The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton, for Dean Street December

This is my third entry for Dean Street December, and it seems appropriate for it to be a mystery by an author I’d never heard of until Dean Street Press reprinted 15 of her books. Starting in 1924, Moray Dalton published 29 mysteries, most of which feature two detectives, Scotland Yard inspector Hugh Collier and private inquiry agent Hermann Glide. I thought I had chosen the first in the series but as it is set at a Christmas house party in the country, it was still very suitable.

George Tunbridge and his wife are hosting family, friends, and neighbors at a fancy dress dinner at their country home, following by a game of hide and seek. Hugh Darrow, a friend who lost his sight in the war, comes across the victim while trying to find a hiding place in the house’s long gallery and calls for help. Tunbridge and his cousin, Sir Eustace, send the ladies to their rooms for safety and after finding the body of Edgar Stallard, one of the guests, call the police. Sergeant Lane of the Parminster Constabulary gets the call, although he is off duty, relaxing with a visiting friend, Hugh Collier, of Scotland Yard.

Sergeant Lane heads to the scene of the crime, and invites Collier to come with him. As they start interviewing the male guests, they learn no one is sorry that Stallard has been murdered, except the shy girl from the Vicarage with whom he had been flirting. Sir Eustace doesn’t mince words to the detectives:

The fellow was a rank outsider. I couldn’t stick him. Neither, I fancy, could my cousin. The women liked him. He was one of these writing chaps, you know. Not novels Reminiscences and biography of scandalous type and réchauffés of criminal trials. That sort of muck. He was gassing away only yesterday about a volume in preparation, a collection of murder mysteries of the last century, little dreaming, poor devil, that he was destined to figure personally in anything of the kind.

Sir Eustace resents Collier saying that he and his young fiancée can’t return to town until after the inquest and calls Scotland Yard to complain. Collier is then recalled and has to leave Lane alone with the investigation, which surprised me, once I had realized he was the series’ featured detective. Collier remains interested from afar, however, and when he believes the wrong person has been arrested, he recommends that a private investigator, Mr. Glide, work on the investigation.  All that really matters is his detective skill but he is an odd looking fellow:

He had removed a thick overcoat and a woolen muffler and revealed a lamentably narrow chest and a wizened little face, pinched with cold, and lit by a pair of brilliant and melancholy brown eyes. He looked, Ruth thought, exactly like a sick monkey. Even his hands, with their long delicate finger – but what was he doing with them?

Mr. Glide ruminates over his cases while squeezing a lump of modeling wax – the original stress ball.

This was an entertaining read and who doesn’t like a good house party turned murder investigation? The characters were interested and varied, and there were enough surprises that I did not quite guess the murderer. And points to Dalton for making the American character compassionate and kind rather than affluent and tacky! I deliberately didn’t read the introduction by Golden Age mystery expert Curtis Evans until I had finished the book so I was initially puzzled by the fact that the book had three separate detectives. Sergeant Lane was on the right track to solve the murder but it is Mr. Glide who really untangles it and figures out more than the police. I will look forward to reading more by this author.

I had often seen British fictional characters refer to their dwelling as “digs” but in this book the guest who finds the body says he lives in diggings. Apparently, the term "diggings" was the original slang word for one’s living quarters or place of residence. The more common, shortened form used more often is "digs." If, as alleged, the term became popular in the 19th century and is believed to have originated from the miners' camps during the California and Australian gold rushes, where a miner's "diggings" were essentially their temporary home or claim, how did it get to Britain?

This is my thirty-third book for the Cloak and Dagger Challenge and, of course, I also chose it for Dean Street December, hosted by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home.

Title: The Night of Fear
Author: Moray Dalton
Publication: Dean Street Press, paperback, 2019 (originally published in 1931)
Genre: Mystery/series
Source: Library