FFB: Inspector Rusby's Finale - Virgil Markham

As usual I have discovered a delightful book that others found “nightmarish” and “disturbing.” I am beginning to think that many critics out there in the blogosphere have no sense of humor, fail to see the obvious, and cannot see a parody when it’s right in front of them. I can only view Virgil Markham’s fifth crime novel, one that plays with mystery motifs, as a parody of the detective novel. Like many of his other books it is a mix of absurdity, head scratching incidents, eccentric characters, and a soupçon of Gothic horror. But even with a single scene that truly is disturbing I found the book to be a frothy adventure, with a dash of detective novel plotting, that culminates in a romantic ending.

Inspector Rusby’s Finale (1933) as the title tells you right away is the story of a policeman’s last case. It is a lesson in jumping to conclusions, not seeing the forest for the trees, and allowing one’s prejudices to cloud one’s judgment. The book is also a very funny and lighthearted send-up of everything English found in the Golden Age of Detection. Markham, people seem to forget was an American, not a Brit. in this unusual mix of detection, romance and Gothicism he has mastered replicating the highbrow prose style that is the hallmark of most Golden Age detective novels of his contemporaries while simultaneously satirizing aristocrats, detective novel clichés like jewels that go missing at social events, the war of classes between wealthy homeowners and servants, even the very idea of a house party. His books all seem to be playing with the form of the detective novel in one way or another, exaggerating the conventions and motifs to the point of absurdity. In The Devil Drives (1932) we have a prison tale that gives way to a bizarre murder – how did a man drown in a locked house? Inspector Rusby’s Finale treats us to yet another miracle problem – an entire houseful of people vanish overnight with not a trace of them to be found in the world outside. Sound nightmarish? Perhaps. But the story does not begin there. The opening chapter of the novel is a huge clue to what follows.

With chapter headings that allude to the world of theater -- "second act", "scene shifting", "command performance", etc. -- we are given subtle hints to the overarching theme of make believe and illusion. Markham starts off with a prologue entitled "curtain raiser" (no capital letters in any of these chapter headings, BTW) set in the sunny Italian Riviera town of Rapallo. There a group of unnamed women are having a going away party, sending off one of their friends before she heads to England. This seemingly nonsensical sequence filled with catty gossip and gift giving should hint to any reader that the book is going to be a lighthearted story of love and getting even with misbehaving boyfriends. Given this ostensibly strange and out of place prologue it is not hard to figure out what is going on in the first section of the book. Some readers may attempt to match the named women in the first half of the book with the unnamed women from the party who sport only nicknames like Picture Hat, Shy Mouse, and Departing One. They would do better to home in on the gifts bestowed on the Departing One and the snippy remarks related to her paramour.

Markham overloads the night of the house party with unusual incidents and some mysterious goings-on. They are bound to lead most readers away from what they should be paying attention to. These incidents certainly give Inspector Rusby a very troubling time. Why anyone would find the story disturbing is beyond me. Oh! There is that dead body. The one with the bare feet, scarred and bloody, and a bullet it its head. The one found shoved in a closet with not a trace of ID on it. The appearance of the corpse diminishes the frothiness to something more resembling gravitas. Still, the novel as a whole doesn’t seem too concerned with who the corpse is or who was responsible or even why he was killed. In fact, when another body turns up in the story and you think the book will actually start to resemble a genuine whodunit Markham refuses to treat that dead body with any importance either. By the end of the book both murders will be solved (in a way), the culprit unmasked and dealt with by the police (in a way) but neither dead body will have been given a name or personality. The corpses in the mystery novel are merely props for a story that means to deliver more than just a pat and just solution of criminal acts.

When Judy Merle, Rusby’s flighty and willful niece shows up, the story shifts into yet another mode. Suddenly the characters Rusby is interviewing become more lively and increasingly odd. The humor intensifies into near farce. And – thankfully, for most readers – the plot actually exhibits some genuine detection with Judy playing Watson to her uncle’s Holmes.

Judy insists accompanying her uncle to Stoke New Place, the mysterious house of vanished occupants, and offers up a few clever ideas to explain the various mysteries that baffled her uncle that very strange night. Like where did the voices saying, "Damn!" and "Oh the Romans" come from? Why did a woman with a Dutch accented voice scream at a barking dog? Where did the dog come from? And, of course, how did the dog disappear along with the house guests and servants in the morning? Why does Rusby keep finding pairs of women’s gloves, ornately decorated, all identical, wherever he goes?

Markham is clearly having fun with this book. The characters are unusual and eccentric. He delights in mimicking regional voices and dialects spoken by his myriad characters. On of my favorites is Daniel Churd, a crossword puzzle addicted gardener who gets into trouble with his shrewish daughter Mrs. Taylor.  She is such a castigating intolerant woman that even while Churd is being interrogated by Rusby she unapologetically hurls venomous verbal abuse on her poor father.  Later, there is an excellent scene with another servant of sorts -- Trivett, an ancient sexton at St. Egbert's Church. Rusby questions Trivett while he is digging graves in the St. Egbert churchyard and learns of some inside dope on the two Sir William Rockleys in the story (senior and junior).  The policeman also is handed a surprising revelation in the past of Amos Laxton, a real state agent who Ruby has talked with on numerous occasions and who Rusby suspects of withholding vital information. And of course Judy Merle is the greatest highlight of the book with her rebellious nature, her fathomless optimism and good spirits, and her insatiable curiosity.

Markham's typical hyperbolic wit
found in an inscription in my copy.
(Note: he was living in Missouri at the time!)

No one is really sinister. Only when Markham cannot resist his penchant for Gothic excess does the story become slightly disturbing. When Rusby demands that Dr. Dunbar, the head of a metal institution, cooperate with him and let him see every one of the seventeen patients in the asylum we get a sense of uneasiness. There is a frightening episode involving an experiment with asphyxiation in order to arouse a catatonic patient from his withdrawn state that not only made me raise my eyebrows but mystified me. I wondered if it was an actual “therapy” used in mental institutions in the 1930s. I found nothing remotely resembling the experiment. Electroconvulsive therapy and use of drugs like thyroxine were common in treating catatonia and dementia praecox, but not restricting the patient's breathing. Markham seems to have made it up completely. The way it is described I thought that patient was being anesthetized with some form of gas, but the physicians involved were actually suffocating him! Bizarre seems an understatement. The scene is like a cruel torture sequence you’d find in the pages of Dime Detective or Weird Tales.

Of the handful of mystery novels I've read by Virgil Markham, this one is the most readable, the most entertaining, and the most intriguingly constructed. His mixing of several subgenres, his play with detective novel motifs and his talent for creating lively and fascinating characters make it one of his finest works. If the ultimate reveal in the denouement is not too surprising, and perhaps a bit of a letdown, this is no real fault of the book as whole. I think it's one of the finest parody pastiches of the Golden Age. The prose style alone is something to marvel at for a writer so thoroughly American. Somehow Markham manages to both thumb his nose at the detective novel and a write a modest love letter to the genre.