Invisible Weapons (John Rhode)

• By John Rhode
• First published: UK: Collins, 1938; US: Dodd Mead, 1938

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⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

You can now go into bookshops and buy John Rhode detective stories.

When I was a teenager, at the turn of the 21st century, that would have seemed incredible.

“Crime” in bookshops consisted of dreary tales about middle-aged policemen with domestic problems, hard-nosed pathologists up to their elbows in decomposing corpses, and charming fellows who keep sex dummies in the cellar.

Detective stories (outside specialist shops) were limited to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Sherlock Holmes.

So walking into a mainstream bookshop and seeing The Paddington Mystery and Invisible Weapons on the shelf still smacks of a minor miracle.  Collins has reprinted those two, as well as Mystery at Olympia and Death at Breakfast.

More power to their elbow!  I’d love to see all 144 of Major Street’s detective stories surface.

That said, aren’t these four, frankly, rather odd choices?

The Paddington Mystery (1925) has, I suppose, historical value.

It’s one of Rhode’s rarest novels, and it’s the first detective story to feature Dr. Lancelot Priestley, the sage of Westbourne Terrace, a dry old mathematician who solves murders as a recreation from cracking the Riemann hypothesis.

I read it a decade ago, and remember almost nothing about it, except that Harold Merefield (Dr. P’s future son-in-law) finds a stiff in his bed, and the detectives measure windows.

It’s not as good as Dr. Priestley’s Quest (1926), which has plenty of action; The Ellerby Case (1927), where a drug dealer tries to bump off Dr. Priestley with a series of increasingly ingenious death-traps (including a bright green hedgehog); The Murders in Praed Street (1928), where a serial killer strikes in a seedy London suburb, and Dr. Priestley discovers he’s the next victim; The House on Tollard Ridge (1929), which combines a haunting, a sharp portrait of a strong woman in a loveless marriage, and a couple of ingenious murders; and The Davidson Case (1929), where the slaying of a syphilitic businessman, running his firm onto the rocks, raises the question of justifiable murder.

The others are decidedly rummer choices.  (I haven’t read Mystery at Olympia.)

Death at Breakfast (1936) has some clever ideas, including a handy way of killing a man in the morning, but it is, Barzun and Taylor thought, “rather routine Rhode”.  The usual policemen, Superintendent Hanslet and greenhorn Jimmy Waghorn, are pretty dense (is anything denser than copper?), and the murderer’s scheme takes some swallowing.

As for Invisible Weapons…

Brad (at ahsweetmysteryblog) wondered whether “locked room mysteries are inherently masculine in their approach and appeal”.

John Rhode, thought Christianna Brand, was a man’s writer, with his railway tickets and time and tide-tables.

Invisible Weapons may, then, be the most masculine book in a masculine sub-genre.

It is refreshingly devoid of such effeminacies as characterization or style.  Inspector Waghorn measures carriage-ways, and stares intently at brick walls.  Dr. Priestley sends his minion Merefield to do a census of fridges; count keys; and chase vans.  There are long paragraphs of exposition and recapitulation.

We recognize old plot devices as friends from other John Rhode novels.  An old rip dies, before he can marry a much younger woman (Poison for One).  Suspicion falls on a chauffeur.  And there’s a calf’s head (Hendon’s First Case).

The murderer, of course, adopts a disguise, and lays several false trails, incriminating other people.  Waghorn and Hanslet each get “their” cases, which turn out to be connected.  They are methodical, and very slow. They dutifully suspect the obvious culprit in one case, while the death in the other seems to be an accident.  And the murderer is evident.

As a short story, rather than one of Major Street’s four detective novels a year, this may have succeeded.  There’s certainly not enough meat – plot complexity – for a full-length mystery.  (Compare, for instance, Death Takes a Flat.)  Rhode, though, often doesn’t do sub-plots.  He’s a detail man.

Nor is there enough character interest, or wit and charm to skate blithely over a thin tale.  The best Rhodes, and many of the Miles Burtons, show that Street could draw vivid characters – see, if you will, Murder, M.D. – and that he had a dry sense of humour.  (Could John Dickson Carr‘s closest friend in the Detection Club be totally mirthless?)

Even in its day, Invisible Weapons was considered a second-tier Rhode.

“The major Rhode is still ahead,” thought Torquemada in the Observer, “and that in spite of the fact that this author has … retreated at least half way towards his best and safest ground, the problem of the scientific How.  …

“As regards the two scientific Hows, the two invisible weapons: it must be confessed that Austin Freeman has given us more than one study of the second and more likely, and that the first, on the feasibility of which a reminiscence of boyhood might cast a doubt, would not have seemed mysterious to the late Thomas Hanshew, to Carolyn Wells, to Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace, or even, if my memory serves, to Martial.”

Invisible Weapons, in conclusion, is representative – without being actually good.

It’s not as good as the books on either side of it: Proceed with Caution (1937), the quintessence of the Crofts school, or the atmospheric Bloody Tower (1938), with its doomed family, cursed monument, and buried treasure.

It’s hardly in the class of The Claverton Mystery (1933), with its séances and apparently natural death; The Venner Crime (1933), his most Austin Freeman-ish book; The Corpse in the Car (1935), with its venomous virago of a victim, and 44 stuffed cats; or Death on the Board (1937), with an astonishing *five* hyper-ingenious murders.

Let’s hope that they appear soon.

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UK blurb

Source: Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC

The murder of Mr. Robert Fransham while he was washing his hands at his niece’s house was one of the most amazing problems that ever confronted Scotland Yard.  Especially in view of the fact that no weapon could be found and that there was a policeman in the house when the murder was actually committed.  The combined efforts of Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn brought no result and the case was dropped—but not forgotten.  It was only after another equally baffling murder had been committed that Dr. Priestley began his investigations.  He was as good as told that he had a “bee in his bonnet”, but as the doctor so aptly remarked, it was a bee which might produce the honey of wisdom.  And it did, for Dr. Priestley’s brilliant deductive powers eventually solved this extraordinary case.

US blurb

Source: Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC

By a stroke of luck, Constable Linton was waiting in Dr. Thornborough’s consulting room when it happened.  But he had no sooner broken through the heavy oak door which was the only opening into that tiny room than he found that the situation was far beyond his rightful jurisdiction.

Old Mr. Fransham was stretched on the floor, an ugly square wound in his forehead, murdered…

It was not long before Jimmy Waghorn and Inspector Hanslet were investigating the possible answers to these questions, but only after Dr. Priestley made his startling discovery did they reach the true solution.  John Rhode has been scrupulously fair in presenting his clues; yet it will be a clever reader who can keep pace with Dr. Priestley’s orderly and imaginative deduction.

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CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

The Times (5^th April 1938): Mr. John Rhode has no need to blacken his murderees’ characters to produce sufficient suspects to make an enthralling mystery.  In Invisible Weapons he once again builds a flawless murder (indeed, he lavishly gives us two, each equally well thought out), and once again destroys his edifice by a solution that surprises the reader by its very simplicity.  Each crime is a brilliant variant on the locked-room puzzle.  It must, of course, be galling for Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn to find another case apparently insoluble until Dr. Priestley solves it; but their loss is the reader’s gain.

Daily Mirror (7^th April 1938): He was just washing his hands – and Mr. Robert Fransham was murdered. His corpse set Scotland Yard an almost insoluble mystery and gives us one of the best tales John Rhode has yet written.

The Daily Telegraph (D.S. Meldrum, 8^th April 1938): In Invisible Weapons Mr. Rhode’s laconic and unemotional Dr. Priestley once more directs two officers of the Yard, Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, to the solution of a most intricate crime. Or rather two crimes, for two men are murdered, one at Epidaurus, a doctor’s house in the country, the other in Cheveley-street in London, both by the same hand and both by invisible weapons.

This is the point: the means by which Fransham’s murder is done are such that Waghorn has to give up the problem as insoluble, and it is not until the second crime that the perspicacity of Dr. Priestley gets to the bottom of both. Needless to say, the killings are presented with a rare exegetical skill and promptness in detail.

Mr. Rhode is always most ingenious in the mechanics of his plot, and here in this respect her surpasses himself. But it is perhaps possible to be too ingenious, even in a detective story. If all readers viewed the case with the Doctor’s impersonality, it would not matter, but the ordinary reader is affected by other considerations. When the means are so craftily inventive as in the case of Fransham’s death, we are apt to tell ourselves that the murderer could never have built his elaborate plans on such a precarious basis. A margin, we feel, would have to be left for accidents.

Observer (Torquemada, 10^th April 1938): The major Rhode is still ahead, and that in spite of the fact that this author has, in Invisible Weapons, retreated at least half way towards his best and safest ground, the problem of the scientific How.  I do not mean that the Who, the taker-off of Robert Fransham and then of Sir Godfrey Branstock, is meant to be, or indeed is, obvious; it is left to Dr. Priestley to tell the more than usually unproductive Waghorn and Hanslet who Who is, at the same time as he draws the outline of Who’s invisible weapons; but I do not think that the reader will be unduly surprised by the identity.  As regards the two scientific Hows, the two invisible weapons: it must be confessed that Austin Freeman has given us more than one study of the second and more likely, and that the first, on the feasibility of which a reminiscence of boyhood might cast a doubt, would not have seemed mysterious to the late Thomas Hanshew, to Carolyn Wells, to Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace, or even, if my memory serves, to Martial.

The Scotsman (11^th April 1938): WICKED WAYS: Subtlety that almost Succeeds

Readers of the works of Mr. John Rhode know all about Dr. Priestley and Inspector Waghorn and Superintendent Hanslet. They will be pleased to meet these characters again in Invisible Weapons and to find them occupied on as pretty a problem as ever engaged their skill. Mr Rhode wastes no time: by the sixth page he has staged the first murder, and the circumstances are more than a little dramatic. Fransham has gone from London to Adderminster to visit his niece, the wife of a doctor; and a few minutes after his arrival he has met his death in a quite baffling way – while there is actually a policeman in the house. This is not the only murder; but the means adopted in the second one (the victim, strangely enough, is Fransham’s neighbour in London) are more obvious, though ingenious too.

All of it makes a complex mystery, in solving which the final honours go to the precisian Priestley. The basic idea by which the two murders are associated is a little far-fetched, but this is a very admirably told story, obviously the work of a past-master in the genre; and he scores full marks for the plan of assassination of victim number one – invisible weapons indeed, but effective!

Aberdeen Press and Journal (14^th April 1938): Few detective story writers can present more difficult problems than John Rhode. In his latest, Invisible Weapons, a visitor in a doctor’s house in the country is found dead in the cloakroom. He has been killed by a blow on the forehead, yet there is no trace of weapon or missile, although neither could in the circumstances have disappeared. Inspector Waghorn is puzzled. Superintendent Hanslet jumps to conclusions as usual, and Professor Priestley is judicial. Then comes another death that looks like accident and isn’t, and the Professor gets busy, with the usual results.

Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer (Garfield Howe, 20^th April 1938): Once again Mr. Rhode applies his businesslike method to the solution of a – perhaps over-ingenious – problem. Dr. Thornborough, an inoffensive young G.P. practising Adderminster, is suspected of polishing off his wife’s uncle, the wealthy Mr. Fransham. Only he had the motive and opportunity to brain Mr. Fransham while the latter was stooping over the wash-basin in the doctor’s cloakroom.

Unfortunately, no visible means of accomplishing the murder could be produced, so the police had to shelve the case. Jimmy Waghorn had his doubts about the doctor’s guilt. The redoubtable Dr. Priestley, having heard the facts from his friend, Hanslet. sees reason to lend a hand, until a second death – that of the late Mr. Fransham’s neighbour in Cheveley Street – suggests to him a link between the two occurrences, and that the gas-poisoning of Sir Godfrey Branstock was not accidental. From his study, and an inspection of Nos. 3 and 4, Cheveley Street. Dr. Priestley points an unerring finger at the murderer.

A neat job, if a little lacking the breath of life.

Manchester Guardian (E.R. Punshon, 22^nd April 1938): Puzzle.  A man is struck down in a room which has a locked door and only one small window under constant observation from without.  How, then, can the blow have been delivered, since no missile is to be found?  No wonder that in Mr. John Rhode’s Invisible Weapons Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn are baffled.  Luckily there is always Dr. Priestley to help, and, indeed, one shudders to think how many murderers Messrs. Hanslet and Waghorn would have let loose upon society but for the intervention of Dr. Priestley.  A reader familiar with detective stories may have less need of Dr. Priestley’s help to guess the truth, since the method used is not entirely unfamiliar.  Readers, however, who, like the two police officers concerned, happen never to have heard of it before will be able to admire both its extraordinary ingenuity and its effectiveness.

Times Literary Supplement (John Everard Gurdon, 23^rd April 1938): While Fransham was washing his hands in the house of his niece, Mrs. Thornborough, someone killed him by fracturing his skull with a cubical object.  A brief investigation satisfied the police that Dr. Thornborough had committed the crime, but they were quite unable to bring a charge against him because the most scrupulous search failed to reveal any weapon or missile.  Fransham’s skull, in fact, had apparently been fractured by thin air.  After a time, therefore, the disgruntled authorities shelved the case, and in that condition, no doubt, the matter would have rested if the astute Dr. Priestley had not suspected a connection between Fransham’s death and a certain sad accident.  The story is admirably developed and very nearly convincing.

Sydney Morning Herald (29^th April 1938): FAR-FETCHED MURDERS

John Rhode’s otherwise excellent double murder mystery sheds some of its satisfactoriness when the time comes for him to explain two things: first, the connection between the killing of Mr. Fransham and Sir Godfrey Branstock; and, second, the way in which the former was murdered.

SPOILER Any man who remembers boyhood exploits with a catapult will also remember how difficult it is to hit a target, dead-centre, at 12 or 15 feet, even given freedom of vision and movement for aiming.  But for a murderer to plan a killing by removing a brick from a wall, to sight a catapult through the hole thus made, and to smash the skull of a gentleman having a wash in a room across the driveway, would call for a degree of patient practice which would try the endurance even of a homicidal maniac.  And Mr. Fransham’s executioner is no homicidal maniac.  He bears no animus against his victim; has nothing to gain from his death but the opening up of the way to get rid of Sir Godfrey Branstock.  By following this technique he does, of course, give Mr. Rhode something on which to base a yarn, but the procedure is one that is extremely difficult for the reader to swallow.

Even in his choice of a missile to be used in the catapult, the author has been forestalled.  A fairly recent detective novel was based on a killing done by what appeared from the wound to be a stiletto.  Actually, no steel did that job; John Rhode has used the same substance to heighten the mystery element in his story.

Daily Herald (P.E.H., 5^th May 1938): John Rhode stays in everyday England for Invisible Weapons. But his method and his motive in the first of the two linked murders are, thank goodness, very far from being everyday affairs.

You probably won’t believe in the motive, and there no shame being beaten on that, but you are very good indeed at this sort of thing if you fathom how the dark deed was done.

Illustrated London News (7^th May 1938): Invisible Weapons, by John Rhode, presents, the publisher points out, an extraordinary case. Too extraordinary: an expert with the unusual missile that eliminated Uncle George could have used it equally well on the prime victim, and spared himself a vast amount of preliminary planning. But that would have robbed Dr. Priestley of his usual opportunity for solving a mystery that was baffling Superintendent Hanslet, and Mr. Rhode’s public of a full-length thriller.

The Sketch (8^th June 1938): The invisible weapon – or, rather, the substance out of which it was made – has, I am nearly sure, already been used for murderous purposes in detective fiction; but, in spite of generous hints from the author, I did not suspect it here. Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn had such a good case against Dr. Thornborough that they would have been tempted to arrest him at once, could they have divined the method of the crime. There was the doctor’s wife’s rich uncle, dead in the cloak-room of the doctor’s house, killed by the usual blunt instrument. But what instrument? And why was it not found with the body? It could hardly have bounced back through the window. And no one had approached the window; the uncle’s chauffeur, who was standing near by, was positive as to that. Clues began to come thick and fast, the clue of the Russian cigarettes, the clue of the loose brick, but they conveyed nothing to the Superintendent and the Inspector, who, not for the first time, confessed themselves beaten and handed over the investigation to Dr. Priestley.

Invisible Weapons presents a pretty problem solved with great neatness. The method of the murder fulfils the requirements of detective-story convention: it is highly improbable but perfectly possible. The second death reflected still more credit on the murderer, for it did not look like a murder at all. For that the murderer had plenty of motive, for the other but little; and I think that a person of such immense ingenuity could have attained the first objective by non-lethal means.

Books (Will Cuppy, 19^th June 1938, 300w): Mr. Rhode has been accused of slowness in the past, though we always called it thoroughness; this time there’s plenty of speed and a rather terrific amount of suspense, or whatever it is that keeps one reading a baffler.  There’s also the narrative skill that makes the better English mysteries so comforting.

Sat R of Lit (25^th June 1938, 40w)

NY Times (Isaac Anderson, 26^th June 1938, 200w)

New Yorker (16^th July 1938, 40w)

Punch: No one is fairer than John Rhode in giving his readers a chance to solve mysteries for themselves.