Forgotten Book - He Arrived at Dusk

It's ten years since a review by John Norris of a book by R.C. Ashby (who was to become much better-known as Ruby Ferguson, a popular author of 'pony' books) aroused my interest in Ashby's crime fiction. It took a long time, but I've finally acquired a copy of He Arrived at Dusk, which John also reviewed, in laudatory terms, describing it as 'a little masterpiece', and comparing Ashby's skill at misdirection with Agatha Christie's. 

Ashby wrote a number of detective novels and it seems that her forte was combining a fair play puzzle with strong elements of the supernatural. This is certainly the essence of He Arrived at Dusk, which was published in 1933. My copy is the Hodder file copy, which is dated 9 February in that year. It has crossed my mind that the timing was unfortunate, because this was just before Dorothy L. Sayers started reviewing crime for the Sunday Times. Had she covered this novel - and had she liked it - it would have given Ashby's career and reputation a significant boost.

My guess is that Sayers would indeed have liked it. This is not only a clever story, it is unusual and it is well-written (I am pretty sure Sayers would have approved the prose, which struck me as clear, but evocative and definitely better than the writing of many detective novels of the early Thirties). After an intriguing opening in a London club, we're plunged into a narrative written by a researcher called Mertoun, who is summoned to catalogue the library of Colonel Barr, who lives in a lonely house close to the coast of Northumberland. But Mertoun doesn't actually get to meet Barr, who is so ill that he remains in his room, fiercely guarded by Nurse Goff, who won't allow anyone - not even his nephew Charlie - to see him.

We soon hear about a strange local legend involving a Roman gladiator, a sort of ghost who haunts the locality. There have already been deaths in the Barr family and eventually someone else dies - but it is not Colonel Barr...

I did feel that the book lost some pace in the middle section, and when the narrator switches to the nurse's brother. But the finale is excellent and I appreciated the cunning with which Ashby had told a relatively simple story, embellishing it very nicely so as to create her surprise solution. Recommended.