Darkness at Pemberley

by T.H. White

What starts as a sedate murder mystery novel set in Cambridge soon transforms into a melodramatic thriller that takes the reader to the country estate of Pemberley, the location of Jane Austin's novel "Pride & Prejudice".

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature, Adventure, Detective, Classics

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Born in Bombay to English parents, Terence Hanbury White was educated at Cambridge and taught for some time at Stowe before deciding to write full-time. White moved to Ireland in 1939 as a conscientious objector to WWII, and lived out his years there. White is best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.

Reviews

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spot on detective novel!

What starts with a wonderful locked room mystery soon turns into a country house thriller with cat and mouse games galore!

All that and an exciting car chase just means this book ticks all the boxes for me (and there are maps! I'm a sucker for a book with maps)

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the author of the better-known five-volume saga The Once and Future King comes this early novel, a unique take on the country house murder mystery. Following the murders of three people at Oxford University, the perpetrator confesses to a police inspector early in the story. The mystery becomes not a question of “who-dun-it?” but rather of “where is he and how will we find him before he does it again?”

With the novel being set at Pemberley (the country house of Jane Austen fame) with the only female main character named Miss Darcy, the reader might expect an early Austen fandom story. Not so! Nevertheless, it’s a ripping good mystery with a few scenes worthy of James Bond and an understated romance thrown in to keep all the readers happy.

Easy reading and just plain good fun.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age. Or I'm just feeling more critical here in January. So far, I'm handing out an average of 2.7 stars to books read in 2014. And I feel kind of bad about this one because two of my favorite bloggers, Yvette (in so many words) and Sergio (Tipping My Fedora), both thought pretty highly of Darkness at Pemberley by T. H. White (1932)--and I'm all, Yeah, it was okay. Decent little read.

My primary difficulty with the book is that we have two very different things going on even though it's all one story. In the first section, we have a classic locked room, academic mystery. Mr. Beedon, a don of St. Barnabas, has been found shot to death in his locked room. To all appearances, he has committed suicide--but complications arise when a student (who is not one of Beedon's students and apparently unknown to him) is also found dead from a gun shot. And he has been shot by the same gun. The famous police surgeon from Scotland Yard says that Beedon has obviously shot the student and then shot himself--in remorse or some such thing. Enter Inspector Buller who is convinced that it is a case of murder all round. And...barely half-way through the book, we find out he's right and who the murderer is. But there's no evidence to prove it. The murderer is so full of how brilliant and uncatchable he is that he knocks off another victim (who might have been able to provide a bit of proof) right under Buller's nose. Buller is so disgusted with himself and his inability to prevent the last murder as well as his inability to bring the crime home to the culprit that he resigns from the force. Thus endeth the first lesson.

At this point the story goes through a transformation. Gone is the cozy, locked room, college atmosphere. Presto-chango, we're off on a "catch-me-if-you can" game of hide and seek in a rambling country mansion (which, by the way is Pemberley and is in the hands of Elizabeth & Fitzwilliam's descendents) and a high-speed car chase just to make things interesting. There will be an ingenious new gas to try and rid the house of lurking murderers, crawling about the roof with ropes, and escapades in the chimneys. Buller will be in danger of being roasted alive before the murderer finally gets his due. Plenty of adventure and excitement--and, of course, a rather sweet little romance between Buller and the female Darcy heir.

The locked room murder is a decent little mystery with a rather clever method of misdirection. The characters are interesting and engaging. And I enjoyed White's prose. I just wish the book hadn't had a split-personality going on--it was like reading two books in one. Three stars for a good vintage read.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Nancy Oakes]

to me, right around 3.7

Not to be at all confused with P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley, White's novel takes place over a century later than Austen's original and opens with a sort of locked-room puzzle. I have to say that in this case, the words "cracking good yarn" came to mind after I'd finished it; it's definitely not perfect by any means, but it's definitely a good, old-fashioned tale that kept me turning pages.

If you want plot (with no spoilers -- that would just be wrong), you can click here to get to my online reading journal; otherwise read on.

Darkness at Pemberley is anything but a ripoff of Austen's original; it is also a most unusual story. The nature of justice is at its heart, as is the fact that readers are left thinking about exactly what kind of people we're dealing with here as the main players come up with their own plans as to how to set things right. It is a really good study of character and social class of the time, number one; number two, it's just plain good vintage reading.

I've seen several negative reader reviews but I genuinely enjoyed this book -- it's anything but run of the mill or formulaic and while a lot of readers were left cold, I thought there was enough excitement in it to keep it from being anything but boring. It's certainly one I'd recommend to regular readers of vintage British crime. If you're expecting a riff on Pride and Prejudice, as some readers obviously were, the book might seem disappointing; otherwise, going into it with no expectations might just be the way to approach it. It was actually surprisingly good.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only mystery novel written by the author of The Once and Future King and other Arthurian novels. The two sections of this book could not be more different. It's like two novels for the price of one. Did White mean this as a spoof? Whatever his intent I found it a quick read, well written and an enjoyable romp.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I discovered this title while rereading White's glorious "Once and Future King." By comparison, mystery-writing isn't his strong point. The fact that "Darkness at Pemberley" isn't REALLY a Jane Austen spin-off ordinarily would recommend it to me (as I detest Austen spin-offs)but plot is awfully contrived, and there are holes in it.
That said, there's also at least one plot twist that caught me totally offguard and spun my head around! And White's writing here, as in "Once and Future King" shows a real affection for his characters.
And best of all is the historical-ness of the thing. I relished being back in the day when phones were still referred to as 'phones and when a posse-by-automobile has to communicate by leaving messages at country post offices and blinking headlights. "He drove like a demon... [and] averaged 50 miles per hour exactly."
My favorite that-was-then quote came when (WARNING, POSSIBLE SPOILER) the villain Strikes Again, dispatching an elderly character. Wouldbe words of comfort to surviving friend: "Liz, darling, he was sixty-nine. He couldn't have lived much longer. Don't cry."

[Wendi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was going to give this 2 stars, but the final page made me laugh aloud for realio trulio.
However, cold reflection and evenhanded justice promote me to pount out there is really no compelling reason for anybody to read this book except that T.H. White wrote it, and even then, it's mainly interesting if you have read the letters he wrote about it to his friend and old tutor, 'Pottës' (in the book Letters to a Friend, edited by Gallix). And I still skimmed through the tedious car chase and some of the evil mastermind's monologue. Also, I find it a wretchedly annoying when the gòod guys are outwitted repeatedly by the criminal because they are even stupider than I am.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr Darcy would have been horrified!

When Inspector Buller is called to a Cambridge college to the murder scene of a young man who has been shot, it quickly appears that the solution is easy – another man is found dead in the building opposite, also shot but apparently by his own hand. The obvious conclusion is that the second man killed the first and then in a fit of remorse took his own life. Buller is unconvinced – he has spotted odd little things in the second man’s room that make him believe he has also been the victim of an elaborate murder. Buller investigates, works out who the murderer is but can’t find the evidence to charge him. The murderer confesses, but only without witnesses and mostly to boast about his own cleverness. Buller, disgusted with his own failure to bring the murderer to justice, resigns from the police, which he can afford to do since he is one of those fortunate Golden Age policemen with private means.

That’s all in the nature of a prologue. The real fun begins when Buller tells the story to his friends, brother and sister Charles and Elizabeth Darcy, current occupants of Pemberley. Yes, that Pemberley! Charles, who has his own reasons for hating the idea of someone getting away with murder, decides to stick his oar in. Thus begins a romping adventure, where the murderer is trying to do away with Charles, and Buller and assorted friends, together with the faithful staff of Pemberley, are attempting to keep Charles safe.

The word that springs to mind for this is preposterous. The story is ludicrous, the credibility line doesn’t even exist, and White has thrown every possible mystery novel trope in to make a kind of glorious Irish stew – locked room, impossible crime, revenge thriller, car chase, both academic and country house settings, maniacal villain, gory deaths, mysterious drugs, poisons, amateur detectives, police, moral ambiguity, extrajudicial justice, shades of Gothic horror, touch of romance, bit of humour, dramatic thriller ending. It ought to be a complete mess, but by some miracle I can’t explain, it works! I found myself racing through it with a smile on my face, rushing through a lot of total nonsense to an ending I knew would be completely over the top, and yet enjoying it thoroughly all the way. I think the reason White gets away with it is simply that he was a very good writer, and wasn’t trying to take himself too seriously. It reads as if he had as much fun writing it as I did reading it.

Although Pemberley is the main setting and Charles and Elizabeth are descended from the original Darcy and Lizzie, there’s no attempt to make this any kind of Austen pastiche. In fact, I’m quite sure Mr Darcy would have been horrified at the behaviour of his descendants and I’m rather surprised that White restrained himself from throwing his disapproving ghost into the mix, especially since restraint doesn’t seem to have been one of White’s authorial traits. But young Elizabeth does seem to have inherited her namesake’s forceful, independent spirit, sense of humour and desire to only marry a man she can respect.

Martin Edwards lists this in his The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books in the Singletons section – that is, authors who only wrote one mystery novel in their lives. Part of me feels it’s a pity White didn’t write more of them, but a bigger part feels that it’s probably just as well, since I really can’t imagine how he could ever have topped this, and he’d pretty much used up a lifetime’s worth of plots already in this one novel. Unique, preposterous… and great fun!

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[Larry Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun enough little book, albeit a bit silly and not all that believable. On the other hand, I can see that Hollywood could have had a wonderful time dramatizing the book, what with car chases and people climbing around inside chimney flues and also having fights inside the flues and on the roofs and so forth. But, as nearly as I can tell, no movie has ever been made.

The book begins in Cambridge where one of the dons appears to have been murdered along with an undergraduate who has no known connection to the don. Inspector Buller tries to ferret out the scoundrel, and thinks he knows "who dunnit", but can't prove it. He talks to the murderer, who has since also murdered one of the college porters (door keeper to us Yanks). The murderer confesses, but since there is zero tangible evidence against the murderer, he can't be arrested and tried. Buller is despondent and quits the police force.

A few months later, Buller visits his friend Charles Darcy at Pemberly. Darcy lives there with his sister Elizabeth. Yes, they are of the lineage of the original Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen, and it's allegedly the same Pemberly. That's about all the Jane Austenism one gets, however. Just the use of some names to provide some flack to intrigue the reading masses and con then into buying this unremarkable book.

Anyway, Buller tells his tale to Charles and Elizabeth (btw, he's madly in love with Elizabeth, but since he's a lowly policeman and she's a baronet's daughter, he figures there's no hope and mostly pines away in vain). Charles is incensed for some reason and goes to Cambridge to tell the murderer that he, Charles, is going to get the guy. So, the guy laughs at Charles and tells him to watch his own back. Then for much of the rest of the book, the murderer haunts Pemberly by living inside the chimney-flue system and sneaking into people's rooms at night, leaving frivolous, but tangible evidence of his sneaking, so as to scare them, and have a bit of fun for himself. He's got a huge ego, which is partly justified because he is actually rather brilliant. No surprise about the brilliance, of course: he is a chemist, after all.

Anyway we have lots of adventures and eventually come to a conclusion. T.H. White is a rather famous author, but certainly not for this book.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one weird book.

It seems at first to be a rather rote locked-room mystery, which I almost abandoned, until someone confesses and it becomes a thriller, with some excellent creepy moments. With the descendants of Elizabeth and Mr.Darcy at Pemberley. Because why not? Not that this is at all like Jane Austen or Regency Romance. The structure is bizarre, the characters prone to sidetracks, and there's a car chase, for fuck's sake. I hesitate to recommend it, though I'll say that it's quite readable and not like much else. Don't lose heart before page 90.

[Farhana Sufi · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Christie wrote her mysteries at this era, they turned out to be cool (except a few). This one on the other hand was too superficial and incredible! Too much of the chimney nonsense.

[Lisa Brantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good, well written. Ingenious villain. Quite enjoyable

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is basically 2 styles rolled into one. First a locked room mystery, and then a thriller/adventure. This would be fine, if there wasn't such a gulf between the 2 sections of the book.
Still, it's well written and not a disagreeable read.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mystery novel from the British Golden Age of Mystery. The first part of the novel is a typical college campus mystery : who killed Mr. Beedon, don of St. Barnabas, and the undergraduate in the house opposite Mr. Beedon’s room in Old Court ? Enter Buller, a methodical detective who is presented as being a gentleman despite his lowly birth. He figures out the perplexing locked-room mystery in fewer than 90 pages and gets a confession out of the murderer – who, unfortunately, has an unbreakable alibi.

By page 93, Buller has resigned from the police in disgust over his inability to bring the murderer to justice, and is spending time at Pemberley with this friends Sir Charles Darcy and Miss Darcy (Austen lovers : insert groan here). He indiscreetly tells the story to Charles, who goes off immediately to tell the murderer he (Charles) will kill him (the murderer). Buller realizes that the psychopathic murderer will now not rest until he’s eliminated Charles, and turns Pemberley into a type of fortified camp to protect his friend. But the murderer is clearly hidden somewhere in the house and taunts the inhabitants with cruel tricks. Enter a mad scientist with a novel poison gas that is sure to fumigate the house of murderers. But something goes wrong : the murderer survives the gas attack and kidnaps Miss Darcy, leading the male inhabitants of the house on a wild goose chase all through the county. Finally, things come to a dramatic ending in the chimneys of the stately home. And in the end Buller gets the girl.

The book has mainly curio value. It reads like two books in one : the first one is a classic puzzler, but then in the second part our cerebral detective morphs into quite the action hero, dashing about Pemberley with guns, driving at a breakneck speed of 50 miles per hour (!) through the English countryside at night, and climbing on roofs and into chimneys. Psychology and character development are non-existent. Still, it is an interesting, quick read for lovers of the classic British mystery.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Temporary review, possibly more to come:
Cheese dog, pure and unadorned.
Sherlock Holmes meets Paul Temple, and that is not a compliment.
I'll admit it's decades since I read and loved The Once and Future King, which perhaps I wouldn't care for at this late date either, but I still can't figure out why White felt it necessary to include Pemberley and "the Darcys" (brother and sister) in the story. It would have gone better as just a house-party mystery. Well, I say "better". The Moriarty figure was ridiculous, and the locked-room mystery at the beginning was okay but just went nowhere. As for the RO-mance...geh.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who knew T. H. White had undertaken a sequel to Pride & Prejudice? Well done, too.

[Nente · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strictly for T.H. White completists. Which I am. But nothing else could recommend it.

[Jay Maxfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book as it is one of the books that Martin Edwards uses in his book The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books which discusses the development of Crime Fiction 1901-1950. This book appears under the chapter heading Singletons - which denotes that the author only wrote one novel in the crime fiction genre. The book was published by Gollancz in 1932. The story is initially set in Cambridge University (first third of the book) and then moves it's setting to Pemberley, Derbyshire and to the home of the Darcey's (yes of the Pride & Prejudice sort).
The only nice thing I can say about this book is the initial setting of Cambridge University and its descriptions of students and the masters lives and where they live is interesting to peer into. However any seasoned classical crime reader will detect early on in the book that the author has absolutely no experience or idea about crime novels and hasn't or cannot cross the border from writing about a make believe world to the world of crime where things have to be at least plausible. This author asks the reader to believe in ten impossible things before breakfast which makes the novel totally unbelievable. The author has used so many different genres - Crime, Thriller, Romance and sub genres - inverted story, lock room, car chase, farcical etc etc - that the novel becomes completely jumbled, incoherent and extremely cumbersome to read as well as using too many occasions for whole dialogues of conversation that are irrelevant to the storyline. The villain is outed within the first 70 pages - he explains to Inspector Buller how it he did it and his mistakes but has a cast iron alibi so that no jury would commit him. Because of this Buller decides to hand in his notice and then visits his friends the Darcey's - Charles & Elizabeth (brother and sister) - Buller is in love with Elizabeth Darcey and tells them the story of the murderer who he couldn't commit. Charles being as mad as a hatter aristocrat then confronts the murderer and tells him that he will kill him. As the killer is a very intelligent maniac who doesn't like to be threatened the situated gets turned around and the maniac threatens to hunt down Charles and get off scot-free for his murder. Starting to seem un-plausible, silly and unrealistic yet! The maniac after missing Charles with a loose tile then reigns terror on the household by moving around the wide chimney system within the house without detection - no soot (yes the chimneys had been cleaned recently) no noise, no light from torches, the ropes he uses never get burnt by the fires they light, he is able to clean the soot even at night in the dark! This then gets even sillier as Buller ropes in a Doctor and a Scientific friend who are all happy to commit murder and gas the maniac and/or shot him whichever is easiest and write a death certificate. The maniac being clever has thought about everything and has a gas mask he also knows all about the Chimney system in a house he knew nothing about (yes has read about them very quickly at the British Museum) a few days previous. Said Maniac kidnaps Elizabeth and steals one of the cars - which results in a car search chase with three other cars setting out 15 minutes after the the maniac. This part of the book is so convoluted and boring that I skim read it as it just isn't possible to believe it. The rest of the book is jumbled or rushed as the author doesn't have the stomach to finish the novel (perhaps he knew by this stage is was a flop?) and is best described as gobbledygook and it is no surprise that the author never wrote another crime novel after this failure.
I would not recommend reading this book and don't understand why Edwards included this in his list (admittedly he did say that not all are good novels and that he used them to show various ventures in crime novel writing) as this novel doesn't show any development - it just shows an author getting completely lost in a genre that he knew nothing about. I would give the book 2.5 out of 10 and for classical crime buffs - it is a similar novel to The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, yes, it's that Pemberley. I'm not sure why Austen's world draws so many murder stories into it, but this one's different, as it is set over 100 years after Pride and Prejudice and involves the descendants of that novel's Elizabeth and Darcy--one of whom, natch, is also Elizabeth. The Pride and Prejudice connection does not seem to serve any real purpose, other than to repurpose a comedy of manners' setting into a murder setting. Structurally, the book is odd. Its first part offers us locked-room murder mystery on a university campus. The killer gets away with it and arrogantly explains to the stalwart detective Buller (nice name!) exactly how he did it. We then move, in a rather thinly-justified plot development, to Pemberley, where the same murderer is after the current Elizabeth's brother, said current Elizabeth being the object of (unacknowledged) affection of Buller. Again, White plays on the conventions of the locked room mystery, and quite effectively, especially in the final pursuit of the killer by Buller and their climactic encounter, which is remarkably clever (so I won't spoil it). This was quite a fun read, albeit not quite a classic of the genre.

[Lilykitten · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing puts this a notch above many other mystery/detective stories of the same period, even though the plot is a little uneven. The two halves of the story nearly fit together perfectly, and it is quite satisfying in a way to discover after a few chapters that the first two murders are not going to be the main focus of the story. I liked the character of Elizabeth with her directness - "My dear man, where on earth do you get your ideas about women from? Your period's about 1850. I'm going to stay here and see the fun. Why should I be bundled off to the Lodge any more than you?" and the hints at the slightly more-than-decorous thoughts of one of the characters: "There were certain things, in short, that he would like her to like him to do to her." The conversations have a lightness that stops them dating quite as much as in some other books I've read, including a wonderfully brutal section on poison gas that manages to be quite funny at the same time:
"Look here, I wonder if you can make an alteration?
"Can you make it lighter than air and lethal ?"

Very readable and pleasant way to pass a couple of hours.

[Millstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I acquired this one thinking it was a period whodunnit which must have some connection with Pride and Prejudice, which turned out to be not entirely the case. Without spoilers, there is a large element of psychological thriller and of chase about it and the P&P element is acknowledged, but not really central. Parts of it were even reminiscent of Gormenghast, even though it predates the earliest one by 10-15 years. It was very enjoyable in its way, but if you want a 30s murder to puzzle over, this isn't what you are looking for.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What starts out as a typical golden-age mystery (with diagrams and maps) ends as a cat-and-mouse romp. We're told whodunnit a third of the way through, then the rest concerns how the Inspector (and a number of friends) plot to thwart the criminal who is so clever that he cannot be brought to trial for his crimes. (The murderer is so clever that he makes Dr. Moriarity look like a bumbling fool.) I found the last part tiresome (including 19 pages detailing a car chase through the countryside) and wound up skimming a lot at the end.

[Amy Tolle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Darkness at Pemberley" is, without a doubt, one of the weirdest detective stories I have ever read. But, it's weirdness is what makes it compelling, amusing and (dare I say?) charming. It's so very odd, but simultaneously so very clever. T.H. White wrote "Darkness at Pemberley" back in 1932 and that is when the story is set. I picked it up because of it's "Pride and Prejudice" related title and characters, but I read it avidly because it's an excellent (albeit strange) novel, with or without the "P&P" tie in. If you like quirky detective stories, you'll like "Darkness at Pemberley."

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely quaint story. Slow yet charming in that period of English life. Some outdated words or phrases which I had to look up- this always makes me enjoy a novel more as I am learning. Written with touches of that delicate nuancing that TH White does so well and which illuminates his writing.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just could not get into the style of writing in this stofy.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: three people have been murdered, and there's plenty of action for Inspector Buller of Scotland Yard at a mysterious country house too.

[Robin Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting "fan fiction." Not exactly a locked room mystery, but close. Pretty hard-boiled, as well. The only thing really related to P&P is the setting and character names.

[Laura Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

rather dry but I did become fond of the main character by the end.

[Simon Vozick-Levinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, ridiculously plotted mix of 1930s detective fiction, English country romance, and pulp action-adventure. The plot is completely absurd but it’s an interesting curio.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great copper caper in trying to catch a serial killer!