This is by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868-1947). If you think that name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because her brother was Hilaire Belloc (remember Matilda Who Told Lies?). It's an interesting family. Their mother was a British suffragist, their father a French lawyer (who died when Marie was four). They divided their time between France and the UK, and Marie remained bilingual and bicultural all her life. In 1896 she married journalist Frederic Sawney Lowndes, and she wrote prolifically (44 novels, many of them bestsellers, plus much other work).

Published in 1913, The Lodger is an expanded version of a short story that appeared two years earlier, and I came across it courtesy of A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway.

This is the bit (we start with Gertrude Stein talking): "'If you don't want to read what is bad, and want to read something that will hold your interest and is marvelous in its own way, you should read Marie Belloc Lowndes.' I had never heard of her, and Miss Stein loaned me The Lodger, that marvelous story of Jack the Ripper and another book about murder at a place outside Paris that could only be Enghien les Bains. They were both splendid after-work books, the people credible and the action and the terror never false. They were perfect for reading after you had worked and I read all the Mrs Belloc Lowndes that there was. But there was only so much and none as good as the first two and I never found anything as good for that empty time of day or night until the first fine [Georges] Simenon books came out."


Marie Belloc in 1888, when she's 20 years old

***

The Lodger is a really good read. We start by meeting the Buntings. Formerly servants (Robert was for many years a "self-respecting manservant", and Ellen "what is known as a useful maid"), but now struggling to get a place in the same household, they have opted to set up a modest home in London, and let out rooms to lodgers. But business has been bad, and the two are not far off starvation when we first meet them.

This is all described in a way that shows great empathy: "They were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell on the safe tableland of security -- those, that is, who are sure of making a respectable, if not a happy, living -- and the submerged multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised, struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison."

Imagine the Buntings' relief, then, when there's a knock at the door, and someone not only wants to rent more than one room, but also is willing to pay extra to ensure his privacy. He's a bit of a funny one, but Ellen -- with years of experience in class distinctions -- can tell he's a gentleman. Over time, that status, plus the very welcome income, makes her overlook his excessive desire to be quiet and undisturbed, his habit of going out for hours in the dark of night, his "queer kind of fear and dislike of women" (although he makes an exception for Ellen), his proclivity for searching out the most misogynist passages in the Bible, and his strange "experiments" with his gas stove.

We are already aware that London is in the grip of a series of brutal murders carried out by someone targeting women, and styling himself "The Avenger". Robert has been avidly following the details, and wheedling information out of their only friend (Joe, a connection from a previous employment, who is now a detective in the police force). In those pre-internet days, the announcement of further deaths comes via posses of newsboys shouting the latest headlines in the streets. (Lowndes borrows straight from actuality in her depiction of the press coverage: "Bloodhounds to be seriously considered" and "Pardon to accomplices" are actual headlines.)

Ellen's gradual recognition that there's something very wrong about this lodger (who has the unlikely name of Mr Sleuth) is really well done.

He wins her sympathy, telling her that he has for years been misunderstood, persecuted, and tortured: "Poor kindly, solitary Mr Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being."

She starts to lie about his whereabouts, telling Joe (who is remarkably uncurious for such a promising policeman) that Mr Sleuth has spent the last few days at home, when he hasn't: "That moment, those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life. It was the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie." She's relieved when the descriptions of the killer seem to point in a different direction, but she's suspicious enough to snoop through her lodger's belongings. Time and time again, though, she's thrown off the scent by her respect for his status as "a real gentleman".

And, of course, she needs his money... If he goes away of his own accord, she has lost her income. If it does turn out he is the Avenger, the Buntings' association with him will destroy any hopes of a joint situation -- not to mention incur possible charges of being an accessory after the fact.

Ellen even attends the inquest for one of the victims: "The full and deadly horror of The Avenger's acts came over Mrs Bunting in a great seething flood of sick fear and -- and, yes, remorse." She feels haunted by the victims. But she still feels pity for the perpetrator, as well as horror.

Then Robert, who up to now has had little to do with Mr Sleuth, has cause to become suspicious. But he can't say anything to Ellen, for the same reasons she can't say anything to him. It's only when they inadvertently leave Daisy (Robert's daughter by a first marriage, who stays with them occasionally) alone in the house with Mr Sleuth that they realize they share this dangerous knowledge.

This all makes for a very, very creepy read. A plausible degree of uncertainty about Mr Sleuth is kept up almost to the end. As this blogger puts it, "I honestly couldn’t decide. Like the Buntings, I felt that though his behaviour was deeply suspicious, it was still possible that he was simply what he seemed -- an eccentric but harmless loner. With the constant hysteria being whipped up by the newspapers, were the Buntings (and I) reading things into his perfectly innocent actions?"


Ivor Novello in Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 1927. I don't think there'd have been any doubt there was something up with this guy...

So... The psychology is done beautifully; there's no gory description (everything is left to the imagination); the cold, foggy streets of London provide an atmospheric background.

And then the ending is really disappointing...

I won't give it away. Suffice it to say that things close well for the Buntings (they don't have to make that agonizing choice they have been worried about), and also for Daisy and Joe (now an item). But Mr Sleuth's story is resolved with a highly out-of-character gesture and an enormous coincidence. Which is a pity.

Still, this is definitely a book that's eminently worth reading. Not only is the suspense handled masterfully, but the book has interesting things to say about class and crime in the England of the day:

-- The Buntings are very class-conscious. I had to laugh at this sentence: "They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr Sleuth had luncheon." The words for meals are still a bit of a class give-away in Britain, even today. Whereas those of us from modest backgrounds would have breakfast, dinner, and tea, those more fortunately positioned would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or supper -- supper for us meant a buttered cracker and a biscuit, eaten with your cup of tea just before you went to bed). We also gain some insight into class solidarity. "Londoners of Bunting's class have an uneasy fear of the law," Lowndes explains at one point. And certainly, both Ellen and Robert are revolted by the idea of a reward for information. "To go and sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds," Ellen exclaims with revulsion. Joe feels the same: "I don't think I'd like to give anybody up for a reward... A man as gives up someone for a reward is no better than a common informer." Fairly early on, Joe takes Daisy and Robert to the police museum. Robert, seeing the records of finger-prints, and hearing Joe's enthusiasm for the "wonderful" system they're part of, says, "Wonderful, but also a very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their finger-prints in, Joe." Robert is both moved and fascinated by the casts that are routinely taken of hanged men.

-- There's a certain amount of scepticism about the way the British authorities are handling the Avenger case. Joe says: "We haven't got the same facilities -- no, not a quarter of them -- that the French 'tecs have." And Joe's friend at the "Black Museum" opines: "There's no such thing as justice here in England. 'Tis odds on the murderer every time. 'Tisn't one in ten that come to the end he should do -- to the gallows, that is."

-- The unsolved "Ripper" murders that took place in London in 1888 would undoubtedly still have been present in readers' minds, even a couple of decades later. According to Elyssa Warkentin, The Lodger represents "the first appearance of the Ripper in a full-length novel". Lowndes was inspired to write the story after hearing a dinner-table account of two servants who were convinced Jack the Ripper had stayed at their lodging-house before and after one of his murders: "In imagining the Ripper case as a domestic plot with a working-class, middle-aged landlady detective, Lowndes pushed the boundaries of the detective fiction genre itself."


There's a lot about fires and gas stoves in The Lodger

The novel was immediately popular with the public, and sold impressively, Warkentin tells us, but critical success followed only after Lowndes's death, and she has received little academic attention. Which seems odd, given the calibre of her work.

And there's one final little interesting thing:

"Lowndes had a colleague working in London who shared her interest in criminality and female detective characters: Agatha Christie. The two writers shared a love of the mystery genre, although Christie tended to dramatic denouements while Lowndes preferred to write slow, domestic uncoverings that explored psychological motivations. Lowndes and Christie clashed, professionally, over the character of one of Christie’s most famous and successful detectives: Hercule Poirot. Christie introduced her Belgian detective in 1920 with the publication of her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Remarkably, in 1920 Lowndes herself published a novel called The Lonely House, which introduced a character she intended to use recurrently in future work: a Frenchman named Hercules Popeau. He and Christie’s Poirot are strikingly similar.

"There are many possible antecedents to this composite Popeau/Poirot character, but Lowndes was convinced that Christie had somehow stolen her creation. She wrote in protest to the Secretary of the Society of Authors, 'It is exactly as if someone had taken "Sherlock Holmes" ... and called him "Shernock Holme", using all his mannerisms and making him the central character of a murder mystery.' Christie’s immediate and meteoric popularity rubbed salt in Lowndes’s perceived wound, particularly since no publisher or theatre would accept work from Lowndes that included her Popeau after Christie’s Poirot was established... The mysterious affair of Popeau/Poirot was never satisfactorily concluded, and it left Lowndes bitter, sick, and angry."

How curious.