1927: The Tragedy at Freyne

The Tragedy at Freyne
by Anthony Gilbert
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Scott Egerton #1
Publication Date: January 1, 1927
Genre: mystery: golden age (1920-1949)
Pages: 230
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of crime

When Sir Simon Chandos is found poisoned in his library, with a confession in front of him and a phial of morphia tablets on the table at his side, suicide is the obvious deduction. This is a dreadful shock to the members of the house party gathered in his picturesque old Norman country house, Freyne Abbey. But the discovery of a trivial discrepancy, by one of the guests, turns the suspicion in the direction of murder, and from that slight clue the amateur detective, Scott Egerton, unravels the web of an exceptionally brilliant and cold-blooded plot…

Anthony Gilbert was the penname for Lucy Malleson, who also wrote under the name Anne Meredith. The first book I read by her was Portrait of a Murderer, published as Anne Meredith, which was reprinted by British Library Crime Classics to much success in 2017.

The Tragedy at Freyne is the first in her Scott Egerton series, and is a classic British country house closed circle/impossible crime mystery (these are obviously not the same trope – one can have an impossible crime without it being a closed circle, and vice versa, but I don’t want to go into more detail, in an effort to avoid major spoilers).

The set up is a weekend house party* at Freyne manor. The host, Simon Chandos, is found dead in the morning after a night of revelry and drama. There was an effort by the murderer to make it look like Chandos committed suicide, but this is quickly debunked.

The four of us—Bannister, Egerton, Dacre and I—had slept in adjoining rooms the previous night, the other side of the wing being closed, so that the step Miss Dennis had heard might have belonged to any of us, except for the lameness to which she testified. Above our rooms were the servants’ quarters, in a long wing stretching out in an ungainly manner from the side of the house, like a clumsy chicken trying to extend her leg, and fearful of being nipped.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this golden age mystery. There are also a fair few (typical) obnoxious statements about women, like this one:

As far as reason goes women have not progressed much from the stage of the savage whose head can hold only one idea at a time. That’s where men score. They do, as a rule, take the impersonal standpoint; women see life as individuals, and it’s as individuals that they regulate their lives. Law-givers? No sane man wants to see laws made by women. To begin with, not one in ten has a grain of respect for the law she wants to create. Lady Chandos hasn’t; Miss Dennis hasn’t. As for Miss St Claire, I don’t suppose she cares either.

Everytime I read something like this, I laugh out loud, thinking about men in public life who take nothing from the “impersonal” standpoint. But, I digress into politics (Trump. I’m talking about Trump). As a person who reads a lot of vintage fiction, it’s like water off of a duck’s back for me. What’s a woman – who is also a lawyer and a former prosecutor – supposed to do but laugh at this sort of nonsense.

Which brings me to the next point – as a former prosecutor, I often find myself thinking about whether or not the mystery presented wasn’t just solved, but was it also prosecutable? It’s obviously not a requirement that the “case” be prosecutable at the end of the book, but it’s interesting to think about. Many times I conclude that they are not.

This one, I would say, gets a yes from me. There are some solid clues that would make solid, admissible evidence to present in court. There is one piece of evidence related to typewriter print matching that is quite fun. If you remember typewriters, they had very unique characteristics (off kilter, damaged or faded portions of letters, spacing mismatches/issues, etc) that would be able to be linked with absolute certainty. Opportunity with respect to the morphia is well thought out. There is also a clear and compelling motive.

The murderer is a particularly nasty piece of work who leaves quite a path of destruction in (his/her) wake.

This one is available for kindle from Spitfire Publishers Ltd for a mere .99 in the U.S. For fans of golden age mystery, I recommend.

*Sadly, no one has ever invited me to a weekend house party at a manor in the English countryside, with or without murder.