By Sourav Dutta
First published in 1931, Murder of a Lady (also titled The Silver Scale Mystery) is a classic locked-room murder mystery from Anthony Wynne (pseudonym for British author Dr Robert McNair Wilson), one of the acknowledged masters of this particular genre.
In Duchlan castle, located in the idyllic Scottish Highlands, lives the Gregor family. Consisting of the Laird of Duchlan (basically a Scottish version of the English Lord) Hamish Gregor, his unmarried sister Mary, daughter-in-law Oonagh and his grandson, it is a peaceful, if not particularly cheerful, household. Captain Eoghan Gregor, Duchlan’s son, is in the army and visits infrequently. When one fine morning Mary Greogor is found murdered in her room, doors and windows firmly bolted from the inside, no one can offer any explanation.
Who would want to kill Mary, a god-fearing old spinster who loved and cared for people, regardless of their social status? She was known to all as the very soul of kindness. Or was she? Everyone, from her family to the tramps and beggars, had only praises for her. It seemed they had all loved and respected Mary Gregor. Or did they? These are the questions that amateur detective Dr Eustace Hailey of Harley street must answer when one morning his pleasant Scottish vacation is interrupted and he is plunged into an impossible mystery where people are being killed with impunity, be it behind locked doors or right in front of watchful eyes with no one catching even a glimpse of the perpetrator.
The only clue is a single silver scale of herring fish, left in the wound. To make matters worse, pretty soon almost everyone except the good detective seems to be convinced that the murderer is not a man at all, but something else entirely.
Written during what is considered the Golden Age of Mystery (1920 to 1940s), the setting and characters will be familiar to any Agatha Christie fan. True to form, Dr Hailey, a specialist in mental diseases and an expert in locked-room mysteries, is known to assist the official investigators only in the most complex of cases that he likes.
There is also no shortage of enthusiastic but ultimately ineffective police inspectors who make it clear that while they respect the amateur sleuth’s reputation and perhaps even his methods, they would very much like him to take a seat in the side-lines and let them get on with the real police work. Any mystery to be solved, and credit accrued thereby, is their business, thank you very much.
However, unlike most such stories, rather than bumbling fools, the police have been shown as competent and even clever investigators. Their failure is more a result of the uniqueness of this case where all conventional methods are bound to come up short.
Inspector Dundas, assigned to the case, comes with a reputation for success. With a string of successful cases behind him, he comes to Castle Duchlan knowing that this is the kind of case that can make or break a man’s career and thus, after respectfully warning Dr Hailey to stay out of the case, throws himself into it with unbridled enthusiasm.
Being an intelligent man, he asks himself the same three questions that every detective must — Who? Why? How? And immediately hits a rather high wall. No highlander will speak to an outsider like him about such matters. No member of the Duchlan household, including the nurse, the maids and the piper, has seen or heard anything nor do they seem to know anything, even when it is obvious that they must.
The Scottish mentality, their nature and beliefs as interpreted by the author, plays a crucial role in this novel. The strongly held notion of Highlander loyalty, their love for tradition and superstition colours the very way the characters think or act and is an inherent part of the mystery.
Hailey, as a doctor and a friendly vacationer, is able to extract answers to crucial questions where the Inspector is left floundering. In spite of these difficulties, the indomitable inspector forges ahead and soon has answers to the first two of his three questions or so he believes. But for all his efforts he is absolutely no closer to answering the how of it.
The mutual dislike between him and the household makes things even more difficult and soon the inspector realises that his only recourse is to ask Dr Hailey for assistance. Dundas’s investigation however comes to a sudden halt with the second murder, his own.
Between 1925 and 1950 Wynne wrote over two dozen mystery novels with Dr Hailey as his detective. Murder of a Lady is considered a classic of its time but reading it now one cannot but feel vaguely unsatisfied. A detective novel, especially a locked room mystery, is a magic trick where the magician must reveal his secret in the end. Thus the trick behind the illusion needs to be as captivating and impressive as the illusion itself, if not more.
Unfortunately, in this case while the mystery seems grand, when the final solution is revealed, your first likely reaction will probably be “That’s Cheating!”
To avoid spoilers, all that can be said is that the solution is unsatisfactory and has a number of loopholes, not the least of which is that the good doctor actually had no proper proof. It is all conjecture, circumstantial evidence and surmise that will be thrown out of a court. Suffice to say that no modern day mystery writer, with any claim to the title, would even dream of writing a detective novel that pivots on such a solution.
In spite of all that, this is a fast-paced and interesting book that should be read. It is a reflection of its time and such novels should be read as a matter of course by anyone who claims to be a fan of detective fiction.
Anthony Wynne’s name is rightly celebrated as one of the masters of the genre and this book while not his best, is definitely one of the better ones.
Book: Murder of A Lady:
A Scottish Mystery; Author: Anthony Wynne; Publisher: Niyogi Books; Pages: 269; Price: 395
(The author is a Software Consultant at Infosys, Hyderabad)
