An Expert in Murder

I have long been an admirer of Josephine Tey's brilliant and beautifully written crime novels, dating mainly from the 1930s -- The Daughter of Time, The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar and others. And I was aware, for reasons that will appear, of her alter-ego as Gordon Daviot, playwright, whose first play Richard of Bordeaux, was a smash hit in 1933. So I was intrigued recently to hear an episode of a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of this book, in which Tey is a central character and which revolves around the production of that very play. I wasn't able to listen to all the episodes, so I snapped this up at the airport on the way to France last week. Now -- why do I know about Richard of Bordeaux? Because my mother and aunt, who were theatre designers, designed the sets and costumes -- their first professional job, and the beginning of a partnership with the director and star John Gielgud which was to last throughout the 1930s. I had not realised until I started reading the novel that my mother, my father and my aunt actually appear as characters in it! Admittedly their first names have been changed (though my father, who appears only briefly, remains as George), but the studio where they lived and worked, in St Martin's Lane, is described with absolute accuracy. In fact this novel is a very interesting blend of fact and fiction.  Many of the characters are based on real people whose names have been changed: John Gielgud becomes John Terry, the impresario Bronson Albery becomes Bernard Aubrey, and so on. But fictional characters and events have been rather cleverly blended with the real ones, and some people behave in ways which would undoubtedly have appalled them in real life. The story is pretty intriguing -- a young woman gets killed on a train, and no motive appears obvious -- another death is linked to the first by some odd arrangements of props, but the two victims appear not to have had any connection with or knowledge of each other. Josephine Tey and her friend the Scotland Yard detective Archie Penrose do manage to find the connection, and the murderer, needless to say! I was a bit afraid my mother might turn out to have done it but I don't think it is too much of a spoiler to say that she didn't. Evidently Nicola Upson talked to Gielgud, and to my aunt Margaret Harris -- which means this book was a long time in the writing, since they both died exactly eight years ago this month. Apart from a few minor quibbles I really enjoyed this, and was impressed by the historical accuracy of the research, which seems spot on down the the last detail. Nice work.