Is THIS the last swim of the year?

It probably should be, because this was in the big Seven Lake, and the waves were choppy and Frederick gave off "this is no longer fun" vibes.  But it's set to be another roaster tomorrow...

 

Film review: Ugetsu (1953)

Film number 47 in our box set is this little number, from the other (i.e., non-Kurosawa/Ozu) Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi. It's hard to say what's so great about it (many people have it rated very highly, Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese among them), but it certainly holds you in its grip over its runtime.  It's very simply told, without showy cinematography, although each scene is certainly vivid, and some of the on-lake or lakeside scenes are exquisite.  There's no particularly witty dialogue or grand speeches either.  It has the feel of a fairy story, which is appropriate, because that's basically what it is.

There are four main (adult) characters, as well as a young boy (who seems to be represented by a dummy in several scenes, which is a little distracting), all of whom start out living simple lives in a small village, and [SPOILER] most of whom return to those lives sadder and wiser at the end. 

The main couple are Genjuro, a farmer who prefers pottery (and turns out to be very good at it) and his gentle wife Miyagi.  Then there are the village dreamer Tobei, who yearns to be a samurai but has zero qualifications for the job, and his apparently shrewish wife (but really, she has a lot to put up with) Ohana.  Genjuro, Miyagi and their young son Genichi are a very happy little clan, 

but everyone's life is threatened by the ongoing civil war.  (The setting is the period 1568-1600.) As the film begins, Genjuro is just packing up his cart to go and sell his ceramics in the nearby town.  Miyagi is apprehensive, he cheerful - war is good for business, he insists.  He sets off with Tobei tagging along, much to Ohana's annoyance.  Just after he leaves, the village wise man tells Miyagi that no good can come of fast money in evil times, but when Genjuro returns, it is with a surprising amount of money and a beautiful kimono, 

and it's hard to get the point across.  Tobei does not return, as he is still trying to become a samurai, only to show up that evening decidedly the worse for wear (judging by what happens to him later, he has been kicked around by actual samurai), to be berated afresh by Ohana.  Emboldened by his windfall, Genjuro becomes obsessed with making as much pottery as possible to sell, and becomes absent-minded and irritable, even pushing Genichi away, where previously he had been the apple of his eye.  But all seems to be lost when the war comes to their village before the crockery is ready.

The soldiers who swarm into town are merciless, abducting men for forced labor and assaulting the women, as well as picking the village clean of valuables and food.  Fortunately many of the villagers, including our protagonists, make it into a nearby mountain hideaway to wait out the raid.  However Genjuro can't keep away, because he is terrified that the fire in his kiln will go out and all those pots will be ruined, so he runs back into town early.  You might think this would be his downfall, but this is not yet the moment, and not only does he escape capture, but although the fire has gone out, his pots are finished.  Nonetheless, it's no longer safe, so all five now head to the lake to take a boat to a nearby town to sell the pots.  The scene on the lake is very ghostly, as Ohana sings a doleful song as she rows them across in impenetrable fog.  (She's rowing because she is a boatman's daughter, apparently.  

Also the "rowing" is that weird Japanese thing of swishing what looks like a rudder back and forth, so not as strenuous.)  However, in the middle of the lake they come across another boat with a dying man in it who warns them that the lake is swarming with pirates.  

Genjuro gets spooked for Miyagi and Genichi and insists on offloading them on the nearest shore, although Ohana insists on coming with her husband.  As it turns out, the three in the boat make it to the prosperous town and when next we see them, they are doing a roaring trade in the marketplace, while Miyagi and Genichi have a much more perilous journey.

However, things almost immediately go awry.  First, the stall is visited by a mysterious old woman and even more mysterious young woman, who pick out a range of items and ask for them to be delivered to "the Kutsuki mansion."  

Then Tobei spots some samurai and runs off after them, and Ohana chases after him.  She loses him, however, and somehow ends up out of town where she is set upon by a group of soldiers and sexually assaulted.  Tobei buys some armor and persists in his goal of attempting to be a samurai.  Meanwhile, Genjuro closes up shop for the day, asks his stall neighbor to watch his stuff until his partners return, and sets off for the mansion.  The mansion appears to contain only women, and appears rather dilapidated, although this seems to change.  One of the things this film does well is present to the viewer a different vista from that being seen by the protagonist, while also conveying what he sees.  (This is done particularly effectively at Genjuro's return to his village.)  So I think we see a slightly run down mansion at first that then appears more grand as Genjuro settles in.  And settle in he does, because he is ensnared into marrying the young woman, who is the daughter of the slain head of the Kutsuki clan.

At first he seems afraid, but very soon he is rolling around raving about how he's never known such pleasure. 

This keeps up until one day he is visiting the market and asks to buy some beautiful fabric from a vendor.  The vendor scoffs that no wife he could have would be grand enough for it to be worth paying what it cost, and eventually it emerges that he lives with the lady of Kutsuki mansion, whereupon the vendor goes very pale and says he doesn't want his money.  Genjuro starts home but crosses paths with a Buddhist priest who stops him and says he sees death in his face.  The priest deduces that he has been bewitched and could not live with himself unless he does something to help Genjuro.  We find out what it is when Genjuro returns and confesses that he has a wife and child already.  When the lady does not bat an eyelid at this and just decides that he should never leave the mansion from now on, he struggles, and his wife goes to hold him but finds she cannot touch him, because he has the priest "exorcised" him by writing Sanskrit symbols on his body.  

Genjuro grabs a sword and swings it around... and passes out.  Only to wake up in a field, being shaken by locals, who accuse him of stealing the sword from the temple, some time ago.  He says no, it was in Kutsuki mansion, and they scoff and point to some nearby overgrown ruins and say that was Kutsuki mansion, long demolished.  It turned out that all the inhabitants, not just the chief, were killed, but the older woman felt sorry for her lady dying without knowing love and brought her back from the land of the dead to find it.

MEANWHILE, Tobei has stumbled into good fortune.  In the midst of battle (where he's mostly hiding) he spies a soldier taking a general into a secluded spot, where the general tells the soldier to behead him.  This he does, and is carrying off the head, when Tobei stabs him from behind with his spear.  He brings the head to the leader of his particular branch, who rightly disbelieves that Tobei killed the general himself, but still grants him a horse and a retinue as reward.  Tobei is heading home in triumph when his men ask to stop at a brothel (where the courtesans have been calling out to them) and Tobei relents.  Of course, as you might guess, it's there that he comes across Ohana who has become a successful prostitute, 

even though she feels dishonored.  Tobei, to his credit, gives up all his trappings of success, hurling his precious armor into the river, to take Ohana back to their village.

MEANWHILE, alas, Miyaki comes across some starving soldiers on the road and is stabbed trying to save some of her food for Genichi. We see her stumbling on, trying to carry Genichi home...

Genjuro arrives back in the village to find his house appearing deserted.  In the scene I referred to earlier, he enters, sees it apparently long abandoned, but persists in calling out Miyagi's name, goes out the back door, comes round and re-enters, only to find Miyagi calmly cooking by the fire.  She gives him Saki and some stew and he is overjoyed, and cradles Genichi, and falls asleep next to him.  We see Miyagi start darning something and the scene fades as light starts to stream in the gaps between the boards of the walls.

Of course you can guess what's happened.  However, four of our initial five return to their village, now with renewed appreciation for the simple life, and Tobei becomes quite the farmer.

Amazingly affecting.  Usually, with a fairy tale, it's hard to get invested in the characters, especially such simple folk.  But this film draws you in and holds you rapt, and you feel like you've been holding your breath as the film ends.  Strangely powerful. 

Swimming? In October?? In Michigan???

You better believe it!  It's been up in the 80s and today it got up to at least 86 degrees F.  We've been having drought conditions, which sadly are said to severely impact the display of Fall colors, which ruins my favorite time of the year!  Oh well, at least we can have a dip, at the amazingly packed campground at Seven Lakes.  (I could've sworn it was usually closed for the season by now.  Maybe the extra business - it was more packed than at any time in the Summer - is because of the government shutdown affecting National Parks?  Unlikely, but possible.  It's funny to see all the Halloween stuff when it's so hot.  Reminds me of living in LA and seeing fake snow at Christmas on the shop windows as you swelter in your T-shirt and shorts.

 

 

Film review: Knife in the Water (1962)

Film number 46 in our Criterion box set is Roman Polanski's debut, set in Poland, of course.  You can see how he got a reputation, as the film oozes style - he favors extreme closeups of faces in the foreground, with things happening in the background.  

It helps that this film has precisely three people in it for all but its opening and closing stretches, when it has two.  These are a couple: she seems to be in her 20s, wearing a natty pants outfit with those Far Side framed glasses, he is a tanned businessman type who seems late 30s/early 40s.  They are in a car driving through rain throughout all the opening credits, and into the beginning of the film.  She is driving, which is interesting, although he eventually grabs the wheel, presumably because he thinks she's about to do something wrong, and they switch.  It's a natty little car, apparently luxurious for Poland, although they're definitely crammed close together. The couple seem a bit fed up with each other, and bicker, right up until a man appears in the road and refuses to budge, despite the husband's irritated honking, until the car has to swerve off the road.  The figure is our third cast member, who looks in his mid-to-late 20s, although we find out later he's 19 (Communist Poland was hard on people, unsurprising given the amount the couple smokes - also the actor was 24).  He has bottle blond hair and he's hitchhiking.  Somehow the husband manages to enrage himself into giving the young man a lift (largely by convincing himself that the wife would have picked him up).  And off they go, the young man happily babbling in the back 

about how he thought this was an embassy car and the husband a chauffeur.  Turns out it's very early in the morning on a Sunday (which is why he was struggling to get a lift) and the couple are on their way to a huge lake where they have a sailboat moored.  This is pretty much unimaginable luxury as far as the young man is concerned (and I have to keep calling him "the young man" because of the three only Krystyna is named, and that because the boat is called Christine and blondie asks if it's named after her).  Talking of Krystyna, for most of the time she's on the boat (by far the bulk of the movie) she's not wearing her Far Side glasses and she looks quite different.  In fact it was driving me crazy who she reminded me of (facially) and it's just come to me: Greta Thunberg.  It's the eyes.  

Anyway, the young man initially has no intention of joining them on the boat, but once again, the husband seems to convince himself into inviting him along.  He dismisses him and calls him back several times, but by the last one the young man says he knew he was going to.  Sidenote: I've been looking at stills from this film for years, because the box set comes with a huge coffee-table book with a spread on each film in it, and they gave me the impression that this was a sort of Brimstone and Treacle/Satlburn situation, where a mysterious manipulative young man comes into a family and destroys it intentionally, but this kid really just seems like kind of a doofus.  

However, he does have a really big knife (yes, it is the titular one - you thought that was a metaphor, didn't you?) that plays a significant role in the proceedings.

If, like me, you came to this film expecting some kind of thriller, you'll be disappointed.  [MAJOR SPOILER] all three of the protagonists are alive at the end.  And in fact, for significant stretches of the film, they get on just fine.  They play silly kids games (pick up sticks) 

when it's raining outside (the film takes place over almost exactly 24 hours).  There are definitely tense moments, and exciting moments (they run aground, for example, just as the storm starts), but there's also a lot of quotidian moments, including dragging the boat through rushes, for some reason.  

As with all Roman Polanski films that I've seen, however, there is a sort of creeping dread.  Something about the young kid clearly rankles the older man, and he keeps needling him.  In return, the young man shows that he can shin up the mask like a monkey and play that game with the knife and the fingers.  Then it builds until suddenly the older man takes things too far, and for a while there are no longer three people on the screen.  

But by the end, the older man sort of redeems himself, whereas the wife has done something he will find hard to forgive (in fact, he doesn't believe her when she tells him, and she acquiesces when he tells her to stop joking).

Is it a great film?  Well, it's probably a great first film, and it must have been a bugger to shoot, as they're all really out on the real (not especially large) sailboat on a real Polish lake, and they didn't have the small cameras they have now.  And it keeps you on your toes with a grand total of three actors and one setting (and normally I hate "box" episodes of TV shows where they do that to save money - "Fly" in Breaking Bad, for example).  But the score is pretty cheesy (it sounds exactly what you'd expect Jazz in Communist Poland to sound like).  And, as usual, I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from it.  Men are basically children?  Men and women are fundamentally different?  No doubt there's some stuff about class in there, although Krystyna tells the young man that her husband and her started off just like him, and without inherited wealth behind the Iron Curtain you can assume she's not kidding.  So it's both an interesting period piece and something that seems to shoot for universal truths.  Anyway, I thought the husband's self-designed pot holder was great, no matter how the kid laughed at it.  And watch for the wiper bookends. 

S-eptemb-ummer

 Well, after an unusually cool August (we put away the air conditioners and the shorts) Summer came roaring back with a vengeance.  And it just seems to be getting hotter.  The temperatures do dip into the 50s or low 60s at night, but it's up in the 80s during the day and humid.  Weird.  And the ten day forecast shows no relief.  

(Not my most flattering photo.  Or my most in focus.  Main point is to show it's shorts weather.)

 

Swan hassling

 As always in Michigan, after a period where it looked like Autumn had truly started (temperatures down in the 40s at night, 60s in the day) - what we like to call "False Fall", we get "Indian Summer" or "Surprise, motherfucker, you didn't think the sweating was over, did you?"
Up to 83 today.  However, Frederick is fully recovered from Covid, so we went for a trot in Holly Rec.  The Lake seems to have turned into grasslands (this is the lake that the rickety walkway goes across, so it was never deep).

Here's the walkway.  Frederick does NOT like it - I have to hold his hands as we walk across it, which requires coordination that neither of us really has.  And what's that in the distance to complicate matters still further?

Egads!  Swans!  Specifically what looks like a family, so extra likely to 'ave yer arm off.  I found a large stick in the mud next to the walkway and waved it at them (we literally could not go round them - they were on the walkway in the one place where there was water of any depth) as they hissed at us and resisted moving for the longest time.  However, they eventually flounced off and we were able to pass.

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

I cannot believe I did not know this book existed until it arrived in the mail as part of my subscription to the British Library Crime Classics club.  Apparently (according to Martin Edwards who writes an introduction to each book published by British Library) it is a "lost classic" first published in 1950. To my shame, I assumed that anything that lost can't be that great, considering how famous Green for Danger is.  But I'll say it up front: in my opinion, this is her best book and I canNOT believe Alfred Hitchcock did not make this into a film.  It has all the elements that would appeal to him: the lead character is an independent modern woman, very much like the character played by Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes, a creepy collection of characters who are not what they seem and who are obviously keeping terrible evil secrets, a mysterious lord of the manor who is aloof and taciturn and all the sexier for it, and a charming Welshie (should be played by Michael Redgrave if he could do a decent Welsh accent) who makes it his business to irritate our heroine, whipping her into a frenzy of rightenous indignation.  Add to the mix the amazing character development that Brand does best: smart women who do silly things all while knowing they are doing silly things but can't stop themselves because they need to prove to everyone around them that they are not silly. Then, to cap it off, a whiz bang ending that has people "tripping" off cliffs onto jagged rocks below, a suicide motivated by unrequited love, a villian monologuing just long enough for the hero to shoot half his face off, and a heroine who staunchly refuses to fall in love with her rescuer only to fall head over heels in love with him.  Music swells.  Fade to black. 

Let's begin at the beginning: Our heroine, Katinka (yes, really) writes an agony aunt column for the magazine Girls Together.  Miss Friendly-wise, the BFF workmate of Katinka's, kicks her painful high heels off and pads down a hallway to tell Katinka (who writes under the name Miss Let's-be-Lovely) that another letter from "Amista" has arrived, only to find Katinka on the floor of her office, legs in the air, vigorously bicycle peddling. (Katinka advises all her readers to do so during dull moments at work.) Then the two sit together, reading over the latest missive from their mysterious letter writer who, once a week, writes asking for advice on how to get a man. "Amista" (they refuse to believe that is a real name) has spent the past year telling them about her love for a man, a Mr. Carlyon, who refuses to notice her. Each week, Katinka chivvies Amista along and provides valuable advice: use a mud mask to clear bad skin, get a fashionable hairdo, buy a bold color of lipstick, change up your nail polish color every few days. Amazingly, over the course of a few months, the letters become less morose and more optimistic: the gentleman in question has noticed Amista and is taking an interest--his hand brushed against the back of her hand once! Taking full credit for this positive turn of events, Katinka advises Amista on how to reel in her love and get a wedding band on that finger.  And, even more astonishingly, it seems to have worked as the letter that arrived today tells them that she and Mr. Carlyon are now engaged and the wedding date is set--all thanks to the wisdom of Miss Let's-be-Lovely!!  Katinka is pleased but not overly surprised--of course her advice worked--she's brilliant!  Yet, she secretly wonders, why then is she so miserably alone, only able to capture the attention of cads and roués who grope and paw her clumsily when she goes out evenings, hoping to find loving companionship?  It's a puzzle....Fed up with everything, Katinka decides she needs a holiday--a real one--that will get her far from London. Then she has a brainwave: Amista lives in Wales and Katinka is Welsh (in the sense that until she was five or six years old she spent summers there with distant relatives) and, get this, she has one distant relative (Great Uncle Joseph, known by locals as Jo Jo the Waterworks because he lives near a huge reservoir) who is still alive and lives on the outskirts of Swansea, a town not very far from where the letters from Amista get posted.  So...why not head out to Wales and hunt down this Amista and see if she can give further advice to Amista so that her wedding is all that it should be?  Off she trots.  

Katinka assumes she will blend right into the Welsh landscape but, to her amazement, everyone who looks at her laughs and takes joy in teasing her.  One man in particular rubs her wrong, a tall man who could be handsome if he didn't find such joy in giving her a hard time for not knowing where she was going or who anyone is. And to make matters worse he is wearing a suit that is "just too brown a brown." Eventually, she gets them to reveal that the house she can see perched  atop a huge craggy cliff (like a vulture--not a good omen) across a long inlet from the sea belongs to Carlyon.  But, they insist he lives alone and that he certainly is not engaged to be married nor ever was.  Katinka, wobbling on her fashionable high heels dismisses them as ignoramouses and sets out to walk to the house. It's one helluva walk and requires her to wade through 6" of fast running water that is quickly rising with the incoming tide.  Exhausted, bedraggled and dirtied, she finally manages to reach Carlyon's house.  And, surprising to no one but Katinka, he isn't thrilled to see her--indeed he's extremely rude--and insists that (a) there is no "Amista" and (b) he isn't engaged or recently married to anyone and (c) no, she can't come in to look around to see if he is lying. THEN, to her astonishment, up trots the man in the too brown suit who introduces himself as Mr. Clucky (a name too stupid to be real, Katinka concludes) who claims to be a police detective hired by Carlyon for protection against nosy journalists, which he assumes Katinka is!  Mystified, Katinka agrees to leave (she knows when she isn't wanted) but then notices there, right next to Carlyon on a small table by the door, a letter waiting to be posted .... from Amista!!!! Sputtering in shock, Katinka is hauled away when suddenly her ankle twists and down she goes, unable to walk another step. Of course Carlyon thinks she lying--using her "twisted ankle" to work her way into his house. But unable to be a complete cad, he allows her in to have tea, telling her that as soon as she is recovered, she has to go.  But her ankle really does swell up amazingly and the inlet tide is rising so it seems no one is going anywhere anytime soon. Feeling extremely pleased with herself, Katinka has succeed in getting an invitation to stay the night.

And what happens then?  A series of bizarre events that leave Katinka certain she is going mad: the household has a live in nurse who nurses no one and a helper named Dai Jones Trouble--another silly name--who runs various errands, many of which require him to lope across the crags doing God knows what. She is shown to her room, given a drink that sends her into a deep uneasy and delirious sleep and awoken at 3 in the morning by a someone wearing a featureless mask and a bloated white claw dripping with blood. Unable to move--from fright or because she's been tethered to her bed, she can't tell--she passes out.  The next day, finally freed from her room, she tells everyone her story and no one believes her: no one else lives in the house and no one looked at her or crept about her room while she slept.  Then things get really weird: while Mr. Carlyon is out on the hilltops walking off his endless rage, Mr Clucky grabs Katinka and drags her into the attic where he shows her stacks and stacks of boxes and suitcases, all filled with extrenmely expensive women's clothing as well as photos of him getting married not once, not twice, but three times!  Where are these women now?  Convinced that "Mr. Clucky" is (a) no policeman but a journalist and (b) Mr Carlyon is a victim of a terrible tragedy (well, maybe several terrible tragedies) and (c) Mr Carlyon is incredibly handsome and (d) she's madly in love with him and (e) Mr Clucky is a most annoying buttinski who keeps ruining every moment she finagles to get alone with Carlyon and (f) Mr Clucky can't decide on how thick his Welsh accent is and (g) keeps calling her "bach" and other sweet Welsh terms of endearment to cause her to sputter in indignation.

All this within just twenty four hours of arriving in Wales! Before another 24 are up there will be a murder, a suicide, an attempted murder and then a killing and all questions answered most satisfyingly.  There needs to be a new category of books invented for such a book: "comedy romance mystery psychological thriller farce" would almost capture it.   

The Judas Priest by Carter Dickson

 

Carter Dickson is actually John Dickson Carr, an American author (who is regarded as a brilliant honorary British murder mystery author) who wrote dozens of books, plays, short stories, and non-fiction books as John Dickson Carr, Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbain.  He's widely regarded as having written the absolute best "locked room" murder mysteries, setting the standard that no one since has matched.  And, The Judas Window is regarded as being the best of his best.

Dickson has four heroes: Henri Bencolin, Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonal March.  The Judas Window features Sir Henry Merrivale, a public criminal defender in London. And, for the benefit of his American readers, Carr explains the English system for assigning defense lawyers: those with money can hire a private "solicitor" who are expensive but (in theory) better as they will have more time for your case, and those eligible for legal aid (poor, in other words) will be assigned a legal aid solicitor through the Public Defender Service.  All this sounds like the system in the US. What's different is the distinction between solicitors and barristers: in the US, any attorney (an attorney is a  licensed lawyer) can go to court if that's where the case ends up but in England, a client has a soliciter who handles the "day-to-day" parts of your case (processing briefs, as far as I can tell) and a barrister if your case actually goes to court (that is, you don't admit guilt).  And barristers are considered a cut above ALL soliciters whether private or public, and are assigned randomly (yeah, I don't really believe that given what I've seen on Rumpole) and so (in theory) you could end up with the best barrister in the land arguing your case even if you don't have two pence to rub together--or, if you are stinking rich, which is what happens here. The client in question, James Answell, has been accused of killing his soon-to-be father-in-law, Avory Hume, when they met for the first time to discuss the upcoming wedding between James and Avory's daughter, Mary.  And, of course, they are in a room with windows locked on the inside and a door that has been bolted on the inside--and the only fingerprints on the murder weapon and the door bolt are James'.  And worst of all, James' version of events is ridiculous: he claims Hume drugged his drink and he was unconscious when Hume was being stabbed in the chest with an arrow taken off the wall of the room they are both locked in.  

On top of this implausible and impossible murder is a very cleverly written novel. The murder of Hume is described in a very brief prologue which ends with James losing consciousness.  Then chapter one begins with the start of James' trial.  His barrister is Sir Henry Merrivale who is famously crotchety and brilliant. His appearance isn't described, but I imagined him dressing and talking like a peevish Mark Twain, which is ridiculous because the book was written in 1938. Yet, it works.  Because Merrivale is so brilliant (and secretive) we (the reader) need someone to tell us what is going on. The people who do that are Ken and Evelyn Black, friends of Merrivale who have worked with him (or, more accurately, beside him, following his orders in his six other cases that have been novelized), who are attending the trial.  At all the right moments they ask each other questions and so thereby create a reason for the other to explain to us what is going on or why what just happened is important.  

The mystery is unraveled and then re-raveled over and over as each witness is called to testify and is then examined and cross-examined.  It's a great way to present information as it comes out out of order and so it's nearly impossible to keep track of the events in question.  So, blessedly, Carr has supplied us with: a map of the house showing us all the relevant rooms, windows, doors and paths outside; a minute-by-minute timeline leading up to the death of Hume and then a second minute-by-minute time line of everything that happens after Hume is dead but before the police show up and get into the study where the murder took place. In addition to James and (dead) Avory Hume, we have Spencer Hume, Avory's brother, who is a physician and has access to drugs that can sedate someone yet leave no trace; Reginald Answell, James' cousin who dated Mary last year and took some salacious photos of her and then used them to blackmail her father; Dyer, the butler/chauffer who let James into the house and overheard him "fight" with Hume; Amelia Jordan, Hume's personal secretary and busybody who "takes to bed" and spends the next few weeks heavily sedated after seeing her employer's dead body; and, finally, Fleming, a neighbor, who is told to visit exactly when James is in the study with Hume, thereby providing an excellent witness to testify that no one else arrived or left the house before or after the murder.    

If things aren't bad enough for James, after insisting he is innocent as a newborn babe, he suddenly does a 180, and announces (as he is being taken from the courtroom at the end of Day 1) that he did it all and he'd do it again!  Of course it turns out that he (wrongly) assumed that, if he isn't found guilty his bride to be, Mary, would be found guilty and he confessed to protect her. So, not only does our hero Merrivale has a terrible case, he now has to convince a jury that unanimously believes his client has confessed to the crime.  Yet, unsurprisingly, our hero comes through and James is acquitted.  This isn't giving anything away as we know he's innocent because we were there in the study with him when he lost consciousness and then, a mere five minutes later, woke up to find Hume dead and the murder weapon in his hand. 

This really is an excellent murder mystery which came out right smack in the middle of the "Golden Era" of British murder mysteries.  Not only is it a cracker story but the writing is wonderful: not a wasted word and it gallops at an incredible pace.  It really is unput-downable.  And best of all, as with all good fiction, the just are rewarded and the bad are punished. My only regret is that I read this book ahead of the six other Merrivale mysteries as Merrivale refers to his previous victories when gloating to Ken and Evelyn about how amazing he is.