The Chianti Flask

Best known for The Lodger, Lowndes (1896–1947) inverts the traditional courtroom drama in this psychologically complex mystery, first published in 1935. Laura Dousland has been charged with murdering her husband, Fordish Dousland, by poisoning his wine with rat poison, supposedly motivated by his mistreatment. One witness, a physician who was a golfing acquaintance of Fordish, testifies that the deceased, who was depressed and may have been suicidal, asked him whether the rat poison Fordish had requested his wife to purchase would be painless if administered to a human. The key proof incriminating the defendant comes from the household’s sole servant, Angelo Terugi, who insists that the flask containing the tainted Chianti that killed Fordish mysteriously vanished the night Fordish drank from it. That damning account is interrupted by the defendant, who protests that Terugi has confused that night with a prior incident when her husband concealed a flask to keep the servant from imbibing from it. The jury’s verdict comes early on, leaving Lowndes to tease out over the rest of the book whether the jurors’ decision was the right one. This is another obscure title worthy of resurrection as a British Library crime classic. (Feb.)