Well, I am thoroughly enjoying revisiting the work of Anthony Berkeley, with Not to be Taken (1938) proving decidedly more fun at second assessment, and now his debut The Layton Court Mystery (1925) upgrading itself from ‘amusing but seriously flawed’ to ‘Holy hell, this is superb!’ after a reread. Indeed, I enjoyed this so much that I’m deliberately reviewing it on a Thursday so that I don’t go over my self-imposed 1,000 word limit, because I feel like I could talk about this book for weeks, and frankly no-one needs that. So, a gathering at a country pile, complete with one host found shot in the locked library…hit me with the classics.

Take one naively enthusiastic amateur sleuth, here novelist Roger Sheringham, who “seems somehow to live two minutes to everyone else’s one”, add a sidekick marinaded in misgivings — young Alec Grierson, recently engaged to another guest at the manor — and mix in a variety of other guests who are all up to suspicious activities, lying about their whereabouts, and all generally presenting a mysterious face to the world. Leave to simmer for a day or two and before long you have the recipe for most of the classic Country House Murders you’ve read in the genre, complete with era trappings (Grierson is shocked by the sight of the body because, being a mere 24 years old, he is “too young to [have fought] in the war”).

The impressive thing about The Layton Court Mystery is that, once you’ve read a fair proportion of this sort of thing, you realise how fresh it is for Berkeley to be doing it at all. He’s not stuck in tramlines, but rather flattening the ground for the genre’s expectations to later come through and fix in place that which it wants to use. So when Inspector Mansfield is rather less than impressed at having two amateurs trailing around after him…

“It’s not my job to know anything, sir,” returned the inspector, a little huffily. “My job is to collect evidence.”

…and when Grierson starts to find the questioning of potentially innocent people a little distasteful…

“We’re playing a very grave game, you know, and we can’t treat it as a joy-trip and only do the bits we like and leave out all the nasty part.”

…it is the form itself which is being annealed. Discussion of footprints (“We are getting professional, aren’t we?”), the disdain thrown at “[s]ecret passages and — and hidden chambers and what-nots”, the notion of “wheels within wheels”, the desire for some Mysterious Stranger to appear in proceedings and so widen the field of suspects beyond the friends of the sleuths, even the important notion of splitting semantic and evidential hairs (“[B]ut nice, thick, easily-splittable hairs.”), and a promise that all evidence will be shared with the reader are all done with future novelists in this era taking notes in the background. The sleuth being better placed to rule on justice is here, too, with Sheringham declaring:

“I consider that I’m very much more competent to do so than are twelve thick-headed rustics, presided over by a somnolent and tortuous-minded gentleman in an out-of-date wig. No, I’m going to follow this up to the bitter end, and when I’ve got there I’ll take counsel with you as to what we’re going to do about it.”

Crucially, though, and reaching beyond mere tropes into the novelist’s art, it’s fun. The whole thing might float away because of how immaterial it seems at times, but the humour comes thick and fast, from the lugubrious gardener on page one to Roger’s own sense of almost plaintive self-importance (“I think I’m being rather brilliant.”) and wounded pride at his errors (“I deduced it.”) right through to notes about minor characters like the constable placed in charge of the crime scene and the aside that “Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before”. The stamp of wit here is unmistakeable, and betokens someone who understands that they’re trying to achieve something significant but, dammit, they’re going to enjoy themselves while they do it.

In terms of clues, there are only really two pointing to the guilty party (“We greater detectives are above evidence.”), but the notion itself is innovating, and the stirring in of a heartless blackmailer’s suggestion that a lady’s sexuality could be used to pay her debts is really quite bold for the era, showing a serious hand behind all this fun. Remove the unwelcome anti-Semitic subclause in one sentence and this would make a fine entry in the British Library’s Crime Classics range, showing those deep in the genre much about where the tropes were first aired and providing a breezy and delightful time to those still paddling in the genre’s shallower waters. Twee it may seem at times, but this is a hugely important book in the Golden Age’s development, and I consider myself very fortunate to have reread it at this time in order to appreciate that. Magnificent stuff, deserves to be far better known.

~

See also

Noah @ Noah’s Archives: You will probably find this volume difficult to take seriously, because you have read its imitators so many times before. Ngaio Marsh lifted the idea of interviewing a subject per chapter for about 90 percent of her own books, and ground us all between millstones of boredom while doing so. The false solution then the true was not yet the basis of 90 percent of Ellery Queen’s activities. The locked room mystery was not yet the bailiwick of John Dickson Carr. And at this point in his career, Anthony Berkeley was not yet a polished writer. There’s certainly an artificial air of “jolly hockey sticks and a ha’penny’s worth of chocs a fortnight come Michaelmas” — a forced bonhomie coupled with a deep vein of Anglophilia — that is hard to plough through. Indeed, if this book had been written in 1935, it probably wouldn’t have seen publication. But in 1925, this is the bomb, and you should suspend your critical facilities long enough to slog through it. And you will thereby learn a lot about how mysteries work and where they come from.