Anthony Berkeley - The Wychford Poisoning Case

The first two Sheringham mysteries sold well and the detective’s popularity was such that his name would be included in the title of the third, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (1927), which for the first time in the series was published as by Anthony Berkeley.

In all, Sheringham appears in ten novel-length detective stories, one of which, The Silk Stocking Murders (also reissued in this Detective Club series), is dedicated by Berkeley to none other than A.B. Cox! Sheringham is also mentioned in passing in two of Berkeley’s non-series novels, The Piccadilly Murder (1929) and Trial and Error (1937), and appears in a novella and a number of short stories, including two recently discovered ‘cautionary’ detective problems published during the Second World War.

Though undoubtedly one of the ‘great detectives’ of the Golden Age, Roger Sheringham is not a particularly original creation. As already noted, there is much of E.C. Bentley’s Philip Trent about Sheringham, as there is about many other Golden Age detectives, including Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. And, emulating Bentley’s iconoclastic approach to the genre, Berkeley delighted in turning its unwritten rules upside down. Thus, while Sheringham’s cases conform, broadly, to the principal conventions of the detective story—there is always a crime and there is always at least one detective—the mysteries are distinctive and memorable for the way in which they drove the evolution of crime and detective stories. Each of the novels brings something new and fresh to what Berkeley had previously dismissed as the ‘crime-puzzle’. Several do have what can be described as twist endings but that is to diminish Berkeley’s ingenuity and undervalue his importance in the history of crime and detective fiction.

While other luminaries wrought their magic consistently—Agatha Christie in making the most likely suspect the least likely suspect, and John Dickson Carr in making the impossible possible—Anthony Berkeley delighted in finding different ways to structure the crime story. ‘Anthony Berkeley is the supreme master not of “the twist” but of the “double twist”,’ wrote Milward Kennedy in the Sunday Times , but his focus was not so much on adding a twist at the end but on twisting the genre itself.

Astonishingly, it is more than 75 years since the publication of Berkeley’s final novel, As for the Woman (1939), which appeared under the pen name of Francis Iles. And yet his influence lives on. Berkeley did much to shape the evolution of crime fiction in the 20th century and to transform the ‘crime puzzle’ into the novel of psychological suspense. In the words of one of his peers, Anthony Berkeley Cox—more than most—‘deserves to become immortal’.

TONY MEDAWAR

September 2016

‘KEDGEREE,’ said Roger Sheringham oracularly, pausing beside the silver dish on the sideboard and addressing his host and hostess with enthusiasm, ‘kedgeree has often seemed to me in a way to symbolise life. It can be so delightful or it can be so unutterably mournful. The crisp, dry grains of fish and rice in your successful kedgeree are days and weeks so easily surmountable, so exquisite in their passing; whereas the gloomy, sodden mass of an inferior cook—’

‘I warned you, darling,’ observed Alec Grierson to his young wife. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘But I like it, dear,’ protested Barbara Grierson (née Shannon). ‘I like hearing him talk about fat, drunken cooks; it may be most useful to me. Go on, Roger!’

‘I don’t think you can have been attending properly, Barbara,’ said Roger in a pained voice. ‘I was discoursing at the moment upon kedgeree, not cooks.’

‘Oh! I thought you said something about the gloomy mass of a sodden cook. Never mind. Go on, whatever it was. I ought to warn you that your coffee’s getting cold, though.’

‘And you might warn him at the same time that it’s past ten o’clock already,’ added her husband, applying a fresh match to his after-breakfast pipe. ‘Hadn’t you better start eating that kedgeree instead of lecturing on it, Roger? I was hoping to be at the stream before this, you know. I’ve been ready for the last half-hour.’

‘Vain are the hopes of men,’ observed Roger sadly, carrying a generously loaded plate to the table. ‘In the night they spring up and in the morning, lo! cometh the sun and they are withered and die.’

‘In the morning cometh Roger not, who continueth frowsting in bed,’ grumbled Alec. ‘That’d be more to the point.’

‘Cease, Alexander,’ Roger retorted gently. ‘The efforts of your admirable cook engage me.’

Alec picked up his newspaper and began to study its contents with indifferently concealed impatience.

‘Did you sleep well, Roger?’ Barbara wanted to know.

‘Did he sleep well?’ growled her husband, with heavy sarcasm. ‘Oh, no !’

‘Thank you, Barbara; very well indeed,’ Roger replied serenely. ‘Really, you know, that cook of yours is a culinary phenomenon. This kedgeree’s a dream. I’m going to have some more.’

‘Finish the dish. Now then, aren’t you sorry you wouldn’t come and stay with us before?’

‘Not in the least. In fact, I’m still congratulating myself that I resisted the awful temptation. One of the wisest things I ever did in all my life, compact with wisdom though it has been.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘For any number of reasons. How long have you been married now? Just over a year? Exactly. It takes precisely twelve months for a married couple to get sufficiently used to each other without having to be maudlin in public, to the extreme embarrassment of middle-aged bachelors and unsympathetic onlookers such as myself.’

‘Roger!’ exclaimed his indignant hostess. ‘I’m sure Alec and I have never said a single—’

‘Oh, I’m not talking about words. I’m talking about expressive glances. My dear Barbara, the expressive glances I’ve had to sit and writhe between in my time! You wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Well, I should have thought you’d have enjoyed that sort of thing,’ Barbara laughed. ‘All’s copy that comes into your mill, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t write penny novelettes, Mrs Grierson,’ returned Roger with dignity.

‘Don’t you?’ Barbara replied innocently.

An explosive sound burst from Alec. ‘Good for you, darling. Had him there.’

‘You are pleased to insult me, the two of you,’ said Roger pathetically. ‘Helpless and in your power, speechless with kedgeree—’

‘No, not speechless!’ came from the depths of Alec’s paper. ‘Never that.’

‘Speechless with kedgeree, squirming with embarrassment in the presence of your new relationship to each other—’

‘Roger, how can you! When you yourself were Alec’s best man, too!’

‘You put me between you and insult me. The very first morning of my visit, too. What are the trains back to London?’

‘There’s a very good one in about half an hour. And now tell me all the other reasons why you wouldn’t come down here before.’

‘Well, for one thing I set a certain value on my comfort, Barbara, and other regrettable experiences, over which we will pass with silent shudders, have shown me very clearly that it takes a wife a full twelve months to learn to run her house with sufficient dexterity and knowledge to warrant her asking guests down to it.’

‘Roger! This place has always gone like clockwork ever since I took it over. Hasn’t it, Alec?’

‘Clockwork, darling,’ mumbled her husband absently.

‘But then, you’re a very exceptional woman, Barbara,’ said Roger mildly. ‘In the presence of your husband I can’t say less than that. He’s bigger than me.’