PPL#4: Murder Will Speak, by JJ Connington

 

9781616463922

Coachwhip Publications, 2016

originally published as For Murder Will Speak, 1938

287 pp

paperback

(read in July)

I have a stack of mystery/crime novels sitting here waiting for my thoughts and I am so behind.  Murder Will Speak is at the top of the stack, book number thirteen of eighteen in author J.J. Connington's series featuring Chief Constable Clinton Driffield.  It is my first outing with this author, even though I have three more Coachwhip publications by Connington sitting on my shelves at the moment.  After finishing this one, I bought two more, trying to line up as much of the series as possible for future reading in order.  

 The blurb on the back cover of this edition hints somewhat  cryptically at what the reader is about to encounter:

"A Poison Pen, ubiquitous, outspoken --

A murder (or was it suicide?) --

A suicide (or was it murder?) --

Who? -- Why? -- and Why? --"

The story begins with a bit of a shakeup at the brokerage firm owned by a certain Mr. Lockhurst, who is likely going to be away from the office for a few months after a diagnosis of coronary thrombosis.  His doctor, as discovered via telephone by his second in command, Oswald (Ossie) Hyson, has prescribed complete rest for twelve weeks, and Lockhurst is not to be "worried by business affairs."  That's certainly not a problem for Hyson, who figures that after all is said and done, Lockhurst's absence would likely be more along the lines of "possibly" five months, which would be "time to turn round in."  Right away you realize that something hinky is going on at the firm, especially when Hyson is only glad that the his employer "didn't peter out in that attack" because it would have meant auditors going through the company's books, and the fact that he had thought it a good idea to obtain a power of attorney from Lockhurst, even though it wasn't needed during the course of every day business.   As it turns out, there's not only hanky-panky on the financial side going on, but on the personal side as well with at least one typist in the office, maybe more.  

Away from the brokerage,  someone has been sending "the most awful anonymous letters" that say the "most dreadful things."  There has been so many in fact, that one character describes it as a "perfect epidemic," bad enough to have garnered the attention of the Investigation Branch (IB) of the General Post Office, under the supervision of a man named Duncannon.  According to him, the "poison-pen affair" has grown "to such major proportions" that it's time for "all hands to the pumps."  As he also notes, if the IB doesn't clear it up, "some really bad damage may be done."  As it turns out, he's completely right, but he has no clue of how "really bad" that damage may be.  

from Wikipedia

Sir Clinton is matched with a sort of partner (who is more like a sounding board providing the occasional hint to Driffield in this book -- since I haven't read any of the the others I have no clue if he ever takes a more active role) by the name of Wendover, whom Driffield refers to throughout as Squire.  It is he who brings Wendover into the conversation with Duncannon, and while the GPO  is running its  operation trying to find the poison-pen writer, the police find themselves in the thick of their own investigations after two deaths.  The first death is that of Nancy Telford, who along with her husband Jim were friends with Linda Hyson, wife of Ossie.  While Nancy was found dead in rural Scotland, the authorities there are hard pressed as to whether or not her death was suicide or murder, and have turned to Sir Clinton for help.  He in turn wonders if Nancy's demise was connected to the plague of poison pen letters, and gets Duncannon involved as well.   The second body in the case belongs to none other than Oswald Hyson, who is discovered with his head in the gas stove by the Hysons' maid upon her return home after her evening off.  The more he learns about Hyson, and while his death definitely looks like suicide, Sir Clinton isn't so sure and treats the matter as if it was a case of murder.  As he and his subordinate Inspector Craythorn begin to dive into the case, it becomes obvious that there may be a connection between the two deaths. 

I quite enjoyed this book, and even though Sir Clinton wasn't what I would call an exciting sleuth, he is extremely thorough in his methods, taking time to slowly layer what clues he has so that by the end, there is little room for doubt as to what happened, why, and by whom.  It was rather fun to watch this process; on the other hand,  I didn't find it too difficult to figure out the identity of the poison-pen author because it was just way too easy.  Unfortunately, figuring  out the solution to the murder here before the Chief Constable did wasn't too hard either.  There was actually one point where I page tabbed a brief bit of conversation that pretty much gave away the show and once that was stuck in my head, I started to have a bare inkling of how the killer was able to pull it off and then come up with what seems to be an air-tight alibi.   All of that was fine though, in comparison to how the author deals with the women in this story, with some pretty awful (and extremely dated) psychological hypotheses about what makes them tick.  While I won't go into detail here, some of these parts were  just cringeworthy, to be honest, but then again, the novel was published in 1938 so I'm not really all that surprised.  

As a whole, I can certainly recommend this book to readers of vintage crime/mystery and readers who enjoy a good story centered around the havoc that is wreaked when a twisted mind has little else to do but to disrupt the lives of others via the poison pen.  I love this stuff. 

By the way, do not miss Curtis Evans' most informative introduction to this edition -- while he goes into some great detail about the author, he doesn't give away too much about the mysteries in this book so it's perfect.