J. Jefferson Farjeon, Seven Dead

J. Jefferson Farjeon, Seven Dead, 2017
British Library Crime Classics/Poisoned Pen Press
Reprint of Collins (UK) 1939 original
© 1939 Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon
ISBN 978-0-7123-5688-6

Farjeon was another of the then-prolific and well-regarded authors of mystery fiction who slipped from public view; he published more than 80 books between 1924 and 1955.  Many of these featured Inspector Kendall, a non-Scotland-Yard policeman based in the southeast of England.

In Seven Dead, Ted Lyte breaks into a house he thinks is vacant, hoping to steal enough of something he can fence for enough for a meal.  Instead, he finds seven people, dead in the parlor, the shutters nailed closed.  He stumbles into the police as he’s trying to escape.  And he was seen, unbeknownst to him, by freelance journalist (and yachtsman) Thomas Hazeldean.  Kendall fairly quickly accepts Hazeldean as an innocent bystander.

The cause of death is obscure—the victims were not shot, stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned—which pretty much leaves some kind of poison—and seem to have died about 24 hours before the discovery of the bodies.  The residents of the house, John Fenner and his niece Dora Fenner, are not there (and it is not readily apparent where they are, except that their departure was hasty).  A paining of a young girl has had a bullet shot through it.  And an aged cricket ball is perched upon a glass vase on the mantel.

Kendall (and Hazeldean) discover that it is likely that the Fenners are in Boulogne, and Hazeldean heads off in his yacht to discover what he can there, while Kendall pursues inquiries in England.  From this point, the story proceeds at a brisk pace, with many discoveries, some new mysteries developing, but no resolution.  Eventually, all the principals in the case converge on Boulogne, and the contours of a solution begin to emerge.

And then…

I think the book falls apart.  Roughly the last 50 pages of the book involves a trip taken by Hazeldean and Dora Fenner (while Kendall pursues his unchronicled inquiries), Kendall’s meeting up with them in Africa, and a voyage to a tiny island in the Indian Ocean.  Where we discover a journal written by one member of a group of castaways.  The timeline of the journal and the timeline of the murders are (obviously) related, but just how those timelines intersect is not clear.  And while we are given a solution, the whole thing seems to be pulled more-or-less out of the air.  So what seemed to be a very promising story ended, for me, with an unconvincing thud.