C.H.B. (Clifford Henry Benn) Kitchin (1895-1967) was a man of many talents. He became a solicitor in 1924, he was a farmer and a schoolmaster, and he made a good deal of money playing the stock market. He had eclectic interests, including botany, linguistics, music, chess, and greyhound racing, which his wealth allowed him to pursue. His first mystery novel Death of My Aunt (1929) was quite successful. It has been frequently reprinted and translated into a number of foreign languages. It seems to be reviewed more often than any of his other mysteries.
His second mystery Crime at Christmas (The Hogarth Press, 1934) has the same protagonist as his first, stockbroker Malcolm Warren, who spends Christmas Eve, the last day before the general holiday shutdown, negotiating a favorable purchase of stocks for one of his biggest customers Axel Quisberg. When the market closes Warren rushes home to pack and change for a trip to Quisberg’s house in Hampstead where he has been invited to spend the Christmas break.
Warren knows and likes Quisberg‘s wife, who was widowed twice before she married him. She has one son from her first marriage and two daughters and two sons from the second. Quisberg treats all five as if they are his own. Four of the children are on hand for the holiday in addition to Quisberg’s secretary and his mother, the would-be fiancé of the oldest daughter, and Doctor Martin Green, who is a family friend.
The house is quite full and personalities start rubbing against each other right away. An apparent accidental death discovered early Christmas morning squashes the holiday spirit and the second one on Boxing Day brings the police, who question the manner of the first victim’s death. Warren discovered both bodies and therefore spends a lot of time with the investigating officer.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The plot is reasonably good and the characters are defined well enough. The pace seemed immeasurably slow; Kitchin is verbose and offers unnecessary description. For instance, far too often, when one of the children is mentioned, he explains again their relationship to their mother and stepfather, i.e., Amabel, first daughter of Mrs. Quisberg’s second husband. If relationships were important to the plot, inheritances maybe, I could understand it but that’s not the case here.
The most entertaining, I expect unintentionally, passage was the chapter in which Warren describes his insomnia. He counts sheep, he breathes deeply, he does all manner of time-honored methods to induce sleep, and then he decides to imagine himself being carried in a sedan chair through the mountains of Tibet. He describes this imaginary trip in agonizing detail. I fail to see any soporific aspects to this exercise. The idea of being carried in a sedan chair through mountains would scare me awake for a week.
The final chapter where Warren talks directly to the theoretical reader and wraps up plot points not covered in the big reveal was just too much. Not acceptable at all.
I did not find this book to be especially readable, even though the plot is sound. One Christmas mystery that need not be at the top of anyone’s to be read list.
Also reviewed here: https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/crime-at-christmas-1934-by-c-h-b-kitchin/