The Secret of Chimneys

A light-hearted caper with a satisfying ending

The cover of the 2017 edition, 
published by Harper Collins

Agatha Christie once again chose the adventure story format for her fifth novel, The Secret of Chimneys, rather than the detective story conventions she had employed in her first and third novels, which both featured her Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot.

Published in 1925, The Secret of Chimneys details the exploits of a good-looking young adventurer, Anthony Cade. The story starts in Africa, moves to England and is influenced by the political intrigues going on in the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia.

Needing money and looking for a new adventure, Cade accepts two jobs from a friend. He has to deliver some potentially controversial political memoirs safely to a publisher in London and restore some stolen letters to a woman who has been blackmailed because of them.

Linking these two jobs is an English country house called Chimneys, which is famous for hosting informal weekend parties, where politicians, heads of corporations and foreign dignitaries are able to mingle socially and conduct their business privately in its comfortable surroundings.

A shooting party is to take place at Chimneys, to be hosted reluctantly by its owner, Lord Caterham, who has been asked to assist the Government. Prince Michael of Oblovic is to be a guest at the party and it is anticipated that important Government business will be done.

In the course of carrying out his tasks, Cade goes to Chimneys himself. A murder occurs in the house just after he arrives, starting off a series of fast-paced events. Cade finds himself caught up in an international conspiracy and it soon becomes obvious that someone will stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being restored in faraway Herzoslovakia.

ITV reimagined the story as a Miss Marple
mystery, with Julie McKenzie as Marple

Despite the presence in the house of officers from both Scotland Yard and the French Surete, Cade has to pursue his own ideas in order to find the murderer, to be with Virginia, the woman he has fallen in love with, and ultimately fulfil his own destiny.  

Agatha Christie, who was born 132 years ago today in 1890, was widely praised for writing The Secret of Chimneys. Reviewers said it was more than just a murder mystery as it involved a treasure hunt. In July 1925, The Times Literary Supplement praised the ‘most unexpected and highly satisfactory ending’ of the story.

The novel has since been called ‘a first-class romp’ and been judged to be one of the author’s best early thrillers. I thought it was a light-hearted caper and found it enjoyable to read. I admired the way Agatha kept the ‘secret’ of Chimneys up her sleeve right to the end.  

The novel introduced the characters of Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard and Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent, who were both to appear in later novels.

It was the last of Agatha’s crime novels to be published by Bodley Head as the author then moved to Collins, later to become Harper Collins. It is known to have been translated into 17 different languages.

The Secret of Chimneys was adapted as a stage play by Agatha in 1931, but its world premiere did not actually take place until 2003 in Canada. It has also been adapted for television and as a graphic novel, although a version made by ITV in 2010 turned it into a Miss Marple mystery and took several other liberties with the plot.

The fictional Eastern European country of Herzoslovakia is also referenced in two Poirot stories, The Stymphalian Birds and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.

Agatha went on to become such a popular and successful novelist that even though we are now well into the 21st century, her books are still being purchased from shops and online and are regularly borrowed from public libraries. New film and television adaptations of her wonderful stories are constantly being made and she remains the most translated individual author to this day.

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Danger Point by Patricia Wentworth

Not so much a whodunit, more a question of who is trying to do it

Danger Point was first 
published in 1941

The self-effacing, elderly lady detective, Maud Silver, is sitting on a train about to depart to London when a young woman who is clearly very upset bursts into her compartment.

The woman is a wealthy heiress, Lisle Jerningham, who has recently got married and should have been blissfully happy. But she has overheard a sinister conversation in the garden of a country house, which has terrified her.

Lisle confides in Miss Silver about fleeing from the house party she had been attending after hearing total strangers discussing how her husband’s first wife died in an apparent accident. After Lisle’s new husband inherited his first wife’s considerable fortune, he was able to save his family home. The unknown people seemed to think her husband was broke again and were speculating about whether he would attempt to engineer a second convenient misadventure.

Miss Silver does her best to calm Lisle down and gives the distraught young woman her business card in case she wants to consult her professionally at any time.

But the beautiful heiress has mixed emotions once she has started to feel better. She loves her new husband, Dale Jerningham, and can’t allow herself to believe that he would wish to harm her, even though she has started to wonder about a recent incident when she nearly drowned while swimming with him and other members of his family.

Miss Silver does not know whether Lisle really is in danger or is simply being paranoid. But after another attempt is made on Lisle’s life, the young wife gets in touch with her at her London office and then subsequently cancels the appointment she has made. After reading in the newspaper that another young woman has been found dead near Lisle’s coastal home, the detective decides to travel there in order to investigate further.

Danger Point is Patricia Wentworth’s fourth Miss Silver novel and was first published in 1941. Like her previous Miss Silver story, Lonesome Road, it  involves a rich young woman who someone is trying to kill. But is it Lisle’s handsome husband, another member of his family, or a disgruntled former employee?

Patricia Wentworth could draw
on a depth of life experiences

Patricia Wentworth was the pen name of Dora Amy Elles, who was born in India, where her father was stationed with the British Army, in 1877. She was sent to England to be educated, but returned to India and married George Dillon in 1906. He had three children from a previous marriage and they had one child together. After his death she moved back to England with the children.

In 1920 she married again, to George Turnbull, and settled in Surrey. She had begun writing while in India and in 1910 had won the Melrose Prize for her first published novel, A Marriage Under the Terror, which was set during the French Revolution.

Under the pen name of Patricia Wentworth, she wrote 32 crime novels featuring Miss Silver, beginning with Grey Mask in 1928 and ending with Girl in the Cellar in 1961, the year of her death. Miss Silver develops as a character during the series and works closely with Scotland Yard. The reader eventually discovers she is a retired governess with a passion for Tennyson as well as for knitting.

I would recommend Danger Point, which is very well written with good descriptions of the coastal scenery that form the backdrop for the story. Patricia maintains the mystery and the suspense right until the end. It is less a question of whodunit and more a matter of the reader finding out who is trying to do it.

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Lonesome Road by Patricia Wentworth

Miss Silver is at her best as she pits her wits against a potential murderer

The latest Hodder paperback
edition of Lonesome Road

The reader learns more about the background and character of the mysterious Miss Silver in this third novel by Patricia Wentworth to feature the elderly lady detective.

In Lonesome Road, published in 1939, heiress Rachel Treherne is convinced her life is in danger and goes to see Miss Silver at her office in London, after she remembers a friend mentioning the name of the private investigator.

Miss Silver is sitting at a walnut writing desk in a room that looks more like a Victorian parlour than an office. Rachel sees she is a little woman in a snuff-coloured dress with ‘what appeared to be a great deal of mousy-grey hair done up in a tight bun at the back and arranged in front in one of those extensive curled fringes associated with the late Queen Alexandra, the whole severely controlled by a net.’

She begins to have second thoughts about confiding in Miss Silver, but the elderly lady encourages her to say what she is worried about and so Rachel tells her that she thinks someone is trying to kill her.

Rachel explains that her father left her an immense fortune that she has to administer as a trustee. She has used some of the money to set up retirement homes for elderly people who are not very well off. The rest of the capital is tied up. She can leave it to her relatives in her will, but is unable to give much of it away now.

She has received an anonymous letter telling her she has ‘had the money long enough and it is someone else’s turn now’. This has been followed by two more letters, the third saying simply, ‘Get ready to die.’

Rachel tells Miss Silver she has had a narrow escape from falling down the stairs. Then her curtains were discovered on fire in her bedroom and someone tampered with her chocolates to try to poison her.

Patricia Wentworth wrote
32 Miss Silver mysteries

Several members of her family live with her in her house and she tells Miss Silver she loves them all and can’t bear to suspect any of them.

She arranges for Miss Silver to come and stay with her. Miss Silver says she is to tell her family that her new guest is a retired governess, which is, in fact, perfectly true.

It is the first time any clue about the mysterious old lady’s background has been given to the reader by the author.

Miss Silver also quotes the poet Tennyson twice during the meeting with Rachel and says she admires the great poet and frequently quotes him to her clients.

But before Miss Silver even arrives at Rachel’s family home, the heiress has had another brush with death, having fallen over the side of a cliff. She later says she felt sure she was pushed. She manages to cling to a bush growing out of the side of the cliff and is rescued by a friend who has come to look for her.

Going to stay in Rachel’s house in the guise of an impoverished retired governess gives Miss Silver the chance to observe Rachel’s family. She points out later that they talk to each other as though she isn’t there because they feel she is unimportant.

She quickly realises that Rachel’s older sister, Mabel, considers herself to be an invalid and wants Rachel to back her grown-up children financially in their various ventures.

There is one cousin who wants Rachel to spend her money on charitable projects she is interested in, while another cousin is clearly short of money and very anxious. A third cousin, who is an artist, wants Rachel to marry him.

Meanwhile, the maid, Louisa, who is devoted to her mistress, goes to desperate lengths to make Rachel aware of the fact she is in danger from her whole family.

Thank goodness for Miss Silver, who sees and hears everything while she sits in the background knitting.

Lonesome Road is well worth reading, if you like novels of suspense, as it maintains the mystery well and doesn’t let the reader relax until the final page. 

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Look to the Lady

Third Campion mystery features an ancient relic, witches, gypsies and a ruthless gang

Look to the Lady involves Campion searching
for a 'monster' hiding in Suffolk woodland

Margery Allingham was well into her stride writing about her mysterious, amateur sleuth, Albert Campion, when she published her third novel about his adventures, Look to the Lady, in 1931, just two years after his first appearance in The Crime at Black Dudley. 

Campion and his butler and ex-offender sidekick, Magersfonteing Lugg, rescue the son of a baronet, Val Gyrth, from violent criminals attempting to kidnap him. They offer to help him prevent the theft of a rare family heirloom, the Gyrth Chalice, but as soon as they arrive with him at his family home in Suffolk, they discover his aunt has been found dead in mysterious circumstances.

Campion sets out to solve the mystery of the aunt’s death and work out how to protect the valuable chalice, which the Gyrth family have been guarding for the nation for more than a thousand years. 

To solve the mystery, Campion has to go out with an elderly professor to try to find the ‘monster’ hiding in nearby woodland that has been terrorising the local people for years. 

Look to the Lady has been
republished by Vintage Books

After infiltrating the headquarters of the gang plotting to steal the chalice, Campion is imprisoned by them, until a band of gypsies helps him to escape. 

Then he has to ride a wild, black horse five miles across open countryside to be in time to prevent the theft of the chalice from its home high up in a tower. 

Although Margery Allingham was writing during the Golden Age of detective fiction, Look to the Lady is less of a cosy, village mystery and more of a sophisticated, fast-moving novel of suspense.

Agatha Christie has been quoted as saying: ‘Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light,’ and, in her day, Margery was regarded as one of the four Queens of Crime, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. 

Look to the Lady was first published in Great Britain by Jarrolds more than 90 years ago, but it has now been republished by Vintage Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group. It remains an exciting, addictive page turner and I can highly recommend it.

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(Suffolk woodland photo by Benjamin Thomas via Pixabay)

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