Thanks to Sherlock Hemlock from Sesame Street, I can honestly say that I’ve loved parody detectives longer than I’ve loved detective fiction.
If you don’t remember Sherlock Hemlock, probably take a couple minutes on YouTube and get to know him. (Just for your own personal growth and development journey – it’s not remotely relevant for what follows here.)
Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce was published in 1936, and features three detectives who turn up at the scene of a murder to try and solve the crime. They are Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, and Father Brown, respectively. (Those aren’t the names they’re using here, but changing the names does absolutely nothing to obscure their identities. My favorite of the names is “Lord Simon Pimsole.”)
The mystery itself is a classic locked-room murder, set in the most stereotypical country manor house. All the expected stock characters are there. Watching three caricatures bumble around and try to solve the murder is just…fun.
To my untrained eye, it feels much more modern than its publication date would suggest. The genre it mocks so effectively was just defining itself. “Case for Three Detectives” came out at the same time as the last of the Lord Peter Wimsey and Father Brown books, and while Poirot was in his heyday.
I say it feels modern, but that’s strictly referring to the concept. It’s got some baffling cultural references that make clear that it’s almost a hundred years old. They mention, in passing, those postcards you might send from your holiday with a picture of your hotel, where you mark an “X” over a window and label it “our room.” You know, as you do.
But even more unfamiliar than that is the apple room. It’s described in some detail, but the author clearly expects us to know about apple rooms. This apple room contains a water tank. Apparently.
When we entered it the apple-room appeared to me even more barren of possibilities than the box-room, but Lord Simon seemed to like the place.
“Rippin’ smell, stored apples,” he remarked, drawing it in through his chiselled nostrils.
The fruit had been laid out on the floor, each apple separated from its fellow to prevent the spread of any infection. But a clear passage, about a yard wide, had been left from door to window. Lord Simon stood looking down at the crimson and yellow rows, then stooped to pick up a Cox’s Orange Pippin.
…
And he picked his way among the fruit to the water-tank which wheezed stertorously in the corner.
