IN THE HISTORIC CORNERSTONE of detective fiction, Trent’s Last Case (1913; titled The Woman in Black in the United States), Philip Trent makes his debut and breaks several of the unwritten, if widely accepted, rules of the genre: he falls in love with the chief suspect and, after delivering a brilliant solution to the mystery, discovers that he is completely wrong.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) is often credited with being the father of the modern detective story (even though his first novel was written a century ago) in that he insisted that his protagonist be human, which is to say fallible, unlike such contemporary characters as Sherlock Holmes, Craig Kennedy, and Martin Hewitt. Born in a suburb of London, Bentley attended Oxford University, then left to study law; he was admitted to the bar in 1902. He also turned to journalism at this time, making it his lifelong career.
In 1905, he published Biography for Beginners under the name E. Clerihew, a collection of nonsense poems in a four-line form that he invented and that still bears the name Clerihew, which for years rivaled the limerick in popularity. It was illustrated by Bentley’s closest friend, G. K. Chesterton, who influenced his colleague’s literary style in its clarity and humor.
Trent’s Last Case was filmed three times: as a 1920 silent with Gregory Scott as Trent, as a Howard Hawks–directed version in 1929 with Raymond Griffith in the titular role, and in 1952 with Michael Wilding as Trent, Margaret Lockwood as the prime suspect, and Orson Welles as the murdered millionaire. Bentley wrote only two other books featuring the amateur detective Trent: the novel Trent’s Own Case (1936) and Trent Intervenes (1938), a short-story collection.
“The Ordinary Hairpins” was first published in the October 1916 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in Trent Intervenes (London, Nelson, 1938).