The Seven Who Waited - August Derleth

THE STORY:  In this seventh Judge Peck detective novel August Derleth once again revisits his favorite plot motif - the family decimation murder scheme.  Former pharmacy magnate Josiah Sloan, in the last stages of a terminal illness, has summoned his relatives all of whom will inherit even shares from his vast estate located outside of Baraboo, Wisconsin. The heirs are all eager for the man to drop dead and as they wait for him to draw his last breath someone has decided to eliminate the competition, so to speak. Soon all the heirs are the target of a ruthless killer who clearly wants the $250,000 estate in its entirety. Judge Ephraim Peck is summoned to the Sloan estate along with D.A. Meyer and local coroner Dr. Enderby to help prevent a complete slaughter of the heirs.

CHARACTERS: The Seven Who Waited (1943) is populated with a coarse group of very unlikable suspects.  Not one of them is described in any way that would elicit sympathy from the reader. The first victim, Phineas Canler, is described as a piggish glutton who eats voraciously at the dinner table, belches loudly, slurps and guzzles his alcohol, and of course is immensely overweight.  Thankfully he dies within the first two chapters so we are spared further belching and slurping.  But no one among the six remaining heirs really has any redeemable qualities. There is a seemingly prissy spinster who secretly reads salacious sex stories in trashy pulp magazines and hypercritically criticizes her relatives for being hedonists, her ineffectual lazy son who barely appears in the novel, a haughty young woman who sneers at all the men, her portly 50ish brother whose only interest is making money in the stock market; a vain middle-aged man with a glass eye and a toupee who dresses like a dandy and flirts with all the women as if he were still a handsome stud in his 20s, and Carson Kerby, a professional gambler who may have the most to hide among all these six people.  Kerby was my pick for the killer due to all his furtive wanderings around the Wisconsin estate and his evasive manner of answering Peck's questions. Lorin Fenner, Peck's companion and secretary who acts as narrator, finds Kerby to be the most likeable of the relatives despite his shady "profession." That I assume is supposed to get us to also like Kerby and though he does come off as  charming at times, honestly I didn't care about any of them. When they died or were attacked it all seemed like just deserts.

For me the most interesting characters were Hester Clohr, a domineering housekeeper/cook who suffers no fools and Alexander Carswell, the often drunken gardener who can quote Lewis Carroll doggerel from memory. The notes in poetry form seem to indicate that Carswell may have something to do with the crimes. He also has a habit of lurking around the grounds late at night. Hester is also considered a suspect as she is highly protective of and devoted to Josiah Sloan and disdains all of the guests she is forced to feed and house while also caring for her dying employer.

UK edition showing a victim struck by
an arrow. Never happens. The arrow hits
no one & has a poetic note attached.

INNOVATIONS: About the only innovative aspect of the book is that the murderer is something of a failure. Of the several crimes committed only two murders succeed and three others are botched attempts that are thwarted by our detective heroes.  Prior to each crime the murderer leaves a weird p note on the bedroom door of the intended victim.  Each note parodies poetry and seems informed of the rhyme that inspired the vengeful killer in Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). One of the notes begins like this: "Seven little men sat waiting in the parlor/One was doctored and that left six..." Each notes ends with a final line warning how many days are left until the next death: "Three days are allowed."

The detective work is a combination of dogged interrogation and Derleth's usual rigid logic that often discounts tacit aspects of murder investigations like deceit and lying or coincidence. For instance, Judge Peck insists that the killer must have knowledge of medicine because one of the murder means involves taking a lethal poison in powder form and switching it out with a sleeping aid in powder form that is prescribed in capsules. The judge thinks that there isn't anyone on the planet with who might also simply have patience and manual dexterity to open a capsule, remove the safe drug and replace it with the poison. I was rolling my eyes. That's precisely how the Tylenol Killer of the 1980s performed his random slaughtering. He was neither a doctor nor a pharmacist.

THINGS I LEARNED:  In Chapter 8 Lorin hear the strains of "After Sundown" and I was curious what it sounded like.  I found multiple versions online because it was a Bing Crosby record! He first sang it in the movie Going Hollywood (1933), his screen debut thanks to his co-star Marion Davies who demanded he play the role of the radio singer she falls in love with. Both the film and the record helped launch Crosby's movie & recording career taking him away from his original profession as a radio crooner.

"Another defi" remarks Josiah Sloan when another weird poem is found slipped under the door of one of the heirs.  Because the word was not italicized I had a heck of a time finding out the context and meaning as it applies to this story.  I kept getting irrelevant results about "defi" being slang for definite and other 21st century lexicon nonsense.  If the word had been set in italic font like this défi then I would have learned the correct meaning instantly.  Because of course it's a French word!  Sloan meant that the note in poem form was another dare or another challenge.

At a key moment Meyer, the local D.A., threatens Sloan with a John Doe hearing because Sloan will not reveal the identity of an eighth heir who has been referred to as X for the majority of the novel.  This threat refers to a peculiar Wisconsin law. As stated on a Wisconsin lawyer's website the John Doe Hearing "will allow a judge to determine whether it appears probable from testimony given that a crime has been committed and whether to file a complaint."  In this case, Meyer and Judge Peck are using the statue to compel testimony from Sloan, a reluctant witness.  I think Derleth made similar use of several other Wisconsin laws throughout the series. This was the first one that was not made clear in the story's context and I needed to fully understand it by doing internet research. 

August Derleth (1909-1971)

EASY TO FIND?  Not too scarce for a change.  This title which comes late in the Judge Peck series of detective novels is currently easy to get a hold of.  Though there are no paperback reprints from the era nor any modern reissues The Seven Who Waited is offered online in both US and UK editions, thought there is only one copy of the latter which is indeed extremely uncommon. Prices are less than $100 for most of them and all come with the intriguingly illustrated DJ. Happy hunting! 

Death Took a Publisher - Norman Forrest (Nigel Morland)

THE STORY:  Inspector Jack Grief and John Finnegan, a forensic chemist, join forces to solve two baffling poisoning murders that seem impossible. In the first case the detectives cannot figure out how the poison was administered in a time span of less than five minutes when no food or drink were in the room and the victim showed no signs of a hypodermic needle being used. In the second the victim is found in a locked room with a fireplace blazing and a unlatched window leading to a precarious ledge that no one would dare use as an escape.

THE CHARACTERS:  Death Took a Publisher (1936) is the first of two books Nigel Morland wrote using his Norman Forrest pseudonym.  In it we meet Grief, a typical British policeman of the Golden Age, who is grounded in reality and will have nothing to do with so-called impossible murders.  "I hate mysteries!" he exclaims in exasperation at the midpoint of the book. He prefers solid police work though he delegates much of it to his platoon of constables and sergeants. Grief is not above some unorthodox breaking and entering to follow-up on leads.  Twice he basically commits burglary in order to go through the apartments of two suspects and faces grave consequences when he realizes he will somehow have to justify his breaking the law. 

John Finnegan is the super-genius of the novel. Formerly employed in the United States by the Justice Department he is handpicked by the Home Office in England to head up the newly created Department of Forensic Chemistry in London. Here he spends much of his time poring over fingerprints both legitimate and forged (more on that later) via his high powered microscopes and conducts experiments using other other technical wizardry. He also performs some elaborate detective work in discovering the bizarre murder means that killed Willoughby Royle, an ostensibly well liked publisher at Royle & Gray, Ltd. The method of killing is the book's most ingenious and -- to borrow Grief's adjective-- diabolical aspect of the story.

The suspects, especially the women, are an eccentric group.  There is Rebecca Finck, Royle's secretary who seems to spend much of her time covering up and inventing stories about what happened in the office when Royle was killed.  Also among the publishing employees is the elderly spinster Miss Thyme who is primarily a reader and copy editor of sorts. She determines whether or not most manuscripts are worthy of the publishing house or if they contain problems that need to be addressed prior to being sent to the printer. Grief discovers she is a secret devourer of erotica and risque literature and belittles her in his mind.  He treats her less than kindly and as a consequence seriously underestimates her. Miss Thyme will prove to be the only person to solve the crime because of her job as the firm's reader.

Sybelline Higgins is a caricature of a romance novelist who reminded me of Salome Otterbourne, the vociferous and opinionated novelist in Death on the Nile.  Miss Higgins first draws Grief's attention when she is astonished not that Royle was murdered but that he was poisoned with hydrocyanic acid. Each time the poison is mentioned Miss Higgins has an overly theatrical reaction. Grief mulls this over and comes up with a surprising theory that ultimately leads him to rummaging around in the novelist's home while she is conveniently not at home.

There are a handful of other employees at the firm but apart from the second victim and Mr. Brew, a satirical character who exists only for Morland to ridicule "anarchists" and "budding Communists", they all seem to be cut from the same drab cloth. I was proven right when they all, for the most part, turned out to be bogey characters.

INNOVATIONS:  The real interest of the novel is in the police work and the technical aspects of Finnegan's crime solving. Morland was a proponent of realism in crime fiction. When he tackles the science of criminology (a great interest of his) the book rises above its pulpy origins. Much of the crime solving is focused on fingerprints allowing Finnegan to lecture frequently about his mentors and textbooks he has read on the topic.

Death Took a Publisher is often poking fun at professional writers and the entire business of publishing.  It's as much a story of those two worlds as it is a near send-up of detective fiction. Ultimately, all the allusions to detective fiction and specific writers (there are many) lead to the novel being a rather involved meta-fictional mystery novel. A minor character, Sheraton Andrews, is a reclusive mystery writer and he seems to have gone missing. Also missing is the manuscript of his latest book A Half Bucket of Blood. This all seems almost thrown in as an afterthought until Grief, during one of his burglaries, locates the manuscript and hands it over to Gavin Gray, co-owner of the publishing house. Gray then gives the manuscript to Miss Thyme to review for any issues prior to sending it to the printer. Suddenly, Andrews and his book become the focus of the novel. The denouement is as meta-fictional as any similar mystery novel I've ever read.  It may not be the first time this gimmick was employed, but Morland certainly gets his money's worth in the final chapter. 

THINGS I LEARNED: When Grief enters the home of the second victim he is impressed with the tasteful furnishings and the decor focused on racehorse art. He notices a print of "The Worst View in Europe" and a portrait of a horse called Plenipotentiary. Of course I had to have my curiosity satisfied so off I went a-Googling.  The painting is by Charles Johnson Payne (aka "Snaffles") and depicts a rider falling disastrously in a steeplechase or in a failed attempt to jump a stonewall while fox hunting. Payne also did a painting called "The Finest View in Europe" as a companion piece which is a POV painting of a rider on horseback.

The horse is also real and during its time was better know as "Plenipo". The Thoroughbred won six out of seven races during its year-long career from April 1834-April 1835.

"Fingerprints Can Be Forged" (1924) is a monograph by Albert Wehde and John Nicholas Beffel.  Their work is cited by John Finnegan when he encounters an elaborate frame-up involving obviously faked prints that are meant to implicate an author in the murders. I found more on Beffel, a leftist journalist who specialized in writing about radical political ideas, especially promoting labor organizations and criticism of lynchings, than I did on Wehde. This 134 page treatise was reviewed in 1927 by Edmond Locard, Director of the Laboratory of Police Technique in Lyons. Locard, like Finnegan, also mentions in passing the work of Minovici of Bucharest who wrote about the possibility of forging fingerprints in his Manual of Forensic Medicine (1904). 

QUOTES:  Miss Higgins; "Mr. Royle was not a gentleman -- he was publisher. Therefore we cannot attribute to him the qualities reserved for ordinary mortals."

Finnegan: "...I'm not a Sherlock Holmes, and I can't tell if the man wore a pink hat and had an epileptic sister in Tooting!"

He picked up the latest Sayers, then put it down with a sour look on his face when he felt the weight of it. Van Dine came in for a minute's consideration, and Gardner was equally treated. Finally he picked up the new Freeman and paid...his seven-and-sixpence.

Finnegan: "I like a detective story to be a detective story. When they try to write novels at the same time I've no patience for 'em."

Dan Lewis, Grief's superior: "I don't think I've ever come across a case like this. It's a detective novel, down to the ground--all the trimmings: red herrings, the senseless and complicated method of killing you would expect to find in a seven-and sixpence thriller..."

EASY TO FIND?  Rather scarce as usual, my friends. Both US and UK editions come in at least two types -- hardcover and paperback. However, both the US and UK paperback editions may be abridged. If you speak and read French, the cheapest copies out there are int hat language. All copies I turned up seem fairly priced.  Happy hunting!