Razor Edge by Anthony Berkeley
inspired by a true story...
This essay is part of the series Death Takes a Holiday, where I explore the dark side of the sunny season — Caribbean cruises gone wrong, bodies washing ashore on beaches, honeymooners plotting murder. Grab a cold drink and find a shady spot. The heat is murder.
Read earlier posts in the series here:
Spoilers: The murder method, but not the culprit, is revealed
While on holiday visiting his friend Major Drake in the coastal town of Penhampton, amateur detective Roger Sheringham passes up a round of golf to investigate a possible murder. (The major, it should be noted, is more than happy to rule the death an accidental drowning and get on with the golfing.)
A body has been discovered washed up on the beach and is subsequently identified as Edward Hutton by his wife. Hutton had left their boardinghouse that morning to go swimming with a friend and never returned. The friend remains missing, and upon inspecting the body in the town’s “larger than usual” mortuary (death by accidental drowning is common in the area), Sheringham declares the case murder.
While reenacting the crime and looking for clues along the rocky shore, Sheringham references the Brides in the Bath case, a real series of murders committed by George Joseph Smith that captivated England when he was arrested in 1915. Smith was a bigamist, marrying multiple women and killing three of them for their life insurance by drowning them in the bath. The case became famous in part because of the method he used to drown his wives: by suddenly grabbing their feet and jerking them up, their heads were thrust underwater. The sudden rush of water into their nose and throat immediately incapacitated them while leaving no sign of a struggle. Knowledge of the case informs Sheringham’s supposition that the killer used the same method, drowning the body in a tide pool with relative ease before moving it to the rocks where it was found.
The Smith case captivated Golden Age novelists as well as the public, and Berkeley was far from the only writer to reference it in his work. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh all referenced the case in at least one of their stories, with Allingham even basing a 1955 short story, “Three is a Lucky Number,” on Smith and his crimes.
A 1925 article examines why Smith’s crimes captivated mystery writers decades after his execution:
For Smith invented a new way to commit murder, and one which enabled him to face coroner's juries, and come forth triumphant, "without a stain on his character." I have heard a writer of detective novels, one with a lively fancy, begging for "a new kind of murder," yet this stodgy Mr. Smith, without the imagination of a green-grocer (notoriously a duller profession than any other color of grocer) thought out, in minute detail, a most successful plan for homicide, and only went to ruin because, like so many great artists, he could not resist one more farewell appearance.1
“Razor Edge” was unpublished during Berkeley’s lifetime and it’s not difficult to see why. It’s a brief, straightforward story, and the twist can be seen from a mile away by any reader with even a passing interest in detective fiction. Aside from Sheringham and the wife, none of the characters pop off the page or leave much of an impression at all. In fact, the most diverting part of the story was a digression into the victim’s swimming attire:
“Scratches! Nonsense! Bathing dress, that’s all.”
“Do you mean, he wore a backless swimsuit, as I believe the loathsome term is?”
“He was wearing a pair of slips,” said the superintendent.
Despite a very entertaining Google search, I could not figure out what a pair of slips is or looks like. So that’s one mystery that remains unsolved…
murder in the links
Unrelated, but well worth a read: A New Agnes Varda Exhibition is an Extension of Her Life’s Work
Deeply relevant: “Self-Retiring” Jamie Lee Curtis Gears Up For Murder, She Wrote Reboot
read with me
Next week: The Crime Coast by Elizabeth Gill
In two weeks: “The Regatta Mystery” by Agatha Christie
“The Brides in the Bath Murders” by Edmund Pearson, Vanity Fair
I always find it interesting when crime writers draw on real cases. My favourite Anthony Berkeley story is probably "The Mystery of Horne's Copse", which is in the BLCC anthology Murder at the Manor