Let X Be the Murderer - Clifford Witting

Lookee here-- It's a book that was recently reprinted and one that you can actually purchase without having to take out a second mortgage! I did promise a few books that were much easier (and affordable) to find this week.

I have an interesting history with Let X Be the Murderer (1947).  I bought a first edition with the unusual illustrated dust jacket (bonus points to anyone who knows what is on the cover on that old edition over on the left.  I'll reveal it later in the post) but never received it.  It was one of two very expensive books that was lost or never delivered or --most likely-- destroyed in mountain of mail that went "missing" in my neighborhood of Rogers Park back at the height of the pandemic.  That loss was one of the most gut wrenching lessons I learned and I stopped buying books from the UK and all sellers overseas for two full years because of the combined loss and the general collapse of the Chicago mail delivery service between March 2020 and the summer of 2021.

This year, a few weeks before Galileo released their new reprint paperback edition, a relatively affordable copy of Let X... turned up in the catalog of a US seller I used to buy from regularly. I snapped it up and it arrived back in May.  Then out of the blue Galileo sent me a review copy!  It was completely unexpected and a delightful surprise.  When I opened the package and saw what it was I did remember that Robert Hyde, one of their publicists, had promised me that I'd get the last couple of Witting books that were planned for release as they came out.  I am also supposed to get copies of the other two Joan Cockin books that they have in the works.  

All these years I was under the impression that Let X Be the Murderer had something to do with mathematics. Anyone would think so based on the title.  Then when you open the book and see that the books is divided into four sections -- Theorem, Hypothesis, Construction, Proof -- once again most readers would be expecting an academic mystery perhaps about a murdered calculus or geometry professor. However, Inspector Charlton does not meet anyone involved in mathematics or geometry or even physics.  Instead it's almost as if he travels back to the 19th century because this detective novel turns out to be very much a homage to the Victorian sensation novel.  As a bonus, adding to the anachronistic atmosphere, Witting throws in eerie occult dabbling and explorations into the world of spiritualism and paranormal events.

Inspector Henry Charlton, Witting's usual protagonist detective, is paired up with the flippant Cockney copper, Det-Sgt Martin this time and they make an amusing pair.  Yet another surprise -- Peter Bradfield (who appears in several other Witting detective novels as a constable and in Subject-Murder as one of the lead characters) pops up in the last couple of chapters to help Charlton carry out some sneaky police business by gathering crucial evidence that might never have been collected. Bradfield eventually makes it to the rank of Chief Inspector, I think, and he becomes the lead detective in Witting's novels that were written and published in the 1950s and 1960s.

In essence this could be seen as Wilkie Collins redux.  The machinations of Mrs. Gulliver, a scheming housekeeper, and the Harlers, a devilish husband and wife, reminded me of the diabolical trio of Count Fosco, Lady Fosco and Percival Glyde in The Woman in White.  Mr & Mrs Harler in Let X Be The Murderer are intent on sending a poor old man to the madhouse just as those other three set their sinister designs on Laura Fairlie. Similarly, the bulk of the novel involves a highly convoluted history of philandering, adultery and questionable parentage. The often dizzying explanations of who was jumping into whose beds and who fathered what child got to be rather head spinning.  The climax of the book involves...well, can't really mention it without ruining a genuine shock.  But I must tell you that event is something that occurred in two other books I recently read and made me not only raise my eyebrows in surprise but burst out laughing.  Not so much because it's both absurd and so utterly unexpected but because who could believe that I would read three different books from three different decades over a period of three months that all featured the same bizarre revelation?  It was beyond surreal!

It's not just the slew of dastardly villains all of whom get what they deserve in the end that make this such an engaging page-turner.  Cast in the role of the apparent victim of the Harler's "Gaslighting" plot is elderly Sir Victor Warringham, head of the household at the dilapidated estate known as Elmsdale. Sir Victor had recently lost his wife and daughter in a wartime bombing and he's been devastated by their deaths. He turns to spiritualism for solace and has been acting increasingly eccentric. Someone caught him playing at witchcraft spells and black magic in the kitchen, he's written a book on haunted houses, and is currently involved in researching folklore and legends.  When Charlton interviews him Sir Vincent reveals what all his experiments have been about. It was a clever bit of misdirection very early in a novel teeming with reversals, upsets and topsy-turvy perceptions.

Perhaps the only drawback to this mystery novel is Witting's tendency to have his characters indulge in long monologues to fill in backstory or to explain themselves.  It's another aspect of the book that recalls a Victorian sensibility; an insistence that characters speak at length about their motivations or to dissemble and mislead.  Clement Harler, in particular, talks voluminously and pompously.  He also calls the lead detective Clayton for much of the book and it's only when Charlton has finally got Harler to come clean and stop lying that he humiliates Harler by sternly correcting him.

Oh yes, about that illustration on the DJ.  It's supposed to depict two different colored flex cords from a bedside table lamp.  The cords are used as a murder weapon in one of the many crimes that occur in the book.  A paper knife is also involved but is oddly not part of the drawing.  Down there in the lower right corner you can see what I think its meant to be the electrical plug.  But there's no way I think anyone would be able to name the objects depicted without having read the book. Anyone guess correctly?