Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973) was a British author most well known for her creation of Arthur G. Crook, an entertaining lawyer whose ethics do not bear scrutiny. Crook had some 50 adventures published under the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert. Malleson also used the name J. Kilmeny Keith and later she adopted the name Anne Meredith. Before Crook came to life, Anthony Gilbert wrote mysteries about an aspiring politician named Scott Egerton.
Egerton is introduced in The Tragedy at Freyne (Collins, 1927), a country house drama with a locked room murder and not one but two love triangles. The latter unfortunately was enough to put me off the story. The narrator is Alan Ravenswood, an explorer and cousin to Catherine Ravenswood who married artist Simon Chandos some five years before the story begins. A weekend party takes place at the country home of Chandos. The manor was formerly an abbey; it sounds beautifully restored. The event is the 21st birthday of the ward of Chandos, Rosemary St. Claire. Announcement of her engagement to MP Scott Egerton is expected imminently. Also present is Rupert Dacre, a longtime friend of Catherine’s who has been in love with her for years and doesn’t hide it, and Guy Bannister, an international correspondent. Chandos has a secretary named Althea Dennis who is acutely possessive of Chandos. She is given to melodramatic outbursts.
The undercurrents during dinner make Ravenswood uneasy and Chandos is clearly unhappy, but no one expected to find him dead in his study the next morning, with a nearly empty bottle of morphine tablets nearby. The room was locked and the key was found in the dead man’s pocket. The windows were also secured. The obvious conclusion was suicide, except for a small but significant discrepancy. Its discovery brought Inspector Bradlaugh of Scotland Yard on the scene.
I remember enjoying the Crook novels when I read them years ago but this early mystery by Malleson was surprisingly rough. Contemporary reviews were positive but nearly 100 years later I found the tendency to melodrama tiresome and the frequent misogynistic comments unexpected. The aforementioned love triangles were irritating. Egerton suddenly comes to the fore about three-quarters of the way into the story, an odd twist in the structure. Malleson was clearly still figuring things out when she wrote this one.