The Devil's Saint

"As long as Satan walks the earth, evil walks with him. Even here... someone held hands with the devil..."
- Simon Ark (Edward D. Hoch's "City of Brass," from City of Brass and Other Simon Ark Stories, 1971)

Lately, the Dean Street Press began resurrecting the literary legacy of Winifred Peck, which began with one of her mainstream works, Bewildering Cares (1940), together with both of her detective novels and I reviewed one of them earlier this month – a splendidly imagined mystery entitled The Warrielaw Jewel (1933). I alluded in that review to Peck's famous relatives and singled out her younger brother, Ronald A. Knox, who penned several highly regarded mystery novels. Knox was also a Catholic priest and a theologian of some renown, but he was not the only family member who served the church.

The father of Winifred and her five siblings, one sister and four brothers, was the Right Reverend Edmund A. Knox, fourth Bishop of Manchester, while another one of her brothers, Wilfred Knox, "earned distinction as an Anglican clergyman and theologian" – which likely resulted in a discussion or two between her Protestant and Catholic brothers.

Evidently, Peck drew on her family background when she briefly returned to our beloved genre with her second, and last, mystery novel, which was given the Episcopalian-sounding title of Arrest the Bishop? (1949). The story is set inside the walls of a Bishop's Palace and takes place in anticipation to both Ordination day and Christmas, but the arrival of an unpleasant and scandalous character casts a shadow over the proceedings. However, I should point one or two things before I begin poking the plot.

Peck dedicated Arrest the Bishop? to her husband, Sir James Wallace Peck, who helped her plotting the book and the dedication tells how he "horrified a guest" by announcing at breakfast they were going to make it "a fatal dose of morphia." Or terrified her housekeeper with a note asking to tell "Lady Peck we must have an inquest." This endeared them to me! Secondly, the book, similar to its predecessor, qualifies as a historical mystery, because the story takes place in the then recent past, which is two years after World War I – during a dark, snowy December in the year 1920. So the characters that fought in the trenches of the Western front add an extra layer to the depiction of ecclesiastical life at the Bishop's Palace. On top of that, the book can also be read as a Christmas mystery and all of this makes for an interesting detective story.

The villain of the piece is the wicked Rev. Thomas Ulder: a silver-tongued drunk and a scoundrel whose tenure as the head of the Theological College was dogged by "tales of bad management," financial discrepancies and muttered curses of his name by candidates who passed through the college – followed by "definite tales of drunkenness and dishonesty." He was finally persuaded to retire to a remote village, where the congregation was small and old, but he seems to have spent his time there gathering material.

Thomas Ulder's intention to return to the diocese coincides with the visit of several important guests, namely Canon Wye and Chancellor Chailly, but the Bishop is thoroughly appalled when he learns Ulder "is coming out to see him and his guests." On the eve of ordination, Ulder arrives at the Bishop's Palace, but his health has deteriorated in the intervening years and collapses as soon as he crossed the threshold. They placed Ulder in one of the bedrooms, but someone took advantage of this medical emergency and slipped him a fatal dose of morphine. And this is where the trouble really begins for the poor Bishop.

Initially, it is assumed Ulder took the poison himself, which would be bad enough, but a scrap of paper seems to indicate he had picked up blackmail as a side trade and every name on the list was present at the time of his death – which both strongly suggest murder. But as bad as a suicide or murder at the Bishop's Palace, is the person who'll be in charge of the investigation: Major Mack, the Chief Constable, who is "a violent Dissenter" and "a real enemy of the Church." Someone who sneers at the clerical tendency to sweep every hint of a scandal under the rug. However, I should note here that "the burly Chief Constable" is described as bursting with prejudices, against prelacy, pacifism and (modern) women, but his distaste for foreigners did not extend to the Dutch. So he probably has a point about those white feathers, harlots and fence crawlers. Personally, I found no reason to dislike the Major. He's a good guy!

Funnily enough, the Major, "who is no mere agnostic," is assisted by Dick Marlin, ex-military intelligence and now a Church deacon, who sees himself as a Church Militant. They make for a surprisingly well-matched pair of characters who ought to have had their own series of mystery novels. Sadly, they only appeared in this one-off. A large chunk of their work consists of drawing the past sins from all of the potential blackmail victims, which also involves one of the Bishop's daughter and this convinces the Major at one point that he has the "duty to arrest the Bishop." It was Marlin who convinced him to hold off the arrest for another day.

The introductory chapters, the subsequent investigation and the depiction of (family) life within the walls of the Bishop's Palace makes for an excellent and fascinating story, which came close to being superior to The Warrielaw Jewel, but the solution was prosaic and uninspired – which prevented the book from being a truly noteworthy detective novel. A genuine shame because I assumed, throughout the entire story, that the book was heading to my best-of list for 2016, but the final two or three chapters prevented that. It's really frustrating when you read a mystery that's consistently great and then fails you in the end. Anyway...

So Arrest the Bishop? is really well written and characterized, but as a detective story, the book stumbled and fell with the finish line in sight.

The Jewel That Was Ours

"And that means murder..." 

- Miles Bredon (Ronald A. Knox's "Solved by Inspection," collected in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, 1990)

During her lifetime, Winifred Peck (née Knox) gained critical and popular recognition as an author of mainstream fiction and biographical literature, which began with the publication of The Court of a Saint (1909), when she was 27, followed by twenty-five novels and memoirs over the next four decades – including a pair of long-forgotten mystery novels. But some of her equally talented relatives always seem to cast a shadow over her accomplishments.

One of these relatives was her younger brother, Ronald A. Knox, who was a founding member of the London-based Detection Club and concocted the Detective's Decalogue: The Ten Rules of Detective Fiction. Reportedly, Knox also authored some excellent detective stories, such as the much-touted Still Dead (1934), but I’ve only read one of his short stories, the Chestertonian "Solved by Inspection." However, I was aware of Knox and the legacy he had left behind, but I think most of us were oblivious of his sister and her brief participation in the Grandest Game in the World – which changed for me when Curt Evans wrote a 2012 blog-post, "Murder in the Family," about her first mystery novel. 

It was (sort of) a repost of an article that had been previously published on Mystery*File, but it was on Evans' blog that I first learned about Peck.

In any case, The Warrielaw Jewel (1933) impressed me as a potentially interesting detective story, which can be counted as one of the earliest examples of a historical mystery. During the Golden Age, the historical detective story were not the rage it is today. So I was very curious about that aspect of the story. I was not as thrilled about the comparison with Margery Allingham or how the book supposedly presaged the "shifting of emphasis from pure puzzles to the study of character and setting," which "helped mark that gradual transition from detective story to crime novel," but I was left intrigued nonetheless – sharing Evans' hope that the book would, one day, be republished. Well, that day is finally upon us!

Dean Street Press is reissuing The Warrielaw Jewel and Arrest the Bishop? (1949), which are prefaced by award-winning crime novelist and anthologist, Martin Edwards, who reviewed the book back in 2011. At the time, Edwards' called the plot and prose well constructed, but ponderous and lacking excitement. These are valid points of criticism. However, I was not bothered by the leisurely pace of the storytelling or the strong emphasis on characterization, because the overall structure of the story was pretty solid. Peck essentially penned the kind of character-driven detective story that Ellery Queen attempted to create in Calamity Town (1942), but Peck actually succeeded were Queen failed. On top of that, Peck even included a "Challenge to the Reader" at the end of the twelfth chapter. But I'm getting ahead of the story here.

The Warrielaw Jewel is narrated by Betty Morrison, who relates the details of a murder case she was involved twenty years previously, when she had just married her husband, John Morrison, who's an attorney to an old, eccentric and moldering Edinburgh family – the Warrielaws. The events of Betty's narrative took place in 1909, "when King Edward VII lived" and "the term Victorian was not yet a reproach," which began to move after she and her husband moved into the house that was vacated by his parents.

In those days, Edinburgh was not a city, but "a fortuitous collection of clans" and beneath the surface "lurked a history of old hatreds" and "feuds as old as the Black Douglas." Betty is about to discover this first-hand when she comes into contact with the Warrielaw. One of the favorite economy of her husband's clients is saving six shillings and eight pence by extracting legal advice from him in an ordinary social setting, which is why he find several members of the family on his doorstep: Miss Mary Warrielaw and Miss Rhoda MacPherson. Officially, they wanted John's advice about a burglary at the home, but Mary also hints about the ill will towards her sister, Jessica, who is sort of the matriarch of the family and she has been slowly selling off the family jewels, pictures and antique furniture.

She was taken to the court over this by a cousin, Cora Murray, but the law decided in Jessica favors. So she has continued liquidating family assets ever since. But now she wants to get rid of the last family heirloom, the fairy jewel!

According to the family legend, the only known fairy relic in the world came into their possession during the reign of James II of Scotland. One night, the dark lair of their clan strayed out into his dark woods and there he encountered a genuine fairy – a small, fair and glittering lady. He took the fairy to his castle and married here there. As a dowry, she gave him a jewel, taken from "the dim caverns of elf lands," but there's an interesting aspect about this legend that was not acknowledged. The family legend states that the fairy, a dutiful wife, bore the lord of the manor ten children and they were all bequeathed with "her fair hair and gold-green eyes." It is noted how strange these gold-green eyes are, because, besides the peculiar color, they also have small pupil that rarely contract or expend. These eyes are the most defining trait of all the Warrielaws. I can imagine the early Warrielaws dreamed up this fairy tale to explain the mutation in their bloodline, which made them standout from the other dark Borderers of the 15th century.

Winifred Peck

Anyway, the first half of the book lay the groundwork for the second half and takes the time to introduce all of the characters, which also includes other relatives such as Neil Logan, "a queer fish," who's an artist and one of the few family members who profited from Jessica. Alison is Rhoda's younger stepsister and she's getting involved with Betty's brother, Dennis. The reader is also shown around the rundown mansion of the family with its rabbit warren of dark corridors, ageless library, overstuffed rooms and large, overgrown garden. This narrative is punctuated with comments from Betty about the changes that have taken place between 1909 and 1933. It equips the book not only with a strong sense of place and time, but also gives off the impression that time is moving all around the characters. Peck succeeded admirably in penning a story that looked back on events from a previous era.

Well, these events really begin to move when Jessica Warrielaw vanishes from the face of the Earth and leave the household without a dime to draw on. She stays gone for seven weeks, but then a gruesome discovery is made in one of the outhouses a stone's-throw from the Warrielaw estate: Jessica's badly decomposed body was found underneath several sacks, battered and stabbed to death, which quickly places her eccentric nephew, Neil, in a precarious position – who benefited under her will and had the means to carry out the murder. So he's charged with the murder of his aunt and hauled in front of a judge.

Luckily, for Neil, a retired policeman and a long-time friend of Betty's husband, Bob Stuart, decided to poke around in the case. And he stumbles to the truth when the sight of what could've been Jessica's ghost startles someone. However, the explanation for the murder is not another variation or imitation of the Birlstone Gambit. It's a surprisingly easy, straightforward and workable explanation, which feels like an inevitability through Peck's excellent characterization and depiction of the various family members.

I should note here that a large chunk of the plot does not necessarily revolve around correctly identifying the murderer or motive, but placing the sequence of events in the correct order. So, plot-wise, this might not have been the most ideal crime novel to have a Queen-ish "Challenge to the Reader" inserted, which belongs between the pages of a thoroughbred whodunit, but you can definitely work towards the solution based on the given information.

A case of gimmick infringement?

All in all, The Warrielaw Jewel placed a great deal of emphasis on characterization and setting, but the end result was a dark, moody and memorable detective story. And, as I said earlier, Peck succeeded in this book where Ellery Queen failed with their character-driven-and psychology driven Wrightsville novels. Well, that really all I've say about this book. It's a really good, engrossing and solid read in spite of the plot taking a backseat in favor of the characters and setting.

I'll try to scratch her second mystery novel from TBR-list before the end of the month, but, for my next blog-post, I'll try find something that’s heavy on plot. Perhaps a locked room mystery or something. I haven't discussed one of those for ages on here, right?