Envious Casca

 

By Georgette Heyer

Inspector Hemmingway, Book Two

Uncle Joe has decided that the best way to celebrate Christmas is to gather a group of people to spend a few days at his brother Nathaniel's country estate. Uncle Joe is either a half-wit or a joker because the people he invites seem to be chosen to irritate his elderly brother as much as possible. 

One wonders why Nathaniel ever agreed to host this gathering as everyone seems to get on his nerves, including his nephew Stephen, who is a quarrelsome and angry young man and Nathaniel's heir presumptive. And there is Paula, Stephen's sister, who wants Nathaniel to fund a play she is frantic to star in, along with the play's author, Roydon. Roydon has been mislead by Paula into believing that Nathaniel is willing to back the play but when the old man sees it is a rather smutty and crude, he explodes in anger and refuses to have anything to do with it. Also included is Nathaniel's business partner, Edgar, who is on the outs with the old man due to some disagreement about the direction the business has been taking. About the only people there who don't upset Nathaniel are Maud, Uncle Joe's phlegmatic wife and young Matilda, who is a relative of some sort.

But Nathaniel's worries are soon over when he stabbed to death in his bedroom with all the ways into the room locked from the inside. So the police have quite a mystery on their hands, with lots of suspects and a puzzle to figure out a classic locked room mystery.

So this was quite an interesting mystery although the killer is quite apparent from time of the murder. The mystery is not so much who killed the old man but how it was done and why. Although the why becomes very clear once Nathaniel's will comes into the story. 

I have a few quibbles with the story though. First, how very unpleasant the characters are. What a bunch of mean, nasty, rude people! So hateful and unkind they are to each other. Were people really like that in 1930s Britain? Which is when the book was written but not published until the 1940s. My second quibble is the romance story, which suddenly pops up at the very end of the story virtually out of nowhere. Especially since the female has a very good understanding of what a jerk her lover is. The third quibble I won't discuss because it would be a spoiler. But I must say it seems unlikely that the killer would have knowledge of this unusual method of murder. 

Despite my quibbles, I still enjoyed the mystery a lot, mainly because I couldn't figure out how it was pulled off until the author revealed it at the end. 

Side note: I'm not sure who Casca is, but I think it is one of the people who was involved in the assassination  of Julius Caesar.