Calamity In Kent
A review of Calamity in Kent by John Rowland – 240906
The sixteenth in Cornish-born John Rowland’s Inspector Shelley series, Calamity in Kent was originally published in 1950 and is reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Shelley, as is often the way with officers of the Yard who have the audacity to take a holiday, is drawn into investigating an impossible murder in the Kentish seaside resort of Broadgate. He is perceptive enough to allow the convalescing journalist and the story’s narrator, Jimmy London, to help out, recognizing that a member of the Fourth Estate is likely to get to places and hear things that an officer of the law would not and agrees to pool information on the understanding that London will get his much needed scoop.
On a morning walk London bumps into Broadgate’s lift operator, Aloysius Bender, who has found the body of a man with a knife sticking in his back inside the locked lift. While London sends Bender to get the police, he makes a brief examination of the body and discovers that the victim was John Tilsley and that he had a notebook with some notes, codes, and symbols which London pockets. Before the police arrive another man, claiming to be Dr Cyrus Watford and recognizing the victim, appears on the scene but is not anxious to hang around.
As well as who killed Tilsley, the key points of the case are how did the murderer get the body into the lift, why was the victim killed and what secrets lay in the notebook. London and Shelley set out to crack the mystery, although with London acting as narrator we see the case progress through his eyes. It is always a difficult decision to make an investigator, especially an unofficial sleuth, narrate the story because of necessity they will not be privy to all that goes on and some of the revelations made by the police have to be introduced by way of updates. I am never convinced that this is the best way to tell a story.
The case deepens with a Groundhog Day, another body found with a knife sticking in its back in the self-same locked lift, again found by Bender who again bumps into London. London sends Bender once more to summon the police and while looking at the body discovers that it is that of Dr Watford. What was his connection with Tilsley? The violence does not end there. Bender is attacked but survives the assault, one that took place away from the lift, a key point upon which the story turns and should put the reader on alert as to the culprit’s identity.
Investigations reveal that Tilsley was involved in a shady but extremely lucrative business in supplying motor parts and jewelry in the area, while Scotland Yard are aware that there is a new drug ring active in the Kent area. Is there a connection? Shelley sends London off to a pub in Deal where the drug dealers are believed to operate and predictably the journalist walks into a trap but, equally predictably, Shelley has London tracked and is there to save him from is fate.
As there can only be one possible solution for how the bodies came to be locked in the lift, the big reveal is no great surprise, although Rowland does his best to misdirect with his portrayal of the culprit. What we have is a gang of drug dealers and runners led by a Mr Big who goes by three aliases, which use an ingenious method to bring their contraband into the country and distribute it around the Kent area. The murdered victims had become a security threat to the integrity of the operation, but the failure to remove Tilsley’s notebook and London’s nose for a story brings them down.
It is an entertaining enough read with a strong narrative style and it is good to see the police, or at least the Yard, work well with an amateur for once, with London and Shelley proving engaging companions. That, of course, is driven by Rowland’s decision to have the tale told by a narrator who, by necessity, has to play a prominent part, especially at the death, than would normally have been expected.
