These Names Make Clues by E. C. R. Lorac

The British author Edith Caroline Rivett – who wrote under the pseudonyms E. C. R. Lorac, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne – is fast becoming one of my favourite writers of Golden Age mysteries. The British Library have reissued several of her novels in their Crime Classics series, and while These Names Make Clues (1937) isn’t quite as strong as some of the others I’ve read, there’s certainly a very intriguing puzzle for readers to enjoy.

The novel opens with an invitation to a treasure hunt party, which is to be hosted by the London-based publisher Graham Coombe and his sister, Susan. The Coombes have invited Chief Inspector Macdonald to attend the gathering, urging the detective to test his wits against the thriller writers and other assorted luminaries attending the event. At first, Macdonald is somewhat reluctant to accept, fearing that he might look a bit foolish if trumped by an amateur sleuth. Nevertheless, he ends up taking the bait, albeit on a whim.

The action swiftly moves to the party itself at Caroline House, a rather well-to-do property in London’s Marylebone, in the spring of 1936. Macdonald is one of ten or so guests at the gathering, each of whom is assigned a literary pseudonym to adopt for the night.

At first, the treasure hunt proceeds according to plan, with each guest working on their individual clues while also wondering about the other players’ identities. (To the best of the Coombes’ knowledge, the guests haven’t met before, so their true identities also remain something of a mystery – to one another at least.)

Just as the party is in full swing, the game is rudely interrupted by a blackout, seemingly due to a blown fuse. Candles are lit as a temporary measure, but when the guests reassemble to take stock of the situation, one member of the party is missing. Before long, the body of ‘Samuel Pepys’, aka the crime writer Andrew Gardien, is discovered by Macdonald at the back of the house. 

So Samuel Pepys was Andrew Gardien, author of a dozen detective stories. The “Master Mechanic” the reviewers called him, owing to his ingenuity in inventing methods of killing based on simple mechanical contraptions. “Heath Robinson murders,” another reviewer had styled them, involving bits of cord and wire and counterpoises, all nicely calculated to tidy themselves up when their work was done. Springs and levers and pulleys had been used with wonderful effect by the quick brain which had once animated that still body. (p. 44)

Heart failure appears to be the most likely cause of Gardien’s death, but naturally Macdonald is suspicious. There are scorch marks on the dead man’s hands, possibly indicating an electric shock of some sort, although quite how that might have happened is not immediately apparent. The sighting of a mysterious grey-haired man is another puzzling factor, with two of the guests claiming to have seen this man before the blackout happened. The identity of the grey-haired man is unknown. However, there is a suggestion that he bore a vague resemblance to Gardien’s literary agent, Mardon-Elliott, who was not on the official guest list for the party, as far as we can tell.

The picture is further complicated when Mardon-Elliott himself is found dead in his office the following morning. Once again, the circumstances are suspicious, with various clues pointing to Gardien as the potential perpetrator – a theoretical possibility, especially given the degree of uncertainty around the time of Elliott’s death. As Macdonald subsequently muses, the two crimes appear to be linked, with Gardien’s murder pointing to Elliott as the perpetrator, and Elliot’s to Gardien – a puzzling situation indeed, possibly designed to throw detectives off the scent.

“Yet here we have the murder of Elliott – signed Gardien – so to speak, and the murder of Gardien with an indication of Elliott. The probability is that the same person killed both and arranged indications that they killed one another, doing it in such a way as to suggest a thriller writer is the perpetrator – on account of the funny business involved – from which suggestion it seems reasonable to argue by contraries that a thriller writer had nothing to do with it.” (p. 136)

By now, Macdonald is well and truly in his element, interviewing the various attendees to figure out their movements on the night of the party. As ever, this likeable detective is a pleasure to shadow as he goes about his business, ruminating on various details that other investigators might miss.

Towards the end of the story, the action shifts from London to the Berkshire countryside with Macdonald’s friend, the enthusiastic journalist Peter Vernon also getting embroiled in the case.

While These Names… is a little short on the immersive sense of place Lorac employs so well in several of her other mysteries – a missed opportunity given her skills in capturing rural landscapes (as in Fell Murder) and wartime London settings (as in Checkmate to Murder) – it does feature some very interesting characters, not least the razor-sharp historian Valerie Woodstock.

The girl’s shrewd eyes met Macdonald’s full. Her appearance might indicate the society miss, interested only in clothes and a good time, but her expression showed a very different personality. Valerie Woodstock had recently leapt into fame for an erudite piece of historical research, and Macdonald knew that a first-class brain was hidden behind that frivolous exterior. (p. 51)

Readers would do well to pay close attention to the characters’ names in this intriguing mystery – a point that is easier said than done given the liberal use of pseudonyms running through the book. Nevertheless, fans of cryptic crosswords and anagrams will likely enjoy this one, especially given the relevance of the novel’s title, These Names Make Clues.

As ever, the novel comes with an excellent introduction from the writer and series consultant Martin Edwards, who explains a little more about Lorac/Rivett and her election to the Detection Club. It’s lovely to see this engaging novel back in print after a long period in the wilderness. My thanks to The British Library for kindly providing a review copy. (If it’s of interest, you can buy the book here via this link to Bookshop.org.)