Murder of a Lady by Anthony Wynne

Miss Mary Gregor was murdered in her bedroom in Duchlan Castle. The white haired lady was found kneeling by her bed as though in prayer. She had received a dreadful knife wound in her chest. The puzzling thing was that the room was locked. Nobody could have entered because the door was locked on the inside and could not be unlocked from the hall. The windows were closed and could not be opened from the outside. The bedroom did not have secret passages or secret doors.

At first, amateur crime solver, Dr. Eustace Hailey, who was in the neighborhood was called to investigate by Mr. Leod McLeod, the Procurator Fiscal of Mid-Argyll in Scotland. Dr. Hailey's inspection of the room turned up a fish scale in the wound which would mean that the knife used had been in the kitchen or on a local fishing boat.

Dr. Hailey interviewed the members of the family. Miss Gregor's brother, the Laird Duchlan, was extremely upset at her death, but would not talk about her. His son, Eoghan Duclan, had just returned to the castle from his military service. Eoghan had a great enjoyment of gambling and was financially troubled. Eoghan's wife Oonagh was apparently a very unhappy woman. She seemed to be showing an interest in the local doctor, Dr. McDonald. There were also the servants who had been with the family a long time. Christina was now the nurse for Oonagh's son Hamish who was sick, and the butler, Angus, who was also the castle piper.

Then the police arrived in the person of young Inspector Robert Dundas. Dundas took over the investigation and told Dr. Hailey that he did not need his assistance, and that Hailey could leave the castle. Hailey remained in the neighborhood and his talk with the local residents yielded the information that Miss Mary Gregor had been very kind and generous to the poor and the gypsies in the area, but she did not have any friends of her own social class.

Dundas finally has to admit to Dr. Hailey that he getting nowhere in his investigation, and that if he doesn't succeed in finding the murderer he will lose his status in the police department.  He asked Dr. Hailey to help him. Here we find too different approaches to solving a mystery. Dundas follows a fact based approach and seeks for clues. Dr. Hailey believes that the solution of the mystery will be found in learning the characters of the victim and those people who had dealings with her.

The situation in the castle became much more complicated, and two more murders occurred. Christina and Angus believed in local folktales and thought that evil spirits were the murderers.  The family members were reticent about sharing family secrets, and the police called to investigate nominate a family member to arrest, but something always goes wrong with their plans. Dr. Hailey conducts many interrogations of the family, and finally finds the identity of the murderer, and a rather unusual method of conducting a locked room murder.

Anthony Wynne was a pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson (1882-1963) who was a Glasgow-born physician. Wynne wrote twenty-seven detective novels featuring Eustace Hailey. Wynne wrote a variety of other things which included a medical column in the newspaper and a biography of Napoleon. He wrote some excellent locked room mysteries, but his books have been long out of print. Murder of a Lady was published in 1931, and has been reprinted by Poisoned Pen Press. It has an introduction by Martin Edwards.