From the massively magnificent archive…
Attorney Otis Landon and his widowed sister, Mrs.
Laura Mulford, live together in the Hammersleigh, “one of the most attractive
of the moderate-priced apartment houses in New York City.” At thirty-two, Otis
expects never to marry, although, as he tells his sister, “I rather fancy that
if I ever fall in love, it will be at first sight, and very desperately.”
Conveniently both for Otis and the plot, he does.
The object of his affection is one Janet Pembroke, who lives in an apartment
across the hall with her wealthy but miserly, temperamental, and somewhat
reclusive great-uncle, Robert Pembroke. Although they’ve only lived in the
Hammersleigh for two weeks, Otis and his sister have both heard Pembroke’s
“voice raised in tones of vituperation and abuse.”
Not long after, Robert Pembroke is found dead. Otis
and Laura Mulford are drawn into what turns out to be a case of murder,
Pembroke slain by what is described as a woman’s method. When the crime was
committed, the door to the apartment was locked, the windows were fastened
tight, and a night-chain was in place, which suggests that only one or both of
two others within it, Janet Pembroke and her maid, Charlotte, could have done
the deed. Fully smitten, Otis is ready to do whatever it takes to protect the
woman he (irrationally?) loves.
Thus begins the essence of a mystery novel by an
author seminal to the genre who predates “the Golden Age.” It is a novel that
demands of modern readers patience, tolerance and, above all, a sense of humor.
Patience is essential for several reasons. The
author’s narrative style is that of an older, more formal era, and will likely
seem stilted and verbose to a modern audience. The dialogue is equally stilted.
I sincerely doubt Americans in the early 20th Century spoke the way Carolyn
Wells’ middle- and upper-class characters do. Jane Austen’s English characters
from the early 19th Century spoke less “literarily.” For example, consider this
exchange between Laura Mulford and Otis Landon regarding whether Janet Pembroke
merits her uncle’s berating:—
“Yes, but how do I know
what she may do to deserve it? Those dark eyes show a smouldering fire that
seems to me quite capable of breaking into flame. I rather fancy Miss Pembroke
can hold her own against any verbal onslaught of her uncle.”
“Then I’m glad she
can,” I declared; “as she has to stand such unjust tyranny, I hope she has
sufficient self-assertion to resent it. I’d rather like to see that girl in a
towering rage; she must look stunning!”
The book could be shorter by a third to a half if Otis Landon’s first-person narrative didn’t contain multiple repetitions of the facts of the case and, especially, incessant lengthy passages in which he moons about the enigmatic and volatile Janet Pembroke, his love for her, his anxieties about her possible love for other men in the story, and angst about her possible guilt.
Tolerance is essential because of snobbishly
demeaning, disparaging and racist attitudes toward “menials”—e.g., an elevator
operator whose language suggests a substandard education, and Charlotte, the
African-American maid, with her stereotyped dialect. Here’s Charlotte talking
about forgetting to remove the night-chain before opening the apartment door:—
“Laws!” exclaimed what
was unmistakably a negro (sic) girl’s voice, “I nebber can ’member dat chain!”
A sense of humor is essential—make that vital—when
reading this novel. Thoroughly non-existent is police procedure as we’ve come
to know it nowadays. Landon and others are given license to explore and tramp
all over the crime scene as they see fit. A prominent lawyer, very much a
suspect, who represented Robert Pembroke and who visited him the day before his
death, is presently out of town on business. Rather than locate and bring him
in for immediate questioning, the police and D.A. decide to delay official
proceedings until his return. Otis Landon fancies himself possessed of a
detective’s instincts, and manages to find physical clues and talk to people
connected to the victim who might have reasons for wanting him dead while the
police do almost nothing investigative. But despite his efforts, he can’t
resolve the locked-apartment puzzle, so he ultimately consults Carolyn Wells’ incarnation
of the Great Detective, Fleming Stone. A Chain of Evidence contains twenty-four
chapters. Fleming Stone doesn’t appear until the twenty-first (or, according to
my Kindle, until eighty percent of the novel was behind me). As soon as Landon
explains the circumstances of the case to Stone, the latter announces that he
knows who the murderer is. In order to solve the locked-room problem, however,
he must visit the apartment. Once he does, it takes him no time at all to
figure out the answer to that riddle.
The fact that the solution is a complete cheat is
apparently inconsequential to the author. Much earlier in the story the reader
is given several crucial details concerning the impossibility of entrance to
the apartment with the night-chain in place. What is revealed in Stone’s
explanation contradicts much of it and points up something the reader should
have been told but wasn’t, thus underscoring that the reader has been unfairly
duped.
Except to mystery historians and purists, I must
conclude that A Chain of Evidence is nothing more than a (vaguely) entertaining
curio.
For more information about Carolyn Wells, see mystery connoisseur and analyst Michael E. Grost’s A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection: http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm. For more on Fleming Stone, see The Thrilling Detective website: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/fleming_stone.html.
Barry Ergang ©2016, 2023
Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in eBook formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com
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