It has been a couple of years since I last read anything by Mabel Seeley, as back in 2022 I reviewed The Listening House (1938). The Chuckling Fingers was the author’s fourth mystery, and it seems to have won the Mystery of the Year Award 1941, although I have been unable to identify who was running this award.
Synopsis
‘An urgent note from a friend spurs Ann Gay to visit her recently married cousin, Jacqualine Heaton. Upon her arrival at Fiddler’s Fingers, a remote, pine-grown estate on Lake Superior, Ann immediately senses her cousin’s fear – someone has been playing increasingly malicious tricks on the Heaton’s, a proud family of Minnesota lumber tycoons, and worse yet, they seem determined to frame Jacqueline. Ann quickly resolves to take Jacqueline and her young daughter away, Toby, away from the danger. But what began as seemingly trivial pranks – ruined clothes, a burnt bed, a smashed boat – escalates to direct attacks and ultimately murder. Dangerous waters crash against the finger-like rocks on the lakeshore, making a sound like a guttural chuckle, one that seems to mock the murder that took place there – but no one is laughing when everyone on the estate becomes a suspect. Potential motives are revealed as Ann learns more about the Heaton family, and with no chance of anyone leaving Fiddler’s Fingers until the killer is caught, Ann realises that the only way to prove her cousin’s innocence is by snaring the murderer herself.’
Overall Thoughts
The novel begins with a dramatis personae and a family tree, which is handy as this story is not short of characters. I liked the description of Ann Gray in the list, as it makes her sound fun: ‘stenographer in an insurance office, twenty-six. If trouble was a lake, she’d dive into it headfirst.’ The choice of opening scene in chapter one is strong. It uses buckets of foreshadowing, revealing it’s Had-I-But-Known roots, yet I did not find the excessiveness put me off as I feel like Seeley writes it in such a captivating way:
‘Other people may think they’d like to live their lives over, but not me – not if this last week is going to be in it. Out of what has just happened at the Fingers, both Jacqueline and I got something worth keeping, but heaven defend me from ever again having to stand helplessly by while it becomes more and more apparent to almost everyone but me that the person I love most in the world is murderously insane. Heaven forbid that I ever again see a car moving like Frankenstein, of its own power and volition, carrying a secret burden into a lake. Or that I ever again grasp an arm and feel that rigid marble chill, or that I ever again have to look on while a blood-drenched shirt is ripped away from the terrible red hole a bullet makes in living flesh.
I never again want to know the panic of facing the evil of a mind so much more skilful than mine that even the signs we did see – the acid in a bride’s toiletry bag, the burned matchsticks under a bed, the world scrawled with a child’s blue chalk on rock – all just bogged us deeper in error and despair.’
I found this type of foreshadowing intriguing, as it encourages us to puzzle over what is going to happen later in the tale.
When reading this book, I was curious as to which other classic crime novels feature pranks and even a very brief look into this, revealed that pranks are pretty prolific in such works and are used for different purposes and the motivations behind the pranks also differ. I thought I would share a few of them (and apologies for the plethora I have omitted), beginning with The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933) by John Dickson Carr. This story shows that a prankster can add a bizarre element to a mystery plot, intriguing the reader as they try to fit the unusual activity into the wider picture of a crime or series of crimes. In this situation it is someone stealing hats. 1933 also saw the publication of Christopher Bush’s The Case of the April Fools, which has been reprinted by the Dean Street Press. April Fools Day is a good time period for committing a murder, as the antics of such an occasion, tend to disarm the intended victim and any witnesses.
Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L. Sayers is arguably one of the most famous classic crimes novels which includes pranks and in this tale I feel the person responsible chose to perform destructive and unsettling pranks to draw out the suffering of their target audience. I also wonder if pranks are used in crime fiction as evidence of a person’s disturbed mind. This certainly seems to be the case in Come Away Death (1937) by Gladys Mitchell.
There is another madder hatter to be found in the annals of vintage crime fiction as in Malice in Wonderland (1940) by Nicholas Blake, Nigel Strangeways is called into investigate a series of increasingly vicious pranks (such as putting dead animals in guests’ beds) at a holiday camp. Naturally one strand of the investigation considers if someone is perpetuating these pranks to bankrupt the business.
The desire to extend a victim’s suffering is also a reason used by killer in Murder’s a Swine (1943) by Nap Lombard, in which the guilty party leaves threatening letters and a dead pig’s head around a block of flats, before their grisly deed is committed and discovered. However, a motive which chimes in with Seeley’s mystery is the wish to incriminate and frame another person, firstly implicating them in pranks, but ultimately in a murder. This is also a trope found in The Cat Wears a Noose (1944) by D. B. Olsen (a.k.a. Dolores Hitchens).
1950s crime fiction is not without its pranks as A Murder is Announced (1950) by Agatha Christie sees a newspaper advertisement, advertising a murder, being perceived as a prank. However, death does strike, and the advert is part of a killer’s plans to manoeuvre certain people into position. Deadly Earnest (1952) by Joan Cockin, which was reprinted earlier this year by Galileo Publishing also sees nasty pranks being executed during a job interview weekend. Are they happening to fray the nerves of the applicants or is someone trying to damage the reputation of the organisation? Finally, a personal favourite of mine is Enter Murderers (1960) by Henry Sleasar, which is a gripping novel that explores what happens when a prank gets out of control. Here this is done for tension and psychological suspense, but Anthony Berkeley works with a similar premise and plays it for comedy and laughs in Mr Priestley’s Problem (1927).
Ann Gay and the reader are on a similar level when it comes to assessing the situation at the beginning, trying to figure out what has been going on and where the source of the trouble is within the Heaton household. Jacqueline and her husband Bill have only been married eight weeks, but from the time of their honeymoon malicious pranks have been occurring.
Fiddler’s Finger is a well named location:
‘Near the gate, round white birches grew in rings; after that the car entered a grove of Norway pines so densely set that dusk seemed to close in. No green along the earth there – only the light brown of old pine needles halfway toward being resolved into earth again, dappled in moving patterns of light and shade. The pine stems swayed like huge black reeds, extending twenty and thirty feet upward before the branches were needled, in whorls like round green eyes against the thin blue sky.’
There is a nearly overpowering sense of wilderness and as the passage goes on there is a feeling that the “wild” is within as well as without. Later in the novel there are attempts to use the environment as a way of adding tension, but unfortunately the pace at that point was too languid for this to be truly effective.
Jacqueline does a lot to evade being alone with Ann, who she fears will start asking her questions about what is going on. She even goes as far as inviting the whole family to help her unpack Ann’s luggage. Personally, I would not like having everyone pawing over my holiday belongings. Bill is equally cagey about answering questions, yet he also seems to be in the dark, trying to probe Ann for information on his wife’s family background. Ann tries to verbally shake some honesty from Jacqueline, but this fails, and it takes 50 pages for the plot to reach the knowledge already stated in the blurb. I did wonder if this was a bit slow.
We don’t have to wait too long for the appearance of a potential love interest for Ann, coming in the form of Jean Nobbelin, who was the one to write to Ann telling her to visit, and he is also Bill’s business partner:
‘Since I was Jacqueline’s attendant, Jean had squired me to the wedding parties, and I’d been more nettled by him than by any man I’d known before; I’d felt I ought to wear armour when he was around – not too secure armour.’
Yet, despite this setup, Ann does not spend much time around Jean, until the final 40-50% of the story and even then love is not on their mind and there is no verbal spark between them. I thought it was interesting that Seeley did not pursue this narrative thread in the conventional manner. However, this does not stop the author from returning to narrative arc stereotypes at the denouement, a decision which I don’t feel worked so well, particularly given one aspect of the solution.
The first murder is effective in pushing the plot in a different direction, as Ann is all ready to take Jacqueline and her daughter away from the place, when a corpse means they are tethered to the Heaton home, in which a sinister criminal lurks, plotting Jacqueline’s downfall. The circumstantial evidence certainly stacks up against Jacqueline. Yet the sheriff is thorough and does not act precipitously. The pressure on Jacqueline sinks and rises throughout the plot, depending on what has occurred.
Seeley is good at portraying the emotional strain of murder on the survivors who are under suspicion and are facing police interrogation:
‘He catapulted himself upon us, beating at us again, shouting, demanding, trying to force confession by power and vigour, throwing himself again and again at people who placed and crouched tighter into themselves and were helplessly under his onslaught but who always, consistently, persistently denied. It went on almost all night. When he stood back again at last, we were just shreds, the remnants of people.’
Nevertheless, I don’t think the sheriff is portrayed as an unredeemable bully, but more as a man out of his depth and he is able to stay on good terms with those involved in the case. Regarding the passage above the dramatic imagery and language is more a depiction of how it felt to be questioned, rather than a literal depiction of physical violence by the sheriff.
I think significant clues and pieces of information are swamped by random incidents and despite the narrative signalling specific plot events, it did feel like we took a long time to reach them. This is a shame as there is some mid-story drama which deserved a bigger page space to be explored. The novel partially feels like it is being dragged out because there are large chunks where there is limited amateur and police sleuthing and some leads are not properly followed up due to distractions.
This felt like such an impenetrable case that it is not surprising that Ann falls back on the strategy of setting up a trap to catch the killer, using herself as bait. This sequence has an unexpected comedy element to it. I think if this book was shorter and the plot tighter, this would have been an amazing read.
Rating: 3.75/5