The Santa Klaus Murder - Mavis Doriel Hay

The Santa Klaus Murder is a classic Golden Age murder mystery, right down to the plan of the house & list of characters at the beginning. It's even set in a country house at Christmas. All that's missing is snow as it's a mild winter.The British Library have recently reprinted all three of Mavis Doriel Hay's mysteries written in the 1930s. I reviewed Death on the Cherwell here & I have Murder Underground on the tbr pile.

Sir Oswald Melbury is the kind of man who keeps his family on their toes. He is a widower with a son & four daughters, all of whom are more or less under his thumb & resent the fact. George is married with three children. Hilda has been left a widow, not very well off, with a daughter, Carol, who wants to study as an architect but can't afford the training. Edith wanted to marry a young actor, Kenneth Stour, but her father disapproved & she married his choice instead, Sir David Evershot, a difficult man who suffered shell shock in the war & may have hereditary insanity in his family. Eleanor is reasonably happily married with two children.

Jennifer, the youngest daughter, is the only one still at home with her father. She wants to marry Philip Cheriton, a young man with prospects but not much money. Sir Oswald disapproves & threatens to change his will if Jennifer marries without consent. He favours another suitor, Oliver Witcomb. All these people are spending Christmas at Flaxmere, more or less reluctantly. Sir Oswald's secretary, Grace Portisham, is also one of the party. The children are suspicious of Grace & her influence on their father. The final guest is Sir Oswald's sister, Mildred, who was displaced by Grace & hates her for it. Most of the servants have been at Flaxmere for many years. The exception is the new chauffeur, Bingham, who replaced faithful Ashmere who was pensioned off when a new car was bought.

Sir Oswald has planned a surprise for his grandchildren - Santa Klaus will deliver their presents in person on Christmas Day. To that end, he has ordered a costume to be sent out & told Oliver Witcomb that he will be playing the role. when the costume hasn't arrived two days before Christmas, a second costume must be found at short notice. On Christmas Day, Sir Oswald retires to his study to wait for a phone call. When Oliver, in costume as Santa Klaus, enters the study for further instructions, he discovers Sir Oswald dead at his desk, shot in the head. No one seems to have heard the shot because Santa Klaus was handing out crackers to the children at the time. However, Oliver is adamant that he had no crackers & wasn't in the hall when they were given out. At first, the police don't believe him as there are many witnesses to the fact but when the possible existence of a second costume is revealed, the mystery deepens although it also leads to Oliver becoming the main suspect.

The Chief Constable, Colonel Halstock, takes charge of the investigation. Most of the story is told from his viewpoint & he's assisted by local Inspector Rousdon & also by Kenneth Stour, the former suitor of Edith who happens to be staying with friends nearby. Sir Oswald was an unpleasant old man but the real motive for his murder seems to be the existence of notes for a new will that he was working on. All his children want to know what's in the will & some of them may know or suspect that he planned to change it. The scene on Christmas Day was chaotic & several people were absent for different periods of time. The family are all very good at fudging the truth or just lying outright & Colonel Halstock has a frustrating time sifting through the clues until he reaches the only possible solution.

The Santa Klaus Murder is a traditional mystery in the classic tradition. Kenneth Stour is a refreshing addition to the investigation as he energetically assists the Colonel & encourages several members of the party to write down their memories of the days leading up to Christmas. This also helps the reader to set the scene & sort through a large cast of characters. I enjoyed reading it very much & I hope that the British Library keep rediscovering these Golden Age gems & presenting them to a new audience.

Death on the Cherwell - Mavis Doriel Hay

Published in 1935, the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, Death on the Cherwell, & its author, Mavis Doriel Hay, have been completely forgotten until this welcome reprint by the British Library. The tradition of college crime - whether based in Oxford or Cambridge - was well-established in the Golden Age of mystery fiction & I enjoy a mystery set in an enclosed community so I was definitely interested in this reprint. Add the gorgeous cover & the fact that the fictional college is called Persephone & I couldn't wait to read it.

Four first-year students at Persephone College - Daphne, Sally, Gwyneth & Nina - meet on the roof of the boathouse near the college on a cold January afternoon. They plan to form their own society, the Lode League, & their purpose is to curse the unpleasant Bursar of the College, Miss Denning. Miss Denning, known as the Burse, is coldly efficient & very strict with the students & is therefore loathed by many. The League has barely concluded their first meeting when they see a canoe drifting down river. They're astonished & a little frightened to discover the dripping wet body of Miss Denning lying in the bottom of the canoe.

The Principal of the College, Miss Cordell, calls the police & it appears that Miss Denning had quite a few enemies & not just among the disgruntled students. She was feuding with a misogynistic local landowner, Mr Lond & a local farmer, Lidgett, over the sale of land to the College. She had also upset a Yugoslav student, Draga Czernak, by insulting her & inspiring the girl to threaten a blood feud against her. She was also very secretive about her private life. She had no family, apart from a niece, Pamela, who was studying at Cambridge. Miss Denning had been determined to keep Pamela away from Oxford but would never explain why.

Miss Denning was a keen swimmer & canoeist & it wasn't unusual to find her on the river in all weathers. Inspector Wythe of the local police soon decides that her death was murder. How could she have drowned accidentally & then got herself, dripping wet, back into the canoe? If she hit her head accidentally, someone must have put her body back in the canoe & set it drifting downstream. Where were the paddles? When the doctor discovers a blow to the back of her head, it seems that murder or manslaughter are the only options. Scotland Yard, in the person of Detective Inspector Braydon, arrives to carry on the investigation, which is being helped & hindered by the meddling of the four members of the Lode League as well as some of the male students of  St Simeon's. Finding the solution of this mystery will mean delving into the past of Miss Denning & disregarding a lot of red herrings along the way.

I enjoyed Death on the Cherwell very much. The college atmosphere was evoked very successfully. I loved the fact that the students of Persephone College were just as irritated at being referred to in the Press as Undergraduettes as the students & Fellows of Sayers's Shrewsbury College. There are some very funny scenes, especially Daphne's conversation with Owen Vellaway, student of St Simeon's & newly published poet. His poem, Dust, is available in Blackwells, in a sealed package to stop people just reading it in the bookshop. What would Owen have thought about pirated books in the days of the ebook? The students are resourceful in their investigations & I do think Inspector Braydon is extraordinarily forbearing with them as they go around picking up evidence & destroying fingerprints. He's definitely in the gentleman sleuth mould of Alleyn & Campion, though, & has impeccable manners & a proper sense of the right way to go about a sensitive investigation so as not to impugn the reputation of the College.

Sally's sister, Betty & her husband, Basil Pongleton, (who made an appearance in Hay's other mystery, Murder Underground) arrive in a wonderful car & have a convenient previous acquaintance with Miss Denning & her niece. This enables them to offer to look after Pamela when she arrives in Oxford & Sally & her friends take advantage of the opportunity to further their investigations. The minor characters are all interesting, from Mr Lond's worried landlady to the absent-minded don, Mr Mort & the unhelpful Farmer Lidgett, who leads Inspector Wyeth on a muddy walk through his fields, recreating the afternoon that Miss Denning died. Death on the Cherwell is my idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon book. It's a shame that Hay only wrote three mysteries but it's lovely to have them now all back in print in this beautifully produced series of British Library Crime Classics.