There are times when only a British Library Crime Classic will do, and I had one of those times the other day. I'd never heard of Margot Bennett and I imagine few people will have done, though this novel was included in Julian Symonds Hundred Best Crime Stories and was shortlisted for the first ever Gold Dagger Award in the UK and for the Mystery Writers of America Award. It certainly deserves to be better known, as it's an unusual novel in several ways, namely the plot, the structure and the style.
The main premise is simple: four men have booked seats on a private plane from England to Dublin. The plane explodes and crashes into the Irish Sea. The wreckage is lost and the bodies can't be recovered. But what is known is that only three men boarded the plane. Who was the fourth passenger - the man who didn't fly - and why didn't he arrive at the airport?
The man who didn't fly had been spared by chance or providence. He should have appeared, smiling uneasily, to describe how he had stopped to tie his shoelace and missed the bus. He was silent as though he had taken a bus to eternity. He was not only silent, he was invisible, and, worst of all for the authorities, he was any one of four people. He could be classified only as the man who didn't fly, and he created the impossible situation of leaving three deaths to be shared out between four people.
The consequences of this are far-reaching. No one can be pronounced dead by the coroner, no insurance company will pay out. And last but not least there are the families and friends of the four men, all of whom hope - or in some cases fear - that their loved ones may be still alive.
The investigation starts in a bar at the airport. It is here that the police learn for sure that only three men boarded the plane. But the landlord, who served them, is old and sick. He can't identify the men from the photos shown him by the police. He remembers scraps of their conversation but his memories are so confused that they are no help at all: something about South Africa, or was it Australia? maybe something about the Grand National? The staff of the airport are equally unhelpful.
Perhaps the families and friends of the missing men can help. They were all known to each other. The plane had been chartered by a businessman called Joe Ferguson, whose wife Moira is understandably in a semi-stupor and can't help at all. Her neighbours, the Wades, knew the other three men quite well. One was their lodger, Morgan Price, a man in his forties whose background was a great mystery - nobody seems to know why he had taken a room at the Wades. Then there was Maurice Reid, who was something in the city and had a weekend cottage nearby. And finally there was Harry Walters, an aspiring poet, who stayed with the Fergusons and was hoping to marry twenty-year-old Hester Wade, though he was also carrying on with Moira Ferguson.
The novel is constructed in an unusual way. Instead of conventional chapters, it's divided into named sections corresponding the the stages of the investigation. The police take the family members back through their recollections of the days leading up tp the flight, so we have Investigation 1-4 followed by Wednesday 1-8, Investigation 5, and so on. Each section unravels a bit more of the characters of the missing men and their interactions with each other, their reasons for wanting to take the flight, and their relationships with the surviving family members. Slowly, facts emerge which may or may not have a bearing on the case. Financial double-dealing emerges, a jewel robbery has recently taken place. A strange young man called Jackie has turned up at the Wades and asked for a job - where did he come from and could he have anything to do with it all? And who is the mysterious Australian who is staying at the local pub?
Naturally in the end the mystery is solved, through a complex process of elimination. But the fun of the novel - and it is delightfully witty - is in watching the interactions between the various characters. There's Charles Wade, who's in financial trouble and has agreed to put all his remaining capital into a venture sold to him by Maurice Reid, much to the horror of his two daughters, Hester and sixteen-year-old Prudence. Hester is blindly devoted to Harry, who everyone else can see is not going to be much use to her as a husband. And Prudence, my favourite character (her greatest fear is that people will think she's not sophisticated) who is clearly the most intelligent and perceptive member of the family, though she's only sixteen and still learning how to be a grown-up.
The writing here is so lively and original - it reminded me a bit of Barbara Comyns, if you've ever read her, though I see someone has compared it to Stella Gibbons. So all in all it was a joy to read, and another great discovery for the Crime Classic series. Long may it continue.
