Post Mortem

"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic."

- Aristide Valentin (G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911)

Ever since its inception, The London-based Detection Club produced some interesting and experimental volumes of collaborative detective fiction, which consists mainly of round-robin novels (e.g. The Floating Admiral, 1932), but The Anatomy of Murder (1936) took a break from fictional crimes with plots constructed like an obstacle course. 

The Anatomy of Murder is a collection of true crime articles and cast the contributors in the role of armchair criminologists. It's a short who's who of the early Detection Club: Dorothy L. Sayers, E.R. Punshon, Helen Simpson, Margaret Cole and Anthony Berkeley – appearing here under his penname of "Francis Iles."

They're tasked with re-examining five infamous cases from the late 1800s and early twentieth century, but these literary exhumations consist mainly of going over the facts and consider their implications. So don't expect any mind-blowing, alternative explanations being spun from the giving facts. It's a dry and factual collection, but interesting from a historical perspective and a particular item of interest for avid consumers of true crime stories.

Note that I'll be keeping the case descriptions as short and summary as possible, because murderers operating outside of the printed page are generally unconcerned with creating a clear, straightforward and clue-filled plot – unlike their fictional counterparts. 

Helen Simpson wrote the first chapter, "Death of Henry Kinder," which could also have been titled "Crime in Australia" and is a textbook example of "an unsatisfactory crime" from "the point of view of a reader of detection stories."

Henry Kinder was a chief teller in the City Bank of Sydney and appeared respectable, but was very fond of hard liquor and his drinking habits had began to affect his health in the months preceding his death. On October 2nd, 1865, the news of Kinder's suicide startled many of his respectable friends in the city and a jury brought in a verdict death "by the discharge of a pistol with his own hand," but by that time the rumor mill had started – with subsequent events revealing Kinder may have been polished off with a dose of poison by his wife's lover. Henry Louis Bernard was put on trial and Simpson's report, peppered with diary entrants, letters and pieces of court transcripts, shows how the chain of events clanked "to a madman’s fandango," which lead to a very unsatisfactory conclusion.

Well, unsatisfactory if this had been a piece of fiction, but, as a criminal case from history, it demonstrated that even if the perceptive story book detectives had existed their singular talents be rendered pretty much useless in cases lacking their own clarity of mind. You can read an extensive description of the case here. 

Margaret Cole's penned the second chapter and deals with "The Case of Adelaide Bartlett," which is better known as the "Pimlico Mystery" and shares some similarities with the previous case: in both cases a spouse is fatally poisoned after a previous incident relegated them to a sick bed. In the case of Henry Kinder, it was an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, but in the 1886 death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett it was mercurial poisoning – which he claimed was self-ingested. However, it was not the poison that would end up killing him.

A month later, Bartlett passed away and a post-mortem examination revealed a fatal quantity of chloroform in his stomach. The inquest yielded a verdict of willful murder and Adeleide Bartlett was indicted, but acquitted under "immense cheering" in the courtroom. As Cole noted, it was one of the most interesting trials of its day, because it was not "a tale of horror or brutality." None of the people, however odd or foolish, were monsters and tried "to be as nice as impossible under rather difficult circumstances." It was an interesting study in characters and motives that were somewhat ahead of their time.

However, it must be noted as well that one of the main reason for acquittal was failing in providing an answer how the poison could've been administrated without a struggle, since chloroform burns, but Cole makes a valid suggestion based on the characteristics of the people involved – and had the jury considered this possibility "she would have never gone free." A very odd case to say the least.

Interestingly, Cole's account includes a list of nineteenth century medicines and remedies given to Thomas Bartlett after his mercurial poisoning, which did not sound very appetizing.

For the third chapter, E.R. Punshon gives "An Impression of the Landru Case," which deals with the "incredible reincarnation of the Bluebeard of the nursery tales." Henri Désiré Landru was one of the neatest and charming serial killers who ever stalked the European continent. Known as "The Bluebeard of Gambais," Landru operated "during that four-year feast of horror and of terror we remember as the war" and responsible for the complete disappearance of eleven people in such a manner "that nothing can be declared with certainty" – concluding that "no jury" would've brought in "a verdict of guilty" had "each case stood alone." It's an accumulation of those eleven disappearances in close proximity of Landru, a methodical kept notebook and a storage room with a "strange collection" of items "once the property of a woman who once had known Landru and now was known to none" that became his undoing.

Punshon sketches an interesting, but unsettling, picture of charming confidence man with the predatory nature of "Jack the Ripper," but with more self-control and enjoyed to play the game until the very end – which in Landru's instance was up to the moment he was lead to the guillotines. You almost have to admire the guts and brawn of such an imperturbable character, but I’m sure France could've used such talents elsewhere at that specific point in time.

Dorothy L. Sayers goes over one of the England's most infamous "unsolved" murder cases in it's criminal history, "The Murder of Julia Wallace," which has captured the imagination of several post-WWII crime-writers – including a couple of Golden Agers. The books it has inspired include George Goodchild and C.E. Bechhofer's The Jury Disagree (1934), Winifred Duke's Skin for Skin (1935), John Rhode's The Telephone Call (1948) and P.D. James' The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982).

You can understand why mystery writers tend to be intrigued, because if William Wallace was guilty of bludgeoning his wife to death "he was the classic contriver and alibi-monger that adorns the pages of a thousand mystery novels," but if he was innocent "then the real murderer was still more typically of the classic villain of fiction." Where do you begin to describe a case that includes all of the classic ingredients of a detective story: a blood-stained mackintosh, a mysterious phone call from a non-existent person calling himself "R.M. Qualtrough" and an apparent contrived alibi. Then there are the conflicting witness statements: such as a constable who assumed he saw Wallace crying in the streets, but the clients he met after this apparent encounter with the policeman reported he was his usual self.

It was a dark, murky and muddled case, but despite every scrap of evidence against Wallace being circumstantial, which included an exonerating testimony from the local milk delivery boy, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. However, Court of Criminal appeal quashed the verdict in what was at the time an unprecedented move, which left open that intriguing question: who killed Julia Wallace? This was easily my favorite chapter from the book.

Finally, Anthony Berkeley, writing as "Francis Iles," delivers the longest-written chapter from the book as he rides his hobbyhorse, called criminal psychology, across a hundred pages describing the sordid mess known as "The Rattenbury Case." I did not find the case as interesting as Berkeley, but I can understand why people interesting psychological crimes can rattle on about it for page-after-page: a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Rattenbury, living together with her much older husband and her very young lover in a villa, which leads to battering-death with a mallet. Probably not the best chapter to end the book on, but I'm sure there are readers out there, especially readers of psychological thrillers, who'll be as intrigued by chapter as I was by Wallace chapter.

Well, there you have it: five cases re-examined by members of the Detection Club. The cases have something of interest to offer, one way or another, but I think the main draw is that the articles/chapters were written by famous mystery writers from the Golden Age – rather than for the cases themselves. I think it would've been better if they re-examined unsolved cases and provided a possible solution, which was, after all, their job.

However, it was a good, historically interesting diversion from the fictional murders the authors usually reveled in, but I'll be returning to those fictional murders for the next review.

Swapping Sleuths

"However, there is, as you have shown, a friendly readiness amongst the members of the Detection Club to help the weaker brethren, so I have written to one or two of our friends to ask them to tell me what, in the opinion of their sleuths, the solution is."

- Milward Kennedy.

There are moments when I wish there was a grain of truth in the popular surmise that human beings are endowed with an immortal soul. I have a practical reason for this longing: to have a bargaining chip when summoning Old Scratch to negotiate a business deal. Because getting an opportunity to travel through a tear in the time-space continuum to meet a bunch of detective writers from the previous century, while cheaply buying first editions and solicitation autographs, is totally worth the hazards of eternal damnation. But the joke would undoubtedly be on me, as I would freeze-up like a shy schoolgirl who's just been approached by her first crush.   

Me: * shoves a copy of The Hollow Man and a pen in John Dickson Carr's face *

JDC: Do you want me to sign this for you?

Me: * nods *

JDC: What's your name?

Me: J-John...

JDC: Ah, a fellow John. Nice to meet you, John! What's your surname?

Me: D-D-Dickson…

JDC: Huh?

Me: D-Dickson Carr!

JDC: Your name is also John Dickson Carr?

Me: * just points at JDC *

At this point he slowly, but surely, starts backing away from me as my under lip starts to quiver and Lucifer impatiently begins tugging my sleeve, like an eager child who just acquired a new toy and can't wait to get home to start playing with it, and that's how I would've squandered a divine wish that could've granted me world domination or the answers to the question of life, the universe and everything. Unfortunately, this scenario, which is definitely worth an eternity of third-degree sunburns, is just a pipe dream – and the only opportunity I will ever have at soaking up the atmosphere of a meeting of the original Detection Club, is reading their round-robin novels. Well, you have to be grateful for what you get and this week I immerged myself in their second joint-effort, Ask a Policeman (1933), but this time I will leave the introduction to the review to someone else: one of the original collaborators! 

Ms. Gladys Mitchell has the floor:

"I was engaged in only one of the collaborations, which were for the benefit of club funds. Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers exchanged detectives and, of course, Anthony's manipulation of Lord Peter Wimsey caused the massive lady anything but pleasure. Helen Simpson took over Mrs. Bradley in exchange for Sir John Saumarez. We two, I am glad to say, got along famously and it is to her that I owe, as you know, Dame Beatrice's second name, Adela."

This is an excerpt from an Question and Answer session, conducted by B.A. Pike, entitled In praise of Gladys Mitchell, and can be found in its entirely at Jason Hall's The Stone House – a website fully dedicated to the life and work of this unorthodox, alternative Queen of Crime.

The book opens with a brief exchange between the for me unfamiliar Milward Kennedy and the plotting machine known as John Rhode, in which Kennedy asks his colleague to produce a dark and murky plot for a title, Ask a Policeman, that was presented to him by his publisher – and the follow-up is a novella-length chapter recounting the shooting of Lord Comstock, an unpalatable newspaper mogul, at his country retreat. The rag king was an expert in jacking-up the circulations of his papers by viciously attacking the establishment and on the morning preceding his murder, three representatives of institutions under siege by his publications, the government, the police and the church, visited his retreat. This makes it a very sensitive and high-profile case and with the police filling in the role as one of the suspects it's decided up on, from above, to give a few notable amateurs free reign over the investigation.

This novella-length chapter demonstrates that John Rhode is undeserving of his reputation as a dullard and sleep-inducing writer. Even with such authors as Gladys Mitchell and Anthony Berkeley waiting in the wings, ready for the opportunity to seize his pen, he contributed one of the best chapters of this collaborative effort – sketching a mystifying problem with some touches of dry humor that his fellow clubmembers had a lot of fun toying around with.

Helen Simpson is the first one who gets a shot at clearing the mystifying problems that befogs the death of the hated newspaper magnate, but instead of Sir John she has Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley at her disposal – whom she promptly dispatches to the scene of the crime. I think her, and mine, solution was the most evident one as we both fingered the same person based on the significance of the police constable who was run over with a car after the killing. But the best part of this chapter is perhaps the way in which she captured the essence of the character she borrowed and how she touched upon nearly every familiar element from Mitchell's books – from the involvement of a young teenager, a niece who coincidently had a fling with the secretary of Comstock, to the diary notes at the end and a plot thread that is left dangling in the wind. Not bad if you're limited to a mere fifty pages!

Up next is Gladys Mitchell's interpretation of Helen Simpson's Sir John Saumarez, who's an acclaimed stage actor basking in the spotlights of success, however, this is my first acquaintance with the character making it impossible to judge the accuracy of Mitchell's portrayal. The solution he proposed was probably even more blindingly obvious than the previous one, but he gave away a first-rate theatrical dénouement with the best seats in the house reserved for his readers. I have to hunt down one of Simpson's detective novels featuring Sir John for an encore.

Anthony Berkeley is the only one of the quartet of crime writers who managed to upstage the instigators of this book, Milward Kennedy and John Rhode, with his marvelous and amusing rendition of Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter. There's a delightful scene in which they discuss the appropriate attire for an appointment with an archbishop who's under suspicion of murder! And to top it all off, he comes up with a solution that points to one of the least likely suspects of the lot as the person who pulled the trigger of the gun with a deadly precision.

Dorothy Sayers' take off on Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Roger Sheringham is equally amusing, but one wishes that as much attention was bestowed on constructing a clever solution from the given clues as on exonerating the archbishop from every suspicion – who she turned into a Machiavellian schemer cleverly maneuvering the paper tycoon into one of his own traps and saving his church from further abuse. The solution is uninspired, forgettable and actually had the flip through the chapter to be reminded who the murderer was supposed to be.

The final chapter is for Milward Kennedy, who is confronted with the daunting task of explaining away the solutions presented by the sleuthing foursome and wrapping up the case – and his approach to this conundrum turns the book into a parody that's very similar to Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) and his critical commentary on Mrs. Bradley, Sir John, Wimsey and Sheringham is hilarious! However, I still haven't decided whether I loved or hated the way in which he explained everything, but it's a perfect illustration of "the blinkin’ cussedness of things in general" at the expensive of the four brilliant amateur sleuthhounds.

In summary, Ask a Policeman is a fascinating experiment, but one that derives its interest mainly from watching a troop of famous detectives taking a stab a the same murder case and how they behave when someone else is in charge of them – while the murder at the summer retreat quickly lost its appeal by a abundance of coincidences and a lack of overall consistency. It's not the howling success that their first round-robin novel, The Floating Admiral (1931), was, but if you're a fan of any of these writers or characters the book is well worth your time – and it's one of those rare crossovers that gave me that pleasurable tingle down my spine! I love and adore crossovers and it gives me an immense pleasure knowing that Mrs. Bradley, Sheringham, Wimsey and even Sir John inhabit the same universe.  

A note of warning: avoid the recent reprint by The Resurrected Press who took gross liberties by altering the text. More details here.