Had I but known the terrible secret that lurked in that cellar, I would never...
Whoops. Hold it. All I'm trying to say is that my most recent visit to the Classic Mysteries vault has yielded a delightful book from a woman who is mostly remembered for pioneering that "Had I But Known" school of mysteries. Mary Roberts Rinehart was one of the most popular mystery authors in the United States during the first half of the 20th Century She wrote more than just the Perils-of-Pauline type of mysteries in which the heroine usually could be relied upon to venture by herself into that mysterious cellar in the middle of the night to be trapped by some evil criminal, thus requiring rescue (in the nick of time) by the hero. I've enjoyed a number of Rinehart's books and done audio reviews on the Classic Mysteries podcast for several of them. One of my favorites among her books is The Yellow Room (1945). Here's a slightly edited transcript of my review, which I wrote several years ago:
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The hardships of World War II had not been kind to the Spencer family. Young Carol Spencer’s fiancé had been lost in the South Pacific. With rationing and the general privations of war on the civilian population, Carol’s mother managed to find a great deal to complain about. Her sister Elinor was totally self-centered, which means that a great deal of the burden of caring for her mother fell on Carol’s shoulders. Her brother, Greg, was in the army – he had, in fact, just been named for a Presidential medal of honor for his service. At any rate, when Carol’s mother decided she wanted to have the family’s summer home in Maine opened – despite the fact that the season hadn’t really started yet – it was Carol who wound up having to go from New York to Maine and open the house. What Carol found when she got to Maine, however, was something of a mess. The maid who was supposed to have opened the house with her has disappeared. There’s also no sign of the man who was supposed to do the gardening and heavy lifting around the place. The telephones were all gone – reclaimed by the war board, apparently. And there was an unpleasant smell throughout the house. But hey, there’s a war on – what did you folks expect?
And then another maid found the body of an unknown woman in an upstairs closet. And Carol – and her family – found themselves under suspicion of murder. And that was just the beginning. You’ll find the story in The Yellow Room, a 1945 book by one of the great American mystery writers, Mary Roberts Rinehart. While she was tremendously popular with American readers during the first half of the twentieth century, her books have largely slipped into obscurity over the past few decades. She is remembered largely for some of her early works, like The Circular Staircase or The Bat or The Man in Lower Ten, books that very clearly belong to what is often rather unflatteringly called the “Had I But Known” school. But Rinehart had a much longer, successful writing career, and I’m glad that readers are now having the opportunity to rediscover some of her books in electronic editions from OpenRoad Media.
One of those late mysteries is The Yellow Room, a book written during World War II, and a book which gives a pretty grim picture of what life was like then in an America on a war footing, with rationing of food and gasoline and other essentials, and much of the American population of young men off fighting a war from which many of them would never return.
That appears to be what happened to Carol Spencer’s fiancé in The Yellow Room, although the young man’s father – a neighbor of the Spencers in Maine – refuses to believe his son is dead – and that, too, is hard for Carol Spencer to handle. The finding of a woman’s body in the family home, however, proves to be only the beginning of a long and rather complicated plot – and Carol Spencer quickly finds herself a primary suspect, even though she insists she has no idea of the identity of the dead woman. That circle of suspicion soon includes most of the Spencer family, as the local police chief – it’s a one-man police force, because of the war – the local police chief believes somebody in the family must have known the victim and murdered her.
Another young man, though, is on Carol’s side – a Major Dane, a war hero now living in Maine as he recovers from a war injury. He’s something of an unknown quantity – where did he come from, and how come he gets involved in the case? The police chief is not happy about Dane’s interest in the case.
The plot grows more and more complex – in fact, I’d have to say there’s almost too much going on for most readers to follow, with more red herrings than I’d have thought possible. It’s hardly a fair play mystery; we are told periodically, for example, that a given character has learned some secret that explains some mysterious event, but that secret is not shared with us until the final unraveling of the plot.
On the other hand, I must also say that The Yellow Room is a real page turner. I frequently succumbed to the “Just one more chapter” reading routine, only to come to the end of the current chapter and be presented with a cliffhanger that forced me to read yet another chapter. As entertainment, The Yellow Room, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, is hard to beat.
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You can listen to the original audio room from the Classic Mysteries podcast by clicking here.
Next: A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie.
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