At the British Museum

An older American couple stood in line ahead of them. “You have a beautiful child,” the lady said, turning toward them.”

Sarah smiled. “Thank you. Right now, I’m thankful he’s chosen to cooperate and just stare at all the pictures.”

The lady smiled and then looked at Michael. “I suppose people have told you how much you look like King Michael.”

Michael laughed. “I think I’ve heard that a few times.”

-      From Dancing Prophet. 

Photograph by Grant Ritchie via Unsplash. Used with permission.

John Rowland’s “Murder in the Museum”

Henry Fairhurst is sitting in the famous domed reading room of the British Museum, waiting on a librarian to bring him some 17^th century books on a French courtesan, He’s there as a favor for a journalist friend, helping with a story the friend is writing. As he waits, he engages in the favorite pastime of watching other museum visitors and imagining stories about them.

The red-haired man sitting nearby is a good example. Somewhat disheveled in appearance, his head his lolling back, and he begins to make sounds like snoring. Henry makes his way to the man to awaken him. And watches as the man slips to the floor, dead.

And not just dead from natural causes. Dead as in poisoned, as it turns out.

The dead man is Julius Arnell, a professor of English literature who had specialized in Elizabethan drama. Inspector Shelley of Scotland Yard arrives to investigate, and soon Henry finds himself (with more than a little enthusiasm) helping the inspector with his inquiries.  

Murder in the Museum by John Rowland was first published in 1938, during the Golden Age of the murder mystery (and long before the library and the reading room of the British Museum were separated into the British Library). Like Rowland’s Calamity in Kent, reviewed here a few weeks ago, it’s not so much an “Inspector Shelley investigates” story as it is an “Inspector Shelley investigates assisted by a knowledgeable amateur” story. It’s been reissued as one of the British Library’s Crime Classics series.

Henry and Shelley soon find themselves in more than one murder – two other Elizabethan drama academics have died; a mysterious will arrives in the mail; impoverished relatives have their own possible motives; and organized crime may be involved. Rowland threads a number of possible murderers through the story, keeping the reader guessing and occasionally wondering where the story is going.

British Museum

Rowland (1907-1984) began his working career as a chemistry teacher, gradually moved to journalism and writing, penning some 21mystery novels and true crime stories before becoming a Unitarian minister in the 1950s. As mystery novelist Martin Edwards points out in the introduction to Murder in the Museum, Rowland was writing in the culture of his time, and reflects typical attitudes toward ethnic groups like Jews. The British Library, after some discussion, decided to retain the relatively few references of this type in this story, because Rowland did reflect the attitudes (and prejudices) of his time.

Murder in the Museum isn’t one of the heavyweight mystery classics, but it is a good example of many of the mysteries of the 1920s-1940s.

Related:

My review of John Rowland’s “Calamity in Kent.”

Top illustration: The old Reading Room of the British Museum.

Walruses, Vikings and Chess

Three of the most popular exhibits at the British Museum in London are the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the Lewis Chessmen.

The Lewis chessmen?

Carved from the tusks of walruses, the Lewis chessmen were found in the 1830s on a beach on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, off the Scottish coast. Some 92 pieces from four sets of chessmen were discovered, but exactly where they were found, and who found them, remains something of a mystery.

Where the pieces originated is also a mystery – and some controversy. Many experts say the most likely source was a workshop (or workshops) in Trondheim, Norway. Others argue for Iceland. It’s also possible that the pieces could have made in Scotland or England. Clearly, they reflect a Norse design influence and were created about 1200, give or take a few decades.  The official guidebooks on the chessmen published by the British Museum and the National Museums Scotland seem to accept the Trondheim argument.

In Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, Nancy Marie Brown, who has written books about the Vikings and reads both Icelandic and Old Norse, argues for Iceland. Even more provocatively, she argues for a woman carver, Margret the Adroit, known for her work in carving walrus ivory about the time the Lewis chessmen were created.

But Brown does far more than that. She envelops the chessmen in the times they were created, exploring the influence of the Vikings and Norse kings over the North Sea, Scotland and its outer islands, Iceland and Greenland. She goes into detail about walrus ivory, and how the chessmen would have been carved. She describes the history of the period, bringing in the Caliphate in Baghdad, Charlemagne, the Vatican, Christian politics of the time, and the Norse sagas, which I was only vaguely familiar with from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

And she uses a structure built around the pieces themselves, which keeps the story centered on the chessmen even as she ranges across a number of fields of study. Her story continually reminded me of how little I knew of Norse history (I also learned about the history of chess, and that it was with the Lewis chessmen that the bishop first appeared as one of the pieces).

Nancy Marie Brown

Brown is the author of Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist’s View of Genetically Modified Food (2004); The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman (2008); The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages (2010); Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of the Norse Myths (2014); and The Saga of Gudrid the Far Traveler (2015). She blogs at God of Wednesday and lives in Vermont.

Whether you accept her argument for Iceland or not, Ivory Vikings is a fascinating tale of history, told through the means of these small figures. In their history context, the Lewis chessmen are about far more than a game and pastime that people enjoyed and occasionally fought over.

Additional reading on the Lewis chessmen:

The Lewis Chessmen Unmasked (2011) by David Caldwell, Mark Hall and Caroline Wilkinson (published by the National Museums Scotland).

The Lewis Chessmen by J. Robinson (published by the British Museum).

Photograph: The Lewis Chessmen at the British Museum.