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Five To Five
Much had been risked, and the murderer had escaped by such a rare combination of chances.
When elderly, unpleasant Simon Ewing was bludgeoned in his maisonette, and a stranger was seen exiting the building by several of the residents. The murderer had entered—and escaped—in just a few minutes when invalid Ewing was left unattended, implying that someone knew the movements of both his household and the neighbours.
Who would run such a risk in a building with multiple comings and goings?
Robbery appears to be the motive, but why was only one ring taken from Ewing’s secret hoard of valuable jewellery? A second death leads Detective-Inspector Woods to untangle exactly who was where in the crucial minutes before the murder.
Five to Five draws its inspiration from a notorious unsolved murder in Glasgow and creates an alternative fictionalised account of what might have happened.
The True Crime Case of Oscar Slater
On an evening in December 1908 maidservant Helen Lambie was sent out to fetch the evening paper by her employer Miss Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-yr-old woman who lived at 15 Queen's Terrace, West Princes Street, Glasgow. She was gone for 10 minutes. A downstairs neighbour, Arthur Adams, on hearing a disturbance upstairs, left his flat to investigate and passed a man hurrying down the staircase. Helen Lambie returning from her errand, also saw a man hurrying down the staircase. Alarmed, Lambie and Adams searched the flat and found Miss Gilchrist lying dead in a pool of blood in the dining room, having been brutally battered about the head.
On investigation, the police determined that the murdered had lit the gas in the bedroom and left behind a box of matches. A wooden box in which Miss Gilchrist had kept private papers (including a recently changed will) had been forced open and the contents strewn on the floor. But although several valuable pieces of jewellery lay on a dressing table, only a diamond crest brooch was missing.
Four days later, information reached the police that 38-yr-old German Oscar Joseph Leschziner had been trying to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond crescent brooch. Leschziner had arrived in Glasgow the month before the murder accompanied by Frenchwoman Andree Antoine, and they lived in a flat a few blocks away from Marion Gilchrist's residence. Leschziner had a number of aliases and was known as Oscar Slater in Glasgow. Slater had already been prosecuted for malicious wounding and assault in London and disorderly conduct in Edinburgh. The police knew him as a disreputable foreigner and an associate of prostitutes, thieves, burglars and resetters; it was also believed he was an illegal gambling-den operator.
By the time the police went looking for Slater, he and Antoine had left Glasgow on the HMS Lusitania (under false names) bound for New York. Upon his arrival there he was arrested and found to be carrying the pawn ticket for a brooch, which the Scottish police thought incriminated him still further. They sought extradition, but it proved unnecessary as Slater returned voluntarily to Glasgow hoping to clear his name. He was charged with murder, found guilty and sentenced to death. Two days before his execution, his sentence was commuted without explanation to penal servitude for life.
An outcry ensued and campaigners, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sought to clear his name for decades.
In Five to Five, the author imagines who might have been the killer. In her review of the novel in the Sunday Times, Dorothy L. Sayers noted that the Gilchrist enigma was one of the "most mysterious of all recent murder cases".
When elderly, unpleasant Simon Ewing was bludgeoned in his maisonette, and a stranger was seen exiting the building by several of the residents. The murderer had entered—and escaped—in just a few minutes when invalid Ewing was left unattended, implying that someone knew the movements of both his household and the neighbours.
Who would run such a risk in a building with multiple comings and goings?
Robbery appears to be the motive, but why was only one ring taken from Ewing’s secret hoard of valuable jewellery? A second death leads Detective-Inspector Woods to untangle exactly who was where in the crucial minutes before the murder.
Five to Five draws its inspiration from a notorious unsolved murder in Glasgow and creates an alternative fictionalised account of what might have happened.
The True Crime Case of Oscar Slater
On an evening in December 1908 maidservant Helen Lambie was sent out to fetch the evening paper by her employer Miss Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-yr-old woman who lived at 15 Queen's Terrace, West Princes Street, Glasgow. She was gone for 10 minutes. A downstairs neighbour, Arthur Adams, on hearing a disturbance upstairs, left his flat to investigate and passed a man hurrying down the staircase. Helen Lambie returning from her errand, also saw a man hurrying down the staircase. Alarmed, Lambie and Adams searched the flat and found Miss Gilchrist lying dead in a pool of blood in the dining room, having been brutally battered about the head.
On investigation, the police determined that the murdered had lit the gas in the bedroom and left behind a box of matches. A wooden box in which Miss Gilchrist had kept private papers (including a recently changed will) had been forced open and the contents strewn on the floor. But although several valuable pieces of jewellery lay on a dressing table, only a diamond crest brooch was missing.
Four days later, information reached the police that 38-yr-old German Oscar Joseph Leschziner had been trying to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond crescent brooch. Leschziner had arrived in Glasgow the month before the murder accompanied by Frenchwoman Andree Antoine, and they lived in a flat a few blocks away from Marion Gilchrist's residence. Leschziner had a number of aliases and was known as Oscar Slater in Glasgow. Slater had already been prosecuted for malicious wounding and assault in London and disorderly conduct in Edinburgh. The police knew him as a disreputable foreigner and an associate of prostitutes, thieves, burglars and resetters; it was also believed he was an illegal gambling-den operator.
By the time the police went looking for Slater, he and Antoine had left Glasgow on the HMS Lusitania (under false names) bound for New York. Upon his arrival there he was arrested and found to be carrying the pawn ticket for a brooch, which the Scottish police thought incriminated him still further. They sought extradition, but it proved unnecessary as Slater returned voluntarily to Glasgow hoping to clear his name. He was charged with murder, found guilty and sentenced to death. Two days before his execution, his sentence was commuted without explanation to penal servitude for life.
An outcry ensued and campaigners, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sought to clear his name for decades.
In Five to Five, the author imagines who might have been the killer. In her review of the novel in the Sunday Times, Dorothy L. Sayers noted that the Gilchrist enigma was one of the "most mysterious of all recent murder cases".
- GenresMystery
203 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 14, 2021
About the author
Dorothy Erskine Muir
12 booksDorothy Agnes Sheepshanks (1889-1977) was one of seventeen children of John Sheepshanks, Bishop of Norwich. She attended Oxford, worked as an academic tutor, and began writing professionally to supplement the family income after the unexpected death of her husband, in 1932.
Dorothy worked for Oxford University & became an outside specialist tutor to whom colleges might refer undergraduates. According to family sources, Machiavelli and His Times was written with the Political Thought and Renaissance Special Subject papers of the Oxford History School in mind.
Under the moniker, D. Erskine Muir, Dorothy wrote three accomplished detective novels: In Muffled Night. (1933), Five to Five (1934) and In Memory of Charles (1941).
Dorothy worked for Oxford University & became an outside specialist tutor to whom colleges might refer undergraduates. According to family sources, Machiavelli and His Times was written with the Political Thought and Renaissance Special Subject papers of the Oxford History School in mind.
Under the moniker, D. Erskine Muir, Dorothy wrote three accomplished detective novels: In Muffled Night. (1933), Five to Five (1934) and In Memory of Charles (1941).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 10, 2022
There are, as Curtis Evans points out in his Introduction to this reprint of D Erskine Muir's 1934 novel, many similarities between the principal crimes presented here and the notorious murder of Miss Marion Gilchrist in Glasgow in 1908, popularly known as the Oscar Slater Case.
However, it must be clearly stated that the major difference between fiction and real life is that, whereas in the novel, justice is done and the murderer found and punished, the Glasgow murder was never solved.
Muir is very readable and her characterisation is vivid. Her principal detective, Woods, while thorough and painstaking, is never dull, and he is also very human and real. The solution may in some ways be the obvious one, but the twists and turns on the way to it are both realistic and absorbing.
However, it must be clearly stated that the major difference between fiction and real life is that, whereas in the novel, justice is done and the murderer found and punished, the Glasgow murder was never solved.
Muir is very readable and her characterisation is vivid. Her principal detective, Woods, while thorough and painstaking, is never dull, and he is also very human and real. The solution may in some ways be the obvious one, but the twists and turns on the way to it are both realistic and absorbing.
June 21, 2026
An enjoyable minor golden age crime novel that seems to succeed because it’s very comfortable with being quite minor, focusing instead on a small amount of mostly well fleshed out characters and taut and careful writing. Most second league golden age crime writing tends towards stuffing the narrative with way too many characters and at least some failed comedy attempts at accents but neither happens here. It’s not particularly memorable but I do admire Muir for not having any faff in this and executing her solidly plotted - if somewhat uninspired - mystery with efficiency and sparkle
June 29, 2025
Another fictionalised real mystery by D. Erskine Muir, a fun read but a bit predictable
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews