As has recently been remarked elsewhere, the superb modern raft of Golden Age reprints has been very kind to Anthony Berkeley. The form’s arch Innovator-in-Chief has seen some excellent titles brought back to public availability — The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Murder in the Basement (1932), Jumping Jenny (1933) — and one, in The Wintringham Mystery, a.k.a. Cicely Disappears (1927), rescued from the sort of obscurity that had reduced its existence almost to rumour. Still yet to see the light of day, however, is The Piccadilly Murder (1929), so a reread seemed due to see if it really was as good as I remember. And, yes, it very nearly is — except in one key regard, in which it’s even better.

Stopping off for an afternoon drink in the melting pot of the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel, Ambrose Chitterwick — very nearly one of my favourite detectives in fiction — has his attention drawn to a red-haired man and the older lady with whom he is engaged in a heated discussion. When Chitterwick sees the man drop something into the lady’s drink, and when the lady herself dies shortly thereafter, there can be little doubt as to what has occurred.

“You’ll be in the situation of having actually seen the murder committed. As a criminologist yourself, sir, I needn’t tell you how extraordinary that is.”

“In a poison case,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, “I should think almost unique.”

“Pretty well so. Direct evidence! That’s what we’re going to get from you, Mr. Chitterwick.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick unhappily.

This is the sort of small problem Berkeley excels at — no serial murders, no inculcated village atmosphere to tease out, just a simple poisoning, with the small matter of running the culprit to ground and then having Chitterwick tell what he saw. And so, of course, Berkeley cleverly introduces developments which both simplify and complicate the setup brilliantly, with Chitterwick turning detective after realising that some of what appears to have gone on in that lounge doesn’t quite add up…

There is, in the slow and patient re-examination of events, including a reconstruction of the crime, perhaps the seed of the love I’ve come to have for the Humdrum school, showing how intelligent reasoning applied to a seemingly open-and-shut case can explode new possibilities. The book doesn’t exactly race along, but equally the developments crammed into each chapter — not all of them surprising — speak of great care being taken to explore the myth of what is ‘obvious’ in the commission of a crime. Chitterwick’s amateur status is given extra credibility by his involvement in The Poisoned Chocolates Case — which he, with typical effacement, insists he “simply allowed…to solve itself” — and the intelligent picking apart of events is adroitly handled.

The book improves on my memory of it, however, in just how damn funny it is. While undertaking the serious business of maybe saving a man from the gallows, Berkeley drops in fabulous character beats like Chitterwick’s aunt who “not only refused to keep a car, but somehow managed to convey the impression that she actually disbelieved in the existence of such things”, or the observation that “it was surprising what a number of intimations Miss Goole could manage to convey in a couple of simple sentences”. Some of his best lines are of magnificent inconsequence — “Mouse was a vigorous driver for so small a man.” — and the contrasts he draws between, say, schoolmasters and university professors had me hooting. Berkeley is noted in the genre for the way he’d cock an eyebrow at many of its more doubtful conventions, but I had forgotten that he could be genuinely hilarious on occasion.

Which is not to say that the book is a parody in any way, merely high-spirited while keeping its eye on the main prize of the solution to its core crime.

He, and practically speaking he alone, was going to put a rope round the neck of a man who unmistakably and most thoroughly deserved it, and he could not feel sorry that he was.

The closing stages, then, pay off your patience well, and while you have to swallow one coincidence that might be rather too large to go down smoothly, there’s some ingenious reasoning that ties events together tightly. Berkeley, too, is savvy enough to the trappings of lazy reasoning to avoid stumbling into easy answers (“Just because a woman may be a thief, that doesn’t make her the accomplice in a murder…”), and displays keen psychology in his summary that hints at the more psychologically-drive crime novels he would write under the nom de plume Francis Iles.

The Piccadilly Murder would, then, make a superb addition to the ranks of the British Library’s Crime Classic range, and, should that ever come to pass, Berkeley’s reputation is likely to rise even higher. I still find him to be detective fiction’s equivalent of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead — very good when he’s good, and positively horrid when he’s not — but for the invention, intelligence, and dry humour he brought to the most demanding genre on the planet he deserves nothing but our respect and admiration. If you get a chance to read this one, seize it.

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See also

Puzzle Doctor @ In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel: The central idea that start the investigation is the lead suspect’s family trying to persuade Chitterwick, by various methods, that he could possibly be mistaken. It raises the question as to what sort of mystery this is – is it a whodunit or is it an inverted tale about a murderer trying to escape the law? With Berkeley, one can never be quite sure, and I’m not going to say which it is. What I can say is that this is a very satisfying and, indeed, clever book.

Ben @ The Green Capsule: The plot feels pretty predictable throughout, and the reader will have the smug satisfaction of figuring out the various revelations pages, if not chapters, before the characters. I’m pretty sure Berkeley is letting the reader do that, and in the end, after so much foresight throughout the read, I stepped on the rake that he had planted and took the pole directly to the face. Yes, Berkeley had me looking exactly where he wanted and he fooled me good.