The Affair on Thor's Head - E C R Lorac

 

The Affair on Thor’s Head (1932) is the second of E C R Lorac’s books featuring Scotland Yard’s Robert MacDonald. Called out this time to the coast after a hut burns down and the original  theory – that the old man that lived there came back from drinking and had an accident with his stove - won’t fly.

Instead the charred body appears to be that of a visiting sailor come out of the past to right a wrong. We know this because he got chatting to a local doctor up on Thor's Head earlier that day when both men had stopped to admire the view (incidentally Lorac waxes as lyrical on the fineness of the man as the view, and does a lovely job of both) and told him about his pursuit of a swindler from a voyage he took 25 years or so before, and about an injury that happened to his arm on that trip. 

So when the skeleton is examined the doctor naturally recognises the injury. Hence murder and MacDonald, following up what seem like dead leads from that horrendous sea trip 25 years before; involving alcoholics, con artists, a mad lady (although she may be the same as the alcoholic, I’m a little unclear) a newly married man slowly dying but determined to see St Helens, a doctor who took the post because he thought it would be a rest (hah!), and such atrocious weather that it was believed the ship might never make port.

Just as well that it was such a memorable trip though, as otherwise it seems unlikely that MacDonald would be able to jog the memories of all the various people whose memory he has to jog to get to the bottom of things. This could be very tedious but somehow manages not to be, and while the book is currently out of print (I read it in the British Library) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was republished in the next few years – it seems a much more polished book than the first (The Murder on the Burrows) and has a great sense of place. 

I do struggle to believe anyone wouldn’t spot the murderer by the halfway point, even with the red herrings and distractions like people wandering around at night despite having rocks heaved at their heads or being shot at. Not to mention local prejudices, liaisons, lifeguard outposts and two young students who want to try their hand at amateur detection – but MacDonald is painstaking and undistracted and I was always sure he was working on the right lines. It becomes not whodunnit but how to prove it. 

Incidentally I’m resolved not to comment again on how often Lorac or one of her characters talks about MacDonald’s Scottishness and the supposed attributes of Scots, but will quote one final paragraph on the matter and for future books (and my own amusement) content myself with a rough tally.

'You forget he's a Scot, and Scotsmen are the least foolhardy race under heaven'. Said, I believe, just before MacDonald was lowered down a cliff face late at night to look for a corpse and not long after someone bunged that rock at him. Just saying.