The Silent Witness Speaks
By Jeff Baker
The lawyer who never loses a case, whose brilliance is acknowledged by his peers, who does not merely defend clients but solves mysteries as well was, of course, created by a lawyer with an immense sense of right and wrong. And no, it’s not Perry Mason!
About a decade before Mason’s first appearance, Melville Davisson Post, a one-time lawyer, created Colonel Braxton, a lawyer in a small Virginia town in the late Nineteenth Century. Braxton handles cases for the downtrodden, the friendless, and the suspect. In the short stories, collected as “The Silent Witness,” Braxton uses his powers of observation to solve the mysteries and puzzles that come up in his legal cases.
Braxton operates mainly as an armchair detective, his “armchair” being the courtroom. He solves several cases involving forged documents; Post was an absolute master at ringing clever changes on this theme, (his most famous character, Uncle Abner, does the same in the story “An Act of God.”)
In what may be the best of the Braxton stories, “The Witness In the Metal Box” (collected as “The Metal Box,”) a young Melville Post himself may be the admiring narrator as he sits in on the court case, one involving a will. None of the other Braxton stories are narrated quite like this one, which adds to the story’s charm.
And that is why the stories are so readable nearly a hundred years later; the charm and the mastery of plotting which permeates every tale. I spent a weekend in the public library reading through the stories in ancient issues of The American Magazine, where they first appeared. They were apparently very popular, as Post himself was highly regarded and was one of the highest-paid writers of his day. The American magazine ran ads promoting Braxton stories in upcoming issues: “Another story featuring this fascinating character.” Of course, none of the characters are developed partially, let alone fully, but the stories retain their gripping power to entertain.
The Colonel Braxton stories were collected as “The Silent Witness” in 1930, and the book is not hard to find. Many of the stories have since appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, and anthologies like “Death on the Verandah,” Berkley Prime Crime, 1995.
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A delivery driver for almost thirty years, Jeff Baker’s stories have appeared in “Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine” and the recent anthology “The Necronomicon of Solar Pons” from Belanger Books. He recently quit his job to write full time and to read. He lives in Wichita with his husband Darryl.