.

But on her way, she went to the meeting room and knocked on the door. She told the detective the client had returned. He took the client into the kitchen to speak to him, but after taking down his contact details and statement allowed him to leave the library with his bag.

"Sallie noticed Lauren, who had somehow
managed to change into a little black dress"

While Sallie was trying to deal with the growing mountain of shelving, the detective came to tell her his officers had been to Paula’s home and spoken to her neighbours. They had told the police she was unhappy because her husband had left her for another woman and that he wanted to sell the house immediately because he was desperate for money. They said Paula had been refusing to cooperate.

A wedding picture of Paula and her husband had been in the lounge and the officers had texted him an image of it, which he showed to Sallie. “But her husband’s been in the library this afternoon! I saw him earlier, rummaging about among my Mary Baloghs!” Sallie exclaimed.

The detective ordered the uniformed officer to search the area around the Mary Balogh novels. To Sallie’s horror the cop heaved piles of books off the shelves enthusiastically. Then he brought ‘Soldiers of Shepshed’ to Sallie, which he had found at the back of the shelf, saying: “I’m no librarian, but this don’t look like romance to me.”

The uniformed officer then found a piece of blind cord and the detective took it into the meeting room to compare it with the cord on the window blind.

On her way to the shelves again, Sallie noticed Lauren, who had somehow managed to change into a little black dress with a side slit, was dancing a tango with the uniformed cop near the audio books. This shift is becoming more and more bizarre, she thought.

The nice detective came to thank Sallie for all her help. He said: “We’ll get that poor girl’s murderer bang to rights. It’s a classic domestic. There’s no one else in the frame, so we’ll soon have him in custody. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, and I’m sure people must have said it to you many times before, but you have the most beautiful, blue eyes. When you’ve finished work, would you be kind enough to join me for a drink so I can go over my notes with you to make sure I haven’t missed anything.”

“But I thought it was an open and shut case,” Sallie said.

“Well, it’s more a case of murder by the book,” he said, looking into her eyes. He held his hand out to her and she found herself reaching out to him as well, but then there was a loud thud…

Sallie woke with a start and saw she had dropped her book on the floor. She had fallen asleep while reading in front of the fire. Her black cat was curled up on the sofa next to her and there was a half empty glass of wine on the coffee table. “Oh dear, I must have dreamt the whole thing,’ she said, stroking the cat, who purred contentedly. 

“Do you think it’s time I retired from the library, Desdemona?”

 The End

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Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Alleyn falls in love but he still has to be professional and solve the murder

Artists in Crime was Marsh's sixth
novel featuring Roderick Alleyn

Artists in Crime introduces Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn’s love interest for the first time, the painter Agatha Troy. She is reserved, independent and a successful professional artist and Alleyn instantly finds himself falling for her.

The detective first meets Troy when he is returning from a long holiday in New Zealand and boards a ship to Vancouver. As the ship leaves the port of Suva after calling at the Pacific island of Fiji, he sees Troy up on the deck painting the wharf before it fades into the distance.

Alleyn already knows and admires Troy’s work and he has an awkward conversation with her about it. He finds himself drawn to her at once, but she seems unimpressed with him and is offhand.

They next meet when Alleyn is sent to investigate a murder that has occurred at the country house in England she has inherited from her father. He is staying with his mother, who has a house near Troy’s home, before he returns to work after his long absence. His superior officer at Scotland Yard telephones to ask him to start work early to investigate a murder near where he is staying.

When he goes to the house, he again sees Troy, who is still shocked after a woman has been killed in her home in a macabre way. She does not welcome Alleyn and his officers searching the rooms of her guests or keeping them under supervision in her dining room while they embark on their investigation.

Alleyn tries to maintain a professional detachment but finds himself apologising to Troy for the things he must do to investigate the murder. It is only at the end of the novel, when the case has been solved and the murderer arrested, that we see a softening in Troy’s attitude towards him, which gives Alleyn hope for the future

Patrick Malahide (left) played Chief Inspector Alleyn
in the 1990 BBC TV adaptation of Artists in Crime

The suspects in the case are all Troy’s students, who pay her ‘substantial fees’ to study under her in the studio she has built in the garden of her home. The victim. Sonia, is an artist’s model, who the students are painting in the nude.  She is posing on a bed that has been draped with a silk cloth. Earlier, a dagger has been attached to the underside of the bed and the model is impaled on the point when she takes up her pose for the class.

Troy inherited the house from her father, but he did not leave her much money so she has to earn her own living. However, she is shown living comfortably in the world of the 1930s upper classes in England. She has a well-staffed country home and enjoys living in the Bohemian art world of London, where she stays at a club and has many society friends.

Artists in Crime was  televised in 1968 and 1990. It is a well-plotted mystery with a surprising ending and it is interesting for the reader to see Alleyn’s character developing from the way he is portrayed in the earlier books. He is once again ably assisted by his subordinates, Fox and Bailey, and his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.

I did not find the details about methods of painting and artists’ equipment very interesting, but I realise Ngaio would have found it fascinating because she enjoyed painting herself and studied art before becoming an actress and then a crime writer.

First published in 1938, Artists in Crime is the sixth Roderick Alleyn mystery and is well  worth reading for the whodunit element of the novel alone. The love interest between Alleyn and Troy is well set up and has immediately made me want to read the next novel in the series, Death in a White Tie, in which Troy appears again.  

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Miss Silver Intervenes by Patricia Wentworth

A blend of blackmail, murder and romance makes for an intriguing mystery

Miss Silver Intervenes is
the sixth Miss Silver mystery

We learn more about the character of Miss Silver in this sixth book by Patricia Wentworth featuring the ex-governess turned private investigator.

She is no longer just a little old lady sitting in the background knitting, but is shown to be well respected by the police, who treat her as an equal and give her full access to their investigation in this story.

The mystery involves residents who live in eight flats in Vandeleur House, an old converted mansion in Putney. The characters are beautifully drawn by Patricia Wentworth and I found myself enticed into their world and wanting to keep turning the pages of the novel to find out more about them.

Miss Silver comes into the story when one of the residents, Mrs Underwood, who she has met once through mutual friends, calls on her unexpectedly at her flat. Although Mrs Underwood is reluctant to admit why she has come to see Miss Silver, she eventually reveals that she is being blackmailed and needs help.

Mrs Underwood can't bring herself to tell Miss Silver the full details of what has been happening to her, but later, when Miss Silver reads that another resident living in the same block of flats has been murdered, she decides to take matters into her own hands and manages to get herself invited to stay at Vandeleur House.

Mrs Underwood is living there with her niece by marriage, Meade, who is recovering from the shock of being in a shipwreck in which her fiancé, Giles, was drowned. Then one day while she is out shopping, Meade encounters Giles, who was rescued from the sea but has now lost his memory.

Patricia Wentworth (above) again
spins an intriguing mystery

Miss Silver wastes no time in getting to know the other residents in the flats and finding out about their relationships with each other using her considerable skills as a conversationalist.

There is a middle aged couple whose marriage has been put under strain by the husband’s obsession with the attractive young woman who lives in the flat above them. A pleasant young woman is clearly being bullied by the domineering mother she lives with. An elderly spinster is struggling to survive financially because of her income being affected by the wartime economy. An elderly woman is being cared for by her maid and a companion, and there is a single man who keeps himself to himself so that no one knows what his occupation is.

When the police investigating the murder find out that Miss Silver is staying with her friend, Mrs Underwood, they invite her to join forces with them but the relationship becomes somewhat strained when they opt for a simpler explanation for the murder than the theory Miss Silver has put forward.

However, they eventually have to admit they were wrong when the old lady, with a fondness for the poetry of Tennyson, manages to unravel what has been going on at Vandeleur House while simultaneously knitting a pair of socks for her relative in the air force.

During the story, Miss Silver also makes a new friend in one of the investigating officers, Sergeant Frank Abbott, who is invited to the celebratory tea party in her flat at the end of the novel.

I would say the only weak point in the plot is that Miss Silver uses her knowledge of a previous blackmailing case to help her identify the murderer, which gives her an advantage over the police and the reader. But nevertheless, I found Miss Silver Intervenes, first published in 1944, to be extremely well written and enjoyable.

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The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L Sayers

Novel's fascinating format makes for a compelling and ingenious murder mystery

The Documents in the Case is
notable for its experimental format

A bundle of letters and statements can be daunting to sort out in real life, but when a reader is presented with the same challenge at the beginning of a detective novel, they might be put off from even starting to read the story.

However, when the author of the novel happens to be Dorothy L Sayers, I think most readers would probably be prepared to make the effort.  

In The Documents in the Case, the sixth detective novel by the author, which was published in 1930, there will be a murder to be solved eventually, and two men will join forces to play detective. But that is about all this story has in common with Dorothy’s other detective novels featuring her aristocratic sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, who doesn’t appear in this book at all.

The murder victim is not discovered until page 135. By then Dorothy has introduced us to the main protagonists in the story by presenting us with a succession of letters that they have written to other people, which will eventually become part of a bundle of evidence presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

We read the letters written by a young writer, John Munting, to his fiancée, Elizabeth Drake, letters written by a middle-aged spinster, Agatha Milsom, to her sister, Olive, and letters from an older man, George Harrison, to his son, Paul. In theory, if we are astute enough, we should have all the information we need to solve the crime when it finally takes place.

We learn a lot from all the letters about the relationship between an older man and his young wife, information that is destined to be sent to Sir Gilbert Pugh, Director of Public Prosecutions, which will ultimately lead to a murder conviction and a hanging.

Robert Eustace, the pen name for Eustace Robert Burton, a doctor and a writer of crime and mystery novels himself, was credited by Dorothy with supplying her with the plot idea for The Documents in the Case and with also giving her the supporting medical and scientific details to use.

The concept for the book was based on the ingenious idea of giving the reader all the evidence that the DPP will trawl through before deciding whether there is a case to answer.

I think Dorothy makes a success of this because she is a superb writer. Some of the letters written by the spinster, Agatha Milsom, who is working as housekeeper to the married couple, Mr and Mrs Harrison, that she sent regularly to her sister, Olive, reminded me of the letters in Jane Austen’s novels, written by characters to each other that help to move the plot forward without every scene having to be played out. Using the multiple viewpoints of the letter writers not only establishes their own characters with the reader, but also reveals their real opinions of the other characters.

My only, very slight criticism of the book is that the scientific evidence put before the reader at the end of the story was lengthy and hard for a non-scientist, such as myself, to understand completely. But I mention this as just the faintest of criticisms because I still persevered and read through it all and I think I just about understood it.

Sayers was given the idea for The
Documents in the Case by a doctor friend

The story is essentially about people and their relationships and reveals how people see things very differently. The fact that there is a murder and therefore a whodunit element to the story was a bonus for me. Without it, there wouldn’t have been much incentive to read all the letters and statements!

Pulling out the essential truth about the case from each character’s version of events is a task that falls to the victim’s son, Paul, with the reader going along for the ride. I found The Documents in the Case to be a compelling story and a real page turner and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

It transpires that the victim died as a result of being poisoned by a substance that could either have been administered deliberately, or that they could have consumed it accidentally. It falls to scientific analysis of the poison to prove whether it was administered to the victim deliberately, or whether it could have been present in food naturally, and it is not easy for the pathologist to find out the truth.

Sadly, Dorothy is said to have been disappointed with the way The Documents in the Case turned out and she confessed to wishing she had done better with the brilliant plot she had been given by her doctor and writer friend, Eustace.

In my opinion she did extremely well with it, but it is up to other readers to pronounce their own, final judgments.

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Persons or Things Unknown by Carter Dickson

Solving a seemingly impossible murder

Dickson's story appears in the
collection A Surprise for Christmas

Golden Age mystery writers wrote many excellent short stories as well as the novels they were famous for, and they loved to turn their hand to writing short, seasonal detective stories for the periodicals published over the festive season.

Persons or Things Unknown was written by one of only two American writers admitted to the prestigious British Detection Club, Carter Dickson, who was much admired by his fellow Golden Age writers for his locked room mysteries.

Carter Dickson was one of the pen names for John Dickson Carr, who lived in England and wrote most of his novels and short stories with English settings. He wrote Persons or Things Unknown for The Sketch, a weekly illustrated journal, for their Christmas edition in 1938.

Dickson served up a locked room mystery in a spooky setting with a historical background, which is perfect entertainment for whiling away an afternoon in December or January in front of a fire as a guest in someone’s unfamiliar, and not particularly comfortable, house.

Persons or Things Unknown has the reign of King Charles II as its background. When it was written, it was far less common to combine mystery with history, particularly in short story form, than it is now.

John Dickson Carr wrote under
a number of pseudonyms 

A group of guests have gathered after dinner in the drawing room of ‘a long, damp, high-windowed house, hidden behind a hill in Sussex.’  Their host has just bought the property and the party after Christmas is also meant to be a house warming.

One of the guests, who narrates the story, tells us that the smell of the past was in the house and that you could not get over the idea that ‘someone was following you about.’

The host alarms the group of guests by saying he wants to know if it is safe for anyone to sleep in the little room at the top of the stairs. He says he has ‘a bundle of evidence’ about ‘something queer’ that once happened in the room.

He then tells them he has been given a diary in which the writer says he once saw a man hacked to death in the little room at the top of the stairs. The man’s body is alleged to have had 13 stab wounds caused by ‘a weapon that wasn’t there, which was wielded by a hand that wasn’t there’.

The diary tells the story of the beautiful young daughter of the house, who was once engaged to a local landowner. Then along came a fashionably dressed young man from the court of the newly restored King Charles II, who fell for her and was determined to win her hand in marriage. The subsequent dramatic events led to a seemingly impossible murder in the little room at the top of the stairs, which used to be called The Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. It was a mystery that no one had ever been able to solve.

The host then puts all the facts he has been able to discover before his guests, who include a policeman and an historian, and invites them to come up with a solution.

The Hollow Man is regarded
as Dickson Carr's masterpiece

John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown in Pennsylvania in 1906 and moved to England in the 1930s, where he married an Englishwoman and began writing mysteries. He was published under the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

Most of his novels had English settings and English characters and his two best-known fictional detectives, Dr Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, were both English. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of Golden Age mysteries. He was influenced by his enthusiasm for the stories of Gaston Leroux and became a master of the locked room detective story in which a seemingly impossible crime is solved. His 1935 Dr Fell mystery, The Hollow Man, is considered his masterpiece and was selected as the best locked room mystery of all time in 1981 by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.

Persons or Things Unknown was republished by the British Library in 2020 in A Surprise For Christmas, a collection of seasonal mysteries selected by the crime writer Martin Edwards.    

In his introduction to Persons or Things Unknown, Edwards says the author ‘blends historical atmosphere with a pleasing locked room mystery in the form of an inverted detective story of the kind first popularised by R. Austin Freeman.’

In my opinion, this pleasing locked room mystery by Carter Dickson, which takes up just 20 pages of the book, would be the perfect post lunch, or post dinner, winter diversion.

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Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon

A ‘creepy’ Christmas story with all the classic festive ingredients

John Jefferson Farjeon was a journalist who
went on to be a successful novelist

When a group of passengers trapped on a snowbound train on Christmas Eve decide to take their chances in the ‘curtain of whirling white’ to try to find shelter, the scene is set for an intriguing seasonal mystery.

No one answers the bell at the first house they find, but when they try the door handle it turns and they stumble inside with relief. The fires are lit, the table is set for tea, but surprisingly there is nobody at home.

It is obvious the occupants would not have ventured out in such extreme weather conditions unless there had been an emergency and the house has clearly been prepared for guests, so despite uncomfortable feelings of guilt, the train travellers warm themselves by the fire, eat the tea that has been prepared and set out to solve the mystery.

The main sleuthing brain belongs to an elderly gentleman, Mr Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, who uses a mixture of reasoned logic and psychic intuition to try to work out what has happened to the occupants of the house.

He is ably assisted by a bright young man, David Carrington and his cheerful sister, Lydia, who has practical skills. A chorus girl, Jessie, who has fallen in the snow and sprained her ankle, a young clerk called Thomson who succumbs to ‘flu, Hopkins, an elderly bore, and Smith, a rough man who turns out to be a criminal, complete the Christmas house party.

Mystery in White is published as
a British Library Crime Classic

The author of Mystery in White, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, was a crime and mystery novelist, playwright, and screen writer. Born in 1883, Farjeon worked for ten years for Amalgamated Press in London before going freelance. He went on to become the author of more than 60 crime and mystery novels, short story collections and plays.

He was a major figure during the Golden Age of murder mysteries between the two world wars and Dorothy L Sayers praised him for being ‘quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.’

Farjeon was named after his maternal grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, who was an American actor. His father, Benjamin Farjeon, was a successful novelist, one of his brothers was a composer, another a drama critic and director, and his sister, Eleanor Farjeon, wrote poems, including the words for the hymn, Morning Has Broken.

Originally published in 1937, Mystery in White was republished as a British Library Crime Classic in 2014. Like most Golden Age mysteries, it has a satisfying, logical conclusion, brought about by the deductive powers of Mr Maltby and the heroics of David.

At the end of the story, the police inspector, who manages to reach the house on Christmas Day, remarks to his sergeant: “Four murders in a dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey.”

When the owners of the house return they are happy to forgive the intrusion by the party from the train. As Lydia had said earlier to the chorus girl, Jessie: “Suppose this house belonged to you and you returned to it after the world’s worst snowstorm, would you rather find your larder empty or seven skeletons?" 

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Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

An author famous for Regency romances has a stab at a country house mystery

The Cornerstone edition of
Footsteps in the Dark

Prolific writer Georgette Heyer is famous for creating the Regency England genre of romantic novels, which were inspired by her love of Jane Austen’s books and were meticulously researched and full of period detail.

Georgette is probably less well known for her detective fiction, which she began writing in 1932 when she produced a country house mystery, Footsteps in the Dark.

She wrote the novel while awaiting the birth of her son, Richard George Rougier, and afterwards said dismissively that she did not claim it as ‘a major work’.

For the next few years, Georgette published one romance novel and one detective novel every year. The romances always outsold the detective novels, which may be why Georgette is chiefly remembered for them.

Her son, Richard, once said that Georgette regarded the writing of a detective story as similar to tackling a crossword puzzle, an intellectual diversion before harder tasks had to be faced.

It has been claimed that Georgette’s husband, George Rougier, a mining engineer who later became a barrister, often provided her with the plots and that she created the characters and the relationships and brought the plot points to life.

Georgette’s detective novels have been praised mostly for their humour. The New York Times wrote: ‘Rarely have we seen humour and mystery so perfectly blended.’ The Daily Mail once referred to Georgette as: ‘The wittiest of detective story writers.’

The novels were all set in the period in which they were written and the humour comes from the characters and the dialogue that takes place between them.

I was keen to read her first detective novel, Footsteps in the Dark, and I was not disappointed. 

Georgette Heyer wrote her debut
detective novel while pregnant

Two sisters, Celia and Margaret, and their brother, Peter, inherit an old country house called The Priory from their uncle. The property has not been lived in for many years because their uncle preferred to live elsewhere, but the three of them and Celia’s husband, Charles, decide to spend a few weeks holiday at The Priory. They soon learn from the local people that the house is believed to be haunted but are determined not to be frightened into leaving.

When they hear peculiar noses and a skeleton falls out of a secret cupboard, they try to find out more from the other residents in the village. Then a murder is committed and they feel they have to stay in the house and solve the mystery. I thought it was a carefully plotted story, with believable characters and a satisfying solution at the end.

Georgette produced 12 detective novels in total, between 1932 and 1953 when her final novel, Detection Unlimited was published.

She believed that publicity was not necessary for good sales and, wishing to maintain her privacy, refused to grant interviews, which is perhaps another reason her detective stories have been overlooked. 

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Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham

Campion risks his life to try to bring an audacious killer to justice
 

The Vintage edition of 
Death of a Ghost

Death of a Ghost, Margery Allingham’s sixth novel to feature the gentleman adventurer Albert Campion, was first published in the UK in 1934.

In a note about Campion at the beginning of the book, the author observes that her hero is an adventurer, whose exploits are sometimes picaresque, as in Mystery Mile and Sweet Danger, but he sometimes faces grave difficulties, as in Police at the Funeral. She warns that Death of a Ghost falls into the second category.

When the story starts, preparations are being made for a party at the London home of John Lafcadio, an artist who has been dead for 18 years. It is the eve of the annual ceremony for the unveiling of one of the series of 12 paintings he has left behind in a bid to keep his memory alive.

Campion, who is a friend of the painter’s widow, Belle, visits her the day before the ceremony and attends the unveiling occasion the following evening. When the ceremony is interrupted by a daring and particularly brutal murder, Campion calls in his good friend, Inspector Stanislaus Oates to investigate.

Suspicion falls on a member of the family, but the police can’t find enough proof to make an arrest. But when another murder is committed at the property, Campion decides to investigate for himself to help his old friend, Belle.

I found the novel slow at first, while lots of characters were being introduced and described. The action didn’t really get under way until page 50.

Throughout the novel, Campion seems passive, not behaving at all like the action man that he was in Sweet Danger.

In another departure from her previous stories, Margery reveals that Campion has guessed the identity of the killer and names the person about 100 pages from the end of the book. He says he has no means of proving it and fears for Belle’s safety, lamenting to Inspector Oates that he is being outwitted by the killer.

Campion seems strangely trusting to accept an invitation for a drink at the suspect’s apartment and then to go out to dinner with a person he feels sure has committed two murders.

Peter Davison played Albert Campion in a 
BBC TV adaptation of Death of a Ghost

He allows himself to fall into a trap set for him by the suspect and then the action heats up with Campion’s life in danger.

The writer Margery Allingham was born in 1904 in London and began writing at the age of eight when she had a story published in a magazine.

Her first novel was published when she was 19, but she did not make her breakthrough as a crime writer until her novel, The Crime at Black Dudley, was published in 1929. This introduced her series detective, Albert Campion, even though he appeared only as a minor character in her first book.

He was at first thought to be a parody of Dorothy L Sayers’s hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, but Campion matured as the series of books progressed and proved there was a lot more to him, becoming increasingly popular with readers.

Margery Allingham is regarded as one of the four great Queens of Crime from the Golden Age of detective fiction. One of her fellow Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, once said of the author: “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.”

Reviewers have identified Death of A Ghost as a proper detective story rather than a high-spirited thriller, but it differs from other detective stories of the time by having the sleuth identify the killer and share his knowledge with the reader considerably before the end of the book. The reader must wait for proof that Campion is right and to find out whether the police will have enough evidence to arrest the suspect and bring him to justice. But like all good mystery writers, Margery keeps a few surprises up her sleeve until the end of the story.

Death of a Ghost was filmed for the BBC in 1960, when Campion was played by Bernard Horstall, and then again in 1989, when the role was played by Peter Davison.

Vintage Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group, have now republished all Margery’s novels featuring her series detective Albert Campion.

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Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell

Inoffensive’ female victim had a long list of enemies

The Death at the Opera edition
published by Vintage Publishing

Mrs Bradley uses all her skills as a psychoanalyst to find out who is guilty of the murder of a teacher during a performance of the comic Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado at an experimental co-educational school.

Author Gladys Mitchell evokes the school setting very well, revealing what she thought of some of the work and the rituals she herself was involved in during her long career as a schoolteacher.

Eccentric sleuth Mrs Bradley is called in to investigate by the headmaster of Hillmaston School after a young arithmetic teacher is found drowned in a cloakroom before she can make her entrance during the opera production in the role of Katisha.  Another teacher had to take over the part at the last minute and gave a magnificent performance.

Mrs Bradley is very clever in the way she talks to both staff and pupils and persuades them to open up to her. Gladys comes up with some believable, if eccentric characters, revealing what she must have thought about some of her teaching colleagues over the years.

The author brings back the Reverend Noel Wells, who was Mrs Bradley’s ‘Watson’ in her fourth novel, The Saltmarsh Murders. He becomes Mrs Bradley's sleuthing partner again when she travels to Bognor Regis to investigate the murder victim’s past. At one stage he puts his own life in danger to test one of her theories.

They encounter a man who has been acquitted in court of murdering his wife and Mrs Bradley, showing no fear, offers herself as bait in order to see what he is capable of. With the help of Noel, she ends up solving a different murder.

Author Gladys Mitchell keeps the
reader guessing until the final pages

Death at the Opera, originally published in 1934, is written in a very elegant and witty style and Mrs Bradley is presented as a more rounded person and less of a caricature than she was in the earlier books.

The detective cleverly draws up a list of people with a motive, and a list of those with the opportunity to commit the crime. She eventually dismisses all the people with a motive and all the people who had the opportunity. She then makes a list of all the attributes the murderer must have had to commit the crime and not give themselves away. This helps her to solve the case.

Mrs Bradley also solves the offstage murder of a woman who has drowned in an ornamental pond in the grounds of a mental hospital, who had been the wife of the music teacher at the school.

Gladys keeps the reader guessing until the last pages of the book, when she produces an incredible surprise.

I would agree with a review in the Observer newspaper, which said: “Mrs Lestrange Bradley is by far the best and most vital English female detective.” I think her fifth outing in Death at the Opera shows her at her most bizarre and brilliant.

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The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth

A Miss Silver mystery with a bonus romance for the reader

The action in The Chinese Shawl takes place
among guests at a country house

After reading The Chinese Shawl, I was delighted to discover that Patricia Wentworth’s fifth mystery to feature her series detective, Miss Silver, was her best so far. The Chinese Shawl, which was first published in 1943, was less of a thriller, or novel of suspense like her first four Miss Silver stories, and more of a whodunnit.

However, the murder victim was portrayed by the author as such an unpleasant character that until their violent death 120 pages into the book, I was thinking more along the lines of ‘when are they going to do it?’ or, ‘I wish they would just get on with it and do it,’ until the murderer strikes at last.

The novel is set against the backdrop of World War II and features a group of young people, who are all closely connected with each other, attending a weekend house party at an old house called the Priory. Some of the men are enjoying leave, or are convalescing after being wounded, and a tangle of troubled relationships and past liaisons between them and the women add to the tension.

Unusually, for what is essentially a crime novel, there is a romance at the heart of the book and a family feud potentially standing in its way. Although the previous Miss Silver mysteries usually had a couple falling in love among the characters, the romance element in this novel is far more closely tied up with the plot

The Chinese Shawl is the
fifth Miss Silver mystery

Patricia Wentworth, who was born in October 1877, 145 years ago this month, supplies the reader with interesting details about life during World War II, such as the blackout rules, the damage caused by air raids, the plight of evacuees and the strain caused by the war on relationships, making the book still fresh and interesting for new readers in 2022.

Miss Silver has been invited in her capacity as a private detective by an old school friend to stay at the Priory and try to solve a series of thefts that have been happening. The lady detective gets to the bottom of the thefts quickly, but is still staying in the house when the murder takes place.

The detection element mainly consists of the police superintendent, Randal March, listening patiently to Miss Silver’s theories about the case, which are based on her instincts and judgment of character. The reason for his forbearance is that Miss Silver used to be his governess. Miss Silver produces a large quantity of pale pink and pale blue knitted matinee jackets and bootees while she is discussing the case with him throughout the story.

The plot is as intricately constructed as the baby clothes and, right at the centre of it, is the Chinese shawl of the title, a colourful garment worn by one of the main characters.

The murderer is not revealed until the end of the book, after the author has skilfully misdirected the reader during the last few chapters, while playing completely within the rules.

I enjoyed the first four Miss Silver mysteries but thought The Chinese Shawl was even better. I would recommend the novel to detective fiction readers who like a bit of romance on the side and enjoy a well-defined period setting.

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