The Cambridge Murders

 The Cambridge Murders (1945) by Glyn Daniel

Sir Richard Cherrington, Vice President of Fisher College, Cambridge, and eminent archaeologist, decides to use his abilities to uncover the mysteries of the past to unravel the mysteries of the present. Things are bad enough when one of the college porters is found shot to death in the path between the inner and outer courtyards. But when a very unpopular Dean goes missing, things look very black indeed. And then the body of Dean Landon is found stuffed in the trunk belonging to Cherrington's nephew. Inspector Wyndham of the local Cambridge force begins to look at Cherrington with a very suspicious eye, but when Scotland Yard arrives the focus is turned to Evan Fothergill who has been having an affair with the Dean's wife. Those aren't the only suspects though. There's Roger Westmacott who though he might have a chance with Anne Landon before the Dean scooped her up and who has had many run-ins with the Dean since then. And there's John Parrott, an undergraduate whom the Dean had just sent down from College for flouting the rules about late leave once too often. And Westmacott's nephew who was also kicked out--and would have been reported to the police for theft if the Dean had lived. Of course, Anne Landon might also have wanted to get her husband out of the way permanently. Then she and Fothergill would have been free to marry.

Cherrington, not suspecting that any of the police seriously suspect him, sets out to solve the mystery for purely academic reasons. He's always been interested in crime (he has whole shelves of crime texts and detective stories--very fishy from Inspector Wyndham's view) and wants to see if he can put theory into practice. Some of his activities in the detecting game make him look even more suspicious to the authorities and even Superintendent Robertson-McDonald of the Yard begins to believe that Cherrington can't be as innocent as he claims. Will our amateur sleuth track down the real villain before the Yard decides to charge him?

First of all, thanks to Kate from Cross Examining Crime for including this in my Secret Santa goodies a few years ago [sorry it's taken so long to get to it, Kate, but you know how vast my TBR pile is...]. She knows how much I love getting new-to-me academic mysteries. Glyn Daniel does at least one thing really well in this one--he gives us very good look at academic life at Cambridge, albeit at a very fictional Fisher College. One really believes in the stairways leading to the Dean's and Cherrington's and the others' room as well as the courtyards separated by the Screens (where the porter was found) and walk leading down to the River Cam. I feel like once I make it to England (fingers crossed for this summer) that I could go to Cambridge and find this place. Daniel shares Sayers' gift for creating a College so real that it comes alive on the page. 

He also does a very good job with most of his characters. The best is Robertson-McDonald. I enjoyed his quirk of arriving on the spot, gathering up all the reports and files, and then taking himself off by himself for a really good think before getting started. It was also fun to watch him build up a beautiful theory and then think it all came to smash over one tiny little detail--a seemingly unshakeable alibi. [Surely a Superintendent at the Yard has learned by now to distrust the unshakeable alibi...] The one character who doesn't shine as much as I'd like is our amateur sleuth, Cherrington (and I noted this in Welcome Death when I reviewed it last year). I'm just not completely sold on him. He does a bit better at sleuthing in this debut than he did in his second outing, but he's not as engaging as I'd like my academic detective to be. I think one thing that's off-putting is that he has way too much sympathy with the suspects. He says he wants to pursue the investigation for academic reasons and then he doesn't want see any of the suspects get in trouble with the police--even when they're telling blatant lies. 

Overall, a well-plotted academic mystery--engaging story with an interesting motive behind the killings. ★★★ and 1/2 

First line: To those who were educated in the older and more beautiful of the two ancient Universities there is no need to explain that Fisher College lies between Trinity and St. John's, and stretches from Trinity Street down to the Cam, but to those who were not so fortunate we should explain that Fisher College--the abbreviation "Fisher" is never used--comprises two excellent seventeenth-century brick courts, both tremendously praised by Ruskin.

"Quite like my undergraduate days" he said to Wyndham. "I mean being back in a College and dealing with porters. The salt of the earth, you know," he added. "The salt of the earth. No," he said ruminating, "he shouldn't have killed Gostlin. That was bad--very bad. It gives me an added reason in tracking him down." [Superintendent Robertson-McDonald; p. 139]

"After all...a murder should not really be more difficult to solve than a crossword puzzle. And I can solve them fairly quickly." [Robertson-McDonald; p. 148]

Last lines: "You know," he said, turning to the Superintendent, "this is one of those rare occasions in my life when champagne is the only drink and enough champagne to make us all quite tight."
  And he got up and rang the bell. 
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Deaths = 3 [two shot; one pneumonia]