Tue 27 Aug 2019
Stories I’m Reading: AUGUST DERLETH “The China Cottage.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[2] Comments
AUGUST DERLETH “The China Cottage.” Solar Pons. Short story. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1965. First collected in The The Casebook of Solar Pons (Mycroft & Moran, hardcover, 1965), as “The Adventure of the China Cottage.” Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock’s Games Killers Play (Dell, paperback, 1968.
I wonder if this story marked the first appearance of Solar Pons’ brother Bancroft, a man of some size and weight and who worked, not surprisingly, for the British Foreign Office. Dead in a locked room is an eccentric breaker of codes and ciphers, found slumped over the latest set of papers he was working on.
But as it turns out, Pons quickly deduces that the papers and the secrets that may have been in them were not the reason for his murder, and the problem of the locked room is disposed of almost as quickly. If it was indeed murder, the killer simply walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Or her.
No, the puzzle, as Pons finally works it out, and I hope I’m not giving too much away, has to do with the china cottage of the title, an ordinary incense burner in the shape of … a cottage. It is imagined, by me at least, that at one time these were quite popular in England.
As a consulting detective whose cases you may decide to follow when you’ve read the entire Holmes canon several times over, Solar Pons certainly has his fans, even today, but I’ve always found his tales to be a mixed bag. This one’s better than many, but in my opinion, no way near the best of them. I found the shift in focus from a case in Bancroft’s purview to a much more domestic one disconcerting, but your opinion may vary.
August 27th, 2019 at 7:12 pm
I enjoy the Pons stories, for all their flaws, still the only pastiche to warrant a pastiche. Yes, some stories are better than others, but many are still classics, and Derelith’s playful visits from Limehouse’s Mr. King, or a LA criminal defense attorney named Jerry Mason, as well as one legitimate exercise in SF make the series unique. The wink of the eye and tongue in cheek is never far off.
August 27th, 2019 at 8:43 pm
I have been considering the possibility that Derleth was having fun with us in this story as well. Oh, this is a spy story, complete with a code to be cracked before the killer of Sir Randolph can be identified. No, it’s not. Then it’s a locked room mystery. Uh, no. If it’s a murder, the killer simply closed the door behind him.
And of course what it really is is a murder as domestic as it can be, with the key being a mere incense burner, as common around the house as can be.