Four Days’ Wonder by A.A. Milne

It feels needlessly flippant to be discussing detective fiction, especially fun detective fiction, at the present moment. But then again, aren’t scholars like me always banging on about how Golden Age crime writing’s importance lies in its wartime context? Those of us not playing any direct role in the conflicts might find at some times, as have so many readers over history, the need to escape, however briefly.
 
I read Four Days’ Wonder (1933) before we heard about the invasion. At that point, I felt the need to escape something else altogether. Having finally succumbed to COVID-19, at the most inconvenient time – a highly stressful fortnight at work, so I absolutely could not take time off – and with a particularly unpleasant drama playing out on the academic side, I needed some literature of escape. I wanted something light, fun, easily readable, and intelligent. At last, I found the perfect book in my study.
 
A.A. Milne (1882-1956) is of course best known as the author of Winnie the Pooh. Every now and then, someone pops out the fact that he also wrote detective fiction. It nearly always follows the format: “Did you know Milne also wrote one detective novel – and it’s a masterpiece?!” They are referring to The Red House Mystery (1922). I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone acknowledge that he wrote at least two detective novels. The other is Four Days’ Wonder. 
 
When I came across Four Days’ Wonder in a charity shop about a year ago, I picked up it and Two People, which were being sold for the combined total of 50p. I picked it up out of interest because I honestly hadn’t known until then that Milne wrote any books for adults beyond Red House. Now, I enjoyed Red House when I read it yonks ago and have always thought it was more a comedy than a mystery – although apparently that’s not the correct opinion. I also knew that the consensus that it was Milne’s only foray into the genre was wrong, because I read his short story “The Rape of the Sherlock” before even reading Red House. Anyway, I was curious, so I turned to the blurbs. While Two People clearly wasn’t going to be a whodunit but did look fun, Four Days’ Wonder looked much more promising.
 
Nonetheless, the books languished in a TBR mountain until the other week. I opened up Four Days’ Wonder and it turned out to be exactly, and I mean exactly, what I needed.
 
Jenny (Jane) Windell is an eighteen-year-old reader of detective fiction who, one day, stumbles across the dead body of her colourful aunt, actress Jane Latour. After inexplicably cleaning what looks like the murder weapon and losing her monogrammed handkerchief at the scene, she flees and decides, with debatable evidence, that she will be the police’s prime suspect.
 
On the run, Jenny enlists her oldest friend to help her forge various new identities, and finds a handsome artist on a farm near Tunbridge Wells who doesn’t seem to care which name she’s currently using and helps her with equal enthusiasm. All of these characters are wonderfully drawn. Their banter is witty, affectionate, and – considering the period – remarkably alive and inoffensive.  I particularly enjoyed the fantasy worlds Jenny and Nancy, her friend, create and inhabit, and their elaborate secret codes and identities. There is an entire secret code explained clearly at one point and I just ended up wishing I had friends with whom I could be that creative.
 
From the cocksure Inspector Marigold to the conveniently shared initial ‘J’ affecting half the characters, the novel gently lampoons many of the traditions of the then-contemporary adventure mystery story. Of course, Arthur Conan Doyle is namechecked, and so too are Freeman Wills Crofts and – with the irreverence that marks this book as firmly middlebrow – Edgar Wallace.
 
While Jenny is the protagonist, having the adventures and ultimately solving the mystery, what happens to her is mostly happenstance. But the characters are all linked by another one: an exquisite creation. Archibald Fenton is a novelist, who is much lauded as a writer, but as a person is absolutely inadequate. Pompous, self-absorbed, under the generally unevidenced belief that he is irresistible to women, and more concerned with his image than his art, every second with him was a pleasure because I knew the author gets it. My work has put me into close contact with a lot of writers, especially crime writers, most of whom are incredibly lovely but there are egos. And I’d better say no more than that.
 
I did not want Four Days’ Wonder to end. But it had to and, at just over 200 pages, its length is just right. The solution to the mystery might disappoint some and, if this were a Freeman Wills Crofts, I would be a bit miffed, but I powered through it brimming with pleasure and satisfaction, and closed the book with a big smile on my face.
 
You probably do need to be a dedicated Golden Age mystery fan to enjoy Four Days’ Wonder. By that, I mean you probably need to be a serious reader, who recognises the habits of writers beyond the big names. This may not be one for casual readers or fans of the genre in other media. 
 
But if you are a hard-reading genre enthusiast whose heart needs lightening, I cannot recommend Four Days’ Wonder enough. A.A. indeed.

The D. Case by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (and Charles Dickens)

Together, Carlo Fruttero (1926-2012) and Franco Lucentini (1920-2002) wrote several crime novels, short stories, and collections of criticism from the 1960s until Lucentini’s death. I’m not familiar with their work, but understand that they have a fair following in Italy and that The D. Case, or, the Truth about the Mystery of Edwin Drood (1989) is unusual, even given their trademark humour and strangeness.

In some ways, The D. Case is a work of criticism masquerading as a novel. In others, it’s a parody of detective fiction and the shoe-horning in of social commentary. Mainly, though, it’s just a weird and fascinating read.

There are two narratives here: Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, famously unfinished at his death, is republished chapter by chapter and interspersed with a ‘contemporary’ narrative in which multiple detectives from the pages of fiction gather together at a conference to try and determine the ending.

I have probably missed some, but these are the fictional detectives I spotted: Sherlock Holmes (and Watson), Hercule Poirot (and Hastings), Dr Thorndyke (and Astley), Nero Wolfe (and Goodwin), Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer who form an amusing double act, basically doing the same thing at all times – with one being famously considered a rip-off of the other, Father Brown, Superintendent Battle, Sergeant Cuff, Hercule Popeau, Toad-in-the-Hole (the anti-hero in Thomas de Quincey’s ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’), Porfiry Petrovich(!), Inspector Bucket, Gideon Fell, Dupin, and Maigret.

The detectives bicker and divide themselves into cliques – including over the question of whether The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a mystery novel or a psychological thriller. Plagiarism is a constant discussion, as character quarrel over whether Dickens plagiarised Wilkie Collins and whether Robert Louis Stevenson plagiarised Dickens. Hercule Poirot is forced at several points to confront the fact that he himself exists as a result of Agatha Christie plagiarising Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau (there’s no mention of M. Poiret). Yes, the characters are perfectly happy in their own fictionality – including Inspector Bucket, who knows he was created by Dickens. Sherlock Holmes remains oddly silent because he knows that Arthur Conan Doyle contacted Dickens in a séance and asked for the solution. So, he already knows the truth.

Throughout, existing (real-life) theories and proposed solutions to Dicken’s novel are brought up and evaluated before Poirot presents the ‘truth’ – not only about how the novel should end but also why it was never finished. This theory, so outlandish and like something out of a crime novel that it works in a work of fiction and not in a work of literary criticism, is universally accepted and, at the end of the book, universally hushed up. The 'D.' in 'D. Case' turns out to stand for three things: Drood, Dickens, and the fourth solution proposed.

Since plagiarism forms such a lively element of the discourse throughout – including being at the heart of Poirot’s solution – it is interesting that Fruttero and Lucentini seem not to have been too bothered about copyright infringement. Perhaps this can be classed as parody, but I don’t really know enough about copyright law to know how it works. In my English translation (but not, a friend tells me, in the original Italian), Agatha Christie Limited is thanked for permission to use the character of Poirot – but no other author or estate is thanked, and there is no reference to the other Christie characters: Hastings and Battle. Nonetheless, The D Case counts technically as the first authorised Hercule Poirot continuation novel. Mystery upon mystery!

Greedy Night by E.C. Bentley

A curio today, and one of the shortest texts I've reviewed so far. 'Greedy Night' (1936) is a short send-up of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, which appears in Parody Party, a fascinating volume edited by Leonard Russell and printed on what looks like watermarked writing paper by Hutchinson. Russell's 'introductory note' seeks to trivialise the book as the result of a weekend parlour game, and makes what I think is a wonderful point.

Responding to what he sees as the inevitable criticism that 'post-war novelists and people haven't sufficiently distinctive styles to admit of the better sort of parody', Russell points out that parody as a 'critical' tool serves to draw out these distinctive styles that are otherwise invisible in a contemporary world. It is, of course, heartbreaking to realise that people living in what we now call the interwar period described themselves as living 'post-war', and even more so to reflect that the unique and specific prose styles we so readily associate with those years are themselves defined by the passing of one war and the anticipation of another.

It's a really interesting book, which is sometimes available online and cheap. And there are some great contributors including Rebecca West (parodying Charles Morgan), Rose McCaulay (Ernest Hemingway), Francis Iles (Hugh Walpole), Cyril Connolly (Aldous Huxley), John Betjeman (various Russians), and more.

Before going any further, a note of warning: this post contains spoilers. Personally, I find it difficult to discuss the joys of detective fiction without blabbing about the solutions, because often the story of the crime itself is essential to whatever contribution the text is making. In a similar vein, I don't mind a jot if I read a book already knowing whodunit. For me, it really isn't a case of 'animated algebra.' But I know that many people disagree, so accept this spoiler warning, the only intimation!

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), as if you needed to know, wrote Trent's Last Case (1913), a comic country house mystery that many have credited with spawning the British murder mystery as a distinct literary genre. He also invented the appropriately-named clerihew, a form of verse that haunts me from my student days, when our poetry tutor regaled us with an assortment of his own miniature masterpieces, from which I have yet to recover.

In this intriguing send-up of Dorothy L. Sayers, Bentley contributes a clerihew of his own which appears both in the text and ahead of it, accompanied by an image attributed to Bentley's famous son ('Nicolas Bentley drew the pictures', runs the credit line). I quote the clerihew in full because it reveals the story's charms and its limitations:

Lord Peter Wimsey 

May look a little flimsy, 

But he's simply sublime 

When nosing out a crime.

Charming because it's a clerihew by E. Clerihew himself, and it's clearly done in a spirit of great affection. Limited precisely because it's clearly done in a spirit of great affection, and, technically, it's not very good. These four lines alone tell us that there's not going to be any serrated criticism in the story -- and that's fine, of course. By its very nature, parody tells us something about contemporary reception and interpretation, even if this has been carefully controlled. I'm looking forward to reading the chapter parodying Hugh Walpole by Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley, aka A.B. Cox), who was not well known for softening the blows to his peers.

The opening scene has Bunter, Wimsey's faithful manservant, bringing his master breakfast in bed. When they discuss the unfortunate substances that His Lordship imbibed the previous night, and when Bunter casually lets drop that he has 'always taken an interest in the technical study of medieval calligraphy', it's clear that the character here is early Wimsey, not late Wimsey. This is the character Sayers described as a cross between 'Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster' and not the introspective married feminist that Wimsey was about to become at the time of the story's publication.

Another figure soon arrives on the scene: no less a personage than the Bishop of Glastonbury. A mysterious death has taken place, and His Grace invites His Lordship to investigate. The investigation takes Wimsey into an academic setting -- of course -- where everyone starts to talk about eating. There is a curious exchange between Wimsey and a young admirer called Mitchell:

Wimsey laughed. 'I must go. But do you and your friends really read the chronicles of my misspent life, then?' 

'Do we read them?' cried Mr Mitchell. 'I should say we do read them! We eat them!' 

'How jolly for you -- I mean for me -- that is to say, for her -- oh well, you know what I mean,' Wimsey said distractedly.

There is a nod here to the grand generic tradition of acknowledging the artificial status of the narrative; to Sherlock Holmes' many remarks about the people who read his adventures in The Strand. And the reference to 'her' takes it one step further.

The words 'we eat them' become relevant, too.  At the end of the book, Wimsey opens up the corpse's mouth -- God knows what the corpse is still doing there -- and removes several pages of a book. That book is Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (with a handy footnote explaining the publisher, and just falling short of 'available in all good bookshops'). Wimsey explains:

Strong Poison! [...] Too strong indeed for poor Dermot. Such is the magic of that incisive, compelling style that even the very printed word is saturated with the essence of what it imparts. Others eat her works in a figurative sense only; Dermot began to eat this one in truth and in fact and so rushed, all unknowing, on his doom.

Do we detect here a josh in the direction of Sayers, who sought to elevate the intellectual standing of a detective novel and was about to give it up all together? Is the hyperbole mere sycophancy or is it a ruthless critique of what many people still consider pretension? What I really want to know is -- what did Dorothy L. Sayers think of this story? I'm sure she will have read it.

There are also some hints here -- as there are in Trent and much of the fiction it inspired -- of what we now call postmodernism. I think that we can expect a po-mo crime revival one of these days. But I'm rambling, and in discussions of this nature, that's not a good thing.