John George Haslette Vahey (1881–1938) was born in Belfast and was educated at Ulster, Foyle College, and Hanover. He first worked as an architect, then as an accountant, and then became a full-time writer. His novel was published in 1916 and his last in 1938, according to the Golden Age Detection wiki, http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7930959/Loder%2C%20Vernon. He wrote under his own name as well as the pseudonyms of Henrietta Clandon, John Haslette, Anthony Lang, Vernon Loder, John Mowbray, Walter Proudfoot, and George Varney.
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haslette_Vahey, gives a ninth pseudonym, Arthur N. Timony, cited in Who’s Whodunnit: A List of 3,218 Detective Story Writers and Their 1,100 Pseudonyms: Library Studies No. 5. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. 1969. p. 160. The same article in Wikipedia credits Vahey with 66 books, saying he published as many as seven in a single year.
He used series characters for some of his books but most of them seem to be stand-alone mysteries. Whose Hand? (Collins, 1929), published by William Morrow as Between Twelve and One in the U.S. and reprinted by Spitfire in 2025, was the second mystery released under the Loder pen name. It starts with the classic country house weekend with some ten strangers travelling on a reserved train to spend the weekend as guests of the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Mr. Cupolis. All of these people have invested heavily in a scheme devised by a well-known European scientist and backed by Cupolis.
The group is received by Cupolis’ secretary who tells them Cupolis was taken ill on his return trip from Scotland and they won’t be seeing him that night. A telegram arrives during the evening that advises all of the guests’ money has been lost in a general collapse of Cupolis’ financial empire. A few individuals who invested far more than they could afford were beside themselves. They all retire for the night distraught and determined to confront Cupolis at the earliest opportunity. The retired military office plans to use a horsewhip to wring his money out of the bankrupt financier.
A servant finds Cupolis dead the next morning, and the house is soon overrun by police. The medical examiner determines that Cupolis was killed between midnight and 1:00 a.m. and the movements of the household during the night are examined carefully by Inspector Cobham while the guests make plans to try to recoup their losses.
I expect much of the plot was drawn from life; the 1920s were full of get-rich schemes and con artists anxious to part gullible people from their money. Too, the relevance of scientific research to everyday life was beginning to be realized and ordinary people wanted a piece of the action. The characters are the usual for the time: retired military officers who had served in India, the young woman devoting her life to her elderly parent, the irascible businessman, the heir to a minor title, the well-off young sportsman.
What I particularly noticed are the number of characters whose names begins with C. The victim Cupolis, Inspector Cobham, Lord Cramish, Clive Merton, Mr. Corbett, and Mr. Colper. This alliteration did not help establish unique identities.
I was so lulled by the classic markers of the late 1920s that I read past some well-conceived clues and was completely surprised by the inspector’s logical resolution of the case. Fans of fair-play mysteries especially will want to look at this one.