The Mystery at Stowe. Vernon Loder

‘The name of Mr Loder must be widely known as a reliable and promising indication on the cover of a detective story’ (Times Literary Supplement); ‘Successive books by Vernon Loder confirm the impression gathered by this reviewer that we have no better writer of thrill mystery in England’ (Sunday Mercury); ‘…just the effortless telling of a good story and meticulous observation of the rules’ (Torquemada in the Observer). Nevertheless, his works have remained out of print since the 1930s, and have been the purview of Golden Age collectors, among whom he has a dedicated following, with first editions scarce and commanding high prices.

      Now Vernon Loder is emerging from obscurity—and rightly so. Despite the rather scant and cursory attention he has received in the major detective fiction commentaries, Loder has a number of proponents, including leading US writers on Golden Age fiction, John Norris and Curtis Evans, and deserves a better place in Golden Age posterity. I particularly recommend searching out some of his later titles—Whose Hand (1929), The Vase Mystery (1929), The Shop Window Murders (1930), Death in the Thicket (1932) and Murder from Three Angles (1934). Loder deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed by a new readership, and this reissue of his important first novel The Mystery at Stowe augurs well for the revival of his popularity.

      NIGEL MOSS

      October 2015

       EDITOR’S PREFACE

      MR Vernon Loder is one of the most promising recruits to the ranks of detective story writers, and this novel The Mystery at Stowe augurs well for his future popularity. He certainly knows how to provide a mystery baffling enough to satisfy the most exacting reader. He holds too a very definite opinion, with which we are wholeheartedly in agreement, that the task of the writer of mystery stories is not only to mystify, but to entertain. Consequently he has enlivened the more serious business of detection by the inclusion of several amusing characters.

      But while appreciating to the full the entertainment value of the thriller, Mr Vernon Loder fully realises that nothing succeeds so well as really brilliant detective work, and that is the chief feature of his story. The reader may justly suspect every character of the murder of Mrs Tollard in that pleasant country house, and interest and suspense are cleverly maintained to the very last, when a well-engineered surprise awaits us. Jim Carton himself is a most interesting detective to follow. He is an unusual type and brings to the problem the fresh and alert mind of an Assistant Commissioner in West Africa. In that capacity he has investigated many criminal cases among natives. The fact that a tiny poisoned dart was found buried in the victim’s back specially interests one who has special knowledge of African natives and their subtle use of little-known poisons in committing murder.

      His experience had led him to support a theory that there were five primary motives for murder—anger, jealousy, greed, robbery and hate—and this test he applies in turn to the suspects in order to discover that most baffling thing in a murder case: a motive. Who? How? Why? These are questions which confront Jim Carton—and our readers.

      THE EDITOR

      FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

      November 1929

       CHAPTER I

       WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

      ‘NED is full of vitality, and Margery hasn’t a backbone even the X-rays could detect,’ said Mrs Gailey, as she chalked her cue, and leaned over to take her shot. ‘That’s the trouble, I am sure, and if it wasn’t for (Oh! rotten miss! I put on far too much side)—I mean to say only for her sweet temper, there would have been a dog-fight before this.’

      Mrs Gailey, a vivacious brunette of about twenty-six, was known to be summary in her judgments, and better at jumping to conclusions than negotiating fences in the hunting-field. Miss Sayers, with whom she was playing in the billiard-room at Stowe, strolled round the table to where her ball lay, her face wearing an expression of mild scepticism.

      ‘I don’t see why there should be a quarrel, and I can’t quite agree with you that she has a sweet temper,’ she remarked. ‘By the way, Netta, you’ve left me in a perfectly beastly lie under the cushion.’

      She stabbed at the ball, and, by a marvellous fluke, effected a cannon. Mrs Gailey applauded ironically.

      ‘I never heard her say a cross word in my life,’ she observed.

      Nelly Sayers played a losing hazard, and looked up when her ball rolled gently into the pocket. ‘That doesn’t prove anything either way. I don’t say she has a bad temper. I only say we can’t call it sweet till we know.’

      ‘Wait till you’re married,’ said Mrs Gailey, with a wise look, ‘you get different ideas of life.’

      ‘I expect you do. You married people think we are a positive danger to your dear husbands. We have even to be careful where we smile.’

      ‘You may smile at mine, when he comes down,’ said her companion, laughing, ‘but there is something in what you say. Margery is one of us, and we’re bound to look on Elaine Gurdon as a poacher.’

      Nelly Sayers foozled an easy pot, and came round. ‘That strikes me as awfully silly. It isn’t Elaine’s fault that she is handsome, any more than it is yours.’

      ‘A thousand thanks,’ smiled Mrs Gailey, looking at her ball. ‘Go on! I like to hear that sort of thing.’

      ‘At any rate, she is jolly good-looking, and she has seen things and done things I should have funked.’

      ‘But she has no nerves, and she enjoys it. She wouldn’t be happy living all the year round in civilisation. If you enjoy anything there is no hardship in it.’

      Miss Sayers sat down on the bank. ‘I don’t say there is. What I mean is this. She travels in all sorts of wild places, and has made one or two discoveries. But she hasn’t the cash to go on.’

      ‘I thought she wrote books?’

      ‘So she does, but I suppose they don’t make enough to keep her, and cover the expenses of travel as well.’

      While she spoke, Mrs Gailey made twelve, and glanced up with a smile at the scoring-board, where apparently she only needed fifteen more for game.

      ‘She might go to her bank for it.’

      Nelly Sayers shrugged. ‘Banks aren’t too generous. In any case, Ned Tollard is only financing her expedition for the fun of the thing. He’s interested in South America. Isn’t he a director of the Paraguayan railway?’

      ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. But it sounds odd, and I know, if my husband spent half the day consulting a woman like Elaine Gurdon about maps and routes, and things of that kind, I should feel pretty hot about it. That’s why I say she has a sweet temper. She never says a word, but sometimes I have caught her looking at Ned in a sad way.’

      Nelly Sayers made six, and broke down. Mrs Gailey took her cue, deciding to risk the pot which would take her out.

      ‘I expect she is like me. She doesn’t think there is much in it.’

      ‘Perhaps not. Oh! I’ve done it. That makes game, and I’m going into the garden. Coming?’

      ‘No, thanks, I must write a letter.’

      The house of Stowe, at which they were both staying for a week, had once belonged to a family more noted for warlike fame than wealth. Unlike the builders of the famous house of the same name, they never rose to be great lords or mighty men in the world. Stowe itself was really a very large manor-house, and the family had only parted with it in the nineties, when it had passed into the hands of Mr Magus, a miser and recluse,