Downton Abbey and Winnie-the-Pooh

Original cover of A.A. Milne's mystery

Children's author A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh,  also wrote a detective novel. An odd connection exists between Milne's The Red House Mystery and Downton Abbey. The bones of the classic British mystery are on display in Milne's book:

* the English country house setting
* a crime investigated by an amateur
* a sidekick
* a locked-room puzzle
* a whodunit with clues that play fair with the reader

The book opens "below stairs" . . .

The housekeeper and a parlor maid discuss the arrival of the host’s long-lost brother, the disruptive stranger amid the guests already at the house. The murder is investigated by a gentleman sleuth named Tony Gillingham. Aha. Tony Gillingham is also the name of Mary’s suitor in Downton Abbey and the man whose rapist-valet died in an “accident.” Is the choice of the man's name a coincidence? I wonder. 

Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey’s creator and writer, is certainly familiar with British mysteries from the same era as Milne's. Fellowes wrote the country house mystery Gosford Park and a screenplay for Agatha Christie’s The Crooked House. Fellowes says “murder in a genteel setting” never goes stale. 
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Downton Abbey was originally conceived as a spin-off of Gosford Park. Though the series went in another direction, the remnants of that initial idea remain in the suspicious deaths that affect upstairs and downstairs at Downton.