Celebrating the Christmas season with a double murder! Nothing is more festive than a host who walks out during dinner, a maid screaming in the library, and Scotland Yard at the front door.
Brian Flynn (1885-1958) was an English writer who worked in a range of jobs before achieving success as an author. He published more than 50 mysteries; his series detective was Anthony Bathurst, who was a bit like Sherlock Holmes and a bit like the upper-class investigators Wimsey and Campion. Flynn is another of those authors whose books sold steadily during their lifetimes but who disappeared quickly from memory thereafter.
Steve Barge, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, https://classicmystery.blog/, rediscovered Flynn and helped usher the books back into print through the hard work of Dean Street Press. His introduction prefaces each book.
The Murders near Mapleton is the fourth Bathurst appearance. It was originally published in 1929 by John Hamilton and then in the U.S. by Macrae-Smith in 1930. Dean Street Press reprinted it with the first 10 books in the series in 2019. Since then DSP has re-issued 30 more of Flynn’s books.
At Sir Vernon Eustace’s country house on Christmas evening, a small party has gathered for dinner. The notables of the village of Mapleton are present, along with Sir Vernon’s niece and her particular friend. The conversation is convivial, the food is excellent, the toasts sincere, and the Christmas crackers are opened. Sir Vernon stands and states he has received bad news and that he must leave, which he does.
His guests are understandably bewildered but they carried on according to convention. Then a blood-curdling shriek comes from the back of house, where they all rush to find one of the maids unconscious on the library floor and the French doors to the terrace open. Shortly thereafter the butler is found dead in his pantry. While the police are called to the scene, Anthony Bathurst is driving the police commissioner back to London a few miles away. At a railroad crossing, they find an abandoned automobile and on the tracks the mutilated body of Sir Vernon. Which brings Bathurst and the commissioner into the case. Just why Bathurst should be participating in a police investigation is never explained, although it is plain the commissioner thinks highly of his abilities.
The post-mortem examinations reveal that Sir Vernon was shot in the head before being run over by a train, which was an interesting twist. And that the butler Purvis was a woman, not a man as everyone had supposed. I thought this was quite daring for 1929 and an innovative potential plot device but Flynn didn’t expand on it.
Bathurst shows up the inspector assigned to the case again and again, as they both search for Sir Vernon’s killer. As often happens in these older mysteries, the answers involve links to the past. I guessed one part of the solution easily enough but not the most significant piece.
Bathurst isn’t as annoying as Holmes or Philo Vance but he’s still smug and superior. And he’s given to French bon mots which no one around him understands.
Flynn’s writing is prolix, unnecessarily so, which made parts of the story slow reading, and the dialogue is often melodramatic, typical for the time but again not easy to read.
For students of Golden Age crime fiction and for fans of complicated plots.
Spokane Chronicle, 31 March 1930, ·Page 4
The Sunday Times, 31 March 1929, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
The Boston Globe, 29 March 1930 ·Page 22