Month: October 2022

The Reason Why (Elinor Glyn, 1911)

“Each man kills the thing he loves,” and had the tire not blown out on the taxi, Tristram very nearly would have killed Zara.

Francis Markrute, the fabulously wealthy financier, plays a deep game. He’s in love with Lady Ethelrida, the Duke’s daughter. But while the Duke has very little in the way of cash, he’s fiercely proud of his family’s good name and winning her hand will be difficult.

Wrayth, the Tancred country seat, has been closed for years for lack of funds to maintain such a stately mansion. Markrute proposes to marry Tristram, the current Baron Tancred, to his niece Zara in exchange for a very handsome settlement being endowed on her to reopen Wrayth. That will be his “in” to the family, and once in, he can go to work on Ethelrida.

For her part, Zara is assured that her little half-brother Mirko will be taken care of. Consumptive and in ill health, the boy hovers near death, but Markrute has long denied him or his father Mimo any money, having been so incensed that his sister would marry so far beneath her station.

And so the marriage kicks off with a solid foundation of hatred and recriminations all around, with Zara believing that Tristram married her only for her money, Tristram believing Mimo must be a lover she’s keeping up a clandestine relationship with, Mirko abandoned in an abusive convalescent home, and Markrute too caught up in his own affairs to notice.

Chasing after Zara with murderous intent, Tristram arrives just in time to see Mirko die in her arms, but he of course thinks the child was hers and Mimo’s. Markrute had sworn her to secrecy, rather hoping that Mirko would go ahead and die and Tristram need never know of his embarrassment.

Tristram is at the point of fleeing England for Japan or some other distant point to forget his blasted life when Zara forestalls him and tells him the truth. They return to Wrayth to begin anew. Markrute, meanwhile, has married Lady Ethelrida and is living happily ever after.

No inscriptions.

The Case of the Rolling Bones (Erle Stanley Gardner, 1939)

Alden Leeds grew immensely wealthy in the Klondike gold rush and now in his old age has taken up with Emily Milicant. Most of his relatives are not at all pleased and want him declared incompetent—for his own safety, you understand, and certainly not because they don’t want to lose out on their inheritance.

But enough of that. There’s a mystery surrounding Leeds. In the Klondike, he was partnered with a man named Bill Hogarty, who he might have killed. He left a body, anyway. But maybe it was Leeds who was killed and “Leeds” is really Hogarty. That could be, except Hogarty is killed again just now in Los Angeles and Leeds is still the number one suspect.

You might notice there’s one corpse too many in this equation, but no matter. Only one man has an alibi, Guy Serle, who’d bought a crooked dice factory from L.C. Conway, who might also be John Milicant, who might also be Bill Hogarty. And it’s Serle’s testimony that pinpoints when Hogarty (it’s not him but let’s just call him that) died. They called for a late dinner of lamb chops and baked potatoes to be delivered while they discussed matters, and from the post mortem, we know that Hogarty died two hours after his last meal.

Funny about that meal: they cleaned their plates—I mean, of everything. They ate the potato skins and evidently even the bones from the chops. They either did that, or Hogarty ate at the conventional dinner hour, Serle killed him, then ordered out a second dinner that he simply threw away to move the time of death and thus manufacture an alibi for himself.

Inscriptions: On the title page, “Richard Card, February 12, 1949”.

Sleeping Dogs (Carolyn Wells, 1929)

Erstwhile film star Kennith Carlisle’s first foray into detecting.

Eileen Abercrombie is found dead the morning after a blow-out tea party. It was not a natural death—her doctor at once diagnoses it as bichloride of mercury poisoning. Accident and suicide seem unlikely. Someone slipped it into the highball she drank after the last guest had left.

Was it her husband Hugh? The police think so. It’s little secret that he’s in love with Lorna and wanted a divorce that Eileen would not grant. Troy Loring, Eileen’s lawyer? Maybe he was embezzling from her? There’s no evidence of that, but Percy Van Antwerp really thinks it’s him. Percy is in love with Eileen’s daughter Maisie, but Eileen forbade her marrying someone fifteen years her senior.

There’s more, including another murder, but you can solve it by the half-way mark. Hugh has got a motive but none of the other components of a crime. Loring has no motive at all and it’s absurd to even consider Hugh’s business partner. Percy wants Eileen out of the way so he can marry Maisie, with a bonus of her inheriting her mother’s fortune as well. The timeline of the story he tells of the tea party doesn’t mesh with the one Maisie tells, and he claims to have been with her the whole time. Suffering from terrible corns on his feet, he had ready access to bichloride of mercury and was seen entering the tea pagoda by the last guests to leave.

Inscription: Signed James in a tiny script on the very center of the flyleaf.

A Young Mutineer (Mrs. L.T. Meade, 1893)

On their mother’s deathbed, Hilda vowed to take care of her younger sister Judy. This she’s quite happy to do—the sisters are very, very close. Enter Jasper Quentyns. He’s a bastard from the start, but for some reason I can’t fathom, Hilda is head over heels in love with him and the two marry.

Jasper hates Judy. He’s an intensely jealous person and dislikes Hilda having anything to do with anyone besides himself, but moreover, he simply hates children. When Hilda moves to London with him, Judy’s health fails. Hilda telegraphs that she’ll be there in a few hours, but while Jasper doesn’t forbid it in so many words… well, he forbids it. By the time Hilda arrives the next day, Judy has slipped into a coma and Jasper is furious that Hilda insists on staying with her.

When Judy has recovered enough to be moved, Jasper expects her to be sent to the coast or whatever and for Hilda to come home, but to his further fury, Hilda insists that Judy come with her. Jasper stops eating dinner at home and eventually starts staying out all night with friends at his club, particularly with his best friend Rivers. Hilda is devastated.

Judy comes to believe it’s all her fault and, with the help of Rivers, runs away. Don’t misunderstand Rivers—he isn’t on Jasper’s side. He’s trying very hard to send both him and Hilda a wake-up call. Jasper just gets angrier and Hilda, much to Rivers’s consternation, still doesn’t leave him.

Jasper’s aunt arrives and sees how miserable Hilda is. Hilda’s reached the point in her marriage, the aunt explains, when she’s discovered that her husband is neither an angel nor a hero and that his heart, which she thought to be boundless, is very, very small indeed. But she must not only forgive his smallnesses but she must cater to his caprices and vanities and support all his selfish whims. And so Hilda does and Judy is sent away.

Inscription: On the front flyleaf, “Helen from Alice”.

Bats Fly at Dusk (A.A. Fair, 1942)

One of the Cool & Lam mysteries where Bertha Cool is flying solo, Donald Lam having joined the navy.

A blind man who sells ties and pencils on the street is concerned that one of his regulars, Josephine Dell, a stenographer who works nearby, has gone missing. She was hit by a car, though not seriously injured. The driver wanted to take her to the hospital, but she refused, eventually consenting to be taken home.

Meanwhile, her employer has died and the will names his housekeeper as the residual legatee, cutting out his only blood relative with just $10,000 of his half million dollar estate. The will is two pages and, curiously, while the first page reads how you’d expect an author would write, the second page reads like it was written by someone barely literate. But the two witness signatures are on that dubious page, the housekeeper’s son-in-law and Josephine’s.

After finding where Josephine lives, Bertha Cool goes to see her. Her roommate left several days ago—just after the accident—and she’s preparing to leave now, herself. There’s something odd about Josephine. Have you figured out what it is? We’re only barely a quarter into the book and the solution is plain to see.

The second page is a forgery, written by the housekeeper. Josephine is not Josephine—she’s the roommate and the housekeeper’s personal friend. The real Josephine they sent off to a nursing home for two months to recover, keeping her out of the way so she can’t repudiate the fake signature on the will. The cousin was indeed left with comparatively nothing but it was Josephine who was the residual legatee.

No inscriptions.

The Devil’s Paw (E. Phillips Oppenheim, 1920)

As the Great War drags into its fourth year, a secret collaboration forms between the British Labour party and the German Socialist party to force what amounts to a status quo ante bellum peace. Most have only the best intentions but they don’t know that the ringleader is secretly on the payroll of Hohenzollern and that the intended peace is anything but—Germany wants Britain to lay down its arms so that it can steamroll Europe before the Americans arrive and drastically shift the balance of the war.

Inscription: On the front flyleaf, “Hattie Brown…” and then Hattie ran out of space and had to squeeze in her last name to the point of illegibility. “Oct. ‘20”.

White Hands (Arthur Stringer, 1927)

Winslow is alarmed with the company his daughters Jinny and Paddy keep and more alarmed by the manners they’ve picked up. A great lumber magnate, he packs them off to a remote island in the wilds of the Canadian northwest where they’ll be forced to fend for themselves.

Rather than simply dying as you would expect of two rich, teenage socialites from the city left alone in the cold woods without even matches, Paddy thrives. Jinny, now, is rather put out by her father’s actions and just a bit sulky. Black Arrow, a wastrel of an Indian, comes upon the island and it doesn’t take much persuasion for Jinny to leave with him in his canoe.

Everyone sets out in search of the runaway. Black Arrow and Jinny were caught in forest fire. Black Arrow left Jinny in the lake while he went back for the canoe, never to return. Winslow, with Jinny’s fiancé in tow, rescue her. It would seem that Winslow has discovered he can’t hide away his daughters from temptation but can at least leave them in good hands.

No inscription.

Foursquare (Grace S. Richmond, 1922)

Mark Fenn, professor of psychology at tiny Newcomb College, has followed Mary Fletcher’s literary career with close interest. Her nonfiction war work was especially strong and perhaps no writer shows greater promise, but her first published piece of fiction since the war’s end, while sparklingly written, is disappointingly vacuous.

That’s not just Mark’s opinion—it’s Mary’s own. She intends to drop out of New York society and return to her hometown of Newcomb for a year to regroup and find the inspiration for a novel that really means something. Her publisher, John Kirkwood, is vehemently opposed to this plan. Only in New York can you be inundated with new and startlingly fresh experiences. Nowhere else can creativity flourish.

After six months in the country, Mary is disheartened that she still hasn’t found whatever it is she’s in search of. John lures her back to the city with a plan. For many years, he’s nursed a story in his head. It’s a gripping, intriguing tale, but he can’t write it—he’s no writer. Mary can. She’s caught at once by the power of John’s story, but what is its message? It’s not an uplifting tale—it wallows unrestrainedly in the gutter.

What provincial nonsense, John tells her. He’ll show her his inspiration for the main character in his story. In an Italian villa somehow transported to the heart of Manhattan, Mary and John attend a strange party thrown by even stranger people. At the center of it all is Esmé. She says nothing, she does nothing. Nothing can describe her appearance. Yet for all that, there is never a doubt that everything revolves around her presence. This is John’s main character. She is not Mrs. Halloway. She’s not even Esmé. Is anyone who they are or is this a bizarre masquerade? Whoever they might be, the party grows hot. One guest pulls a gun and shoots Mr. Halloway. Did he die? Was he ever there?

Mary’s aunt grows suddenly ill. Mary rushes to Newcomb but doesn’t make it in time. After the funeral, Mary collapses under the nervous strain. She’s slowly brought back to life by nurse Rosie O’Grady. When she’s quite well again she burns the rough draft she’d written of John’s story.

A fire breaks out at Newcomb College and soon engulfs the whole structure. Mark and some of the other professors manage to save much of the library and files, but otherwise it’s a total loss. They must rebuild now and be ready for the spring semester. To delay would be fatal—the school would never open again. Mary and Guy Carter, a composer and disabled war veteran, collaborate on a fund raising musical, titled The Light on the Road, about a teacher whose inspiration follows a boy throughout his life.

Inscription: On the title page, “To Maud Barks, Jan 6-25, From Alta and Ernest”.