Annie Haynes (1864-1929) was born in the Midlands of England. By the early 1900s she lived in London and moved in literary and feminist circles. Her early stories were serialized in newspapers, some were later revised and published in book form. Her first novel The Bungalow Mystery was published by The Bodley Head (Agatha Christie’s publisher) in 1923. Another nine mysteries were published before her death in 1929. Who Killed Charmian Karslake? appeared posthumously, and The Crystal Beads Murder, was completed by an unknown writer and published in 1930.

The books were about evenly divided between Inspector Furnival, Inspector Stoddart, and non-series stories. Haynes started with stand-alones and then created her series characters, I expect as the crime fiction of the time trended that way.

Witness on the Roof was first published by John Lane in 1925. The main character is Polly Stafford, 10 years old when the book opens. Unhappy with a termagant stepmother and multiple half-siblings and with her older sister living elsewhere, she escaped as often as she could to one of her favorite hiding spots, the roof. One day she began looking in the windows of the houses nearby and she discovered a man burning papers in one room. She watched him place a pistol in the hand of a woman who appeared to be sleeping on the floor but Polly realized that she was probably dead. As she watched, the man looked out the window and saw Polly. Frightened, she ran home and told her father and stepmother what she had seen. They were inclined to think she was fantasizing until the newspapers broke the story of the murder. Her father did not want the police talking to his child so her information was not reported. Soon after, relatives of Polly’s dead mother sent for her to live with them and she forgot about the murder in the upheaval.

Fast forward 10 or 12 years, Polly is now Joan, her mother’s relatives deeming that name preferable. Polly/Joan marries a most eligible gentleman and a woman claiming to be the long-lost older sister appears, in time to claim a sizable inheritance. Because of information uncovered while vetting the possible sister’s history, the old murder case which remained open is re-investigated.

A complicated story with the main character’s romantic woes taking up as much space as the mystery. The narrative is an interesting mix of Victorian melodrama and investigative procedural. Perhaps if Haynes had lived longer, she would have transitioned completely to the procedural form. Removing the overwrought romance would shorten the book by about 100 pages and leave a nicely conceived mystery with confused and mistaken identities, imaginative characters, and some excellent misdirection.

I particularly like the accidental witness trope and I wish it were used more often. Christie’s 4:50 from Paddington (1957) of course is the most well-known example but Sharon Bolton used it to good effect in Dead Woman Walking (2017). Witness on the Roof is an intriguing example of the transition of turn of the century crime fiction writing to the more structured style of the Golden Age.