Death Greets a Guest - Charles Ashton

THE STORY: At a meeting of an archeological society a sudden torrential downpour sends all of the members, who were outside smoking and chatting, ducking for cover. Most made it back indoors some only to the porch of the Eastwood Hall. One guest -- Chandler, a sketch artist who was outside drawing trees -- heads for the summerhouse directly opposite the main meeting area of Eastwood Hall. Four of the members watch the storm increase in strength from a large window inside the Hall and see the guest wave to them from the only window in the summerhouse which also has only one entrance. When the rain subsides some of the members see Chandler slumped in the window frame. They head to the summerhouse and discover that the man has been shot in the back giving the book its ironic title Death Greets a Guest (1936). Yet no one entered the summerhouse at all during the storm. The man was in there all alone.  Basically, he was murdered in front of witnesses by an invisible assailant. Major Jack Atherley assists Colonel Bretherton (the local Chief Constable) and Inspector Williams to find out who killed the guest, how it was accomplished, and why a relative stranger was murdered at all.

THE CHARACTERS: Because the story deals with a group of men who are members of a private club (the archeological society gathers to discuss old buildings, mostly churches) the cast list is rather large. Many of the society's members appear only in the first scene and after the murder takes place and initial Q&A is over many are never heard from again.  Even with the absence of about five to seven men the cast remains varied and large. Among the notable characters who make up the primary and supporting cast are:

Stamford Eastwood - head of the society and host of this meeting. Quite a stiff upper lip sort of gentlemen who suffers no fools quietly.  He is married to 

Sylvia Eastwood - at first a charming woman who befriends Atherley, but quickly turns sharp-tongued and sarcastic when Atherley and the police begin to focus attention and suspicions on her friend...

Jimmy Bagstaffe - an insufferable artistic aesthete who adopts a theatrical manner, wears ridiculously theatrical wardrobe, hosts hedonistic parties for his artistic friends (mostly performing arts types) and belittles everyone and anything he disagrees with. He comes across as a satiric character meant to be a parody of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s who still cling to the hedonism of a decade ago, and also I got a very strong ridiculing of gay or effeminate artistes. A very popular bigoted stereotype that turn up a lot in vintage popular fiction.

Kesgrave - a new neighbor of Stamford and Sylvia's. Jack and Sylvia are invited in for an impromptu meeting one afternoon and we learn Kesgrave is in the process of renovating his Tudor era home, that he is a writer of fiction who uses a pseudonym that he will not divulge, and that he is married to a vivacious woman ten years younger than him.

Musprat - the bore of the archeological society, another comic character. If given a chance he will lecture on endlessly about building trivia, mostly made up of "fascinating features" of the houses and churches in the area. Jack makes the mistake of indulging Musprat one too many times.  I had a feeling that much of his droning on would contain some vital clue that everyone would overlook.

Joe Dudman - the owner/barkeep of the local pub. He is instrumental in identifying...

Mysterious Bar Patron #1, a bearded man who went off to Eastwood Hall looking for someone there regardless of the fact that he was told a private lecture meeting was taking place. 

Mysterious Bar Patron #2 - Immediately after the bearded man shows up another stranger stops in the bar asking about the bearded gent. He claims they are friends and wants to know where he was headed. Dudman tells him the bearded guy was off to Eastwood Hall and #2 mystery man heads there as well.

 One of the society members has a speech impediment that is played for laughs. I thought it a cheap form of humor (even for 1936), something that seemed utterly out of place for Ashton who likes to sprinkle his books with wit and wise cracks, but tends to avoid low farcical humor. Oh well. Making fun of a speech impediment would never fly these days.

INNOVATIONS: The impossible crime surprisingly is not the focus of the investigation; the motive really is more puzzling. The search for the "why" of the murder sends the plot into some intrigues in the past, many of which are found in an odd scrapbook of newspaper clippings that Chandler created. Also, Chandler's sketchbook and the drawings he made during his tour of the outside grounds at Eastwood Hall will provide a possible motive for one of the main suspects. I enjoyed all of the investigations and digging up of the past which involved a variety of crimes, solved and unsolved. When the solution to Chandler's impossible murder (the "how" aspect) is finally made known it's downplayed and delivered almost matter-of-fact. Early on I had a suspicion that Ashton was inspired by the detective novels of Anthony Wynne who employed a similar gimmick in many of his books.

Ashton adds a few unusual plot twists in a clever way. Normally a tired cliche, anonymous letters turn up in the final third adding an element of hysterical paranoia. The letters inspire Atherley to set up an elaborate final scene in which he is determined to unmask the killer.  It's a highly theatrical sequence and the killer comes as an utter surprise. I laughed and thought, "But of course! How did I fall for such a detective novel trick? It's one of those unwritten rules like "Never believe a character who is a bedridden invalid can't walk." Yet I fell for one of the oldest tricks in mystery writing. Kudos to Ashton!

EASY TO FIND? Death Greets A Guest is a very rare book. After looking for over ten years I finally found a copy of the cheap "Cherry Tree" paperback edition but a copy in any edition is near impossible to find. Miraculously, Neer who blogs at "A cup of hot pleasure" found a copy at a library and did not enjoy the book as much as I did.  I like Atherley's irreverence and his egocentrism. His personality, I think, is lively and lighthearted, never as annoying as similar traits in a vain supericilious character like Philo Vance.  To each his own.

FIRST BOOKS: Murder in Make-Up - Charles Ashton

THE STORY:  During the filming of Tempest, a crime movie about a gentleman thief, the actor playing the thief is found stabbed behind a bit of scenery. The movie crew insists that the police remove the actor's make-up prior to carting away the corpse to spare him the indignity of the false beard and greasepaint.  The police remove the make-up and reveal the man is a completely different actor -- Lancelot Weston, the young romantic lead in the movie. Why did Weston pretend to be William Harvey for that one scene? Was Harvey actually the intended victim? Inspector Bob Saunders investigates assisted by his police consultant Major Jack Atherley.

THE CHARACTERS: Murder in Make-Up (1934) is the first detective novel by former silent film actor Charles Ashton.  The novel introduces his series characters Jack Atherley and Inspector Saunders.  Atherley is the true sleuth in Ashton's series of detective novels and he's a breath of fresh air. Saunders is a by-the-book copper while Atherley is his witty, carefree aide with a talent for seeing things "out of the box".  He reminds me of Philip "Spike" Tracy, the playboy amateur detective created by Harriette Ashbrook. Saunders and Atherley are perfect foils for one another and I enjoyed how Atherley routinely exasperated Saunders, often for the sheer joy of annoying his policeman colleague.

The rest of the cast is made up of Saunders' homicide squad headed by Sgt. Davis, another serious policeman who is more tolerant of Atherley's lightheartedness and often anticipates when the Major is about to pull one over on Saunders.  And of course because the murder takes place in the world of cinema we have a  supporting cast of suspects in the movie biz.  They are:

William Harvey - the character actor who plays the gentleman thief and was supposed to be in the scene being filmed when Weston was killed.  As the story progresses several more attempts are made on Harvey's life.  The police do their best to protect him, but the killer always manages to penetrate the police protecting Harvey

Lettise Moore - the ingenue lead in Tempest. She has a secret related to Harvey that the police soon uncover. This makes her a prime suspect but she is protected by...

Mrs. Moxon - a dresser on the set for Miss Moore, and a servant/confidante in Moore's private life.  Maternal, overprotective and somewhat of a termagant. Moxon is a thorn in Saunders' side.  Atherley is the only who can tame this shrew. She is actually on his list of suspects because after stabbing Weston the killer needed to be able to silently lower his athletic body behind the flats while the scene was being filmed. Atherley is certain the killer is one of a similar build and with enough upper body strength to carry out the silent disposal of the corpse. Besides three of the male suspects, Mrs. Moxon is the only woman who could also to do everything as he thought it out.

Ralph Lastor - the producer (in the US we'd call him the director) of the movie. His mind is only on the movie, its delays and the possible scrapping of the production due to the criminal investigation and the loss of his leading man. Why would he kill one of his actors and sabotage his own production?  Does he have a secret too?

Dick Howard - assistant director, man of all work. Suspicious, shifty, mistrustful. He draws the attention of Saunders when his police team while following Howard as directed see him sneaking around off the set making visits to Miss Moore's home and conversing confidentially with... 

Miss Laurie - the script girl (continuity in modern movie talk) who is always on set. We learn fairly quickly that she talks in a fake American accent, flirts with nearly all the men, and had the hots for handsome Weston. But she was rejected by him. If Weston was the true intended target then Miss Laurie is definitely suspect #1 thinks Atherley. But was she strong enough to commit the murder as he envisioned it. Or was Weston somehow stabbed in some other manner?

INNOVATIONS: For a novice effort at detective novel Ashton does some admirable work here.  It is almost a purely fair play novel. Unfortunately, he does hold back a bit and does more suggesting what happened which forces the reader to fill in some unexplained events.  For instance, late in the book Atherley finds some supplies left behind by workmen who were doing plumbing repairs in his flat.  Atherley is described as picking up a bucket of paint and stepping onto the fire escape.  He then exclaims with a smile, "What a fine night!" and the chapter ends.  But why was he out there with a bucket of paint?  It's all explained in the final chapter. The reader has to figure it out on his own prior to being told what Atherley did.  This kind of "sneaky" clueing is perhaps forgivable in a novice mystery writer.  But! I know that Ashton continued to do this sort of thing in his later books. Here Comes Murder was written nearly ten years later and includes similar scenes only partially explained when first presented to the reader.

Really the best part of the book is the insider information on how an early “talkie” is produced.  Ashton, a former silent film actor, offers up not only the glamorous part of movie making but the complicated work of the non-actors consisting of the lighting crew, cameramen, make-up and wardrobe staff, as well as the hassles of keeping track of all the changes from shot to shot carried out by the continuity person -- in the early days of moviemaking usually called "the script girl" and almost always (as in the novel) a woman. The script girl is really nothing more than a secretary who spends all day taking copious notes, later typing them up in a daily report, on what everyone is wearing, which props are held in which hand, and all the rest of the minutiae of a movie scene.

Charles Ashton as Dick Alward
in Pillars of Society (1920)

THINGS I LEARNED:  One of the first scenes explains exactly why a clapper board was necessary in making early sound movies.  The sound of the clap was used to synchronize all sound in the scene that followed.  A clapper was used to end the scene as well.  I'm unsure if this is why they still use a clapper.  Maybe with all the digital technology used in moviemaking it's used more to label all the scenes for the editing team.

Atherley uses an odd abbreviation in a single line of dialogue: "And it's got the archives of the famous Yard l.b.w." He says this after looking up one of the suspects in Who's Who on the Screen. I spent nearly an hour using various search terms in trying to find what those three letters meant. Turns out it's the cricket term "Leg Before Wicket" which I think means a foul that can get a batter dismissed. If it had been made clear early in the novel that Atherley was also a cricket player and often uses cricket terms I'd been able to figure this out faster. By the midpoint long after the use of that abbreviation we learn that Atherley is an avid cricket player and has played in tournaments. Apparently on a professional team because a taxi driver recognizes him from a past game. Why he uses "l.b.w." in reference to the Who's Who listing still eludes me.  

EASY TO FIND?  You can have my copy (it's the "Cherry Tree Book" copy pictured at the top) if you're lucky enough to place the highest bid. (SOLD!) Good luck finding a copy anywhere else. Like all of Ashton's detective novels it's as rare as finding a silver nitrate copy of one of Charles Ashton's movies from the silent era.

FFB: Here's Murder Done - Charles Ashton

THE STORY: Irritating philatelist Ambrose Merrow was not liked by his neighbors for he never stopped talking about his treasured stamp collection. But was that any reason for someone to brutally stab him? And how did the murderer do the foul deed in a locked house in the presence of three people then escape the crime scene without being seen? Inspector Dick Sangster matches wits with a clever killer and uncovers a nasty blackmail scheme and a past murder before he brings the culprit to justice.

THE CHARACTERS: Here's Murder Done! (1943) is populated with a variety of theater people and though it gives us some insight into the world of playwriting and arts criticism it is not truly a theater mystery. Still, theater and acting most definitely play a part in the story. Ashton gives us two playwrights, one music critic, and an actress in his cast of interesting characters. Godfrey Taversham, playwright #1, and his fiancee Diane Harlow, an actress, are two of the three witnesses present when Merrow is killed in his house. They, along with Constable Hockey, are on the front step, see Merrow stick his head out the window of an upper level and wait patiently for him to open the door. I was sure that some kind of impostor gimmick was being pulled on us here but that turned out completely wrong.  Nevertheless, theatricality does play a part in the rather ingenious solution to this near impossible crime. Who got into the house while the front door was being watched and the back door was locked from the inside? And how did the killer get away unseen?

Sangster employs some unorthodox eavesdropping tactics and overhears Taversham and Diane having a conversation about a missing ladder and the unusual experiment Sangster and his sergeant performed proving how someone might have got onto the Merrow property without leaving any footprints. As he listens in Sangster discovers they are acting like amateur sleuths attempting to sort out the real clues from the red herrings. By the end of the conversation Taversham is certain he is onto the solution while Diane wants him to keep his mouth shut. Will their detective work prove too dangerous for their own good?

I liked the outspoken music critic Rupert Carrington who after a series of routine Q&A scenes with Sangster and the various suspects and witnesses was a delight of sarcasm, impatience and sardonic wit.  He thoroughly loathed Merrow calling the murder victim one of the most annoying men he ever met. He also can't stand the pompous writer Peppington (playwright #2 and aspiring novelist) whose lofty opinions prove he is nothing more than a dilettante and a windbag. Carrington tells Sangster that if anyone would have had an argument or had it in for Merrow it would be Peppington, a man whose disdain for everyone in town surpasses the minor irritations of Merrow and his nonstop blather about stamps.

And of course there is Peppington himself, not to mention his equally supercilious wife Amelia and their out of control six year-old son Sebastian.  They are clearly meant to be satiric portrayals of the kind of pseudo-intellectuals who were cropping up during wartime. Peppington has a grandiose manner and an insufferably egotistical persona of the sensitive artiste "living on a higher plane." He and his wife have ascribed to the new permissive notions of raising a child without discipline. Their unrestrained parenting results in a foul-mouthed son who calls his parents by their first names and challenges every authority figure he meets. Sebastian treats Inspector Sangster like a fraud, calling him a liar to his face when the policeman teasingly refers to himself as Father Christmas. The scenes with the Peppingtons are hilarious showing off Ashton's talent as a farceur and a skilled writer of absurd dialogue.

INNOVATIONS:  With a first half made up almost entirely of Sangster's straightforward interrogations I thought that Here's Murder Done! was going to be just another run-of-the-mill detective novel, relying on tired formulae and plot gimmickry. I was completely taken aback by three well-handled twists of the plot, two of which were shockingly surprising to me. There is a second death of a character one would never expect to be knocked off by the writer. It sort of defies the expectations of detective novel conventions and really made me gasp. The second was a neatly pulled off introduction of a surprise relative of the murder victim that changes the entire structure of the plot and sends the reader off into a whole new realm of motivations. By the halfway mark Ashton has done quite a bit of leading the reader down the garden path and I was completely taken in.  I could kick myself for overlooking the most blatant clue involving the world of theater people. Best of all the solution to the impossibility of the murderer's escape is simple and eloquently presented when Sangster delivers his findings in the final chapter.

Here's Murder Done!, for me, was an excellent example of a second tier writer matching the ingenuity of the Grand Masters point for point. The clues I was meant to see are cleverly hidden, often appearing in conversations that any reader would dismiss as "filler" and the red herrings were so masterfully handled that I paid more attention to those than the genuine clues. This mystery novel ended up being one of my favorite reads this year.

THE AUTHOR: Back in 2016 I wrote a piece on how I discovered who Charles Ashton (1884-1968) was. A perfect mini biography turned up on Imdb.com when I learned that he was a former actor in silent cinema. Here is that bio: "Not long after receiving a medical discharge from the army due to injuries he received at the Battle of Ypres Charles Ashton became a movie actor. He made his film debut in Pillars of Society (1920). He appeared in a string of films for such well-known directors as Maurice Elvey and Victor Saville. Ashton was one of the many silent-era actors whose career ended with the advent of sound, and he made his last film in 1929. However, he did begin another career as a successful novelist in the 1930s and 1940s, mostly of crime thrillers." The bio is the work of "frankfob2@yahoo.com", a knowledgeable cinephile who wrote hundreds of profiles on movie performers and directors for that oft-used movie website.

Charles Ashton created one series detective named Jack Atherley who supposedly appeared in at least eight titles. Only those marked as such in the list below can be confirmed. Atherley does not appear in Here's Murder Done! Ashton's books were published only in the UK by Robert Hale, Ivor Nicholson and Museum Press, not exactly top of the line publishers. Several of his books were reprinted in paperback editions by Withy Grove Press, Ltd as part of their often abridged "Cherry Tree Book" paperback digest imprint. These seem to be the only extant copies available for sale. I managed to purchase three of them over the past year so there will be more reviews on Ashton's mystery novels coming. None of his books were published in the US or Canada in his lifetime. There are no other known editions during his lifetime except for two translations of Fates Strikes Twice (1944): one in French (Le destin frappe deux fois), the other in Swedish (Döden Slår Till).

For those interested in Ashton's cinema career he appeared in at least 21 movies between 1920 and 1929. Among them are The Monkey's Paw (1923) in which he played the doomed son (a "sarcastic performance" according to someone who actually saw the film) and a bit part in a 48 minute version of Sweeney Todd (1928), unusual in that it features a man who dreams he is the murderous barber after reading a newspaper account of the crimes. For more on Ashton, just visit his IMDB page.

Charles Ashton's Detective Novels
Murder in Make-Up (1934) w/ Jack Atherley
Tragedy after Tea (1935)
Death Greets a Guest (1936) w/ Jack Atherley
Calamity Comes to Flenton (1936) w/ Jack Atherley
Stone Dead (1939)
Death for Two (1940)
Here's Murder Done (1943)
Fate Strikes Twice (1944)
Murder at Melton Peveril (1946)
Dance for a Dead Uncle (1948)

Out of the Shadows -- Charles Ashton, Mystery Writer

Pietro dePalma uncovered a book by little known mystery writer Charles Ashton and wrote about it on his blog Death Can Read. He was frustrated that he could find no biographical info on the writer. So recognizing a research challenge when I see one I set out to prove him wrong. With only three quick internet searches I uncovered quite a fascinating biographical sketch on Charles Ashton in a place no mystery fiction researcher would think of looking.

Here's how I did it.

French edition (Colnem, 1945)
Translation of Fate Strikes Twice (1944)

1 & 2. First and foremost of course, look up his books online. Using only two search criteria -- his name and the date range of all his known published books -- I brought up a brief list of books for sale. I read all the info in the booksellers' catalog descriptions. Ashton's publishers were not among the elite in the British book industry. Therefore the number of his books are few and far between. Most of his books that turned up for sale are in French editions. But I hoped for an enterprising and show-off bookseller (there are many of us out there) who included some biographical info on the writer. And I found one! Luckily, it's an English edition:

ASHTON, Charles (Charles Henry), 1884-1968 STONE DEAD. London : Mellifont Press, [1944]. [Second edition]. A country-inn mystery from photographer, war-hero, silent movie star and ultimately crime-writer Charles Ashton. Originally published by Robert Hale in 1939. Crown 8vo (18cm). 96pp.

3. Aha! He was an movie actor. Off to imdb.com. Enter Charles Ashton and look for the one with silent movie credits. Lo and behold! a full biography on Charles Ashton:

British actor Charles Ashton became an actor not long after receiving a medical discharge from the army due to injuries he received at the Battle of Ypres in World War I. He made his film debut in Pillars of Society (1920). He appeared in a string of films for such well-known directors as Maurice Elvey and Victor Saville. Ashton was one of the many silent-era actors whose career ended with the advent of sound, and he made his last film in 1929. However, he did begin another career as a successful novelist in the 1930s and 1940s, mostly of crime thrillers.

And there you have it. Charles Ashton -- war veteran, silent movie actor, and mystery writer -- resurrected from obscurity.