#62 – The Pale Horse

Father Gorman is coshed and killed after visiting a dying woman. It may have been taken for a mugging gone wrong had a list of names not been found hidden in his shoe.

Narrator Mark Easterbrook hears about this list from his friend Jim Corrigan, the police surgeon and initially makes nothing of it. He is more interested in the Pale Horse that was mentioned during a discussion about Macbeth’s Third Murderer and how it would be handy to be able to whistle up a killer to commit an everyday murder for you.

While staying with relatives in the country he hears about a Pale Horse – an old inn now owned by three women, reputed to be witches – but could they really be a trio of murderers?

I won’t say more because one of the strengths of this book is the incremental build up of information.

There are some good ideas at the heart of this, although the type of business that Mr Bradley conducts I’ve definitely come across in at least one short story (possibly by Stanley Ellin – does anyone know what I mean?), but re-reading this I feel that there is a big element that is important for the story as a whole but really serves no purpose at all. Combined with an excess of characters doing the sleuthing this was unfortunately rather a let down.

Recurring Character Development

Ariadne Oliver

Has a maid called Milly who “guards her from the onslaught of the outside world”.

Her books include at least 55 murders.

By the end of the book she has published “The White Cockatoo” which she was working on at the beginning.

Signs of the Times

The first page refers to an espresso machine and a jet plane, signs that this an up to date book at the time, although as the book goes on to show for all our modern inventions we can never be sure that everything can be explained.

Ginger humourously imagines Miss Grey as being “like Madame de Montespan on a black velvet altar”. The Marquise de Montespan (1640-1707) was a mistress of Louis XIV and was rumoured to have taken part in witchcraft including having a priest perform a black mass over her naked body.

Venables quotes “The world is so full of a number of things” which is from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses”.

Bradley says “a man can bet on anything he pleases…whether the Russians can send a man to the moon”. This book was published later in the year that Yuri Gagarin first flew in space and before Kennedy’s speech of the next year committing to getting a man on the moon before the end of the Sixties so at this point the Russians may have been favourites.

Mark refers to a woman looking to poison a man as “a second Madeleine Smith”. Smith (1835-1928) was accused of the 1857 murder of her lover, Pierre Emile L’Angerlier, who died of arsenic poisoning. She was found not guilty on one count and not proven on another despite having a strong motive and having purchased arsenic shortly before the death.

References to previous works

Mark’s cousin appeared in “Cards on the Table”.

Mrs Oliver refers to the Murder Hunt that she organised in “Dead Man’s Folly”.

The Reverend and Mrs Dane Calthrop appeared in “The Moving Finger”.

 

#62 – The Pale Horse – WITH SPOILERS

Father Gorman is coshed and killed after visiting a dying woman. It may have been taken for a mugging gone wrong had a list of names not been found hidden in his shoe.

Narrator Mark Easterbrook hears about this list from his friend Jim Corrigan, the police surgeon and initially makes nothing of it. He is more interested in the Pale Horse that was mentioned during a discussion about Macbeth’s Third Murderer and how it would be handy to be able to whistle up a killer to commit an everyday murder for you.

While staying with relatives in the country he hears about a Pale Horse – an old inn now owned by three women, reputed to be witches – but could they really be a trio of murderers?

I won’t say more because one of the strengths of this book is the incremental build up of information.

There are some good ideas at the heart of this, although the type of business that Mr Bradley conducts I’ve definitely come across in at least one short story (possibly by Stanley Ellin – does anyone know what I mean?), but re-reading this I feel that there is a big element that is important for the story as a whole but really serves no purpose at all. Combined with an excess of characters doing the sleuthing this was unfortunately rather a let down.

Recurring Character Development

Ariadne Oliver

Has a maid called Milly who “guards her from the onslaught of the outside world”.

Her books include at least 55 murders.

By the end of the book she has published “The White Cockatoo” which she was working on at the beginning.

Signs of the Times

The first page refers to an espresso machine and a jet plane, signs that this an up to date book at the time, although as the book goes on to show for all our modern inventions we can never be sure that everything can be explained.

Ginger humourously imagines Miss Grey as being “like Madame de Montespan on a black velvet altar”. The Marquise de Montespan (1640-1707) was a mistress of Louis XIV and was rumoured to have taken part in witchcraft including having a priest perform a black mass over her naked body.

Venables quotes “The world is so full of a number of things” which is from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses”.

Bradley says “a man can bet on anything he pleases…whether the Russians can send a man to the moon”. This book was published later in the year that Yuri Gagarin first flew in space and before Kennedy’s speech of the next year committing to getting a man on the moon before the end of the Sixties so at this point the Russians may have been favourites.

Mark refers to a woman looking to poison a man as “a second Madeleine Smith”. Smith (1835-1928) was accused of the 1857 murder of her lover, Pierre Emile L’Angerlier, who died of arsenic poisoning. She was found not guilty on one count and not proven on another despite having a strong motive and having purchased arsenic shortly before the death.

References to previous works

Mark’s cousin appeared in “Cards on the Table”.

Mrs Oliver refers to the Murder Hunt that she organised in “Dead Man’s Folly”.

The Reverend and Mrs Dane Calthrop appeared in “The Moving Finger”.

SPOILERS

Betting on your victim to survive and hoping that you lose – great idea! – although isn’t this what life insurance is? Insurers may call it “pooling risk” but essentially you’re making a bet that you’ll die and hoping that you lose! Having market researchers check what brands someone uses so that you prepare poison in something they won’t notice – great idea!

But what is The Pale Horse itself for? Poppy puts Ginger and Mark in touch with Bradley directly – Thyrza Grey doesn’t send him – and it is Bradley who sends him back to The Pale Horse. What’s the point of having the customers believe that their target has been killed by mysterious means?

That is my struggle with the book on this re-read – can anyone provide a good reason for it?

Sherlockian Shorts #1 – A Study in Scarlet

A new series of posts, containing full spoilers, as I make my way once more through the complete canon, picking out points of interest and reflecting on my personal experience of the stories.

• Watson meets Holmes at the point that the latter has discovered an infallible test for blood stains. This is 22 years before the creation of the Kastle-Meyer test.
• When discussing their worst points Watson confesses to keeping a bull pup – I didn’t remember any other references in later stories to him having a dog though! This is because it exists purely as a plot device so that when Holmes wants to test the pills for poison which were found at Stangerson’s murder scene there is a suitable subject. The dog has been ill for some time and the landlady has been asking Watson to put it out of its misery.
• Due to periods where Holmes lies on the sofa for days on end with “such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes” Watson would have suspected him of “being addicted to the use of some narcotic had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion”. He will soon come to learn the truth, that addict or not, Holmes is certainly a drug user.
• Watson is astounded that Holmes is ignorant of the Copernican theory of the solar system. Holmes responds that having been informed of it, he will try to forget it as it has no relevance to his work. To an extent I agree with him – we need to be taught many things as we don’t know what direction our lives will take us –  but being an accountant, knowing whether the earth orbits the sun or vice versa has no impact on my day to day life whatsoever. I’m happy to believe the former but if someone wants to argue the latter it doesn’t matter to me.
• Lestrade, Holmes’ regular contact at Scotland Yard is mentioned first and is involved in the investigation, but it is actually Tobias Gregson who calls him into this first published case.
• The murderer is the first invisible man perhaps – they know Drebber took a cab to where he was murdered but no one else has included the driver on the list of suspects.
• Chapters 8-12 can be skipped without losing anything of importance – I know because this time round I did. Jefferson Hope explains in chapter 13 that he is avenging the deaths of two people and that is sufficient motive.
• I love Hope’s method of giving his victims a chance by having the pairs of pills of which just one contains poison – although he is convinced that the righteousness of his cause will prevail.

 

Turning Japanese #9: The Red Locked Room (1954-61) by Tetsuya Ayukawa (translated by Ho-Ling Wong)

The blurb to this recent Lock Room International anthology boldly compares Ayukawa to two kings of the mystery genre:

“Few writers of detective fiction can match both John Dickson Carr and Freeman Wills Crofts at their own game. Included in this superb collection by Tetsuya Ayukawa, recognized as the doyen of the honkaku mystery, are four impossible crime stories and three unbreakable alibi tales. The final story “The Red Locked Room” can lay claim to be one of the finest ever written in the genre. Judge for yourself.”

Before getting into that judging, let’s meet our sleuths as outlined by Taku Ashibe* in his informative introduction:

Stories marked (O) feature Chief Inspector Onitsura who is “mostly occupied with breaking down alibis…and is perhaps best described as ‘Ellery Queen wearing the face of Inspector French'”.

Stories marked (H) feature amateur detective Ryuzo Hoshikage “to whom Chief Inspector Tadokoro turns in much the same way as Inspector Lestrade turned to Sherlock Holmes”.

The White Locked Room (H)

The Meteorological Agency may have underestimated the amount of snow that fell but at least they recorded accurately that it stopped at 8.40pm, a vital piece of evidence in this no-footprints mystery. I’m not that well read in this specific sub-genre so I can’t give it a fair rating but I liked it, especially the import of armchair detective Ryuzo Hoshikage’s questions on whether a suspect had hurt his foot and whether anyone had reported a dog or cat being burnt in the neighbourhood.

Whose Body? (O)

An empty acid bottle, a recently fired gun, and a length of rope are sent to three artists. What may have been a joke of some sort turns out to much more sinister when a week later a body is found on which these “three tools of death” may have been used.

This initial set-up and then the ideas which are explored here are brilliant and could well have been fashioned into a full-length novel. The only issue I have is with the presentation as we don’t see much of the detection taking place but rather are given the explanations after the events have taken place.

The Blue Locked Room (H)

Uses a classic GAD trope in one aspect but apart from that there’s not much to write home about.

Death in Early Spring (O)

The prologue states:

“To understand the full detail of what happened, it is unfortunately necessary to examine a dry series of railway timetables. Only by doing so will it become clear how the culprit managed to mystify the chief inspector without utilising any special trickery of their own.”

The statement above is somewhat unexpected and yet is proved to be completely accurate. I loved this one as well and I think Crofts would have as well, particularly as it is through innovative work done by National Railways that Onitsura ends up on the right track.

The Clown in the Tunnel (H)

Not just a murderous clown, but a murderous clown that vanishes from inside a tunnel under observation at both ends – sleep well everybody!

This includes a neat trick which I’m sure I must have come across before but can’t remember where.

The Five Clocks (O)

A suspect’s alibi seems too good to be true but if it is not true how could he have fixed five separate clocks to make it seem true?

This contains a neat chance piece of evidence that puts the final nail into the criminal’s coffin but unnecessarily misses out a key bit of evidence from someone’s account to the police and again has too much tell and not enough show.

The Red Locked Room (H)

An after hours dissection of a murder victim takes place on a university campus but where were the body parts to be sent and how did the killer get in and out of the locked facility?

This is a top-notch puzzle and it makes me wonder whether Ayukawa was aware of a particular story and whether this is a deliberate nod to it.

Conclusion

Overall I think the comparison to FWC is more apt than to JDC but I would say 5 from the 7 stories are strong and justify having bought this collection. If you, like me, want to see more translations of Japanese mysteries, then get hold of this to show that the demand is there.

Meanwhile I’m looking forward to taking a look (probably in a couple of month’s time) at Locked Room International’s latest offering “Lending the Key to the Locked Room” by Tokuya Higashigawa.

*Having looked him up I’ve now got another book to add to my wishlist “Murder in the Red Chamber”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous posts in this series:

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada

The Moai Island Puzzle by Alice Arisugawa

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada

The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

The 8 Mansion Murders by Takemaru Abiko

Death in the House of Rain by Szu-Yen Lin

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji – WITH SPOILERS

The Laughing Policeman (1968) by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (translated by Alan Blair)

Roseanna was followed by “The Man Who Went Up In Smoke”, an investigation of the disappearance of a journalist with a Croftsian style methodology and solution (although Inspector French was never propositioned in any way and certainly not in a manner this explicit) and “The Man on the Balcony”, a tale of city under the shadow of a serial child-killer, and then we come onto the fourth and the most lauded of the Martin Beck dectet.

Eight passengers are killed and one wounded when someone opens fire on a bus late one night. The work of a madman? Or does the presence of one of Martin Beck’s officers, given his particular talent, point to something more subtle?

This can be read as a standalone but the benefit of reading it in order is that you feel more for the characters, both the dead man and his colleagues.

Kvant and Kristiansson, the unlikely heroes of the previous book, become the hapless villains of the piece following their discovery of the crime scene. We see a more human side to one-man wrecking ball Gunvald Larsson. Martin Beck is more depressed though his relationship with his teenage daughter seems to be good even if he isn’t amused by the comic record of the title which she gives him for Christmas.

How the key pieces of evidence are pulled together is beautifully done and by the time you reach the final line you may laugh with Beck or you may want to cry for what might have been.

To sum up, this is a police procedural par excellence.

 

 

 

Goodnight Irene (2018) by James Scott Byrnside

In my mind, great mystery writers with three names become three letter acronyms: ACD, DLS, ECB, GKC, and JDC – do I need to add JSB to that list?

Rowan Manory is a private detective who hasn’t had a case for four months following the bad publicity surrounding the fallout from his previous investigation – featured in Chapter 1 which felt like a pre-titles sequence à la TV shows like Elementary or The Mentalist. He therefore jumps at the chance to travel from Chicago to Mississippi to investigate a threatening letter received by Robert Lasciva, a man connected to a twenty year old suicide which his policewoman mother worked on and which was never satisfactorily resolved.

With his sidekick, Walter Williams, in tow Manory arrives at a weekend houseparty that is soon cut-off by the real-life 1927 Great Flood, and within hours of arriving has to investigate his host’s armoured and beheaded corpse found in his locked study and the disappearance of his aunt from the same locked room. From this point on you won’t want to stop reading until you reach the dawn alongside the dwindling group of survivors.

Classic GAD tropes feature in both the set-up and resolution and are utilised well. I had one idea about the possible significance of the suit of armour which was completely wrong and would actually have created more problems that it would have solved but spotted the point of one minor clue – even whilst simultaneously disagreeing with it!

Manory is an interesting central character. He has the arrogance of Hercule Poirot saying “I am the best detective I know” but differs significantly in that he puts the law before justice. I am interested to see how this viewpoint plays out in later books.

How do I answer my first question? It’s too early to say whether Byrnside will become JSB but this is an excellent first novel and I will definitely be getting hold of “The Opening Night Murders” and the “The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire” with eager anticipation in the next couple of months and I would encourage you to have a read of “Goodnight Irene” and then do the same.

N.B. early in the the investigation a full spoiler for “The Big Bow Mystery” by Israel Zangwill is given.