The Biscuit Barrel Murder

Geoffrey William Start
Works of: Fiction
Publisher(s): The Book Guild

Desperate to prove to his father that he’s not an underachiever, Sir William (Wispy) Fescue is delighted when his detective agency lands its first proper case: a woman has been falsely accused of murder and is set to face the hangman’s noose unless he can uncover the real murderer in time. He and his two colleagues have a great sense of fair play. Marjorie Dougal (Strangely) Drye his friend from the western front, who shares his passion for all things gastronomic, and Miss Wanda Cushway, a highly intelligent Oxford graduate, exceptionally attractive with an enthusiasm for entomology, have finally got something to sink their teeth into.

The agency’s successes to date, included tracking down a stolen herd of prize Jersey cows, to the village of Coniston Cold in North Yorkshire. A stolen bronze statue of Medusa, to a scrapyard in Bognor, and a missing Rembrandt, to a pawnbroker in Shoreditch High Street.

This chance arrived on the 19^thof April 1922, when Lord Alfreton engaged him to find the real murderer of his daughter’s fiancé, Viscount George Thurmaston, who had been murdered by eating a coconut cream laced with strychnine. Miss Josephine Leighton was found guilty of his murder and was to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Tuesday the 2^nd of May 1922, setting up a race against the clock to prove her innocence.

Miss Leighton at the time of her arrest was fighting the seat of Lewisham West as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. A passionate campaigner on issues of women’s suffrage and latterly on prison reform, she viewed her incarceration in Holloway as an opportunity for campaigning.

The agency is led down a number of blind alleys, one in that Viscount Thurmaston invested a large sum of money in the first caviar farm in Britain, run by his old school friend Mr Harry Norrington, who has a very good reason for wanting the Viscount dead.

The other red herring is that they discover that the Viscount was in the process of buying Ripley Colliery near the Derbyshire town of Alfreton, from its present owner Mr Benedict Spaulding. Benedict’s brother Luther took great exception to this and threatened that all manner of harm would befall the Viscount if he bought the mine.

The action takes place in various locations in England, including Blakeney, London and also in Boulogne where, with the help of Inspector Finkelstein of Scotland Yard, the real villain, Mr Maurice Dupree is arrested, along with his associate. He is a union convenor in the steel industry and founder of the Monozygotic Twins against the Aristocracy. A cause he passionately believes in.

The Home Secretary, a Tory and a very unlikely associate of Dupree and an out and out misogynist is also arrested as an accessory to the murder, as he takes advantage of the fact the Dupree was beaten to the nomination by Miss Josephine Leighton in his attempt to be selected to fight the seat of Lewisham West.

The characters are eccentrically engaging, humour runs throughout the book and the story carries the reader along with descriptions of Wispy and Strangely’s delight in the gastronomy of England and France. Miss Wanda Cushway endearingly yearns to find love but her supreme intellect tends to put men off.