Befogged: The Night of the Fog (1930), by Anthony Gilbert

The letters began coming during the bitter winter of 1929, when the country was fettered in the grip of a black frost, when houses were flooded and countless people homeless, and when the poor suffered untold misery and died in destitution.

Now there's a cozy opening for you, eh?

Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Beatrice Malleson, 1899-1973) is one of those detective fiction writers I have always found interesting, though until now I had not read what I would call a really "great" book by her.  She had the literary instincts of a mainstream writer and in addition to detective fiction she indeed wrote mainstream fiction, as well as some crime novels.  In 1936 she abandoned her early series sleuth, the elegant Liberal MP Scott Egerton, and replaced him with with Arthur Crook, the roguish Cockney defense attorney for whom she became best known.

Crook appeared in over fifty mysteries between 1936 and 1973, easily eclipsing the ten Egerton detective novels that appeared between 1927 and 1935.  Yet it was on the strength of the Egerton books that Gilbert was admitted to the Detection Club in 1933, and, in truth, from my reading the half-score of Egertons seem generally to offer readers more in the way of detection than the Crooks, which to me often seem to veer more into (though not completely) suspense territory.

In the fifth Scott Egerton mystery, The Night of the Fog (1930), I have found a Gilbert detective novel that has succeeded, in my estimation, on all counts.  It's an evocatively written tale with a memorable setting and some well-observed characters, and it also has meticulous detection and a very clever plot.  If I ever do a new list of recommended mysteries this is one that most definitely will go on it.

The novel is set mostly in rural England, primarily at the village of Queen's Wrotham and the moldering, candlelit manor house of Jasper Hilton, the tightfisted, morose and spiteful owner of much of the farmland round about, who is suspected of having murdered his wealthy wife a dozen years previously, though he doesn't spend any of her fortune.

Despised by his tenants, he begins receiving a series of anonymous letters threatening his life. Not having confidence in his estate manager nephew, Rolfe Hinton, who has never recovered from his experiences in the Great War, Jasper Hinton finds the money to hire a London detective, Thornton Peile, to get to the bottom of the matter of the poison pen letters.

Soon Peile finds himself embroiled in the roiling emotions of the Hinton household. Not only do Jasper and Rolfe Hinton despise each other, Rolfe is intensely suspicious of the relationship his lovely wife Leslie has with the local doctor, Gilbert Cheyne. Peile solves the mystery of the poison pen letters to his satisfaction and departs, but this doesn't save Jasper Hinton's life.

After Jasper is found stabbed to death in his own fog-enshrouded home, evidence points to both Rolfe Hinton and Gilbert Cheyne as the culprit; and there are a number of additional suspicious characters in play too, including servants, villagers and an impassioned leftist dogood "foreigner" named Mary Carstairs, who was trying to stir up the locals against the manifold iniquities committed by Jasper Hinton.

In the novel Peile, alternating with an ambitious local policeman named Cavendish, functions as the lead investigator for much of the story--though Gilbert's sleuth Scott Egerton ultimately plays a crucial, if admittedly rather distant, role, in a way that reminded me of Hercule Poirot in some of Agatha Christie's later mysteries, like The Clocks.

I think Gilbert may already have been finding the series amateur sleuth something of a fifth wheel in her narratives, although, interestingly, Scott Egerton actually preceded the sleuths of Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham in falling in love with a suspect in a case (his first, Tragedy at Freyne, 1927), marrying her and siring offspring; so one can make the case, I think, that Egerton, though forgotten, has historical significance within the genre.

Yet Gilbert seems to have been more interested in portraying her suspects' inner emotional turmoil than in detailing the personal lives of her series sleuths--perhaps this is one reason she never had the staying power of the Crime Queens after her death in 1973. (Arthur Crook has less of a developed personal life than Scott Egerton as I recollect.) Back during the Golden Age probably few people read Gilbert primarily to get the latest news on Scott Egerton, his wife Rosemary and their bouncing baby boy.

Be that as it may, Gilbert's concern with the cruelly blighted lives of the downtrodden--something to which I referred in an earlier blog piece where I proposed that Gilbert completed Annie Haynes' unfinished mystery The Crystal Beads Murder (published in 1930, the same year as The Night of the Fog)--is a quality that should appeal today to the devoted student of Golden Age detective fiction.

I have long argued that Julian Symons oversimplified the history of the Golden Age in arguing that social justice was a concern that essentially went unvoiced in fiction of that era by traditional English mystery writers. Gilbert in fact stands out among the many English mystery writers of that time for the empathy she expressed for the plight of society's unfortunates.

A supporter, like her Detection Club colleague E. R. Punshon, of the British Liberal party, Gilbert put no small degree of her political and social preoccupations into her writing; and for me this gives her book added interest.

When Julian Symons wrote in Bloody Murder that "the social values taken for granted by Sayers, Christie, Rinehart" were reflected in the work of other writers he need not discuss, like Anthony Gilbert, Georgette Heyer, Mignon Eberhart, Elizabeth Daly and Helen Reilly  (it's suggestive of the critic's gender-based assumptions, in my view, that all these examples of "conservative" Golden Age authors are women writers), he surely was right about some of the authors, but not Anthony Gilbert.  I can't think of two British writers working within the classical tradition in the 1930s who were more different in tone than, say, Anthony Gilbert and Georgette Heyer.

But even if you aren't drawn in by the bleak social detail in The Night of the Fog, you should enjoy the clever plot and gripping narrative.  It is a most engrossing tale, on multiple levels. Unfortunately, it seems to be available in a modern edition neither in the US or UK, though a number of Anthony Gilbert's novels have been reprinted in the UK by Orion Books' The Murder Room imprint.  Perhaps its turn will come.

Update 8/13: It now looks like Orion will be release its new edition of The Night of the Fog in the UK in December.  Good news!

Note: photos are of the enigmatic Calcott Hall (Red Dress Manor). See Derelict Places.

The Inspector Stoddart Mysteries of Annie Haynes: The Man with the Dark Beard (1928), The Crime at Tattenham Corner (1929), Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (1929), The Crystal Beads Murder (1930)

The reissues of the Inspector Stoddart detective novels by Golden Age detective novelist Annie Haynes will be out through Dean Street Press in the fall, in paper and electronic versions, and below you can see what the covers will look like. These tales will be followed by Haynes' three Inspector Furnival novels and her five non-series mysteries.

Also coming are three detective novels by yet another Golden Age British woman mystery writer, one who has been out-of-print for seventy-five years.  More to come on those books, but, in the meantime....

The Man with the Dark  Beard

Who did in the eminent Dr. Bastow in his own consulting room? Was it the man with the dark beard--or is he a red herring? Inspector Stoddart is on the case--his first recorded one.

The Crime at Tattenham Corner

Who left financier and racehorse owner Sir John Burslem dead in a ditch in Hughlin's Wood near Tattenham Corner?  Did his killing have something to do with the running of the Derby Stakes at the famed Epsom Downs Racecourse? Inspector Stoddart is on the case again, this time with a little romance in store--strictly in the line of duty, of course....

Who Killed Charmian Karslake? 

It's the question on everyone's lips when a popular American stage actress is found murdered in her bedroom at the country house where she had been invited for the weekend. There's a mansion full of suspects, but Inspector Stoddart always gets his man--or woman.

The Crystal Beads Murder

Who slew that lecherous swine Saunderson in the summer-house?  What could the cryptic clue of the three white crystal beads mean?  Inspector Stoddart answers all questions in his last recorded case, which may have been completed by crime writer Anthony Gilbert, Annie Haynes having passed away before she finished the manuscript.  It's a fine finish to an entertaining mystery series.

Who Completed Annie Haynes' The Crystal Beads Murder? Fourth Suspect: Anthony Gilbert (aka Lucy Beatrice Malleson)

Lucy Beatrice Malleson published her first mystery novel, The Man Who Was London, in 1925, under the singular pen name J. Kilmeny Keith.  This was followed in 1927 with another Keith novel, The Sword of Harlequin, described as "less a detective novel than a psychological study." That same year Malleson also created the pseudonym for which she is best known: Anthony Gilbert.

Whodunit?
Anthony Gilbert perhaps.

Tragedy at Freyne, the first Gilbert novel, introduced amateur sleuth Scott Egerton, who would serve as Gilbert's series detective in ten novels, published between 1927 and 1935. (After dropping Egerton as a series character Malleson created the lawyer sleuth Anthony Crook, for whom she is best known.) In 1928 the second Anthony Gilbert novel, The Murder of Mrs. Davenport, appeared, followed by three more detective novels over the next two years: Death at Four Corners (1929), The Mystery of the Open Window (1929) and The Night of the Fog (1930).

So "Anthony Gilbert" was quite busy with her own books in 1929, when Annie Haynes died, leaving an unfinished mystery manuscript; but perhaps the fact that Gilbert published "only" one detective novel in 1930 is a pointer in favor of the theory that Gilbert took some time out to complete The Crystal Beads Murder.  Also in favor of Gilbert as the "culprit" is that, compared with Agatha Christie and A Fielding at this time, she was a relatively less established name in mystery.

We know also that Gilbert was unmarried and greatly involved in women's club life, a milieu that would have been familiar to Annie Haynes and her companion, the prominent feminist and philanthropist Ada Heather-Bigg.  Furthermore, the writing style of the later portion of The Crystal Beads Murder strikes me as similar to Gilbert's in her own books. In both there is a greater reliance on descriptive writing and a more prominent authorial voice.

Additionally, the phrase "flotsam and jetsam," used to refer to a bedraggled piece of humanity, pops up in the later portion of The Crystal Beads Murder; and this is a term and image that appears recurrently in Gilbert's own work.  Compare the use of the term in The Crystal Beads Murder with its use in Gilbert's The Long Shadow (1932), for example, and you should see what I mean:

She was a kind-hearted woman and the slowly moving figure [note: a passing tramp!] appealed so eloquently as a bit of human flotsam and jetsam, drifting through the murk of an autumn morning, that she impulsively threw the window open and called to him as he passed.

                                   --The Crystal Beads Murder

Nobody knew who the old woman was; nobody ever asked.  Nobody cared.  She was part of the flotsam and jetsam flung up by life to end its days in Sullivan's Dwellings.

                                    --The Long Shadow

In both cases it is not merely the use of the phrase, but the sentiment behind it, the empathy for the downtrodden, that is notably similar.  This strong concern with the plight of society's unwanted is highly characteristic of Anthony Gilbert's work (including her revealing memoir, Three-a-Penny) and, I think it's fair to say, rather less characteristic of Golden Age mystery in general.

Conclusion: All right, guv, it's a fair cop!

Who Completed Annie Haynes' The Crystal Beads Murder? Third Suspect: A. Fielding

Lady Dorothy Feilding (not A. Fielding)

Until research breakthroughs this year, the life of Annie Haynes was one of the most mysterious of Golden Age detective fiction writers.  Certainly rivaling Haynes in terms of personal mystery, however, was the enigmatic A. Fielding, author of 23 detective novels between 1924 and 1944.

A. Fielding was probably one Dorothy Feilding, though not the Lady Dorothie Feilding (1889-1935) some have asserted she was. However, this Dorothy Feidling remains a most elusive presence.

Noting that one thing we know about her is that she once lived down the street from Agatha Christie, I humorously suggested in a prior blog piece that Dorothy Feilding may have been Agatha Christie under an assumed name!

By 1929, when Annie Haynes died and a woman mystery writer friend stepped forward to complete her last, unfinished mystery, The Crystal Beads Murder, A. Fielding had published six detective novels and a thriller.  Over 1929-30 she would publish no less than four additional detective novels. (Fielding was a prolific mystery writer up to 1938, often publishing two novels yearly.)  Assuming Fielding would have had time to complete Haynes' mystery, is there any affirmative evidence to suggest that she did so?

Stylistically, there are similarities in the work of Christie, Fielding and Haynes alike, namely a brisk narrative style, heavily dependent on dialogue, and a partiality for genteel settings. But we know so little about Dorothy Feilding we can't say, really, whether or not she might have been a friend of Annie Haynes.  Also the section of The Crystal Beads Murders that represents the work of the substitute author actually is more reliant on descriptive writing than either Christie, Fielding or Haynes.

Conclusion: Unlikely.

Who Completed Annie Haynes' The Crystal Beads Murder? Second Suspect: Margaret Cole

Margaret Cole is credited with writing 27 detective novels with her husband, the prominent socialist academic GDH Cole, between 1925 and 1942.  In reality, as I explain in my book The Spectrum of English Murder, she probably wrote ten of the co-credited novels mostly herself, and GDH (Douglas) probably wrote seventeen of them mostly himself. (Another detective novel is officially credited to Douglas Cole alone.) Margaret Cole also is responsible for a collection of short mystery fiction.

Here are the books I credit to Margaret Cole in Spectrum:
The Murder at Crome House (1927)
Poison in the Garden Suburb (1929)
Burglars in Bucks (1930)
Dead Man's Watch (1931)
Death of a Star (1932)
Death in the Quarry (1934)
Scandal at School (1935)
Mrs. Warrender's Profession (1938) (short fiction)
Greek Tragedy (1939)
Counterpoint Murder (1940)
Knife in the Dark (1941)

So if Margaret Cole came to the rescue when the late Annie Haynes' unfinished manuscript for The Crystal Beads Murder needed completing in 1929-30, this came at a time when she was launched on her second and third detective novels, in addition to all her activities as, like her husband, a prominent English socialist intellectual. I just can't see this, nor is there anything in the writing that to me reads like Margaret Cole's fiction.

Conclusion: Highly unlikely.

Who Completed Annie Haynes' The Crystal Beads Murder? First Suspect: Agatha Christie

Could Agatha Christie have been the mystery writer who completed Annie Haynes' The Crystal Beads Murder, left unfinished when Haynes died at the age of 63 in 1929?

Christie hit a rough spot creatively in the aftermath of her apparent nervous breakdown and disappearance in late 1926.  In 1927 and 1928 she published what she considered two of her worst books, The Big Four and The Mystery of the Blue Train. (Most people seem to concur with her about The Big Four, at least.)

By 1929, however, she was coming out of this bad patch.  She published The Seven Dials Mystery, which I personally think holds up well today, and had written some Tommy and Tuppence and Miss Marple short stories, rather delightfully jolly and keen affairs respectively. Would she have found time to complete Annie Haynes' unfinished mystery?  And, if so, would she have had any inclination to do so?

Annie Haynes's publisher, The Bodley Head, published Christie's first five novels, between 1920 and 1925.  Yet Christie left The Bodley Head in 1926, after considerable acrimony, jumping ship with The Murder of Roger of Ackroyd to Collins and sticking it out with them for the next half-century.  I have a hard time believing that Christie in 1929-30 would have wanted to have had anything to do with The Bodley Head.

Also, had Christie completed The Crystal Beads Murder, it's hard for me to believe that we wouldn't know this by now, with all the people who have intensively researched her life and works, like John Curran.

Conclusion: On the whole Christie seems unlikely.

The Crystal Beads Murder (1930), by Annie Haynes and ???

Clue in the crystal....Can Inspector Stoddart read the signs?

Annie Haynes had not completed the manuscript of The Crystal Beads Murder before she passed away in 1929 from heart failure, at the age of 63. (She had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for fifteen years.)  A sister mystery writer offered to complete her friend's manuscript, a proposal to which Haynes' publisher, The Bodley Head, eager to have one last Annie Haynes detective novel to place before the voracious mystery reading public in 1930, assented.

I have an idea who this woman mystery writer may have been and I will throw out some clues in the coming days.  It's a matter I discuss in my introduction to the forthcoming reprint of The Crystal Beads Murder, by Dean Street Press. Care to make any guesses?

The Crystal Beads Murder concerns the slaying of a libidinous swine in a summer-house on the grounds Holford Hall, the Midlands country estate of Lord and Lady Medchester.  Suspects in the slaying naturally are numerous, presenting another challenging case for Inspector William Stoddart, who previously solved murders in The Man with the Dark Beard, The Crime at Tattenham Corner and Who Killed Charmian Karslake?  In the current case he does have one clue: a broken section of a crystal bead necklace that his assistant, Alfred Harbord, found in the dead man's overcoat pocket. Where will the clue of the crystals beads take the investigation?

The Crystal Beads Murder is written in Annie Haynes' best vein, with intriguing plots complications and interesting characters alike capturing the reader's fancy. It will be out in the fall, along with the other Stoddart mysteries; and Annie Haynes' eight other detective novels will soon follow.

Introducing....

In a recent post I mentioned some of the book introduction projects on which I have been working. Here I thought I would list all the books for which I have done introductions.

To me reintroducing older mysteries to classic mystery fans, whether on my blog or in new editions of the books themselves, is always enjoyable. It has been a driving passion of mine the last fifteen years to bring vintage mysteries back to light.

All aboard!
classic mystery comes back in a big way

One of the most interesting cases concerns Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White, which I reviewed  three and a-half years ago on my blog, in what was, I believe, the first piece on the novel on the internet and, quite possibly, the first review of the novel since the 1930s. (For that matter my very first blog post was about Farjeon.)

Back in June 2012 I received a nice email from the literary executor of the estate of the Farjeon siblings telling me that she had been looking to inform delegates to a conference whether there was anything accessible on the net about Jefferson Farjeon, so she was glad to come across my pieces. She agreed with me that Farjeon deserved something rather better than literary oblivion.

As readers of this blog are likely to know, something better indeed came to Farjeon, when, two-and-a-half years later, Mystery in White was reprinted by the British Library to much success, with tens of thousands of copies of the novel sold, as I understand it. The introduction to the reissue is not by me, of course, but here are the detective novels and series I have introduced (links provided):

A uniform 4000 word introduction to the J. J. Connington novels reprinted by Orion Books' The Murder Room series.  This was a direct offshoot of the publication of my 2012 book, Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery, on the school of so-called "Humdrum" detective novelists (so dubbed by Julian Symons), the most prominent representatives of whom were Cecil John Charles Street (John Rhode/Miles Burton), Freeman Wills Crofts and J. J. Connington.

The nine Todd Downing novels reprinted by Coachwhip.  All but the first one have a uniform introduction, but that first one, Murder on Tour, has a special introduction that incorporates additional information I discovered about Todd Downing since the publication of my 2013 book on Todd Downing's crime writing and reviewing, Clues and Corpses.

A uniform introduction to the two detective novels by Willoughby Sharp, Murder of the Honest Broker and Murder in Bermuda (Coachwhip).

A uniform introduction to the two detective novels by Anita Blackmon, Murder a la Richelieu and There Is No Return (Coachwhip).

An introduction to the one detective novel by Kirke Mechem, The Strawstack Murder Case (Coachwhip).

A uniform introduction to the he three detective novels by Emma Lou Fetta, Murder in Style, Murder on the Face of It and Dressed to Kill (Coachwhip).

A uniform introduction to the two detective novels by Medora Field, Who Killed Aunt Maggie? and Blood on Her Shoe (Coachwhip).

An introduction to the one detective novel by Alfred Meyers, Murder Ends the Song (Coachwhip).

Two individual introductions to the Golden Age detective novels of Ianthe Jerrold, The Studio Crime and Dead Man's Quarry (Dean Street Pres)

An ongoing series of individual introductions to the 35 Bobby Owen detective novels of E. R. Punshon that are being reissued by DSP.  The first five novels--Information Received, Death among the Sunbathers, Crossword Mystery, Mystery Villa and Death of a Beauty Queen--have been out for a couple of months and just out now are the next five in the series: Death Comes to Cambers, The Bath Mysteries, Mystery of Mr. Jessop, The Dusky Hour and Dictator's Way.

I am also completing introductions for DSP's reissue of twelve Golden Age detective novels by Annie Haynes (1865-1929), Agatha Christie's contemporary female crime writer at The Bodley Head (the English publisher of Christie's first five mystery novels).

These reissues will begin with the Inspector Stoddart series: The Man in the Dark Beard (1928), The Crime at Tattenham Corner (1929), Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (1929) and The Crystal Beads Murder (1930), and be followed by the three novels in Haynes' Inspector Furnival series--The Abbey Court Murder (1923), The House in Charlton Crescent (1926) and The Crow's Inn Tragedy (1927)--and her five stand-alones: The Bungalow Mystery (1923), The Secret of Greylands (1924), The Blue Diamond (1924), The Witness on the Roof (1925) and The Master of the Priory (1927).  Below is a sample of what one of the reissues will look like.

The Haynes reissues are particularly exciting to me because Haynes was a prominent Golden Age crime writer about whom practically nothing seemed to be known in the modern era.  Oh, but have things changed! And there is yet one more woman crime writer to be reprinted by DSP this year, with more authors and books to follow, including the rest of Punshon's Bobby Owen series.

Also, at long last, I will be doing an introduction for Crippen & Landru, a project I'm very pleased to have come to fruition (more on this soon).

I also have some more projects with Coachwhip concerning American authors, so stay tuned!

Note: you will find out much more about all the authors mentioned above by searching their names on my blog.

Bertie and Punshon: The Code of the Woosters (1938), by P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse is known to have been a great fan of detective fiction, and one can certainly see evidence of of Wodehouse's criminal whimsy in The Code of the Woosters, the author's 1938 novel saga of the further antics of his most renowned series characters, the amiable ass Bertie Wooster and his profoundly capable valet, Jeeves.  Sprinkled throughout the Wodehouse novel are general references to detective and thriller fiction as well as a very specific reference to a 1937 mystery by E. R. Punshon. (The credit for the latter discovery belongs to the late William A. S. Sarjeant, an admirer of both authors.)

The Code of the Woosters, as Bertie informs readers at the outset, tells the tale of "the sinister affair of Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, old Pop Bassett, Stiffy Byng, the Rev. H. P. ("Stinker") Pinker, the eighteenth-century cow creamer, and the small, brown, leather-covered notebook."  There is, as this suggests, a lot going on in this novel! (Bertie actually left out the part about the policeman's helmet.)

When the novel was adapted for the 1990s Jeeves & Wooster television series, the scriptwriters, apparently finding the multiple plot threads too challenging to untangle simultaneously, actually divided the whole story into two episodes, with the first dealing with the affair of the cow creamer and the second addressing the matters of the small, brown, leather-covered notebook and the policeman's helmet.  Mystery readers who like a twisting plot, The Code of the Woosters is a book for you!

Although of course the book is farcical, there actually is quite a bit of country house criminality going on in it. And throughout the novel knowing allusions are made to detective stories and thrillers.

Extorted by his Aunt Dahlia into snitching from a rival silver collector, Sir Watkyn Bassett, an eighteenth-century cow creamer to which she feels her husband is morally entitled, Bertie makes his way to Bassett's country estate, Totleigh Towers, to commit the criminous deed.

There he encounters in addition to Bassett--who, before he retired as a magistrate, fined Bertie for snatching, while on a drunken lark, a policeman's helmet--one Roderick Spode, leader of a fascist organization known as the Black Shorts. (By the time Spode formed his group, you see, all the black shirts had already been taken by British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, so Spode had to settle for shorts.)

Both men dislike, and are quite suspicious of, Bertie, causing him to reflect doubtfully:

the deus ex moochina

I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well.

Soon he finds another party, Stephanie "Stiffy" Byng, Sir Watkyn's niece, extorting him to steal the cow creamer for her! Bertie finds the whole situation is getting dashed confusing, leading to this exchange with Jeeves:

"I think it would help if we did what they do in thrillers.  Do you ever read thrillers?"

"Not very frequently, sir."

"Well, there's always a bit where the detective, in order to clarify his thoughts, writes down a list of suspects, motives, times when, alibis, clues and what not. Let us try this plan. Take pencil and paper, Jeeves, and we will assemble the facts."

This is, indeed, something that is done in several E. R. Punshon detective novels from the period, and it's clear from further references made by Bertie that Wodehouse had read Punshon's Mystery of Mr. Jessop, published the year before in 1937.

At one point in the novel, Bertie curls up with a good mystery:

A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, and to while away the time I pulled the armchair up and got out the mystery story I had brought with me from London.  As my researches in it had already shown me, it was a particularly good one, full of crisp clues and meaty murders, and I was soon absorbed.

This mystery is in fact Mystery of Mr. Jessop. Yet later in the novel, when Bertie is trying to retrieve the small, brown, leather-covered notebook that Siffy has swiped from Gussie Fink-Nottle, he finds inspiration to action in the pages of his mystery:

To give the brain a rest before having another go at the problem, I took up my goose-flesher again. And, by Jove, I hadn't read more than half a page when I uttered a cry.  I had come upon a significant passage.

"Jeeves," I said, addressing him as he entered a moment later, "I have come upon a significant passage."

The "significant passage" concerns a section of the book where a young woman's flat has been ransacked, by a person or persons unknown searching for "missing jewels" (actually a diamond necklace). Bertie quotes a portion of the book where the detective--called Postlethwaite by Wodehouse, but actually Punshon's Superintendent Ulyett--lectures "his pal" (actually his subordinate, Punshon's series sleuth, Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen) about "the top of the cupboard" being "every woman's favourite hiding-place."  This all comes directly from a passage in Mystery of Mr. Jessop.

To Bertie it suggests an immediate course of action:

I eyed him keenly.

"You see the profound significance of that, Jeeves?"

"If I interpret your meaning aright, air, you are suggesting that Mr. Fink-Nottle's notebook may be concealed at the top of the cupboard in Miss Byng's apartment?

"Not 'may,' Jeeves, 'must.'  I don't see how it can be concealed anywhere else but.  That detective is no fool.  If he says a thing is so, it is so.  I have the utmost confidence in the fellow, and am prepared to follow his lead without question."

Of course not all goes as smoothly as Bertie naively expects, and he finds detective novels are not always quite the same as real life.

It's not up here!

Another interesting similarity between the two novels has to do with the references to British politician Oswald Mosley's fascist Blackshirts, who in the mid-Thirties were involved during political demonstrations in violent street brawls with communists. Wodehouse's Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts clearly spoof Mosley and his gang.

a frightful ass in footer bags
Roderick Spode

"The trouble with you, Spode," Bertie lectures (once he has been supplied by Jeeves with a dirty secret on Spode that he can use to keep the obnoxious man in check):

is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone.  You hear them shouting, "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine that it is the Voice of the People.  That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags!  Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"

In Mystery of Mr. Jessop E. R. Punshon satirically references the London brawls between fascists and communists, indicating that he holds totalitarian ideology in disdain.  He would have more to say on this subject the next year in his detective novel Dictator's Way, which appeared the same year as The Code of the Woosters.

Note: Both the Punshon novels mentioned above, as well as three others--Death Comes to Cambers, The Bath Mysteries and The Dusky Hour--will soon be reissued from Dean Street Press.  They will have introductions by me in which I further ruminate on the mystery writing of Mr. Punshon. As for Mr. Wodehouse, you should be reading him already!