The murder-on-stage is one of those favorite, time-tested tropes of the mystery genre. Ngaio Marsh was probably the most famous author to develop it, beginning with her second novel Enter a Murderer and continuing through the several theatrically-set mysteries she became especially famous for. Impossible crimes happening during a production of a play have become an interesting sub-sub-genre as well, as seen by Derek Smith’s Come to Paddington Fair and James Scott Byrnside’s The Opening Night Murders. The trope seems to have found its home in the world of cozy mysteries and mystery TV shows. It makes sense that Marsh was fond of killing off characters on the stage, because she was herself a noted theatrical director. It makes sense too that J. I. M. Stewart, under his Michael Innes pseudonym, would create one of these scenarios suited specifically to Shakespeare.
Under his real name, Stewart was best-known as a leading Shakespearean literary critic during the 20th century, on top of his criticisms of other English authors and his own literary fiction. As a matter of fact, the first thing I ever read by Stewart was not this book, but rather an essay about Othello I perused for an essay I had to write for an English class. (I don’t think I ended up citing Stewart’s essay; nevertheless, my argument that Iago’s true motivation was a repressed desire for Othello earned me an A). In the world of GAD, Stewart is better known as Michael Innes, author of dozens of mysteries featuring Scotland Yard detective Sir John Appleby, and a smattering of non-series detective stories and thrillers. Innes’ novels belong to the “donnish” subsection of the detective story, featuring literary references and near-outlandish plots, yet as Anthony Boucher mentions in his introduction to Hamlet, Revenge!, Innes “is almost a different literary personality with each book.” Innes’ early style mixed the pure detective story with different facets of his real personality and life, to great success. His debut Death at the President’s Lodging is his “academic” book; Hamlet, Revenge! his “Shakespearean” book; and Lament for a Maker, considered his masterpiece by many, his “Scottish” book.
Hamlet, Revenge! centers around the preparations for an amateur production of Hamlet at Scamnum Court, home of the aristocratic Crispin family, and the subsequent investigation of a murder that occurs, well, on stage. The production, directed by Giles Gott (who returns, as I am aware, from President’s Lodging,) goes horribly awry when Lord Auldearn, England’s Lord High Chancellor who plays Polonius, is shot right before his character’s death in the play. Before the murder, the book reads like a Victorian novel, a comedy of manners, with different members of the aristocracy mingling, creating petty conflicts, and joining together for a common event – the Scamnum Hamlet. There is also a trace of foreshadowing about a possible espionage plot, as Lord Auldearn is called back briefly to London for an important meeting. Innes nails the style he’s going for in Part One, with long descriptive paragraphs reminiscent of Henry James (through which he masterfully depicts the village of Horton Hill and the sprawling Scamnum Court) and several references to different literary, historical, and academic figures, many outside of Shakespeare:
“Macdonald,” said Noel, “knows the Elizabethan clowns and the cruces Shakespearianæ; a village Gott, in fact; a mute, inglorious Malloch; a pedant guiltless of his pupils’ blood.”
“Mr. Gylby,” explained Bunney to Lord Auldearn, “is paraphrasing Gray’s celebrated Elegy.”
Hamlet Revenge!, “Prologue”, Chapter 3
The six characters mentioned in those two short paragraphs represent only a fraction of the cast which Innes introduces to us in this first part. There are a total of 24 characters who act onstage for Hamlet, with two other eventual suspects behind stage for other jobs, as well as a smattering of non-suspects, servants, policemen, and politicians. This means that there are a whopping total of thirty suspects once Lord Auldearn is murdered, which feels overwhelming at first. However, there is a character-list of sorts in the form of the play’s cast list (although this is a double-edged sword because the characters are all listed by their real names and not their titles, i.e. the Duke of Horton is called Edward Crisipin in the list and the Duke everywhere else.)
The dozens of characters seem like they would be hard to keep track of, but I thought that Innes did a good job of making each character unique enough that, with the help of the cast list, I could remember everyone involved with the play. Many of the characters are high-class, especially the Crispin family itself. The Duke and Duchess are perfect examples of aristocratic gentility; their daughter Elizabeth yearns for more independence outside of her charmed life; the Duke’s cousin Gervase is a ranking member of the House of Commons; and Noel Gylby, a relative whose connection to the rest is never specified, is more concerned about his academic erudition than his place in high society. The rest of the cast is invited from all over Britain, and even outside of it, as proven by the American characters such as the Terborg family, essentially a New England version of the Crispins’ high class, and Dr. Bunney, a philologist who is especially concerned with recording as many different accents as he possibly can on his “black box”, often to comedic effect. The professions of other characters allow Ines to explore different facets of his knowledge: Sir Richard Nave is a Freudian psychologist fashionable on Harley Street; Charles Piper is an author of literary acclaim; Professor Malloch has just come down from Aberdeen performing viva-voce examinations.
The first part of the novel is definitely slower than the rest, and can be hard to get through, but if that style of writing isn’t your thing, then it gets much better once Auldearn is murdered. There are immediately many facets to the mystery. Why was Auldearn shot and not stabbed to fit with the play? Why was Auldearn killed during the play at all? Did the murderer kill Auldearn to gain access to a sensitive document which was quickly found, or is there a more personal motive? Why did the murderer risk coming onto the rear stage (the stage is constructed similarly to an Elizabethan stage, which Innes describes better than I could,) risking being seen by the prompter Mr. Bose? Why did Mr. Bose, an expat from India, not say anything about what he saw, easily condemning him to second-victim status? Why did the murderer risk dragging Bose’s body across several hallways to leave it in front of Auldearn’s room, where Appleby was investigating? Most importantly, why did the killer send five messages to various people involved with the play across different formats, each containing a Shakespearean quote, over the week before the production?
It’s definitely a complex puzzle plot, and once Appleby comes on the scene, whisked down to Scamnum after watching the ballet Les Présages by his superiors in Scotland Yard and the Prime Minister himself, some pieces of that puzzle fall into place while the big picture seems to constantly grow in size. Appleby’s first chapter does a good job of portraying him as a by-the-book police detective, but still one who appreciates the arts and is a philosophical thinker. His primary concern at Scamnum, as evidenced by the level of political importance associated with his appointment to the case, is securing the document Lord Auldearn had held onto (an agricultural manifesto titled the Pike and Perch Joint Scheme) and investigating the possibility that spies have gotten hold of the document, or have found a way to copy it and send the information out. Appleby quickly suspects that any espionage activity was ultimately a failure – the ransacking of Auldearn’s safe was performed by a career cat-burglar, and a Morse code message flashed out from a Scamnum window was likely a false alarm – and instead focuses on the murder of Lord Auldearn as a more personal matter, committed with theatrical flair and possibly having its motive in the kind of long-held longing for revenge harbored by Hamlet himself. Of course, Innes is smart enough to continue the connections between Hamlet and the murder mystery beyond the murder occurring during Polonius’ death: one of Appleby’s main lines of investigation is finding out how else the murder may have derived from the themes and conflicts of the play.
Since Gott acts as Appleby’s Watson, he brings more of the imaginative advancements in detection to the table, especialy as concerns the relations between the crime and Hamlet. Appleby’s method is more humdrum, and Gott’s is more Chestertonian. This is evidenced best in Part Three. Appleby and his underling Sergeant Mason eliminate the suspects one by one based on their availability for the two murders, five messages, and an attack on a third character; over thirty pages they close in on Appleby’s preferred suspect but ultimately come to a dead end. After this, Gott proposes his own solution based on the timing of the murder to Polonius’ death, ideological zealotry, anagrams throughout the messages, and Lord Auldearn’s medical conditions; this solution leads us into a twisty and exciting Epilogue which resolves the espionage elements and brings the Scamnum affair to a close. Innes has planted his clues well, a mix of the physical (the characters’ whereabouts and the setup of the stage) and psychological (the murderer’s daring and theatricality.) While the complicated nature of Lord Auldearn’s murder ends up not having some kind of brilliant Carrian solution in terms of howdunit, the Shakespearean connections do not disappoint.
Since Hamlet, Revenge! was published in 1937, it contains many references to that time period. Some of these are very interesting insights into world affairs; the Prime Minister is worried that Pike and Perch could worsen strained political tensions if it falls into the wrong hands, a Russian character is immediately distrusted (she turns out not to be Russian,) and Gott points out the rise of extremism in his solution, especially pertinent as fascism spread across Europe:
“All over the world to-day are we not facing a rising tide of ideological intolerance, and are not violence and terrorism more and more in men’s thoughts? And this dressing-up of the lawless and the primitive as a ruthless-because-right philosophy or world-picture or ideology that must and will prevail—is this not something to haunt and hold naturally unstable men, whatever their particular belief may be? The modern world is full of unwholesome armies of martyrs and inquisitors. We bind ourselves together by the million and sixty million to hate and kill—kill, as we persuade ourselves, for an idea. Are we to be surprised if here and there an individual kills simply because he hates—and simply because he hates and idea?”
Hamlet, Revenge!, “Dénouement”, Chapter 6
Innes gives us looks as well into the expanding class divide, as symbolized by the split between Scamnum and Horton Hill; both the upper and lower classes are shown as flawed and the aristocracy’s pomposity is definitely on display. There is an early example of paparazzi and pop culture fever – Horton Hill is packed by sightseers and ice-cream vendors as people become desperate to get a glimpse into the resplendent setting of what appears to be a political murder. Unfortunately there are also some dated racial attitudes, especially towards the Indian character Mr. Bose. The characters seem to have a field day making fun of Bose’s dependence on his father for advice (from whom he has gotten permission to “eat an egg” if constitutionally necessary,) and the Duchess of Horton has essentially invited him to Scamnum as a charity case, but he is not considered by the others to be an “Oriental bath mat”. This, plus a use of the n-word, makes for some discomfort in a modern age.
Hamlet, Revenge!, with its stuffy opening, long character list, and “donnish” style, is definitely not for everyone who enjoys GAD fiction. With my preference for plot-oriented impossible crime stories, it may be surprising that I enjoyed this as much as I did, but as someone who enjoys James and Conrad as much as Christie and Carr, this was right up my alley. It’s definitely a novel that will appeal to some readers and not others, so I wouldn’t uniformly recommend it but think it’s worth a try – I get the feeling that if you don’t enjoy the Prologue, then Innes in general might not be an author you’ll get along with. However, I’ve been impressed by Innes’ writing, especially since his main avenue was literary criticism (a.k.a. stuffy to the max,) and I look forward to reading more from him. I’m especially interested in Lament for a Maker, because of its near-universal acclaim among Innes fans and its narrative similarities to The Arabian Nights Murder, which I absolutely loved.
New Horizons Challenge: 11 works out of 25
Author: Michael Innes
The Challenge Requirements so far:
1/3 works translated into English
4/3 works written in English after 1970
1/2 works that are hardboiled or noir
2/2 works written by an American minority author
0/2 works with a musical setting
Other Reviews:
At the Scene of the Crime, Bardfilm, Captain’s Quarters, Classic Mysteries, gadetection (Nick Fuller / Wyatt James), The Grandest Game in the World, Harriet Devine’s Blog, Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, One-Minute Book Reviews, Past Offences, A Penguin a Week, She Reads Novels, Shelf Love, Tanaudel