Knock, Murderer, Knock! Read online

  Harriet Rutland

  KNOCK, MURDERER, KNOCK!

  “I think,” said Palk slowly, “there’s a homicidal maniac loose in the Hydro, but who it is, God knows.”

  Presteignton Hydro is a drably genteel spa resort, populated by the aged and crippled who relish every drop of scandal they observe or imagine concerning the younger guests. No one however expects to see gossip turn to murder as their juniors die one by one – no one, that is, except the killer. The crusty cast of characters make solving the case all the harder for Inspector Palk – until the enigmatic sleuth Mr. Winkley arrives to lend a hand.

  Knock, Murderer, Knock! was Harriet Rutland’s sparkling debut mystery novel, first published in 1938. This edition, the first in over seventy years, features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  ‘Very well written, intelligent story of triple murder... acid characterization’ Kirkus Reviews

  “In the tea-room, and hovering round the card-tables, were a vast number of queer old ladies, and decrepit old gentlemen, discussing all the small talk and scandal of the day, with a relish and gusto which sufficiently bespoke the intensity of the pleasure they derived from the occupation.”

  MR. PICKWICK, at Bath.

  INTRODUCTION

  Until my research into the life of Harriet Rutland, occasioned by the welcome reprinting by Dean Street Press of her three classic detective novels, little was known about her beyond the fact that “Harriet Rutland” was a pseudonym concealing the name of one Olive Shimwell. In 2009 I queried whether anyone knew anything about Olive Shimwell, and even leading mystery genre scholar Allen J. Hubin pronounced himself stumped. Happily, we now know something about the life of the elusive Olive Shimwell, author of three of the most unjustly neglected English mysteries from the Golden Age of detective fiction, now back in print after more than seventy years.

  In 1926, in Harborne, a prosperous suburb of Birmingham (in England’s West Midlands), schoolteacher Olive Maude Seers (1901-1962), daughter of prominent Birmingham builder and decorator Joseph Seers, wed John Lester Shimwell (1901-1964), grandson of a monumental stonemason and himself a brewing microbiologist who a few years previously had received a degree in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham. John Shimwell worked for Mitchells and Butlers Brewery in Smethwick, another Birmingham suburb, but in 1931 he and Olive moved to Ireland, where he became the Head Brewer for Beamish and Crawford, a company headquartered in Cork, Ireland’s second largest city. The Shimwells would remain in Ireland until the outbreak of the Second World War, when John accepted a position as the head of the yeast research laboratory at the Whitbread Brewery in London.

  During the near decade they spent in Ireland the Shimwells resided at least part of the time not in Cork proper but at Hillside Cottage in St. Ann’s Hill, a tiny nearby community that in 1930 boasted a post and telegraph office, a railway station (four trains to and from Cork daily), several shops, thirteen desirable residences and, last but not least, St. Ann’s Hill Hydropathic Establishment, opened by pioneering hydropathist Dr. Richard Barter in 1843 and still in operation throughout the 1930s, when the Shimwells dwelt in the vicinity. The Hydro, promoted “as a residence for invalids and accommodation for tourists to the region,” boasted, in addition to its hydrotherapy facilities, eighty bedrooms, a circulating library, a reading room, a theatre, a billiard room, tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course and “an American bowling alley” (see Tarquin Blake’s Abandoned Ireland website).

  When, sometime around 1937, Olive Shimwell decided to try her hand at mystery writing, surely nothing was more natural, given her years of residence at St. Ann’s Hill, than for the author to stage her first “Harriet Rutland” murder extravaganza--published in England in 1938 under the title Knock, Murderer, Knock!--at a hydro hotel. Knock, Murderer, Knock! succeeds splendidly not only as a clever puzzle but as an acerbically amusing satirical portrayal of genteel hotel society. In A Catalogue of Crime the authoritative genre critics Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor compare Knock, Murderer, Knock!, which they pronounce “shows a good intelligence at work,” to Leo Bruce’s classic 1962 mystery Nothing Like Blood, but I was also reminded of John Rhode’s nearly exactly contemporaneous 1939 detective novel Death on Sunday, wherein the author draws commensurately acid pen portraits of his hoity-toity guest house subjects, though not quite with Rutland’s remarkable literary flair.

  Although Shimwell took care to cloak her true identity behind her Harriet Rutland pseudonym, she also adopted the additional obscuring course of transferring the locale of her imaginary hotel, Presteignton Hydro, to Devon, England. (Presteignton may be based on Paignton, a real Devon town located near Torquay, home of Agatha Christie, just as the novel’s fictional Newton St. Mary may be based on Newton Abbot, the Devon town where Olive Shimwell moved after her divorce from John in the mid-1940s and where she would pass away in 1962.) Given her withering portrayal of many of the characters in Knock, Murderer, Knock!, Shimwell’s evasive actions seem reasonably prudent.

  Among the ghastly gallery readers will find at Presteignton Hydro are Mrs. Napier, a batty exhibitionist who pretends she is too frail to walk (“She’s down again, miss.”); blind and blunt Miss Brendon (“Senna pods were good enough for my mother, they ought to be good enough for me. I’ve had no action for six days!”) and her loyal maid Ada Rogers (“Oh, no, miss... Two days, miss, it is, and time yet.”); proudly pious Miss Astill (“Psalms and a sermon once a week are what everyone needs, I say.”); painfully proper Mrs. Marston (“I’m no believer in letting youth have its fling. It’s only asking for trouble these days, especially with girls.”); and snobbish and imperious Lady Warme, who, to her secret shame, worked in her father’s shop as a girl and married a man who owed both his fortune and his title to his widely-used Patent Cornflour.

  The favorite form of recreation for these good ladies is indulging in censorious gossip about other Hydro inmates, especially young and pretty Miss Blake and handsome Sir Humphrey Chervil. Shimwell handles with facility a large cast of characters at Presteignton Hydro that includes, in addition to those individuals mentioned above, the hydro owner, Dr. Williams, and his secretary, nurse, housekeeper, and young daughter; Mrs. Marston’s husband, two teenage daughters and the Marston chauffeur; a couple of retired military men, crossword-loving Admiral Unwin and knitting hobbyist Colonel Simcox; and the aspiring mystery writer Mrs. Dawson and her young son Bobby.

  In a memorable bit of genre parody, Mrs. Dawson (“that blasted woman thriller-writer” another character derisively terms her) views everything that occurs around her at the Hydro as potential material for her books. “[T]here have to be several murders in the book,” pronounces Mrs. Dawson on the fine art of mystery writing. “Two or three, at least. The reading public nowadays is never satisfied with only one murder.” When murder strikes most viciously at the Presteignton Hydro, it is up to stolid Inspector Palk, with the help of Sergeant Jago, to untangle the horrid affair; but after a second decidedly unnatural death takes place it becomes clear that the good inspector is in over his head. Fortunately, at this point it appears that an amateur detective is in the offing, quite eager to lend Inspector Palk a hand. Has this person turned up in time to prevent the third murder that, according to Mrs. Dawson, the Golden Age reading public demanded in its mysteries?

  A strikingly assured performance for a first-time mystery writer, Knock, Murderer, Knock! compares so favorably with the work of Shimwell’s great British Crime Queen contemporaries--Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh--that one might justly dub Harriet Rutland an heir presumptive. In addition to its beautifully designed clue puzzle, the debut Rutland novel has witty writing, a memorable setting, fin
ely drawn characters, moments of shock, poignancy and romance and lashings of literary allusions. The novel’s title alludes to a line in Macbeth and it opens with an apt epigraph from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, while throughout the text there are references to classic literature. My favorite example is when the incorrigible Miss Blake, asked to read aloud to the ladies of the Hydro while they perform their needlework, chooses scandalous passages from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, provoking this exchange with Lady Warme:

  “Of all the low, immoral books. But I’m not surprised. That is just the kind of literature I imagined you would choose. I don’t wonder that the youth of today is corrupt, with that kind of dirt lying on every library shelf for young hands to reach.”

  Miss Blake corrected her with a smile.

  “Not every shelf, Lady Warme. It was banned in the Irish Free State, or Eire, as they call it now.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. It’s about the only decent thing I’ve ever heard about the Irish.”

  Knock, Murderer, Knock! was published in England in late 1938 and the United States early the following year. It was warmly received in both countries, with the Saturday Review, for example, pronouncing the novel an “exceptional” book; yet until now it had never been reprinted and had dropped almost entirely from public consciousness. As indicated above, Barzun and Taylor took favorable note of Rutland’s debut novel in 1971, but as far as I know no one mentioned the novel in the internet age until I included it on my list of 150 Favorite Golden Age British Detective Novels, posted at the website Mystery*File in 2010. Since then, Knock, Murderer, Knock! has been lavishly praised by vintage crime fiction blogger John Norris, who wrote of the novel: “A hardcore mystery fan couldn’t ask for a more literate and witty refresher in the genuine traditional mystery.” I concur. It is a great pleasure for me to have the chance to welcome Harriet Rutland into the ranks of revived classic mystery writers, as I can scarcely think of an individual more deserving of revival.

  Curtis Evans

  Chapter 1

  Mrs Napier walked slowly to the middle of the terrace, noted the oncoming car, looked round to make sure that she was fully observed, crossed her legs deliberately, and fell heavily on to the red gravel drive.

  “Just look at that old hag!” exclaimed Admiral Urwin, chuckling.

  “A bloomin’ acrobat, that’s what she is,” muttered Matthews, the chauffeur, who had just managed to bring the car to a standstill in front of her.

  Amy Ford, the chambermaid of the front corridor, leaned from an upper-storey window to shake a duster, and retired, convulsed with laughter, to call, “Molly, come here, do; she’s fallen down again. If that isn’t the fifth time this morning!” She jumped quickly back to her work as she heard the housekeeper’s sharp voice behind her: “Slacking as usual, Amy Ford!”

  “She’s down again, miss,” commented Ada Rogers, Miss Brendon’s personal maid, drawing the curtain back from the bedroom window.

  “Who? Who?” croaked her bedridden mistress, looking like an ill-fated owl.

  “Why, Mrs. Napier, to be sure, miss. She did ought to be in a loony home, that she ought, but they do say that her family’s that fond of her that they couldn’t abide to let her go.”

  “That woman ought not to be allowed to reside in the Hydro,” said Lady Warme indignantly. “She’s a public nuisance.”

  “But she’s grand copy, poor thing,” replied Mrs. Dawson, taking out her little red notebook.

  Miss Blake lifted her mascara-lidded blue eyes to Sir Humphrey Chervil, Baronet, who was affixing the orange-and-black striped canopy of her deck-chair over her head, and shrugged her smooth, bare shoulders.

  “It must be terrible to grow old,” she said, with a little assumed shudder. “If I ever thought that I should grow like that woman, I’d kill myself.”

  “You never will,” Sir Humphrey assured her, gazing with admiration at her stream-lined figure in its skin-tight sunbathing frock. “You’re a sight for the gods in that get-up, and whom the gods love, die young.”

  The little group of people on the croquet lawn looked up towards the terrace.

  “There she goes again!” exclaimed Winnie Marston.

  “Who? Tishy?” asked her younger sister, Millie, laughing.

  “Hush, girls. It’s unkind of you to take any notice of poor Mrs. Napier,” said their mother. “She’s not quite –”

  “They’re all ‘not quite’,” wheezed Mr. Marston asthmatically. “How I ever keep sane myself in this god-damned hole, I don’t know!”

  Colonel Simcox looked up from his deck-chair, snorted, and buried himself again in his newspaper.

  “My God!” ejaculated Dr. Williams, who was standing with his secretary, Miss Lewis, regarding the little scene from his surgery window. “One day I shall commit a murder in this place.”

  “The silly old fool!” said Nurse Hawkins, savagely stamping out a forbidden cigarette. “Now I suppose I shall have to go and pick her up.”

  Mrs. Napier lay still in an agony of mind.

  “No one is coming to help me,” she thought. “I shall have to get up by myself, then they’ll all laugh at me. No one knows what I suffer. Nobody understands. They wouldn’t leave me here if they did. It’s unkind of them, cruel. They know I can’t get up... Perhaps no one saw me. Perhaps I chose the wrong moment, when they were all looking the other way. But this chauffeur person saw me. He’s looking at me now; looking at me in a way that no man should look at a woman. I shall scream...”

  Miss Astill, a thin woman wearing an old-fashioned dress which had originally been black in colour, but now looked rust-brown in the morning sunlight, walked jerkily forward and spoke to the recumbent figure on the gravel.

  “What’s the matter, Mrs. Napier?” she asked softly. “Why don’t you get up?”

  Mrs. Napier rolled her eyes upwards and made a few movements with her body like a wounded bird.

  “I’m dying!” she gasped. “Poisoned! My enemies have had their revenge; they know that I have the King’s shoe. Oh, nobody knows what I go through in this dreadful place.”

  “God knows, dear,” soothed Miss Astill. “You must have faith. He will take care of you.”

  Two firm arms tightened around Mrs. Napier and raised her to her feet before she had realized what had happened. She clung hysterically to Miss Astill’s bony frame as Nurse Hawkins came running up to them.

  “What’s happened to you, Mrs. Napier?” asked the nurse.

  “Happened?” Mrs. Napier glared at her through her thick-lensed, gold-framed spectacles. “I’ve been lying here for hours. I might have died for all that you care. You all hate me. I’d far better be dead. I pray that you will never be like me.”

  “Amen to that!” exclaimed Nurse Hawkins fervently. Then, in softer tones, she added: “There, you’ll soon feel better now. Let me see if you can walk to the nearest pillar. Ups-a-daisy! Don’t fall down again; left, right, left, right. I’ll go and fetch the bath-chair for you.”

  The thought of the bath-chair acted like a spur, and Mrs. Napier began to walk slowly, still crossing her legs one over the other, to the pillars which supported the open, glass-covered verandah which ran round the south front of the Hydro. There she left her.

  “That dreadful nurse!” said Mrs. Napier. “She neglects me so. I think I shall have to go away from here. Nobody cares about me.” She began to whimper.

  “Oh no, you can’t mean that,” protested Miss Astill in her gentle, ladylike voice. “Nurse Hawkins is very trying, we know, but you must have patience with her. She has all the faults of an unbeliever. But you must never think of leaving the Hydro. Where else would you ever find such comfort and peace, and anyone so thoughtful as the dear, kind doctor? The one fear of my life is that I might have to live somewhere else. You surely could not deliberately choose to go away. Besides, we should all miss you so much.”

  Mrs. Napier smiled.

  “Perhaps I spoke hastily,” she said. “If you want me to st
ay, of course, I will. You are always so kind.”

  “That’s right,” replied Miss Astill with an encouraging smile. “Now I must leave you. I am going to take my morning exercise along the shrubbery path.” She jerked herself away.

  Mrs. Napier began dusting down the front of her shapeless brown woollen cardigan suit with a large silk handkerchief. A burst of laughter from the croquet lawn arrested her attention, and she looked up.

  “Those horrid Marstons,” she thought. She could never make up her mind which of the four she hated the most; the supercilious mother, the bad-tempered father, or the two stupid, giggling girls. What did any of them know about suffering like hers?

  Another laugh. Mrs. Napier glared suspiciously at them.

  Were they laughing at her? No, it was at Mr. Marston, who was driving all the croquet balls off the edge of the lawn because he was annoyed at losing the game. And his language! Really, she could not stay and listen to it.

  She made two steps, crabwise, holding on to the nearest pillar, then relaxed as she saw that they were not going to play any more. As they walked away Mr. Marston’s loud voice could be heard discussing, like any bridge-player, every wrong stroke which had been made during the whole course of the game, both by his partner and by his opponents.

  Mrs. Napier looked beyond the croquet lawn to the grassy edge of the bright-red cliff, and across the sunlit sweep of Devonshire Bay to the opposite arm of land from which the distant, vast expanse of Dartmoor rose in a dim purple haze. The thought of the moors soothed her. As she stood there on the terrace gazing across towards them, a deep peace enfolded her, and she forgot the troubles of the morning. It was thus that the moors had looked down with unchanging brows on the troubles of countless generations, so big were they, so calm, so remote.

  She remembered the time when they had not been so remote to her. Thirty-five years ago she and Mortimer had spent their honeymoon on those same moors, and had tramped for hours among the tors. She in a short plaid cape and long tweed skirt, and he in ulster and deerstalker, with a half-plate camera strapped to his back. What fun that camera had brought to them! How often had they been turned away and refused food and shelter because some worthy farmer’s wife had mistaken it for a pedlar’s pack or for part of the equipment of the scorned tinker folk.