Virgil
Markham was a strange mystery writer who eschewed the common
tropes and conventions in his detective novels, eight in total
published between 1928 and 1932, which have been practically
forgotten today and Curt
Evans wrote, in a
2012 blog-post, that the books may have been "victims of
their own originality" – or "to say strangeness."
A writer who steered his "narratives over worn-out ruts"
to find "different and exciting ways of working with the form."
And it's not easy to decide whether, or not, he succeeded in cutting
new pathways through the genre.
Curt referred to one of my
reviews of Markham's first and most well-known mystery novel, Death
in the Dusk (1928), which I described as rivaling Joel
Townsley Rogers' The Red Right Hand (1945) and Fredric
Brown's Night of the Jabberwock (1950) in the race for
most outlandish detective story ever contrived. The outlandish plot
and story-telling is also the reason why I didn't break my neck to
get all of Markham's detective novels.
Death in the Dusk
is a massive, nearly 400-page long, detective novel posing as a grim,
blood-soaked fairy tale with bleeding portraits, levitating bones,
immortal cats and an enchanted duel between medieval sorcerers, but
turgid narrative makes it a slow, plodding read – requiring your
undivided attention. A book that is hard to warm to and only can be
appreciated for what's it trying to and not how. So was brought
Markham back under my attention?
Back in 2018, The
Invisible Event and The
Green Capsule posted glowing reviews of Markham's third mystery
novel, The Devil Drives (1932).
JJ
began his review with "someone
who venerates plot to the extent I do should not have enjoyed this
book as much as I did,"
while GC praised Markham for coming up with "a
completely unique solution to a locked room murder."
What I gleaned of the erratic plot from their reviews, I expected
something along the lines of R.H.W. Dillard's The
Book of Changes
(1974), but with more lucidity and substance in the writing and
plotting. My expectations were exceeded, because The
Devil Drives
had no right to be this good and entertaining! A story that's not
easily described, or defined, but absolutely wonderful to read.
The
Devil Drives
is narrated by the "sinfully
young"
warden of New Jersey's Franklin Penitentiary, George Peters, who
receives a visit in the opening chapter from a representative of the
Woman's Press Association, Miss Louisa Matthews Carmody – who
wishes to inspect all of the parts of the prison. Peters has the
unshakable feeling that Miss Carmody's primary interest was in the
prisoners rather than the conditions of the prison. In the second
chapter, Peters goes down to the death house to have one final talk
with "a
gunman with a long New York record,"
named Frank Holborn, who claims to have been framed. And tries to ask
the warden a favor. Peters turns him down and the story really begins
after the, more or less, successful execution of Frank Holborn. This
is the point where the narrative becomes jittery and episodic.
Peters
receives a packet of old, undated love letters written by a
13-year-old girl, "Pat," to an obviously older man, "Dubrosky,"
which are full of references to "the
loveliest doll's house"
with a pigmy tribe inside and a buried treasure that no one will ever
find – except "by
earth, air and water."
Someone wants to give Peters the job to find that treasure, but, in
order to do so, he has to burn all his bridges behind him. And
descend into the criminal underworld.
Fascinatingly,
Peters assumes a false-identity and uses it to set himself up as a
fixer. The underworld equivalent of a private investigator and can't
remember having ever come across a character who had to play
detective in that role.
What
comes his way is a notorious murder trial that has taken the place of
the Hall-Mills and Gray-Snyder affairs in the newspaper headlines and
its unfortunate aftermath. A flamboyant gangster with fresh flowers
in his buttonhole, an eccentric blackmailer, a gun-wielding countess
and a long-missing, Raffles-like house thief. Everything is all over
the place and it takes until the last quarter of the story to follow
the twisting, winding path of the plot down to a small, lakeside
cabin that looked like "a
pumpkin-house in fairy tale"
with its sides and back bulging "a
bit like the pumpkin." When Peters looks through the window, he sees the body of man laying
a puddle of water surrounded by muddy footprints, but the solid,
pinewood door and windows are locked, bolted or hooked on the inside.
So how did a man drown, on dry land, while locked inside a cabin?
I've
to agree with JJ that the locked room-trick is not wholly original
and hinges on a principle that's not exactly popular among
puzzle-purists (burn the heretics!), but Markham came up with an
entirely new and satisfying variation on the trick – a solution
that was audaciously clued and hinted at. So have to side with GC's
enthusiasm over the locked room-trick, even if it's not an outright
classic.
On
a side note, when the body was found and it came to light he had a
non-fatal head wound, I began to suspect the pumpkin-like cabin
somehow had been flooded with water and drained again, which could
have been done through the chimney or those suspicious weatherstrips
that helped seal the place (could they have been removed to let the
water in or out?). And he had sustained the wound when he bumped his
head to the ceiling when he floated to the top. But what killed him
was not ordinary drowning, but delayed drowning, which would explain
the muddy footprints inside (he walked around before collapsing). A
hypothesis I had to abandon because it didn't fit the timeline of the
story, but still wanted to share that pulp-style locked room
possibility with you.
The
Devil Drives
is a strange animal and a bundle of contradictions. A simplistically
complicated story with a loose, episodic plot tried together with a
string of coincidences, some harder to swallow than others, but
somehow, it worked – punctuated with an ending that gave everyone
involved déjà
vu.
There's no logical reason why it worked, but, somehow, it did and the
result was very pleasing. One of the most unorthodox and curious
(locked room) mysteries I've read in a long time!