The Man Who Loved Lions (The Man Who Wasn't There) by Ethel Lina White

[cimorene]

This is a bonkers variant of the locked mansion mystery-country house party murder mystery subgenre where the country house is also a private zoo or menagerie! I have learned there is a Dickinson novel with one, and I've read a Nancy Drew with like... sneaking up to a mansion with the grounds patrolled by tigers, and there's the Philo Vance one with the fish and aquarium collection, and a Nero Wolfe one with the remains of a non-lethal menagerie, so there must be others. I admit that I have had to give up on some of the known golden era writers because they were too sexist or bad, but now I'm curious I'm going to have to try to look into that.

Anyway, this is the AMAZING plot of The Man Who Loved Lions.

1. Ann, 23, returns to England after 7 years abroad for a reunion of a college clique that used to meet in the tower room of a castle belonging to a classmate. She takes a bus to the estate and when she asks the bus driver says "You mean the zoo?" She has forgotten over the 7 years that she was told about a private zoo at the estate, but she never saw it.



2. The bus stop has moved so she has to climb the fence and cross the park, which is left as natural woodland with, reportedly, murderous animals roaming through it, but she goes anyway and manages to successfully guess the correct route, although she hides in the scrub because she hears elephants nearby at one point. She never sees them.



3. She gets to the tower and finds only their host there, an older student named Richard whose uncle owns the park and zoo. He's always seemed creepy to her. He immediately hits on her, attempts to convince her nobody else is going to show, and tries to get her to leave. She decides to go and then sneak back in because she is determined to meet the hot one ("Stephen").



4. She walks to the next bus stop and finds the main gate of the house, where by chance she is met by Richard's wealthy uncle who owns the zoo. He knew her father and immediately invites her up to the house and introduces her to his guests for the evening. She makes friends with lady who confides in her that they all think Richard is plotting to murder his uncle. Ann is like, "That checks out, I always thought so too."



5. She makes an excuse and sneaks back to the tower room to check who else has shown up and meets a 3rd old pal, John, who tells her he is unhappily married before wandering out. Richard then comes in again saying "He'll be dead soon!" because he mistakes her for someone else. Then a 4th member of their study group shows up, Isabella, acting obviously in love with Richard, but admits to being married to John. Ann deduces that this is who Richard thought he was addressing.



6. They go down to the party and a 5th member of the study group, James, staggers in escorted again by the uncle, apparently drunk, dirty all over and a bit bruised. Ann gets him alone and he tells her that he found the tower door locked and was wandering the grounds when Richard offered him some whisky at the greenhouse. Next thing he knew he was waking up on the floor in the elephant house with an elephant standing guard over him. He remembers dreaming about an irate stampeding elephant and when he got up he discovered a mouse crushed to death under him where he had accidentally rolled onto it, so he believes Richard dragged him there and then let loose a mouse on him to get the elephant to trample him to death. Then he leaves again. Richard finds out he was there and looks angry.



7. The whole party goes to visit the lion enclosure and see them and the tiger do tricks, but when they're walking above the ravine that leads to the lions' outdoor territory Isabella accidentally-on-purpose drops her evening bag over the edge and Richard and her drunken jealous husband, John, fight over who is going to retrieve it and end up wrestling down the slope to the edge of the ravine until John falls in. Everyone assumes he will be eaten by the lions. The uncle and Richard go off with rifles into the enclosure, but they bring him back miraculously alive because he knew to play dead and the lions lost interest. Richard looks angry again. Ann deduces that Richard is attempting to just kill SOMEONE, anyone, in a way that looks like an animal-related accident, in order to get the zoo closed down and INDIRECTLY murder his uncle so he can inherit, because he knows that his uncle will have no reason to live without the zoo. And he can't risk killing him directly because he's the obvious suspect, because he's such a creep that nobody likes him.



8. Ann goes for a walk in the tropical greenhouse alone with Richard (because REASONS) and he tells her there might be a deadly snake hiding loose in the greenhouse and contrives to drop some vines on her head while they're on the catwalk, causing her phobia of snakes to act up, so she insists on walking back over the ground even though the route goes right over a huge tank that used to house the crocodile on a rickety metal bridge without handrails which Richard warns her is probably falling apart and unsafe, but he's just using reverse psychology to make her DETERMINED to go. The bridge breaks under her and she barely makes it to the other side, and when they get back she learns that there actually is still a crocodile in the tank; he was lying to try to lure her to her death~, but Richard doesn't know that she knows.



9. After this Richard tells her that Stephen will definitely be arriving soon from a certain abandoned spot in the fence that he always used to climb over and hints that he, Richard, intends to lie in wait to club him over the head and drag him off to be eaten by wolves. This is done just to trick her into going off alone with him again, but knowing that he intends to kill her instead, Ann leaves behind a note to be opened if she doesn't come back and tells him about it once they're near the fence. Stephen isn't there, but they both come back to the house alive and Richard is angry again.



10. The 6th and penultimate member of the study group shows up (except for Stephen that is), and she's a medical doctor named Victoria. She's also the rich uncle's private doctor, and Ann's new friends who let her in on their suspicions of Richard tell her there were ugly rumors about her secretly killing rich uncle's OWN rich uncle who reportedly died peacefully in his sleep recently at the age of ninety-something; but they don't credit them because the guy was so old anyway and zoo uncle already had enough money to own a castle and start his zoo after all.



11. However, there's some kind of ominous secretive conversation between her and Richard after which she is very tense and agrees to go walking alone with Richard to the reptile house. Then she comes back somewhat upset and informs them Richard has been tragically accidentally killed by the snakes. She says he went in alone so she didn't see it, only found his body covered in snakes and snake bites.



12. Zoo uncle goes J'ACCUSE! She's a murderer! Because she is a specialist studying snake venom but she didn't know that as of recently there ARE no venomous snakes left in his zoo; he was required to destroy them in case of getting hit by a bomb in the Blitz. (Too bad she didn't check before injecting Richard with snake venom, because you'd think as an expert she could identify them?)



13. Everyone is kind of puzzled until Ann jumps up in a lightbulb moment and informs them all that it's because Victoria was being blackmailed by Richard with the knowledge that she was paid by him, Richard, to murder the uncle's uncle, and she couldn't afford any more blackmail.



14. The End, except Ann goes back to the tower at midnight and meets Stephen and they live happily ever after.

Comments

[stranger]

You're right, the plot just keeps turning and turning until it kind of eats its own tail. The cascading rich uncles are a nice touch. Inheritance by uncle seems a great deal more likely in mystery novels than real life, somehow. Not to mention faking snakebite death, escaping elephant death, and attempting crocodile death via reverse psychology...