The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.64 - 1939?
I must admit, once or twice I felt a little uncomfortable as I read this 'mystery' novel. Sometimes, it is best not to know too much about an author. Twenty-five year-old John Norton - possessed of talent, but lacking the ambition and endeavour to develop it - is a wastrel artist based at Wellbrook-on-Sea, a fascinating region where mat-grasses cheval the sand-dunes with horrent green, their billows rolling between the sea beaches to southward and the marshes and saltings, amid which Wellbrook river loiters from the north in its wide estuary. Norton, whose weakness had long ago served to stifle such creative talent as he possessed, has recently been handed the very rare experience of a commission. Crafty, cynical and often dissolute, he had courted 18 year-old Sarah Huntsman. She, although knowing his weaknesses, doubted not, that once wedded, she would swiftly lift him to healthier opinions and better self-control. Was it ever thus?
A major problem arises. Her father, Inspector Thomas Huntsman, strongly disapproves of any such union. A widower, Thomas views Norton with more than a little distaste: everything about the youth, including his method of earning a living, was anathema to Huntsman. Moreover, in Sarah's life-long affection and faithful service her father had found happiness and content...it had come as a very painful shock to him that his devoted daughter could find in such a man any object of affection. Unfortunately, Sarah's infatuation for Norton leads to their elopement, a marriage in a registry office and an eventual return to Norton's lodgings at Wellbrook. Huntsman, bitterly shocked, now passes his daughter in the street without visible consciousness of her presence. Months pass. The marriage (inevitably?) crumbles and Sarah plans a divorce; Norton actually concurs as he is 'playing away from home'. Then he goes 'missing'. In fact, he will be found near where he had been engaged in painting for his commission. His body, with all his artist's paraphernalia, is found among the dunes under several feet of sand. The ensuing tale is that of - not so much a who-dunnit - but a finger-pointing at the irascible father-in-law.
At the very end of the novel, Huntsman (having escaped the noose at the last minute) is walking out one Sunday evening with Sarah; the last line is spoken by her: "Come home, father."
Adelaide Phillpotts (1896-1993)
So far, just a tightly controlled tale by a master story-teller and skilful plot constructor, who had already written 92 novels. However, forty years after the publication of A Close Call, in 1976, the author's own daughter, Adelaide, was interviewed by James Dayananda for a book he was writing on her father. Adelaide had remained unmarried until the age of 55; in 1951, much against the wishes of her father, she finally got married. Phillpotts not only cut her off but never met her again before his death in 1960, aged ninety-eight. Worse was revealed in the interview. Adelaide stated that their relationship had been incestuous. Her father's 'love' had been obsessive and controlling. He had sexually abused her as far back as when she was seven, and had kept up an intimate relationship until 1929, when he married his second wife. He remained throughout obsessively jealous of any of her relationships with other men. Many of his letters to Adelaide are addressed to My precious love, My sweet love and My dearest love. Two extracts from his letters should suffice:
"Today I had hoped to welcome my precious girl and have my arms around her again." (1914: Adelaide was 18)
"I was not surprised after your first mention of that Jew and his politeness to hear he wanted you. The damned swine saw you were alone. You must not go to a hotel in future where that sort of vermin harbours for he might have been wickeder that he was and have planned to compromise you in some way." (1929: Adelaide was 32).
Enough said. It certainly puts a different light on the all-important relationship between Thomas Huntsman and his daughter Sarah in the novel, although no such impropriety is suggested.
The story charts a fairly straight line after the discovery of Norton's body. Huntsman, well-known locally for his temper and his intense dislike of his son-in-law, is banged up in gaol. Scotland Yard is drafted in and, although his friends and colleagues and, above all, Sarah can't believe he is guilty, all evidence points to him being the murderer (his spade and his pistol are found next to the body and a damning letter, seemingly written by him, is in the dead man's pocket). And so it comes to trial. Chapter XIII Case for the Prosecution, sees Sir Cato Warrender, K.C., a famous advocate, laying out a damning case against Huntsman. It is powerful and, surely, unanswerable. Charles Girtin, advocate for the defence, tries his best. Chapter XIV is, in fact, for a reader in 1936 more fascinating and novel than it is for the reader of today. Building on Freud (and R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), it addresses the psychological 'fact' of the dual consciousness, the 'double life'. The urge from the primitive is ever tempestuous, furious, volcanic, overbearing; but such paroxysms for the time being poison the conscious and for the time being may be said actually to destroy it...Thomas Huntsman has no recollection whatever of the double life into which he was plunged. In other words, he did the murder, but under the influence of his 'other' persona. Well, it didn't wash for the judge or the jury.
And then comes the clever denouement. Without spoiling anything for a future reader, Huntsman is cleared. AND I had guessed quite early on in the novel who the actual murderer could be. The author played fair. The individual was not sprung on the reader from nowhere. So, in summary: another well-written tale by a master craftsman; but I wish I hadn't known about the latter's own beyond-the-pale behaviour.
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