Dean Street Press kindly put a number of their Golden Age reprint ebooks on sale recently and I took advantage of their generosity. Among my purchases was The Milliner’s Hat Mystery by Sir Basil Home Thomson (Eldon Press, 1937; Dean Street Press, 2016). The book was also published as The Mystery of the French Milliner by Doubleday Doran for the Crime Club in 1937. The Dean Street Press reprint has an informative introduction by Golden Age crime historian Martin Edwards, who described Sir Basil Thomson (1861-1939) as something of a Renaissance man. He was a solicitor, who worked in the Foreign Service and in British Intelligence. Between those two careers he was Governor of Northampton, Cardiff, Dartmoor, and Wormwood Scrubs prisons. From 1908 to 1913, he served as secretary of the Prison Commission and then Assistant Commissioner to the Metropolitan Police from 1913 to 1919.
Thomson wrote eight mysteries featuring PC Richardson, who advanced up the law enforcement ladder throughout the series. Thomson also wrote other fiction as well as biography and histories of Scotland Yard and of Dartmoor Prison.
Richardson achieved the rank of Chief Constable by the opening of The Milliner’s Hat Mystery, the seventh book in the series. In keeping with his lofty status, he is a peripheral presence, only advising his subordinates Chief Inspector Vincent and Detective-Sergeant Walker who do most of the investigative groundwork. A dead man is found in a barn by a couple of young men seeking shelter from a storm. A gunshot wound with no weapon nearby means homicide but lack of identification stymies the local police, and the inquest is adjourned as Vincent arrives to take over the case.
The investigation takes Vincent to France and back again, which results in an interesting running commentary about the differences between the criminal justice systems of both countries. This story is an early police procedural, different from its contemporaries, as Martin Edwards notes, in that the collaborative nature of police work is clearly shown. Such teamwork is an ordinary part of more current law enforcement-mysteries, but the Golden Age fictional inspector tended to be the main actor at all times. Thomson’s experience in Scotland Yard informed his writing extensively.
As usual I became caught up in the contemporary references. When the local Inspector Miller asks Inspector Vincent for a statement to give the reporters, they compose an announcement that Miller says he will run off on a Roneo and hand out. I suspected and a look at the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary confirmed that a duplicating machine was meant. Still a mystery is the statement that a suspect “proceeded to make the American eagle scream.” From the context it means the suspect became vociferously and abusively verbal but I cannot find a reference to this particular phrase.
Not a complicated mystery but involved enough to hold my interest, and the realism of the investigative detail is notable. Worth the attention of any Golden Age student.