It had a few nice points, it started with an interesting character, ‘cause this Anita really was a mystery girl and she seemed a good, interesting one. The murder part was not as thrilling, at least not reading it now. I can imagine that it was quite different to read it back then, in 1922.
Also, there were very long descriptions of places and people, that if you like it it will give you a good idea and set the right atmosphere for you. If you don’t, like me, then many bits will be boring.
The characters were alright, everyone had their own personality, but this is one of those books that really feel the passing of times.
It has Fleming Stone in it, but he didn’t do much and only features 1/4 of the book, and the mystery is solved by his assistant anyway.
Details now:
It’s all set in the city of Corinth, where the very respectable Doctor Waring just became president of the university, elected and all that, important man but also good and nice. Gordon Lockwood worked for him, young intelligent man always with a mask in place so not to show anyone he has feelings.
Waring was about to marry Mrs Bates, the nicest and kindest woman in the city.
Then Anita Austin comes to town and tells nobody about herself so people start calling her Miss Mystery. Nobody seems to like her simply because she doesn’t chat to people and doesn’t speak about herself. Lockwood notices her and falls in love with her.
She immediately seems interested in Waring, goes to one of his lectures and then meets him at his house via a boy who was trying to interest her.
It seemed pretty obvious to me that he was her father but didn’t know of her, but apparently nobody in the book could imagine such a thing! She kept hiding it like a terrible secret until the last page or so.
Anyway, one morning Waring is found dead. There is no weapon and the door is locked from the inside, so both the suicide and the murder theory seem equally impossible. There isn’t much investigating, really. They see that the room is really locked, then a bitter spinster finds money and Waring’s tie-pin in Anita’s drawer, they slowly find proof that she was there that night, then Trask come to Corinth as Waring’s only heir, since his will is nowhere to be found, and he likes Anita at first sight and wants her and tells her that if she marries him he’ll get her out of it since he’s a good lawyer, but if she doesn’t he’ll tell compromising things about her.
A sign of the times, maybe, that this fact is not considered much, the man is not a despicable one here. She doesn’t like him, she loves Lockwood, but still, that’s it.
Anyway, in the last few pages it all comes out:
Waring married an actress when he was young because she was beautiful, but after only a few weeks they went their separate ways because they had nothing in common (and neither thought it worth it to divorce, I guess) then she made him believe she had died so that there would be no chance of him entering her life again. She raised her son without telling her of this, but when she read that he was about to getting married again, she sent her daughter to spy on the situation, because of course she could not let him get married to another woman not knowing that he still had a wife already, but calling for a divorce now would look bad for him, and maybe there was a chance she could want him back now, so she basically trusted her daughter judgement of the situation. Anita said that her mother was a good woman, but then she also said that as soon as she met her father she was nothing to her anymore, because she was enamored with her “wonderful father”… so he willingly gave her some money and a jewel and she went away, then he reflected on the whole thing and read a latin book where it said the story of a guy killed by ice, so he opened the window, took one icicle and stabbed himself, then sat on his chair and died, and the weapon simply melted… so it was suicide after all, not really a locked-room murder mystery this time. Lockwood said that he did it not to spare himself but to spare others, the university and whatnot, and that he was easily influenced and that maybe if he hadn’t read that book he would not have done it… it seems all a bit silly to me.
Anyway, although it is partly human nature and partly due to old times, I found rather annoying how all the females were against her because she was pretty and mysterious, and how all the men were bewitched because she was pretty and they wanted her, and also how Lockwood talked to her. He was in love with her (and at least he had been fascinated by her character all along), and he said things to her such as: “my little girl” (she was 21), and “don’t bother your lovely head about it”, and “you obey your future lord and master” when he talked about getting married.
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