Greymarsh - Arthur J. Rees

THE STORY:  Sir Roger Liskard and his wife Linda are having a house party. The timing couldn't have been worse. As the guests arrive at Greymarsh, the Liskard's imposing house on the Norfolk coast, a storm is brewing. With the threat of abnormally high tides and surging waves indicating an impending flood the talk turns to Gothic legends, murder and the concept of Justice. Henry Liskard, Roger's brother and a painter of some renown grows weary of the talk which morphs into a legal debate. Henry leaves and takes his art world friends to his studio located in a tower that long ago served as a lighthouse for the area. There they view Henry's strange portrait of a nun contemplating an open grave while a figure representing the Devil watches from a thorny bush in the background. The three friends display reactions ranging from impressed to repulsed. Henry's studio is filled with similar paintings of macabre subject manner.  Eventually, the men leave Henry to retire for the night in his bedroom just off of the studio. He does not escort them out alarming the men who think he ought to lock the door. Henry assures them no one ever comes out to the tower and he often leaves the only entrance unlocked at night. The next morning Henry is found shot dead.  The door to the tower is open as is the door leading to his studio-bedroom. The guests realize almost immediately that due to the raging storm and the tsunami-like waves that flooded the grounds that they are all now on an isolated island and that one of them must have shot Henry.

THE CHARACTERS: After the lengthy exposition dealing with the house party and the several guests who attend, the story focuses on only a handful of people:  Roger & Linda Liskard; Herbert Lintwell, a lawyer who attends the house party; Avis Ormond, a village girl with whom Henry was enamored; George Rumsden, a sailor in love with Avis; Avis' father, a blind fisherman and Creeke, deaf-mute companion and aide to Avis' father. Colwin Grey and his lawyer friend Richard Haldham (the narrator of Part II of the novel) are summoned by Hugh Templeton, friend to Roger Liskard and uncle to Haldham. Templeton wants someone to clear the name of Roger Liskard who is a primary suspect in the shooting of Henry.

The night of the murder Templeton was awakened by a piercing scream coming from the vicinity of the tower.  He went out into the storm and found Roger Liskard a few feet from the tower's main entrance. He had apparently fallen and severely injured himself.  But Roger was also raving and terrified of what he had seen.  He talked about expiation using that word specifically and asked Templeton to make sure Linda knew what happened.  His final words before passing out into unconsciousness was a rant:  "No, no! I will not believe it!  The dead cannot return!" Templeton is both puzzled and frightened by those seemingly insane remarks. That rant alone is reason enough to have Colwin Grey find out exactly went on in the tower the night of the shooting.

Colwin Grey wastes no time in his investigations.  He is of the intuitive school of detection but also has superhuman intelligence and a wide knowledge on a variety of arcane topics. We learn, for example, that in his boyhood he was fascinated with seaweed and made a study of it.  This, of course, comes in extremely handy when he finds a piece of "blood red" seaweed near the tower.  It turns out to be of the Rhodophyta division, seaweed that can only grow in deep ocean water and may be an indication that someone traveling from the sea brought it up on shore.  Haldham and Templeton find it hard to believe that anyone would be mad enough to set out in a boat during the storm in order to gain access to the makeshift island created by the severe weather. It would've been a suicide mission. Grey is sure that someone did visit the tower by boat and that they suffered the consequences of the rash decision by being swallowed up by he sea.

Through subtle manipulation of villagers and playing into their love of gossip Grey learns of Henry's love of women. They served as his models for his paintings and the stories include strong intimations they were more than just models. Grey is also the first to notice that the partially hidden face of the nun in the painting still on the easel the night of Henry's death resembles Linda Liskard. This fact opens a whole Pandora's box of motives ranging from jealousy to revenge. This coupled with the fact that both Linda and Roger interrupted Lintwell in his investigation of the tower the day after the murder adds another level of suspense in a tale that begins to grow ever more complex.

We know from one of the earliest chapters that Henry enjoys meeting Avis in secret out by the coast where he sketches her and they talk of life in the village. Lately Avis has withdrawn from the world and is often seen wandering the marshlands and spending time in the cemetery at Henry's grave. Grey is concerned for Avis and her morose moods. He says, "Her grief strikes me as rather excessive--in the circumstances. No; the reason lies deeper than [grief]." Eventually he will confront her and manage to get her to confide in him, thus clearing up the one or two puzzling aspects of Henry's death. Grey is convinced the murderer is dead and tells Avis this thinking it will console her. But finding proof of his theories will take time and considerable effort.

ATMOSPHERE:  Greymarsh (1927) is populated with brooding characters haunted by the coastline and the power of the unpredictable sea. Rees' writing is at its best when he is describing the fury of the ocean and the storm that was such a threat to the partygoers at the Liskard home.  The macabre and the unexplained are also fascinating subjects for Rees. The first half of the story is a Gothic novel in miniature what with the florid descriptions of the sea, the legend of a murdered monk's skull that was supposed to remain in the tower lest all descendants of Greymarsh fall under its curse, and a story of an impossible murder that took place in Africa related to the men at a key moment during the party. Rees skillfully manages to insert these vignettes into the story’s framework creating both an anxious atmosphere and setting up a clever segue into the role of policemen and lawyers in murder cases.

That African murder tale serves as the springboard for a debate about justice and truth-seeking and will come back to haunt the partygoers when Henry is found dead.  Mortimer, a caustic art critic, reminds everyone of Lintwell's challenge to find a killer among an isolated group of suspects. Lintwell said if he had been in Africa he would never have allowed the seven men to leave until he found the culprit. Likewise, Mortimer says they are all in a similar situation: it seems as though one of their isolated group is a killer. This sets off Herbert Lintwell, an arrogant self-righteous lawyer, on a path of amateur detective work that will prove extremely detrimental to Roger, Linda, Avis and Templeton.

INNOVATIONS:  The detective work -- both from Lintwell in the first half and Grey in the second half -- is engaging and modeled after the old fair play techniques. The reader sees everything each man sees, he knows their thoughts, too. Nothing is held back. However, Lintwell is a sloppy detective and makes rash judgments. A clever reader will be able to note his mistakes prior to Grey revealing them to Haldham and Templeton.

Grey, on the other hand, is the "Transcendent Detective", as Carolyn Wells liked to call the sleuths of this era in detective fiction. He knows more than the average man, sees more, and is skilled at manipulating people into telling him more than they should ever tell. The clue of the seaweed is probably the highlight of the book. It's simultaneously bizarre and amusing, especially when Grey remarks that studying seaweed was his boyhood hobby. Later, Haldham accidentally finds a revolver by stepping on it in a pile of seaweed. Seaweed is key to unravelling the mysteries!

Northeaster by Winslow Homer (1895)
via Metropolitan Museum of Art

QUOTES: "And now? The sea was wreaking fresh wickedness. [...] In its unstable heart lurked treachery, and implacable hatred of mankind."

"...the encircling sea had seemed a joke, but it wore another aspect now, relentless as fate, impassable as time. The sea held them all there captive, until it thought fit to let them go."

"There is no room for sentiment or gentlemanly feelings where murder is concerned."

"The revelation of the likeness in the studio impressed me most, though I did not see that it carried far. And yet, in that veiled and enigmatic picture, the key of the problem might be concealed"

"A murderer has one deed of violence to repent, but a fool has to atone for his whole life."

Avis has a monologue that includes these pithy exclamations:  "The sea is worse than cruel. Cruelty does not matter so much, because everything in life is cruel. The sea is not only cruel--it is wicked as well. There is nothing it loves so much as to wreck ships and drown men. It is a place of ghosts..."

THE AUTHOR:  Arthur John Rees (1872–1942) was born in Melbourne, Australia.  In his early career he wrote for Australian newspapers including Melbourne Age and New Zealand Herald.  Sometime in his 20s he traveled to England where he settled. His first two detective novels were written in collaboration with John Reay Watson. In 1919 he wrote his first solo novel The Shrieking Pit lauded by Barzun & Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime (1989, revised) as "a first rate novel...distinguished from its fellows by an absolutely steady forward march through a variety of clues and contradictions."  I've read this admirable novel and it strikes me as being heavily influenced by Trent's Last Case (1913) even to the inclusion of a similar clue involving missing shoes and a young man and young woman lying in order to protect each other. After a brief series of novels featuring Colwin Grey, Rees introduced his new policeman detective, Inspector Luckcraft, who would feature in seven more mystery novels from 1926 through 1940.

Colwin Grey Detective Books
The Threshold of Fear (1925)
Simon of Hangletree (1926) - U.S. title The Unquenchable Flame (1926)
Greymarsh (1927)
The Investigations of Colwin Grey (1932) - collection of 8 stories and 2 novellas