FFB Review: "Heir Presumptive" by Henry Wade--Reviewed by Patrick Ohl

This is Friday and that means Friday’s Forgotten Books. After far too long an absence, Patrick Ohl returns today with his review of Heir Presumptive. Suggestions for more great books to read can be found over at Patti’s blog. You should check it out after you read Patrick’s review below….

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee;

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

—Macbeth, Act II, scene i

I’m puzzled over why Henry Wade should be considered one of “The Humdrums”, a term used by Julian Symons to denote a group of authors who are supposed to be some of the most boring writers in the world. I can understand why someone like John Rhode or Freeman Wills Crofts would make it on the list – they can be rather dry at times – but for the life of me I don’t see that in Henry Wade (pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher). For instance, his book Heir Presumptive is the best inverted murder mystery I’ve ever read.

Heir Presumptive was published in 1935, though the edition I found in my university’s library was a reprint from 1937. It comes complete with a family tree and a map of Captain David Hendel’s deer forest, folded into the book at the front and back. These come in very useful, particularly the family tree: the family history is a complex one, and at first, I found myself looking at the family tree quite often to see who was related to whom.

But I didn’t end up using the family tree for long, as Wade really makes sure you get to know the characters. The main character is Eustace Hendel— once a doctor, he married a rich widow who promptly died and left his a fortune, whereupon he chucked the practice and has lived his life luxuriously. Years later, however, the fortune has been squandered and Eustace finds his standard of living steadily dropping. He’s forced to live “by his wits”, playing poker games with impressionable young, well-to-do men, and squeezing finances out of them that way (with some strategic losses, of course).

All this changes when distant relatives, Howard Hendel and his son, Harold, die in a tragic swimming accident. Eustace comes down to the funeral, and while talking with a lawyer, he learns that there are only two people standing in the way of his inheriting a baronetcy and a fortune— Captain David Hendel and his son, Desmond. Slowly, but surely, a plan of murder evolves in his head, as he determines to get rid of his relatives and inherit.

We see all the events from Eustace’s point of view, and I have a hard time remembering the last times I read of a main character this fascinating. There are definite parallels to Macbeth: he is a weak man who is pushed into murder by a woman with a far stronger personality. The woman in this case is Jill, his current companion and former actress, who has let Eustace know that if he can’t find a regular income, she will return to the stage— and that means a change of companion. Eustace loves Jill and can’t bear the thought of losing her. He confides in her what he’s learned about his position, and she is the one who tells him to “screw your courage to the sticking place” and suggests doing away with the competition. Though the idea has already entered Eustace’s mind, it is Jill who first phrases it bluntly, and she more or less prods him into the crime.

Eustace’s tragedy is that he falls in love with the wrong sort of woman—Jill is domineering, manipulative, and amoral. He fails to notice kindness when it is shown to him; he is bitter that his family resents him, or are arrogant or self-righteous. He wants to be loved but doesn’t know how to set about achieving that.  He equates the inheritance with happiness and foolishly places all his eggs in that basket, ultimately resorting to murder.

Eustace justifies his actions to himself: the truth is, Captain David Hendel is not a very likeable person. He is pompous, rather self-absorbed, and not very kind. Somehow, Eustace manages to get an invitation to David’s deer forest for a stag hunt. He decides that David will die accidentally during the hunt, and the stag hunt scenes are marvellous. They are suspenseful and really well-written, and Wade does a good job withholding from the reader just what kind of accident Eustace is planning.

But these characters are complex: David is not a one-note character. We see him from Eustace’s point of view, of course, and it is a biased viewpoint. Despite this, we see glimpses of a genial, good sort. He’s downright mean when Eustace practically bungles the hunt, but he’s quite decent when, a few days later, Eustace gets his target, clapping him on the back and congratulating him. One of the characters, Blanche Hendel (widow of the recently deceased Howard), remarks that David “loved Glenellich; it was the one place where he seemed to be natural; I don’t want to seem to criticize my husband’s family, but they were rather overbearing in some ways, both Howard and David. I never saw their father, but of course old Lord Barradys is too. Up here David seemed to drop all that.” To which “Eustace thought that that was not his impression, but he was prepared to admit that he had not seen David under the most favourable circumstances.”

But the true monstrosity begins after David dies and Eustace must suffer through the inquiries. He decides that he must do away with Desmond, David’s son, and the prospect is horrifying. Eustace doesn’t want to kill Desmond— he is a very sick young man who will die soon anyhow, but he is charming and enjoys company. I won’t say what happens next, though the irony is brilliant and what results is a genuinely fascinating fusion between the inverted murder mystery and the fair-play detective story. Although I did predict the ending, the twist still feels jaw-dropping, as you see it through the eyes of Eustace. And then the final scenes are just brilliant.

In fact, Heir Presumptive has got to be one of the greatest mysteries ever written. It’s a successful inverted murder story and told brilliantly through the main character. The characters are complex and you really feel you get to know them. There are suspenseful scenes, and the plot twists and turns so much you feel you’ve been taken on an emotional roller-coaster ride. There is real horror here— the ordeal of the investigations feels exhausting. The finale is just brilliant. I really can’t think of anything the book does wrong.

So, the million-dollar question: why is Henry Wade is lumped together with The Humdrums? I honestly think that Julian Symons, seeing Wade getting high praise in Barzun’s A Catalogue of Crime, simply assumed that he was the same kind of writer as John Rhode or Freeman Wills Crofts: technically ingenious but not always the most interesting writer. (I think they have their charms, especially Rhode, but that’s a discussion for another day. Whatever I may think, Symons was not all that fond of them.) There’s nothing altogether specific about Wade in Bloody Murder: Symons only mentions him twice, in order to put him down and call him “Humdrum” both times. There’s no real proof that he read or didn’t read Wade, but I’m inclined to think he just made a bad assumption. Unfortunately, it seems to have damaged Wade’s reputation: few people, excepting genre enthusiasts, have ever heard of Wade in this day and age, and that is a crime more heinous than any fictional crime I’ve ever come across.

Overall, Heir Presumptive is a brilliant read and I highly recommend it. I can only hope that Henry Wade comes back into print some time soon. After all, his contemporary J. J. Connington, similarly neglected, has slowly come back into print thanks to e-books from The Murder Room…

Patrick Ohl ©2013

The nineteen-year-old Patrick Ohl continues to plot to take over the world when he isn’t writing reviews of books he reads on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime. In his spare time he conducts genetic experiments in his top-secret laboratory, hoping to create a creature as terrifying as the Giant Rat of Sumatra in a bid to take over the world. His hobbies include drinking tea and going outside to do a barbecue in -10°C weather.