Fred's Book Club: House of Mystery.

Hello, friends! Welcome back to the Humpback Writers feature as it begins its second year under that awful name. We call it that because it falls on Wednesdays, not because humps are involved. Had we chosen a different work by this week's author, though, we could have called it Heffalumpback Writers, but we did not, so there you are.

And today we indeed have a book by Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A. Milne, a puzzling tale for adults called The Red House Mystery.

While remembered most for his children's works, Milne was originally a writer for adult audiences, which in his day just meant grown-up in themes and language, not in sex and violence. The Red House Mystery (published 1922) was an unusual departure for him nonetheless, being a detective story. He was known for light verse and plays, despite being a World War I veteran and thus in line to have spent his career in mournful, angry screeds.

Milne dedicates the book to his father, John Vine Milne: "Like all really nice people, you have a weakness for detective stories, and feel that there are not enough of them. So, after all that you have done for me, the least that I can do for you is write you one."

The book begins like so many English manor house stories -- in fact, indistinguishable from a Wodehouse novel except for the lack of laugh lines. Here's how it starts:

In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working.
     It was the hour when even those whose business it is to attend to the wants of others have a moment or two for themselves. In the housekeeper’s room Audrey Stevens, the pretty parlour-maid, re-trimmed her best hat, and talked idly to her aunt, the cook-housekeeper of Mr. Mark Ablett’s bachelor home.

Obviously they didn't have leaf blowers in Milne's day.

One of Mark Ablett's guests is Bill Beverley, whose friend Antony Gillingham decides to drop in. So does Robert, the black sheep of the family, newly returned from Australia. Robert, sad to say, doesn't last long.

They turned the body on to its back, nerving themselves to look at it. Robert Ablett had been shot between the eyes. It was not a pleasant sight, and with his horror Antony felt a sudden pity for the man beside him, and a sudden remorse for the careless, easy way in which he had treated the affair. But then one always went about imagining that these things didn’t happen—except to other people. It was difficult to believe in them just at first, when they happened to yourself.

Not only is Robert dead, but his body is found in a room locked from the inside. In other words, Milne has jumped right in and written a locked-room mystery, one of the most difficult to construct, because everyone will be looking up the chimney and knocking around for secret passages and you have to avoid those. It would be a few years before John Dickson Carr became a master of the form, but it's always a tough go.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Antony and Bill become amateur Holmes and Watson to try to solve the mystery.

“Now then,” said Bill, “We are alone. Fire ahead.”
    Antony smoked thoughtfully for a little. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to his friend.
    “Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked.
    “Watson?”
   “Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself—all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.”
    “My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?” Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, “I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.”

Anthony and Bill are good fun, and Milne observes all the form needed to give us a good mystery with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief. Raymond Chandler knocked the book for being unrealistic and contrived, but that's what you expect from this kind of story. See also Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, the aforementioned John Dickson Carr, and on and on. We can't all write like slumming angels the way Chandler could, or get away with not accounting for all the bodies.

The worst thing I can say about The Red House Mystery is that I found it forgettable. I think I read it about seven years ago, and when I thought about profiling it for the book club I realized I'd forgotten the whole thing. Took some skimming to refresh my memory, and I usually remember at least a few crucial bits of plot, style, or character from every book I've read without prompting. All I remembered was, it was fun, and it was a mystery.

The novel is available free, thanks to Mongo and our other good friends at Gutenberg. If you'd like a light late-summer read with good cheer and a murder, I think this will fit your needs like Winnie stuck in Rabbit's hole.