Hilton, James - Murder At School (1931)

Murder at School and other Hilton books are available from Project Gutenberg.

As one would expect from the author of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, this detective story (the author’s sole) is set in a minor public school (Oakington). The victims are two present - day Oakingtonians, brothers, and one of the masters, and the detective is an old Oakingtonian, Colin Revell, in the mould of Trent and Sheringham. Hilton writes with wit and verve, and his character studies are uniformly excellent, while the false theories he devises show considerable ingenuity and make it a great pity that this was his only work in the genre. As it is, I ‘guessed’ the murderer’s identity very early on, but remained entertained until the end.

Nick Fuller

Somewhere in fictional London there must be a club for inept detectives. Not the deliberately inept, like Inspector Dover, but the endearingly hopeless investigators whose creators just couldn't get it quite right. Boneheaded Paul Beck will be there, and the hapless Peter Hardcastle from Eden Phillpotts' The Grey Room; and a special chair will be reserved for the hero of this book, the dithering Colin Revell.

Hilton was a popular author - he wrote Lost Horizon and Good-by, Mr Chips - and like his contemporaries AA Milne and EC Bentley he seems to have felt that knocking off a detective story would be a bit of a doddle for a dull afternoon. Luckily his innate writing ability is enough to make the book entertaining and even draw the occasional chuckle: but as a detective story it is dire indeed.

The investigation - for want of a better word - begins when a schoolboy is killed by a falling gas-bracket. The only question is whether the bracket fell or was pushed; but since it caused death only by descending vertically on the exact position the boy's head happened to be in, it is clear that any self-respecting murderer would have considered it far too chancy. Nonetheless, Revell, an Old Boy, is called in by the Head. He dithers about for a couple of days then goes home without discovering anything of import because there is, in fact, nothing to discover: it WAS an accident.

Nonetheless, when the boy's brother is found dead in the empty swimming-baths nine months later, Revell invites himself back and stays on, first as the Headmaster's guest and then as his secretary, for what seems like forever. The fact that this was not an accident is immediately obvious: but the Head is quite unconcerned at the presence of either a murderer or suicide in his school and does his best to hush it up. In this he is aided by the school doctor, who is unable to tell the difference between an injury due to a fall and a bullet wound.

Time drags on. Nobody feels any urgency about the task of catching an assassin or preventing further murders. Revell is diffident about approaching the chief suspect, because he is such a GRUMPY man, and so clearly middle-class; but he manages to flirt at length with his wife. Despite the fact that there are only four possible suspects, he makes the mistake of confiding in, not just one, but two of them. Had he studied maths rather than humanities he would have realised that this gives him a fifty-fifty chance of spilling all his secrets to the murderer; which, of course, he does.

Enter finally a real detective from Scotland Yard, Guthrie. He is brought into the case by the boys' guardian, who must have been getting pretty exasperated by this time. Guthrie wanders around a bit, finds a weapon, has the body exhumed and manages to establish more facts in a day than Revell has in three weeks. But 'his hands are tied'. He can't go around accusing respectable ladies and gentlemen of murder, after all (why not? There are only four of them). After a week or two in the country at the taxpayer's expense he too gives up and strolls off.

Revell lingers on for several months, poring over the fragments of evidence he has accumulated but doing nothing about finding any more. A teacher dies. The reader, who has identified the murderer long ago, waits patiently for a climax. It comes! A gun is pointed at Revell! Not fired, just pointed. He trumps his idiotic behaviour by going after an armed killer in the dark and is rescued by Guthrie, who finally wraps things up.

Revell is emotionally devastated by the result, and so he should be - a more ham-fisted attempt at an investigation has seldom been made. One man has died unnecessarily, the school's reputation is in tatters and the Head is out twenty-five pounds on Revell's unearned salary, not to mention his board and lodging. But he has acted like a gentleman throughout - that is, like a cloth-headed cretin - and this, to Hilton, is obviously what really counts.

Read it and laugh - or weep. But don't read it as a detective story.

Jon Jermey

It is ten years after the Great War and Oxford graduate Colin Revell lives in London near the Caledonian Cattle Market. A somewhat irritating young man, he is engaged in writing "literary articles for a high-brow weekly" while composing a satirical epic. Fortunately he has private means.

Revell attended Oakington, a minor public school. One day he receives a letter from its current headmaster, Dr Robert Roseveare, inviting him to visit Oakington to solve a mystery. The two men do not know each other, but Dr Roseveare had heard from a mutual acquaintance at Oxford that Revell had recovered a manuscript stolen from his college library, and so hopes he can shed light on a tragedy that has taken place at the school.

Revell accepts Dr Roseveare's invitation and so learns the history of the Marshall brothers. The oldest died during the war, leaving Wilbraham, currently head prefect of Oakington, and their youngest brother, Robert. The latter was killed by a falling gas fitting in a freak accident in the dormitory of his school house.

Dr Roseveare reveals he had sent for Revell because Robert had written a just-discovered will, leaving all his possessions to his remaining brother -- apart from his three-speed bike, which was to go to a particular school chum. And the will was written the evening before Robert was killed. Dr Roseveare feels the situation is...suggestive....and wishes Revell to secretly look into the matter in the guise of a Old Boy back for a visit.

Revell goes about the school grounds talking to various masters and staff. He makes no progress, ultimately finding there does not seem to be anything suspicious to learn. Dr Roseveare admits to an attack of nerves about the matter and apologises for the wild good chase, so Revell returns to London.

But then there is another death at Oakington and Revell takes up his investigation again.

My verdict: Misdirection and red herrings abound as Revell invents well reasoned theories fitting the available information and suspects, but is then forced to discard them as the novel progresses. I am a reader who likes to follow clues and solve the mystery before the author reveals whodunnit, but I could not guess the culprit, who turned out to be the third person I suspected, and a twist or two at the end also caught me by surprise.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500291.txt

A note on this page states:

First published 1953 as Murder at School by 'Glen Trevor'. This edition first published 1953.

MaryR