The May Week Murders

 The May Week Murders (1937) by Douglas G. Browne

[note: cover says "murder" while the spine and various sources says "murders]

May Week at Cambridge is a pretty hectic time of year--nightly balls and a huge influx of visitors. This makes a prime setting for a Golden Age mystery. This particular May Week brings together the surviving members (and children of deceased members) of a university club which started before the first world war. The club, known as the Nine Bright Shiners also instituted a trust fund for any children of the original members. A trust fund that seems to operate somewhat along the lines of a tontine. The children earn an equal share of the trust as soon as they graduate from Cambridge. If any don't survive to graduate (or are sent down, one supposes), then the shares get larger for the remaining children.

Sir Vyvyan Roswell-Hogg hosts an annual dinner for them all to get together. But this year the dinner doesn't end well. Roswell-Hogg is found stabbed in the lane running behind his hotel and the diamond pendant presented to his wife by the club is stolen that same night as well. Suspicion soon lands on Wilfred Lanham, one of the founding members and the originator of the trust fund idea. Lanham had fallen on hard times and had applied to trustees of the fund for assistance from the fund (pointing out that exceptions had been made for widows of original members who had been lost in the Great War). But there had already been ill-feeling between the trustees and Lanham and they turned him down. Lanham particularly blamed Roswell-Hogg because he had great influence over the other trustees. Lanham was supposed to be in Cambridge--though to visit his daughter, not to attend the dinner--but when the police go looking for him, he's nowhere to be found.

Then several children of the survivors are murdered as well and it begins to look like someone either has a vendetta against the club in general (Lanham again) or is trying to make the shares bigger...or both. The police are making little headway in either finding Lanham or finding any evidence that will point to someone else. Added to the mix is a mysterious man from Chicago who is on the hunt for someone else from America but who doesn't seem quite clear on exactly who that is...Does this connect with the murders or is something else going on? Fortunately the Chief Constable, Colonel Nugent, is good friends with Major Maurice Hemyock, a well-known amateur detective, and Hemyock arrives to sort things out.

This is not the strongest mystery by Browne that I have read (see What Beckoning Ghost or Too Many Cousins). It takes a while to get into the swing of things and it was a bit disconcerting not knowing who exactly our narrator was and how they were connected to Hemyhock until we were well into the thick of it. The plot and motive are fairly well-worn (definitely now and, I suspect, even at the time of first printing). And, it may be that I was just having a particularly bright moment when the first clue to the culprit was presented, but I did see where everything was headed from that point. On the plus side, I do enjoy Browne's characters (once I had the chance to get everyone sorted properly) and our narrator--Myra--is quite charming. A decent mystery, but perhaps not the best introduction to Browne's work. ★★★

First line: I had been staying with the Nugents at Clayhythe since the beginning of May Week.

Last lines: "They won't be," said Maurice.
                  He was quite right.
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Deaths = 12 (four stabbed; one car crash; four in battle; one drowned; one natural; one shot)