Novel: The Red House Mystery

Overview
A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery (1922) is a classic country-house whodunnit that pairs nimble puzzle-making with light, humorous observation. The novel introduces Antony Gillingham, an affable, curious outsider who drifts into detection when a shooting at an English estate turns a summer house-party into a locked-room enigma. With his friend Bill Beverley as Watson-like companion, Antony conducts a fair-play investigation that unpicks alibis, hidden architecture, and staged appearances, leading to a neat unraveling of motive and mechanics.

Setting and Premise
The Red House, a comfortable estate in the village of Stanton, belongs to Mark Ablett, a genial but self-important host accustomed to arranging his household and guests like pieces on a chessboard. On the day in question, word arrives that Mark’s estranged brother Robert, long absent in Australia and reputedly disreputable, is returning to see him. Shortly after Robert is shown to Mark’s study, a shot is heard. The study door is found locked; when it is forced, a man lies dead on the floor, apparently Robert, and Mark has vanished without a trace. Suspicion naturally fixes on the missing host, and the efficient local Inspector Birch takes charge.

Investigation
Antony Gillingham, arriving by chance to call on his friend Bill, is drawn into the mystery from the first moments of alarm. Observant and playful yet methodical, he tests the scene’s assumptions: who actually saw Robert, which doors were secured and when, how keys could be handled, and why certain servants were placed where they were. Small inconsistencies accumulate, oddities about locked doors, a window that gives less access than it promises, and the suggestive diligence of Mark’s cousin and man-of-affairs, Mr. Cayley, who dominates the household’s movements. Antony’s and Bill’s rambles over the grounds yield tangible clues: footprints that go where they shouldn’t, the suspicious use of a nearby pond, and, most telling, a concealed passage connected to the study, with a cache deep inside an old, disused well. Their patient stakeout of this secret way at night confirms that someone familiar with the house is tending evidence rather than grieving.

Solution and Aftermath
Antony’s reconstruction shows that the shooting was staged to present the neatest story: an angry meeting, a gunshot in a locked room, and the host’s flight. The locked-room effect is explained by keys and the hidden passage, which allowed the culprit to enter and leave undetected while seeming to batter hopelessly at a sealed door. The dead man is indeed the troublesome Robert; the missing Mark, however, is not the gunman the tableau suggests. The pattern of preparation, the use of the passage, and the clandestine retrieval of the weapon from the secret well point back to Cayley as the orchestrator of the crime and the subsequent cover-up. Faced with Antony’s quiet trap and Inspector Birch’s questions, the facade collapses; the conspiracy to fix blame on the absent master is exposed, and the official case is brought to a tidy close. Antony and Bill, their friendship burnished by shared adventure, step back from the limelight with characteristic modesty.

Tone and Legacy
Milne’s lone full-length detective novel delights in fair clues, crisp dialogue, and the airy charm of amateur sleuthing. The Red House Mystery helped popularize the genial, game-playing strain of Golden Age detection: a country house as chessboard, a puzzle assembled in the open, and an investigator whose pleasure in thinking is as central as the answer itself. The book remains a brisk, witty exemplar of its kind, balancing gentle satire of social manners with the satisfying click of a well-made plot.