The Second Shot (1930)
My review:
Plan of estate
One of the best-known of the Roger Sheringham cases, although not as good as The Poisoned Chocolates Case or Trial and Error. The gimmick is simple, owing something to Christie’s Roger Ackroyd: the guilty man writes his account of the crime (omitting his guilty) especially for the police. The chief drawback is that the narrator is singularly annoying—he is a fuddy-duddy moss and stamp collector, though he gradually loses his mincing ways. Several of the characters start off as being perceived one way, but end up the other: the (aptly-named) Armorel Scott-Davies, heir of the classic victim, her cousin Eric, philanderer and scoundrel extraordinaire; and Elsa Verity, a girl too good to be true, loved by Scott-Davies for her money.
Several of Berkeley’s themes occur: the altruistic murderer (whom everyone compliments); the false denouements (Sheringham becomes a miniature Crimes Circle in himself, as he constructs—and explodes—cases against all the suspects, prefiguring Jumping Jenny); and the trial and inquest.
The chapter in which the ‘murder game’ is plotted is excellent, and very amusing. One wonders whether Ngaio Marsh read it while writing A Man Lay Dead, for in both books the man who plays the murderer in the game turns out to be the murderer in real life.