Friday Fright Night...er Spooky Saturday: Creepy Country Homes

  Curtis @The Passing Tramp (and sponsor of the Vintage Mysteries Group on Facebook) has revived the Friday Fright Night first launched in October 2020. Bloggers will take part in a month-long event sure to prepare us for Halloween. Friday Fright Night will find us serving up spooky, spirited reads at the end of each week throughout October. Curtis put out the call on Facebook but all bloggers are welcome to serve up ghastly delights and if you aren't on Facebook and would like to be included just provide a link to your post in the comments and I'll pass it along to Curtis. 

How did it get to be the end of October already?! This week flew by and I wasn't quite ready for Friday night...so I've made it into Spooky Saturday instead.....and this week's topic is all about those cozy country homes that wind up giving the shivers to their residents. Many a heroine (and sometimes a hero) in mysteries set off to the country in search of a respite from city life only to find themselves in the middle of creepy circumstances.

Mary Roberts Rinehart turned this scenario into a good thing repeatedly. In fact she took one story and revamped it after it was turned into a play. The Circular Staircase (1908) was Mary Roberts Rinehart's first best-seller. She had begun her mystery-writing career with The Man in Lower Ten (1906), but Staircase made her name. It also gave her the distinction of having created the Had I But Known (HIBK) school of mystery writing--full of spooky houses and heroines who would have stayed out of trouble if they only knew then what they know now. It also involves said heroines in actions which manage to extend the time necessary to solve the crime.

As Miss Rachel Innes tells us in the very fist line:

This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.

Miss Rachel (or Aunt Ray as she's known throughout the book) has been the guardian of her niece and nephew for years and they convince her that getting out of New York City for a cool, quiet summer in the country is just what she (and they) need. She follows their advice and rents a secluded home called Sunnyside. However, peace and quiet is the last thing that they find in the secluded country house. The first night passes quietly enough, but it is the last one that does: "Never after that night did I put my head on my pillow with any assurance how long it would be there; or on my shoulders for that matter."(14) On the second night, Miss Rachel's maid Liddy swears she hears a ghost and Miss Rachel, despite telling us repeatedly that she doesn't take fright easily, becomes alarmed as well when she sees a shadowy figure outside the window and is later disturbed by "a sound from the east wing, apparently, that made me stop, frozen, with one bedroom slipper half off, and listen. It was a rattling metallic sound, and it reverberated along the empty halls like the crash of doom."(23)

Later, I read Rinehart's The Bat--which is a book based on the play which was in turn a loose reworking of the plot in Staircase. I had great fun with The Bat and actually recommend it more highly than the first novel. The Bat is more tightly plotted and the action moves far more fast and furious with suspense at just the right level. In this version Miss Rachel is turned into Cornelia Van Gorder, a spinster who has longed for adventure. Cornelia takes herself, her Irish maid Lizzie, and her neice Dale off to the country to escape the city's summer heat. She rents a country home that has recently become available when Courtleigh Fleming, a local bank manager, died. She's bemoaning her quiet, unadventurous existence when suddenly the countryside becomes the center for some very mysterious activity.

Cornelia begins receiving anonymous notes meant to frighten her away from the house. There are rumors that The Bat, a notorious criminal mastermind, is in the area. And...in the wake of the bank manager's death, it is discovered that a large amount of bank funds are missing--as well as one of the bank clerks. Cornelia's neice begins acting strangely, her maid Lizzie is nervous as a cat, and her butler Billy is inscrutable (as all Chinese men of the time are represented). Dale brings home a new gardener who isn't what he seems and Cornelia decides to request that a detective be sent to help her get to the bottom of the nasty notes. Who on earth could possibly care if she spends her summer in the banker's abandoned house? That's when the excitement begins. There are mysterious people popping in and out of rooms. Strangers on the roof and bats flying through the rooms. Lots of adventure and excitement now, eh, Cornelia?

But Rinehart doesn't limit creepy country house adventures to ladies in distress. Oh, no. In The Red Lamp you think you might have a young woman in danger or Had-I-But-Known book. As the the back of the book tells us:

Jane wanted to leave Twin Towers the moment she arrived. She had a strange feeling about the old mansion, a chilling apprehension of doom that followed her through the creaking halls like a death shadow. The others thought her fears were groundless--until they felt the evil iridescence of the Red Lamp, and realized how terrifyingly right she was.

But then you read the book and you find out this isn't a woman-in-danger book. The story isn't really about Jane at all. It's a man in danger. And, as a matter of fact, it's a Professor in danger. And as the detective Greenough tells him, "you'll have to admit that you've seemed to go out of your way all summer to get into trouble!" So, what is the trouble, you ask?

Well...Professor William Porter has inherited Twin Towers from his Uncle Horace. Uncle Horace died from what was declared natural causes--a simple heart attack. Or was it? Was he literally scared to death by earthly agents or...perhaps by supernatural forces? Twin Towers had been rumored to be haunted. There are tales of a red lamp that glows in its windows at night. And when the red lamp glows, things happen. Things that no one can explain.

Of course, Rinehart didn't corner the market on spooky goings-on in the countryside. Ethel Lina White joined her with The Spiral Staircase (1933; originally titled Some Must Watch). She even used the old cliche: It was a dark and stormy night....no, really, it was. It is a suspense thriller with a damsel in distress that makes excellent use of the dramatic storm-tossed night at a secluded house in the country to provide a top-notch novel filled with Had-I-But-Known moments.  

She was visited by no prescience to warn her that--since her return--there had been certain trivial incidents which were the first cracks in the walls of her fortress. Once they were started, nothing could stop the process of disintegration; and each future development would act as a wedge, to force the fissures into ever-widening breaches letting in the night.

Things start off calmly enough. Helen Capel is over-joyed to find a position as lady's help at the Summit, Professor Warren's remote estate on the Welsh border. After all, apart from the loneliness of the locale, the post is a very good one--offering her a very nice room and sitting room of her own, good food, and she's even allowed to take her meals with the family. It is a bit worrisome that there is a murderer loose in the countryside. A mysterious killer who has chosen as his prey young women who work for their living. Some think he may be a man who believes these women have taken jobs away from men. 

But, reasons Helen, all the girls who have been killed have been alone.  And the murders have taken place at a good distance from the Summit. Surely she, and the others in the house, will be safe if they keep the place shuttered and bolted at night and they all stay inside. Yes, she's sure of it. Until a victim is strangled in a house just five miles away. Until the next victim is found murdered just on the other side of the estate. Death and terror creep closer to the Summit, but still Helen feels safe...until the stormy night when she bolts herself in the house only to find that the danger was somewhere inside and had chosen her as the next target.

White also provides the typical suspense-thriller heroine in Helen Capel, a self-identified independent-minded young woman who none-the-less does remarkably silly things for someone who suspects she's in danger. Through various plausible-sounding means, several of the inmates leave the house, a few of them are drugged, drunk or otherwise incapacitated, and Helen promptly goes about alienating one of the few people who couldn't possibly be the killer--thereby setting herself up to slip into the maniac's clutches. 

White manages to bring about a quite nifty ending--I won't spoil it by giving even a hint of what I mean. The book is a classic example of good suspense done right without blood and gore or explicit scenes. It is also a terrific character study with plenty of misdirection to allow the reader to question each person's motives and whether they are really what they seem. A very good read for a dark and stormy night of your own. Just make sure to lock all the doors. You might want to check under all the beds first, though.