The Draycott Murder Mystery: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Molly Thynne

  The Draycott Murder Mystery

  There was something about those hands, with their strangely crisped fingers, as though they had been arrested in the very act of closing, that somehow gave the lie to the woman’s attitude of sleep.

  A howling gale … A lonely farmhouse … the tread of a mysterious stranger … and then the corpse of a beautiful blonde, seemingly stopped in the act of writing.

  This is all a bit much for local bobby PC Gunnet, especially when it seems the dead – and aristocratic – woman shouldn’t even have been there in the first place. But nonetheless the owner of the farm, John Leslie, is convicted, and his guilt looks certain. Certain, that is, until the eccentric Allen “Hatter” Fayre, an old India hand, begins to look more deeply into the case and discovers more than one rival suspect in this classic and satisfying puzzler.

  The Draycott Murder Mystery, a whodunit hinging enigmatically on the evidence of a fountain pen, was first published in 1928. This new edition, the first for many decades, includes a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  About the Author

  Titles by Molly Thynne

  The Murder on the Enriqueta – Title Page

  The Murder on the Enriqueta – 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 wind swept down the crooked main street of the little village of Keys with a shriek that made those fortunate inhabitants who had nothing to tempt them from their warm firesides draw their chairs closer and speculate as to the number of trees that would be found blown down on the morrow.

  All through the month of March it had rained, almost without ceasing, and now, in the fourth week, the north of England had been visited by an icy gale which had already lasted two days and showed no signs of abating. The lanes, that for weeks had been knee-deep in mud, had dried with almost miraculous swiftness and the more frugal of the cottagers had gleaned a fine store of wood from the branches with which they were strewn. To-night they were thankful to sit indoors and enjoy the fruits of their industry.

  The gale swept on its devastating way across the open meadow-land that surrounded Keys, increasing every moment in violence and causing the timbers of the small farmhouse which stood at the end of a blind lane about a mile from the village to creak and groan under its terrific onslaught.

  The front door of the house stood open and, with each gust of wind, it swung with a heavy thud against the inside wall of the dark passage, but no one came to close it and there was no light at any of the windows of the apparently deserted house.

  Once the gale dropped for a moment and the monotonous barking of a dog in a distant farmhouse could be heard; beyond this there was no sound but the renewed, long-drawn howl of the wind, the protesting creak of the trees as the heavy branches were swept across each other, and the dull thud of the swinging door.

  The sun had set and it was already dark when the first sound of footsteps was heard in the lane. The walker approached quickly, with an odd, shuffling tread that became almost noiseless as he neared the house. Arrived at the gate which led into the little front garden, he paused for a moment, then, without opening it, slid away like a shadow in the direction of the barn that stood on the other side of the farmyard. Whatever his business may have been there he made no sound, and for nearly an hour after he had passed the farmhouse stood silent and deserted and the open door continued to swing monotonously on its hinges.

  Then a second shadow loomed out of the darkness of the lane. This time there was the click of the latch as the newcomer opened the gate and went quickly up the path to the front door. Here he paused with a sharp exclamation of surprise, then passed on into the hallway beyond. There was the scratch and flare of a match, followed by a steadier glow as he lit an oil-lamp that stood by the door. Carrying the lamp, he went first to the front door and examined the latch to see that it was undamaged before closing it. Then he passed on into the little kitchen at the back of the house, placed the lamp on the table, and was about to put a light to the fire when he discovered that his matches had run out. He had used the last one to light the lamp.

  With an exclamation of annoyance he picked up the lamp once more and made his way to the sitting-room, one of the two rooms that lay right and left of the front door. He moved quickly, his mind intent on the food and warmth he needed badly, for he had walked a long way in the bitter wind and was feeling both hungry and tired. Dazzled by the glare of the lamp in his eyes, he was already well inside the door of the sitting-room when he saw the thing that pulled him up with a jerk as sharp as though some one had laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

  He stood arrested, holding the lamp at such an angle that it smoked violently. But the black fumes drifted past his nose unheeded.

  For the room which he had thought untenanted save for himself held yet another occupant.

  Seated at the writing-table facing the door, her arms outflung across it and her head pillowed on the open blotter between them, was a woman.

  From where he stood he could see only the top of her head, a tangle of fair curls that gleamed yellow as spun gold in the lamplight, and the rich fur collar of the coat in which she was wrapped. He could see her hands, too, and the sparkle of her rings. There was something about those hands, with their strangely crisped fingers, as though they had been arrested in the very act of closing, that somehow gave the lie to the woman’s attitude of sleep.

  But it was not her hands or the beauty of her hair that held the eyes of the man at the door. They were glued to the open blotter and the stain which had spread across it, a stain which had already stiffened the fair curls that lay so still upon the once white paper into hard little rings and which was even now fading from its first bright scarlet into a dull rust.

  He stood motionless, oblivious of the acrid odour of the smoking lamp, then, with an effort, pulled himself together and crossed the room. Placing the light on the mantelpiece, he bent over the woman and laid his hand gently on hers; but he knew, even before he touched her, that she was beyond all human aid. Raising the thick fair hair at the side of her head he revealed a wound in the temple from which the blood had already ceased to flow.

  As he straightened himself after his brief examination, his eyes went instinctively to the window; but he was not quick enough.

  Had he been a second earlier he would have seen the white face of a man, pressed against the glass outside, taking in every detail of the room and its grim occupant. As he was in the very act of raising his head the watcher ducked below the sill of the window and when, a few minutes later, he ran out of the front door, after a hurried search through the house, there was no one either in the barn or any of the outhouses.

  The unseen watcher at the window had vanished like a shadow into the darkness of the night.

  CHAPTER II

  Police Constable George Gunnet bent down with a grunt of satisfaction and slowly unlaced his second boot. He was not a quick mover at the best of times and the pleasant kitchen, with its glowing fire and appetizing aroma of toasted cheese, was conducive to drowsiness. He had just come in from his last round and, to one fresh from the wild night outside, the kitchen was a haven of peace and comfort. His tunic hung over the back of a chair and he sat, very much at ease, in his shirt-sleeves, waiting for Mrs. Gunnet to finish her bustling preparations for the supper he felt he had more than earned.

  “Nobody been, I suppose?” he asked, according to custom, as he filled his pipe.

  “Who should have been?” his wife countered tartly. Mrs. Gunnet had once, some twenty years ago, been in service
in Glasgow and, as she often said, never could get used to a dead-alive little place like Keys. “Nothing ever happens here, as I’m aware of.” Gunnet stretched his legs luxuriously towards the warm glow of the fire.

  “There’s quite enough happening for me, if it’s all the same to you,” he said comfortably. “There’s a big elm down in Fanning’s meadow and there’ll be more before morning if this goes on. All I could do to stand up against the wind at the Four Corners and it fair blew me home. Oye, shut the door, can’t you?” He made a grab at the newspaper as, in the path of the wind, it leaped from the table and scudded across the room into a corner. It was followed by a half-empty packet of tobacco which he was too late to save.

  “Here, will you shut that door!” he shouted, his head half under the table. Then, emerging and catching sight of the visitor: “Beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie; I didn’t see as it was you. What with that outer door opening straight onto this room like, the wind comes in something cruel.”

  But Mrs. Gunnet’s sharp eyes had already detected something unusual in the caller’s bearing.

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there, sir?” she broke in. “Was you coming after George?”

  The newcomer nodded. He was panting with the haste in which he had come and his face had a queer, grey look underneath the natural tan of an open-air man. When he spoke it was in a hard, dry voice, carefully devoid of all emotion, as if he were afraid that, at any moment, it might get beyond his control.

  “I say, Gunnet, I want you up at the farm. Something’s happened.”

  He stopped, apparently not wishing to go further before Mrs. Gunnet, who was gazing at him, her round eyes wide with curiosity.

  Gunnet got slowly to his feet.

  “Anything wrong, Mr. Leslie?” he asked. “It’s a wild night, for certain, but if I’m really needed …”