The Murder on the Enriqueta: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Molly Thynne

  The Murder on the Enriqueta

  News travels quickly and mysteriously on board ship. By the time lunch was over, the rumour began to spread that Mr. Smith’s death had not been due to natural causes.

  The bibulous Mr Smith was no pillar of virtue. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Enriqueta, he met someone he knew on board at midnight – and was strangled. Chief Inspector Shand of the Yard, a fellow traveller on the luxury liner, takes on the case, ably assisted by his friend Jasper Mellish. At first the only clue is what the steward saw: a bandaged face above a set of green pyjamas. But surely the crime can be connected to Mr Smith’s former – and decidedly shady – compatriots in Buenos Aires?

  The Murder on the Enriqueta (1929: originally called The Strangler in the US) is a thrilling whodunit, including an heiress in peril and a jazz age nightclub among its other puzzle pieces. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  Unless I’m much mistaken, you will find yourself unwilling

  To lay aside a yarn so crammed with situations thrilling.

  (To say nothing of a villain with a gruesome taste in killing.)

  Punch

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Curtis Evans

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  Titles by Molly Thynne

  The Case of Sir Adam Braid – Title Page

  The Case of Sir Adam Braid – Chapter One

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Although British Golden Age detective novels are known for their depictions of between-the-wars aristocratic life, few British mystery writers of the era could have claimed (had they been so inclined) aristocratic lineage. There is no doubt, however, about the gilded ancestry of Mary “Molly” Harriet Thynne (1881-1950), author of a half-dozen detective novels published between 1928 and 1933. Through her father Molly Thynne was descended from a panoply of titled ancestors, including Thomas Thynne, 2nd Marquess of Bath; William Bagot, 1st Baron Bagot; George Villiers, 4th Earl of Jersey; and William Bentinck, 2nd Duke of Portland. In 1923, five years before Molly Thynne published her first detective novel, the future crime writer’s lovely second cousin (once removed), Lady Mary Thynne, a daughter of the fifth Marquess of Bath and habitué of society pages in both the United Kingdom and the United States, served as one of the bridesmaids at the wedding of the Duke of York and his bride (the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). Longleat, the grand ancestral estate of the marquesses of Bath, remains under the ownership of the Thynne family today, although the estate has long been open to the public, complete with its famed safari park, which likely was the inspiration for the setting of A Pride of Heroes (1969) (in the US, The Old English Peep-Show), an acclaimed, whimsical detective novel by the late British author Peter Dickinson.

  Molly Thynne’s matrilineal descent is of note as well, for through her mother, Anne “Annie” Harriet Haden, she possessed blood ties to the English etcher Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), her maternal grandfather, and the American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), a great-uncle, who is still renowned today for his enduringly evocative Arrangement in Grey and Black no. 1 (aka “Whistler’s Mother”). As a child Annie Haden, fourteen years younger than her brilliant Uncle James, was the subject of some of the artist’s earliest etchings. Whistler’s relationship with the Hadens later ruptured when his brother-in-law Seymour Haden became critical of what he deemed the younger artist’s dissolute lifestyle. (Among other things Whistler had taken an artists’ model as his mistress.) The conflict between the two men culminated in Whistler knocking Haden through a plate glass window during an altercation in Paris, after which the two men never spoke to one another again.

  Molly Thynne grew up in privileged circumstances in Kensington, London, where her father, Charles Edward Thynne, a grandson of the second Marquess of Bath, held the position of Assistant Solicitor to His Majesty’s Customs. According to the 1901 English census the needs of the Thynne family of four--consisting of Molly, her parents and her younger brother, Roger--were attended to by a staff of five domestics: a cook, parlourmaid, housemaid, under-housemaid and lady’s maid. As an adolescent Molly spent much of her time visiting her Grandfather Haden’s workroom, where she met a menagerie of artistic and literary lions, including authors Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.

  Molly Thynne--the current Marquess has dropped the “e” from the surname to emphasize that it is pronounced “thin”--exhibited literary leanings of her own, publishing journal articles in her twenties and a novel, The Uncertain Glory (1914), when she was 33. Glory, described in one notice as concerning the “vicissitudes and love affairs of a young artist” in London and Munich, clearly must have drawn on Molly’s family background, though one reviewer reassured potentially censorious middle-class readers that the author had “not over-accentuated Bohemian atmosphere” and in fact had “very cleverly diverted” sympathy away from “the brilliant-hued coquette who holds the stage at the commencement” of the novel toward “the plain-featured girl of noble character.”

  Despite good reviews for The Uncertain Glory, Molly Thynne appears not to have published another novel until she commenced her brief crime fiction career fourteen years later in 1928. Then for a short time she followed in the footsteps of such earlier heralded British women crime writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margaret Cole, Annie Haynes (also reprinted by Dean Street Press), Anthony Gilbert and A. Fielding. Between 1928 and 1933 there appeared from Thynne’s hand six detective novels: The Red Dwarf (1928: in the US, The Draycott Murder Mystery), The Murder on the “Enriqueta” (1929: in the US, The Strangler), The Case of Sir Adam Braid (1930), The Crime at the “Noah’s Ark” (1931), Murder in the Dentist’s Chair (1932: in the US, Murder in the Dentist Chair) and He Dies and Makes No Sign (1933).

  Three of Thynne’s half-dozen mystery novels were published in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, but none of them were reprinted in paperback in either country and the books rapidly fell out of public memory after Thynne ceased writing detective fiction in 1933, despite the fact that a 1930 notice speculated that “[Molly Thynne] is perhaps the best woman-writer of detective stories we know.” The highly discerning author and crime fiction reviewer Charles Williams, a friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and editor of Oxford University Press, also held Thynne in high regard, opining that Dr. Constantine, the “chess-playing amateur detective” in the author’s Murder in the Dentist’s Chair, “deserves to be known with the Frenches and the Fortunes” (this a reference to the series detectives of two of the then most highly-esteemed British mystery writers, Freeman Wills Crofts and H.C. Bailey). For its part the magazine Punch drolly cast its praise for Thynne’s The Murder on the �
��Enriqueta” in poetic form.

  The Murder on the “Enriqueta” is a recent thriller by Miss Molly Thynne,

  A book I don’t advise you, if you’re busy, to begin.

  It opens very nicely with a strangling on a liner

  Of a shady sort of passenger, an out-bound Argentiner.

  And, unless I’m much mistaken, you will find yourself unwilling

  To lay aside a yarn so crammed with situations thrilling.

  (To say nothing of a villain with a gruesome taste in killing.)

  There are seven more lines, but readers will get the amusing gist of the piece from the quoted excerpt. More prosaic yet no less praiseful was a review of Enriqueta in The Outlook, an American journal, which promised “excitement for the reader in this very well written detective story … with an unusual twist to the plot which adds to the thrills.”

  Despite such praise, the independently wealthy Molly Thynne in 1933 published her last known detective novel (the third of three consecutive novels concerning the cases of Dr. Constantine) and appears thereupon to have retired from authorship. Having proudly dubbed herself a “spinster” in print as early as 1905, when she was but 24, Thynne never married. When not traveling in Europe (she seems to have particularly enjoyed Rome, where her brother for two decades after the First World War served as Secretary of His Majesty’s Legation to the Holy See), Thynne resided at Crewys House, located in the small Devon town of Bovey Tracey, the so-called “Gateway to the Moor.” She passed away in 1950 at the age of 68 and was laid to rest after services at Bovey Tracey’s Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit. Now, over sixty-five years later, Molly Thynne’s literary legacy happily can be enjoyed by a new generation of vintage mystery fans.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  The Enriqueta was a new boat with her reputation still in the making and, so far, luck had been on her side. She had accomplished her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Buenos Aires in record time, partly owing to her speed, but more largely to phenomenally good weather, and now, on her return journey and already thirteen days out from Brazil, it looked as though she were going to repeat the performance.

  She was carrying her full complement of passengers and the crowd in the smoking room was of the size and quality that only goes with calm weather and an oily sea. Even the most saffron-hued among the Latin-Americans were enjoying their cigars wholeheartedly and the smoke clouds hung motionless on the heavy air of the stuffy, over-decorated saloon. To one fresh from the coolness of the deck the atmosphere, a rich compound of mingled tobacco, alcohol and humanity, came almost as a physical rebuff and, by eleven o’clock, it had driven all but the most hardened of the card players to their cabins. At a few of the tables, however, the play still went on steadily, accompanied by an almost equally steady consumption of liquid refreshment.

  It was close on midnight before the first of the card-parties broke up. The interruption came from a plump little man whose luck had been out for the last three nights and who had earned for himself the reputation of being one of the heaviest drinkers on board.

  “I’m through,” he announced, rising unsteadily to his feet. “God, what a night!”

  “Keep your tail up. The voyage isn’t over yet, you know.”

  The speaker, a spare, long-limbed cattle rancher, swung his chair round and stretched his legs. The half tolerant, half contemptuous note in his voice would have roused the anger of either of the other players, but it was a long time since the man he addressed had been in a position to resent the attitude of anyone undiscriminating enough to put up with his company.

  He stood, swaying slightly on his feet, the sweat glistening on his white face, his dull eyes fixed vacantly on the glass he had just emptied.

  “When I say I’m through, I mean it,” he said heavily. “And, what’s more …”

  He broke off, evidently thinking better of what he had been about to say. For a moment he stood staring at the men who had been his boon companions for the greater part of the voyage. He seemed to have some difficulty in finding his voice, but when he did speak it was to the point.

  “Curse you!” he said gently, his face devoid of all expression. But there was no doubt as to his sincerity. Then, without another word, he turned and left them.

  As he threaded his way clumsily in and out of the tables to the door, the laughter of the three men followed him and he cursed them again, softly, but venomously.

  He climbed to the upper deck and leaned over the rail, gazing out into the soft, starlit darkness. At first the cool air made him dizzy and it was some time before his brain began to clear and he was able to take stock of his position. As usual, the more he looked at it, the less he liked it. He had been pretty flush when he came on board and had won a very nice little sum during the first week. Then his luck had changed and he had been fool enough to go on playing. And there wasn’t a soul on board he could touch for a penny.

  His mind went back to the country he had left and tears of maudlin self-pity filled his eyes. He had been happy there, he told himself, until his wife had died and left him alone in the world. He had buried her, it is true, without a tear and had grudged her even the expense of the cheap funeral. It was only after her death that he began to miss her, or rather her pitiful earnings that had kept him in drinks during the greater part of their married life. For one short year he had supported her, working as correspondence clerk in a South American store, then he had thrown up his job, or the job had thrown up him, she had never been able to arrive at the true facts of the case, and it had dawned on her that she must go back to the stage if they were to live at all. For fifteen years the plan had worked admirably, from his point of view, and then she had died and left him stranded on a cold world. As he brooded over his loss, sagging against the rail of the Enriqueta, her desertion struck him as infinitely pathetic. After her death he had drifted along somehow, taking some curious bypaths on his way, until by chance he had fallen in with a member of his wife’s old company and had managed to touch him for a loan. With characteristic optimism he had invested the proceeds in a lottery ticket and had won enough to pay for his passage home and leave him a considerable sum in hand.

  Then, casting about for a further means of support, he had remembered his one remaining relative, a widowed sister. He had cabled to her, announcing his advent, in the role of heartbroken widower, and had shaken the dust of Buenos Aires off his feet, in the haste of his departure conveniently overlooking the repayment of the money he had borrowed from his wife’s old friend. And now he found himself stranded once more, this time on the high seas and with no prospect of replenishing his empty pockets.

  He pitied himself profoundly as he gazed across the dark waters, but even self-commiseration palls after a time and his mind began to dwell sentimentally on the sister he had not seen for nearly twenty years. He had last heard from her on the occasion of his father’s death three years before. Incidentally, the old man’s will had been infernally unjust, but he had never blamed her for that and certainly her letter had been, on the whole, friendly. It was apparent to him now that he had always been far fonder of her than she had realized. After all, blood was thicker than water, he reflected complacently, blissfully unaware that his cable was still undelivered, his sister having been in her grave for nearly two years. His name not being mentioned in her will, her lawyers had not thought it necessary to inform him of her death.

  Somewhat sobered, but still a prey to a gentle melancholy induced by the contemplation of his sad plight, he roused himself and made his way to his cabin.

  To reach it he had to pass a row of staterooms on the upper deck. Though his brain had cleared considerably since he had left the smoking room, his legs were still inclined to play him false and, half-way down the alley, he lurched suddenly and cannoned with his full weight against one of the stateroom doors.

  The catch must have been insecurely fastened, for it gave under the impact and he would have fallen headlong into the cabin if he had no
t clutched at the sill to steady himself.

  Sober enough to realize that he had committed an unwarrantable intrusion, he began to stammer a clumsy explanation.

  Then his eyes fell on the man whose privacy he had invaded and the apology died on his lips.

  “Good Lord,” he cried. “You! Well, of all the luck! My dear chap, where on earth have you been hiding yourself?”

  His voice was warm with the delighted surprise of a confirmed cadger who scents an unexpected victim.

  “Doing yourself proud, I must say,” he went on, oblivious of the ominous silence with which his effusive greeting had been received.

  Uninvited, he pushed his way into the cabin, closing the door behind him, and cast an approving eye round the luxurious stateroom.

  “Pretty snug, what?” he commented.

  Then, as his fuddled brain slowly took in certain aspects of the scene before him, his pale eyes narrowed and his expression changed to one of crafty appreciation.

  “I say, old chap,” he whispered. There was a wealth of meaning in his voice now. “Let me in on this. Where’s it all come from …”

  The sentence died away in a gasp, ending in a choking gurgle. Without a word, the man he addressed, who had neither opened his lips nor moved from his position opposite the door since the intruder’s unceremonious entry into his cabin, launched himself at the other’s throat. The attack was so swift and unexpected that it caught the other man unprepared. In any case he was in no condition to defend himself.

  There was a thud as his head struck the panelling of the door behind him, then the elbow of his assailant hit the electric light switch and plunged the cabin into darkness.

  For a space only the scraping of the two men’s feet upon the floor indicated the silent struggle that was in progress. It ceased abruptly with the dull sound of a heavy fall.