Last week I reviewed Sanborn’s first detective story, Murder by Jury (1932) and this week I am looking at another. This story takes place on Mrs Van Wycke’s yacht, which is beached on an island off the Maine coast. One of her guests, Professor Dante Gabriel Burge, a psychologist, decides to conduct an experiment to prove how unreliable and inaccurate people are as witnesses during moments of stress. This setup pre-empts to a degree the premise of John Dickson Carr’s The Black Spectacles (1939). Naturally, during this experiment, in which the lights are turned out, and the professor himself, decides to fire off some shots, among other actions, the hostess is murdered, killed by another gun and her jewels are stolen, including a rare ruby. It is this ruby which brought several of Christine Van Wyke’s guests to her boat, if she had but known it, and this extends to the protagonist Bill Galleon, who has come up with an excuse (in the manner of Frankie Derwent in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) to get onboard her boat. He works for the Verity Insurance Company who are on the trail of the ruby, which they believe might have been stolen from one of their clients. Bill gets quite the shock though when he discovers who Christine’s secretary is, a woman who used to work for his company, and one who he had fallen in love with, yet had been puzzled when she had mysteriously disappeared one day. What does her reappearance mean now? I suspect the reader will know before Bill does.
After sabotaging his own boat, the first person Bill encounters on Mrs Van Wycke’s yacht is Angeline Tredennick, who we met in Murder by Jury, and she was in fact the vital juror who worked out who had murdered Mrs Vanguard; more by accident than by design. Since that book she had left her previous occupation and is now a housekeeper for Christine. She is suspicious of Bill and his so-called accident, but her shrewdness has limitations I would say. After all Bill seems ‘nice’. Interestingly, Sanborn borrows a phrase she used in Murder by Jury to describe Angeline: ‘Gossip was meat and drink and breath and sunshine to Angelina Tredennick’, but this time the author adds the following caveat: ‘[…] and the worst thing about this place was that no matter what a lot of interesting things you found out, there was nobody much to talk them over with.’ Moreover, like Gary Brennon in Murder by Jury, Bill Galleon perceives that Angeline will be useful to his activities: ‘He saw already that Angeline Tredennick, with the deep well of her curiosity and the clear spouting stream of her talk, could be of advantage to him in his mission…’
We get to know the cast of characters through observation of their personalities and relationship dynamics, when we see their differing reactions to Christine showing off her jewel collection. These observations are further established in the aftermath of the murder. It is amusing to see the aloof and clinical professor, perplexed and out of his depth, when one of the women on the boat flings herself upon him, thinking he has killed for her: ‘Dante Burge took the frantic woman by the shoulders, holding her away. For once in his life he had more psychology on his hands than he could manage.’ He is also in for an uncomfortable time, when the other guests are not so convinced that he didn’t just set up the experiment as a way of killing Chistine. After all he did fire some of the shots which were heard:
‘Professor Dante Gabriel Burge was a brilliant man. Within the scope of his own subject, he was acknowledged an authority. But like many brilliant men, he sometimes overlooked the obvious. He appeared to realise now for the first time the full significance of his position.’
At least the professor can take comfort in the fact that the experiment was a success, albeit with unexpected consequences, as everyone’s recollections of the experience differ, and it is clear to the reader that some of the responses will be lies to conceal secrets and culpability. This is also where Bill becomes more annoying as a character, as despite Jane (Christine’s secretary) repelling him and generally being rude to him, he is determined to hide any information which would incriminate her (thereby slowing up developments, although I will say the book starts out at a good pace).
Due to the location of the book, and the tendency of some of the others to scupper the remaining dinghies, getting a full police team involved in solving the case is not a possibility. It takes nearly a full day before even a local constable is drawn into the mystery. Prior to the appearance of Constable Loose, the guests try to puzzle out the case themselves.
Bill’s irritating qualities are outstripped by Jane’s. She acts so unpleasantly and so obstructively that you wonder how Bill could ever be potty about her. This romance strand does mar the narrative as a whole and you know Jane telling the truth would speed things up remarkably. Therefore, I did enjoy the presence of Constable Loose. He might be a yokel police officer, but he is smart and stubborn, and he won’t be snubbed or put off by the guests when he wants a question answered. Moreover, these are the questions which Bill has been trying to suppress as they would implicate Jane.
Angeline performs a similar role in this novel, to the previous one, although her role is significantly smaller in Murder on the Aphrodite, as Bill takes over the amateur sleuthing job. This is a shame as I think Angeline would have been a more interesting sleuth to follow.
The Saturday Review of Literature seems to have enjoyed this mystery, describing it as ‘above par’ and opines that ‘it has atmosphere, zip, good characterisations – and an end that you do want to believe.’ I felt this last bit to be an odd turn of phrase, so I wonder if like me the reviewer had found the solution interesting, but that it perhaps came out of nowhere. In and of itself it is a dark and exciting solution, but this intensity of character is not connected firmly enough to the rest of the story to really work. The solution has to be largely conveyed via the killer’s confession as the investigators would never have got fully on to it. So, for me, I think this mystery had a lot of good elements and some interesting possibilities, but that the romance centred narrative does not enable them to reach their full potential.
Rating: 3.75/5