Perhaps we really should repair the locks and bolts on the Classic Mysteries vault - they always seem to be getting involved in seemingly impossible mysteries! Or at least that's how we might apportion the blame. Seemingly impossible crimes in certified-locked rooms were a specialty of many authors in the Golden Age, and their books continue to stoke my own enjoyment of such mysteries. Certainly a mystery named Sealed Room Murder sounds as if it promises an evening's worth of entertainment spent unraveling one of those mysteries which couldn't have happened - but did. The book, written by Rupert Penny in 1941, sets out to baffle us with maps, diagrams, drawings and charts contributing to the fun. And, yes, you will be given the clues you need to figure out how a baffling murder was committed. Will you rise to the challenge? Here's the audio review I did of Sealed Room Murder for the Classic Mysteries podcast nearly a decade ago - as usual, somewhat edited for clarity and availability:
- 0 -
Here’s a quotation worth thinking about for locked-room mystery lovers:
“All sealed-room murders, whether in books or real life, have the same objects: first to remove the victim or victims, secondly to balk investigation. If you can trick the police into believing that somebody performed a miracle, you’re safe from anything worse than suspicion. The essential quality of a miracle is that it can’t be explained, and what can’t be explained isn’t punishable.”
The speaker, of course, is a fictional character, Chief Inspector Edward Beale of New Scotland Yard. He speaks because he is in the middle of investigating an absolutely impossible crime – one of those murders that couldn’t possibly have happened, yet did. The case is called Sealed Room Murder, by Rupert Penny, a British author who wrote towards the end of the Golden Age period between the two world wars. His books are largely forgotten today. Based on his last novel, Sealed Room Murder, that seems a pity. This 1941 impossible crime novel is now back in print, giving a new generation of readers – including me – a chance to discover an amazingly well-done locked room mystery.
Sealed Room Murder tends to move rather slowly, from a modern reader’s vantage point, but the slowness is due in part to the author’s thoroughness in setting up the impossible crime that is at the heart of this mystery.
We are presented with a thoroughly unpleasant woman, living in a house along with the relatives of her late husband – and thoroughly detested by just about everyone who knows her. We are told quite early in the book that this woman, Mrs. Harriett Steele, is going to be murdered. She makes life miserable for the people who live with her – this is another of those stories where someone’s last will and testament has forced these people to live together in order to inherit eventual wealth. In return, someone in the house is playing very ugly tricks on Mrs. Steele – pouring ink over a drawer full of her underwear, smashing a cherished grandfather clock, carving chunks of wood out of a parquet floor. She calls in a private investigator, Tony Purdon, to try to find out who is responsible – for she means to have revenge on the vandals. And Purdon, though he quickly comes to detest Mrs. Steele just as the others in the house detest her, does begin questioning the residents of the house, along with the servants, trying to discover what’s going on.
What’s going on, of course, is an elaborate plot leading to murder: Mrs. Steele is eventually murdered (just as we have been told, repeatedly, that she would be killed) – but in an absolutely impossible way: she is stabbed in the back apparently while alone inside a room whose doors are locked and bolted. Fortunately for Tony Purdon, his friend, Chief Inspector Edward Beale of New Scotland Yard is called into the case. It is very hard to pull the wool over Inspector Beale’s eyes – and he will eventually, with Tony’s help, be able to explain the case. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Inspector Beale won’t buy the impossible aspects of the crime – for, as he points out repeatedly, obviously it can NOT have been impossible, because it happened. And his job will be to find out how it happened.
All of this is set up very carefully for the reader, for the author clearly is a believer in the idea that crime fiction is a grand game between the author, who must hide the clues in plain sight, and the reader who must properly interpret those clues. And it is worth noting that before presenting the solution to the problem, in the final chapter, the author tells us the following:
“The problem is now complete, the previous chapters containing all the data necessary to a full solution. Accordingly, who murdered Mrs. Steele? Or, for those readers who like hard work, how was the murder committed?”
That’s a pretty direct challenge, bringing to mind, for example, many of the early Ellery Queen novels, where that same kind of “challenge to the reader” was given a very similar formal presentation. Inspector Beale goes on to explain how it was done, and by whom. Be forewarned that this involves a number of charts and diagrams – certainly, for me, this makes it more difficult to believe that a murderer would go to that much trouble, but as a mystery with a locked room crime, it’s a fascinating and rather ingenious solution.
Rupert Penny only wrote eight mysteries (plus a ninth, under the name Martin Tanner), and most were long out of print. Now, Ramble House has brought back The Sealed Room Murder and all of the other Rupert Penny mysteries as well in "Print On Demand" editions. Based on my enjoyment of this one, I will be looking for the others as well.
- 0 -
You can listen to the original podcast review by clicking here.
Next: Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, by Stuart Palmer.