Jarrold's 'Jackdaw' Crime Series continued

Jarrolds Publishers - both 1940

Whereas I read eight in this series during my ten days in Corfu, I only managed two paperbacks whilst spending eight days in Rome. Tramping round a very hot city, compared with lazing on a sun lounger, is not conducive to concentrated thought in the evenings. Moreover, there were the restaurants...

The Secret of the Downs was the second of Walter S. Masterman's novels in the series. Set in Dorset, it starts - Agatha Christie-like - at the Fernbank Hotel, where a group of guests are idling their time away. These include Mr Clutterbuck, a wit of the first order, with his wife and two children; Mr Fragson, a hard-boiled business man from Bradford; 'Polly Parrot' Montgomery, with her faded companion, Miss Amelia Smith; Dr. Ingram, a quiet man, and his wife; the Misses Jenkins, elder and younger; a queer old gentleman, Mr. Summerbund, with his valet Wilkins; and Colonel Clayton, a tall bronzed man. The final guest, a young man named Frank Conway, bursts in one glorious summer evening, clearly in a dreadful fright; manages to dress for dinner; sits at his table; leaps up trying to tear of his clothes and expires! Murder? Undoubtedly, through poison of his underwear.

His sister, Mary, arrives and, plucky English girl that she is, refuses to go away until she has hunted down the murderer. Masterton knows how to tell a story and his cast of characters are believable. Red herrings abound and, I must admit, I didn't guess the murderer. The Dorset Downs by the coast figure largely in the plot, which includes an old smugglers inn, lost treasure from a shipwrecked Armada vessel, and a eerie cave - only reached at low tide or through an ingenious mechanism embedded in a large boulder above. At first, I thought it might be the re-appearance of the Agglestone (of previous novels/blogs), but no. Various levels of the Law are dragged in  - the local Inspector Baines - a heavy, stocky man, country-bred, and not over-bright; Chief Constable Godfrey Williams, a lithe, alert man with keen black eyes and grey hair; and Sir Arthur Sinclair from Scotland Yard (he was middle-aged, with reddish hair turning grey, and a heavy moustache. He had the appearance of a prosperous farmer);

so are the local landlord, Black, a shifty character if there ever was one; the Mayor of the little seaside town, Alderman Sproston, J.P., a stout, prosperous-looking man with a florid face, also clearly up to no good. 

All these characters help to move the plot along, helped by sea-fog, phantom-like faces at windows and gloomy cellars. The denouement, when it came, was quite exciting. Yes, Mary, it's true, though how you guessed I don't know. I am glad now that you have, almost glad. I, too, couldn't have gone on. It's true I am the murderer we have been searching for. I am that villain, and I make no excuses whatever. I deserve all I get. This rather puts the kibosh on any future relationship and, within the last 12 pages, not only does the 'hero' shoot himself, but Mary suddenly dies when meningitis supervened. Frankly, the most unlikely aspect of the novel! 

Ruth Burr Sanborn's Murder on the 'Aphrodite' also involved a close-kit group of suspects, this time on a stranded boat. Gems, particularly a ruby, appears to have been the draw. I took some time to get involved with the story, perhaps because I did not find any of the  characters sympathetic. The 'hero', Bill Galleon, spent most of the book being moonstruck over a girl he re-found on the vessel; the murdered woman, Mrs. Van Wycke, was garishly unpleasant; whilst the suspects were uniformly second-rate. The psychologist Professor Burge was unreal; the housekeeper Angeline Tredennick a compulsive talker and eater; the butler Toombs a walk-on part for the main suspect; the young Southerner Ewell Choate a hot-tempered brat; Varro, who looked like a crook and was one; Beulah Mullins, the awfully nervous little down-trodden cousin of Mrs Van Wycke, nondescript; and Jane Bridge/Barron, the apple of Galleon's eye, simply shifty!

The dog Telemachus - born of a runaway match between a Russian wolfhound and a wild Irish terrier - was the liveliest spark of them all; only being run close by the very odd local policeman/detective, Constable Amasa Loose of Trussett, Maine - a high-boned craggy face, all juts and promontories like the Maine coast that reared him, who was much shrewder than his looks. 

The murderer is unmasked by Galleon at the end, but there is ample cause for their behaviour. Loose's late appearance gave a better direction to the plot and probably saved it from mediocrity.