The Notting Hill Mystery
Compiled by Charles Felix
Author of ‘Velvet Lawn’
from the papers of the late R. Henderson, Esq.
with an Introduction by Mike Ashley
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
First published in 1865
Copyright © 2015
Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library
First E-book Edition 2015
ISBN: 9781464204814 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
The Notting Hill Mystery
Copyright
Contents
Map
Introduction
The Notting Hill Mystery
The CaseSection I
Section II
Section III
Section IV
Section V
Section VI
Section VII
Section VIII
More from this Author
Contact Us
Map
Introduction
Seeking the Evidence
According to the late, great aficionado of crime fiction, Julian Symons, writing in 1972, there is ‘no doubt’ that The Notting Hill Mystery is ‘the first detective novel’. Any such absolute statement is bound to be challenged, and there are certainly other contenders so it is worth exploring the book’s position in the evolution of the detective story in order to understand its significance.
First we need to fix a date. A quick check of the title page of this book states that it was published by Saunders, Otley & Co., in London in 1865, but we can go back further. It was first published as a serial, with no author credit, in Once a Week, from 29 November 1862 to 17 January 1863. That serial was illustrated by George Du Maurier (1834–1896), the author of Trilby (1894) and grandfather of author Daphne Du Maurier, and his illustrations are reprinted here.
The 1860s was a period of awakening for the detective novel. The best known of all the early works, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was published in 1868 after it had been serialised in All the Year Round from January to August of that year. It features Sergeant Cuff who is brought in to find a stolen sacred Indian diamond. He is solid, reliable and thorough, a man of morals, who not only solves the case through methodical investigation, but ensures that the diamond is restored to its rightful home. By the time of The Moonstone the detective novel had become established, but what were its antecedents?
Collins’s novel appeared at least five years after The Notting Hill Mystery and plenty of other books and stories featuring detectives had appeared by then. Perhaps the best known is Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1812–1870) originally issued in monthly parts between March 1852 and September 1853. This introduces us to Inspector Bucket ‘of the Detective’, a wonderfully portrayed character who glides through the pages of the novel just like he slips through the dark and dangerous world of Victorian London, enquiring of the underworld, observing, thinking before he acts, and in every way a true detective. He was modelled to a large degree on a real police detective, Inspector Field. Yet, despite Bucket’s noticeable presence in Bleak House, his investigations into the death of Mr Tulkinghorn revolve around one of Dickens’s many subplots and are not central to the book. One could not describe Bleak House as a detective novel, even though it is very evidently a novel featuring a detective.
There had been plenty of short stories involving investigations into crimes, such as ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi’ (1819) by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), which involves the eponymous lady investigating the innocence of a man arrested for murder. The Fräulein does not solve the crime herself though her pursuit of the truth does lead to the revelation, so she may be seen as an ancestor of the female detective.
The first true literary detective, as we would recognise him, is C. Auguste Dupin, created by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), who appears in three short stories, starting with ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841). Dupin is quite rightly regarded as the true ancestor of Sherlock Holmes, and though he does not earn his living from detection, Dupin is recognised as an expert by the Prefect of Police in Paris and his advice is sought whenever there is an unusual or particularly baffling crime. Poe can justifiably be credited with creating the first modern independent detective, but he did not write a detective novel.
The fact that Poe set his stories in France is because France had become closely associated with the idea of a private detective ever since the days of Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857), a one-time thief who turned gamekeeper and set up the first plain-clothed investigative unit, the Brigade de la Sûreté, in 1811. The story of his life and the establishment of the Brigade was told in Mémoires de Vidocq, published in four volumes during 1828–29. This book, which no doubt embellished the truth with vigorous literary licence was a huge influence on early crime fiction. It was translated into English almost before the ink was dry. An industry erupted, in the English penny dreadfuls, the French sensational literature and the American story papers, of retelling stories (mostly fabricated) from police sources.
Its influence can be seen in the many ‘casebook’ reminiscences that appeared in subsequent years. One of the earliest was by a forgotten British writer, William Russell (1807–1877), who produced a series of stories for Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal under the alias ‘Waters’, purporting to be first-person accounts of a London detective. These first made it into book-form in America as The Recollections of a Policeman in 1852 and in Britain as Recollections of a Detective Police-Officer in 1856. These were immensely popular, especially in America, where the image of the private detective was further enhanced by the media-hype around the first private detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) in 1850. Russell wrote many similar books, under various aliases, all in the faux autobiographical style of Vidocquian reminiscences, and inspired many imitators.
Amongst them are The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester, Jr, and Revelations of a Lady Detective, published anonymously but attributed to either Bracebridge Hemyng (1841–1901) or William Stephens Hayward (1835–1870). Both were published in 1864. The Female Detective features Mrs Gladden, usually known simply as ‘G’, who is a genuine consulting detective. Mrs Paschal of Revelations of a Lady Detective, on the other hand, is employed by the London Police Force in order to undertake undercover work. Between them they put the female detective firmly on the literary map.
Another nominee for the first female detective is Ruth Trail in Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy, by Edward Ellis, a penny dreadful which appeared in 52 weekly parts starting on 8 February 1862. Ruth isn’t really a detective. She’s an undercover agent who works on both sides of the law and, as the story develops, is more villain than heroine.
These and similar books such as Mary E. Braddon’s Three Times Dead; or, The Secret of the Heath (1860), also known as The Trail of the Serpent, are works which involve crimes and include some d
etection, but are in no way detective novels. But they do show a rapidly growing interest by the public in the work of the police, primarily for the more sensational and gruesome activities.
Many believe that the true father of the detective novel was the French writer Émile Gaboriau (1832–1873). Directly in the tradition of Vidocq, but further influenced by Poe, Gaboriau created the police detective Monsieur Lecoq in a series of five novels. In the first, L’Affaire Lerouge, he takes a back seat to the retired pawnbroker and consulting detective Father Tabaret, whose deductive skills Lecoq learns and adopts, but in the later novels Lecoq takes centre stage. L’Affaire Lerouge was first serialised in the daily newspaper Le Pays during 1863, after the magazine appearance of The Notting Hill Mystery, but our dates are closing in.
Before he became a full-time novelist, Gaboriau served as secretary to the author Paul Féval (1816–1875), a popular writer of crime thrillers and historical novels who developed a long series of linked novels involving international crime syndicates and conspiracies. Of special interest is Jean Diable, published in book-form in France in 1863 though not translated into English till 2004. It was serialised in Le Siècle from 1 August to 20 November 1862, concluding just a week before The Notting Hill Mystery began. Set in 1816, Jean Diable features the Scotland Yard detective Gregory Temple (even though Scotland Yard was not established until 1829). Temple has a painstaking, methodical and analytical approach to detection. The serial, long and rambling like most newspaper feuilletons of the day, involves Temple’s attempts to convict a master criminal. To French readers, the master criminal was more the hero than the English detective and in the final episode Jean Diable eludes conviction even though Temple has at last found the one vital clue that proves his guilt. The novel is undoubtedly crime fiction and is a step forward from the casebook-style novels, focusing on the tussle between a police detective and a master criminal. It is arguably the first police-procedural novel, and is certainly the closest to a genuine detective novel yet published.
So what makes The Notting Hill Mystery different?—and it is, quite startlingly different. For a start the investigation is by an insurance agent, Ralph Henderson. The novel is his report, presenting all the evidence to prove, to his satisfaction, that Madame R** was murdered and how. His report includes statements from a host of witnesses, including police statements, all of which are meticulously analysed and methodically assessed. There are no sensational chases, no battles with criminals, no undercover work. In that sense the novel is remarkably modern in its presentation. It seems to grow in entirely new soil, with no relationship to previous casebook reminiscences.
There are precedents, but only short stories. Wilkie Collins had written ‘Who is the Thief?’ (Atlantic Monthly, April 1858), later incorporated into his novel The Queen of Hearts (1859) as ‘The Biter Bit’. It’s a fairly light-hearted story, telling, by a series of extracts from police memoranda, how the villain was identified. In ‘Hunted Down’ (New York Ledger, 20 August–3 September 1859), Charles Dickens tells of a girl whose life is insured and who then mysteriously dies. Mr. Meltham, an employee of the insurance company, investigates her death and identifies the perpetrator.
The author of The Notting Hill Mystery would have almost certainly read those stories and used both ideas and techniques in his serial, taking them to an extreme never seen before, and rarely seen since. In that sense the book is unique and is, so far as the record shows, the first full-length modern English-language detective novel.
Which leaves us with the mystery of the authorship. When the story was serialised in Once a Week there was no author credit, but when published as a book in 1865 it bore the by-line Charles Felix. Felix had written at least one earlier crime novel, Velvet Lawns, published by the same firm, Saunders, Otley & Co., in 1864. Various names have been suggested as to his true identity, but it wasn’t until early 2011 that the American collector and bibliophile Paul Collins, writing in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, drawing upon contemporary evidence, revealed that Felix was Charles Warren Adams (1833–1903), the sole proprietor of Saunders, Otley.
The original Messrs Saunders and Otley had died a few years earlier, and Adams was unable to salvage the firm and return it to its glory days of the 1830s when it had published the likes of Edward Bulwer (later Bulwer-Lytton) and Captain Frederick Marryat. The firm went into liquidation in 1869. Adams became the Secretary of the Anti-Vivisection Society and it was in this capacity that his one hitherto claim to fame, or notoriety, arose. Also on the Society’s committee was Mildred Coleridge, great-grand niece of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In November 1883 she turned her back on her family and moved in with Adams, much to the embarrassment of her father, the first Baron Coleridge who was also the Chief Justice. Her eldest brother, Bernard, wrote her a letter saying what a scoundrel he thought Adams was. This led to a major libel case in the Queen’s Bench Division which dragged on for over two years to no one’s complete satisfaction. In the interim, Adams and Mildred Coleridge married in June 1885 and remained together until Adams died in July 1903.
Mildred lived on until January 1929. Did she, I wonder, know that he was the author of the first modern English detective novel?
Mike Ashley
The Notting Hill Mystery
Mr. R. Henderson to the Secretary of the ——
Life Assurance Association.
‘Private Enquiry Office, Clement’s Inn,
‘17th Jan., 1858.
‘Gentlemen,
‘In laying before you the extraordinary revelations arising from my examination into the case of the late Madame R**, I have to apologise for the delay in carrying out your instructions of November last. It has been occasioned, not by any neglect on my part, but by the unexpected extent and intricacy of the enquiry into which I have been led. I confess that after this minute and laborious investigation I could still have wished a more satisfactory result, but a perusal of the accompanying documents, on the accuracy and completeness of which you may fully rely, will I doubt not satisfy you of the unusual difficulty of the case.
‘My enquiries have had reference to a policy of assurance for 5000l., the maximum amount permitted by your rules, on the life of the late Madame R**, effected in your office by her husband, the Baron R**, and bearing date 1st November, 1855. Similar policies were held in the —— of Manchester, the —— of Liverpool, the —— of Edinburgh, and the —— of Dublin, the whole amounting to 25,000l.; the dates, 23rd December, 1855, 10th January, 25th January, and 15th February, 1856, respectively, being in effect almost identical. These companies joined in the instructions under which I have been acting; and, from the voluminous nature of this letter and its enclosures, I shall be obliged by your considering my present reply as addressed to them conjointly with yourselves.
‘Before entering upon the subject of my investigations, it may be as well to recapitulate the circumstances under which they were originated. Of these the first was the coincidence of dates, above noticed; and an apparent desire on the part of the assurer to conceal from each of the various offices the fact of similar policies having been elsewhere simultaneously effected. On examining further into the matter your Board was also struck with the peculiar conditions under which Madame R**’s marriage appeared to have taken place, and the relation in which she had formerly stood to the Baron. To these points, therefore, my attention was especially directed, and the facts thus elicited form a very important link in the singular chain of evidence I have been enabled to put together.
‘The chief element of suspicion, however, was to be found in the very unusual circumstances attendant on the death of Madame R**, especially following so speedily as it did on the assurance for so large an aggregate amount. This lady died suddenly on the 15th March, 1857, from the effects of a powerful acid taken, it is supposed, in her sleep, from her husband’s laboratory. In the Baron’s answers to the usual preliminary enquiries, forwarded for my assistance, an
d herewith returned, there is no admission of any propensity to somnambulism. Shortly, however, after the occurrence had been noticed in the public prints, a letter to the Secretary of the Association from a gentleman recently lodging in the same house with Baron R**, gave reason to suspect that in this respect, at least, some concealment had been practised, and the matter was then placed in my hands.
‘On receipt of your instructions, I at once put myself in communication with Mr. Aldridge, the writer of the letter in question. That gentleman’s evidence certainly goes to show that, within at least a very few months after the date of the latest policy, Baron R** was not only himself aware of such a propensity in his wife, but desirous of concealing it from others. Mr. Aldridge’s statements are also to a certain extent supported by those of two other witnesses; but, unfortunately, there are, as will be seen, circumstances calculated to throw considerable doubt upon the whole of this evidence, and especially on that of Mr. Aldridge, from which alone the more important part of the inference is drawn. The same must, unfortunately, be said with regard to some other parts of the evidence, as will be more clearly seen when the case itself is before you.
‘From his statement, however, in conjunction with other circumstances, I learned enough to induce me to extend my researches to another very singular case, which not long since had given rise to considerable comment.
‘You will, no doubt, remember that in the autumn of 1856 a gentleman of the name of Anderton was arrested on suspicion of having poisoned his wife, and that he committed suicide whilst awaiting the issue of a chemical enquiry into the cause of her death. This enquiry resulted in an acquittal, no traces of the suspected poison being found; and the affair was hushed up as speedily as possible, many of Mr. Anderton’s connections being of high standing in society, and naturally anxious for the honour of the family. I must, however, acknowledge the readiness with which, in the interest of justice, I have been furnished by them with every facility for pushing my enquiries, the results of which are now before you.
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