One of you must be Boris Karloff! The producer promised I’d be working with him!
If you can get past Boris Karloff, noted English actor, playing a Chinese detective, then the confusing named, at least in this print, Mystery at Wentworth Castle (1940, aka the equally perplexing Doomed to Die) might be a pleasant way to pass an hour. This is not a whodunit, but rather a thriller, in which the head of a shipping company, Cyrus Wentworth, already reeling from the sudden burning and sinking of one of the line’s ships, the Wentworth Castle, with high loss of life, is shot to death virtually in front of his primary rival, Paul Fleming, as well as the rival’s son, Dick.
Dick was in the office to ask for Wentworth’s daughter in marriage, and is in the final stages of a row, being shown the door, when a gun goes off and Wentworth dies. Dick is the presumed murderer, but he’s disappeared, much to the frustration of everyone: police captain Street, who wants this case closed, reporter Roberta Logan, who wants an exclusive story, and Wentworth’s daughter, Cynthia, who cannot believe her fiancee would have shot her father. Cynthia is the one who calls in Jimmy Wong, Chinese detective, to investigate.
From here we get a tangled web: Chinese smugglers, shots fired in the dark, high technology to recover handwriting from ashes, cooking the books, lies to the police, all leading to a denouement and a killer that no one would have foreseen – because it doesn’t make a great deal of sense, and the killer’s motivations are never explored.
It’s a trifle disjointed, and the byplay between Street and Logan is forced and annoying. Definitely a mediocre effort, which is unfortunately also mildly racist with Karloff playing the Chinese detective.
But at least it was pleasant and a trifle convoluted.
