He Came By Night (1944) by Anthony Gilbert

It has taken a few days to get going with reading this month. One difficulty has been trying to decide what to read. Very often I would decide on a book and then five minutes later I have completely gone off the idea. I was beginning to feel like Mavis from Open all Hours…

However, I eventually made my choice and my first read of April was by a familiar face, Anthony Gilbert. This is her 13^th Arthur Crook mystery, which was also published under the name Death at the Door.

Like so many of her books, He Came by Night, is not the cheapest to buy a hard copy of, but a kindle version is more cheaply available. Mine is the a Collins Crime Club one. When putting this post together I was intrigued by the different approach publishers have taken to providing this book with a synopsis. Interestingly the two I have included below both end on the same note, the later reprint no doubt making a nod to the earlier one.

Synopsis 1 – Collin Crime Club

‘It was sheer luck that caused Arthur Crook, taking an unwanted holiday in November in the little Mereshire village of Bridget St. Mary, to stumble on a body where no body has any right to be. it was Crook who hardily undertook to work for the defence of the old woman arrested for the crime, who followed the trail from King Fossett to Bishop Cleveland, and thence to London; who unravelled the mystery of the strange girl, Stella Reed; who attacked the murderer with his own weapons and at the eleventh hour, when everything seemed lost, produced the final iota of evidence that brought the criminal to book, and justified his double claim that Crook’s clients are always innocent and that he always gets his man.’

Synopsis 2 – The Murder Room Reprint

‘How do you catch a killer when the murder goes unnoticed? […]The victim was certainly deserving of death, but not the hard, cruel death he found. No one deserved that . . . At first, the killer goes unsuspected. Someone else would pay the price for the crime – an innocent woman would pay and the murderer was willing to arrange other, more ‘accidental’ deaths to ensure it . . . until solicitor-detective Arthur Crook steps in.  In one of his most baffling cases, Crook only has two guiding principles: his client is always innocent and, come hell or high water, he always gets his man.’

Both have a “Mountie always gets his man” sort of vibe and I wonder if the earlier synopsis is trying to emulate Erle Stanley Gardner’s lawyer detective, Perry Mason. Looking at both blurbs side by side, and having now read the book, I think the first synopsis is my preference. It gives you a better sense of the book you are about to read and the details it provides are in some ways less spoiler-ish than the more minimal ones included in the second synopsis. However, I would be very interested to see which one other people like best.

Overall Thoughts

There were two things which initially drew me to this book. The first was that it seemed like Arthur Crook would make an earlier appearance in the novel, an oddity for him as very often Gilbert prefers to hold off his entrances until later when a key character has got themselves into a serious pickle. This expectation was fulfilled, and I think the mystery was all the better for having Crook make an early start.

The second thing that interested me about this story was that the woman on trial is older. Again, this is less common for Gilbert, I think, based on the books by her I have read. Usually, the female protagonist is younger and tends to be a damsel in distress figure. Older women do feature in Gilbert’s books, but I think they tend to be murder victims rather than characters damned by circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, I should point out that the older woman in He Came by Night, awaiting trial, mostly resides off page after the first quarter of the book and instead other younger or middle-aged females become more dominant. Although Gilbert’s books do not overtly read like HIBK mysteries, I sometimes wonder if their depiction of gender and personal agency mirror this subgenre to a degree. Perhaps because the central detective is male and not a dude in distress, the HIBK scaffolding is less visible.

The novel opens with an unknown male, ‘the hunted man,’ making his way to his old village after being away several decades. He left under a cloud and is now in danger. He thinks he is walking towards a source of money and therefore security, but as we are told he is in fact walking towards death. The sense of foreboding in this setup is then contrasted with the excited anticipation Mary Anne Manners feels, getting ready for her grandson’s arrival, having been given 48 hours leave. Gilbert does not info dump the fragmented and troubled connections between Mary Anne Manners, ‘the hunted man’ and the other people in her family. We find out about her dead daughter and the shadows in her history, which link to the local aristocratic family – the Clevelands. At this stage we learn about the curse which seems to prevent any elder Cleveland son from inheriting. They always seem to die before this can happen… I like this approach of Gilbert’s as it encourages the reader to pay attention and to puzzle over what has been going on in the past. This section of the novel also shows us piece by piece how events and choices are going to increasingly incriminate Mary. Even the way our ‘hunted man’ meets his demise is perfectly suited to an older person and the murder method is chillingly simple. It wasn’t something I was expecting.

Chapter three sees Arthur Crook enter the story and uncharacteristically he is on holiday. He is something of a “Johnny Town Mouse” (a ref. you might get if you know your Beatrix Potter), and it is amusing watching him encounter the scary world of… the countryside. According to him there is too much grass, cows are walking death machines and bicycles are too big and dangerous. He tries his best to follow the advice of the newspaper columnist Timothy Tramp, but his holiday soon finds him uncovering a body. I like how Gilbert plays around with melodramatic conventions in this part of the book as the reader is naturally keyed for a body to appear, especially when a coffin enters the picture, but Gilbert shies away from the obvious. Crook’s investigation of the crime scene includes some interesting points. For instance, he knows a bottle of beer must have been put there recently, as the branding is for a wartime variety, (inferior naturally). Further comedy also occurs when Crook has the task of finding a policeman to report the information to. Seemingly a simple task, but not in reality.

In the end a local parson takes him up to the local Cleveland family estate, as the current Earl is the Deputy Chief Constable. The Cleveland family is effectively portrayed as anachronistic and out of touch, and the effectiveness lies in the nuance Gilbert puts into the depiction. Gilbert’s book is not a Downton Abbey parody, apart from the fact the Earl wanted the inquest postponed for a day as he always goes to town on Tuesdays. Unsurprisingly and quite rightly the coroner does not comply! In addition, at the inquest we see some resentment towards the upper classes from the coroner: ‘The nation was constantly being told that this was everybody’s war, that we were all in the front line, but the fellows in uniform got the privileges just as they got the food.’ Oh, and don’t get him started on petrol! I’d like to say society has changed since then, but I think current news stories suggest otherwise. But it is interesting to look at mysteries novels published in WW2, as the jingoistic perception of “Blitz Spirit” is far less apparent than nostalgia would suggest.

Crook’s viewpoint of them is a crucial lens for the reader, which puts the reader and Crook on the same side, observing the village and local gentry from the outside. This viewpoint differs from the locals who have lived there for generations, who almost think that if human agency has aided the Cleveland curse, then this is just “providence”. At one point Gilbert writes: ‘You couldn’t, Crook decided, argue with that sort of mentality. He felt like an ardent missionary confronted by an equally ardent heathen; there was no making any headway in either direction.’ I think Crook’s non-feudalistic standpoint gives his character more of a modern mentality.

It is interesting how the author ties in the negative qualities of the family into the way their social position enables them to avoid some of the difficulties of living in wartime. We also see the dowager and her stepdaughter enact war effort one-upmanship, trying to outdo the other person’s efforts in heading up voluntary organisations.

As I mentioned earlier, Mary Manners does not feature much in the narrative once the inquest jury accuses her of the murder. Yet we do get a few small scenes, which are entertaining due to how hard she makes it for Crook who is trying to help. His exasperation is beautifully conveyed in this line: “Look here […] you’re in a spot. You do realise that. Oh, you can look like Queen Victoria’s twin sister till the cows come home, but it won’t help you, not when you’re in the witness box.” Fortunately for Crook though, action elsewhere will help him to root out the real killer. I found it interesting that at the 60%-mark, Crook decides his best move is to return to London. This action is stated as a curious one by the narrator, yet the theory is, is that if he leaves the picture the true culprit will feel safe enough to act further and it is these expected actions, which Crook thinks will help him solve the case.  A detective’s absence aiding the revealing of the solution is an interesting idea.

He Came by Night commences with a quote from Act 1 of Othello in which the eponymous tragic hero (or as I like to them tragic nitwit), is called to the Senate to defend himself against the charge that he bewitched the duke’s daughter into marrying him. Now classic crime writers have been known to insert literary allusions into their texts and for there to be very little relevance for doing so. Initially I thought this might be the case here, yet in a way Gilbert’s story reverses this set up with the aristocratic males being drawn to lower class women. These women are often seen by the female relations of the men as upstarts who should “know their place”. The passion these women have for their sons/brothers etc. and their ancestral home becomes increasingly intertwined into the mystery plot. However, it is not just the Cleveland ladies who have this obsession as the reason for many of Mary’s decisions is to protect her grandson who is her be all and end all.

I think perhaps one weakness of Gilbert’s plot construction is that whilst the identity of the killer is not necessarily spelt out too early, other surprising twists and shock plot developments are heralded too early. This leaves the reader less affected by them, having been expecting them for many chapters. The slower pace of some of Gilbert’s book also feeds into this problem, as does a reoccurring trope. In quite a few of Gilbert WW2 mysteries, there seems to always be a young woman who goes through all manner of near-death experiences. Moreover, you know she is not going to die, even when she falls into the clutches of the killer when she ends up hospital. Pretend policeman and fake messages and phone calls are used liberally. Why these young women don’t suspect a rat on these repeated occasions is beyond me. Given how the reader knows the woman is not going to die, it is unfortunate that Gilbert stretches these sequences out. I imagine she did so, in order to give Crook the means to catch the killer, but the page space still feels a bit too much.

Nevertheless, I still found a lot to enjoy in this one and part of me really does like the idea of an Arthur Crook TV series.

Rating: 4/5

P. S. I thought I would include this description of a character’s tea making. I am not a tea drinker, but I can’t imagine this sounds appealing to anyone who is fond of a cuppa: ‘He made the tea the way she liked it, thick and red, so that you could float a hen on it.’