Once again, now for a third time, I have been misled by these House of Stratus editions about the nature of a book by R. Austin Freeman. The cover of When Rogue’s Fall Out, a.k.a. Dr. Thorndyke’s Discovery (1932) promises “Three Books in One, starring Dr. Thorndyke”, leading me to surmise that these were three novellas. Not so. As it happens, Book 1 – The Three Rogues, Book 2 – Inspector Badger Deceased, and Book 3 – The Missing Collector are simply parts of one novel-length story, and I approached the end of The Three Rogues very confused about the apparent lack of impending conclusion and the distinct absence of Thorndyke from its pages.

This should, perhaps, have not been too great a surprise. Freeman has been playing with structure in his recent novels, and this interlinking of three parts, while hardly revolutionary, is something a little different from before. Book 1 concerns the business operations of Mr. Didbury Toke, “a collector of antique and other works of art, a connoisseur and a dealer”. Via means that recall, or anticipate, Roald Dahl’s best short story ‘Parson’s Pleasure’ (1958), he finds himself in possession of an item of greater value than initially assumed and, as a result, is brought to the attention of first Mr. Charles Dobey…

On that day, about eleven in the forenoon, his house keeper, Mrs. Gibbins, came to him as he sat in his study writing letters, and announced with something of an air of mystery that a man wished to see him.

“A man?” Mr. Toke repeated. “Do you mean a gentleman?”

Mrs. Gibbins made it extremely clear that she did not.

…and, via that specimen, the more gentlemanly Mr. Hughes, and the three engage in a business arrangement that provides Mr. Dobey with “a certain element of excitement and adventure…that was only feebly present in lawful dealing”. When Dobey begins to act out, and then Toke makes clear that aspects of Mr. Hughes’s past are known to him, well, things would appear to turn sour.

Book 2 takes the interesting — and, to my reading of the genre, perhaps unique at this point — step of killing off a policeman who has appeared in multiple entries in the series to date, with the unfortunate Inspector Badger being deprived of his life while trailing a criminal. While regular foil Inspector Miller wallows in monomania regarding the man he believes responsible, Thorndyke and Christopher Jervis investigate in their typical idiom: with Jervis once again astounded at how Thorndyke’s insights build incidental affairs into brick-like virtual certainties. The gradual amassing of indicatory evidence is here shown in wonderful relief, with only the chapter in which Thorndyke holds forth on fingerprints — which will, no doubt become crucial — proving a little dense.

Nice touches fill this section out — steam trains are becoming less common, chloroform as in incapacitator is dismissed (“The whiff from a handkerchief, producing instant unconsciousness, appertains to fiction. In practice the forcible use of chloroform involves a rather prolonged struggle, and results in very characteristic marks on the skin around the mouth and nose.”) — and the means by which the trained, burly, and no doubt cautious Badger could have met his end are investigated and established with the thoroughness one would hope for in this series. It may be a little dry if this is your first Thorndyke, but in dividing this section away from the rest of the narrative Freeman is undoubtedly making his point.

The third and longest section then brings us back round to the first ‘Book’, with Mr. Toke’s business affairs coming under scrutiny via the seemingly-impossible presence of someone in his locked-tight rooms. Here we see Thorndyke at his most typical, chasing down slight possibilities in a way that, placing them end-to-end, builds into virtual certainties. And if the book itself contains few surprises, it passes pleasantly with its slightly-dated phrasing and subtle dry humour (“We may have to pick one or two locks, and they may be rather unusual locks. I would not suggest burglars’ tools, because, of course, you haven’t any. If you had, they might be useful.”). It will not startle the modern reader, and you’ll get the most out of it if you’ve read Thorndyke’s debut The Red Thumb Mark (1907), but in fulfilling expectations so neatly it delights the Thorndykian in all of us.

The one false note admist all this is Jervis’s apparent condescension towards the activities of the magnificent Nathaniel Polton. Jervis, of all people, would know of Polton’s ingenuity, and, while he recants of his attitude, his doubts prior to this seem rather more designed for the reader who is new to Thorndyke than for the character who has already experienced so much of that exemplary factotum’s utility. Indeed, it’s lovely to see Polton getting a few more words dedicated to his actions throughout the case than has become the norm in this series of late; he really is one of my favourite minor characters in GAD — now there’s a list! — and any time in his crinkling company is never to be regretted.

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