The Case of the Black Twenty-Two

The Case of the Black Twenty-Two by Brian Flynn

The Case of the Black Twenty-Two begins with Peter Daventry, a bored junior partner in a Cornhill solicitors’ firm, receiving an unusual commission from the American millionaire Laurence P. Stewart. Stewart, an obsessive collector of historical relics connected with Mary, Queen of Scots, instructs the firm to buy three articles at an auction: a pearl collar, an amber rosary, and a tapestry fire-screen. Peter inspects the objects at Day, Forshaw and Palmers’ galleries and notices police surveillance around them. Earlier, while lunching at the Violette, his casual mention of Mary, Queen of Scots has caused an apparently ordinary man at a neighbouring table to react violently, while the man’s companion urges him to delay some unnamed plan. Linnell, Peter’s senior partner, verifies Stewart’s instructions by telegram, but the next morning learns that the three Stuart relics have been stolen overnight and that the night-watchman, Mason, has been murdered. Detective-Inspector Goodall discovers that a woman distracted Mason and the other watchman, Druce, at the entrance, allowing a killer to enter and hide in the galleries. The murderer killed Mason and escaped with the watchman’s keys. While Goodall investigates, Linnell receives news that Stewart himself has been murdered at Assynton Lodge in Berkshire, his skull smashed in his locked library. Peter contacts Anthony Bathurst, an able amateur investigator, to assist Stewart’s son, Charles. Bathurst travels to Assynton with Peter and Goodall. Sergeant Clegg’s preliminary inquiry has established that Laurence Stewart was found at his desk, apparently struck from behind while writing “Urgent in the morning! M. L.” The library door had been locked from inside, the French doors bolted, and Stewart’s revolver, with one chamber fired, lay in his left dressing-gown pocket. Nothing obvious has been stolen from the room. Stewart had last been seen with Colonel Leach-Fletcher, who had recommended the solicitors’ firm to him. The household includes Charles Stewart, his father’s secretary Morgan Llewellyn, Stewart’s ward Marjorie Lennox, the butler Butterworth, and servants. Marjorie denies entering the library on the night of the murder, though Clegg finds her handkerchief, embroidered “M. L.,” behind the French-door curtains. She privately accuses Llewellyn of wishing Stewart harm. Butterworth later recalls hearing Laurence Stewart speaking with Marjorie in the library shortly after ten o’clock, contradicting her account. Llewellyn says he spent the evening with Marjorie, but she says she left the music-room at nine, leaving a gap in his story. Bathurst learns that Stewart’s bicycle, usually stored in the potting-shed, was secretly ridden on the night of the murder: its tyres bear fresh tar from the road into Assynton. He suspects that the killer, or an accomplice, used it to reach the village and telephone associates. He also observes Llewellyn wandering the house after midnight and believes the secretary was trying to regain access to the sealed library. In the Museum Room, Bathurst identifies a missing object from Stewart’s vast collection: another Mary, Queen of Scots fire-screen, made of dark beaten metal. Its design resembles the tapestry screen stolen from the galleries, but instead bears the Latin words “Timeo Danaos” and a large fish. The discovery convinces Bathurst that Mason was murdered to obtain the tapestry screen, though he remains uncertain whether Stewart was killed for the same reason. Clegg traces an urgent telephone call, made from Assynton shortly after the murder, to Blanchard’s Hotel in Clifford Street. A man and woman registered there as Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Charles Stewart received the call, claimed a relative was seriously ill, and departed immediately. They are thought likely to be the couple Peter saw at the Violette and possible participants in the gallery robbery. Colonel Leach-Fletcher tells Bathurst and Goodall that Stewart had confided two fears on the evening before his death: someone at Assynton Lodge had been meddling with his private papers, and he was deeply upset by undisclosed conduct of his son Charles. Stewart intended to speak with Charles after the Colonel left. The Colonel also remembers an open copy of Renan’s Vie de Jésus on Stewart’s desk. Bathurst finds a passionate letter from Llewellyn to Marjorie hidden in that book. Llewellyn begs her to marry him and threatens that, if Stewart interferes, “his blood be upon his own head.” Bathurst concludes that Marjorie had shown the letter to Stewart after the Colonel departed, explaining both her presence in the library and her later accusation of Llewellyn. Examining the desk and garden, Bathurst finds small stones and mud in the ink-bowl and coal-scuttle matching the rockery outside, and continues reconstructing how the murderer entered, acted, and concealed traces.

By Brian Flynn · First published 1937 · Genre: Golden Age Detective Fiction, Murder Mystery, Crime Fiction · 25 chapters · 78,939 words

First lines

The fact that it was an unusually sunny morning for an English summer day had not put Peter Daventry in the mood that it undoubtedly should have done. A riotous evening-during which he had dined not wisely but too well with a number of men who had been at Oxford with him-is not perhaps the best preparation for work on the following day, and Peter heartily cursed the relentless and inexorable fate that had made him junior partner of "Merryweather, Linnell and Daventry-Solicitors. " He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the window of his room, gazing disconsolately at the street below.

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Golden Age detective fiction · British mystery novel · locked-room murder · art-gallery robbery · historical relics · Mary, Queen of Scots · antique collecting · auction-house crime · London in the 1920s · Berkshire country house · amateur detective · Scotland Yard investigation

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