SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE MURDER AT THE DUCK CLUB

 "The Murder at the Duck Club" by Hesketh Prichard  (from Pearson's Magazine, January 1913; reprinted in the collection November Joe:  Detective of the Woods, 1913; reprinted in More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (US title, Cosmopolitan Crimes:  Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes), edited by Sir Hugh Greene, 1973; reprinted in Vintage Mystery & Detective Stories. edited by David Stuart Davies, 2006)

The author, Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard (1876-1922) was, by all accounts, an extraordinary person -- cricketer, explorer, adventurer, big-game hunter, writer, and marksman.  He contributed to the sniping practice of the British Army during the first World War and the measures he introduced are  credited with saving the lives of over 3500 Allied troops.  As first-class cricketer, he took nearly 340 wickets from 86 games (which probably means a lot to someone, unlike me, who is familiar with the game).As a big-game hunter he was also a advocate for animal welfare and helped secure legal measures for their protection, and he campaigned to end the clubbing of grey seals.  In 1899, he reported became the first white man to explore the island of Haiti coast to coast through the uncharted interior of the island, providing the first written description of some of the practices of voodoo. he also survived and attempt at poisoning.  (For that trip, and many others he was accompanied by his widowed mother, in a time when women just did not do that sort of thing.)  He went on to explore Patagonia and, surprisingly, the untraveled interior of Labrador.  He began World War I as a military correspondent for the War Office and ended up improving, calibrating, and correcting telescopic sights used by British soldiers.  He then designed a trench parapet that gave German snipers only a one-in-twenty chance of making their mark -- a major improvement. He designed dummy heads to be used to locate enemy snipers.  For his later work in formalizing sniper training,  Prichard was awarded a DSO; for his wartime work with the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps he was appointed a Commander of the Military Office of Avis.

And he wrote.  In addition to books on travel, nature, and military subjects, he and his mother, Kate Prichard, combined their talents to write two popular short story collections and an novel about Don Q, a Spanish Robin Hood-ish character; the novel was retrofitted into the Zorro universe when it was made into a film starring Douglas Fairbanks, Don Q., Son of Zorro; the New York Times rated the 1925 silent film as one of the top ten of that year.  The mother and son team also wrote series of stories about Flaxman Low, acknowledged to be the first psychic detective in fiction (although the magazine publisher touted them as true accounts, to the authors' dismay); these were published as The Experiences of Flaxman Low as by "E. and H. Heron," 1899.

Writing by himself, Prichard penned nine stories about November Joe, a crime fighting hunter and backwoodsman from the Canadian wilderness.  they were collected in November Joe:  Detective of the Woods, which was listed as #55 in the Queen's Quorum, a chronological listing of the 125 most important collections of mystery and detective short stories in genre.

The seventh of the nine stories was "The Murder at the Duck Club."

Four men -- Harrison Hinx, Simonson, and Galt -- head out to the duck blinds one afternoon at the Tamarind Club, a private hunting club in Quebec.  three come back alive; the fourth, Harrison is found dead in his duck blind later that evening, shot.  All evidence points to Ted Gault as the guilty party.  Galt had just proposed to Harrison's niece and she accepted, but Harrison was not in favor of the union.  He and Galt were heard loudly arguing outside Harrison's duck blind that afternoon.  an investigation showed that Harrison had been killed with number six shot and only Galt used that particular ammunition, the other men used number four.  Footprints outside where the murder had taken place prove that only Galt had walked by there, and indeed, had stopped for a period within twelve paces of where the older man had been shot.  all in all, more than enough evidence to have Galt arrested for murder.

Earlier that spring, Harrison, Galt, and Simonson, along with Harrison's niece, Eileen east, were part of a party of Americans that November Joe had taken salmon fishing.  Eileen, having been very impressed with November Joe and his abilities (as were most people who had met him), sent an urgent message to him, asking him to come immediately. 

The only people at the camp -- the only people who could possibly have killed Harrison -- were the other three hunters, and Tim Carter, the head guide, Noel Charles and Vinez, the two club under-guides, and Sitawanga Sally, the full-blooded Indian cook.  How could any of them, except for Tim Galt, have killed Harrison without leaving a trace?

It takes all of November Joe's skills as a woodsman and his innate ability as a detective to come up with the solution.

It's easy to see how November Joe was looked on with admiration: six foot of strength and sinew, surmounted with a perfectly poised hed and features, with a curious deprecating manner that carried his own charm.  November Joe "appeared unable to speak two sentences to any woman without giving her the impression that he was entirely at her service -- which, indeed, he was."  Except for his race, I picture him as the ideal "noble savage" found in stories of romance and adventure of the time.

Because of the time the story was written, modern readers may notice a few descriptions and opinions which no longer reflect well; but these are very minor issues.  The story and the series are important contributions to the development of the mystery story.

November Joe:  Detective of the Woods is available to be read online at UPenn's Online Book Page.