Seven Dead by J Jefferson Farjeon

 As mentioned in a previous blog, Farjeon is famous for writing "creepy" mysteries yet Thirteen Guests was not at all "creepy," so I figured that either the meaning of "creepy" had changed since the 1930s or I am immune to creeps.  But Seven Dead delivers big heaps of creepiness (but also humor, romance and adventure), starting right on the first few pages. The story begin with a petty thief, Ted, looking for an easy score.  He hasn't eaten in a few days and doesn't have two pennies to rub together so he needs to find something quick.  He's pleased when he sees what he thinks is the perfect place: a decent enough house that is FAR from all other houses, with woods on two sides and a lake on another, so no one can see what's going on, no dog and no chimney smoke.  All signs point to the owners not being home. Fantastic!  Ted walks around, looking for a point of entry. On one side of the house all the window shutters are closed and locked up, but none of the shutters on the other side are closed.  Weird. Then he finds a window ajar and slips in.  He's in the scullery and stands still, listening, to make sure no one heard him, is calling the police or, worse, getting a shotgun. Nope, still quiet.  He heads to the larder and finds exactly what he needs: a big stash of cheese and bread.  He quickly stuffs himself as fast as he can and, feeling much better, he begins his search for booty. Starting with the downstairs, he heads first to an unshuttered front room and finds himself in a diningroom.  He quickly stuffs his pockets with silver spoons and forks. Satisfied with his haul and nervous of being caught, he decides to scamper so he can get to the nearest pawn shop.  But--and this is his mistake--he just can't help giving that shuttered front room a look-i-loo. After all, there must be something really good in there if someone took the time to lock up all the windows and its door. He turns the key, slowly opens the door and takes good, hard look.

Next thing we know Ted is racing out of the house as if chased by Death itself, "his volocity was volcanic".  Then he hears pounding footsteps behind him, running, getting closer, closer! Ted's gasping for air, legs pumping, with no idea where he's going--anywhere but that house! The man behind catches up and grabs him just as Ted runs headlong into a constable, making a Ted "sandwich." He doesn't care if he goes to prison, he's just grateful to be alive and out of that house.

The constable and the man's pursuer--a journalist who happened to be tying his boat to a rotten pier near the house when he heard Ted's garbled screams as he exited the house--can't get an intelligible word out of him. "What's all this?" asks the constable, as every constable in every murder mystery asks when first encountering a crime.  But Ted's too far gone.  He just stares, goggled eyed, screeching with laughter.

Next we cut to Detective-Inspector Kendall who is sitting at a desk in the police department building, talking to the not very bright Sergeant Wade.  Kendall is bemoaning how boring it all is.  He's a  "visiting inspector," sent to this tiny town to train the local police and today it's Wade's turn again--giving him a "gingering up," according to Wade, which he doesn't enjoy and wants to end as Kendall asks too many questions and is never satisfied with Wade's answers.  Then in comes the constable practically carrying a tiny, ragged man with a vaccuous face emitting unintelligble sounds.  "Seems to have gone off his nut," explains the constable. But Kendall isn't satisfied with that dismissive diagnosis and decides that, whatever it was that the little man saw, it's worth checking out.  The constable figures it must have been Haven House where Ted got the spoons, the place Mr. Fenner and his niece, Dora Fenner, live. Kendall tries calling. No answer.  So Kendall approaches Ted, and asks, "It's murder, then?" Ted starts crying and then out comes the cheese and bread. 

To Kendall's regret he learns that our journalist, Thomas Hazeldean, is colleagues with Bultin, the gossip columnist turned serious journalist in Thirteen Guests.  "Are you as bad as him?", he asks.  "Worse!", answers Hazeldean. 

Finally, they get to the house and go in. So what's in that damned roomed?  Seven corpses, of course, which should be obvious from the title.  And they aren't ordinary dead bodies.  These bodies are severely malnourished--as if they haven't had a decent meal in years.  The six men, one very young, the rest older, are unshaven and weather worn.  There is one woman wearing a man's clothing (which I take means pants) that are also tattered and filthy. In fact, all of them are so dirty and grimy, Kendall can't even tell what the original color of any of their clothing was. None are wounded even though there is a revolver in the room that's been fired once.  If they had the gun, why are they dead?  And how did they die? And where the hell are the Fenners?

So begins the mystery, which takes both Kendall and Hazeldean, who are not working together but they are not working against each other, either--they are working side by side, I guess--to Boulogne where the Fenners are staying in a grotty pension which attracts the oddest collection of people: a small man named Gustav who has been following Hazeldean since he arrived in Boulogne and then turns out to be an undercover French cop who ends up a corpse in one of the pension rooms; lecherous Mr. Jones who made some sort of deal with Mr. Fenner so he believes he has the right to access Dora's body and who also ends up dead from a plane crash (but was it an accident?); Madame Paula, the manageress, who seems to hate everyone, except Mr. Fenner, and who skulks in shadows and claims she doesn't know English; and Mr. Fenner who clearly is not as friendly, flustered or paternal as he pretends. When not fainting from getting the frights or losing consciousness because someone has bonked them on the head, our hero and heroine are locked in rooms, locked out of rooms and chased all over town--and then Hazeldean's boat is stolen!  And none of that has anything to do with the seven bodies in the Fenner sitting room!

Before the story is done, we find out "Fenner" [that's not his real name--in fact, nothing he's told anyone since this book began turns out to be true] is one of the most selfish and ruthless persons you can imagine.  And just when seven people who have every right to track him down and beat the living daylights out of him get the chance, he outsmarts them again and they end up dead in his livingroom.  But, just as with Thirteen Guests, the truth will be revealed and, though Kendall thinks justice was served I'm not sure I agree, our hero and heroine fall in love and get married and (it's implied) live happily ever after.