Three books by Victor L Whitechurch

 

 

Three books by Victor L Whitechurch

 

 

Victor L Whitechurch always sounds like a cheery charming gent – he lived from 1868 to 1933 and was a Church of England cleric who wrote fiction, much of it crime fiction, on the side. One of his pastoring posts was at a Mission Church for the 1100 railwaymen employed by the London and north western railway at Willesden Junction. So he had considerable experience and expertise in the railways and was plainly fascinated with them – they featured in his books and short stories a lot.

The Canon in Residence, 1904, came early in his writing career, and is tremendous fun: a respectable clergyman discusses life with a fellow holiday-maker in Switzerland. His new companion tells Canon Smith that he knows nothing of life, and – of course, as anyone would – drugs him, takes his clothes and leaves him to cope with the real world in a different format. (This would all fit in well with my Impersonation posts in the past – the small category of enforced impersonation: in my recollection this happens also in the Daphne du Maurier book The Scapegoat). Also F Anstey’s Vice Versa where a father goes off to school in his son’s body)

The Canon learns a lot from this, and goes into a new job with an eye for social reforms – this makes him unpopular in some quarters, and then rumours go around about his behaviour in Monte Carlo (this was actually his doppelganger). All will eventually be sorted out (not really a spoiler) and everyone is in a better place.

I’ve read two of his (much later) crime books, and had high hopes because of the Canon – but found them less than stellar. A pity, because they both had settings that I really enjoy: a pageant and a university college. 

Murder at the Pageant (1930) starts very promisingly. A pageant in the grounds of Frimley Manor, the upmarket resident family and their house-party of friends all taking the key roles:

Four lackeys arrayed in the historical livery of the Lynwoods— green and orange—bore the old sedan-chair, with Mrs. Cresswell, an old friend of the family, seated regally therein, wearing over her costume what Queen Anne certainly did not wear in 1705, her famous pearl necklace.

Sir Harry, a tall, upright man of about sixty, wore the garb of the reign of Queen Anne. Captain Bristow, of medium height and a little inclined to err on the side of stoutness, appeared as the Duke of Marlborough. Harry Lynwood, the eldest son, who had taken part in an earlier scene, was dressed in the trunk hose, puffed and slashed doublet, and flat cap of the Tudor period; his brother Charles, as a dandy of the Regency, wore white pantaloons strapped tightly at the feet, long blue coat, brocaded waistcoat. Anstice Lynwood looked perfectly charming in Early Victorian high-waisted gown and bonnet. She was talking to her great friend, Sonia Fullinger… dressed as Edward the Sixth, who had actually paid a visit to the town during his brief reign. And Sonia, in her puce-coloured velvet Tudor costume, made a charming little Edward, perhaps not exactly representative of that delicate and not very happy boy, for her laughing brown eyes, dark hair, and quick, agile movements rather belied what history has handed down as the appearance and demeanour of the weakly son of bluff King Harry…

 

A young woman called Anstice! – a name worthy of Patricia Wentworth’s Miss-Silver-World. Her father the Baronet explains that the poshos  will all keep their costumes on when they go in for a bite to eat. Shaping up nicely I thought. But then it all went very flat. Someone is found dead in the sedan chair and that valuable pearl necklace mentioned above – no-one touches it. No OK, just joking, I was only talking about the omnipresence of jewel thefts recently, and yes it disappears. We are privy to the Chief Constable’s way of working:

Every person who had been connected with the drama was tabulated, with remarks against each, many of them having only a brief word or two, such as "Knows nothing," "Stupid ass," "Nonentity," and so forth.

The Edward VI costume proves important, and has to be chased down. But really the whole story didn’t keep my interest.

 

Murder at the College, 1932 so two years later, held together slightly better. The story takes place in the university town of Exbridge, in one of the colleges.  There is a room at the top of a staircase: there are workmen at the foot, and a college porter nearby. So the question is – how could someone have got in to kill the victim without being seen?

A group of men meet regularly in this room -

‘we are all members of a committee of the diocese—appointed by the bishop. We meet once a month to transact business’ –

Halfway through their meeting they broke up for lunch, and when they got back, one of them was dead.

It’s not a bad setup, but I felt I was way ahead of the police in working out possibilities, there were no surprises.

Also – much depends on a secret box with an unbeatable lock.

“My fastening is this padlock—a letter lock, you observe. Eight small revolving cylinders with a series of eight letters on each. Do you know anything about permutation of numbers?"

"I know something about bell ringing," said Ambrose with a laugh. "I learnt ringing in my father's parish. So I know that there are five thousand and forty combinations of letters in this lock of yours."

This is nonsense. In the first section it should say combinations, not permutations. The possibilities of the lock are not 5,040, not even close, much much higher. And the figure from bell-ringing (which is completely inapplicable and irrelevant anyway) would refer to seven bells, whereas eight is the figure here.

There is some impersonation here, usually a favourite round here, and very unconvincing clues involving postcards, books of matches and shoelaces. (The shoelaces did make me think about the old joke about the person with non-matching socks – ‘the funny thing is I’ve got another pair exactly the same’. I don’t think the clue here was wholly thought through)

There are virtually no women characters, as a final criticism, just a bereaved sister who counts for nothing. The murderer seems most concerned that his career has been ruined.

Altogether another sad disappointment.

I think my ultimate verdict is this: Whitechurch sounds like a lovely man with a good heart and a strong moral framework, and this came through clearly in The Canon in Residence. But the other two books were cold and completely lacking in heart or morals. Odd that his obvious niceness does not shine through in his later books.

Pageant picture from the National Library of Wales. This blogpost is called How We Love a Pageant, and has splendid pictures and links to other posts on this topic.

The ‘study’ picture shows Gladstone’s study in Hawarden Castle, courtesy of Cornell University.