Mise-en-Scène

"A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins."

- Orson Welles

The backdrop is the largest studio at the disposal of the Elkin-Filmmaatschappij, an hour away from Berlin, Germany, where an internationally assembled cast and crew are shooting Vrouwen die vergeten (Women Who Forget), a "talkie," starring Neri Vallona and Iwan Inkow – with an unaccredited cameo from Death in one of the key scene. 

As you might have noticed from the language, this is not going to be a review of one of Ngiao Marsh's theatrically staged mysteries, but the author in question, Willy Corsari, performed on stage before becoming a successful writer. In January of last year, I reported on her country-house mystery, Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937), and while there was a fatal flaw in the plot, I was nonetheless entertained – and the first example I found of a Dutch-language impossible crime novel from the Golden Age of Detective Stories!

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Co-Player, 1931), which was also published as Het mystery van het filmatelier (The Mystery of the Filmstudio), is a standalone from early in Corsari's career and focuses on the peculiar stabbing of an unlikable, but desirable, actress in front of a camera. The opening chapters and structure of the book show imagination, rewinding and fast-forwarding between scenes like a movie, giving the reader a fractured view of what happened before Neri Vallona collapsed in Iwan Inkow's arms. It conjures up a picture of a woman who practically handed out motives, ranging from jealousy to greed, and even robbery is an option when discovered that her villa has been burgled and a necklace was snatched from the body.

Unfortunately, the impossible situation is underplayed and has a surprisingly routine (read: dull) solution based on a technique that locked room aficionados will be more than familiar with. I suspected Inkow for the longest time, because the medical evidence and movie reel proved conclusively that he was physically not capable of stabbing Vallona, but I presumed that she had died before the scene was shot – keep in mind that they're all in costume with dancers twirling around them.

The strong Inkow carries the body onstage, underneath his burly cape-like costume, with masked accomplish/mistress as a stand-in for Vallona and swaps places with the body when she swoops to floor (covered by the cape). He then slipped her out of the room when everyone was concerned with the body or when they carried her out there. A bit of a credulity stretcher, I admit, but the gaudy scene and confusing snippets that describe the murder would've been a perfect sell for such a risky method. Once the camera stopped, there was ample confusing to pull a switch and even if someone saw something, it's a detail that's easily lost in the chaos of the moment. It even provides a clue, if you put in a witness who swears s/he saw Vallona's "ghost" sneaking around the hallway after the murder. But you retain the illusion, because everyone thinks they saw her die in front of a rolling camera. Anyway, that's how I would have played it.

The police arrest Jan Ewoud Martens, the recording supervisor, on suspicion of the murder, prompting his friend and mystery writer, Juttu, to launch an investigation of her own – and yes, it's a simmering love story. Juttu soon bumps into an allay, Inspector Lusch, whose head's filled with fanciful theories and still pursuing leads on the case, but it's Juttu who reaches the unexciting end of the problem that began very promising.

I have to say in it's defense that it's mountainous improvement over her first detective novel, De misdaad zonder fouten (The Faultless Crime, 1927), which is a profusion of hackneyed plot devices like twins, sleepwalkers and duplicate keys – all of them brought in with a straight face. The Unknown Player may not be a groundbreaking detective story, but it lost its juvenile plumage that made her first outing an embarrassment and put me off her trail for years. And they can't be all classics.

However, what was interesting is that this may be one of the earliest examples of a fictional mystery writer complaining about growing tired of her own detective(s).

If you're interested, I compiled (some time ago) a list of Dutch-language locked room mysteries on the GADWiki.

Death Notes

"Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home."

- Sherlock Holmes.

Over the past week, I made several attempts at sprinting to the concluding chapters of Willy Corsari's De weddenschap van Inspecteur Lund (Inspector Lund Makes a Bet, 1941), in which the titular policeman has to tell several stories from his own experience that are as interesting as a detective story, but I kept stumbling before finally deciding to abandon it altogether – which is as rare a occasion as a solar eclipse. It was not a bad book as a poor book, which is arguably worst because a bad book can still be readable (hey, we all have our guilty pleasures in this genre) while a poor book has nothing to offer except dull mediocrity.

Though the book was obviously meant as a send-up of her British and American contemporaries, it completely failed to capture their spirit, plotting technique or ingenuity. Take, for example, the second story, "Sporen in de sneeuw" ("Tracks in the Snow"), in which a broken leg and the story of an elderly woman of a long forgotten, unsolved and impossible murder turns Lund into an armchair detective, but the solution was pedestrian and listless. This left me, of course, with the problem of what I was going to do once I decided to put this book aside. I had a deficiency of time to read to begin with and this place hadn't seen an update for nearly a week, so I needed a nimble read in order to put something up here before the end of the weekend and that sounded like a perfect excuse to revisit the man who introduced me to the detective story: the late Appie Baantjer. The fact that this is also my 200th blog post is nothing more than a lucky timed coincidence.

A Deadly Threat, 1988

The book I excavated from my congested shelves was Een dodelijke dreiging (1988; translated as DeKok and the Deadly Warning), which also happened to be one of the first detective novels I touched and vividly remember that delightful feeling of surprise when I learned its solution, but, in my defense, I was new to the game back then. So how did the book stand-up to being read after all these years? Well, it's definitely a worthwhile read in spite of one notable flaw.

Een dodelijke dreiging takes place between the darksome, cold, but often cozy, days between Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) and Christmas, and DeKok cynically asks himself if the peaceful holiday ahead of them has any influence on the influx of baffling crimes in December. DeKok's ruminations appear to be answered in the affirmative when the body of a man, clad in shirtsleeves and a vest, is found slumped against the bark of a tree on the Keizersgracht (Emperor's Canal). His head is turned towards the water and three bullet holes tore holes in his chest. The name that belongs to the stiff is Emile van den Aerdenburg, a designer, who, earlier in the day, came to Vledder with a threatening letter – asking in an almost illegible handwriting how much his life was worth to him and to place an ad with that amount in the newspaper mentioned in the note.

A journalist, attached to that newspaper, has been receiving similar scribbles and narrowly survived an attempt on his life as ex-wives, silent partners, estranged wives, white-collar crime, newly-wed wives and blackmail bob up and down in this case without taking the old veteran bloodhound off his game. Throughout the book, DeKok's reasoning is logical and sound as is the characterization of the man himself and the murderer is a perfect foil to the good inspector. A very memorable and even a sympathetic character, who was exposed to the reader in a very unconventional manner. Well, for this series anyway. No theatrical denouements or a cleverly set-up trap, but DeKok reading a poem by Guido Gezelle – encapsulating the basic truth of the case. Deliberately understated and very effective. Also the aftermath of this murder case was done very well and you can't help but feel that the murderer should've gotten away with it, where it not for a third and unnecessary murder, clumsily disguised as a suicide, which was the only thing that weighed on the murderer's concience and provides the book with a tragic ending.

Unfortunately, there's one blemish concerning the motive, which was not fairly clued at all and made it impossible to anticipate the full solution – and that's what robbed this book of its status as a minor classic. Even the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia could not turn that into an easily ignored blind spot, but, aside from that one complaint, this is still one of my favorite entries in the DeKok and Vledder series and definitely worth picking up if you can get your hands on the translation.

On a side note, I'm compiling a new list of favorite mysteries because the last one I posted left me dissatisfied (i.e. too many glaring omissions).

When the Past Wears Us Down

"It appears to be an impossible crime, but there are no impossible crimes, only misunderstood crimes."

- Stanley Baum ("The Stolen Saint Simon," 2000)

"Willy Corsari" (1897-1998)

Wilhelmina Angela Douwes-Schmidt was born on December 26, 1897 in Sint-Peters-Jette (Brussels, Belgium) and drew her last breath more than a hundred years later on May 11, 1998 in Amstelveen (The Netherlands). She was brought up in an artistic family, as a daughter of an operatic father and a pianist mother, instilling a love for the performing arts from early childhood and destined her for a life in the spotlights, but it was a talent for the written word that brought her lasting fame and an international audience.

Under a fictitious name, that of Willy Corsari, she began dabbling in a variety of genres and themes, touching everything from psychological novels and stage plays to children's literary and detective stories – which were also introduced into the English, French, German, Russian, Norwegian and Danish languages. This puts her in the same league as Robert van Gulik and Appie Baantjer, whose books also scaled the language barrier into the welcoming hands of a whole new flock of readers, but neither of them, not even Van Gulik, was as classically styled as Corsari. The book I picked from her body of work, Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937), to commence this Vintage Mystery Challenge of 2012, can only be described as a blend between the British whodunit, with a plot that has its roots firmly planted in the works of John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, and the continental roman policier.

The key figure of this novel is Sir John Judge, born as Jan Rechter, who left Holland to find his luck in Britain and found it. As an entrepreneur, he put a considerable sum to his name and was even knighted for his business endeavors. Judge was also well-liked among his peers and threw money at people like candy to kids on the fifth of December, but the affluent philanthropist also harbored a darker, secretive side – one not known to his family and immediate associates but it garnered him a sworn enemy. While he was still living in his adopted homeland, a crooked man tried to kill him and were it not for the intervention of his close friend, Tjako Kiliaan, who took a bullet in the arm, he would've returned to his birthland in a casket.

But in spite of the best efforts by those celebrated men of Scotland Yard, this mysterious individual, with his crooked appearance, was never collared and once more became a fleeting shadow from Sir John Judge's apparently unmarked past, however, it infused his wife, Anja, with dreadful premonitions and visions – which persisted to haunt her restless nights even after moving back to the Netherlands. These phantasms feed her fear and whisper to her that her husband is still in danger of losing his life to an assassins bullet, but when she asks, in her desperation, Inspector Robert Lund for help all he can do for her, at that moment, is come down to their estate, De Berkenhof, and talk with her family and friends.

Inspector Lund, by the way, is the archetypical Dutch storybook detective from the pre-1960s period and comparable protagonists can be found in the mysteries from the hands of Tjalling Dix and Ben van Eysselsteijn, but Corsari might have carved the mold from which their detectives were cut. Lund is a regular homicide detective, "who looks even younger than he is," with a wife at home and got were here's now through competence and methodical police work. As I noted here, the Dutch detective story has not, as far as I am aware, an "amateur reasoner of some celebrity" or a nosy, scheming spinster who are constantly inserting themselves in murder cases or stumble over blood-spattered corpses. The detectives are always professional policemen. This has its advantages, but also its limitations. You don't have to over tax your readers credulity in order to place your detective in the middle of a murder mystery, over and over again, but on the other hand, a policeman is bound to his jurisdiction and thus limited in your settings (with exception of the occasional busman's holiday) – and our part of the genre really misses a memorable character like Sherlock Holmes.

Anyway, back to the story! The nightmarish specter, that has haunted Anja ever since the attempted murder back in England, finally seems to have reemerged and presented itself in a solid form to confront her husband, however, the only occupant of the locked study, after the door was busted open, was the body of Sir John Judge – and his murderer had dissipated as rags of mist that were blown away by a gust of wind.

The key of the door was still stuck in the lock from the inside, the windows were securely fastened and an interconnecting door was blocked, from both sides, by a bookcase stuffed with hefty tomes and a cabinet filled with porcelain. It's the condition of this sealed environment that, at first, suggests an accident, but evidence at the scene (i.e. a fresh bullet hole that can not be accounted for) indicates that his death is a murder, one that defies common sense, but a murder nonetheless.

Lund finds himself not only confronted with a death that simply could not have happened, but also with an array of suspects who obviously belong on the pages of an Agatha Christie novel. There's Sir John's overwrought wife, Anja, and his carefree friend Tjakko, but also a limb and sickly looking secretary named Philip Gardner. Lady Cochat and her 10-year-old son Allan, who seems, at first, to have the personality of an automaton and the one who heard the titular footsteps on the stairs, and the frightened Mrs. Canna – who's is foully poisoned a day after the murder and mumbled a few cryptic words before sinking into a deep coma. There are more players, of course, but listing the entire dramatis personae here seems pointless. But take it from me that a line-up of the suspects resembles a stack of cards from the board game Clue.

I never expected that there were actual Dutch detective stories, from the efflorescent era of the genre, that were this classically styled and ingeniously plotted – and even able to toy with me as if I were new to this game! I had a germ of an idea of what actually happened in that locked study, but I kept switching suspects and methods around on at least five different points in the book – which was encouraged with a barrage of twists and a false solution that told a chilling part of the actual solution. There were one or two coincidences that helped move the plot along in certain parts, but that hardly took anything away from the story and when the solution came it was a satisfying one. A nifty play on the least-likely-suspect gambit. It showed, quite clearly, that Corsari was aware what her fellow artists in crime were up to overseas and the ending of this story also impressed me as a nod and a wink at John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle.

But honesty compels me to point out two minor blotches: the third-person narrative does not read as smooth as could've been, especially during descriptive passages, and one component of the solution was withheld, but I am prepared to show leniency on that point – seeing as Lund was unaware of this, as well, and there were more than enough other clues to look at! All in all, this was an excellent read and a top-notch detective story that deserves a translation, if it hasn't been already, and if you come across one of her translated titles I can help you help you determine whether or not it's one of her detectives.

Well, that was the first book that I knocked-off the list for the VMC2012 and I think we're off to a good start. Not to mention that I can actually put a Dutch impossible crime novel on my list of favorite locked room mysteries now! 

My VMC2012 list: 

Een lampion voor een blinde (A Lantern for the Blind, 1973) by Bertus Aafjes

De moord op Anna Bentveld (The Murder of Anna Bentveld, 1967) by Appie Baantjer

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Player, 1931) by Willy Corsari
Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937) by Willy Corsari

Een linkerbeen gezocht (Wanted: A Left Leg, 1935) by F.R. Eckmar

Spoken te koop (Spooks for Sale, 1936) by F.R. Eckmar
Dood in schemer (Death at Twilight, 1954) by W.H. van Eemlandt

Fantoom in Foe-lai (The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959) by Robert van Gulik

Het mysterie van St. Eustache (The Mystery of St. Eustache, 1935) by Havank

Klavertje moord (Four-Leaf Murder, 1986) by Theo Joekes

Het geheim van de tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruins, 1946) by Boekan Saja