#28 – Murder in the Mews

This collection of four longer short stories/novellas all feature Hercule Poirot (but not Arthur Hastings) and comprises:

(1) Murder in the Mews – “Nobody would hear a shot, for instance, on a night like this,” says Inspector Japp to Poirot on Bonfire Night. The next day it becomes apparent that a murder has been committed under the cover of the fireworks.

(2) The Incredible Theft – Poirot investigates a matter of national importance.

(3) Dead Man’s Mirror – Poirot arrives at Hamborough Close only to find that his host has just committed suicide inside a locked room. So why was he sent for?

(4) Triangle at Rhodes – This triangle is not Pythagorean but Eternal and a Greek Tragedy ensues.

(1) is a nice take on a common idea, (2) is not very exciting, (3) could easily have been extended into a full length novel, and the ideas within  (4) are explored more fully in a later novel.

Recurring character development

Hercule Poirot

Has previously met Major Riddle, Chief Constable of Westshire (3).

Signs of the Times

Murder in the Mews is probably set in 1935.

Mrs Allen was visited by the driver of a Standard Swallow saloon (1). The Swallow Coachbuilding Company Limited was founded by William Walmsley and William Lyons in 1930. They used a chassis produced by the Standard Motor Company to build the SS 1. The business became Jaguar Cars in 1945.

Poirot asks Lord Mayfield why neither the police nor the AA scouts were alerted so that they could help trace the thief (2). The Automobile Association was founded in 1905 to help motorists avoid speed traps. A test case from 1910 prevented AA patrolmen from indicating to motorists that they were approaching a speed trap. However they then saluted members displaying a badge on their unless their was a speed trap ahead as they could not be prosecuted for failing to salute. The more familiar breakdown service began in 1920.

Mr Hunberly is Prime Minister (2). If this was set when first published (April 1937) then the actual holder of that office would be Stanley Baldwin.

Dead Man’s Mirror is set in 1936.

Gervase Chevenix-Gore’s biography refers to his service during the European War (1914-1918) which would now almost certainly just be referred to as the First World War rather than referencing a specific theatre of action (3).

Hugo Trent is in the Blues (3). This is the cavalry regiment the Royal Horse Guards which merged with the Royal Dragoons in 1969 to become The Blues and Royals.

Hugo says that Gervase had “certainly ‘been places and seen things’ – more than most of his generation” (3). This could be a reference to a 1935 book of the same name by Kenneth Mackenzie.

When discussing whether it is suicide or murder, Major Riddle says “Everything according to Cocker – but for one circumstance” (3). Edward Cocker (1631-1676) was a mathematician and thought to be the author of “Arithmetick”. This book was so popular that when meaning something was correct someone would say it was “according to Cocker”.

Gervase’s chef had been with the Emperor of Moravia (3). Moravia was part of Czechoslovakia at the time the story is set and is now part of the Czech Republic.

Valentine Chantry has modelled for Chanel (4). Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel began the business which became an international fashion house when she opened a millinery shop in 1909.

Waterproof make-up had already been invented by 1936 (4).

Commander Chantry wonders if there might be a general election because of “this Palestine business” (4). In late 1935 Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, leader of the Black Hand, a militant anti-Zionist and anti-British organisation, was killed in a battle with British police in Mandatory Palestine. This sparked the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936-1939).

References to previous works

Mr Satterthwaite mentions the “Crow’s Nest business”, a reference to Three-Act Tragedy (3).

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Each story was adapted as an episode of the David Suchet series so fulfils “Why – book made into TV programme”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung (1899)

Harry “Bunny” Manders is unwilling to face the social disgrace of a bounced cheque and is ready to blow out what little brains he has but before he does so he has one last, slender hope. Maybe A. J. Raffles, renowned cricketer and man-about-town, will show him some kindness in return for services rendered during their schooldays?

Raffles though has his own pecuniary difficulties but he invites Bunny to join him in visiting a “friend” who may be able to help them both even though it is already two o’clock in the morning. It takes some time before the naïve Bunny realises they are engaged in the burglary of a jeweller’s shop. Although he is initially disgusted, he finds crime exhilarating and becomes Raffles’ accomplice in a series of escapades.

E. W. Hornung married a sister of Arthur Conan Doyle and Raffles and Bunny are a deliberate anti-version of Holmes and Watson. Indeed this volume’s dedication is “To A. C. D. This form of flattery”.

I believe Raffles is the first “gentleman thief”(but please correct me if I am wrong) and he was soon to be followed by Arsène Lupin (Maurice Leblanc) and Hercule Flambeau (supporting character in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories) and other anti-heroes such as The Four Just Men.

The stories included are:

The Ides of March – Raffles saves Bunny’s life and introduces him to a life of crime.

A Costume Piece – Raffles proves to be a master of disguise.

Gentlemen and Players -Raffles is both an amateur and a professional.

Le Premier Pas – Raffles’ first crime – in Australia!

Wilful Murder – Raffles is driven to take extreme measures.

Nine Points of the Law – Bunny steps in where Raffles has failed.

The Return Match – Raffles is visited by an escaped convict.

The Gift of the Emperor – Raffles’ greatest exploit.

Nine Points of the Law is the pick of this collection – overall they are not worth paying too much for but I have downloaded a free version for the Kindle in the past.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Fulfils “Who – Watson narrator”.

 

#27 – Cards on the Table

Mr Shaitana collects art. He also collects murderers. Successful murderers. Those who have not been caught. He invites Poirot to dinner to meet some of his specimens.

Three other representatives of the forces of law and order attend the dinner party: Superintendent Battle of the Metropolitan Police, Colonel Race of the Secret Service, and Mrs Oliver, writer of crime fiction. Poirot assumes that the other four guests, Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer, Miss Meredith, and Major Despard, are part of Shaitana’s collection.

After dinner, the good guys play bridge in one room, while the bad guys play in another, watched by Shaitana. Almost inevitably the evening ends with the discovery that their host has been stabbed to death. No one else has entered the room so one murderer has struck again to preserve their secret.

In her foreword, Christie explains that she has deliberately written a different type of detective story – not one where the least likely person did it but instead where all suspects are equally likely to have done it.

So instead of investigating the murder in the present, our sleuths have to first identify and then investigate murders from the past which hitherto have gone unsuspected. Poirot hopes that by studying these cold cases he may learn enough about each suspect to determine which of them committed this particular murder in this particular way. But even if he can identify the killer, will he be able to provide sufficient evidence to convict them?

I’ve always liked this one a lot because of the way suspicion passes around the field of suspects, and although there is no final surprise – Christie has played fair with her foreword – events do take a number of turns before the truth is revealed.

Mrs Oliver is a fascinating character and Christie obviously has fun with her literary alter ego, especially when dealing with picky readers: “I’m always getting tangled up in horticulture and things like that. People write to me and say I’ve got the wrong flowers all out together.”

Recurring character development

Hercule Poirot

Knows of Colonel Race before the evening of the murder but they have not met before.

Is an “early-to-bed” man.

This is one of his favourite cases.

Had a friend in the English police force about forty years ago.

Mrs Oliver

Is “an agreeable woman of middle age, handsome in a rather untidy fashion with fine eyes, substantial shoulders and a large quantity of rebellious grey hair with which she was continually experimenting”.

Is a “hot-headed feminist” and one of her favourite sayings is “Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard.”

Her thirty-two books (forty-six according to Parker Pyne Investigates – perhaps she writes in other genres and here she is referring to crime fiction only) include “The Body in the Library”, the similarly plotted “The Lotus Murder”and “The Clue of the Candle Wax”, an untitled work where all the Chief Constables are shot simultaneously, “The Death in the Drainpipe”, and “The Affair of the Second Goldfish”.

Her recurring sleuth is the Finn, Sven Hjerson, although she wishes she had made him a Bulgar as then she would receive fewer complaints about accuracy. He has to break the ice on his bath every morning.

Lives in a top-floor flat close to Harley Street. Her study has tropical rainforest wallpaper.

Superintendent Battle

Knows of Hercule Poirot before the evening of the murder.

Is an “early-to-bed” man.

Inspector Japp has told him that Poirot has a tortuous mind.

Colonel Race

In 1925 he was “about forty, with a touch of greying hair at either temple, and was easily the best-looking man on board”.

Known at that time as a big-game hunter but with the general idea that he does Secret Service work.

Was jilted in his youth, so threw himself into his work.

Becomes the administrator of the Eardsley estate.

The above were disclosed in The Man in the Brown Suit but given he is a possible suspect in that book I did not include him as a recurring character in that review.

Signs of the Times

The story is explicitly set in 1937 yet the crime occurs on Friday 18th and shortly afterwards Mrs Oliver visits Anne and Rhoda in October. This combination is not possible. 18th September was a Friday in 1936.

Mr Shaitana is described several times as “Mephistophelian”. In the “Faust” story, Mephistopheles is an agent of the Devil.

Poirot asks if Shaitana has his own private “Black Museum”. An act of 1869 allowed the police to retain or destroy items used in the commission of a crime which previously had to be returned to their owners. In 1874 Inspector Neame and PC Randall collected some of these items together in order to instruct other officers. This was nicknamed the Black Museum in 1877, though is officially known as the Crime Museum.

Anne Meredith is named after one of Lucy Malleson’s pseudonyms. Under this name she wrote Portrait of a Murderer but is better known as Anthony Gilbert.

When Mrs Oliver says “now if you had a woman there”, Battle says “as a matter of fact we have—”. In the UK, Edith Smith was the first woman to be appointed a police officer with full powers of arrest in 1915. Policewomen were placed in separate teams to policemen such as the A4 division in the Metropolitan Police.

After Shaitana finishes discussing various types of accidents, there is a silence and Mrs Oliver breaks it by saying “Is it twenty-to or twenty-past? An angel passing…My feet aren’t crossed – it must be a black angel!” This is a reference to the sometimes observed phenomenon that a room falls silent at twenty past the hour, possibly because the angels are singing and humans unconsciously stop to listen. As her feet aren’t crossed for luck it must be a dark angel.

Poirot refers to Sherlock Holmes and the curious incident of the dog in the night. This refers to Holmes’ case “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”.

Anne’s former employer, Mrs Eldon, now lives in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was established following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I by the British in 1920. It came to an end in 1948 with the founding of modern Israel.

Poirot meets Major Despard just after he has left the Albany. Melbourne House was built 1771-76 by Sir Williams Chambers for the 1st Viscount Melbourne. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany lived there from 1791-1802. After this the three-storey mansion house, seven bays wide, was converted into sixty-nine bachelor apartments by Henry Holland. Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham lived here as did Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman – to be reviewed here later this month.

Major Despard had noticed a good eland head in Shaitana’s hall and says that it probably came from Rowland Ward’s. James Rowland Ward (1848-1912) was a taxidermist. His premises in Piccadilly were nicknamed “The Jungle”. He published “Records of Big Game” in 1882 which entered its twenty-ninth edition in 2014. The firm is now owned by an American company and operates from California.

Reference is made to Lord Byron’s famous poem “I never loved a dear gazelle”. The actual line is “I never nurs’d a dear gazelle” from Irish poet Thomas Moore’s “The Fire-Worshippers, part of his epic poem “Lalla Rookh”.

Poirot wishes that he had a some Brasso and a rag to clean Mrs Luxmore’s door-knocker. Brasso is a liquid metal polish, created by Reckitt & Sons (now Reckitt Benckiser) in 1905.

Poirot when saying “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not cricket more” is deliberately misquoting Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars”.

Mrs Lorrimer sends a letter to Fortnum and Mason’s. This department store was founded in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason.

References to previous works

Poirot, with a touch of foresight, had described the scenario presented in this book in The ABC Murders.

Anne Meredith says that it was really Poirot who solved The ABC Murders.

Poirot tells Major Despard that his last failure was twenty-eight years ago. This is “The Chocolate Box” included within “Poirot’s Early Cases”.

Poirot reveals the solution of Murder on the Orient Express to Rhoda Dawes. It can be inferred that although he tried to keep the truth a secret, given that a little journalistic work may have put someone on the same trail, the facts did become public.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Fulfils “How – death by knife/dagger”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#27 – Cards on the Table – WITH SPOILERS

Mr Shaitana collects art. He also collects murderers. Successful murderers. Those who have not been caught. He invites Poirot to dinner to meet some of his specimens.

Three other representatives of the forces of law and order attend the dinner party: Superintendent Battle of the Metropolitan Police, Colonel Race of the Secret Service, and Mrs Oliver, writer of crime fiction. Poirot assumes that the other four guests, Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer, Miss Meredith, and Major Despard, are part of Shaitana’s collection.

After dinner, the good guys play bridge in one room, while the bad guys play in another, watched by Shaitana. Almost inevitably the evening ends with the discovery that their host has been stabbed to death. No one else has entered the room so one murderer has struck again to preserve their secret.

In her foreword, Christie explains that she has deliberately written a different type of detective story – not one where the least likely person did it but instead where all suspects are equally likely to have done it.

So instead of investigating the murder in the present, our sleuths have to first identify and then investigate murders from the past which hitherto have gone unsuspected. Poirot hopes that by studying these cold cases he may learn enough about each suspect to determine which of them committed this particular murder in this particular way. But even if he can identify the killer, will he be able to provide sufficient evidence to convict them?

I’ve always liked this one a lot because of the way suspicion passes around the field of suspects, and although there is no final surprise – Christie has played fair with her foreword – events do take a number of turns before the truth is revealed.

Mrs Oliver is a fascinating character and Christie obviously has fun with her literary alter ego, especially when dealing with picky readers: “I’m always getting tangled up in horticulture and things like that. People write to me and say I’ve got the wrong flowers all out together.”

Recurring character development

Hercule Poirot

Knows of Colonel Race before the evening of the murder but they have not met before.

Is an “early-to-bed” man.

This is one of his favourite cases.

Had a friend in the English police force about forty years ago.

Mrs Oliver

Is “an agreeable woman of middle age, handsome in a rather untidy fashion with fine eyes, substantial shoulders and a large quantity of rebellious grey hair with which she was continually experimenting”.

Is a “hot-headed feminist” and one of her favourite sayings is “Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard.”

Her thirty-two books (forty-six according to Parker Pyne Investigates – perhaps she writes in other genres and here she is referring to crime fiction only) include “The Body in the Library”, the similarly plotted “The Lotus Murder”and “The Clue of the Candle Wax”, an untitled work where all the Chief Constables are shot simultaneously, “The Death in the Drainpipe”, and “The Affair of the Second Goldfish”.

Her recurring sleuth is the Finn, Sven Hjerson, although she wishes she had made him a Bulgar as then she would receive fewer complaints about accuracy. He has to break the ice on his bath every morning.

Lives in a top-floor flat close to Harley Street. Her study has tropical rainforest wallpaper.

Superintendent Battle

Knows of Hercule Poirot before the evening of the murder.

Is an “early-to-bed” man.

Inspector Japp has told him that Poirot has a tortuous mind.

Colonel Race

In 1925 he was “about forty, with a touch of greying hair at either temple, and was easily the best-looking man on board”.

Known at that time as a big-game hunter but with the general idea that he does Secret Service work.

Was jilted in his youth, so threw himself into his work.

Becomes the administrator of the Eardsley estate.

The above were disclosed in The Man in the Brown Suit but given he is a possible suspect in that book I did not include him as a recurring character in that review.

Signs of the Times

The story is explicitly set in 1937 yet the crime occurs on Friday 18th and shortly afterwards Mrs Oliver visits Anne and Rhoda in October. This combination is not possible. 18th September was a Friday in 1936.

Mr Shaitana is described several times as “Mephistophelian”. In the “Faust” story, Mephistopheles is an agent of the Devil.

Poirot asks if Shaitana has his own private “Black Museum”. An act of 1869 allowed the police to retain or destroy items used in the commission of a crime which previously had to be returned to their owners. In 1874 Inspector Neame and PC Randall collected some of these items together in order to instruct other officers. This was nicknamed the Black Museum in 1877, though is officially known as the Crime Museum.

Anne Meredith is named after one of Lucy Malleson’s pseudonyms. Under this name she wrote Portrait of a Murderer but is better known as Anthony Gilbert.

When Mrs Oliver says “now if you had a woman there”, Battle says “as a matter of fact we have—”. In the UK, Edith Smith was the first woman to be appointed a police officer with full powers of arrest in 1915. Policewomen were placed in separate teams to policemen such as the A4 division in the Metropolitan Police.

After Shaitana finishes discussing various types of accidents, there is a silence and Mrs Oliver breaks it by saying “Is it twenty-to or twenty-past? An angel passing…My feet aren’t crossed – it must be a black angel!” This is a reference to the sometimes observed phenomenon that a room falls silent at twenty past the hour, possibly because the angels are singing and humans unconsciously stop to listen. As her feet aren’t crossed for luck it must be a dark angel.

Poirot refers to Sherlock Holmes and the curious incident of the dog in the night. This refers to Holmes’ case “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”.

Anne’s former employer, Mrs Eldon, now lives in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was established following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I by the British in 1920. It came to an end in 1948 with the founding of modern Israel.

Poirot meets Major Despard just after he has left the Albany. Melbourne House was built 1771-76 by Sir Williams Chambers for the 1st Viscount Melbourne. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany lived there from 1791-1802. After this the three-storey mansion house, seven bays wide, was converted into sixty-nine bachelor apartments by Henry Holland. Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham lived here as did Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman – to be reviewed here later this month.

Major Despard had noticed a good eland head in Shaitana’s hall and says that it probably came from Rowland Ward’s. James Rowland Ward (1848-1912) was a taxidermist. His premises in Piccadilly were nicknamed “The Jungle”. He published “Records of Big Game” in 1882 which entered its twenty-ninth edition in 2014. The firm is now owned by an American company and operates from California.

Reference is made to Lord Byron’s famous poem “I never loved a dear gazelle”. The actual line is “I never nurs’d a dear gazelle” from Irish poet Thomas Moore’s “The Fire-Worshippers, part of his epic poem “Lalla Rookh”.

Poirot wishes that he had a some Brasso and a rag to clean Mrs Luxmore’s door-knocker. Brasso is a liquid metal polish, created by Reckitt & Sons (now Reckitt Benckiser) in 1905.

Poirot when saying “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not cricket more” is deliberately misquoting Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars”.

Mrs Lorrimer sends a letter to Fortnum and Mason’s. This department store was founded in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason.

References to previous works

Poirot, with a touch of foresight, had described the scenario presented in this book in The ABC Murders.

Anne Meredith says that it was really Poirot who solved The ABC Murders.

Poirot tells Major Despard that his last failure was twenty-eight years ago. This is “The Chocolate Box” included within “Poirot’s Early Cases”.

Poirot reveals the solution of Murder on the Orient Express to Rhoda Dawes. It can be inferred that although he tried to keep the truth a secret, given that a little journalistic work may have put someone on the same trail, the facts did become public.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Fulfils “How – death by knife/dagger”.

SPOILERS

It is interesting that the psychological moment mentioned in a previous title but not used there, is picked up here as the key factor in Shaitana’s murder. Roberts is able to manufacture a grand slam contract and provide himself with the best opportunity to kill whilst all eyes are concentrated elsewhere. Although “He had no business to make such a call”, because he has been overbidding his hands in the earlier rubbers, this is consistent with his play and so does not get commented on.

After this re-reading, I thought it would have been amusing if, after her foreword where she promises that there will be no least likely suspect, it had turned out to be Major Despard after all. He may not have killed in the past but may have had a particular reason to become a killer in the present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull (1934)

“Wales: the land of my fathers. My fathers can have it!”

Edward Powell, narrator of this story, would completely agree with Dylan Thomas’ assessment of his homeland. He violently objects to living in the Welsh countryside, just outside the village of Llwll (pronounced “Filth” in his own mind). More than this, he objects to living with his Aunt Mildred who delights in tormenting him and disapproves of almost everything he says and does. Unfortunately for Edward he has no independent means and is unsuited to a working life.

Following an episode where he is forced into walking into the village and back to collect his regular parcel of French novels, he determines that it is high time that his aunt met her demise which will give him the freedom he always craved. And so, with the aid of So-So, his beloved Pekinese, he plans an “accident”. But he finds that, to quote another Richard Hull title, murder isn’t easy…

I had been aware of this book long before I returned to reading GAD fiction and having read a little bit about it had a fair idea of how events would play themselves out and in this I was not wrong. I also picked up on something which I thought could have been worked better into the outcome and so overall was slightly disappointed by the resolution. I think in general I prefer a different take on an inverted mystery to the one that is presented here.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Fulfils “What – Inverted mystery”.

 

The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes (1943)

It’s back down to earth with a bump for John Appleby following* the fantastic events of “The Daffodil Affair” and its unique motive for murder – and what a bump it is for Professor Pluckrose who has been struck by a meteorite! But this is no Act of God: the heavenly body has been dropped onto the learned gentleman from the tower of Nesfield University.

There are many questions that Appleby must answer: Is it really Pluckrose who is dead? If so, was he the intended victim? Why lug the meteorite up the tower when equally deadly objects were already there? Is there any connection to Greek myth? And what is the significance of the three false beards?

As with Death at the President’s Lodging, the academic community present Appleby with their own observations and theories but always with their own individual interests at heart, so Appleby has to work hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Whilst the solution does cleverly answer one of the central questions which is repeated throughout the book, it does come through a disappointing confessional letter, rather than a nice summary from Appleby explaining how he got to the solution.

Overall, the least satisfying of the series so far, though with much that Innes’ fans will still enjoy, but definitely not one to make his detractors change their minds.

*Following in publication order only. This story is actually set pre-WWII.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

Fulfils “Who – An academic”.