Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead

(31. - 1170.) - Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead - Joseph Spector was a music hall conjuror. In 1936, now in his mature years, Spector has adapted his “tricks” for a play, Miss Death. 

Dr. Anselm Rees has left, more accurately, fled Vienna for London. While an old man he continues to treat three patients for psychiatric problems. I thought of Sigmund Freud.

An accomplished musician, Floyd Stenhouse, suffers from nightmares. Dr. Rees has been working with Stenhouse on understanding his dreams.

A well known theatre actress, Della Cookson, seeks help from Dr. Rees concerning her kleptomania.

A novelist, Claude Weaver, has been seeing Rees about worries he was losing his mind as he occasionally suffered from a “fugue state” in which, while still functional, he loses memory of what he was doing for several hours.

Dr. Rees is killed at home in his office near midnight. An unknown man has come to see him. Shortly after he leaves, Rees has a phone call. His housekeeper, ear pressed to the office door, can hear him speaking. Minutes later, he is found dead with his throat slashed. The housekeeper has neither seen anyone exit the office nor the house. Both the office door and windows were locked on the inside with the keys in the locks. 

It is a locked room puzzle for Inspector George Flint who is not impressed. In a deft little moment of satire Flint laments “a burgeoning subgenre of crime, which had rolled over the city like fog. These were the ‘impossible’ crimes - typically high-society affairs, where men in locked rooms were killed under impractical circumstances”.

The same evening as the murder, a painting has been stolen from an English theatrical producer, Benjamin Teasdale, during a party at his home. The painting was in a locked chest in a locked room.

Dr. Lidia Rees, the daughter of Dr. Rees, is unusually composed after her father’s death.

Flint looks to Spector to help him unravel the mysteries of locked room cases. The inspector is a very practical man. Imagination does not come easy to him.

Alibis abound making it difficult to focus on a suspect.

Mead’s prose flows smoothly and I glided through the book. It is a good book. Mead is a clever man. The solution is suitably complex. As usual, my efforts to understand how murder was committed and how the killer escaped the locked room were futile. I could have used more background on the characters though I appreciate the mystery was solved in 255 pages.

Mead refers to several Golden Age sleuths in the book. In my next post Hercule Poirot analyzes Spector and Flint for me though they have yet to meet. There is more than a passing resemblance in the relationship of Spector and Flint to the hugely successful Poirot and Japp.

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See also - Hercule Poirot Comments on Tom Mead's Sleuths Joseph Spector and George Flint