A good book, a pleasant read and a nice mystery. Protagonists are two young people, Bobby the vicar's son and his friend Lady Frances Derwent. It all started when Bobby saw a man lying below a cliff. The man is dying and Bobby thinks he must have slipped and fallen down because of the fog. Before dying, his only words are "why didn't they ask Evans?", words that seem meaningless to Bobby that is in a hurry to go away and when a stranger, who introduces himself as Roger Bassington-ffrench, offers to take his place, he gladly accepts. The man is identified by his sister as Alex Pritchard. Everybody accepts it because the dead man had a picture of her in his pocket. Later on, Bobby miraculously survives what he and his friend Frankie think to be a murder attempt: a high dose of morphine in his beer. Frankie insists that the reason must be because Pritchard had been killed, that it had not been an accident at all. The two start investigating the matter, all the more convinced when Bobby realizes that the picture that was found in Pritchard's pocket was not the same picture he had seen while alone with him. Only Bassington-ffrench could have replaced the picture, so they greatly suspect him. They investigate him, and Frankie finds that he's a charming, innocent-looking man living with his brother Henry addicted to morphine, his very nice sister-in-law Sylvia and their son Tommy. Bobby finds out who was the woman of the picture he really saw in the dead man's pocket: Moira Nicholson, the wife of an ambiguous man running a sanatorium nearby. Moira tells him that she's very afraid her husband might kill her, and Bobby believes her and is worried for her. Both Bobby and Frankie change their mind now and think Dr Nicholson is the murderer (because he's neither pretty and helpless, or charming and good-looking..) but later on they are both kidnapped by Roger, and saved only thanks to the fortuitous arrival of Bobby's friend Badger Beadon. Bobby and Frankie are now sure that Pritchard's real name was Alan Carstairs, that he was investigating having great suspicions regarding his friend John Savage's suicide. Savage had been visiting a woman, Mrs Templeton, and feeling bad one day he had made his will and they called a lawyer who had never met him, the house cook and the gardener. We are now around 20 pages until the end of the book, and Frankie asks herself one question: why did they go outside to ask the gardener instead of asking the house maid? Knowing that the house maid was called Evans, they are now where poor Alan was, wondering "why didn't they ask Evans?". Simple, because she knew John Savage and would have known that the man writing his will was not Savage at all, but Roger impersonating him! They arranged his faked will then killed him. Evans is now married and working at Bobby's home! which is why Carstairs was found near it, more or less. They discover that Moira and Mrs Templeton are the same person when she tries to poison them, and she's arrested. Roger, however, had previously managed to escape with Moira's help, and is now living in South-America under a false name. He even writes Frankie a letter confessing everything! The last two pages are very obvious, with Bobby and Frankie getting engaged.
Frankie reminded me of Bundle from 'the seven dials mystery', only much nicer. This book needed to have two young, inexperienced people instead of a real detective, because they fell so easily for every lie. Bobby blindly believed that Moira was a poor, helpless girl in need of help, his help, and Frankie believed Roger's innocence because of his kindness and good manners, going back on their rightful suspicions of him, believing his not-at-all-satisfying explanation about the photograph. A true detective would know that not liking a man is not enough reason to suspect him of murder; Dr Nicholson was exactly who he said he was, but they believed the pretty girl and the charming man.
Many things are still not answered, though. Why did Roger have the picture of his other friend in his pocket, ready to replace it with Moira's? How could Moira find out where Bobby was having his picnic alone, being therefore able to poison his beer while he was sleeping? Why go through all that trouble instead of killing Bobby there and then to prevent him from learning anything? All questions without an answer. If you really want to you can say that Roger had a picture ready because he knew or suspected that Alan had Moira's picture with him probably to show it to Evans, and that Moira simply got lucky, finding Bobby asleep at the right moment... but you must really want to.
The fact that in the end Evans was living at Bobby's vicarage reminded me of The Alchemist book, where the protagonist after his journey finds out that what he had gone looking for was actually back where he started, but the voyage had been the important part ;-)
Ita: Perché non l'hanno chiesto a Evans?
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