Today’s review will be looking at two books, The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936) by John Dickson Carr and The Three Deaths of Justice Godfrey (2024). Both works are centred on a true crime, the killing of a magistrate in 1678. This might seem like a very niche or obscure thing to do, but Sir Edmund Godfrey’s demise was far from ordinary. His death has never been conclusively solved then or now (Carr himself described ‘the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey [as] a very nearly perfect detective story.’ There were a number of unusual features to Godfrey’s passing (more on those anon) and at the time his death immeasurably fanned the flames of fear concerning the Popish Plot, a supposed Catholic conspiracy, which is said to have been a fabrication made by Titus Oates. Those keen to bolster the creditability of the Popish plot used Godfrey’s death as evidence and as such engineered the investigation so it functioned more as a witch hunt.
To begin with I am going to outline the known facts of the case, before moving on to how Carr and Tyler explore it. Lillian De La Torre in 1989 summed up the case this way:
‘Sir Edmund Godfrey was a strait-laced London magistrate in the loose-laced days of King Charles II. One stormy night he disappeared. Five days later they found him dead in a ditch. Somebody had abducted him, starved him, roughed him up, strangled him with his own neck-cloth, run him through with his own sword, and broke his neck. He was very dead.’
My edition of Carr’s novel was published by International Polygonics, so it has the bonus of a foreword by Douglas G. Greene. Greene explores the political consequences of Godfrey’s death and how it destabilised the monarchy. Greene does a good job of considering the anxiety and aggression towards Catholics at the time, incorporating contemporary poetry in his analysis. In addition, Greene includes further tantalising aspects about the case:
‘Why did Godfrey act as though he were in mortal danger shortly before he disappeared? Who made the threat? What was in the mysterious letter that Godfrey destroyed? Where was he during those five October days between the time that he left his house and the time that his body was discovered? What is the meaning of the splotches of wax on his clothing? How could some people have known of the manner of his death before his body was discovered? Why was he strangled and, apparently later, stabbed with his own sword? Was the motive for the murder personal or political or, in some odd way, a combination of the two?’
Greene then turns his attention to discussing John Dickson Carr’s attitude towards the Stuart royal family, noting that:
‘Carr was unabashedly of the Stuart Apologist school. His love of romance, adventure and lost causes made him a romantic royalist. As a teenager he had written a story in which the protagonist tries to rescue Charles I from Puritan captivity, and in 1928 he wrote a manuscript for a novel set in the seventeenth century and full of “gadzookses and sword-play.” He destroyed it when he realised that he could not treat the Puritans even-handedly. It is possible that some elements of this lost novel survive in Devil’s Kinsmere, a work that Carr published in 1934 under the pseudonym of Roger Fairburn. Devil Kinsmere is a historical novel of mystery and intrigue with Charles II as a major character.’
Greene then moves on to Carr’s inspiration for writing The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey:
‘Carr’s interest in the Godfrey case seems to have begun when he read J. G. Muddiman’s article “The Mystery of Sir E. B. Godfrey” (The National Review, September 1924). Muddiman identified a previously unsuspected figure as the true murderer, but his account is only seven pages long. Examining the seventeenth-century sources, Carr found more and more material to confirm Muddiman’s conclusion – so much, in fact, that the resulting book contains more than 350 pages.’
So, with a bit more context under our belts, lets turn to John Dickson Carr’s novel. The Saturday Review described Carr’s book as ‘Thorough going, amply documented, robustly written tale of crime and corruption in the days of Old Rowley.’ Reading between the lines, this sentence sounds like it might be politely suggesting that the mystery is long and dense, and I must admit I was a bit anxious before embarking upon it. Having now read it I can confirm that it is long, it is very detailed, it uses older styles of English, and it even has footnotes. This is the sort of summary that makes the average reader’s heart quake. Yet there is a “but”. For all these aspects of Carr’s writing, the end result still has a surprisingly powerful, captivating quality to it. It urges you on to find out what happened next and it compels you to feel the experiences of various key players in the ensuing drama, of those caught in the net.
Carr chose to start his book with ‘A Preface for Connoisseurs in Murder’ and here he explores the difference between real life crime and detective stories, with a view to demonstrating how Godfrey’s death becomes that ‘very nearly perfect detective story’:
‘The fact remains that only in very rare cases can real life be fashioned into the tidy, clipped maze of fiction. There can be no good detective fiction which is not bound by the rule of fair play with regard to presenting the evidence; and real life is bound by no rule of fair play with regard to anything. Fiction must not propound a riddle and leave half of it unanswered, but real life is under no such obligation […] Again, the detective in real life may blunder through to a successful capture of the murderer by luck, perseverance, or information received. But we are not fond of such methods in fiction: we do not want Sherlock Holmes suddenly changed into Doctor Watson. Above all, in crimes from real life there is seldom any element of surprise. For fiction must confine itself with in certain artistic rules. In the last chapter its detective must not reveal as the murderer some person who has been the chief suspect throughout the entire course of the story; nor, conversely, must he whisk out of a cupboard somebody of whom the reader has never previously heard. But, with a few noble exceptions this is precisely the solemn, knavish swindle with which real life is always serving us. And this is the reason why fiction will always be more popular than truth.
[A page later Carr sets out the aims for his book]
Instead let the story be arranged like this:
Let the evidence not all be thrown at us in a lump, with comments beforehand; but let it grow as the story unfolds, so that each new turn is a surprise to us as it was to those who saw it happen. Let the real murderer walk and talk unsuspected throughout the story; let there be no nods or elbow-jogging from the author, no hints to watch his gait, no speculations as to what went on in his mind. But let the clues to his identity be scattered shrewdly, for the reader to find if he cares to do so. Let there be half a dozen persons who might have committed the murder, each suspected in turn, and each in turn proved innocent. Let there be a spice of terror, of dark skies and evil things […] Let there be drums behind a great stage – of a nation caught with panic […] And at intervals, over our pipes and glasses, let us discuss the evidence in a certain long library where we shall sit as the Society of Connoisseurs in Murder […] This record does not presume to be history, except insofar as it tries to be true. To write good history is the noblest work of man, and cannot be managed here: the intent is only to amuse with a detective story built on facts.’
After establishing his aims Carr rounds out his preface by commenting on the secondary research available and the ease of recreating the Stuart period on the page (compared to the doing the same for the Middle Ages), as well as providing historical background including political subterfuge of the time, which involved Catholic dominant France secretly financing anti-Catholic organisations, in order to weaken England’s monarchy.
Given what I had learnt about the case, I was surprised by the beginning of Carr’s book, as he chose to start his story with Christopher Kirby, a chemist in the king’s laboratory. I was primed to hear about Godfrey, perhaps even the discovery of his body, but instead the reader is offered a man waiting for the king to set out on his morning constitutional so he can obtain a private appointment with him. Kirby is determined to talk with the monarch, as he fears the king’s life is in danger. The date is 13th August and Sir Edmund Godfrey will not go missing until the 12th October. Carr’s opening is all about giving the big picture, the wider political scene, how the Royal court functioned, and the first seeds of Oates’ Popish Plot. The introduction of Godfrey into the narrative feels a little forced, a feeling which the pen portrait (given via Charles II’s own thoughts) exacerbates, as in someways it comes across a bit like an info-dump.
Conversely, L. C. Tyler, with his novel The Three Deaths of Justice Godfrey commences with a prologue that introduces the reader to Godfrey straight away and the unusual circumstances surrounding his death. Both him and his death are front and centre. The prologue begins on the day Godfrey goes missing, detailing some of his movements. The narrator, however, adopts the impersonal third person pronoun “he” to refer to Godfrey rather than using his name:
‘He’s cautious leaving the house this morning. He has to be. The yard is a maze of carefully stacked, sweet-smelling firewood. Anyone willing to risk a splinter or two could be hiding there. Anyone at all. And today is as good for murder as it is for anything else. Cold. Opaque. Unobliging.’
Perhaps this is done to add a little bit of mystery, an element of temporary anonymity. Nevertheless, it is clear from the opening lines that some kind of threat is in the offing, which is increased by the fact that the enemy is unknown to the reader. I like how Tyler leans into the advice to “tell not show”. I feel Carr’s writing style is more directive, maybe because his goals were a little different.
Tyler’s prologue pulls together a lot of the information which Carr spends chapters going into detail with. Tyler’s version is undoubtedly a more concise record of what events/circumstances Godfrey’s three servants found odd in the run up to their employer dying. Tyler’s narrator strikes a conversational tone in relaying this information and overall I would say the dialogue is more user friendly to the modern reader. Nevertheless, it is interesting though that Tyler offers the reader such an intense pack of key details in the opening pages, before returning to them in the chronologically told narrative, which follows. I have pondered it for some time, and I did wonder if this front-loading strategy was deployed to make sure John Grey’s case and his involvement in it has sufficient shape and direction.
After the prologue, Tyler’s first chapter continues the first-person narrative in the present tense, but now the narrator comes to the fore, Magistrate John Grey the series sleuth and our eyes and ears on the events that follow. Tyler has the challenge of adding in a main fictional character into real historical events. Fortunately, his previous employment gives him an opening for being asked to investigate Godfrey’s death by the Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson. We are introduced to Grey in his home in Essex, two months prior to Godfrey’s death. This is similar to Carr’s book, yet I would say Tyler spends much less time going into these run-up events, which makes sense as his series sleuth could not plausibly have access to all the information Carr had. In keeping with other books in Tyler’s series, there is a character list which includes many of the real-life people involved in the case. I found the snappy description we get for each person was really helpful for giving you a feel for each character and I felt Tyler achieved this in a more concise manner than Carr.
One aim I would argue Tyler’s prologue has, is to foreshadow future events in the book. I think this is a device Carr uses more sparingly or perhaps he uses it in fewer places, but in a more concentrated fashion. After all his own preface could be said to foreshadow the Godfrey case quite a bit. However, when Carr does use foreshadowing in his novel, I found he could use it in intriguing ways. For example, during a standard passage describing a location, Carr writes: ‘From the Strand there were only two entrances into the palace.’ This is not an overly exciting sentence I will admit, until Carr adds this footnote – ‘If the reader is following this narrative as a detective story, he is urged to remember these details, they will become important.’ This type of footnote looks ahead to Carr’s later book The Nine Wrong Answers (1952), where footnotes form a part of the story’s armchair sleuthing.
Moreover, Carr makes use of Godfrey’s own remarks which foreshadow his premature death. Prior to his disappearance he said to an associate: ‘You may live to see an end on’t, but I shall not. This much I tell you: I am master of a secret, a dangerous secret, and it will be fatal to me.’ And Carr further adds: ‘The words puzzled his companion at the time; and afterwards, when he came to give his testimony on oath, he still did not understand them.’ This last line almost has a biblical-like quality echoing the disciple’s own misunderstanding of some of Jesus’ enigmatic statements concerning his own death.
Not long after this passage, we almost get a cluster of pages in which Carr foreshadows Godfrey’s death intensely, going through Godfrey’s last known movements, which take him closer and closer, step by step, to his doom:
‘The grave is dug; this man is going to die. He now moves, and speaks, and opens his waistcoat to warm his grizzled breast at the fire, but we know that he will be very cold presently. Perhaps he thinks there may be a way out of it, a coin-spin chance for his life, but we know that he is already moving towards the ditch on Primrose Hill.’
Interestingly, this type of foreshadowing can also be seen in Tyler’s prologue, such as when he writes:
‘He’s going to die. You’ve worked that out already. Of course you have. The question is how. And when. And where. And why. And, most important, who’s already waiting to kill him. After he’s found, dead in a ditch on Primrose Hill, none of those things will be quite as clear as you’d like them to be. I’m warning you now, it’s not going to be the most straightforward of cases.’
Although I would say Tyler’s foreshadowing here is more interactive with the reader.
Another point of comparison worth exploring between these two books is how they introduce Titus Oates into their stories. Carr drops Oates’ name at the end of chapter 1, as the source of Dr Tonge’s information about the supposed Catholic plot. Carr takes the time to show us the sequence of events which led to Oates’ appearance in the situation. I would say the reader is not encouraged to like him, which is evidenced by his first description:
‘His body was short, broad, and bloated; to their eyes he seemed to move in a luminousness, like a saint or a decayed lobster.’
[…]
‘Mr Oates, who when he had a free hand seemed less like a man than like a bad smell, hurried his bandy legs round the house sniffing for evidence.’
His self-perceived importance and grandeur is undermined by the images mentioned above, although I would say there is an element of subtly and nuance to them. Due to the lack of first-person narrator or central sleuth (more on that anon), Oates’ unreliability and his dubious nature have to driven home via Charles II in the narrative, as the council/government are not convinced by Charles’ success in proving Oates a liar. Reading the speeches Oates made, and the way he engages with cross-examination, the idea came to me that he is what a dangerous Mr Collins (of Pride and Prejudice fame) would be like, his obsequiousness being far more corrosive as he uses it to forge his own advancement.
Like Carr, Tyler depicts Oates in a negative fashion, however I feel he achieves this in a different way. Tyler first presents Oates in a position of weakness, having been caught trying to default on paying an innkeeper for his bed and board and John Grey has been called into adjudicate as the local magistrate. Oates tries to deny any culpability, assuming he is of so great an importance he is above the law. John Grey’s response shows the ridiculousness of this and cuts Oates’ pomposity down to size, which puts you on Grey’s side. It also makes for fun reading. Humour is the overriding tone, although the reader may wonder if Grey has made an enemy for himself.
It does not take long for this to be confirmed, as it is shown that John Grey has underestimated Oates, and overestimated the common sense of the Privy Council. Oates’ rise to power and his progress in having his story believed, is shared via letters John Grey’s wife receives from her aunt, who lives in London. The information is second hand, but it feels natural, plausible and it makes the info more digestible, as there is space for the characters to discuss each development. In addition, I would say this helps move the plot along at a good pace.
Furthermore, Oates’ dangerous quality is made real to the reader, as he imperils the safety of John Grey and those he knows. This allows us to see the type of manipulative manoeuvres Oates and others did in real life to try and force people to become false witnesses so a target could be arrested. We see this at play second hand in Carr’s novel, as it something that is reported to us with the all-seeing eye of hindsight, but in Tyler’s book we can experience what it feels like to be in that situation first hand, which I felt increased the tension and made the sense of threat more personal.
As mentioned previously, Carr does not insert any of his own series sleuth into the story, like Tyler does. For Carr the political value key players (such as Lord Shaftesbury) found in Godfrey’s death is the point to emphasise and the effect Godfrey’s demise was having politically. Moreover, in Carr’s book I feel you are overtly told social/political context information, whilst with Tyler that information must be inferred from the scenes his characters are operating in. Due to the style Carr chose, his book has no central detective doing the interviewing of witnesses or suspects. Instead, these people are formally questioned by committees, or their evidence is reported in the third person. The third person style of the narrative does leave you a little at arm’s length from the characters and consequently you need to infer more from external behaviours/actions. In contrast, in Tyler’s story, Grey’s direct sleuthing enables us to perceive the obstacles being put in place, to prevent a proper investigation. Moreover, I liked how Grey’s wife is good at encouraging difficult witnesses/suspects to talk.
One final note on characters each author chose to work with, I would say Carr’s book has the largest cast (pulled from real life) and to his credit you can keep on top of this, perhaps because the pace is slower and there is more time to become familiar with the people involved. Meanwhile, Tyler’s novel streamlines the number of real-life people he chooses to include. Neither strategy is bad, indeed the two books complement itself very well, by their decisions to offer either the big picture or the narrower focus of personal experience.
In Carr’s The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, I found it interesting to watch Lord Shaftesbury, Titus Oates and their associates upending detecting principles, as their investigations do not truly try to seek the real truth of the situation. Conversely, they use the judicial process for their own ends. This is still apparent in Tyler’s mystery, but we perhaps see it in less detail because events are seen from John Grey’s point of view, and he is not kept fully in the loop by his superiors. He is a bit of an outsider, and he has to feel his way to the truth, like someone groping for the door in a fog.
This outsider status can be useful though. Due to John Grey and his wife living in Essex, outside of the situation, you can see a more sceptical reaction towards the London hysteria, whilst remaining aware of the danger this frenzy could unleash. However, one thing which occurred to me when reading Tyler’s novel was that Grey’s Essex home location means there is a lot of toing and froing as John Grey and his wife have to make quite a lot of trips to London. I understand that this is realistic as if John is not needed in London, then he would go home, but it did make certain parts of the second half less satisfying, creating a bit of downtime in that part of the narrative.
Armchair sleuthing and on-the-page detecting is another theme I wish to consider with these two stories, as both authors approach this in different ways. With Carr, discussion of the possible solutions to the mystery are restricted to specific chapters, one is a third of the way in and the other comes in at the end. The first opportunity is entitled: ‘An Interlude for Connoisseurs in Murder – The Evidence’ and here Carr writes as though he were directly speaking to a person in front of him. In this section he outlines the 12 solutions propounded for Godfrey’s death and the emphasis is on the strengths of each theory, as the final chapter deals with their weaknesses in order to promote the solution Carr thinks is the correct one. Both chapters were interesting, and I felt they did encourage armchair detection.
On the other hand, Tyler’s The Three Deaths of Justice Godfrey sees John Grey discussing the case as it emerges, and as new evidence comes to light, with those around him, in particular, his wife, his father-in-law and Sir Joseph Williamson (Secretary of State). This is woven consistently through the narrative. Grey’s discussions engage with the real theories expounded for the murder of Godfrey. Carr and Tyler are both conversational in these areas, but Carr’s style is perhaps more formal. Furthermore, Tyler also includes a different way of exploring the case, as he has Grey’s wife write certain interludes in the book, where Godfrey’s final movements/moments are reimagined in light of a given theory. It is like the story/the central characters are trying on a set of clothes for size, to see how well it fits. I found this to be a creative way of examining a theory, and it is less dry than a long explanation. It also makes the narrative active rather than passive, which is a difference with Carr’s “interlude” chapters.
When it comes the trials in both books, Carr and Tyler utilise dialogue recorded from the real-life ones, Carr more than Tyler, which makes sense given the comparative sizes of each work. The trials in Carr’s novel are long and due to the amount of detail they contain they are dense. Yet somehow Carr still managed to grip me to an extent I had not anticipated. Carr depicts the limitations and deficiencies of the judicial system at the time and the fragility of life in the 1600s is strongly apparent. Moreover, when it comes to the people on trial, Carr does enable you to feel the plight of the innocent people falsely accused such as Samuel Atkins.
Nevertheless, I think in Carr’s book it must be said that whilst Sir Edmund Godfrey is the titular character, he (and his murder) can fall into the background. Instead, I would argue that Charles II is more the protagonist, particularly in the second half of the book where he is shown to have his back against the wall as Parliament make moves to weaken his rule/change his succession. The narrative here has real palpable tension dripping from the pages. It is at these moments that I felt Carr’s book operates more as a historical epic than a mystery/detective novel. This contrasts with Tyler’s novel in which the detective story remains at forefront throughout, and it is Charles II who is a more of a background figure.
Each author went for a different favoured solution to the death of Sir Edmund Godfrey, and I think both do a good job in this arena. Douglas G. Greene contributes an afterword to Carr’s book which outlines subsequent evidence/findings, which challenge and modify Carr’s theory, but this is information that Carr did not have access to. Tyler writes an afterword to his book explaining why he went for the solution that he did, and I felt his enthusiasm for the mystery surrounding the Godfrey case was clearly in evidence.
I read Carr’s book before Tyler’s, so I knew going in what happened to certain real-life characters, so I was curious to see if Tyler would be ruled by these outcomes or whether he would rewrite history, as real life does not necessarily provide the sort of endings normally striven for in fiction. Reflecting on Tyler’s novel I would say he respects true events, but he does so in a way which engages his series sleuth John Grey and makes his presence in the book exciting and relevant.
Overall, I would say both books have much to offer the reader, so if you have read one then that is not a bar to reading the other. Both involve you well in the dramas of that time and you are aided in investing in the characters. The riches of Carr’s novel have to be more patiently mined, but they are there to be found. Tyler’s mystery is a great addition to the John Grey series and is an accessible gateway into engaging with the history of the 1600s.
Ratings
The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey = 4/5 (I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, more than I thought I would)
The Three Deaths of Justice Godfrey = 4.25/5
Source: My copy of L. C. Tyler’s book was a review copy provided by Constable.
See also: The Puzzle Doctor has also reviewed these two books.