Classic Mysteries in 1920s Britain: The Crime at Black Dudley
After reading Footsteps in the Dark, I tried to find more obscure female mystery writers that are not quite so well known and found The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham. What interested me was the dinner party that turns into murder. It reminded me of the Hercules Poirot mystery Lord Edgeware Dies and Clue.
Unfortunately, the murder gets upstaged for the second half of the book by another crime, and the solution to the first mystery was unnecessarily dragged out for me. I lost interest in the last third of the book and just wanted it to end.
The book is written in true Roaring Twenties lingo, so there were quite a few times where I couldn't understand what the characters were saying, even with context.
In the reviews I read before picking up this book, I learned that Albert Campion is Margery Allingham's detective, but his debut novel (this book) does not have him as the protagonist and frankly, he's not even a detective. He is strangely almost always upbeat and joking around to the annoyance of many of the characters. And there is still some mystery surrounding him when he exits the story.
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| Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV |
Summary
Various guests attend Wyatt Petrie's dinner party at the Black Dudley mansion, along with Wyatt's uncle and some of the uncle's associates. We follow one of these guests, Dr. George Abbershaw, throughout the book. He is part of Wyatt's crowd who, after hearing about the story behind the mansion's famous artifact known as the Black Dudley Dagger, they all agree to partake in the strange ritual of passing the dagger to whomever they come across in the dark. During the game, one guests discovers blood on the dagger and later, Wyatt's uncle is taken upstairs after a heart attack. However, Abbershaw is called upon later by the uncle's attending doctor and associates to sign the death certificate without examining the body.
Many other strange things occur, such as an item going missing from one of the uncle's associates. Determined to get it back, he turns the weekend festivities into a lockdown, preventing the escape of Wyatt and his friends from the secluded mansion.
-- Spoilers --
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Characters
- "dreary and inexplicable lonely" (11)
- "Miles of neglected park-land stretched in an unbroken plain to the horizon and the sea beyond." (11)
- "the long narrow windows were dark-curtained and uninviting" (11)
- "there was a certain dusty majesty about the dark-panelled walls with the oil-paintings hanging in their fast-blackening frames, and in the heavy, dark-oak furniture, elaborately carved and utterly devoid of polish" (13)
And after all of these types of descriptions, we are brought to the dinner table and learn a bit about the cast of characters. After dinner, Wyatt entertains his guests with the ritual of the dagger and the young folks engage in the game. Then, there is a death, but was it murder!?
Even when the murder is put on the back-burner for theft and lockdown, I was still interested in seeing where the story was going.Secret Passages
Mysteries are made all the more sweet when they have secret passages. Since the mansion is several centuries old and used to be a monastery, it should have secret passageways. There is one leading from Abbershaw's room (through an armoire) down to a basement area that opens into a well-placed trunk. There is another passage in a fireplace that is unknowingly shared by two rooms. And there is a passage from the drawing room fireplace to some unknown location. Not much time is spent in these areas; they are used for getting from one place to the other.
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What I Didn't Like
Atmosphere
When most of the characters were drawing out their guns and Chris lays out his plan for capturing the bad guys in order to escape, I started to lose interest, much like Poirot in The Adventure of the Cheap Flat where he and Captain Hastings watch an American gangster movie. Poirot has his eyes closed during the many gunfight scenes. I don't mind action, but the violence took away from the intrigue that was in the first half of the story.
Say That Again?
Britain may speak English, but they have many dialects throughout its regions and in this case, eras. A lot of this book's dialogue went over my head and reminded me of Captain Hastings in the David Suchet version of Hercules Poirot mysteries. After watching quite a bit of British shows, I've come to understand some of the lingo, though sometimes it's only the context that helps. This book, however, had a lot that was incomprehensible for me.
As we go around the dinner table and learn about our cast of characters, Abbershaw describes Chris as a "prize-fighter" and Meggie shakes her head "reprovingly" (17). I'm not sure how that's an insult. She responds with, "You mustn't say that [...] That's Chris Kennedy, the Cambridge rugger blue" (17). According to Wikipedia, that means Chris is a rugby player and has the highest award he can receive. I guess maybe being any old prize-fighter is a lower honor than a rugger blue?
Campion is the character with the most colorful dialogue that I didn't always comprehend, "I'll show them my two-headed penny. I'll be awfully witty. 'They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I began to play they knew at once that I had taken Kennedy's Patent Course. How they cheered me on...'" (137).
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Writing of Its Time
While the author is a woman, I find that the writing reflects its time and still shows what today is misogynistic writing.
Abbershaw gives Meggie a small revolver to take with her so she, Jeanne and Anne have a weapon with them as they stay safe in one of the rooms while the men go around the house to find their friends and von Faber. In this era, carrying a gun is common place, so none of the characters are shocked when anyone reveals a gun. However, Meggie's reaction when Abbershaw gives her the revolver seemed interesting and a bit odd to me because her reaction is described as "...which she took eagerly" (143). I'm not sure how to take that. Does she like having the power? Why does she want to have a gun? She is certainly more of a take charge and intelligent woman compared to Jeanne and Anne. Jeanne strikes me as the type to shrink away from a gun and maybe want a man to take it, and Anne might take the revolver if she had to. But I just found that Meggie seemed to be enjoying this adventure from that one word "eagerly."
Meggie has the most scenes and dialogue compared to Jeanne and Anne, but she is often referred to as "the girl." The author is a woman and yet, she stripes Meggie of her identity multiple times. Not once is any male character described as "the man" or "the boy" by the author, aside from when the character is unnamed. Sure, characters use the terms "old boy" or "old girl," which was or maybe still is a British term used. I noticed "(old) bird" was used as well. Anyways, I was not happy with the author's repeated use of "the girl": "But even so, neither Abbershaw nor the girl could blind themselves to the fact..." (122). Why name Abbershaw but not Meggie in the same sentence?
Additionally, whenever Campion calls Benjamin Dawlish/von Faber as "Daddy Dawlish," or some equivalent, that would have a different meaning with people in this era.
Much like the Brits in Poirot's adventures, Allingham's cast of characters are rude and offensive towards the only two "appearing to be foreign" characters. For example, Meggie describes Gideon as "wicked" based on his appearance (18). While Gideon (and Dawlish) are described like any other character, I couldn't understand what it was that made them "wicked" or "terrible." Meggie is dismissive when Abbershaw asks about Gideon, "... he is a guest of the Colonel's - nothing to do with our crowd" (18). Allingham makes the only culturally different characters the main villains of the story. If some of Wyatt's friends had different nationalities, I think it would have a different impact on the characters' personalities and would take away from the significance of both "foreign" characters being bad.
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Withholding Information
This is a pet peeve of mine when it comes to mysteries. I believe that readers should be allowed to be able to solve the mystery alongside the detective, amateur sleuth or whoever is solving it. Keeping the reader in the dark with information that characters pull out of thin air is mean. I love Agatha Christie stories, but she also did that sometimes and now I see why she likes this book (her testimonial is on my book's cover).
One spot where the author does this is at the end when Abbershaw is doing extensive research in the last chapter because he has suspicions. We don't know what his suspicions are or what his research entails until he reveals it to Wyatt just so the readers can be surprised, too. Thanks a lot.
Too Drawn Out
At chapter 24, the title is "The Last of Black Dudley," which most would assume is the end of the story since the main group has been rescued, the bad guy caught and the police have been called in. I was expecting the murderer of the Colonel to finally be revealed and wondered what could possibly happen for another five chapters. Well, the author takes these extra five chapters to tell us who the murderer is. It was agony and should not have been written like this.
Not only does Albert Campion, the author's detective since the cover says "A Campion Mystery," make his exit from the story in the 25th chapter, but the mystery continues with Abbershaw, Watt and Prenderby who try to crack the case.
The three men happen to find the disguised Rolls Royce, thereby finding Dr. Whitby where they tail the car passed several towns, exchange gunfire, accuse Dr. Whitby of being the murderer and learn that he isn't, and then lose him as he escapes by plane like in some Alfred Hitchcock film. After their adventure, some times passes where only Abbershaw remains on the case while planning his wedding. He does research and finally, readers learn that Wyatt is the murderer. Abbershaw's blunt question elicits a weary and unsurprised response from Wyatt and from myself because it took too long to get here.
Anticlimactic Culprit Reveal
So, we know it's Wyatt and his motive for murder in this classic mystery should have been simple, right? The first thought is usually money; his uncle died, so he'd inherit, but in this story, readers are told early on that the Colonel married into the family and is actually Wyatt's tenant since Wyatt owns the house. Then, what other possible motive could there be?
Wyatt explains that he found out about his uncle's sordid work as part of von Faber's organization; the Colonel was one of several brains of the organization that had built up a society of highly organized crime. Aside from robbery, this society trained young girls to "attract certain men or acquire certain information," (224), which I guess would be used to develop all types of crimes. Wyatt discovered all of this when he fell in love with an actress who was also a "dancing instructress" in a night club. She was one of many girls who were brought into the organization and he wanted to "fight a social evil single-handed" (226). This was clearly a well-developed motive, but it's dropped at the end of the book out of nowhere. Sure, it connects to the Colonel, Dr. Whitby, von Faber and Gideon, but this aspect of the organization is never brought up or even hinted at.
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- I didn't enjoy the presence of so many guns.
- Understanding the dialogue (especially Campion's) was difficult sometimes.
- It took way too long for the characters to discover who the murderer was.
- I don't think the characters needed to find Dr. Whitby and his driver; the police could have done it instead off-screen.
- The murderer's motive should have either a) had more relevance to the rest of the story or b) removed the brainwashing of young girls and been replaced with something much more relevant to the story, such as jewels or the robbery that the burned papers mentioned.
- The author should not have withheld information from the reader.
- Meggie should have had more of a role and autonomy to match Abbershaw; Anne and Jeanne should have been fleshed out more as characters.
- Campion should have been present until the end of the story since he's supposed to be the author's detective who returns in future books.
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Happy reading and writing!
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