NEW STUFF: The Murder at World's End - Ross Montgomery

For the past two years I've seen an intriguing spike in modern writers trying their hand at a retro GAD-style locked room or impossible crime mystery novel.  I've read quite a few of them and mostly they tend to be less than gripping in plot, populated with tiresome formulaic characters, and prosaic in their solutions. Tom Mead, of course, seems to be the heir to John Dickson Carr's fame in mysterydom as master of the locked room mystery. Mead's novels are the exception and never cease to entertain and boggle my mind. Though I have to say I solved most of his last book The House at Devil's Neck, primarily because I read two books back to back that employed a similar masquerade plot device found in Mead's latest book. Now I discover a children's book author who has done his best to outdo the Great Carr and others like him in an often witty and baffling mystery called The Murder at World's End.

Even without the locked room plot element this mystery novel grabbed my attention for the setting and time period alone.  It is May 1910 and Viscount Conrad Stockingham-Welt, an eccentric aristocrat who fancies himself an amateur astronomer (though most of what he claims as his own work he stole from his aunt), has summoned his family to Tithe Hall on the eve of the reappearance of Halley's comet. He is certain that the comet will bring about devastation to Earth. He has ordered everyone to go to their rooms where they will all be sealed in as the comet passes overhead. The entire house is boarded up, all windows and doors are locked and sealed, and all rooms of course are likewise locked and sealed with cotton batting at all doorway bases. Even keyholes are sealed with wax. A perfect set-up for a classic lock room mystery recalling the room locked and sealed with gummed tape in He Wouldn't Kill Patience by John Dickson Carr.

Of course someone is discovered dead in the morning. It will come as no surprise that the murder victim is Lord Stockingham-Welt. The murder weapon seems to be a crossbow bolt. But how was it fired through a locked and sealed door?  (Shades of The Judas Window.) The crossbow usually is held in the gauntleted arms of a suit of armor that stands outside the Viscount's study but now the crossbow is missing.

 

Inspector Jarvis is soon called upon to interrogate the entire household. He sets his sights first on Stephen Pike, the newest addition to Tithe Hall's flock of servants. Stephen reluctantly admits to receiving this job straight out of Borstal where he was sent for committing murder. And so we have the perfect patsy for what appears to be a perfect crime.

Stephen is determined to clear his name.  Luckily, Decima Stockingham, the viscount's aunt, an 80ish invalid who cannot go anywhere without her wheelchair, is eager to clear Stephen's name as well. Together the two, along with the housemaid Temperance, team up to solve the mystery of who killed Lord Conrad.

Montgomery does a rather admirable job of concocting a baffling mystery and even comes up with multiple solutions. He throws in several red herrings, does a good job of leading us down the garden path thinking that one of the servants is very guilty of something if not the murder itself, and then delivers three or four well placed surprises. The biggest shock to me was the second murder victim. Rather a rule breaking bit of business for a traditional mystery novel, though I have encountered it a few time in genuine Golden Age mysteries. Still when this kind of rule breaking event happens it's always a shock.

I was most proud of Montgomery's not resorting to secret passages as an explanation for how the locked And sealed room was accessed. The characters do at one point make a thorough search of the house for such a hoary cliche. but when no such passage is found I was very happy. The final solution though not startlingly original was satisfying and -- most importantly -- fairly clued.  All the hints and references are presented early enough in the story to point the reader to the answer of who killed the viscount and how it was carried out.  If not gasp inducing at least the solution is presented in an entertaining, almost elegant fashion. It is a bit overdone in how Stephen and Decima split the reveal between themselves. Decima, an arrogant egotist, demands that she deliver the solution all on her own, but Stephen interrupts to get his portion of the detective work properly ascribed to himself.

Overall, I was impressed and entertained with this book. The background of Halley's comet and the doomsday mania that affected most of the world is inserted into the story with actual newspaper articles giving the story a valuable sense of verisimilitude. Montgomery plots well, has a savage sense of humor related to the dying British aristocracy, and the contrast between a very youthful servant and the aged woman he cares for is a welcome show of generational mixing that reveals both mutual respect and mutual loathing. Very real and often very funny. Should there be a sequel in the adventures of Decima Stockingham and Stephen Pike I would definitely read that book.