A review of The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams – 231201

Widely regarded as one of the first pieces, if not the first, of detective fiction, The Notting Hill Mystery, originally serialised in the magazine Once A Week between 1862 and 1863 and published as a book later that year under the pseudonym of Charles Felix, predates Emile Gaboriau’s L’Affaire Lerouge (1866) and Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone (1868). It has been reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series and the edition includes the original illustrations by George du Maurier, grandfather of Daphne.

For those of us interested in the development of the genre of crime fiction, it is an important piece of work, but it is more than a curiosity, a fossil presaging the development of a fully formed and resplendent species, as once it gets going it is a rattling good read. For me there was more than a little sense of déjà vu. As a former insurance underwriter I was occasionally presented with a file of papers representing a carefully conducted piece of investigation into the circumstances of a claim. Often the investigator would hint and suggest but leave the final question of policy indemnification to the wisdom of the wielder of the underwriting pen.

The book takes the form of a file of papers compiled by Ralph Henderson which distils for the Board of a Life Insurance company the claims of Baron R*** for a pay out of £5,000 in respect of the life of his wife, one of five policies he had taken out with different companies. If that is not enough to alert even the most blasé of underwriters, Henderson reveals that the Baron is a beneficiary of another legacy, this time worth £25,000, which resulted from a sequence of deaths which fell in the right chronological order in a relatively short period of time. The inevitable conclusion is that the Baron was more than an impartial observer of the tragedy that befell his immediate family, but is there enough evidence to refuse indemnity and bring a charge of murder?

There is a very Gothic feel about the book with its brooding atmosphere of menace, a world populated by gypsies, child kidnappers, poisoners, and an almost supernatural bond between the two sisters caught up in the spiral of events which results in three murders. Perhaps the most eye-catching and sensationalist feature of the book is the role played by mesmerism, a fad akin to hypnotism which was popular in certain circles during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. It was a form of quackery, the last resort for those who gained little comfort from more conventional forms of medicine.

Baron R**** was one of the leading mesmerists in London and it was through practising his quackery that he met his wife and was able to wheedle his way into their family and set his eyes on the pot of cash that lay within his grasp. The descriptions of the sessions and the reactions to them are fascinating, Adams treating the plight of the victims sympathetically. The reader leaves with the inescapable conclusion that mesmerism is a sham and that its practitioners are just seeking to exploit the vulnerable.

I found that the book started slowly and the structure of the book, in which Henderson painstakingly picks out salient facts and draws conclusions from a variety of sources and perspectives, means that there is no linear progression. Hints, suggestions, and cold facts appear, are lost sight of and then their significance becomes even more apparent as Henderson’s narrative unfolds. We have all the pieces of the jigsaw, but need to do some work ourselves to see the whole picture. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

One curious fact I enjoyed is that trapeze artists develop broad feet, something I had never given any thought to before and probably never will again.