“Of course, unlikely things do happen,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I’m no stickler for probability in crime. One so seldom finds it.”
That strikes me as a pretty good summary of a 1928 "Golden Age" classic mystery novel by J. J. Connington, called The Case With Nine Solutions
. It is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.
(Note: the podcast has been available on this blog since Monday, but I am just now getting my written review posted. My apologies for my lateness!)
To begin with, there's the question of those "nine solutions." Actually, that's more a matter of mathematics than of mystery. Sir Clinton Driffield, the local Chief Constable, is confronted by three deaths. One - a maid - is quite clearly a murder victim, as she has been strangled. But the other two people have died violently as well - and either of the two cases could be an accident, a suicide - or, of course, a murder. Mathematically, in terms of probability, Sir Clinton is pointing out that there are nine possible combinations involving two victims and three forms of death (accident/accident, accident/suicide, accident/murder, suicide/accident, etc.).
But there is no shortage of mystery here. The book begins in one of those classic "pea-soup" fogs that used to plague London, making it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. Dr. Ringwood, who is new to the area where he lives, gets a phone call, asking him to come to the aid of a seriously-ill patient. Dr. Ringwood gets lost in the fog and winds up at the wrong house - where he discovers a young man, with bullet wounds, who promptly dies, after a few rather cryptic remarks.
the problem is compounded almost immediately by two more deaths – one of them, obviously a murder, as the body of a maid, evidently strangled, is found in the house next door, where Doctor Ringwood’s patient with scarlet fever was living. That murder took place in the short time between Dr. Ringwood calling the police about the shooting HE had discovered and the arrival on the scene of Sir Clinton Driffield, the chief constable, and Inspector Flamborough, who will be in charge of the case.
But while that maid quite clearly was murdered…the deaths of those other two people, including the young man who was the shooting victim, are not necessarily murders. Either or both could be murder…or accident…or suicide. That leads to the situation outlined in the title of the book - The Case with Nine Solutions. And please don’t be put off by my description, which is making the book sound a great deal drier than it really is. There are some very interesting characters – some appealing, but many of the others quite unpleasant. And there’s no shortage of action, including another murder, leading up to an explosive ending.
It is refreshing to see Connington's books returning to print and to e-book. In writing about Connington in his book, Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery, mystery scholar Curtis Evans calls The Case with Nine Solutions "one of Connington's very finest works and one of the best English mysteries from the 1920s...[It] is a fine example of the classical form, offering an intellectually engaging puzzle as well as characters that seem surprisingly modern in some ways; and it merits reading today, just as it did over eighty years ago." As for me, I must admit there are other Connington books that I found more engaging - particularly Murder in the Maze - but I do recommend The Case with Nine Solutions as another of those marvelous Golden Age fair-play mysteries that challenge the reader to interpret the clues given to the detective - and get to the answer first.
The Case with Nine Solutions is another of my entries - fifteen so far! - in the ongoing Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge at the My Reader's Block blog, this time in the category called "Murder by the Numbers." You'll find some remarkably good classic mysteries being discussed there.