The Manuscript Murder (1933) by Lewis George Robinson

The Manuscript Murder (1933), originally published as by "George Limnelius," is the third of only four novels written by medical officer and World War I veteran, Lewis G. Robinson, who drew on his military career to put together four semi-inverted, character-driven and usually soundly plotted detective novels – nearly all sporting some sort of locked room mystery or impossible crime. I previously reviewed Robinson's first and final detective novels, The Medbury Fort Murder (1929) and The General Goes Too Far (1936), which are both fine examples of vintage crime and detective fiction, but The Manuscript Murder is his masterpiece. 

Robinson's The Manuscript Murder starts out fairly conventional with four men seated round the dinner table of a comfortable Plymouth residence, "The Chestnuts," which is the home of Sir Oscar Horton. A typical retired British colonel who's entertaining three of his old Service friends on the day of his wedding, Torquil Swayne, Kit Vaspell and Joseph Marks, but the conversation turns from their host's honeymoon plans to detective stories and murder in general.

Joseph Marks is the detective novelist "Mark Jessup" and author of the long-running Inspector Flam series, which "already exceeded fifty full-length novels." Marks tells his companions that "the difficulty with murder plots is to provide a motive of sufficient intensity," because "people rarely murder lightly" in real-life. And he gives an interesting reason why he excepts poisoners from the extremely rare malice aforethought category (lacking "the toughness of fibre essential to the neat execution of a murder of violence"). Swayne counters that he and Vaspell have half a dozen "adequate reasons" between them to either kill the famous mystery writer or Sir Oscar. Swayne jokes he will run through a perfect murder plot with Vaspell later that night, but that very same evening Sir Oscar is murdered like a character in a fancifully-plotted detective story.

At nine-five, the butler served Sir Oscar coffee in the sitting room ("minor variant from the library"), while the newly-minted Lady Horton is in the drawing room and the butler retreats to the kitchen until returning to the sitting room at nine-thirty – where he discovers the murder. Sir Oscar had been shot, stabbed and strangled! What the police surgeon finds only deepens the problems for the Chief Constable, Major Weston Pryme. The murderer shot Sir Oscar in the back of the head, but not at point-blank range as there are "no marks of burning" around the wound, which turns the murder into a quasi-impossible crime. The angle at which "the bullet entered the head precludes the possibility of the shot coming from outside the window." And then there's the clue of Sir Oscar's cigar that "did not go out until eight minutes after it was lit." This gave the murderer a window of 8-10 minutes to silently commit a murder without being heard and get away unseen.

So there you have a great, deceivingly simplistic opening to a good, old-fashioned detective novel recalling Anthony Berkeley (The Second Shot, 1930) or Agatha Christie (Cards on the Table, 1935), but then The Manuscript Murder goes off script.

Joseph Marks is working on a new novel, The Quality of Murder, in which he casts Swayne and Vaspell as Sir Oscar's murderer and hands over the manuscript to Major Pryme. The next eight chapters come from Marks' manuscript covering the long, sometimes difficult relationship between the four men beginning during the old days at the military barracks right before the outbreak of the war and picks up again after the war with excursions to pre-war Paris and post-war South America. And, as time marches on, it becomes apparent they have murder in their heart. Sir Oscar is depicted as not the most sympathetic of characters and stands between Swayne and Vaspell and the two women they desire. But how reliable is Marks' fictitious murder mystery come to life? Marks tells Major Pryme he simply used his creative license to twist "every factor in order" to "demonstrate how those two might desire and contrive Horton's death." And filled in the gaps with "deductions, inferences, guesses." So he's asked to write a conclusion to his story and meet to compare notes with his two friends. 

The Manuscript Murder is another good example why Robinson's novels are called semi-inverted mysteries, as the reader gets to know who's plotting murder, why and sometimes how, but there's always more than one person with murder on their mind (The Medbury Fort Murder) or blood on their hands (The General Goes Too Far) – leaving it unclear who pulled the proverbial trigger. The Manuscript Murder marvelously muddled the waters and marched on with the second-half of The Quality of Murder, written addendum's by one of the suspects and a superbly done, psychological grounded false-solution that preceded a much more gritty, inevitable one. But it worked like a charm! Robinson's unvarnished, honest approach to characterization, especially where their private life is concerned, coupled with an original bend for plot-construction makes him one those rarities who can be enjoyed by both rabid traditionalists and apologists of the modern crime novel.

If there's anything to nitpick at, it's the uninspired, mundane book title. Why not the muddy the waters ever so slightly more by simply calling the book The Quality of Murder? I thought it was a missed opportunity to not turn Sir Oscar's murder into a full-blown impossible murder. Robinson only needed to be a little mysterious about the nature of the main murder weapon to turn into one of those "magic bullet" puzzles, but, as this is a semi-inverted mystery, Robinson gives that part away almost immediately. A missed opportunity as an impossible angle would have been the finishing touch to a murder "so chuck full of the stock devices of the detective mystery novel." Other than that stylistic smudge and plot oversight, The Manuscript Murder is as fairly clued as it original with all vivid characterization and authentic military background as The Medbury Fort Murder and The General Goes Too Far, but towers above those two novels in overall quality. One of the better reprints from Black Heath and comes highly recommend. 

A note for the curious: I wanted to shoehorn this into the review, but forgot all about until I was finished. There is a very brief, but fascinating, discussion in the manuscript about fictitious vs. real-life murders between Swayne and Vaspell. One stating that there's always "a subtle and acute detective to unravel the tangled threads" of "the complicated mysterious murder of fiction," but "these super sleuths don't exist in real-life." So the ordinary, everyday policeman can actually be beaten by silenced pistols, cast-iron alibis and unknown motives. This is, of course, not true, because experience is the whetstone of intelligence. Something even the most average of policeman will always have over the clever amateur criminal. But it made me feel a little better about my own track record in solving these mysterious crimes of fiction. I like to imagine myself to be some sort of armchair detective, like Mycroft Holmes, but usually turn out to be closer to Ludovic Travers with one out of three or four theories turning out to be (somewhat) correct. So maybe closer to Roger Sheringham than Travers. But I try. I try.

The General Goes Too Far (1936) by Lewis George Robinson

Lewis G. Robinson had a long, distinguished service career as a Medical Officer in the British Army, serving during the First World War and rising to the rank of Colonel before retiring due to ill-health, who drew on his army experience to write four specialized, military-themed detective novels – all but one published under the name "George Limnelius." Under the same pseudonym, Robinson wrote three extremely obscure short stories, "The Time-Gun" (1929), "A Perfect Alibi" (1929) and "On the Ether" (1930), which were published in The Royal Magazine. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find anything about the short stories, except for titles and publication dates. 

The Medbury Fort Murder (1929) is his best remembered novel, championed by Robert Adey as an unfairly forgotten locked room mystery, who helped secure the book a spot in Martin Edwards' The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017). A place earned not only for its "insider's picture of the army" and "authentic flavour of military life," but for its "no-nonsense treatment of sex and violence" that's "hardly in keeping with the lazily conventional view of Golden Age fiction as cosy." I reviewed the book in 2019 and thought the story's true merit lies in its inversion of the inverted mystery. Somewhat reminiscent of 1930s Anthony Berkeley. The Medbury Fort Murder is definitely a cut above your average, 1920s detective novel and a portent of things to come in the decades ahead, but the other novels had been out-of-print for decades in 2019.

Last year, Nick Fuller listed Lewis Robinson in a blog-post, "Detective stories to reprint," going over some very obscure authors who "might well merit reprinting," but, unbeknownst to Nick, Robinson had already sneaked back into circulation by stealth! Black Heath reissued his four standalone mysteries, as cheap ebooks, in June, 2021. This gave me an excuse opportunity to dive into the neglected work of another forgotten mystery writer. ...Tell No Tales (1931) and The Manuscript Murder (1933) have already neared the snow-capped tops of the big pile. Since I'm chronologically challenged, I wanted to begin with his final novel. 

The General Goes Too Far (1936) in many ways resembles The Medbury Fort Murder as both succeeded in simultaneously being inverted mysteries and genuine whodunits, but The General Goes Too Far is richer in characters, storytelling and setting – which begins in 1920s Ireland and concludes years later in a West African colony. But it starts out as a messy tangle of characters and incidents, until the third and fourth chapter. This is the gist of it. Major-General Sir John Sangye is "a natural-born Puritan" with a personality forming "a pattern of all the less amiable virtues" (an ambitious teetotaler and non-smoker), but, twenty years ago, he had a secretive relation with a young stage actress, Nellie Johnson. She became pregnant with his child, but married Sangye's rich, middle-aged cousin, Captain Challoner, who accepted the child as his own. However, Captain Challoner has no intention to father his cousin's "bastards" and this comes to a head when their car breaks down in the middle of the Irish countryside. A local Shinner commando ambushes the stranded car and a firefight ensues, which Sangye uses as a cover to shoot and kill Challoner. Sangye married his widow and accepted his own daughter, Belinda, as his stepdaughter. So "he erased the memory of that cold-blooded murder from his conscious mind," but "old sins cast long shadows" and it would come back to haunt him. This is only the prologue!

The next chapter introduces another set of cousins, Major Anthony Carson and Major Reginald Heverell, who have a fabulous wealthy aunt. Aunt Edna is in her eighties, sickly and a lot to leave one or both of her nephews. Major Carson begins to play with the idea "to expedite, as it were, the slow processes of Nature" by tampering with Aunt Edna's life saving amyl drops. Simply replacing the nitrate of amyl in one of the capsules with a drop of water. And he would be on his next six-month tour abroad when she gets to the harmless capsule during a fit. Finally, the third chapter introduces a young lieutenant, Benjamin Daunt, who's Belinda's fiancé and learns from his uncle, Colonel Daunt, the truth about Belinda's parentage. But he's indiscreet with this information. And that has consequences when they all come together in a remote African outpost of the British Empire.

A remote, lonely outpost situated between the boundaries of French Gambia and the British Protectorate of Nuevas Palmas, Liberia, where a handful of outpost station were strung along the seven hundred miles of frontier – of which Makompe was the remotest outpost. An island fortress, "built on the site of a seventeenth century Portuguese fort," which constitutes the only fixed defenses of the port of Libreville. So the island fort comes under the responsibilities of the War Office and completely independent of the Colonial Office. It really irks His Excellency, the Governor, knowing that there is one spot, "only about a square mile in all," in the Colony where his writ does not run. Any crime, civil or military, done on the island would be tried by Court Martial. So there's "plenty of scope for friction." The characters who gathered there have already gotten themselves in trouble or plotting how to get themselves out of it as the past slowly comes back into focus. When someone gets shot in a restricted area of the fortress, Major-General Sir John Sangye refuses to waive his "technical right" to jurisdiction and let the Colonial Office investigate the case. And, if worst came to worst, the Governor could get the Home Government to intervene, which would look very bad, but the General stubbornly continues with "dangerous policy." What follows is a Court of Inquiry (in lieu of an inquest), a quick arrest and the suspect getting court martialed, which makes for a very unusual take on the courtroom drama.

Yes, The General Goes Too Far is all over the place as it tries to be an inverted mystery with a detective pull. A frankly written, character-driven crime novel with the General having to face the consequences of his past crime, while trying to come up with "some cunning move to deflect the impending blow at his daughter's happiness." A military courtroom drama with a last-minute, locked room murder placing another character in the docks and simply a story of military life in the Colonies. But it was not an entirely unsuccessful juggling act. You need to get through the messy, tangled opening chapters to get a good idea who's who, what they want, or do, and why. That makes what unfolds at the fort appear all the more mystifying. You have no idea in which direction the story is going or where its going to end.

Robinson managed to keep this up until the trial began, but during and after the trial it became easy to see where the story was headed and the solution began to take shape. Admittedly, the detective story elements were timeworn and second-rate. Such as the late locked room murder, which served as another dead giveaway. But, by that time, it hardly detracted from the overall quality of the story. 

The General Goes Too Far is an engrossing, well-constructed and fascinatingly told inverted detective novel enhanced by its unvarnished depiction of a far-flung, Colonial outpost of the British Empire – replete with class-and race distinctions as well as the tensions between civil and military administrators. This helped balance out some of the shortcomings revealed during its second-half. So the end result may still be a second-string mystery novel, but a first-class second-stringer with a less than conventional take on the inverted detective story. And, perhaps, in some way a little ahead of its time. But I think readers today can appreciate an obscure vintage with a slightly modern twist.

The Medbury Fort Murder (1929) by George Limnelius

Lewis G. Robinson was a medical officer in the British Army during the First World War and wrote three very obscure, army-themed detective novels, The Medbury Fort Murder (1929), Tell No Tales (1931) and The Manuscript Murder (1933), published as by "George Limnelius" – a reference to his mother's maiden name, Limmel. Robinson also penned an inverted mystery novel under his own name, The General Goes Too Far (1936), which was adapted as the motion picture The High Command (1937).

The Medbury Fort Murder is perhaps the least scarce and most interesting title of three mystery novels Robinson wrote under the Limnelius name.

Robert Adey described The Medbury Fort Murder in Locked Room Murders (1991) as "a straight locked room novel" that "rises above most of it contemporaries by virtue of the excellent writing and characterization." John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, lauded the book as "one of the most unique novels" from the early 20th century, because it's both "an inverted detective novel" and "a true detective novel" – while Martin Edwards called it a "terrific book." So, with such glowing recommendations, the book rocketed to the top of my (locked room) wish list, but it took me some time to finally get around to it.

Admittedly, The Medbury Fort Murder is an excellently written piece of detective fiction with surprisingly (for the time) mature characterization and an ambitious plot twisting, and reshaping, the inverted detective story.

The Medbury Fort Murder opens with a lengthy introduction of the characters, spearheaded by Major Hugh Preece, Royal Army Medical Corps, who's a serious-minded medical officer with only "a few flirtations" and ''temporary connections of a more intimate character" under his belt, but has now fallen in love with Prunella Lake – a small part musical comedy actress. They have a short-lived, but earnest, fling "interrupted by the outbreak of the Great War." After which Prunella married the then future Sir Tremayne Ronan and Major Hugh started a family with Claire Chisholme.

Ten years come and go, Hugh receives a letter from Prunella asking him to meet her to chat about old times, but they end up spending the night together, secretly, in a hotel room. And nine months later, Prunella finally gives birth to her first child and passes the boy off as Sir Ronan's. This was supposed to be a secret between only two people, Hugh and Prunella, but Lieutenant Charles Lepean has gotten wind of their little secret. Lieutenant Lepean is best described as a vile, blackmailing miscreant.

The other potential suspects introduced in these chapters are Captain Wape, Lieutenant Harris and Private Swansdick, who'll be with Hugh the primary suspects of the impending murder at Medbury Fort – one of "the chain of forts in the Thames and Medway Defenses." This part of the story also include a brief, richly detailed flashback to an episode in West Africa, which had a glimmer of that memorable, second-half of Christopher St. John Sprigg's The Corpse with the Sunburned Face (1935). George Limnelius was a good writer who knew how to spin a yarn with characters acting like actual human beings, but Limnelius also proved himself to be a very proficient plotter.

John Norris suggested in his previously mentioned review Limnelius seems to have been inspired by Anthony Berkeley's mystery novels. I don't think this is true, because the only typical Berkeley novel he had written at the time was Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (1927) with Jumping Jenny (1933) and Trial and Error (1937) still being in the future, but The Medbury Fort Murder certainly resembles them by inverting the inverted detective story.

In a letter, Prunella tells Hugh that Lieutenant Lepean "must be silenced," because they'll both be ruined if their secret is exposed or "else bled white." Hugh and Lepean happen to be both stationed at Medbury Fort.

So, Hugh begins to plan the murder of Lieutenant Lepean and takes inspiration from a well-known classic of the locked room mystery, but, when Lepean is murdered with surgical precision behind the locked door of his bedroom, it becomes doubtful he actually committed the murder – or did he? There are only three other viable suspects, Captain Wape, Lieutenant Harris and Private Swansdick, where the only ones who could possibly have had access to the officers' quarter at the time of the murder. You can only reach the stone stairs leading to the officers' quarters and mess by passing through the guard room, which had been constantly guarded by either one or three soldiers. So not only is this a locked room puzzle, but also a very tight closed-circle of suspects.

A problem complicated by the presence of three possible murder weapons: a surgical knife, a West African machete and "one those obsolete, long, curved, French bayonets." A problem reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton's "The Three Tools of Death," collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), but here it was not used quite as effective. The clues themselves also turn out to be somewhat troublesome. Who oiled the lock on Lepean's bedroom door and why was the key stolen after the door was broken down? More importantly, the murderer appeared to have employed a different kind of locked room-trick than the one Hugh had planned on using.

Limnelius deserves credit for handling the impossible crime, because normally I would hate these creaking, dated and shopworn locked room-tricks.

There are two (false) solutions proposed to the impossible murder that many readers have seen before, which can also be said about the last and correct solution. However, I can't remember any other locked room story pre-1929 using this exact explanation. I know of a mystery novel from 1931 that used it, but not one predating The Medbury Fort Murder and, keeping this in mind, the ending probably worked better in 1929 than in 2019 – because the timeworn explanations was followed by an original one. A very simple solution that can be seen as an inversion of the locked room problem.

The way in which Limnelius structured and presented the murder of Lieutenant Lepean reminded me of Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detective (1936). We have a murder in a locked bedroom investigated by three detectives, under the guidance of Chief Inspector McMaster, who gather various pieces of evidence and try to fit to one or more of the suspects. The result is an engagingly written, solidly plotted and mostly satisfying detective novel with a nice surprise packed away at the end.

There are, however, a couple of minor smudges. I don't think the clueing is as strong as it could have been, which helped make the surprise a genuine surprise, and the explanation as to what happened in the locked bedroom required a pretty big coincidence. Some modern readers, like Aidan of Mysteries Ahoy (his review can be read here), might have a problem with the classist attitudes aired and imposed on the characters. Chief Inspector McMaster even confidently states that in "the history of crime" there's "no single case of a murder of violence having been committed by an educated man," which is reflected in the motive of the murder.

If you can look pass these imperfections, you'll find an excellently plotted and characterized detective novel in the tradition of 1930s Anthony Berkeley that made surprisingly good use of some old, tired locked room tropes. So, yes, highly recommended!