There has been a fashion for the last few years to revisit momentous crimes from Victorian England (and the Victorian area elsewhere) with the eye of a modern true-crime writer. At best, this produces something as interesting as Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or Rosamond Siemon's even earlier The Mayne Inheritance in Australia. As Judith Flanders' genuinely fascinating The Invention of Murder demonstrates, the era was veritably teeming with exciting criminal trials and celebrity defendants.
This is the vein which Daniel Smith attempts to tap into with The Ardlamont Mystery (2018). Subtitled The Real-life Story Behind the Creation of Sherlock Holmes, this is an examination of an officially unsolved suspicious death which occurred in the 1890s at an estate in Scotland. Smith, for his part, has written two other books connected to 221B Baker Street's famous tenant.
The "mystery" itself deals with the shooting death of 20-year-old Cecil Hambrough. Hambrough, the scion of a landed-gentry family fallen on hard times, had fallen in with one Arthur John Monson who had been appointed to be his tutor. Monson and Hambrough, together with Monson's friend Edward Scott, had gone on a shooting excursion, only for Hambrough to die courtesy of a shot to the back of the head. Was this a tragic accident, as Monson maintained? Or was it something more sinister, as was alleged by the Crown, given Monson's shady background (he can, it seems, best be described with that wonderful Victorian term "scoundrel") and some financial chicanery he had engaged in dealing with life insurance policies? And what about Scott, who promptly disappeared after Hambrough's death?
The reader may well be asking another question, "What's all this got to do with Holmes?" Well, Smith rather tendentiously draws the link that Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn, both eminent early pioneers of forensic science and the inspirations for Holmes, were used as expert witnesses in the trial. Indeed, a third expert witness was a Dr Heron Watson, who Smith argues could well have been an antecedent of Holmes' faithful friend and partner-in-investigation. The Ardlamont case also occurred at around the same time as Holmes fell to his presumed death from the Reichenbach falls, which seems as good as any other reason for each chapter to begin with a quotation from the great detective himself.
And it is here that I need to make the first of my criticisms of this work: It really doesn't do what it says on the tin. A book about the "story behind the creation of Sherlock Holmes" would logically be expected to discuss that, rather than a murder trial occurring around the time that Conan Doyle attempted to end the life of his famous creation (albeit only temporarily, as history shows).
Even the presence of Bell and Littlejohn is in the manner of cameo appearances. There are effective pen-portraits of both men before the action cuts to the scene at Ardlamont itself, and the requisite discussions of what became of both men after the trial ended, but they're rather more in the manner of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern (and almost as interchangeable, if we adopt Tom Stoppard's view of those two) than the central figures Smith clearly wishes they were.
The case itself is at least moderately interesting, perhaps from my perspective more for the fact that the trial was conducted under Scottish law, which meant that Monson was unable to speak in his own defence, and that the unusual verdict of "not proven" was open to the jury. There is some insight into the way that both barristers conducted themselves, although a reader interested in courtroom procedure during the era is much better-off to read Flanders' work mentioned above.
Smith's problem, though, is that he writes in a very "breezy" style which has the effect (unintentional, I think) of gliding over some of the more significant details and then focusing on less significant ones. More is made of a boat the men used for a fishing expedition than the guns they were carrying on the fatal hunting trip, for example. Smith also refers to people by different names at different times - while Monson is always "Monson", Hambrough is occasionally "Cecil", which confuses the matter a bit.
For a book which also claims on its dustjacket to feature Smith's own theory of whodunit and why, this really is more of a blow-by-blow report of the death and the subsequent trial. Smith's own theory (in the penultimate chapter) is relatively long on the "why" of the killing, but builds this theory on a house of cards of supposition. In a way, this is understandable - even a work identifying Jack the Ripper or solving any other famous mystery of the same era is going to have to do that - but coupled with Smith's writing style it feels rather "tacked on".
The "aftermath" discussion also touches on Monson's legally-significant civil case against Madame Tussaud's, which established the principle of "libel by innuendo" (Monson's waxwork was located close to, but not inside, the "Chamber of Horrors", which a jury held was an imputation of his guilt, even though nothing was written to that effect). This is an important point of law, but Smith prefers the comedic element of Monson being awarded one farthing in damages, rather than a discussion of the more important issue.
Overall, this is a book which really fails to hit the targets it aims at. Smith's bibliographical note indicates that this was something of a labour of love for him. That, at least, is a good thing. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate into a particularly essential read.
Two stars.
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