A house party at Buttonwood Terrace is hosted by the Van Wyck family. But the next morning a body is found in an impenetrable room. Murder or suicide and where and what is the weapon used. After all the evidence is put forward Fleming Stone, the detective, is employed to find the answers.
An enjoyable read ( )

Raymond Sturgis accepts an invitation to a house-party hosted by David and Anne Van Wyck - the former Anne Mansfield, with whom Raymond went to high school, and whose marriage to the much older, very wealthy Van Wyck has attracted some unkind comment. The Van Wycks' home is Buttonwood Terrace, near the Berkshires; a beautiful house whose jewel is the two-storey, glass-ceilinged gallery that David Van Wyck calls his study. Raymond soon realises that there is ill-feeling between Van Wyck and his family. The bone of contention proves to be Van Wyck's declared intention to give away the bulk of his fortune to build and endow a library; a philanthropic gesture which his family believes is impulsive, and that he will regret. Furthermore, furiously jealous at the attention that his wife attracts from other men, Van Wyck threatens to add the famous family pearls to his bequest, purely to spite Anne. He declares that he has asked invited the town committee to call upon him that night, to finalise the arrangement. However, the next morning Anne announces worriedly that Van Wyck is still locked in his study, where the meeting took place, and is not responding to calls. The family must break into the study, which is at all points bolted on the inside as well as locked. Inside they find David Van Wyck dead, a broad red stain across his chest. The pearls are missing, and so is the deed of bequest for the library. It seems that murder has been committed - but if so, how did the killer get out of the room? And conversely, if it is suicide, where is the weapon?

This locked room mystery, the fifth entry in Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone series, is an enjoyable puzzle featuring both the strengths and the weaknesses of its author. Wells is most comfortable in her creation of a geographical mystery that depends upon the relationship of one room to another, and on where exactly a particular person was at a particular time. However, this novel finds Wells still struggling with her characterisations, and too often giving in to her tendency to tell, not show. This is particularly true of her women. Anne Van Wyck is another of Wells' innocent sirens, attracting men and causing conflict quite without conscious intent, though the reader ends up having to take her "deadly charm" on trust; while the housekeeper, Mrs Carstairs, who hoped to marry Van Wyck herself and becomes a malignant, Mrs Danvers-like presence in the household after being jilted by him, is an embarrassing stereotype of a Frenchwoman.

On the other hand, there is something oddly charming about Wells' unembarrassed preference for setting her stories amongst the moneyed, leisured classes. The text of Anybody But Anne is amusingly uncritical of the fact that Anne has, clearly, married David Van Wyck for his money and his beautiful house, and entirely in sympathy with the family's outraged reaction to Van Wyck's plan to give the bulk of his fortune away. The household's neighbours, interested spectators at the inquest, are shocked and sorry that he has been murdered - until they hear of his threat to give away the pearls, at which point their sympathy veers around to Anne. It is, indeed, difficult to think otherwise than that Raymond is speaking for his author when, upon hearing of David Van Wyck's planned bequest, he reacts with an incredulous demand to know whether the man is a Socialist!?

However, for this reader the peculiar attraction of this series continues to be the exceedingly off-hand way in which murder is treated. By this stage, the inquest scene almost writes itself: everyone behaves suspiciously, exchanging meaningful looks that only the narrator notices; the woman are one and all on the verge of emotional collapse; the servants get hysterical; and the coroner allows the proceedings to be hijacked by any layperson who feels so inclined. However, while an inquest is unavoidable, actually investigating the murder remains entirely optional - as indeed, as it turns out, is arresting the guilty party, once identified. At no point is there any police presence in this story; and while the Van Wycks do hire a detective, once his suspicions fasten on Anne he finds himself confronted by a stone-wall consisting of Condron Archer, the object of Van Wyck's jealousy; Morland Van Wyck, whose feelings are not very step-son-y; and Raymond, his old love having reawakened. Of the three, only Raymond has sufficient faith in Anne to insist upon the murder being solved. It is he who sends for Fleming Stone, who is - for the first time in the series - initially baffled by the mystery that confronts him, but who soon becomes convinced that the theft of the pearls and the murder of David Van Wyck are two different crimes committed by two independent parties. The question remains - how?