Freeman, R Austin - Mr Pottermack's Oversight (1930)

In addition to The Singing Bone, Freeman also produced a novel in the inverted form, Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (1930). "Novel" is not quite the right word. Structurally, the book is more like a story sequence. It falls into six sections: 1) The Prologue; 2) The Murder, Chapters 1-7; 3) The bank notes, Chapters 8-9; 4) A historical look at the characters, Chapter 10; 5) Mr. Pottermack's final scheme, Chapters 11-16; 6) Thorndyke's logical analysis of the murder, Chapters 17-18. Each one is a separate inverted detective story. The two largest of the sections, Chapters 1-7 and Chapters 11-16, follow the full inverted detective story pattern Freeman pioneered in The Singing Bone. In the first part of each section, we see Mr. Pottermack developing an elaborate scheme to cover up his crime. In the second part of the section, we see Dr. Thorndyke's detection of that crime. The better of the two big sections is the first, Chapters 1-7. This is a richly detailed story that shows Freeman operating at the top of his powers. The smaller sections of the book (except for the last two chapters) do not contain detection by Thorndyke. They mainly show the sympathetic Mr. Pottermack trying to launch some scheme, and how that scheme turned out. The use of the story sequence format is all to the good here; it allows Freeman to incorporate more plots into the book, and tell each at its appropriate length.

In between these detective plots, Freeman also tells the life history of Mr. Pottermack and the other characters. He shows real skill in telling a complex story out of chronological sequence, and from many different points of view. The effect is of one of the avant-garde dramas of Resnais. Freeman also shows an interest in cognitive psychology throughout the book. He is especially interested in how his characters reason, and how they develop new, creative ideas. There are also remarks on how music and odors trigger memory, and how emotions affect thought processes.

Mr. Pottermack contains some of Freeman's most interesting landscape architecture. We can trace the evolution of Freeman's ideas here from their origins. Freeman's earliest Thorndyke writings, "31 New Inn" and The Red Thumb Mark, seem to contain little in the way of outdoor architecture. Next come two stories in The Singing Bone: "The Case of Oscar Brodski" contains a back yard, like that which will play a role in Mr. Pottermack, while "A Case of Premeditation" contains a path, one of the key elements in Freeman's later tales. In 1914 come the opening Hampstead Heath sequences of A Silent Witness. These are among the most memorable in Freeman's work. They introduce the new feature of a wall along the path. Walls play a major role in Mr. Pottermack, both the sea wall of the Prologue, and the wall around Mr. Pottermack's back garden. In Chapter 10, Mr. Pottermack and his girlfriend also meet again through the wall of her garden. Mr. Pottermack also contains a path through a forest, as do the opening scenes of The Jacob Street Mystery (1942).

Mr. Pottermack resembles the earlier story "Phyllis Annesley's Peril" (mid 1920's), in that both involve peering into an enclosed chamber, a room in "Phyllis", the garden in Mr. Pottermack. The apertures are perfect circles in both works, whereas the room and the garden are rectangular. In fact the garden is perfectly square. There is also a circular well in the exact center of the garden, on which is placed a circular sundial. This gives the garden a geometrical feel, being composed of basic figures such as circles and squares. The whole landscape strongly resembles the geometric artworks of Freeman's contemporaries, the Constructivists. Freeman hated modern art, and denounced it in The Jacob Street Mystery and The Stoneware Monkey. He seemed to regard it as resembling children's art, and free-form scrawls. He never seems to have experienced Constructivist works, assembled out of lines, circles and squares. But the landscape of Mr. Pottermack seems to spring from similar artistic impulses as the works of the Constructivists.

Mike Grost

The novel opens with an escaped convict running along in the shelter of a seawall some distance from a town. The fleeing felon discovers a pile of clothing on the beach, evidently togs belonging to a bather who by the evidence of the footprints in the sand had waded into the briny some hours before. Hardly has the escapee effected a change of wardrobe and set out on his way again when a police search party hove into view, its members deducing from the prison clothing left on the beach and the footprints entering the sea that their quarry has escaped by swimming out to a passing vessel. Either that, or he has drowned, although one of the policemen hopes not as the prisoner was a decent sort of chap.

Some fifteen years later, Marcus Pottermack acquires a weathered old sundial bearing the hopeful motto "At the rising of the sun; hope: at the going down thereof, peace." In preparing the site where his ancient timepiece will be sited Pottermack almost tumbles into a hitherto undetected and long-abandoned well. With a wider base than usual the sundial will provide a secure cap to this dangerous garden feature so that particular problem is resolved, but within the hour another and much worse one arises for he receives a blackmailing letter, the latest in a string of same. Readers will doubtless have deduced by this time that Pottermack is Jeffrey Brandon, the escaped convict -- sent up for, but innocent of, the charge of forgery -- and that well and blackmailer are going to make a closer acquaintance.

Dr Thorndyke becomes involved because he is medico-legal adviser to the Griffin Life Assurance Company, and one of its officials shows him a strip of photos taken of the trail of footprints left by an absconding bank manager. Intrigued, Thorndyke sees something interestingly suggestive about them, and so he is drawn into the strange affair by accident.

My verdict: The focus is Mr Pottermack's attempts to cover up his tracks, and he does it in wonderfully inventive ways, whereas Thorndyke takes a less prominent part in events than usual. It may be this novel is unique in that its plotline demands two dead men return from rambling round the fields of asphodel. The tip-off for Thorndyke that all is not as it appears is something I suspect is not commonly known nor even seen in our time, and a major coup would simply not be possible today given advances in science. Even so, the reader is drawn along by this quiet work. More cannot be said for fear of spoilers, but with a wink I suggest readers might care to ponder on the motto of the sundial.

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Mary R