Behind the Bronze Door

Behind the Bronze Door by William Le Queux

Behind the Bronze Door is a mystery thriller by William Le Queux centered on a wave of unexplained "society suicides" sweeping London high society in the years around the First World War and its aftermath, and on the sinister figures who may be engineering them. The novel opens with Henry Hartsilver, a coarse, self-made war profiteer, reading his wife Cora a newspaper account of the latest in a string of baffling suicides among the wealthy and titled — Lord Hope-Cooper, Viscount Molesley, Vera Froissart, Madame Vandervelt, and now Sir Stephen Lethbridge, a man Cora secretly loved before her loveless marriage. Henry pontificates contemptuously about weakness of character, unaware his wife is devastated. Soon afterward, Henry himself is found dead in his bath, having apparently cut an artery — one more "inexplicable" tragedy among people with no obvious motive for self-destruction. Cora's closest friend is Yootha Hagerston, an independent young woman estranged from her disapproving family and soon to inherit money from a deceased aunt. Through society circles the women become entangled with a glamorous, mysterious trio: Jessica Mervyn-Robertson, a stunning widow of supposedly Australian sheep-farming stock; Aloysius Stapleton, her worldly, well-traveled shadow; and young, wealthy Archie La Planta. Nicknamed "the Trinity," they dominate London's fashionable world with lavish entertaining, despite no one being able to verify their origins or source of wealth. Wounded war veteran Captain Charles Preston, introduced to the group by La Planta, instinctively distrusts them, as does his friend George Blenkiron, who — having lived in Australia — insists Jessica's supposed background is fabricated. Cora and Yootha, suspicious of Jessica, engage the Metropolitan Secret Agency, an ominous private detective firm headquartered in a Bloomsbury house nicknamed "the house with the bronze face" for its bacchante-faced door knocker, run by the enigmatic Alix Stothert and his French partner Camille Lenoir — a duo with an uncanny, almost supernatural knowledge of London's secrets. Lord Froissart, tormented by his daughter Vera's unexplained death and suspicious that Jessica knows more than she admits, also consults the agency — shortly before he himself is found dead at the foot of the Bournemouth cliffs, an apparent suicide. Strangely, his will leaves his fortune not to his surviving daughter but to an unknown woman, Mrs. Timothy Macmahon, drawn up at solicitors who also represent Jessica. Preston falls in love with Yootha during a Thames boating trip interrupted by a violent storm, and the two become secretly engaged. Meanwhile a burglary strips Jessica's safe of jewels and cash under mysterious circumstances involving a drugging of both La Planta and Jessica herself at a supper party. Levi Schomberg, a moneylender who holds compromising power over Stapleton and Jessica through blackmail-like financial pressure, is found dead — in circumstances suggestive of poisoning — during the extravagant costume ball Stapleton and La Planta host at the Albert Hall, where Jessica scandalizes society in a daring snake costume. At the same ball, Yootha is falsely arrested for stealing a pearl necklace planted in her bag, an incident the detective agency later reveals as part of an insurance fraud scheme tied to Jessica's circle, using a duplicate necklace of imitation pearls. Ostracized by whispers and social cruelty despite her acquittal, Yootha grows increasingly haunted, as does Preston after the Henley houseboat night when the couple, delayed by circumstance, are forced to spend an unchaperoned night aboard his boat — an event that seems to trigger a blackmail threat via a mysterious urgent letter delivered by La Planta's associate. Preston nearly collapses upon reading it. Doctor Johnson, who examined Schomberg's body and disputed the coroner's "natural causes" verdict, reveals to Cora his conviction — based on firsthand knowledge from years in Hong Kong and Shanghai — that Jessica is in fact "Angela Robertson," a woman of disreputable colonial history, and that Stapleton essentially inherited her from a vanished first husband, Fobart Robertson, amid scandal in Shanghai. Schomberg's body is ordered exhumed, and Archie La Planta is ultimately arrested in connection with his death, exposing traces of a rare, illegal poison-laced perfume traced to Shanghai. Le Queux builds his novel as a slow unmasking: beneath the dazzling surface of postwar London society — profiteers turned gentry, extravagant balls, jewels and gossip columns — runs a criminal conspiracy of blackmail, insurance fraud, and murder disguised as suicide, orchestrated by the "Trinity" and enabled by the unsettlingly omniscient Secret Agency. Preston, Blenkiron, Cora, Yootha, and Hopford (a journalist drawn into the case after being offered a bribe by Stapleton to smear Cora) function as amateur investigators picking apart the conspirators' fabricated pasts one thread at a time, while the body count of society figures who "knew too much" continues to rise around them.

By William Le Queux · First published 1923 · Genre: Mystery/Detective Fiction, Crime/Criminal Fiction, Psychological Thriller · 31 chapters · 87,764 words

First lines

"Isn't this terrible, Henry? Where is it going to end?"

"Isn't what terrible? -- and where is what going end?"

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Behind the Bronze Door is listed on Textopian as a novel by William Le Queux, dated 1923 CE.

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Genres

Tags

mystery · crime fiction · detective story · thriller · suspense · espionage · adventure · secret societies · conspiracy · intrigue · hidden identities · international intrigue

Contents

More by William Le Queux