Death in the Dentist’s Chair: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Molly Thynne

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair

  Constantine reflected on the various means dentists have at their disposal should they wish to silence their patients …

  Mr Humphrey Davenport, society dentist, has an embarrassing problem – he has managed to get locked out of his own surgery. And to make matters worse, Mrs Charles Miller is locked inside, minus her false teeth. When the door is finally opened, the patient is found with her throat cut.

  Dr. Constantine, a fellow patient at the clinic, is a witness to the gruesome discovery. He lends his chess player’s brain to solving a locked room mystery with a difference, ably assisted by Detective-Inspector Arkwright. Was the murderer the theatrical Mrs Vallon? Or little Mr Cattistick, who recognized the fortune in jewels around the dead woman's neck? Or perhaps it was Sir Richard Pomfrey, the subject of an unusually venomous look from Mrs Miller shortly before her demise?

  Death in the Dentist’s Chair was first published in 1932. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes an 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

  About the Author

  Titles by Molly Thynne

  He Dies and Makes no Sign – Title Page

  He Dies and Makes no Sign – Chapter I

  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 yoursel
f 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 ONE

  “Rinse, please.”

  The words reached the patient faintly, coming, it seemed, from an immeasurable distance. Barely conscious though he was, he experienced the mere ghost of a sense of satisfaction. He was still alive, then.

  He opened his eyes. Mr. Humphrey Davenport was standing over him holding a glass full of a pinkish liquid in his hand, his long, yellow countenance wrinkled into an encouraging smile.

  “Rinse, please,” he repeated. This time the words came briskly and clearly.

  The patient sat up and rinsed obediently. The liquid, as it left his mouth, took on a much deeper shade of red, and, at the sight of it, the full significance of this weird ritual came home to him. He made a swift exploration with his tongue and discovered a truly awful void.

  “’Ou-ve thathen them au’ outh!” he ejaculated faintly.

  Long experience had made Mr. Davenport familiar with this form of elocution. He beamed.

  “All the upper incisors,” he assented cheerfully. “Eight altogether. They came out beautifully. Like to see them?”

  He held out a repulsive little tray before which his victim recoiled, the full sense of his loss slowly dawning on him. His front teeth had gone and nothing in the world would bring them back. He returned to his rinsing. There seemed nothing else to do and, as he bent over his task, he heard the door close softly behind the doctor. The whole ghastly business was over.

  The dentist chatted on.

  “We’ll give the gums time to recover and then fit you up with a temporary plate. Meanwhile, I should like to see the mouth again. Sometime tomorrow, if you can manage it.”

  The patient’s sense of humour had never been very conspicuous and, at the moment, it was greatly in abeyance, but even he could see the irony of such an implication.

  “I’m harthy lithy tho hathe athy enthathemeth,” he lisped bitterly. Then, with a more acute realisation of the disaster that had befallen him. “Goo’ Heatheth, I carth eveth torth dithincly!”

  Once more Mr. Davenport exhibited uncanny skill in interpretation.

  “You’ll soon get used to that,” he asserted reassuringly. “By tomorrow we shall have you talking splendidly. It’s only a question of habit.”

  He flicked over the leaves of his engagement book.

  “Three o’clock tomorrow, then,” he said. “And the address? You gave it to me, I remember, but, for the moment, I have forgotten.”

  The patient suspended his rinsing operations.

  “Therthothethy Thotheth,” he volunteered painfully.

  For a moment even Mr. Davenport was baffled.

  “Perthoaythy Hothay,” amended the patient, with an immense effort.

  The dentist’s face cleared.

  “Of course. The Pergolese Hotel. Mr. Cattistock.”

  Mr. Davenport inscribed a neat little card and handed it to him. Ten minutes later he was being bowed out and when, badly shaken, morally and physically, he returned to the waiting room, a large handkerchief pressed to the lower part of his face, he presented a spectacle calculated to inspire terror in the minds of any other of Mr. Davenport’s patients unfortunate enough to see him.

  There was only one. Sir Richard Pomfrey, already a prey to uneasiness, gave one glance in his direction and retired behind the decayed periodical in which he had been trying to interest himself.

  “Good Lord,” he murmured and wished, sincerely and devoutly, that the morning was over.

  A moment later his summons came and, squaring his shoulders, he strode out to meet his fate.

  One ordeal still remained to Mr. Cattistock. Left to himself, he rose shakingly to his feet and, approaching the mirror over the mantelpiece, removed the handkerchief from his mouth. He gave one glance at his reflection and, with a low moan, tottered back to his seat and retired once more behind his already nauseating yashmak.

  He sat huddled in his chair, slowly recovering from Mr. Davenport’s ministrations. The effects had been moral rather than physical and, as his mind readjusted itself, his despair increased. Never again, he felt convinced, would he enjoy the sound of his own voice, mellow and well-modulated, faultlessly articulating the noble prose he loved so well. He realised, now that it was too late, how sinfully proud he had been of his delivery. No doubt this was a judgment, and a just one, on his vanity.

  He had reached this depressing, but far from comforting, stage in his reflections when the door opened and another patient invaded his solitude. He regarded her over the edge of his handkerchief with the faint interest of the wholly miserable.

  She swept in, exuding opulence and well-being, and Mr. Cattistock, who in his normal state was a kindly, tolerant person, took an instant and violent dislike to her. And for this he had some excuse, though his mental denunciations were perhaps unnecessarily acrimonious. She was too fat, he told himself viciously, too old for her ultra-fashionable and expensive clothes, and altogether too dyed, painted and powdered. He took exception to the small, scarlet, bad-tempered mouth, but, most of all, he hated her for her teeth which showed, small and white and even, between the painted lips. Mr. Cattistock was an unsophisticated person and none too observant at the best of times and he had no inkling that those teeth owed their being to the skill of Mr. Humphrey Davenport. Had he known this, a faint ray of light might have illuminated his gloom. As it was he was thrust, if possible, even more deeply into the abyss by the atrocious manners of the newcomer, who gave one glance at his now revolting handkerchief, turned away with an exaggerated shudder of disgust and, pointedly altering the position of an armchair, sat down with her back to him. Mr. Cattistock loathed her as he crouched in his corner, trying to summon up sufficient energy to go away.

  From his position he could only see her hand now, fat, coarsely moulded and heavily beringed, the fingers beating an impatient tattoo on the arm of her chair. Insensibly he began appraising the rings which loaded the pudgy fingers. He possessed a love and appreciation of precious stones quite out of keeping with his circumstances and hated to see them in uncongenial surroundings. There was an emerald on her third finger that must have cost a fortune. Then she rose and, bending over the table, tossed the papers over impatiently in an attempt to find something to read. The full panoply of her regalia was now revealed to Mr. Cattistock and he gasped at the sight. For above the diamond star that heaved upon her bosom hung another emerald, the finest he had ever seen, and Mr. Cattistock, in his day, had handled some of the rarest jewels in the world.

  He was still blinking at it when the door opened to the sound of voices and Sir Richard Pomfrey came in, in animated conversation with
another patient he had encountered in the hall. His face showed the complacence of one whose visit to the dentist is over, but Cattistock, watching him idly, saw the satisfaction cloud for a second, as his eyes fell on the wearer of the emeralds. Then he turned away and gave all his attention to his companion. Cattistock, interested, cast a glance at the face of the stout lady and was shocked at the venom he saw there. Her lips parted, and he thought she was about to give expression to her feelings; then, before the little drama could develop further, the door opened and she was swept out of the room in the wake of Mr. Davenport’s deferential manservant. Sir Richard did not seem to notice her departure, but Cattistock could have sworn that there was relief in his eyes as he bent over the lady he was addressing. Everything about her was in delightful contrast to her predecessor, and Mr. Cattistock, even in his present jaundiced state, found pleasure in looking at her. He continued to do so until she happened to glance in his direction and he surprised a look of mingled sympathy and repugnance in her eyes. He glanced at his handkerchief and realised, with a shock, that it was deeply stained with red. Feeling suddenly abominably conspicuous, he rose and left the room.

  Sir Richard’s relief at his departure was undisguised. He hitched his chair closer to that of his companion and took up the conversation where it had ceased on their entrance into the room. For another five minutes or so it flowed on uninterruptedly and Mrs. Vallon had almost forgotten the aching tooth that had brought her to Mr. Davenport’s dread portals, when the turning of the door handle and the soft murmur of the manservant’s voice gave warning of a further intrusion.

  Sir Richard turned, with something approaching a scowl on his good-tempered face, and glowered at the new arrival. The latter, unperturbed, regarded him quizzically.

  Sir Richard’s annoyance vanished abruptly.

  “Dr. Constantine!” he exclaimed. “What’s brought you here?”