Abbey Court Murder: An Inspector Furnival Mystery: Volume 1 (The Inspector Furnival Mysteries) Read online

  ANNIE HAYNES

  The Abbey Court Murder

  “A crime of a peculiarly mysterious nature was perpetrated some time last night in a block of flats called Abbey Court.”

  Lady Judith Carew acted furtively on the night of the Denboroughs’ party. Her secret assignation at 9:30pm was a meeting to which she took a loaded revolver. The Abbey Court apartment building would play host to violent death that very night, under cover of darkness. The killer’s identity remained a mystery, though Lady Carew had a most compelling motive – and her revolver was left in the dead man’s flat…

  Enter the tenacious Inspector Furnival in the first of his golden age mysteries, originally published in 1923. Though there are many clues, there are just as many red herrings and the case takes numerous Christie-esque twists before the murderer can be revealed. This new edition, the first printed in over 80 years, features an introduction from crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “Annie Haynes does, in The Abbey Court Murder, what all writers of mystery stories aspire to do, and so few carry off successfully… It is a first-rate story… the plot thickens with every page, leading us on to the final climax in a state of unfluctuating interest.” Bookman

  TO DEAR

  MRS. W.K. CLIFFORD

  IN DEEP AFFECTION

  AND PROFOUND ADMIRATION FOR HER WORK

  The Mystery of the Missing Author

  Annie Haynes and Her Golden Age Detective Fiction

  The psychological enigma of Agatha Christie’s notorious 1926 vanishing has continued to intrigue Golden Age mystery fans to the present day. The Queen of Crime’s eleven-day disappearing act is nothing, however, compared to the decades-long disappearance, in terms of public awareness, of between-the-wars mystery writer Annie Haynes (1865-1929), author of a series of detective novels published between 1923 and 1930 by Agatha Christie’s original English publisher, The Bodley Head. Haynes’s books went out of print in the early Thirties, not long after her death in 1929, and her reputation among classic detective fiction readers, high in her lifetime, did not so much decline as dematerialize. When, in 2013, I first wrote a piece about Annie Haynes’ work, I knew of only two other living persons besides myself who had read any of her books. Happily, Dean Street Press once again has come to the rescue of classic mystery fans seeking genre gems from the Golden Age, and is republishing all Haynes’ mystery novels. Now that her crime fiction is coming back into print, the question naturally arises: Who Was Annie Haynes? Solving the mystery of this forgotten author’s lost life has taken leg work by literary sleuths on two continents (my thanks for their assistance to Carl Woodings and Peter Harris).

  Until recent research uncovered new information about Annie Haynes, almost nothing about her was publicly known besides the fact of her authorship of twelve mysteries during the Golden Age of detective fiction. Now we know that she led an altogether intriguing life, too soon cut short by disability and death, which took her from the isolation of the rural English Midlands in the nineteenth century to the cultural high life of Edwardian London. Haynes was born in 1865 in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the first child of ironmonger Edwin Haynes and Jane (Henderson) Haynes, daughter of Montgomery Henderson, longtime superintendent of the gardens at nearby Coleorton Hall, seat of the Beaumont baronets. After her father left his family, young Annie resided with her grandparents at the gardener’s cottage at Coleorton Hall, along with her mother and younger brother. Here Annie doubtlessly obtained an acquaintance with the ways of the country gentry that would serve her well in her career as a genre fiction writer.

  We currently know nothing else of Annie Haynes’ life in Leicestershire, where she still resided (with her mother) in 1901, but by 1908, when Haynes was in her early forties, she was living in London with Ada Heather-Bigg (1855-1944) at the Heather-Bigg family home, located halfway between Paddington Station and Hyde Park at 14 Radnor Place, London. One of three daughters of Henry Heather-Bigg, a noted pioneer in the development of orthopedics and artificial limbs, Ada Heather-Bigg was a prominent Victorian and Edwardian era feminist and social reformer. In the 1911 British census entry for 14 Radnor Place, Heather-Bigg, a “philanthropist and journalist,” is listed as the head of the household and Annie Haynes, a “novelist,” as a “visitor,” but in fact Haynes would remain there with Ada Heather-Bigg until Haynes’ death in 1929.

  Haynes’ relationship with Ada Heather-Bigg introduced the aspiring author to important social sets in England’s great metropolis. Though not a novelist herself, Heather-Bigg was an important figure in the city’s intellectual milieu, a well-connected feminist activist of great energy and passion who believed strongly in the idea of women attaining economic independence through remunerative employment. With Ada Heather-Bigg behind her, Annie Haynes’s writing career had powerful backing indeed. Although in the 1911 census Heather-Bigg listed Haynes’ occupation as “novelist,” it appears that Haynes did not publish any novels in book form prior to 1923, the year that saw the appearance of The Bungalow Mystery, which Haynes dedicated to Heather-Bigg. However, Haynes was a prolific producer of newspaper serial novels during the second decade of the twentieth century, penning such works as Lady Carew’s Secret, Footprints of Fate, A Pawn of Chance, The Manor Tragedy and many others.

  Haynes’ twelve Golden Age mystery novels, which appeared in a tremendous burst of creative endeavor between 1923 and 1930, like the author’s serial novels retain, in stripped-down form, the emotionally heady air of the nineteenth-century triple-decker sensation novel, with genteel settings, shocking secrets, stormy passions and eternal love all at the fore, yet they also have the fleetness of Jazz Age detective fiction. Both in their social milieu and narrative pace Annie Haynes’ detective novels bear considerable resemblance to contemporary works by Agatha Christie; and it is interesting to note in this regard that Annie Haynes and Agatha Christie were the only female mystery writers published by The Bodley Head, one of the more notable English mystery imprints in the early Golden Age. “A very remarkable feature of recent detective fiction,” observed the Illustrated London News in 1923, “is the skill displayed by women in this branch of story-telling. Isabel Ostrander, Carolyn Wells, Annie Haynes and last, but very far from least, Agatha Christie, are contesting the laurels of Sherlock Holmes’ creator with a great spirit, ingenuity and success.” Since Ostrander and Wells were American authors, this left Annie Haynes, in the estimation of the Illustrated London News, as the main British female competitor to Agatha Christie. (Dorothy L. Sayers, who, like Haynes, published her debut mystery novel in 1923, goes unmentioned.) Similarly, in 1925 The Sketch wryly noted that “[t]ired men, trotting home at the end of an imperfect day, have been known to pop into the library and ask for an Annie Haynes. They have not made a mistake in the street number. It is not a cocktail they are asking for….”

  Twenties critical opinion adjudged that Annie Haynes’ criminous concoctions held appeal not only for puzzle fiends impressed with the “considerable craftsmanship” of their plots (quoting from the Sunday Times review of The Bungalow Mystery), but also for more general readers attracted to their purely literary qualities. “Not only a crime story of merit, but also a novel which will interest readers to whom mystery for its own sake has little appeal,” avowed The Nation of Haynes’ The Secret of Greylands, while the New Statesman declared of The Witness on the Roof that “Miss Haynes has a sense of character; her people are vivid and not the usual puppets of detective fiction.” Similarly, the Bookman deem
ed the characters in Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder “much truer to life than is the case in many sensational stories” and The Spectator concluded of The Crime at Tattenham Corner, “Excellent as a detective tale, the book also is a charming novel.”

  Sadly, Haynes’ triumph as a detective novelist proved short lived. Around 1914, about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, Haynes had been stricken with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that left her in constant pain and hastened her death from heart failure in 1929, when she was only 63. Haynes wrote several of her detective novels on fine days in Kensington Gardens, where she was wheeled from 14 Radnor Place in a bath chair, but in her last years she was able only to travel from her bedroom to her study. All of this was an especially hard blow for a woman who had once been intensely energetic and quite physically active.

  In a foreword to The Crystal Beads Murder, the second of Haynes’ two posthumously published mysteries, Ada Heather-Bigg noted that Haynes’ difficult daily physical struggle “was materially lightened by the warmth of friendships” with other authors and by the “sympathetic and friendly relations between her and her publishers.” In this latter instance Haynes’ experience rather differed from that of her sister Bodleian, Agatha Christie, who left The Bodley Head on account of what she deemed an iniquitous contract that took unjust advantage of a naive young author. Christie moved, along with her landmark detective novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), to Collins and never looked back, enjoying ever greater success with the passing years.

  At the time Christie crossed over to Collins, Annie Haynes had only a few years of life left. After she died at 14 Radnor Place on 30 March 1929, it was reported in the press that “many people well-known in the literary world” attended the author’s funeral at St. Michaels and All Angels Church, Paddington, where her sermon was delivered by the eloquent vicar, Paul Nichols, brother of the writer Beverley Nichols and dedicatee of Haynes’ mystery novel The Master of the Priory; yet by the time of her companion Ada Heather-Bigg’s death in 1944, Haynes and her once highly-praised mysteries were forgotten. (Contrastingly, Ada Heather-Bigg’s name survives today in the University College of London’s Ada Heather-Bigg Prize in Economics.) Only three of Haynes’ novels were ever published in the United States, and she passed away less than a year before the formation of the Detection Club, missing any chance of being invited to join this august body of distinguished British detective novelists. Fortunately, we have today entered, when it comes to classic mystery, a period of rediscovery and revival, giving a reading audience a chance once again, after over eighty years, to savor the detective fiction fare of Annie Haynes. Bon appétit!

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  St. Peter’s was rapidly becoming the church for fashionable weddings; but even St. Peter’s had seldom been the centre of a larger or more fashionable crowd than was assembling this warm April afternoon to see Lady Geraldine Summerhouse married to the man of her choice. There was the usual gathering of loiterers round the door and on the steps of the church; while the traffic in the street was impeded by the long line of private carriages and motors setting down guests.

  Two men came round the corner of King’s Street, walking quickly; the sightseers brought them to a standstill.

  “Hullo, what is this?” one of them exclaimed. “Oh, I see, a wedding. Well I suppose we shall get through somehow.”

  Both men, though they wore the conventional frockcoat and silk hat, had the look of travellers, or colonials, with their thin bronzed faces. The foremost of the two had reached the last line of waiting spectators, and was just about to cross the red carpet that was laid up the steps of the church and under the awning. The policeman put up a warning hand, some guests were alighting, another car took its place before the kerb. A group of maidservants, with baskets of flowers, stood immediately before the two strangers. The man behind turned his head idly as a big dark man sprang from a car and handed out a tall exquisitely dressed woman. Together they came up the steps and passed close to the stranger, but the beautiful eyes did not glance at him, did not note the change that swept over his face.

  He, looking after them, caught his breath sharply, incredulously. Then as they passed into the church he leaned forward and touched the arm of one of the maids.

  “Can you tell me the name of the lady who has just gone in?”

  The maid looked a little surprised at being spoken to, but the tone was unmistakably that of a gentleman; there was an obvious desire for information in his expression; she answered after a moment’s hesitation:

  “That was Lady Carew and Sir Anthony, sir!”

  “Sir Anthony and Lady Carew,” he repeated in a musing tone, a curious brooding look in his light eyes. “Not Carew, of Heron’s Carew, surely—mad Carew as they used to call him?”

  “Yes, sir. He is Sir Anthony Carew, of Heron’s Carew.”

  “And she, who was she before her marriage?”

  There was something compelling about his gaze. The girl answered unwillingly:

  “She was his sister’s—Miss Carew’s—governess, sir.”

  “Ah!” He turned away abruptly.

  His companion leaned forward:

  “Are you going on, old man? Hang it all, if you stay here much longer we shall be late for our appointment, and then—”

  “I am not going on.” The first man’s tone was decisive. “You can manage by yourself, Jermyn. Perhaps I may join you later.”

  His friend looked at him and shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

  “Well, you always were a queer sort of fellow. We shall meet later at Orlin’s, I suppose. So long, old man.”

  He disappeared in the crowd. The other scarcely seemed to hear him. He kept his place in the forefront of the spectators, his eager eyes seeking amid the shadows and the dimness of the church, for one graceful figure. He did not notice that the other man had turned, and was now waiting behind him. At last the service—elaborately choral—was over, the organ pealed out the Wedding March, bride and bridegroom with their attendants came forth, and still those light eyes kept their watch on the interior of the church.

  The guests followed, some of them found their carriages without difficulty; others stood waiting in the porch talking and laughing to one another. Sir Anthony and Lady Carew were among the first to come out. Their footman touched his hat:

  “If you please, Sir Anthony, something has gone wrong with the car; it is just round King Street. Jenkins can’t get it to move. Shall I call a taxi?”

  “Yes, no. Wait a minute.” Sir Anthony looked anxious. The big green Daimler was his latest toy. He turned to his wife: “I must see what is wrong myself, I won’t be a moment, Judith, or would you rather go on at once?”

  “Certainly not. I would much rather wait. I hope it is nothing serious, Anthony.”

  As Lady Carew smiled, it was noticeable that the whole character of her face altered. In repose it was cold, even a little melancholy, but the smile revealed unexpected possibilities, the big hazel eyes melted and deepened, the mouth softened into new curves. She stood back a little as Sir Anthony hurried off, a tall graceful-looking woman in her exquisite gown of palest grey chiffon velvet, with the magnificent sables that had been her husband’s wedding gift thrown carelessly round her. Against the neutral tints of her background, against the deep tone of her furs, her clear delicate skin looked almost transparent. Her face was oval in shape, with small perfectly formed features, the eyes were remarkable, big and haunting, of a curious grey blue in the shadows which yet held yellow specks that shone in the sunlight, that danced when she laughed. Set under broad level brows, they had long black lashes that contrasted oddly with the pale gold of her hair.

  One woman paused as she passed.

  “How perfectly sweet Peggy looked, Lady Carew! Quite the prettiest bridesmaid of them all.”

  Lady Carew’s smile lighted up her face; she was obviously pleased as she murmured some inaudible reply.

  The pale-eyed man was just
behind her now. As she turned aside again he stepped out of the crowd and touched her arm.

  “Judy!”

  An extraordinary change passed over Lady Carew’s face as she heard the voice, as she turned and met the man’s gaze. Every drop of blood seemed to recede from her cheeks, leaving her white as death; only her eyes looked alive as she stared at him, even her lips were blue.

  “You!” she said slowly in a hoarse whisper. “You!”

  “Yes, I.” The man placed himself a little before her, so that in a measure he screened her. “At last I have found you, Judy!”

  “But you—I thought you were dead.” Her eyes were strained upon his face in an agony of appeal.

  “So I should suppose,” the man said roughly with a short, hard laugh, his pale eyes burning with an inward fire as they wandered over the lovely face, the graceful svelte form of the woman before him. “But I am not dead, Judy. On the contrary I am very much alive, and—I have come home for my own, Judy.”

  “Your own!” Judith Carew repeated, slowly. Her face was like a death-mask now, but the eyes—the big, luring eyes—were living as they focused on the man’s bronzed face, as they drew forth some dreadful meaning. She gave a low hoarse sob. “Your own—my God!”

  The pale eyes grew suddenly apprehensive, but the harsh tone did not soften.

  “You know what I mean well enough. When shall I find my Lady Carew at home to me, Judy?”

  “Never.” She shot the word out quickly. “You shall never enter my husband’s house. I will kill myself first.”

  Sir Anthony was coming back. They could see his tall figure towering over the heads of others, here and there he was stopped by a cheery word of greeting; they could hear his laugh. The pale-eyed man looked at the trembling woman.