From the Vault: "Case for Three Detectives"

Those of us who enjoy mysteries in general and Golden Age mysteries in particular are all too familiar with this situation: A murder is committed. The police (or other official law enforcement agents) are stumped. Then along comes our protagonist hero, male or female, to show the police what really happened, and, more often than not, the protagonist succeeds where the official investigator fails. Oh well, it's all fiction - often very good fiction indeed, but still fiction. So it's pleasant, every once in a while, to meet a great detective - or several of them - who fall flat on their amateur faces, while the much-scorned official investigator walks away with the prize (or at least, arrests the evil killer).

Consider, if you will, Sergeant Beef, the beer-loving, darts-playing hero of Leo Bruce's 1936 classic Case for Three Detectives. The good sergeant is shunted to one side when three Great Detectives (the capitals, I think, are absolutely required) take over the investigation. And he stays on the sidelines as each of the three interlopers comes up with a brilliant solution to the case. Unfortunately, they can't all agree on a single solution...

Here's what I had to say about Case for Three Detectives on the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago, as always tweaked and polished a bit:

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A murder is committed in a locked room. Sounds like it could be a difficult case to solve. Not necessarily, though, when three of the best – and best-known – amateur private detectives arrive on the scene to take over from the hapless and helpless police. Should be no problem in such expert hands, right? Let’s find out – in Case for Three Detectives, by Leo Bruce.

Leo Bruce was the pen name of Rupert Croft-Cooke, the author of two series of detective stories. The first featured the work of a police detective, Sergeant Beef; the second series, written after the Sergeant Beef stories, concerned the amateur detective work of Carolus Deane. Today’s book, Case for Three Detectives, features Sergeant Beef – and, in fact, was the first of Bruce’s mysteries, published at the height of the Golden Age in 1936. And it is most unusual.

First of all, there’s the murder itself – the death of a woman in a room which is effectively sealed, the door not only locked but double-bolted. Yet the victim is found with throat cut – and no weapon in the room. There appears to be no way anyone could have escaped.

A baffling problem – perhaps. The case is turned over to Sergeant Beef, who is the local police detective on the spot. He is a fairly blunt, straightforward man. The guests at the English house party quite frankly doubt the good sergeant’s abilities. So when three famous amateur detectives show up on the doorstep offering to help, they are welcomed by everyone – with the possible exception of Sergeant Beef, who has been given orders to hold off on his own investigations until the three amateurs have had a chance to go at it.

And who are these three amateurs? They are likely to be familiar to mystery readers in everything but name.

First, there is Lord Simon Plimsoll, a fairly effete nobleman, with a fanatically-devoted manservant who provides him with photographs, clues, and regular swigs of Napoleon Brandy.

Then there is the very Gallic Monsieur Amer Picon, who utters cryptic remarks – half the time in French – while striking up  conversations with the key players in the drama to help him understand the character of the victim and suspects.

And finally, there is the nondescript little Catholic Priest, Monsignor Smith, much given to flights of philosophy and long clerical conversations.

If they sound like three very familiar characters…they should. Case for Three Detectives, in addition to being a fine locked-room mystery, is an excellent satire, using take-offs on Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and G. K. Chesteron’s Father Brown to poke some well-deserved fun at them and, even more significantly, at their methods of detection. For while the characters all contemptuously ignore or sideline Sergeant Beef, we are shown the three Great Detectives at work. And, curiously enough, as they wander through the book, asking questions, examining evidence, and following an entire sea’s worth of red herrings, the three great detectives put their extraordinary skills to work – and come up with three absolutely brilliant solutions.

The only problem, of course, being that they are all wrong.

And while Sergeant Beef is very impressed by their imaginative detective work, and admires the three detectives greatly, it is up to him to arrest the real criminal and explain how the murder really was committed inside that locked room. But then, as the good sergeant had been saying practically since the beginning of the book, "I know who done it."

Case for Three Detectives, by Leo Bruce, is one of the most unusual classic mysteries you’re ever likely to read. It is very funny – he has the mannerisms of the three detectives (and some of the identifying characteristics provided by their authors) very nicely defined. And it’s also a good, impossible crime story – and, in fact, ALL the solutions (including the correct one from Sergeant Beef) are likely to strike the reader as quite legitimate – if occasionally far-fetched. If you enjoy Sayers, Christie and Chesterton, you really should see how neatly they and their detectives are skewered in Case for Three Detectives.

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You can listen to the original podcast by clicking here.

 

Comments

[Les Blatt]

As it happens, mystery historian Curtis Evans posted an interesting and quite relevant entry about Sgt. Beef (and Sgt. Cribb and others) on his blog, The Passing Tramp (at http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2018/04/some-time-for-sergeants-consideration.html ). As always with his posts, it is well worth your reading time.