This is Dickson's second H.M. mystery published in 1934 just two years after Dickson moved to England and started furiously writing, publishing sometimes 5 or even 6 books a year. It goes without saying that this is a locked room mystery--a real head scratcher--but the character development and plotting is a bit rough. Clearly it's an early work. Our friend Inspector Masters is presented as if he's the main character/investigator but (apparently) the public reacted so much more warmly to H.M. (who does not appear qua detective until about halfway through the novel) that H.M. was elevated to the primary detective and Masters demoted to his sidekick in all later H.M. mysteries. It was the right choice since H.M. is far too eccentric to be anyone's side kick but Masters is a strong enough character that he should have been the star of his own series. There are several features of this book that make it one of the lesser Dickson stories:
(1) The story is told from Jim Bennet's point of view, an American who arrives in London to visit his uncle H.M., whom he's never before met. Bennet is young and clearly the Dick Powell (of the movie 42nd Street) sort: never the center of action but always "gets the girl". And the minute we meet this character, we know that (a) he's going to ask the detective a lot of questions to help develop our understanding of what is going on; (b) he's going to be given tasks that require climbing, lifting, hiding, punching and restraining villains; (c) he's going to fall in love at first sight with a hapless female; (d) that female is going to appear as a primary murder suspect but the fact that he fell in love with her means she didn't do it. And that's pretty much how things played out in this book. Jim is tolerable but completely predictable.
(2) The mystery doesn't happen until about one third the way through the book and so the first section is Jim relating his work experiences to H.M. (who is sitting in his office avoiding Christmas festivities organized by his long suffering secretary nicknamed "Lollypop". Since we never see or hear her, I have no idea how she earned that name). So for 70 or so pages we hear how Jim spent his voyage on an ocean liner, surrounded by insufferable American celebrities as well as their entourage and all the backstabbing they do to one another. I can't even remember why he got that job--what does the guy do for a living? It's totally unclear.
(3) Once we finally get to the scene of the crime--an outlandishly grand house built in the style of a 15th century royal vacation home designed to allow for maximally secret trysts--the book turns into a strange combination of Citizen Kane, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Sunset Boulevard. The house is too big, too weird, with too many secret hallways and windows through which everyone can see something but not everything going on somewhere else. The house has sneaky servants with strange injuries and is full of various friends and relations whose history and connections are murky.
(4) The first murder victim (there is always more than one in these stories--the minute you are certain "who dunnit" that person ends up at the bottom of a steep staircase with a broken neck) is movie star Marcia Tait who is described as impossibly beautiful. She's always plays the sexpot in movies and so is assumed to be the same in her real life--every man in her orbit is assumed to be a past or present or future lover. As a result, all women hate her because they think she is going to steal her man and almost all men hate her because they are convinced that she would have sex with them if only there wasn't some other man near her that she (at that moment) favors. In short, she makes everyone around her unhinged. And she's unhinged herself, with "big star" demands such as having the owner of the house make up the outdoor marble pavillion so that she can sleep there--no small ask. It is assummed that she wants to meet a lover out there but in fact she wants to meet her manager/agent out there as he has inside information on deals being struck between Hollywood movie companies and London theater companies. She wants out of Hollywood and they aren't going to let go of her easily. On the other hand, various London theaters want to snap her up because they want to inject a bit of sex appeal to boost their sales. But if terrible rumors about her are believed (such as "being difficult to work with"--the very words that have killed thousands of women's careers), she may end up with no work at all.
(5) Despite being advertised as a "Christmas Mystery" there is nothing "Christmassy" about this book at all: the only reason we know it is winter is because footprints in a light dusting of snow are an important clue. Other than that, there is NOTHING jolly or festive about this gloomy and heavy handed miserable mystery.
I won't go into too many details because, as usual for Carter Dickson/Dickson Carter, there are several solutions generated only to be tossed aside as impossible. The central facts are these: Jim has a wild night in London with friends and sets out for Priory House much later than he intended, arriving at 7 or so in the morning instead of before midnight. Just as he pulls up his car into the driveway (and just as the sun is coming up so he can see clearly), he sees a man (movie star has-been John Bohun--that ridiculous name would NEVER have been allowed in Hollywood in the 30s) with blood all over his hands and a crazed look in his eyes, standing outside a large marble building. There is about 3" of snow on the ground and one set of tracks--his--leading to the building. John orders Jim to look around, check out things, but stresses that he (John) (a) just arrived, (b) made the only set of tracks going to the pavillion, and (c) there is "something nasty is inside". Nasty indeed: it's Marcia's cold corpe with the top of her head bashed in. This lady will NOT be having an open casket funeral....
Right from this moment Jim assumes his role as everyone's dogsbody: John orders him about and Jim obeys. When Masters shows up, he tells Jim where to go, what to notice, and what to say to whom. When H.M. shows up, HE takes over as Jim's boss, ordering him about. Here's the rub: according to the local doctor, Marcia was killed around 3:00 last night but John didn't arrive from London until just a few minutes before Jim, around 6:30 in the morning. There is only one set of tracks leading to (and not from) the pavillion where Marcia's dead body is. And the snow started around midnight and ended around 2:00, so before Marcia was killed. Put all that together and you have a woman killed after the snow stopped, but by someone who left no tracks in the snow either going to or leaving the Pavillion. And thus we have a locked room mystery.
As for the people in the house:
Maurice Bohun: John's brother and owner of the oversized ugly house, who is unbelievably obnoxious and awful. He's set up to be the perfect murderer as he is a smarty pants know-it-all and no one would be sad if he was sentenced to be hung for murder.
Katherine: A relative of Marcia's and it is never explained why she's there. She's beautiful--sort of a watered down version of Marcia so therefore not offensively sexy as Marcia was--just attractive enough for one man to handle. The minute Jim falls in love with her--which is on sight--we know she isn't the murderer despite the fact that she has no alibi at all.
Louise: John's daughter who lives with her uncle Maurice. Louise is the crazy young woman who takes huge doses of opioids to "settle her nerves" that cause her to suffer hallucinations, sleepwalk and sleep scream. When she "comes to" in the morning after the murder, she is on the floor near the back door that leads to the pavillion and one of her arms is covered in blood. But whose blood?
Rainger: a louse and a cad who works with both John and Marcia. He's a movie exec who has glommed onto Marcia because he's trying to manipulate her career for his own profit. He's a lecherous drunk and he propositions every female he meets (no servant or neice of Maurice is safe) by promising a movie career in exchange for sex. Once he's had the sex, he frees himself of them by telling them they are "too ugly" to ever make it in the movies. Another horrible person set up to be the murderer because we'd all love to see him executed.
Mr. and Mrs. Willard: primary servants in the house who seem to operate on no sleep whatsoever as they both see no end of shenanigans during the night Marcia is killed: people turning lights on and off all over the house, people creeping up and down this hallway and that, people running in and out of the pavillion until midnight, cars arriving, cars leaving, dogs barking, dogs not barking...is it any wonder with all that larking about that someone ends up with their forehead bashed in?
Potter: the local inspector who initially is excited to be involved in such a big case but, once he sees what he is up against, quickly puts in a call to London asking for help, hence the arrival of Masters. Potter doesn't leave though as once Masters arrives, he's required to run hither and yon, checking fingerprints, blood types, taking photos, checking backgrounds. And why does H.M. show up? Because once Potter calls Masters out and Masters sees what he's up against, Masters calls H.M.--only he's familiar enough with H.M. to know that he can't simply ask for help on a murder case so he tells H.M. that "Jim got himself into a situation" and it's Jim that needs H.M.'s help--a call for help H.M. is willing to answer.
So who dunnit? Well, in true Agatha Christie fashion, it's the person we are least likely to suspect because it's the person we are led to believe (a) doesn't exist and (b) once we learn of their existence we are told they didn't show up at the house until the day AFTER the murder. And what's the deal with the footprints--how did the murderer get into the pavillion to kill Marcia? They didn't. As H.M. says, you solve a locked room mystery by proving that it isn't a locked room....
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