The Hanging Captain (1932) by Henry Wade

So it must be admitted that January has been pretty average so far, quality-wise, having discussed two of Paul Doherty's e-novellas of differing grades, a trio of so-called transitional mysteries from the late 1950s and a compilation of six uncollected short impossible crime stories – of which only two were of good quality. Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed vol. 84 mainly occupied itself with setting up the payoff to several character-arcs in the ongoing storyline in vol. 85. I decided to return to the genre's Golden Age with one of its great, early luminaries.

Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, English baronet and writer, served in two World

Wars and held the positions of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire during peacetime. The 6th baronet made his greatest contribution to his country when he began writing detective novels and short stories under the name "Henry Wade." Between 1926 and 1957, Wade penned twenty-three novels and short story collection with half of them featuring his series-character, Inspector John Poole. Wade's work is generally highly regarded, "varied in plot and situation" with "a wide, first-hand knowledge of police procedure," which No Friendly Drop (1931), Constable, Guard Thyself! (1934) and Heir Presumptive (1935) can attest to. So why not pick up this month's slack with a novel that was recommended to me as a superb example of Wade's detective fiction? Sure enough, Wade delivered the best detective story (so far) of the month.

The Hanging Captain (1932) is Wade's sixth detective novel and largely takes place at the ancestral home of Captain Herbert Sterron, Ferris Court, which "had been in the family for no fewer than four hundred years." Captain Sterron inherited the estate when he was a young, dashing and rich Dragoon captain whose successful military career allowed him to capture "beautiful Griselda Hewth in the height of her first, victorious London season" – "sweeping her away from under the guns of rival dukes and diamond merchants." So the future was looking bright for the Sterrons, but then he suddenly resigned his commission and buried himself with his wife at his remote country home. There were plenty of rumors ranging from ill-health, money problem and domestic quarrels. Whatever the reason, Griselda stayed put, "on principle rather than by inclination," even throughout the war when Captain Sterron was deemed unfit for active service and spent the war at remount depot on the French coast.

Gerald Sterron, a retired Shanghai merchant, returned to the England, he found his older brother "utterly changed from the care-free, high-spirited dragoon" and "the Tudor home of twelve generations of Sterrons" in a neglected state. Captain Sterron has made "a complete mess of things financially" with everything tied-up in mortgages and "there's no money to keep things up."

The lingering memory of the First World War (Constable, Guard Thyself!) and the decline of the British upper classes (No Friendly Drop) appear to be recurring themes in Wade's detective fiction. Both are present in the The Hanging Captain, but the war is only a background murmur here with the emphasis being on the decline of estates like Ferris Court ("...what with death duties and the cost of keeping the place up"). Not exactly in a nostalgic way that you might expect from a baronet in the 1930s. To quote Martin Edwards from his 2013 review of The Hanging Captain, Wade was "an aristocrat himself, but although his writing often had a touch of nostalgia, plus a strong respect for tradition, he had no time for people who squandered the advantages life gave them" at "a time when things were tough for millions." So the subject is handled in an unvarnished, matter-of-factually way and provides a double-edged motive when Captain Sterron is found hanging from a curtain rod in his study. Suicide looks obvious, but Superintendent Dawle, of the Hylam Police, keeps an open mind as he observes plenty of possible clues and potential motives suggesting he might have a murder on his hands. Firstly, their next door neighbor and High Sheriff of the county, Sir Carle Venning, has been very intimate with Griselda and that angered her husband – swearing to his brother he'll "break him without touching him." Secondly, Gerald Sterron inherits the family estate, which even in 1932 still counted as a pretty solid motive. However, it's another house guest, Sir James Hamsted, who definitively proves his host had been cleverly murdered during a very well written inquest scene. That discovery poses a problem to the local authorities.

The Chief Constable, Major Threngood, does not relish the thought of having to interrogate the High Sheriff and prefers a hush-hush policy, before deciding to call in Scotland Yard to crack that hard, politically sensitive nut. So the story suddenly begins to indulge in a surprisingly rare, baffling under utilized trope, rivaling detectives, but it's not Inspector John Poole who arrives in Hylam. It's his slightly older rival, Detective-Inspector Lott, who previously appeared in The Dying Alderman (1930) and is expected to one day run neck-to-neck with Poole to the post of a Chief-Inspectorship. And the city detective proved to be a perfect foil for the provincial superintendent.

Detective-Inspector Lott "sedulously cultivated the appearance both of youth and clerkliness" and "with his well-cared-for clothes and the golden chain to his pince-nez would have passed anywhere for the holder of some well-paid clerical post in a Government office." Lott has an exceptional record at the Yard as one successfully closed case followed another. A striking contrast to the plodding and methodical Superintendent Dawle who embodies all the qualities of good, efficient British policing ("there was no brainwork in it, only care, thoroughness and method"). I really liked how they played off each other! Lott comes to Hylam with some preconceived notions as his "experience with county constabularies had led him to expect a fair amount of stupidity," but eventually has to admit to himself that Dawle is "an unselfish old cuss" and "not half such a fool as he looked." Wade deserves praise for giving them only two, equally likely suspects, namely Gerald Sterron and Sir Carle Venning, to investigate and they present a very similar problem – a pair of seemingly unbreakable, cast-iron alibis. Gerald Sterron was playing chess with Sir James Hamsted in the library and Sir Carle was in Birmingham attending a theatrical play, which made it impossible for him "to have been at Ferris at the time that the murder had been committed." So while Dawle goes to work on the chess alibi, Lott tackles the theatrical alibi.

And having only two suspects works better than some might assume. I instinctively jumped on one of them, which immediately made me pause to consider the second option and that's where the story got me. For some time, anyway, but eventually pieced most of it together except for some of the finer details. But what a fun, clever little detective story! Not an Agatha Christie-style rug-pull, of course, but a good how-was-it-done puzzle The only thing that could have made the story and plot even better is if Sir James Hamsted had played armchair detective by proposing a false-solution implicating a third, previously unsuspected person. It would have made for a much more engaging and interesting way to tackle the sub-plot concerning Father Speyd's secret as well as preventing the slackening of the story's pacing during its second-half.

But beside that minor point, The Hanging Captain is a good, solid piece of Golden Age detective fiction, plot-wise, ranking only slightly below Wade's excellent No Friendly Drop and Constable, Guard Thyself. The story earned some bonus points in my book as a superb example of what can be done with two very different, but equally skilled, rivaling detectives. Highly recommended!

No Friendly Drop (1931) by Henry Wade

Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher was an English baronet who fought in the two World Wars with the Grenadier Guards and held the positions of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, but Major Sir Henry's greatest service to his country was performed under a pseudonym, "Henry Wade" – plastered on the covers of more than twenty detective novels. Barzun & Taylor considered Wade to be "one of the outstanding authors not only of the thirties," but "also of the immediate post-war period." Particularly his earlier novels are well thought of by classic mystery readers. I had only read Constable, Guard Thyself! (1934) and Heir Presumptive (1935) years ago. So it was about time I returned to Wade and Detective-Inspector John Poole. 

No Friendly Drop (1931) is Wade's fifth novel and the second one to star his series-detective, Detective-Inspector Poole, who made his first appearance in The Duke of York's Step (1929). This one has been on my wishlist and big pile ever since reading glowing reviews from Nick, Patrick and "D for Doom." Having now read the book, I can say No Friendly Drop can be counted among the best of the British country house mystery novels. A story presented as typical, almost idyllic, country house mystery, but the devil is in the details and the nigh perfect plotting has a genuine and moving tragedy hidden underneath.

Tassart Hall, in Brackenshire, has been the ancestral seat of Lord Grayle's family for centuries and he loved both "the old-world furnishings of Tassart" and his dear wife, Lady Grayle. She was "passionately devoted to her husband," but dark clouds slowly gather over the country house.

Lord Grayle is nearly sixty, happily married and very popular in the region, but poor health made him a sad, delicate man that prevented him to make "use of his natural ability and opportunities" and lately developed a neuralgic tic – attacks of acute pain could drive him into a state "far more serious than the disease itself." On top of that, the cost of running a big estate has doubled in post-war England. And on the way of being taxed out of existence. Their son and their ambitious daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Chessingham, disapprove of Lady Grayle not only refusing to cut back on her royal allowance, but even exceeding it. But nothing out of the ordinary for the time, which makes what happens next so devastating.

One morning, the household finds Lord Grayle unresponsive in his bed and Dr. Norman Calladine suspect he might have died from an overdose of medication, but a tabulation of the time of death and medication left shows something doesn't quite add up. Chief Constable knows "this is going to be an extremely awkward case" involving "one of the best known and most respected families in the country." So he decides to call in Scotland Yard who send Detective-Inspector John Poole down to Tassart Hall. Poole comes to the conclusion that he has deeply perplexing murder case on his hand without an apparent motive. Everyone agreed Lady Grayle's "love for her husband was the strongest and most genuine feature of her character." Lady Chessingham was hardly going to push colorless and pompous husband "into an earldom and the Cabinet over the dead body of her father-in-law."

So while they are all flawed people, overly generous, extravagant, ambitious or pompous, none of them are truly evil people who had a need to bump off of the beloved family patriarch – which would have netted them only a few hundred pounds or a heavily taxed estate. Lord Grayle's death actually forces his widow to make serious financial cutbacks. Not quite the cast of vultures commonly associated with these English country house mysteries. Even more uncharacteristically is the character who becomes the focal point of the police investigation.

A tired, completely untrue cliché of the detective story is "The Butler Did It," because a butler is practically part of the furniture and the least likely person to suspect. I can think of only a handful of detective stories in which the butler turned out to be murderer. I cringed every time. No Friendly Drop did things a little bit differently by dragging out the butler of Tassart Hall, James Moode, whose messy financial and private life attracted Poole's attention. Poole strongly suspects Moode of being in the middle of a lucrative scheme to secretly replace the valuable antique furniture at the hall with copies, but, as he digs deeper, Poole begrudgingly admits to himself that even Moode "could not be altogether a bad lot." Continuing the theme of the flawed family members without a pressing motive that really holds up. But then the problem deepens even more when the autopsy report comes in.

Lord Grayle had been given a "skillful mixing" of two poisons, di-dial and scopolamine, which were only lethal in combination. The doses were administrated hours apart. So why did the poisoner use "two stones to kill one bird" and what was the vehicle of the poisons? Poole knows "it's always a risk to leave a poisoner out," but decides to treat very carefully and not always ask the important questions as he hopes to lure the murderer in a false sense of security. Very much to the chagrin of the county police. And they appear to be justified when a second person is poisoned. A poisoning as mystifying as the first one that at the same time brings a great deal of clarity to the problem. I didn't realize just how fairly Wade had been playing the game until roughly the last quarter of the story.

I had a few ideas and suspicions, but the picture remained in unclear until reaching the last quarter when nearly everything, almost automatically, began to click together to form a practically complete picture and only aspect remained hazy – revealing the only weak link in the plot. Wade should have told the reader (ROT13) nobhg gur oebxra fcbhg bs Ybeq Tenlyr'f grncbg. However, it's the only design flaw in what's otherwise a flawlessly plotted detective story that even Agatha Christie could not have improved upon. But the solution is not merely an answer to a complicated, if ultimately simple, puzzle because the characters are not merely chess pieces who stand and move in service of the plot. So the solution is both logical and emotionally destructive, which delivered the finishing blow to the murderer. A truly tragic ending! 

No Friendly Drop has the outward appearance of a typically British, traditionally-structured country house mystery, but you only have to read the first chapter to understand this one is different and what unfolds in the succeeding chapters is an intelligently written and plotted detective story – particularly how Wade handled the plot-thread concerning the faked furniture. When it became evident what had happened at Tassart Hall, the story smartly began to shape into a human tragedy to deliver an ending befitting a classic. The fire that was lit in the 1920s was beginning to roar. Highly recommended!

In the Line of Duty

"Ideals come to torment us all at some stage, or at least they should do."

- Chief Inspector Morse (Inspector Morse Series 5, Episode 1: Second Time Around, 1991)

Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th baronet, served in both World Wars with the Grenadier Guards and was Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire from 1954 to 1961, but the common plebs, like ourselves, probably know him best for his detective stories – all of them published under his penname of "Henry Wade." The detective novels and short stories, published under that byline, are held in high regard by pretty much everyone.

Until now, my only exposure to Wade had been one of his standalone mystery novels, Heir Presumptive (1935), but I kept coming across enticing reviews and readers of this blog have recommended his work to me in the past. I had planned to resume my reading with Wade's penultimate novel, A Dying Fall (1955), but Kate, of Cross Examining Crime, beat me to it (read her review here). So I decided to track down one of his promising-sounding titles and I can tell you that the subject of this blog-post will make an appearance on my best-reads of 2017 list!

Constable, Guard Thyself (1934) is the fourth book about Wade's series-character, Detective-Inspector John Poole of Scotland Yard, and is an early predecessor of the modern-day police procedural. However, the plot of the story consists purely of Golden Age material and can even be considered as a locked room mystery! Granted, the apparent impossibility was the unfortunate byproduct of the murderer's attempt to engineer "an unshakable alibi," but the fact remains that the book ought to be acknowledged as a locked room novel.

So I took the liberty to initiate the book in this beloved sub-genre or ours and labeled it as an impossible crime story. Anyhow...

Constable, Guard Thyself has a fascinating background, a police station, situated in a fictional town, Brodbury, where the policemen who are stationed there become implicated in a murder investigation when their very own Chief Constable is murdered – shot to death, in his own office, inside the police station!

Twenty years previously, the town was suffering from "a severe epidemic of poaching" and Captain Anthony Scole had been appointed to the Chief Constableship in order to "smash the poaching gangs." Captain Scole had earned a fearless reputation during a five-year stint as a policeman in an unruly corner of India, but his efficient reorganization of the local game keepers had only reduced poaching. Not stopped it. What he needed was to make an example out of someone and this opportunity came when an ambush of three poachers ended with the accidental killing of a game keeper.

Nevertheless, Captain Scole insisted during the trial that the shooter, Albert Hinde, deliberately pulled the trigger and the accused was subsequently sentenced to death. Hinde's brother, a mere youngster, and a friend received five years as accessories. When they were released from prison, they enlisted in the army and were killed during the Spring Offensive of 1918 in Northern France. Ironically, Hinde, who was supposed to hang, had his sentence commuted by the Home Secretary on "possible grounds for doubting premeditation" and was kept safely behind bars. Hinde was released from prison twenty years later and he had not forgotten about the Chief Constable of Brodbury.

Scene of the Crime

A much older and wiser Captain Scole did not feel "quite as happy as he had at the time" about the conviction he had secured, which effectively ended the poaching epidemic in his district.

But regret over his past, somewhat misguided, idealism does nothing to quell Hinde's resentment or prevent him from being harassed by the ex-convict. One evening, while traveling homeward, Captain Scole has a brief encounter with Hinde and on the following day he receives a threatening letter, which promises that the next time "the judge puts on the black cap" it will be for something he has actually done – suggesting he might take a crack at the Chief Constable. Alas, the fact that the Chief Constable was surrounded by policeman proved to be insufficient protection against an assassin's bullet and his body was found slumped over his desk with a bullet in his head.

A nation-wide police alert goes out for Albert Hinde and the situation appears as if his capture would bring the case to a close, but the acting-Chief Constable, Superintendent Venning, is prodded into asking the Yard for assistance. And that brings Detective-Inspector John Poole into the fray. Poole methodically begins to separate the facts from the red herrings, which makes for a well-written, pleasantly paced and clever police procedural with classical detective plot.

One of the complicating factors requiring Poole's attention is an anonymous letter hinting at a streak of corruption, and even blackmail, running through the Brodshire Constabulary. A "dirty piece of scandal" pertaining to a clothing manufacturing firm bribing an official, at the Brodbury police station, to give them "the figures tendered by competing firms" and place a sealed bit of their own – which is slightly lower then the bits by their competitors. So they always landed the "profitable contracts" to dress His Majesty's constables.

This opens the possibility that the murder was an inside job. Only problem is that the circumstances of the murder demonstrate that the shooting was very difficult to pull off, whether the murderer came from within or from the outside, which is where the impossible angle comes into play. However, it only becomes apparent how much of a locked room problem Captain Scole's murder really was until Poole explains how it was done. As noted at the start of this review, the impossibility is a side-effect of the murderer's main objective, creating "a cast-iron alibi," but the trick is not bad at all and shows some ingenuity. Such as the significance of the clue of "a piece of powder-scorched leather." Even if that particular clue was given (too) late into the story. Still, why the murderer needed a piece of leather in a gun murder was very clever and practical. Not something I have seen before. So there's that.

But what I really admired about Constable, Guard Thyself is how Wade, early on the story, gave the reader pretty much the raw, unprocessed truth behind the impending murder of Captain Scole, but how everything stuck together proved to be a different story altogether. And putting together a coherent picture of the crime required some genuine detective work on the part of Poole. So, yes, you can probably spot the murderer in the early stages of the story and that could have easily been a fatal flaw in the plot (c.f. J.C. Lenehan's transparent The Mansfield Mystery, 1932), but Wade kept this reader interested throughout the story with reconstructions, developments, diligent detective work and a cast of varied and engaging characters. I would rank Poole among those engaging characters. He might have been somewhat of a colorless personality, but he pleasantly reminded me of Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French.

And then there's the most fascinating aspect of the story: the emerging importance of the Great War of 1914-1919 and how the events on the battlefield proved to be of great importance to the murder of Captain Scole. I have often professed my love for detective stories, with plots, that lean heavily on the World Wars, but there only precious few that incorporate the First World War. There's a Harriette Ashbrook A Most Immoral Murder (1935), originally titled He Killed a Thousand Men, and a short story, Laurance Clarke's "Flashlight," which was actually published in 1918, but there's not much else in this category.

So I welcome Constable, Guard Thyself as an excellent addition to this lamentably short list of WWI-themed detective stories and it has convinced me that there's no excuse to not further explore Wade's output. He evidently knew how to handle a twisty, complicated plot and have been told in the past that the First World War hangs like a ghost over a number of his detective novels, which now has really caught my attention. I might return to Wade sooner rather than later. Any and all recommendations are welcome.

Well, thus far this hastily written, banged-out review. Not sure what's next on the list, but there's another (promising) impossible crime novel on the big pile. On the other hand, I also want to return to Case Closed and the animated Kindaichi series. So we'll see what turns up on this blog next. So don't touch that dial!