Tour De Force - Christianna Brand

In the opening pages of Tour de Force Christianna Brand's detective Inspector Cockrill is seated in an airplane preparing to land in Italy. His seatmate is terrified of flying and buries her head in his chest and clutches at his arm. She then apologizes for overreacting, plucking her red dyed hair off his sleeve "I seem to moulting all over like a red setter." She examines the half red/half brown strand and adds 'Well, like a setter." And Cockie thinks to himself "She's one of Them." A tourist, that is. He is already tired of the group with whom he will be travelling for the next week. Brand has a lot of fun satirizing packaged vacation tours in the first few chapters. We are treated to a nightmare group in the exposition that include Cecil Prout, a flamboyantly gay fashion designer; Miss Trapp, a lonely rich woman being pursued by Fernando, the swarthy and attractive Italian tour guide; Leo Rodd, a one armed ex concert pianist and his devoted but fawning wife Helen; the red haired brassy young woman turns out to be Louvaine Barker, a famous novelist; and rounding out the group is Vanda Lane, a reclusive young woman with romance on her mind.

There is much poking fun at the pitfalls and comedy of travelling in groups: bad hotels, bad meals, the person with the weak stomach, the cheapskate, the complainer and all the types found in a tourist environment. But it's not all fun and games. The final sentence in Chapter Two warns us that the group is en route not only for Siena, Pisa, and the island of San Juan de Pirata but also en route for murder. One of the group soon turns up dead.

It is Vanda Lane who is found stabbed in her hotel room and arranged in a manner resembling some sort of  ritual.  She is wearing a wet kimono and is resting atop a crimson colored shawl with her still wet hair fanned outward. Her hands are clutched around an ornamental dagger protruding from her chest. Also, a notebook has been removed from her room. When it is found it contains intimate facts and secrets on her fellow travellers. Could it be that the loner who seemed to make no friends among the group was actually a blackmailer?

Adding to the mystery is the fact that it seems that the only people with a motive for killing Miss Lane were all in view of Inspector Cockrill at the time of the murder. Three people were on the beach sunning themselves, one man was on a raft in the ocean, another in a duck boat pedaling through the sea, and the sixth person was seated next to Cockie varnishing her toenails. No one could've left the beach or the water without being seen by the policeman. How then did one of these six people manage to get into the hotel and stab Vanda Lane?

Many Golden Age writers have trademarks in their novels. Ellery Queen had the dying clue, John Dickson Carr was the master of the locked room, and I am beginning to think that Christianna Brand is the mistress of the multiple solution murder mystery. As in Death of Jezebel where the accusations and solutions bordered on parody and Suddenly at His Residence where the suspects themselves turned sleuth and came up with ingenious solutions to the murder, Tour De Force is another example of this talented author setting out to prove every suspect could be the murderer. Not only does Inspector Cockrill challenge each suspect by pointing out how they could have evaded his sightlines, escaped from the beach or sea, and killed Vanda, but later the characters turn on each other with several accusations combined with some clever rearranging of the events to come up with at least three more variations. There are multiple arrests, too, and the first to be taken into custody is Cockie himself. Luckily, the police guard is a lazy incompetent who forgets to lock the cell and the inspector simply walks out of his cell, up the stairs, and past the sleeping cop to return to the hotel.

Just when you think Brand has exhausted her supply of possible murderers and presented us with the final solution she has one more trick up her sleeve. The finale is worthy of the best of John Dickson Carr or Agatha Christie. It's a stunner. And it's one that still adheres to the fair play rules. Astute and canny readers can spot the correct clues (and there are many) and arrive at the correct solution.

The requisite map showing position of all the suspects prior to the murder

This was my redemption review for the Italian leg of the Crime Fiction on a EuroPass Challenge. I may not have liked Massimo Carlotto, but I can highly recommend this murderous trip the island of San Juan de Pirata. Aside from Brand's masterful Death of Jezebel I think this is her best detective novel of the impossible crime subgenre. It is, just as the title tells us, her tour de force.

The Crooked Wreath (1946) - Christianna Brand

I am beginning to think that Christianna Brand was a master of the multiple solution. This is the second book of hers where I have encountered such ingenuity in constructing several solutions to the same crime. Ellery Queen did it well in some of his early books (The Greek Coffin Mystery, most notably) and other writers tried their hand at it such as Anthony Berkeley, J. J. Connington, Leo Bruce, Michael Innes and even the Grand Dame herself Agatha Christie, who tried everything at least once. But with each of those writers' books it was always a detective (or detectives) propounding the different solutions. What Brand does is unique to her for the time period. She has the suspects accusing each other in ways that make use of all the facts and clues.

Sir Richard has been found dead in his study in a lodge separate from the estate. A sand covered pathway leading to the lodge is tended to daily by a gardener who uses a roller to remove marks and then adds more sand to the path. Only one set of footprints is found leading to and from the lodge and they belong to Claire who discovered the body first thing in the morning while bringing Sir Richard his breakfast tray. An autopsy will later prove he had been poisoned the night before. How did the murderer get into the lodge and administer the poison without leaving any traces of having entered or left?

One of the characters, Edward Treviss - the young grandchild of Sir Richard's second wife Bella - is thought by nearly everyone to suffer from an odd psychological condition that sends him into fugue states where he possibly engages in activities then has absolutely no memory of having done them. In an effort to shield the 18 year old man from police suspicion the family lies about certain events and misleads Inspector Cockrill.

It is Sir Richard's will, however, that causes everyone to turn on each other. Prior to his death Sir Richard threatened to disinherit every one of his blood relatives and he planned on writing a new will that night. Problem is no one could find the will. Later it is discovered that the will was witnessed by the gardener and his wife so it must exist. But where is it? Destroyed? Hidden? And that's when the plot starts swirling into a maelstrom of accusations.

Christianna Brand (circa 1950)

Unlike some old melodrama where one character jumps up from the davenport, points a finger and maliciously shouts, "You! You did it, you murderous fiend!" the accuser in a Brand mystery has ample facts to back up the claim. In The Crooked Wreath (also published as Suddenly at His Residence) this happens no less than five times. The jury foreman at the inquest accuses a character, the gardener's wife accuses someone else, one of the grandchildren accuses her cousin's wife, and two other grandchildren accuse the former's husband. In each instance such clues as the lack of rose petals on a walkway, a glass with no fingerprints, a fountain pen with a plunger, a dog that can catch sugar cubes in his mouth, a shattered vase, and the ability for a syringe to shoot liquid several feet are all insightfully used to construct a case against the accused. It's an enviable feat to concoct so many variations of how the crime could have been carried out - especially since it's a rather odd poisoning murder. Brand exhibits finesse and ingenuity in each of the five accusations. Even Mrs. Brough, the gardener's wife, who seems such a minor character at first, steps into the foreground with not one, but two daring pronouncements of her own. She first dares to point the finger at the victim's widow (her employer!) and does so defiantly and wickedly. Later she exudes an unctuous side when she insinuates that an illicit sexual romp occurred and attempts to blackmail the two parties involved.

Aside from the merry-go-round of pointing fingers I could not help but notice an interesting parallel to another very well known crime novel. At one point Bella, Richard's second wife, has an long theatrical monologue in which she reveals how much she loathes the estate and the haunting presence of Serafita, Richard's first wife. In a scene right out of Du Maurier's Rebecca Bella says "...more and more the memory of her came to dominate [Richard's] life -- and my life." And then as passionately as Maxim de Winter denounced his wife she concludes her speech with this revelation: "I kill for possession of this place! I hate every stone of it!" The memory of the estate's first mistress pervades Brand's story just as the first Mrs. de Winter taints and haunts Manderlay. Serafita was a former dancer and on the anniversary of her death a wreath of her favorite roses is placed around her portrait. Little boxes containing her gloves permanently adorn the mantelpieces throughout the home, her old ballet slippers also serve as mementos. It is as if - like Rebecca - she is still alive and will not leave the house.

Little do the characters realize how the house itself will play a crucial and shocking role in the harrowing climax. I doubt any reader will see what is coming although there are plenty of clues to the disaster that ends the book. It is a gripping and intensely cinematic finale -- perfectly suitably for such a brilliantly engineered detective novel.