The White Cottage Mystery

The White Cottage Mystery - Margery Allingham [These notes were made in 1990:]. This slim and little-known volume is Margery Allingham's first mystery novel, originally published as a serial, and now reprinted with some editing-out of serial-induced repetitions. It features not Campion, but one W.T. Challoner of the Yard, and his impetuous son Jerry. The plot is less complex than the later Allinghams; the victim is a blackmailer, and a small circle of suspects in the house when he is killed all turn out to have reason to want him out of the way. Various stories come out, and as we look at and dismiss the suspects ... we run out of suspects. The ending is in fact a real surprise; the murder was committed not by any of the grown-ups who had good reason, but by a child too young to understand her own reasons or actions (in mercy, the detective pretends not to have solved the case).