The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley

 

The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley

published 1925

 

 

random female pic to represent characterless women in the book

 

I was listening to the latest Shedunnit podcast, which featured two (2!) of my good friends – Caroline Crampton, and Jim Noy of the Invisible Event blog

The Sanfield Scandal (Green Penguin Book Club 14)

and Jim mentioned in passing that he considered The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley as the first country-house-party mystery.

He’d recently blogged on the book, very enthusiastically,

#1415: The Layton Court Mystery (1925) by Anthony Berkeley [a.p.a. by “?”] | The Invisible Event

So it definitely felt like time to read it.

[btw, Caroline and Jim were discussing a book by Richard Keverne, whom they consider no-one has heard of. Obviously they - weirdly - haven’t been spending their time revisiting CiB’s 2013 menu to find this

The Man in the Red Hat by Richard Keverne

which had a handy picture I have copied for the top of this entry]

So – Layton Court was the first book to feature Berkeley’s series sleuth Roger Sheringham, whose main character trait is being annoying – though this is plainly a decision by the author, Berkeley is not enamoured of his own detective in the manner of Sayers and Wimsey. (Annoying detectives – that feels like something we should be making a list of). Sheringham says to a policeman “I’m extraordinarily interested in all this. You’ve no idea how useful it will be if I ever want to write a detective novel.” By later books, he is exactly such an author, I believe - in this book he is apparently a 'straight' novelist. (I'm not completely sure about all this, but one of my expert friends will put me right if I am wrong)

And the main thing about the book is that it is full of VERY familiar tropes, but you have to keep reminding yourself that most of them are coming up for the first time – Berkeley invented them.

Sheringham is a guest at a country-house weekend, along with his good friend Alec, a young woman called Barbara, her mother, and another woman Mrs Plant. There is a butler and a gardener (and doubtless other staff, but we are not concerned with them).

Their host, Victor Stanworth, is found dead in the library in the opening scenes. The doors and windows are locked, and it is assumed he committed suicide.

No modern reader is held up by this, but it takes till p75 for Roger S to suggest that it may be murder, and to solve the mystery of the broken vase – what could possibly have hit it with sufficient force…? (answer, in case you’ve never read any crime books: an extra bullet)

There is blotting paper with clues, there is a safe that some people are very worried about, there are keys to be found. Might there be a secret door or a priest’s hole? Someone goes down to the library in the middle of the night to get a book, always a favourite round here.

On p195 Sheringham realizes the truth about Stanworth, which again I think most people will have thought of a long, long time ago: motive etc provided. I may say that the identity of the murderer was not in much doubt in my mind from a very early page, but there were aspects to admire in the concealment.

There are some quite funny moments – I liked this

It would have made a striking epitaph, he felt. “Sacred to the memory of X, who died, greatly regretted by everybody, especially his chauffeur, who wanted the day off.”

And there is an excellent diversion where Roger and his friend search for a mysterious stranger by the name of Prince, with a most enjoyable result. I mean, you know it is llikely to be a wild goose chase, but the exact manner is splendid.

Roger’s insult for his friend is that he is a ‘sponge-headed parrot’, which I feel we could all use with pleasure. Along with his expression of surprise.“Jumping Moses!” Roger exclaimed blankly. “That appears to bash me somewhat sideways!”

The mysterious Mrs Plant is having no  nonsense from Roger:

“You will allow me to say that I consider your conduct presumptuous and impertinent in the highest degree. I should be obliged if you would kindly refrain from making me the target for your abominable lack of manners in future.”

And so say all of us.

There’s a promising character in the dead man’s sister-in-law, Lady Stanworth

Roger [was] feeling unaccountably small. Lady Stanworth was perhaps the only person in the world who consistently had that effect upon him.

But we have seen almost nothing to justify this – Lady S IS rather Lady Bracknell-ish, but she scarcely appears. Berkeley could have spent a bit more time doing spiky dialogue for her rather than the endless repetitious discussions between Roger and his friend Alec.

And this brings me on to another aspect. So many tropes from this book are very familiar from so many later books – but the worst can be summarised as ‘all the good men were at school together, and there are no women characters.’ The females are all absolute ciphers, and the men….

“But it’s out of the question!” Alec burst out impulsively. “Jefferson—I don’t know anything about him, though I should certainly have set him down as quite a decent fellow and a sahib, even if he is a bit reserved. But Mrs. Plant! My dear chap, you’re absolutely off the rails there. Of all the obviously straightforward and honest people in the world, I should have said that Mrs. Plant was the most. Oh, you must be on the wrong tack!”

What he is basing his view of Mrs P on is another mystery.

A young woman, Barbara, has this description:

The girl who was advancing across the grass was small and slight, with large gray eyes set wide apart, and a mass of fair hair which the slanting rays of the sun behind her turned into a bright golden mist about her head. She was something more than pretty; for mere prettiness always implies a certain insipidity, and there was certainly no trace of that in Barbara Shannon’s face.

But that’s the end of her more or less.

(the picture cried out to be used, but is the cover of an Edgar Wallace book, so I have erased his name so there is no confusion)

In this respect the book reminded me of both Trent’s Last Case by EC Bentley, and The Red House Mystery by AA Milne, as well as many later books.

Shedunnit, and Trent’s Last Case

The Red House Mystery by AA Milne

-       Again it seemed reasonable to copy a picture…all-purpose early1920s people looking at the plans to see if there is a secret tunnel. That's not what they are actually doing, but it seems ideal to keep on hand for books of the time.

We do get this, to show Roger as unusual:

Roger was in the habit of disregarding the convention that a man should never under any circumstances display emotion in the presence of another man, just as heartily as he violated all other conventions.

But – my friend Curtis Evans, Golden Age guru, once wrote about ‘the idealization of the learned professional class’ amongst crime writers – he was talking about PD James just for starters, and it is so recognizable, rife in her books. But there is also the idealization of the posh upper-class people in GA books, which also annoys me. There is a shared aspect of this book #spoilernotspoiler with one of JD Carr’s works – no need to look if you don’t want to know. (and it features in various other books of the era)

Another example of this – a number of people in the book have been in a blackmailer’s clutches. As it pans out, all are given assurances that the evidence has been destroyed, nothing more will happen. Except for a lower-class person, who apparently is not helpfully informed of this. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

There is a horrible anti-semitic slur in the book which could, and surely should, be easily removed.

But within those reservations, the book was good fun, with some very enjoyable moments, and an absolute case study in how the Golden Age mystery genre developed..

Kate over at Cross-Examining Crime has also reviewed this book

The Layton Court Mystery (1925) by Anthony Berkeley – crossexaminingcrime

Top photograph from the Clover Vintage Tumbler

Men and woman looking at blueprints - NYPL Digital Collections