Detective Sir John Appleby is summoned to look into a seemingly inconsequential crime: the theft of a cab horse called Daffodil. However, it turns out that Daffodil has a seemingly supernatural ability to sense what numbers nearby humans are thinking of and indicate them by pawing the ground or nodding his head. He connects this with some other crimes, including the disappearance of a woman who claims to be a witch, the seeming theft of a haunted house from London, and the apparent kidnapping of a young woman with multiple personalities.
Somehow Appleby tracks them all down to a steamship going to South America, where he and another policeman join and eventually spot the main villain. It turns out to be a millionaire who's somehow trying to corner the market on the supernatural, so that when the current mess is over (this was published in 1942), he can set up a new religion and thereby gain ultimate power. (Interesting idea...)
It's one of those books that has a very intriguing concept, but I can't say I liked it overall. Often there's conclusions drawn that don't necessarily follow what's come before, and sometimes there's jumps in the story with no indication of how or why they got to where they are. Of course, for those who read up on this sort of stuff, it's amusing in retrospect (much is made of the various "wonder horses" that could count, although now we know they're all active or inadvertent frauds; the book's treatment of multiple personality disorder is out of sync with the usual view and now the very existence of MPD is debated). It is marred by something of a deus ex machina ending, and often seems more like something from a Modesty Blaise story than something a London detective should be involved in. It's also oddly self-referential; at one point Appleby could simply shoot the villain and end everything, but decides to let him live and see how things unfold. Later, there's this lovely quote: "'We're in a sort of hodgepodge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn't a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.'" (Innes seems self-aware that he's outside his usual territory here...)
Still, I'll check out a few more of Innes' books at one point or another. I may have just chosen an odd starting point.
Next up was this now-rare collection from Helen McCloy...
The mysteries are exceptional. "Chinoiserie" (which I'm told is regarded as her best story) is amazing. It's the tale of the disappearance of a Russian aristocrat in Peking, set in the diplomatic world of the last days of Imperial China. It's a tale dripping with atmosphere, so much so that I was picturing it in my head as a black-and-white movie starring Marlene Dietrich (or maybe Anna Sten) and directed by Josef von Sternberg. (Yes, it's that lush and dripping with Orientalist decadence; ramp Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture up a notch and you're about there.)
"The Other Side of the Curtain" is a wonderfully twisted psychological tale of marriage and murder, with the innocent victim unsure if what she's experiencing is a dream or a horrible reality.
The other two mysteries star her series character, Dr. Basil Willing, a psychiatrist attached to the New York District Attorney's office. Both have bizarre content that border on sci-fi.
In "Through a Glass, Darkly," we're presented with the problem of art teacher Faustina Crayle (wonderfully sinister name, huh?), who appears to be capable of bilocating; she's seen in a room in the boarding school where she teaches, and simultaneously walking in the garden in one scene. Faustina is disturbed by all this, naturally. But it all turns out to be a particularly fiendish plot (albeit one that's a bit too complicated for its own good). It's a great, eerie story, and McCloy later expanded it into a novel with the same title.
The next is really bizarre. "The Singing Diamonds" are a rash of UFO sightings around the country, and later it turns out that all those who spot the strange objects die mysteriously. Are the deaths caused by aliens? Are they supernatural? Are they simply coincidence? It comes to a head when a pleasant woman sees the objects and fears she is next.
Of course, there's a rational explanation. And I must say...it's both fascinating and infuriating. On one hand, it's one of the most absurdly complicated murder plots I've ever found in fiction, depending a lot on chance and factors out of the murderer's control going just the way he wants them to....but at the same time, the story addresses the psychology of mass delusions and copycat sightings. (Did you know most UFO sightings and abduction stories usually come soon on the heels of TV shows and movies about UFOs? And people usually never think of their house as haunted or "possessed" until after they see a horror film involving ghosts and demons...)
Still, in the end, this collection is well worth reading. "Chinoiserie" is worth the effort, and the other mystery stories are the icing on the cake. Skip the sci-fi.
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