The Deductions of Colonel Gore. Lynn Brock
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John Rhode’s Dr Priestley in The Paddington Mystery and Anthony Wynne’s Dr Hailey in The Mystery of the Evil Eye by one year. All these authors (and many more not mentioned here) established serial detectives in the fashion of the times, and Brock’s Colonel Gore appears to fit into this category remarkably well.
But was he really originally meant to be just another amateur detective with a military background like Philip MacDonald’s Anthony Gethryn, who made his debut in The Rasp the same year as Colonel Gore? It is reasonable to doubt that. Gore lacks too many of the typical characteristics of the traditional hero-detective. He is not a well-to-do super sleuth like Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot. He has no profession that could help him solve crimes like the many doctors and scholars in the trade. He has no sidekick and no ally at Scotland Yard and, to cap it all, absolutely no talent for detecting! Gore makes mistakes. Many mistakes. In fact, he finds so many wrong solutions in The Deductions of Colonel Gore that the real solution ends up being the only one that is left.
T. S. Eliot called Gore ‘too stupid’. But he may have missed the parody in the title and the satirical undertones of Gore’s first adventure in his critique. The Deductions of Colonel Gore reminds one of Ronald A. Knox’s The Viaduct Murder (1925), where the four protagonists tumble from one wrong conclusion to the next trying to solve a murder on a golf course. Both books share the same tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the science of deduction and a tendency to spoof the methods of the great Sherlock Holmes. In fact, this similarity of approach suggests that Brock, like Knox, had intended to write a non-series book. Knox introduced a new detective in his next novel, The Three Taps (1927), whereas Brock—perhaps surprised by the success of his debut—elected for the security of continuing to develop his eponymous character. Colonel Gore’s Second Case (1925) shows Brock working to transform Gore into a sustainable serial protagonist, culminating in Gore finding a sidekick and, later in the series, establishing a detective agency in London. But all that is in the future.
Colonel Gore steps into his first adventure having just returned from Africa and looking forward to meeting many of his old friends. The story begins with a perfectly conventional dinner party. However, before the evening is over, ‘blackmail’ and ‘murder’ complete the guest list. These are not the only gruesome elements in the story. T. S. Eliot once mentioned the ‘extremely nasty people’ in Brock’s novels, and it is true that the author evokes a rather dark and pessimistic view of human nature. Nevertheless, The Deductions of Colonel Gore is a rip-roaring and, from today’s point of view, wonderfully old-fashioned mystery. It includes an archaic African murder weapon and a constantly confused detective who changes his mind about the possible culprit with each new clue he uncovers.
It is important to note that Brock’s stories contain some antiquated stereotypes of Jews and Africans. Such stereotypes would be intolerable in fiction written today, but were unfortunately not uncommon in the 1920s when these stories were published, and like similar writings of their era must be considered within their historical context.
The Deductions of Colonel Gore was reissued as Book 31 in Collins’ popular Detective Story Club in July 1930, and was joined by reprints of his second and third cases the following year. This new edition now includes for the first time the only published Colonel Gore short story, ‘Too Much Imagination’, which first appeared in Flynn’s weekly magazine on 30 January 1926. It follows Gore’s (by now more serious) deductions in a country house murder case. Connoisseurs of his adventures will be interested to note that the story appears to be a sketchy draft of Colonel Gore’s Third Case (1927, published in the USA as The Kink)—as well as the playful appearance of the author’s own home, The Jolly Farmer. It was in Guildford that McAllister wrote his first ‘Lynn Brock’ mystery and it is thus not surprising that most of his Colonel Gore adventures are set in or near Surrey.
In 1932, the innovative psychological novel Nightmare began a run of standalone books from Brock, although it was not quite the end for Gore: the Colonel returned after a break of ten years in his swan song, The Stoat: Colonel Gore’s Queerest Case (1940). Three years later, on 6 April 1943, Alexander Patrick McAllister died at the age of 66 at Herrison House, a hospital near the Dorset village of Charminster, ending a literary career very different from the one he had started, but no less successful for all that.
ROB REEF
February 2018
FOR just a moment following the sound of the door’s closing behind her husband’s entry Mrs Melhuish’s profile remained downbent in abstracted calculation to the bridge-block in her lap. A small forgetfulness, natural enough, perhaps, in a hostess’s last half-hour of anxiety before a duty dinner of importance. Yet, even twelve months ago, Sidney Melhuish remembered with passionate resentment, that absorbed, adorable little face would have flashed round, even in such an anxiety, in eager welcome to his coming. As they noted and weighed the momentary delay, his rather cold eyes hardened. Then, swiftly, they averted themselves. When Mrs Melhuish raised to him an expression of good-humoured perplexity, he was mildly absorbed in his finger-nails.
‘What a nuisance, Sidney. Mr Barrington has just rung up to say that Mrs Barrington can’t possibly come. Frightful earache, poor thing. I’ve been trying to work out my table. Do come and help me.’
Her air of charming, unruffled dismay was candour itself—beyond suspicion. And yet Melhuish was aware that for an instant as she spoke her smiling eyes had repeated once more the question they had asked of his so often of late. But of the hideous, the incredible suspicion that lurked behind it his clean-cut, gravely-smiling face betrayed no slightest hint as he moved behind her chair to inspect the much-altered plan of the dining-table which was drawn on the bridge-block.
For a moment or two they considered it in silence.
‘If I had had even another quarter of an hour’s notice—I know Beatrice Colethorpe would have stopped the gap for me. But even the amiable Beatrice would kick at a dinner-invitation of twenty minutes.’
She turned—Melhuish observed how instantly—as the door of the drawing-room reopened and Clegg announced the first of the evening’s guests.
‘Colonel Gore.’
No moment of feigned abstraction now—no summoning of her forces—no steadying of her nerves to meet his glance. Instead, a quick smile and gesture of vivid, frankest pleasure, in which his poisoned thought detected relief and eager escape from the danger of being alone with him.
Gore’s lean brown face reflected the cordiality of his hostess’s greeting, as she rose and went to meet him with outstretched hand.
‘“Early”, you commanded me. Therefore I have obeyed. Not too literally, I hope.’
Mrs Melhuish laughed as her hand slid into a clasp of fraternal heartiness.
‘Well, as you have kept us waiting for three years, I think we may acquit you of undue precipitation.’ She turned to her husband. ‘This, Sidney, is the one and only Wick.’
Gore’s twinkling gray eyes ran over his host in swift appraisement as they shook hands. In the four days for which he had been installed at the Riverside Hotel he had contrived to learn a good deal about Barbara Melhuish’s husband, and that swift, straight, shrewd glance of his assured him at once that his informants had not been mistaken. A bit frigid, Dr Sidney Melhuish—a bit solemn, perhaps—but one of the right sort. Steady, clean eyes—steady, clean mouth—plenty of jaw and chin. A man that knew his job and knew he knew it. He grinned his charming grin and took the hand of Pickles’s husband in a grip of steel. Thank the Lord, she hadn’t made a mess of it, as so many of the Old Lot had somehow contrived to do.
‘I know you very well by repute, Colonel Gore,’ Melhuish smiled cordially—few men could resist Wick Gore’s grin. ‘Indeed, it is only with the utmost difficulty, I assure you, that I refrain from addressing you as “Wick” straightaway.’
‘Why refrain?’ twinkled