FFB: They Walk in Darkness - Gerald Verner

They Walk in Darkness (1947) opens with a dinner party held on Halloween night. The main topic of conversation is hardly palatable for any dinner party no matter what the date. In the village on Fendyke St. Mary children have been disappearing, five over an eighteen month period. Only one has been found so far. The Robson’s infant was taken from its pram but three days later was found horribly butchered, its throat cut and the body dumped in “a clump of reeds at the edge of Hinton Broad.”

You can imagine all the characters reaching for the whiskey, gritting their teeth, clutching the arms of their chairs. You imagine they would want to change the subject as soon as possible. But no one does. Can there be more? Oh, yes there is--

The prelude to this ghastly murder and subsequent disappearances of other children was the slaughter of lambs killed in a similar fashion and just as ignominiously disposed of. Verner's narrative style is so detached, so British, presenting such monstrous acts in as tasteful a manner as possible.  The guests feel more challenged by how to conduct themselves with decorum rather than show their true feelings. The men shake their heads and dismiss it as the actions of a lunatic, the woman utter euphemistic platitudes. Collectively the dinner party basically shakes their head mumbling about “nasty work”. We expect outrage but get lackadaisical resignation.

If that weren’t enough their hostess Helen Wymondham is more concerned about how the evening was ruined, "all gaiety vanished" no matter how many “valiant efforts” she made to restore it to a pleasant evening for all. She babbles on interminably as she tries to say her good nights to her nephew Peter Chard and his wife Ann: “Such a dismal atmosphere, I’m really quite relieved that the evening is over. I do wish it hadn’t happened today of all days. It would have been so nice if we could have had a really jolly evening…”

Of course this is just a precursor to more unspeakable acts.

The next day four people, two men and two women, are discovered dead at another party held in a reputedly haunted house known as Witch House. It had snowed on Halloween and footprint trails travel towards the house showing all four entered, but none travel away showing anyone left. The door was locked from the inside and had to be broken down. All four people are found seated at a dinner table, some meats are still on a sideboard, a wine bottle is empty,  and all four have eaten and drunk wine. There is a fifth place setting at the table but the plate and glass are untouched, empty of food or drink. Examination of the bodies indicates cyanide poisoning, later corroborated by autopsy, administered via the wine. When mass suicide is ruled out the police are faced with what appears to be a locked room and four impossible murders. Who poisoned the wine, locked the room, and escaped without leaving footprints in the snow?

Peter Chard, a thriller writer, and his wife assist the police in the murder investigation. Eventually, the lamb slaughter, the vanished children, and the poisonings are all tied together when Peter’s wife Ann suggests that everything smacks of ritual and superstition. Peter’s Aunt Helen who hosted the dinner party tells them stories about the house where the murders took place, and of the ugly history of witchcraft and executions that took place in the village centuries ago. Ann dares to suggest that a coven of witches may be active in the village and Peter begins to seriously contemplate that possibility. The truth, however, is far worse -- more outre, more bone-chilling.

The detection and clues are here, but Verner is sloppy in his handling of his sinister plot. While we watch Peter discover things like an ornate jeweled brooch in the shape of capital L in the home of victim Laura Courtland, and read up on witchcraft and horrid occult rituals in the library of Anthony Sherwood other pieces of detective work are shaded in ambiguity or just plain unfair. There are two blatant references to an aspect of one character’s unusual past that stick out like a sore thumb indicating a major clue as to how the the impossibility was pulled off, but on the other hand we never learn (until the last chapter) what Peter found when he investigated the front porch of the Witch House. All the reader knows is that he sees it, smiles and walks away.

Verner seems to lack the confidence to play fair with his readers. He’ll hide a couple of aces up his sleeve but then let one drop out onto the table ineptly. Too much detection happens offstage or is described so obliquely that the reader is unclear what has been discovered. The clues are a mix of the utterly absent or completely obvious. When the solution to the impossible crime comes many readers may be disappointed by its familiarity in the impossible crime subgenre, a gimmick used almost as frequently as knife throwing.

In the end They Walk in Darkness comes off as an inferior homage to a Dennis Wheatley occult thriller moreso than a traditional detective novel. Verner has been described as being inspired by Edgar Wallace in that even when he sits down to write a detective novel he ends up with action oriented thrillers, often with gangsters and career criminals as the antagonists. However, the more I read of Gerald Verner the more I'm reminded of a similarly prolific crime writer who wrote under multiple pseudonyms. Edwy Searles Brooks whose "Ironsides" Cromwell books written in his “Victor Gunn” guise are very much in line with what Verner wrote. Both include impossible crimes, haunted houses, Gothic atmosphere galore, elements of weird and supernatural fiction always rationalized, and the standard heightened melodrama exemplified by this Lovecraftian passage:

Something had come into that quiet, warm, cosy room -- a disturbing, unpleasant something, as though a door had partially opened and through the crack had come writhing abominable and hideous things from an unspeakable hell.…

Luridly cliche? Yes, but a perfect evocation for what's to come. And it would have been fine if Verner ended the chapter there. Instead he undermines the terror with the prosaic by tacking on this absurd coda:

Peter slid the brooch into his pocket."Let’s go to bed, shall we?" he said soberly. "I think I’ve had enough horrors for one day.…"

Despite all the flaws in construction and fair play technique Verner is a born story teller and the book does not fail to grip hold of the reader.  Of all the books I've read this one seems his most mature, he is trying to do something than merely entertain.  There is social criticism and satire of British stoicism in the face of "nasty business." Amid the lathered on histrionics and the intentionally melodramatic prose there is a subversive thread being played out. They Walk in Darkness slowly transforms from occult thriller with detective fiction elements into a contemporary morality play with a motive for murder steeped in vigilantism presented as the only true course for justice and retribution. We watch the disintegration of a community and witness them suffer in helplessness, rise up in anger and violence in order to stop the unseen malevolent force terrorizing their village. Who among them will be brave enough to dispel the superstition and at long last see the truth no matter how improbable?  The novel begins in tragedy and ends in tragedy when at last two characters step out of the shadows take the law into their own hands and fight evil the only way they can. Even Peter Chard recognizes this as the only solution possible in the final pages.