The Man of Dangerous Secrets by "Maxwell March"

 The Man of Dangerous Secrets, Maxwell March (Margery Alllingham, 1936)

Margery Allingham, respected author of Tiger in the Smoke, Hide My Eyes, The China Governess etc, also wrote potboiling thrillers under the name of Maxwell March. Her family were producers of popular fiction, and she carried on the business. Her attempts to sustain a large house and family of hangers-on can be read between the lines of Dancers in Mourning. (In real life, she bought the doctor’s house with its rose garden – did she keep the stuffed wolf?)

The is the only one of her “other” productions I have read. It is a thriller in the style of Sapper, Edgar Wallace, E. Phillips Oppenheim and Sax Rohmer. Robin Grey is a private investigator affiliated to the police (represented by elderly Inspector Whybrow).

Spoilers alert! The story begins on a railway station, where Robin is staked out looking for an evil-doer who never appears. Instead, he recognises a distinguished City man disguised as a railway official, who proceeds to push a young passenger onto the live rail. Robin rescues the fellow, and the story gets going. Anyone engaged to the beautiful Jennifer Fern meets an untimely end (this candidate is despatched a few days later). Robin is roped in to investigate, suggests to Jennifer he should be her next fiancé, and promptly falls in love with her. She is a damsel in distress, very unlike Allingham’s usual career women.

The book is short, and seems written for schoolboys or the teenagers who worked in shops, offices and factories from the age of 14. The headlights of a long, low, powerful limousine rake the dark country road – but then we are told “It was very dramatic”. Clichés of the genre abound: her flawlessly lovely face, his lazy smile, a metallic click, “They’ve got her, the fiends!”, a torn playbill clasped in his hand. We even meet that well-known character, the man whose features are so nondescript that he can impersonate anyone. (“I just knew it wasn’t Lord Alloa.”)

We are quickly introduced to the main plot: a coterie of respected businessmen who are blackmailed by the mysterious “Dealer” into committing his crimes – including murder. The Dealer is one of them, but which? Jennifer’s father is also in the circle, and if she ever marries, a hidden box will spill evidence damning to them all.

Despite the hackneyed writing, the Allingham imagination keeps on working. There isn’t much “description” – teenage readers would skip it. No humour or social comment, either. But there is an atmospheric scene in a dark and deserted office building, leading to the discovery of a man locked in a safe, and a chilling moment when a “cripple” uncurls from his wheelchair and bounds away into the night.

We recognise the refined elderly lady in the priceless lace shawl, who wonders where her brother’s money has gone. Also the disguised character on the railway platform, and the meeting in the vast, empty lounge of the failed hotel which is due to close next week. There are some truly frightening moments when Jennifer finds herself in a locked nursing home situated – where else? – in the Essex marshes. “You’ve just got some silly ideas into your pretty head, my dear – you’ll feel much better after the Operation!” Robin's ride there, sharing an ambulance with a dead body and a cross-dressing nurse, is also thrilling. Will the marshes claim another victim? What do you think?

But what did Inspector Whybrow do with the syringe?

More here, and links to the rest.