Anthony Wynne (1882–1963)

A Scottish Locked Room
Review of the Poisoned Pen Press eBook edition (February 2, 2016) of the British Library Crime Classics (BLCC) paperback (January 1, 2015) of the Hutchinson hardcover original (1931).

Murder of a Lady was yet another Kindle Deal of the Day which I took a chance on. The author Anthony Wynne (penname of Robert McNair Wilson 1882-1963) was previously unknown to me, as was the 28 book series of his amateur sleuth rel="nofollow" target="_top">Dr. Eustace Hailey (1925-1950). I did check the list at The Book of Forgotten Authors, but even there he appears to be doubly forgotten, as he didn't make the cut.

Still, the editor Martin Edwards of the British Library Crime Classics series did select this book #12 of Hailey series to reprint. It is in the 'locked room' aka 'impossible crime' sub-genre of mysteries where a murder has been committed in a room where no one beyond the victim appears to have entered or exited and all the windows and doors are shut and locked when the crime is discovered.

In this case, Lady Gregor, the sister of the laird, has been apparently stabbed to death in her locked room. The weapon has disappeared. The brother, the nephew and his wife, a local doctor, various housemaids and servants (Note: the family piper Angus is not considered to be a servant) are suspects for various reasons. The misdirection carries on at length and the actual solution seems to come out of nowhere at the very end with little apparent investigation to provide earlier clues towards it.

There is a further misdirection that after each murder (there are more than one) a splash can be heard in the waters below the manor house and an apparent swimmer or fish is seen to drift away downstream. This introduces a possible supernatural / horror explanation of a sea creature taking vengeance for a past slight (It did make me think of Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth, coincidentally also from 1931).

Really the only good clue for the early reader would have been the cover image in the original edition.
See cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
Cover image of the 1931 Hutchinson original hardcover. Image sourced from Goodreads.

Dr. Hailey figures it out in the end, but it ends very abruptly and doesn't provide a reader the satisfaction of having followed his thinking along the way. This doesn't earn an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert tag, but the resolution was just too out of the blue to be entirely enjoyable. A 3-star "Like" is fairly generous.

Trivia and Links
The British Library Crime Classics series are reprints of forgotten titles from the 1860's through to the 1950's. You can see a list at the British Library Crime Classics Shop (for North America they are reprinted by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press). There is also a Goodreads Listopia for the series which you can see here.… (more)

The elderly Miss Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan Castle, is found murdered in a locked bedroom. There's no way for the murderer to have gotten in or out of the room, and the only clue is a fish scale embedded in the death blow. Who killed Miss Gregor, and who will be next to die?

The amateur sleuth in Murder of a Lady, Dr Hailey, is a bland non-entity whose detective approach relies heavily on building up psychological portraits of the suspects. But those portraits are dubious, at best. It's one of the real weaknesses of this book that Anthony Wynne's characters are bundles of stereotypical oddities (arising out of such original assumptions as "Ladies, amirite!"; "This is the Innate Soul of the Scottish Highlander!") whose motivations and reactions to events often struck me as unconvincing. Plus, every time a character or the narrative voice reinforced the idea that despite everything, Oonagh and Eoghan really love one another, I wanted to yell at her to take the kid and run. He believed on no evidence that you were having an affair, and tried to strangle you so forcefully that you were left with bruises all around your neck! Girl, take the kid and leg it back to Ireland!

The other real weakness of the book is the resolution. The whodunnit of this book is reasonably easy to figure out, by process of elimination if nothing else. I can put up with that in a locked-room mystery, when the intellectual satisfaction comes so much from seeing if you can work out howdunnit before the detective does.

The howdunnit here, however, is utterly implausible in everything from timing to physics. The big reveal shouldn't make me choke with incredulity as I'm drinking my morning cuppa. Imagine me à la David Rose from Schitt's Creek declaring "I refuse! Not doing that!"… (more)

”Autumn was dressing herself in her scarlets and saffrons; already the air held that magical quality of light which belongs only to diminishing days and which seems to be of the same texture as the colours it illuminates. He marked the fans of the chestnuts across the burn, place gold and pale green. The small coin of birch leaves a-jingle in the wind, right as the sequins on a girl’s dress, the beeches and oakes, wine-stained from the winds’ Bacchanal, the rowans, flushed with their fruiting.”

The sister of the laird of Duchlan is found murdered in her chamber. The door is locked, the windows are barred. The woman was supposed to be respected and loved by all. Who would possibly want to kill her?

But as Dr. Hailey and the police investigate the murder, secrets about her true character are unearthed, secrets of a tyrannical woman who led an entire family to destruction with bitterness and hatred.

One of the finest locked-room mysteries you’ll ever read, this is a fascinating, atmospheric novel about cruel deaths, but most importantly, about the misery inflicted on two mothers because of the cruelty of a miserable woman and the weakness of a cowardish man. It is a story about the hypocrisy and empty decorum of the ”prominent” families, on the need to control lest tradition is abandoned. God forbid!

The enigmas of the case are seamlessly married to echoes of Scottish folklore and the convictions of the locals, while excellent characters jump off the pages. Dr. Hailey, Dr. McDonald, Eoghan and Oonagh, my absolute favourite.

A perfect mystery for an autumnal evening, beautifully introduced by Martin Edwards.

”We Highland folk,” he said in low tones, ”partake of the spirit of our hills and lochs. That’s the secret of what the Lowlanders, who will never understand us, call our pride. Yes, we have pride; but the pride of blood, of family; of our dear land. Highlanders are ready to die for their pride.”

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (more)