Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley

At the country estate of Mortimer Fenley, artist John Trenholme works at an oil painting of Sylvia, the financier’s beautiful ward. She has just emerged from the lake where she swims every morning. A sharp rifle shot shatters the pastoral calm, and Fenley lies dead at the mansion entrance, four hundred yards away. Enter Scotland Yard, in the form of Scotland Yard’s Winter and Furneaux, nicknamed “The Big ‘un and The Little ‘un.” Winter, Chief Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, is big, burly and genial – certain to soothe the anxious and calm the excited. He methodically gathers, sorts and sifts the available evidence and examines the known facts for patterns that might suggest theories of the crime. This knowledge is the basis of deductive method by which he uncovers, in Tracy’s words, “the only sound conclusion from ascertained facts.” Meanwhile, the diminutive and high-strung Detective Inspector Charles Furneaux uses his uncanny instincts and startling intuitions to unravel the mystery inductively. He talks to people, provoking emotional reactions, triggering tempers, seeking out sensitive spots. In this way he builds psychological profiles of the main characters. He uses this knowledge to guess how, under various circumstances, they would probably behave. His intuition then suggests how, in the actual conditions of the murder, they really did behave. In less than 36 hours Winter and Furneaux unravel the mystery, a mild crush blooms into a full-fledged romance, real-estate changes hands, an earlier crime is solved, and more. - Summary by Kirsten Wever