One of the later Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries by Carter Dickson, My Late Wives (Morrow Mystery, 1946; Heinemann, 1947) starts in 1934 when a serial killer known under various names meets and marries young women who disappear after signing over their modest bank accounts to him. Their bodies are never found and charges can not be brought against him because no one can prove murder has taken place. The killer disappeared after the fourth one but Chief Inspector Masters of Scotland Yard never forgot this case.
Some 11 years later, the actor Bruce Ransom receives a manuscript about an identical serial killer and he is determined to play the lead role. His producer Miss Beryl West insists that the ending is wrong for a successful drama and Bruce decides he will go to a remote village and pretend to be the killer for awhile to see if the resolution he likes is really successful.
The original manuscript includes details about the murders only the killer can know and once Chief Inspector Masters has some hint that the killer has surfaced, he’s determined to capture him this time. Both he and Sir Henry Merrivale think Ransom’s idea is lunacy and they are right. Ransom is such a good actor that the residents of the village decide he is indeed a killer and try to drive him away. Ransom’s friends, Masters, and Merrivale have to go to his rescue. While I thought the resolution was a stretch, the scene where the killer is revealed is a fine use of a leftover war training site.
This is a fast easy read even if the plot is byzantine. Merrivale was at the height of his buffoonery in some scenes. He has hired a Scots golf expert to teach him the game but Merrivale steadfastly ignores the rules and the expert’s advice, much to the expert’s despair. His animadversions on golf balls are hilarious: “It’s alive. It leers. It’s got a soul. Son, there’s more concentrated meanness packed into one golf ball than in a whole Congress of the Gestapo after singing the Horst Wessel and eating hashish.” Clearly the agonized plaint of a man trying to learn how to play golf and failing.
A scene early in the book with Merrivale in a penny arcade is priceless. Masters and others are watching for a criminal to arrive. Merrivale becomes enraged because the golfer thinks he can score higher than Merrivale at one of the games. They exchange hot words, then bored service members from multiple countries who were killing time become involved, and what was a police stakeout quickly turns into the destruction of the arcade and everything within it.
Fans of Sir Henry Merrivale, serial killers, and theatre-oriented crime will especially want to look at this one. Frustrated golfers may also find it interesting. Isaac Anderson, mystery critic for The New York Times, listed it among the best mysteries of 1946.