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The Unlatched Door: A Peter Clancy Murder Mystery
The Unlatched Door, first published in 1920, marks the first appearance of detective Peter Clancy. During her long career, author Emma Redington Lee Thayer (1874-1973) published 60 novels, all but one featuring Clancy, who begins his career with the police; later books have Clancy working as a private detective. Clancy is also later joined by his trusty valet Wiggars, who first appears in the tenth book of the series: Dead Man's Shoes (1929).
215 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 18, 2017
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About the author
Lee Thayer
83 books4 followersEmma Redington Lee Thayer (1874-1973) was an American artist who published sixty mystery novels beginning with "The Mystery of the Thirteenth Floor" (1919) and ending, at the age of ninety-two, with "Dusty Death" (1966). All but one feature the red-headed detective Peter Clancy and his valet Wiggar.
Thayer was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, New York City. She married Henry W. Thayer in 1909. As an artist and illustrator, she had paintings displayed at Chicago World's Fair, and produced designs for book jackets.
Thayer was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, New York City. She married Henry W. Thayer in 1909. As an artist and illustrator, she had paintings displayed at Chicago World's Fair, and produced designs for book jackets.
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January 22, 2020
The Unlatched Door is a novel by Lee Thayer written in 1920. Oh, Lee Thayer isn't really Lee, she is Emma Redington Lee Thayer and she was an American author and artist who published sixty mystery novels beginning with The Mystery of the 13th Floor (1919) and ending, at the age of ninety-two, with Dusty Death (1966). All but one feature the red-headed detective Peter Clancy and his valet Wiggar. This one isn't the all but one, it has Peter Clancy in it.
Thayer was born in Pennsylvania (a good place to be born in) and educated at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, New York City. As an artist and illustrator, she had paintings displayed at Chicago World's Fair, and produced designs for book jackets. Some of her work was displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 when she was still in her teens. Two years later she and Brooklyn architect Henry W. Thayer co-founded Decorative Designers, a firm which in the days before dust jackets produced binding designs, interior illustrations and the like for various New York book publishers. Her marriage didn't last forever though, after about twenty years or so, they divorced. Mrs. Thayer kept the name Thayer (obviously) even after the divorce until she died a long time after this. Even though Mrs. Thayer wrote lots and lots of books, she is mostly forgotten now, at least by anyone I've ever known she is. Peter Clancy is in nearly all of the books, and usually he is a private investigator, but in this book, The Unlatched Door, he is still young, and he is currently a young police detective.
On to the things I've learned in this book, I'll pass these helpful hints on to you. First, if you go out with your friends for an evening of "hitting it up", which as far as I can tell hitting it up means getting drunk. So if you have had a few too many drinks and need to be driven home, make sure that the person driving you there gets you into the right house. Some of these city houses next to each other are hard to tell apart (apparently) so your driver will have to make sure you get into the one you actually live in. That's the first thing.
Next, when you live in a city in a house that looks like all the other houses, lock your door. Lock it when you go out in the evening, and lock it when you come home the same night. And before you go to bed you better check the lock one more time. You never know when someone is going to come into your unlocked house and kill you, not to mention never knowing when a drunken neighbor comes in and sees your body lying there. So, remember if you get drunk get put into the right house by a friend, or just don't drink in the first place. As for the other problem, being dead, if only you had remembered to lock the door.
And this is what happens, our main character, Richard VanLoo Schuyler, a young man described as "good looking, tall, fair, with broad shoulders and narrow hips of a natural athlete." He comes from a wealthy family, but their enormous fortune had been somewhat dissipated by Richard's predecessors, there was still enough though, for him to go through life with ease and grace, taking all the good things that came his way. He went to Harvard, he achieved prominence in the field of athletics, he went to law school, and became a member of the bar on a bet with a friend that he would never be admitted. Now he has a comfortable office in the downtown district, where his friends meet for drinks and tobacco. Oh, and he drinks too much.
Dick arrives at home (well, almost at home) after his night out to find the door open, something that puzzles him, and the smell of rich perfume. He sits down to take off his shoes and reaching for them touches something else, something "soft and smooth as velvet-but cold - cold with a clammy horror that chilled the very marrow of his bones." And now he discovers his mistake. Reaching for the light switch he doesn't find one, something is wrong with the wall he thinks, the walls are hung in dark red silk, there is a mirror where no mirror should be, and finally he knows what I already know, "He was in the wrong house."
Now that he figured that out he gets back to what he touched in the first place, a body.
"There it was, the face he had touched, still and exquisite, with an exotic sort of beauty, framed in a mass of soft black hair. He remembered well the last time he had seen it - at the opera - flashing and glowing with health. Now it lay there still and white save for the delicately rouged lips which showed scarlet and seemed to smile up at him mockingly. The eyes were closed, the long black lashes sweeping the curve of the cheek, and he noted with a start that the wax-white hands were folded, as if for burial, across a mass of deep red roses."
I'm not sure what I would have done by this time, but I can't blame our hero for wanting to get out of there immediately. As he says, he can't help her anyway, and how would he explain his being there? So although it seems cowardly for him to leave her there, that's what he does. So he gets his shoes, and his had, and his wet pumps (it's raining) and goes home. To the right place this time. There were a few things it would have been smart not to leave behind, but that's what he did. Little things like the matches, and the in-sole of his shoe, but nobody is perfect. He does eventually tell the police, not about his being there though, in fact he's the one to call them after the girl living there, calls to him to come help her. He does go to her and she shows him the body, who ends up being Mrs. Rutledge, Mr. Rutledge is away from home, so he calls the police for her. And that brings Peter Clancy into the book. Him and the captain, Captain O'Malley. And he still keeps his midnight visit a secret.
So, who killed Mrs. Rutledge? I'm not telling, it took me awhile to even remember, so I'm not sure what that says about the book, or what that says about my memory. We have lots of suspects though, poor Dick who acts like a suspect the entire book, Mr. Rutledge who isn't where he said he would be when this happens, the young girl, Nora, there is some sort of secret about her, the cook, the housekeeper, Miss MacLeod, on and on. The cook we find has quite a past:
The cook proved to be a heavy, soft-footed Irishwoman, neither old nor young, with enigmatic, roving eyes set in a broad red face. She seemed terribly frightened at sight of the officer in the lower hall and could hardly be persuaded to enter the drawing room........."I didn't do it, honest to Gawd I didn't do it!" she wailed. "Keep still!" said the captain sternly. "Nobody's accusing you yet, Sarah Connors."
"Why do you call me that?" she questioned in a shaking whisper.
"Because it's the name you went by years ago when you belonged to the Rollins gang. Don't deny it. You've changed, but I could swear to you anywhere," said O'Malley, with conviction, as he drew the curtains close again.
Then there is Cuthbert Pendleton, a man who dined with the victim earlier that evening, I suppose it would have been hard to dine with her later that evening, anyway, Mr. Rutledge tells the detective that Pendleton came there often, he is a sort of "tame cat", the kind of man women like to have dangling about. So, who did it? I'll never tell, at least not until I remember. I do remember thinking how silly Dick was in that for most of the book he tried to think of ways to get rid of his shoes, the ones now missing an insole. I could think of a dozen things to do with them, but he finally decides to bury them in a bucket of ashes in his basement. Something dumb like that, as if no one ever empties the ash buckets. I enjoyed the book, I would read another one, I'm curious to see how Peter Clancy progresses through the years, and I almost have to read the one she wrote when she was 92. So go ahead and read it if you want to, whether you do or not, please pay attention to whose house you go into when you go home this evening.
Thayer was born in Pennsylvania (a good place to be born in) and educated at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, New York City. As an artist and illustrator, she had paintings displayed at Chicago World's Fair, and produced designs for book jackets. Some of her work was displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 when she was still in her teens. Two years later she and Brooklyn architect Henry W. Thayer co-founded Decorative Designers, a firm which in the days before dust jackets produced binding designs, interior illustrations and the like for various New York book publishers. Her marriage didn't last forever though, after about twenty years or so, they divorced. Mrs. Thayer kept the name Thayer (obviously) even after the divorce until she died a long time after this. Even though Mrs. Thayer wrote lots and lots of books, she is mostly forgotten now, at least by anyone I've ever known she is. Peter Clancy is in nearly all of the books, and usually he is a private investigator, but in this book, The Unlatched Door, he is still young, and he is currently a young police detective.
On to the things I've learned in this book, I'll pass these helpful hints on to you. First, if you go out with your friends for an evening of "hitting it up", which as far as I can tell hitting it up means getting drunk. So if you have had a few too many drinks and need to be driven home, make sure that the person driving you there gets you into the right house. Some of these city houses next to each other are hard to tell apart (apparently) so your driver will have to make sure you get into the one you actually live in. That's the first thing.
Next, when you live in a city in a house that looks like all the other houses, lock your door. Lock it when you go out in the evening, and lock it when you come home the same night. And before you go to bed you better check the lock one more time. You never know when someone is going to come into your unlocked house and kill you, not to mention never knowing when a drunken neighbor comes in and sees your body lying there. So, remember if you get drunk get put into the right house by a friend, or just don't drink in the first place. As for the other problem, being dead, if only you had remembered to lock the door.
And this is what happens, our main character, Richard VanLoo Schuyler, a young man described as "good looking, tall, fair, with broad shoulders and narrow hips of a natural athlete." He comes from a wealthy family, but their enormous fortune had been somewhat dissipated by Richard's predecessors, there was still enough though, for him to go through life with ease and grace, taking all the good things that came his way. He went to Harvard, he achieved prominence in the field of athletics, he went to law school, and became a member of the bar on a bet with a friend that he would never be admitted. Now he has a comfortable office in the downtown district, where his friends meet for drinks and tobacco. Oh, and he drinks too much.
Dick arrives at home (well, almost at home) after his night out to find the door open, something that puzzles him, and the smell of rich perfume. He sits down to take off his shoes and reaching for them touches something else, something "soft and smooth as velvet-but cold - cold with a clammy horror that chilled the very marrow of his bones." And now he discovers his mistake. Reaching for the light switch he doesn't find one, something is wrong with the wall he thinks, the walls are hung in dark red silk, there is a mirror where no mirror should be, and finally he knows what I already know, "He was in the wrong house."
Now that he figured that out he gets back to what he touched in the first place, a body.
"There it was, the face he had touched, still and exquisite, with an exotic sort of beauty, framed in a mass of soft black hair. He remembered well the last time he had seen it - at the opera - flashing and glowing with health. Now it lay there still and white save for the delicately rouged lips which showed scarlet and seemed to smile up at him mockingly. The eyes were closed, the long black lashes sweeping the curve of the cheek, and he noted with a start that the wax-white hands were folded, as if for burial, across a mass of deep red roses."
I'm not sure what I would have done by this time, but I can't blame our hero for wanting to get out of there immediately. As he says, he can't help her anyway, and how would he explain his being there? So although it seems cowardly for him to leave her there, that's what he does. So he gets his shoes, and his had, and his wet pumps (it's raining) and goes home. To the right place this time. There were a few things it would have been smart not to leave behind, but that's what he did. Little things like the matches, and the in-sole of his shoe, but nobody is perfect. He does eventually tell the police, not about his being there though, in fact he's the one to call them after the girl living there, calls to him to come help her. He does go to her and she shows him the body, who ends up being Mrs. Rutledge, Mr. Rutledge is away from home, so he calls the police for her. And that brings Peter Clancy into the book. Him and the captain, Captain O'Malley. And he still keeps his midnight visit a secret.
So, who killed Mrs. Rutledge? I'm not telling, it took me awhile to even remember, so I'm not sure what that says about the book, or what that says about my memory. We have lots of suspects though, poor Dick who acts like a suspect the entire book, Mr. Rutledge who isn't where he said he would be when this happens, the young girl, Nora, there is some sort of secret about her, the cook, the housekeeper, Miss MacLeod, on and on. The cook we find has quite a past:
The cook proved to be a heavy, soft-footed Irishwoman, neither old nor young, with enigmatic, roving eyes set in a broad red face. She seemed terribly frightened at sight of the officer in the lower hall and could hardly be persuaded to enter the drawing room........."I didn't do it, honest to Gawd I didn't do it!" she wailed. "Keep still!" said the captain sternly. "Nobody's accusing you yet, Sarah Connors."
"Why do you call me that?" she questioned in a shaking whisper.
"Because it's the name you went by years ago when you belonged to the Rollins gang. Don't deny it. You've changed, but I could swear to you anywhere," said O'Malley, with conviction, as he drew the curtains close again.
Then there is Cuthbert Pendleton, a man who dined with the victim earlier that evening, I suppose it would have been hard to dine with her later that evening, anyway, Mr. Rutledge tells the detective that Pendleton came there often, he is a sort of "tame cat", the kind of man women like to have dangling about. So, who did it? I'll never tell, at least not until I remember. I do remember thinking how silly Dick was in that for most of the book he tried to think of ways to get rid of his shoes, the ones now missing an insole. I could think of a dozen things to do with them, but he finally decides to bury them in a bucket of ashes in his basement. Something dumb like that, as if no one ever empties the ash buckets. I enjoyed the book, I would read another one, I'm curious to see how Peter Clancy progresses through the years, and I almost have to read the one she wrote when she was 92. So go ahead and read it if you want to, whether you do or not, please pay attention to whose house you go into when you go home this evening.
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