Anthony Berkeley (1893–1971)

Anthony Berkeley originally published this as a serialised story titled Cicely Disappears in the Daily Mail, under his pseudonym, A Monmouth Platts. It remained out of print for years, until it was reissued in 2021 by the Collins Crime Club. A classic, country house mystery, that typifies the Golden Age of Crime Writing in English, it nonetheless raises some uncomfortable questions for the reader about class and wealth, antisemitism, and other forms of implicit prejudices.

In The Wintringham Mystery, we begin with our protagonist, Stephen Munro, who, having returned from military service, squanders his fortune and consequently finds himself impoverished. The opening scene consists of Munro relating to Bridger, his valet (and former orderly, in the military) that he has to let him go as he can no longer afford to pay his salary. Instead, Munro has - horror of horrors - found himself a job, as a footman, in the house of Lady Susan Carey, an elderly, wealthy woman with a country estate. In a deeply uncomfortable scene that was clearly written to be funny, Munro repeatedly mocks Bridger for failing to react with adequate shock and astonishment to this fall in his employer's status; today, we know that Bridger's lack of response may not only be due to the emotional deficits that Munro attributes to him, but also to the fact that he is currently employed by Munro, and bound by conventions of class that will become more apparent as we go on. If I'm to be uncharitable, I could also say that Bridger isn't particularly shocked by the concept of working for a living, more generally. In a touching display of devotion (or lack of self esteem), Bridger refuses to take Munro's recommendation letter and find himself another valet position, and instead accompanies him to Lady Susan's house, where he takes, I imagine, a substantial paycut, to work as under-gardener.

At Lady Susan's, Munro has difficulty adjusting to being a footman, after having been a gentleman of leisure. The hours are long; the butler, Mr. Martin, does not take a shine to him, and Lady Susan informs him that his name is now William ("We always call the footman 'William'). Lady Susan's upcoming weekend party entails a lot of work, and Munro is clearly unaccustomed to work. When the butler, Martin, lists out his duties, Munro marvels, "It seems to me that the footman's life is not an idle one." Oh, I wanted to smack him! His life is further complicated by the arrival of two people he knew from his former life: Freddie Venables, Lady Susan's nephew and Munro's former classmate from school, and Pauline Mainwaring, his former fiance. In response to Munro's fall from status, they respond differently. Freddie continues to awkwardly treat Munro as an old friend even as Munro serves him drinks, attempts to valet him and carries his luggage; Freddie keeps getting in his way, treating Munro like an old friend (who happens to be cleaning silverware, I don't know) and drawing Lady Susan's ire. Pauline Mainwaring cuts him dead. It turns out she is engaged again, this time to a wealthy financier, who is naturally, Sir Julius Hammerstein, and in accordance with Golden Age Mystery writers' tendencies towards anti-semitism, described unkindly and with reference to all the usual stereotypes. At the garden party are a cast of characters with all sorts of motives and intentions. It doesn't take long before Freddie Venables blurts out to the others that Munro is one of them, albeit in footman's livery, having fallen on hard times. The result is an awkward, un-party like situation: Pauline unbends and chats with him normally, the others refuse to be valeted by one of their own class, unpacking their own clothes, and Munro speaks with as he would normally, even though he's dressed in a footman's livery.

The plot get started with two key developments. The first, is that Cicely, Lady Susan's beloved niece, vanishes. At the start of the book she is evidently distraught and upset about something undisclosed. She initially skips the party to go sailing with friends, but then changes her mind and returns. During an attempted seance (rich people goofing around), the lights are turned off, and when they come back on, she's disappeared. Meanwhile, the butler, increasingly resentful at the way Munro is treated with casual friendliness by the guests, unlike all the other servants, complains to Lady Susan about him. So does Sir Julius Hammerstein, who doesn't like his fiance, Pauline and her ex-fiance, Munro resuming a friendship. Lady Susan decides to solve both problems with one stone: she fires Munro as a footman and rehires him as a detective. Munro moves out of servants quarters into a bedroom in the same house and proceeds to spend the rest of the book ineptly investigating Cicely's disappearance, and trying to decide how he can have his Pauline back, when he's unable to support her in the lifestyle within which she (and he) were raised.

The resolution of the mystery is sufficiently twisty: when first published, the Mail offered prizes for anyone who could solve it before the last chapter was out, and among the unsuccessful applicants was Agatha Christie. While entertaining enough, it is difficult for the modern reader to get around the deep-rooted classism, resting on an implicit, unstated assumption about the intellectual and moral superiority of the rich (in case you were wondering, yes [spoilers for the ending a servant committed the various crimes in the book ]. When Pauline tells Munro that she won't mind being a poor man's wife, and cooking and cleaning, he disputes it, telling her that her enthusiasm will eventually wear off, and she'll grow to resent him and the domestic labor. I'd imagine the very stoic Bridger might have had something to say about that, atleast internally, but instead, he is her "servant for life," because she once greeted him politely and shook his hand. To sum up, the mystery is a nice puzzle, the rest of the book is just out of sync with today's times.… (mehr)