Late one night, Dr. John Strangeways is summoned to tend to a woman who has clearly been strangled. Deeply unsettled by the odd encounter, he has cause to remember one of the men who was at that scene when chance brings them together in Rochester a year later. The man in question, in possession of a wicked-looking knife, does not remember the doctor, however, and Strangeways, new in town and on his way to look over a recently-vacated surgery, is relieved to be unable to help when the man asks for directions to the residence of Mrs. Frood. Deciding to take the practice on, Strangeways is in due course introduced to his landlady, and comes face to face with the strangled woman of a year before. Her name? Mrs. Angelina Frood.

The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924), the seventh novel by R. Austin Freeman to feature his esteemed medical jurist Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, makes no mystery of the first encounter between Strangeways and Mrs. Frood, instead saving the promise of the title for developments about which I will try to speak as little as possible. It spoils nothing to say that crime rears its head, and that, in due course, Thorndyke is drawn into proceedings — although, given the nature of working against an unknown combatant, he is rather keen to keep himself as far out of the picture as possible while pursuing his own investigations, leaving the majority of the on-site investigation to the magnificently-named Sergeant Cobbledick.

It must be said up front that this is perhaps not the book to win you over to the joys of Freeman’s style of detective story. Perhaps even more so than before, the case here is pursued along astoundingly realistic lines, occurring over several months as evidence drips in and begins to slowly fill out the details of a crime whose full picture is always slightly out of focus. It’s patient, deliberate stuff, the sort of story Freeman would perfect in the likes of The D’Arblay Mystery (1926) and Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight (1930) — so if you hanker for lightning-fast developments and intrigue and astoundment, head elsewhere. Those of you already convinced of the author’s talents, however, are in for an unhurried, methodical, delightful time.

Firstly, in building his case slowly, Freeman leaves plenty of space for the human feelings that are so important in his writing: both the pathos…

To Thorndyke this quest was just an investigation to be pursued with passionless care and method. To me it was a tragedy that would colour my whole life.

…and the all-too-human dry humour that always seems to linger at the edges of his writing:

I drew aside to make way for the newcomers — two ladies whom polite persons would have described as middle-aged, on the assumption that they contemplated a somewhat extreme degree of longevity.

Equally, in a surprisingly tight cast, good work is done in typifying the likes of housing agent Mr. Japp, who comes to life in his admiration of the ancient architecture of the town, lamenting that as towns are expanded and rebuilt they are filled up “with houses that will look as if they had been bought in packets like match-boxes”. And Japp’s associate, the youthful, quick-witted Peter Bundy with whom Strangeways strikes up a fast friendship, is especially delightful: a foppish oddball at first who, especially in his encounters with Thorndyke, shows hidden depths of playful ribaldry.

There isn’t a great deal of Thorndyke in this one, the narrative making his occasional visits to Rochester very much part of the B-plot, but he’s good value when present, exhibiting a solid faith in the professional police that’s pleasing from such a gifted amateur, and holding forth with the occasional Sherlockian declaration:

“There is nothing so hopeless to investigate as the perfectly obvious and commonplace. As soon as an apparently incomprehensible motive appears, we are within sight of a solution. There may be innumerable explanations of a common-place action; but an outrageously unreasonable action; pursued with definite and considered purpose, can admit of but one or two.”

The time passes, then, very pleasantly, though this largely fails to distinguish itself until a revelation in the final stretch that caught this armchair detective entirely by surprise. I had a sense that something was in the wind, though I was looking in an entirely different direction, and, to be honest, I love what Freeman does here…even if I don’t believe that it would be possible in the way he states. But, well, it speaks volumes that such an interesting notion is deployed in a way that raises this slightly pedestrian book so much in my estimations, with some tiny details — (rot13 for minor spoilers) gur gryrfpbcr — that I simply loved.

I can see The Mystery of Angelina Frood being a divisive book in Freeman’s oeuvre, not least because, for all Thorndyke’s careful investigations, his reduced role renders the edifice rather less fair play than many would perhaps like. Still, for the sheer chutzpah of the final stages, and enlivened by odd moments of historical interest (I would have assumed that “on the q.t.” was an Americanism unlikely to exist at this time, never mind make its way across the Atlantic), I found much here to justify my continued pleasure in Freeman’s writing about his most famous creation. I already intended to read them all anyway, but this has ramped up my interest to its previous levels after a couple of slightly damp offerings in this canon. Here’s looking forward to the good doctor’s next adventure.

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