Q. Patrick was the pseudonym of Richard Wilson Webb (1901-1966), who also published under the names Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge. Webb wrote some books alone and then with Martha Mott Kelly under the name Q. Patrick for a few years before Webb teamed up with Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912-1987). Webb also worked with Mary Louise White Aswell on a couple of early novels. It’s hard to know who is actually responsible for each book under the various pseudonyms, but this column in the A Crime Is Afoot blog sorts it out as clearly as I have found it: https://jiescribano.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/patrick-quentin/
Murder at the ‘Varsity (Longmans, 1933), published as Murder at Cambridge (Farrar & Rinehart, 1933) in the U.S., was written solely by Webb. Narrated by an American citizen Hilary Fenton, graduate of Harvard, whose role as an outsider allows the explanation of Cambridge traditions and procedures that would otherwise be assumed as intrinsic knowledge to English natives. In addition, a glossary has been inserted at the beginning of the book for the benefit of those of us who did not attend an English university.
Fenton finds an unpopular student in their dormitory dead one night. Apparently from an accidental gunshot but the evidence suggests someone else was present. The student, despite his lack of interpersonal skills, was both academically and athletically gifted. He was sure to win a scholarship that one of Fenton’s friends needed to stay at Cambridge and had received a coveted place on the Cambridge cricket team, leaving another of Fenton’s friend as an alternate. The student’s removal neatly allows both of Fenton’s friends to step into the positions they desperately wanted.
While Fenton would prefer not to suspect either of them, the lateness of the hour meant few people were about and no one could have passed the porter without being seen. In addition a strong perfume could be detected in the air and Fenton’s new love interest used that scent, worrying him that she was somehow involved.
This was not the first time murder had visited that particular location. Twenty years before a brilliant academic killed one of his students in a fit of madness and had been confined to an asylum until he managed to escape just days before. The inspector in charge not unreasonably wondered if the escapee had returned to the scene of his crime and decided to kill someone else.
I found the university and period detail more interesting than the mystery, but I usually do become absorbed by those books with a strong sense of place and time, as this one is. A cricket game and an academic tea party with a learned discussion of China and Ceylon teas add to the period detail.
Fans of academic mysteries especially will want to add this one to their reading lists.