Laura Verity thought she was the last person that things would happen to: a little grey-haired lady with not much money and no past, but as my 1941 Crime Club edition of The Vanishing Corpse declares, "here is a really good, exciting, well-told tale to defeat the black out and repel all thoughts of invasion."
Laura is a 56 year old spinster, and for mainly this reason, there is not much left to live for so she decides to rent a far off cottage to kill herself in. Yes, it's pretty much over at 56. She rents a desolate place in the countryside near Brighton from secretive Mrs. French, and thus settled in for the night she discovers a dead woman in the bedroom, a torn scrap of love letter in her hand. Running off to the nearest town, she returns with the police and friendly lawyer Arthur Crook to find - no body! They think she is a crank (she does run off with flights of fancy and attacks of nerves) but they place her in a local resort hotel and begin to investigate. Never staying in such a place, she is fascinated by the widows and lotharios who reside there, while she herself tracks down who the mysterious lover was, who the dead girl was, where her body disappeared to, who to trust and who continues to attempt to poison her, and whatever happened to Mrs. French who can no longer be found? The public is also riveted with the papers calling it The Brighton Mystery, The Wood Mystery, The Nook Murder, The Case of the Missing Manicurist, with reporters as well as the murderer following the only living witness to the crime. Escaping out of many traps - malicious and accidental - the truth arises, and (although there is a blatant clue submerged within the first pages) I guarantee you will never guess the actual culprit - it's a doozy.
This was fun and involving, although compared to mysteries of the time which tend to be streamlined, this was incredibly talky. Lots of description and what about this what about adding up to a bunch of Who Shot John, as it were. Laura was a real character, and A. Crook an able lawyer-cum-detective who stars in another Gilbert mystery I have, Death Lifts The Latch. I enjoyed this and for fans of English wartime mysteries and Crime Club titles, it's a solid entry.
1941 / Hardcover / 252 pages
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