In 2008 the late Professor François Gallix found a fragment of an early Graham Greene murder mystery that was later published with the title The Empty Chair. Professor Gallix thought that the story was likely written in 1926. I suspect he was a year out in his estimation: on May 27th 1927, this paragraph was published in the British newspaper The Daily News with the byline: A DETECTIVE STORY COMPETITION
Those with the ambition – and which of us does not possess it? – to write a successful detective story, are to be given a splendid chance in Messrs. Methuen’s Detective Story Competition. The first prize is to be £250, the second prize £150. The MSS must not have fewer than 70,000 words or more than 100,000 words and all entries must reach Messrs. Methuen’s office by June 30, 1928. The judges will be Mr A.A. Milne, Father Ronald Knox, and Mr. H.C. Bailey.
Greene enjoyed entering competitions and noticed this paragraph, writing about it to his fiancée, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. He told her that he had thought of a plot whilst at Mass, involving an old Catholic priest. He hoped this might attract the attention of one of the judges, Father Ronald Knox. A few days later on 1 June Greene wrote again to Vivienne asking for help in writing clues as he’d never written a detective story.
Now it appears highly unlikely that Greene would write to his fiancée in 1927, asking for her help to write a detective story and telling her that he’d never written one, if he had indeed started such a tale in 1926. Although Graham Greene was well known for dissimulation, there would be little to gain here from subterfuge. It is therefore my belief that the book fragment known as The Empty Chair is the beginning of a detective novel that Greene started in June 1927, in the hope of winning the Methuen competition.
Understanding that the detective story was written in 1927, not 1926, and was intended to be a work of at least 70,000 words allows further investigation into the existing fragment. Professor Gallix notes in his introduction to the French copy of the story, that it was unusual that Greene did not mention The Empty Chair in either his letters or his diaries. The Professor does note another lost mystery story to which Greene refers, that had similarities to The Empty Chair – a tale that included a young governess, a girl and a priest, but that in this case the governess was the murder victim. It seems likely that there was no other story and The Empty Chair was indeed this tale. Norman Sherry also mentions this murder mystery describing the story as involving a murdered governess, a young girl of twelve, and a priest. He notes that it was the girl that committed the crime and the priest that worked it out.
It may have been that Professor Gallix was misled by Sherry’s details as in The Empty Chair, it is a mature man Groves who is murdered. But I do not think this contradicts what we know of the uncompleted work. The young girl is fourteen, not twelve, but all other elements remain the same. What we do not know is the events Greene planned for the last 50,000 words of the novel – but we do know that another would likely die, the governess, and that her killer would be the young girl!
I believe Norman Sherry also inadvertently revealed another detail about The Empty Chair: Greene’s proposed title of the book! The biographer noted that in the mid-twenties, Greene sent Vivienne the first four chapters of a ‘shocker’. This was called ‘Queen’s Pawn’. Sherry said that it had been lost. These four chapters must surely be the four and a half chapters found by Professor Gallix in 2008. The fact that they are in Greene’s own handwriting indicate that this was work that had just been produced by Greene. He sent it to his wife-to-be, hoping that she might contribute to the story with some ideas or clues, as he had suggested in his letter of June 1927. That the story was not completed is no surprise – the couple had a more important engagement on their mind – their imminent marriage in October of that year.
‘Queen’s Pawn’ is an apt and excellent title for what we know about the fragment of manuscript. The Queen is Lady Perriham, an actress whom Greene indicates in the story is a version of another manipulative Queen, Lady Macbeth. The pawn is Sylvia, a young girl of fourteen who in a yet to be revealed way, is controlled by the Queen. And the action of the story? Well perhaps it is like a game of chess with, as in the classic opening of queen’s pawn, Sylvia being two steps ahead of everyone else on the board! It is evident from reading the fragment that was written, that Greene was experimenting with the whodunnit formula in an interesting way. The story was likely not only written as a puzzle of ‘who was the murderer?’ but also as one of ‘who is going to solve it?’ with four potential sleuths, the actor Collis, the police Inspector, Chief Inspector Maybury and Father Valentine !
So, The Empty Chair is almost certainly the first chapters of a detective story that Greene planned to write for a Methuen competition. The completed book would have been over 70,000 words long and was provisionally titled ‘Queen’s Pawn’. Interestingly in 1959 Greene wrote to his friend Gillian Sutro saying that he had abandoned four novels. He quoted them as ‘Across the Border’, ‘Fanatic Arabia’ and ‘Lucius’, but could not remember the fourth. It was, I think, ‘Queen’s Pawn’.
Greene did not complete ‘Queen’s Pawn’ or, as far as we know, enter the competition. The winning books were published by Methuen in February 1929. First prize went to N.A. Temple-Ellis with a weak thriller titled The Inconsistent Villains, second prize to T.L. Davidson with The Murder in the Laboratory. Another nineteen competition entries were subsequently published in a series titled Methuen Clue Stories. One of these books was The Man in the Queue, written by Gordon Daviot. This was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Mackintosh, better known as Josephine Tey. This book, the first of Tey’s ‘Inspector Grant’ mysteries, was the real ‘find’ of the competition.
PHILIP HORMBREY