Portrait Of A Murderer by Anne Meredith

Portrait of a Murderer (A Christmas Crime Story) is an inverted Golden Age tragedy which reveals the killer at the start. We feel the rage, the desolation of the act, and await the sentence of guilt or freedom.

Christmas Eve 1931: Adrian Gray is about to be killed by one of his own children.

All six have returned with spouses to the family home, Kings Poplars—each eager for money. Richard is a knighted MP, ambitious to seek a peerage, and being blackmailed dry by his mistress. Olivia is married to Eustace, an unscrupulous financier who invested the family fortune in dodgy companies, and all has been lost. Hildebrand is the artistic son who left to become a painter, now living in squalor with a common wife the whole neighborhood knows, and five children that are not his. Alistair finds them all to be leeches and doesn't give a flip of the fingers for them. On Christmas Eve, Richard and Eustace are adamantly denied more allowance—there is nothing left. Not knowing this, Hildebrand also asks for money, and when denied, kills his father in a rage. Writing himself a cheque, he plants false evidence. At breakfast, they are stunned to find Alistair dead and that Hildebrand has a cheque.

Sergeant Murray puts the family through the paces, while they maintain a shame-faced transfer of unwanted gifts. Police find enough practical evidence against Eustace, the double-dealing bounder, but does he deserve to hang? The whole affair is a scandal, but will anyone feel compelled to investigate further—will it be freedom or the gallows?

Rich in character and consistently entertaining, this is one of the best crime titles of any season. Published in 1933, and recently republished by British Library Crime Classics, it is now widely available.

Anne Meredith is a pseudonym for seasoned English writer Lucy Beatrice Malleson, who (as Anthony Gilbert) wrote the Arthur Crook detective series for over forty years.

1933 / Tradeback / 250 pages