Freeman, R Austin - Felo de Se? aka Death at the Inn

Felo de Se? was known as Death at the Inn in the United States. It contains a genuine puzzle plot, albeit one with ideas recycled from Freeman's early trilogy of novels.

The Penrose Mystery (1936), Felo De Se? (1937) and The Jacob Street Mystery (1942) all open with non-detective characters who observe the events. Typically these events include the murder or disappearance, and most of the mysterious events of the story. They, and the other characters in the opening chapters, typically have no authority to question witnesses, subpoena records, or otherwise investigate. Their observations are limited to ordinary social relationships with the other characters, and what they can deduce from them. This deduction is very important in Freeman's scheme of things. It is the only form of detective work open to the characters, and the chief way of advancing the detection and mystery plot. It is similar in many ways to the deduction that Dr. Thorndyke does in later sections of the story. Freeman often constructs his tales so that deduction is his chief mode. His early narrators have no detective status, so they can only deduce; and Dr. Thorndyke is often only called in on later stages, after the crime is over, and he can only deduce from the evidence. Freeman is especially good at deduction, and these passages are often highlights of his work

Freeman's approach in these late novels can be contrasted with the Van Dine school. In Van Dine writers, detectives show up immediately after the murder, and investigate everything at once: the movements of the witnesses and suspects, the backgrounds of people's lives, and the geography of the crime scene. It sheds an intense bright light on the whole situation, lighting up every detail of the plot. By contrast, the Freeman approach shrouds his story in darkness. The early narrators only know a small, surface aspect of the events, with everything else in darkness, and Thorndyke can only grope through the events long after they have transpired. It leaves the reader feeling they have been through a dark experience, where most of the key events and facts are shrouded in mystery. The whole mood is one of gothic gloom, of wandering around in mental darkness.

The two part construction of these late novels somewhat recalls Freeman's inverted tales, with a non-Thorndyke opening section containing the crime, and a later section introducing Thorndyke and his analysis. However, the early sections contain a mystery, one full of sinister, hidden events, whereas the inverted stories open with a straightforward account of a crime, with all details fully shown to the reader. Another contrast: in the inverted stories, we often get to follow all of Thorndyke's ideas step by step, whereas in the late novels, Freeman usually conceals Thorndyke's detective ideas from us till very late in the book.

One might point out that Freeman's narrators do not serve as "amateur detectives", the way Green's Amelia Butterworth and her successors do. They do not snoop around, they do not come up with ingenious schemes to uncover facts. They simply accept whatever data comes their way in their normal social role, and draw conclusions from it.

The early sections of these novels often show the narrator meeting some other person, a character at the center of the mystery. This character is very out going socially, a regular bon vivant: thus enabling the narrator to strike up a friendship with the character. Yet the character is also extremely secretive about his past and non-social activities: thus creating as much mystery in the story as possible. These characters, with their mysterious pasts, sinister secrets, and shadowed personal lives, recall the characters in 19th Century Sensation novels. The narrator is typically a professional person, someone whose life revolves around methodical, honest work. This person is a bit of grind, someone whose life is controlled by routine. Other than their work and eating, they have no strong desires. The mystery person is dominated by an obsession: collecting, gambling, modern art. These obsessions are sinister, in Freeman's view, and lead to anti-social behavior on the character's part. They also lead this character to have dealings with, and in practical terms support, a sinister underground, such as gambling dens, fences of stolen art objects, etc. The mysterious character also tends to be the victim of a sinister conspiracy. This criminal activity is ongoing, often lasting many years. It tends to be an organized, profit making evil.

Aside from these obsessions, there is no sign of desire anywhere in most of Freeman's late novels. No one is married, has a family, or feels romantic longings. These are all wholesome or productive aspects of desire. In Freeman's late novels, desire is purely negative: it leads to obsession, then anti-social activity, then the support of the criminal underworld of society.

Criminal activity appears to be far bigger in these novels than honesty. The honest narrator is a solitary, isolated person, while the criminal conspiracies seem to extending in all directions around the mystery character. Their very vagueness makes them seem limitless and unbounded. At the end of the books, they are given clear, fixed dimensions, but through most of the story, they seem indefinite in scope. This produces a portrait of Society in which crime is at least as prominent as honest activity. One of the most dubious theories about mystery fiction is W.H.Auden's claim that the English Golden Age novel depicted an almost wholly good society, out of which a solitary evildoer was cleansed. Freeman's late work is in contradistinction to Auden's concept. In general, many Realist writers show extensive criminal schemes. It is a subject matter favored by both Freeman and Crofts, and many of their literary descendants. It also shows up in the Bailey school, which was influenced by the Realists. The sheer magnitude of these criminal gangs, and their depiction not as solitary aberrations, but as fairly normal profit making activities of Crime, tend to contradict Auden's theory.

The social events in later Freeman often center around eating and drinking. Oddly enough, for all his characters' obsessions with food, none of these meals seem especially appealing to me. I have never drinked or smoked, and the characters' constant craving for alcohol and tobacco is foreign to me. And the characters seem positively to relish their foods' plainness. The econiums to meals made of bread and cheese as the height of bliss also seem foreign to my taste. Nero Wolfe's feasts sound a lot more fun.

Felo De Se? contains a long finale, in which Thorndyke traces all the scientific evidence against the killer. This section comes after the revelation of the killer's identity and action. The effect here is similar to Freeman's inverted novels. Just as in the inverted tales, we already know at this point the basic steps of the crime; we are now seeing all the traces left behind by the criminal as evidence. This section has a considerable charm.

Mike Grost

Brilliant novel by Freeman, for those who like pure detection, complex murder plots and none of that love interest nonsense. ;)

Thorndyke's elucidation of the mystery is a triumph of ratiocination and is a real pleasure to read (though he may have had some help from some of his earlier cases!).

Note: The House of Stratus edition leaves off the question mark from the title, which I believe is an error. Of course one hates to carp about HOS, who put so many titles by Freeman and Crofts within reach of readers again, but there it is. The worst HOS error I know of is its publication of the short story collection The Puzzle Lock as a novel!

Curt.