The Prisoner in the Opal

The Prisoner in the Opal by A.E.W. Mason

In The Prisoner in the Opal, by A.E.W. Mason, the fastidious retired tea-broker Julius Ricardo, whose idea of a gentleman rests on a sound knowledge of red wine, spends each summer at Aix-les-Bains and then tours the Gironde vineyards. At a London dinner party the young Californian Joyce Whipple draws him aside and tells him she is afraid for her friend Diana Tasborough, who has spent the whole summer at Biarritz and has broken her engagement to Bryce Carter. Joyce says that Diana's letters, though innocent in their words, make her see a chain of unfinished, drowned faces between the lines. She asks Ricardo to watch over Diana at the Château Suvlac during the vintage. She will not say why she cannot go herself, except to remark that "Cinderellas must be off the premises by midnight." A month later, at Aix, Ricardo receives an invitation from Diana to stay at Suvlac. Her letter stirs no uncanny feeling in him. His friend Hanaud, the big detective of the Sûreté Générale, then appears in a brigand's disguise. Hanaud is sobered by Ricardo's account of Joyce's fears and offers three explanations: a trick, hysteria, or the truth. Ricardo arrives at Suvlac on Wednesday, the 21st of September. He meets Diana, her now domineering aunt Mrs. Tasborough, the dark and hostile Mrs. Evelyn Devenish, the gross Vicomte de Mirandol, the charming white-haired manager Robin Webster, Joyce herself (who leaves for America the next day), and the Abbé Fauriel. The Abbé arrives late because his church's vestments and an acolyte's cassock have been stolen. During the evening Ricardo notices Evelyn's fierce hatred of Joyce, and he notices Webster talking closely with Joyce. He also notices odd remarks about "dispensing the cold." Joyce takes charge of serving the nightcaps. Waking at about two in the morning, Ricardo sees the chalet light go out and the Vicomte's white house on the hill blazing with light. He wanders to the library and sees a figure flit past on the terrace and slip into Diana's turret room. When he knocks, the light inside goes out at once. Next morning Webster has a bandaged hand. Ricardo also sees the gabare La Belle Simone going upriver, although it was due to leave at six. At lunchtime the Commissaire Herbesthal arrives with Hanaud. A dress-basket has been found floating up the Gironde. It holds the body of a young woman who was stabbed through the heart, and her right hand has been hacked off. Evelyn Devenish and Joyce are both missing from the house. Joyce's door is locked and her room is empty, with the bedclothes tumbled. Diana faints. Hanaud notes a picture over her bed and later tells Ricardo to keep quiet about it. At Villeblanche, Ricardo recalls hearing a hateful sigh in the Cave of the Mummies in Bordeaux, and he expects to find Joyce dead. He identifies the body as Evelyn Devenish. In the basket Hanaud finds Joyce's gold fire-opal bracelet. The examining magistrate, Arthur Tidon, wants a "good conviction," and Hanaud respects him as a clever man. Ricardo tells them of his night's observations. Back at Suvlac, Diana says Evelyn was the daughter of Dennis Blackett. Blackett idolised her, then ruined her husband Julian Devenish after they eloped. Devenish shot himself, and Evelyn was left on a small allowance. Diana is sent off with Webster to send telegrams. Hanaud then searches the rooms. Evelyn's brown satin ermine cloak is missing. Joyce's bed has never been slept in. Among Joyce's letters is one from Bryce Carter and one from a Leeds physician, Sir Henry Brewer, which Hanaud pockets. Hanaud finds that Webster's chalet light was a candle left burning in a saucer. He also finds Joyce's notes in a locked box, which Moreau photographs. Footprints in the garden show that Joyce, in her silver slippers, ran across a flowerbed after the rain stopped. She halted under the trees, apparently on seeing that the gabare had gone. Hanaud concludes that she ran back up the avenue. A gendarme then finds a beautiful, evil papier-mâché mask with red hair hanging in a tree. Last, the party watches the Abbé Fauriel steal into Diana's turret room. Hanaud confronts him and hints at a "rearrangement," and the Abbé answers with defiance.

By A.E.W. Mason · First published 1928 · Genre: Detective fiction, Mystery, Crime fiction · 29 chapters · 123,264 words

First lines

When Mr. Julius Ricardo spoke of a gentleman -- and the word was perhaps a thought too frequent upon his tongue -- he meant a man who added to other fastidious qualities a sound knowledge of red wine. He could not eliminate that item from his definition. No! A gentleman must have the great vintage years and the seven growths tabled in their order upon his mind as legibly as Calais was tabled on the heart of the Tudor Queen. He must be able to explain by a glance at the soil why a vineyard upon this side of the road produces a more desirable beverage than the vineyard fifty yards away upon the other. He must be able to distinguish at a first sip the virility of a Château Latour from the feminine fragrance of a Château Lafite. And even then he must reckon that he had only learnt a Child's First Steps. He could not consider himself properly equipped until he was competent to challenge upon any particular occasion the justice of the accepted classification. Even a tradesman might contend that a Mouton Rothschild was unfairly graded amongst the second growths. But the being Mr. Ricardo had in mind must be qualified to go much farther than that. It is probable indeed that if Mr. Ricardo were suddenly called upon to define a gentleman briefly, he would answer: "A gentleman is one who has a palate delicate enough and a social position sufficiently assured to justify him in declaring that a bottle of a good bourgeois growth may possibly transcend a bottle of the first cru."

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detective fiction · murder mystery · premonition · psychic warning · supernatural dread · fire opal · drowned faces · Bordeaux wine · Gironde vineyards · wine connoisseurship · Château Suvlac · Aix-les-Bains

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The Prisoner in the Opal is listed on Textopian as a novel by A.E.W. Mason, dated 1928 CE.

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