Don Among the Dead Men

 Don Among the Dead Men (1952) by C. E. Vulliamy

If you don't like inverted mysteries and knowing pretty much everything except whether the police will figure out that murder has happened and be able to pin it on the guilty party, then you best not read the first paragraph.

So...Dr. Bowes-Ottery, lecturer in chemistry, is studiously working his way towards a professorship by doing all sorts of experiments with benzenes and colloids and whatnot when he injects his latest concoction into a lab rat and accidentally discovers an apparently impossible-to-trace poison that gives the victim a grand sense of well-being and euphoria before a quite painless death. What a gift to mankind! Bowes-Ottery sees himself dispensing it to all sorts of undesirables who do nothing but harm to the public. He would never doing harm to anyone--but a painless death that wouldn't be anything to trouble one's conscience over. But it doesn't take long for his scheme of benefiting humanity in general turns to one of personal vengeance on those who have been troublesome to the good doctor in one way or another--a fellow academician who has meddled in all sorts of affairs from those that touch Bowes-Ottery personally to those in the university on a grander scale. Then there's that annoying Mrs. Talantoun, the university gossip, whose tittle-tattle ruins reputations and who has recently notices that Bowes-Ottery pays more than a mentor's attention to the young, shapely student who works in his lab. A tongue like hers most definitely needs silencing. And when he tires of the all too clingy shapely student...well, he can't have her ruining his chances for the top prize in his field, now can he? 

His lab assistant remembers the queer incident with the rat and he begins to get worried. And when Bowes Ottery is made a professor and a new chemistry lecturer is hired...and the two don't seem to get on...and the new chemistry lecturer gets sick in a rather odd way...the lab assistant and the lecturer put their heads together about Bowes-Ottery's last experiment before all the deaths started happening. Meanwhile, the police haven't been as happy with the coroner's court verdicts as it would appear and they've been investigating as well...But will they be able to gather enough evidence to convict our poisoner? Will justice prevail? Well...don't read the last quote below if you want there to be any mystery at all in this story (should you happen to want to track it down and read it for yourself).

I have so many mixed feelings about this one. It's an academic mystery--which I love. It's an inverted mystery which I hate. It has an absolutely fantastic opening with an apparent lunatic or gleeful drunk driving crazily across country producing confusion and mayhem wherever he goes, laughing outrageously at everything he does, and killing himself when he runs into a steam roller--and, yet, we're told it's murder. It's one of the best two-page intros I've read in a long time. And then we're introduced to the murderer and we get to read his journal entries and see what a delusional, self-important, megalomaniac he is. No investigation, no looking at clues, no police interviews with suspects (as far as I can tell they don't have any suspects until somebody gets the bright idea that our murderer might have tried to kill the one person who escaped his clutches). But...there's all these lovely, entertaining peeks at university life that I adored. Oh, and the scenes between the prosecuting attorney and the murderer's defense attorney are priceless--as well as the trial itself. And it's always a good sign if I'm grabbing up quotations right and left.

But....as a mystery it falls flat. Because, in my book, it's not one. Yeah, the suspense of "will he get away with it?" is supposed to carry the day in an inverted mystery, but it doesn't really here. Vulliamy, I think, must have thought himself rather clever with his little twist at the end, but that didn't really do it for me either. So, overall: ★★ and 3/4--I just can't bring myself to give a full three stars.

First line: The car pulled up with a screech and a shuddering heave on the grassy verge of the lane, and the driver's cheerful face appeared at the window.

"Well, you can go easy now. Nobody expects a professor to do more than is required of him--and that's damned little." (the new Professor of Greek; p. 56)

Psychology? That is the last refuge of desperation, if I may venture to say so, with the greatest respect to Dr. Roberts. It leads you round and round for ever and ever, and you get nowhere at all. (the Coroner; p. 94)

"You never know where you are with a learned man; he has a way of being elaborately simple." (Inspector Butts; p. 105)

"Innocent people are much more likely to show confusion than guilty ones. Always remember that. Not only are they usually more timid, but they are taken aback by what seems to them so utterly preposterous; whereas the others are continually on the alert." (the Superintendent; p. 106)

If the residents of this University, or its illustrious visitors, were to get in the habit of dying mysteriously with a certain resemblance in the preliminary symptoms (and it's not easy to avoid that), a kind of general suspicion would arise which might become somewhat embarrassing. (from the journal of our murderer; p. 149)

"If you did happen to kill her, even by accident, you simply mustn't say so. I've known you for some years, and the notion seems to me too incredibly fantastic, my dear boy; but we all do funny things now and then." (our murderer's lawyer to him; p. 162)

Last line: Still, I am inclined to believe that he was convicted on a charge of which he was perfectly innocent. And yet, in the strangest way, justice was done; for Justice (like her sister Truth) may wear the mask of irony.
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Deaths = 7 (one car accident; six poisoned)