The Tragedy of Y

"Well, murder or no murder, all I can say is--thank God for the Mad Hatters!"

That's a reporter who's just been berating Inspector Thumm.

A couple of days before a trawler had fished up York Hatter's body in the New York Harbor. He'd disappeared from his house on Washington Square six weeks before, and from the condition of the corpse--fingers too battered for a fingerprint, face cut up beyond recognition--it seemed he'd been in the water the whole time. The identification was made from the clothes--and a suicide note on the body, in York Hatter's handwriting.

At this point, the dedicated mystery reader (and one anonymous New York reporter) go, hunh, sure.

Still Thumm, one of New York's finest, unhappily lets it go as suicide until there's a clear murder attempt at the Hatter household. Then he calls in Drury Lane, retired actor and amateur detective who had solved the earlier Tragedy of X. 

There are two more murders to come and one attempted before Drury Lane unwillingly reveals the culprit.

This has the clever conceit that there's a witness, Laura Campion, in the room when the first murder is committed, only she's blind, deaf, and dumb. What could she have perceived? How can she communicate it? 

I enjoyed this, and it shows up on lists of best mysteries, but it isn't as good as The Tragedy of X. I knew from Laura Campion's clue who had done it, and so the final explanation went on too long for me. Still fun! It's recently been reissued (with the cover shown) by Penzler Publishing as an American Mystery Classic.

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

Golden Age (1932). Spooky House.