1936 classic English detective fiction; seventh of Allingham's novels
of Albert Campion. The Barnabas family publishing house is used to
strangeness; the founder's nephew disappeared in broad daylight while
walking between his house and the main road. Now Paul Brande, one of
the cousins who run the firm, is found dead inside a locked room. US
vt Legacy in Blood.
There's an obvious suspect: Mike Wedgwood, youngest of the
cousins, who's known to have been spending time with Paul's neglected
wife Gina. What's worse, Mike went down to the strong-room where
Paul's body was found, the night before… and said he saw nothing
unusual. But the body was lying right in the doorway and Paul had been
killed several days earlier; how could Mike have missed it?
This is probably the most conventionally structured of the Allingham
mysteries I've read, and even then the murderer is explicitly revealed
in chapter 17 of 21 (and the alert reader will have spotted what's up
much earlier, though there's a certain lack of proof or motive at
first). At the other end of the proceedings, after some immediate
detective work about cause of death, there are long sections dealing
with the inquest and the initial stages of the trial (in particular
lovingly-observed scenes in the Central Criminal Court at the Old
Bailey), and only at the last moment does Campion get into gear to
sort things out. Where in Look to the Lady and Sweet Danger he
vanished off-stage near the climax and came back with all the answers,
this time we're allowed to follow him as he spends a long night
collecting all the information that's needed.
Characterisation is understated but more effective than flamboyancy
would have been. The minor character of Teddie Dell, in particular, is
superbly drawn, as is the faintly-idiotic (or is he?) nephew Richie
Barnabas. Lugg returns at last, but mostly to be made mock of for
trying to get away from his larcenous past; later in the book, when he
has to use old contacts, things work rather better. Campion himself is
less fatuous than he's sometimes been.
The ultimate solution fails to satisfy only insofar as it is outside
the law, and this is for my money the best of the Allinghams so far.
Followed by Dancers in Mourning.
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