Mystery writer Philip MacDonald completed the manuscript of Mystery at Friar's Pardon in August 1931 and in England it was published, under his new mystery writer pseudonym Martin Porlock, in October. The book was not published in the United States. Pardon was one of seven (!) novels published that year by MacDonald, the others being the Anthony Gethryn opuses The Choice, The Crime Conductor and The Wraith, the nonseries serial killer thriller Murder Gone Mad and the mainstream novels Harbour and Moonfisher, published under another pseudonym, Anthony Lawless.
With four crime novels under his own name under his belt, MacDonald evidently decided he needed a pseudonym for his non-Gethryn mysteries. Even Murder Gone Mad, which I call non-series, actually has as its lead investigator Inspector Pike from the Gethryn series.
1931 was the author's peak productive year as a novelist; in 1930 he published "only" three novels and he would go on to publish a trio of novels in both 1932 and 1933, all of them crime novels. There was one Martin Porlock novel apiece in 1932 and 1933, respectively Mystery in Kensington Gore and X v. Rex, though in the United States the two novels were published under MacDonalds own name, under the titles Escape and The Mystery of the Dead Police. Both of these mysteries are thrillers, in contrast with Pardon, which is a genuine detective novel.
MacDonald achieved Edgar Wallace rate of production in 1931, but the quality of the books he published that year was surprisingly good under the other circumstances. One of them, Murder Gone Mad, is generally deemed a crime fiction classic. Another, Mystery at Friar's Pardon, has been acclaimed as a classic locked room mystery by some afficanados. Because the novel was not published in the United States, however, copies have been very hard to find for nearly a century now.
There is a lot in Pardon to appeal to classic detective fiction fans. For one thing, as mentioned above it's a true detective novel, which, truth be told, MacDonald mysteries not always were. For another the book's trappings are highly classical. The setting is a party at a haunted country house, the murder an impossible crime in a locked room. What's not to like, hey? Let's go into some details.
The protagonist is series sleuth Anthony Gethryn stand-in Charles Fox-Browne, your classic between-the-wars not-so-young gentleman--when the novel opens he's "at the beginning of his thirty-fifth year"--on his uppers. We get five pages (all of Chapter II) of his backstory, largely unneeded although it's of interest that Charles' martial history in the Great War seems to bear considerable resemblance, somewhat embellished, to the author's own.
At the opening of the novel we find Fox-Browne (the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?) installed at a modest private hotel for ladies and gentleman (and Charles is very much a gentleman); but soon enough he has accepted a providentially offered position with Enid Lester-Greene, a popular romantic novelist, as her manager at her newly purchased Jacobean country estate, Friar's Pardon, designed by architect Sir John Vanbrugh. Several of the mansion's previous owners have died mysterious deaths, the most recent of which was ab inexplicable death indoors by drowning, but our Mrs. Lester-Greene is very much a materialist and scoffs at such tales as silly superstition.
Oh, such folly, dear Enid!
MacDonald has a bit of fun mocking the romantic dreck Enid Lester-Greene publishes--the novels named are Paradise for Two, Sir Galahad Comes Home, Oasis Love (a reference to The Sheik, of course), Kismet and Drusilla, The Man in Homespun and A Star Despite Herself. Enid is not a terrible person, but she is your standard overbearing murderee, who spends close to half of this long novel giving her family members and dependents reasons to kill her on account of her domineering ways. We have:
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| first edition (I have no idea what the cover depicts) |
Enid's sulky daughter Gladys Lester-Greene
her lovely niece by marriage, now divorced, Leslie Destrier
Lord Pursell of Mitcham, a Wodehousian silly ass aristocrat whom Enid wants to marry her Gladys
Major Claude Lester, Enid's scoundrelly brother
Norman Sandys, Enid's smooth secretary
Mrs. Barratt, the housekeeper at Friar's Pardon and some sort of relation
and, last but not least, at least in terms of social position, Lady Maud Vassar, an authority on the supernatural (like Lady Cynthia Asquith?)
There's a lot of talks about supernatural doings at Friar's Pardon, poltergeists disturbing the guests by throwing vases and such, but Enid dismisses all these manifestations as so much folderol. However, it's Enid herself who ends up mysteriously dead, like previous owners of the mansion. She is discovered dead in her locked study, drowned despite the fact that there is no water or source of water present in the room.
An impossible murder in a locked room? Heavens to Carter Dickson!
While MacDonald declines to present the local police as incompetent idiots--Inspector Willis even has "a manner which was very nearly that of a gentleman"--they make no headway with the case and are content to have Charles Fox-Browne, the obligatory amateur gentleman on the scene, assist them. (He's an old school friend of the police doctor, Riley.) The police end up convinced that the murder has no rational explanation, but "Foxy," as Riley calls him (Foxy is his old nickname from school), knows better. It is he who cracks the case, first by showing how the crime must have been committed, and then, after the police arrest the wrong person, revealing who the actual culprit really was, by means of a dramatic seance scene.
To be sure, Mystery at Friar's Parson is by no means a perfect mystery story. It's another MacDonald 100,000 worder by my count, which I feel is too long for a conventional detective novel. It's slow to get to the murder, the only one in the book, and the supernatural stuff isn't done with the spooky conviction that John Dickson Carr would have brought to the matter. But the plot is quite well-structured and the impossible crime is very nicely clued indeed. The novel was only ever published in England and is quite rare today. Evidently there was not enough visceral excitement in it for the American crime fic fans. But modern fans of vintage classic puzzlers should enjoy it.
