When I first did a Century of Books in 2012, it helpfully coincided with my discovery of a new favourite author: A.A. Milne. He was so prolific that a full 18 years of that century were filled by his works and while he won’t prove quite as helpful for my 2024 ACOB, I will work him in wherever possible, starting with The Fourth Wall (or, The Perfect Alibi), a “detective story in three acts” from 1928.
Like all good mystery stories, we open at a country home, owned in this case by Arthur Ludgrove. Generally quiet, the house is this time full of people: there are the usual occupants – Arthur, his ward Susan who is acting as hostess, and his nephew Jimmy – plus a charming widow and her adult daughter, a Major who hopes he is still eligible at 60 for the attentions of said charming widow, and two middle-aged men to round out the group, Mr Carter and Mr Laverick.
The play begins like so many Milne plays with affectionate bantering between our young leads. The notes have already explained the situation between Jimmy and Susan to us before we ever hear them speak: “They were not engaged, but it would be ridiculous for them to put it off much longer”. Jimmy at 27 is “one of those charming and apparently not very intelligent young men whom the Universities empty into the world so hopefully and so regularly” while Susan, a bit younger, is the typical quick-thinking Milne female, always a few steps ahead of her menfolk and far more practical. Reclining with one of her beloved detective stories, she can’t help but offer her advice to Jimmy when she discovers that the letter he is writing is one that will benefit the houseguest she has taken against so strongly since his arrival:
JIMMY: If you want to know, I’m giving Laverick a letter of introduction.
SUSAN: I shouldn’t.
JIMMY: Why?
SUSAN: Because people hate losing their pearls
Jimmy, bless him, won’t stand for such libel, even though he too admits there is something about the man that he finds unsettling. But quickly they segue to discussing the sensational story Arthur told the night before. Or rather, Jimmy tries to segue until Susan reminds him that she never heard the story:
SUSAN: I’m afraid, James, that the ladies – God bless them – had withdrawn. Doubtless wisely.
JIMMY: It wasn’t that sort of story.
SUSAN: Even though it wasn’t, I should like to hear it.
JIMMY: He was in South Africa when the Boer War was on. Did you know that?
SUSAN: I knew that there had been a so-called Boer War which excited our ancestors tremendously and I knew that Arthur had been in South Africa. I didn’t know they had met.
It transpires that years before Arthur had been in South Africia working for the police. While there, he rounded up a gang of three criminals, one of whom was executed while the other two were sentenced to penal servitude for life. Before they were taken from the courtroom, the two sentenced men swore the get their revenge on Arthur one day.
Before Act One ends, revenge has been sought and Arthur is dead. And we as readers witness the entire thing.
The remaining two acts deal with the investigation, first by the local P.C. and his visiting son, a Scotland Yard sergeant, and later, and more successfully, by the intrepid Susan whose passion for detective stories has made her observant, suspicious, and far better equipped to get to the truth than the professionals.
This is one of Milne’s middling works. You would have a pleasant evening at the theatre watching it or at home reading it, and then forget it entirely – as I almost had, after reading it for the first time five years ago. Milne loved detective stories so it’s natural enough that he tried writing a few, but he never mastered them. Too much explanation is required in such stories, which hardly gives him the time to engage in the quick, clever dialogues he wrote so well. But middling Milne is still fun and I was glad to have picked this up again.