The 21 Clues (J.J. Connington)

By J. J. Connington

First published: UK, Hodder & Stoughton, 1941; US, Little Brown, 1941

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Blurb (UK)

Source: Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC

The Constable was content to call it a suicide pact.  All the obvious facts were in favour of this solution.  The bodies of John Barrett and Mrs. Callis were discovered in a lovers’ nook among some bracken.  Beside them was a pistol with Barrett’s finger-prints on it, and torn up letters in the handwriting of Barrett and Mrs. Callis were scattered about on the turf.  Inspector Rufford unearthed some puzzling problems.  Arrangements for the elopement of the couple had apparently been complete.  Why had their plans fallen through?  Why had they turned their backs on the railway station, with tickets to London in their pockets?  Why was a small sum of money missing from the bag in the wrecked car?  It was not until Sir Clinton Driffield returned from his holiday that a satisfactory solution was found, broad enough to include in its scope all the twenty-one clues, as well as the reappearance of the Jubilee double-florin and the fate of the shooter of cats.  Mr. Connington’s readers will expect to find all the clues honestly laid before them as usual, and they will not be disappointed.

Blurb (US)

Source: Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC

The bodies of a worthy prelate and one of his wealthy lady parishioners are found in a bracken patch somewhat famed as a lover’s rendezvous.  Torn-up love letters are scattered about.  A pistol with the clergyman’s finger-prints lies beside the body…

If Mr. Connington says there are twenty-one clues, you can depend on it that they are offered to you as they turn up and that they will add up to the solution of the case.  Mr. Connington has been aptly termed “the modern master of pure detection”.  Can you fit together the pieces of his latest fascinating mosaic of death?  Can you beat Sir Clinton Driffield to the solution?

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My review

Confession: I gave up a quarter of the way through.

Let’s go back about 20 years, to me aet. 16 or so, addicted to detective stories in the same way my schoolmates were to cut-price hashish, the pleasures of the palm, or evangelical proselytism.

I was irked when I read Julian Symons’s Bloody Murder to see him dismiss Connington as a Humdrum, a constructor of mere puzzles.

I was lucky, you see, only to have read Connington’s best books: The Case with Nine Solutions (1928), with lots of juicy murders and clues; Murder in the Maze (1927), fast-paced enough to read in a single sitting at the National Library; the rather dull Nemesis at Raynham Parva (1929), more interesting in conception than … execution; and Jack-in-the-Box (1944), boasting a sinister mystic and a wealth of scientific slayings.

Three of those are, quite simply, FUN. That, after all, is why we read detective fiction; and if they’re not fun, why bother? (The epicurean aesthetic!)

They are, however, the outliers. Many of Connington’s books aren’t fun. They’re praised for methodical detection, solid construction, and immaculate logic. Not for zest, humour, atmosphere, or action!

Many of his 1930s books feature police detection, murders in suburbia, and flat prose. Even the better books from this period – The Castleford Conundrum (1932) and The Ha-ha Case (1934) – are absorbing , rather than exciting.

By 1941, Connington had been in decline for some time. In Whose Dim Shadow (1935), Truth Comes Limping (1938), and For Murder Will Speak (1938) were the work of a tired, ill man. His last two books, The Counsellor (1939) and The Four Defences (1940), were failed attempts to rekindle his inspiration by writing about a new detective – a witty, wealthy radio host.

The 21 Clues returns to Sir Clinton Driffield – although I stopped reading before he appeared. What we do get, though, is a murder in lower-middle suburbia (chapel-going corpses); paragraphs in Cockney; police investigation; and a lot of tedious stuff about the position of bodies, tracks in grass, and fingerprints, all told in soporific, expository prose.

A glance at his watch showed that he had still a short time in hand before he could receive the photographs, and he decided to spend this in making a rough examination of the finger-prints on the Colt automatic. The pistol had been brought in carefully strapped to a board so that the prints had been preserved intact during transit; and, as it chanced, there was a very clear print on the exposed smooth surface of the slide, so clear that powder was unnecessary to bring out the lines. Rufford noted that it was a “whorl” pattern – that is, one which has a central core to its maze. By using a magnifying glass, he counted the number of ridges which intervened between the core and the nearest “delta” – a point where the ridges eddied away into subsidiary patterns – and found fourteen of them. There were two fairly prominent “islands” in the pattern, and eh counted the number of the ridges between each of them and the “core”, noting the relative positions of the three features.

He next took up the prints which he had made from the fingers of the two bodies. The designs on the woman’s finger-tips were all of the “loop” type, so he was able to discard them immediately. The right thumb of the male body showed a “whorl” pattern, however; and a repetition of the counting process proved that here also there were fourteen ridges between the core and the nearest delta. Rufford was able to pick out the two islands, also; and the numbers for them were identical with those which he had found on the pistol-print. The relative positions of the various features were alike in both patterns.

“Not much need to go further for the present,” Rufford assured himself thankfully.

I stuck it out a couple more chapters, and then agreed.

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Contemporary reviews

Times Literary Supplement (Maurice Willson Disher, 3^rd May 1941):

SUICIDE PACT?

What looks like a suicide pact soon looks too much like it.  There are more clues than are wanted.  Too many bullets have been fired, too many tracks disturb the bracken, too many proofs are provided of an old passion.  This plainly is the kind of fake for Mr. Connington to peel layer by layer like an onion.  The Counsellor, whom he established in his recent novels as an amateur detective with a promising future, does not appear.  Regular police methods make a thorough job of the investigation, a newspaper reporter helps and the Chief Constable puts the bits together until the whole series of events becomes as clear as though it had been filmed.  Calculating patience is
Mr. Connington’s chief characteristic.  At times he dawdles so calmly over routine detail that he exasperates, but this assurance compels admiration directly you are even dimly aware where his purpose lies.

 

Sat R of Lit (10^th May 1941, 40w):

Methodical and painstaking investigation of ingeniously-planned crime should please those who care more for deduction than action.  Well thought-out.

 

Books (Will Cuppy, 11^th May 1941, 170w):

Without stating in so many words that this is a fiction based upon the notorious Hall–Mills murder case, we venture to hint that the wind is in that direction.  Mr. Connington has veiled, adorned, elaborated and otherwise adapted the story with a goodly bag of tricks, including a most adroit substitution of identification.  He has also provided a fine brand of detection and an answer that exactly fits his version.

 

NY Times (Isaac Anderson, 11^th May 1941, 180w)

Observer (Maurice Richardson, 11^th May 1941):

J.J. Connington makes a come-back to his best form in The Twenty-One Clues, a double provincial murder. Brilliant solution by Sir Clinton Driffield after thorough detailed investigation. The best Connington for several years.

 

Spectator (John Fairfield, 16^th May 1941, 20w)

New Yorker (17^th May 1941, 80w)

Manchester Guardian (E.R. Punshon, 27^th May 1941):

Off with the new love and on with the old.  Mr. J. J. Connington in The Twenty-one Clues deserts his broadcasting detective to return to Sir Clinton Driffield, who solves an apparent case of double suicide which both he and the reader soon suspect was really a case of double murder.  The working out of the solution shows all Mr. Connington’s remarkable and careful ingenuity, a quality in which he remains unsurpassed.

 

Time (9^th June 1941, 40w):

Clever, and a satisfying puzzle.

 

New Statesman (Ralph Partridge, 16^th August 1941):

The Twenty-one Clues is old-fashioned detection (and quite adequate, but no more) solved by Sir Clinton Driffield in his prosiest vein.  Instead of probing the bewildering mountain of clues, many readers will take a short cut by glancing at the characters of the persons involved.  Sir Clinton can be trusted only to convict cads.

 

Booklist (September 1941)

Bookmark (November 1941)

A Catalogue of Crime (Barzun & Taylor, 1989):

A poor repetition of the situation in The Case with Nine Solutions.  The 21 clues are in themselves ingenious and attractive, but the show gives itself away very early.  The doings of Driffield, Wendover, the inevitable “young reporter”, and a few yokel policemen are Connington at his worst and wearisomest.

W.H.T. dissents: By no means bad.  An apparent double suicide gives Insp. Rufford a chance to collect evidence but Sir C.D. has to come back from his holiday to put the 21 clues in order.  The plot is elaborate, but sound—there is even a rumour that it had its origin in the Hall-Mills case, q.v.