...and not for the first time. Her thoughtful, intriguing mystery novels have called me back many times over the years. The last one I reviewed on here was The Daughter of Time, which was voted greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers Association in 1990, but I've also reviewed Brat Farrar and Miss Pym Disposes fairly recently.
I was in London for a week, staying at my daughter's keeping an eye on my very delightful teenage grandson, and still pursuing my recent move to read books already on the shelves. There was a complete set of Tey's novels to choose from, and the first one I read was A Shilling for Candles. This is a comparatively early novel, published in 1936 and only her second venture into the genre (the first was The Man in the Queue (1929)). Hitchcock made it into a film called Young and Innocent, which I haven't seen and which sounds pretty awful - Hitchcock played havoc with the plot and Tey was evidently annoyed.
In common with six of her eight crime novels, A Shilling for Candles features Tey's detective Alan Grant. Intelligent and cultured, with a love of theatre - his best friend is the glamorous actress Marta Hallard - Grant is in many ways a very ordinary chap. As Tey writes in this novel,
By the time coffee had arrived he was no nearer a solution. He wished he was one of these marvelous creatures of super-instinct and infallible judgment who adorned the pages of detective stories, and not just a hard-working, well-meaning, ordinarily intelligent Detective Inspector.
The crime he is setting out to solve here is the death of Christine Clay, a beautiful young film actress, found drowned near the seaside cottage she's rented as an escape from people and publicity. A penniless young man who has been staying with her is the immediately obvious suspect, especially as it turns out she has just changed her will in his favour. Grant is pretty convinced he is the perpetrator, and is furious with himself when the man manages to evade arrest and simply disappear, apparently into thin air. But evidence turns up which makes his guilt seem less likely, and other suspects start to emerge, including Christine's estranged brother, a very dodgy character who is posing as a monk in the hope of gaining a large fortune.
Questions of identity loom here - Christine herself, with all her wealth and Hollywood success, turns out to have risen from very humble origins as a lacemaker in Nottingham, and her brother has taken on various identities in his criminal career. If you're familiar with Tey's novels you'll recognise a theme which seems to have fascinated her: how do we really know who people are? Of course this is actually central to The Daughter of Time, where a portrait of Richard III causes Grant to question whether the notorious king was in fact as bad as he was painted. In Brat Farrar, a young man poses as the lost heir to a fortune, pretending to be a long lost twin. In The Franchise Affair, two women, mother and daughter, find their lives and motivations coming under a relentless spotlight. And the second novel I picked up this week, To Love and Be Wise, raises fascinating issues of gender as well as identity.
Briefly, To Love and Be Wise is set in a country village - one that has been invaded by a disparate crowd of London celebrities who have bought up all the attractive old houses. One of these is the popular novelist Lavinia Fitch, a friend of Alan Grant. At a book launch in London, Lavinia has been introduced to Leslie Searle, a young American photographer of extreme beauty, and has immediately fallen under his spell, inviting him to come and stay for an indefinite period at her country house. Her young niece Liz, engaged to Walter Whitmore, a rather stodgy and conventional journalist, is similarly drawn to Leslie, but Liz's stepmother takes an apparently illogical dislike to him and the local vicar is put in mind of other worldly demons when he meets him at dinner. Walter and Leslie are planning to do a book together, but they have a row in the local pub, and Leslie wanders off and is never seen again. Murder is naturally suspected, and Walter is one of the suspects. But the truth proves to be much more complicated than anyone could have foreseen.
I believe this to have been only my second of read of what is, I think, one of Tey's most remarkable novels. There's a tremendous twist towards the end which I certainly didn't see coming the first time around, and it was fascinating to see how Tey drops subtle hints into the earlier part of the text which could be seen as preparing the way for the reveal, though I doubt if many first-time readers would have picked them up.
Tey herself was a woman of some mystery, as is often remarked. Her given name was Elizabeth MacIntosh, but she also wrote plays, some immensely successful, under the name Gordon Daviot. But she was an intensely private person, and apparently did not have any relationships, though her would-be biographer Nicola Upson, who ended up writing an excellent series of crime novels featuring Tey instead of the planned biog, suggests that she may have had a relationship with the actress Marda Vanne, on whom the character Marta Hallard is based. I assume we'll never know - the recent biography by Jennifer Morag Henderson doesn't reveal much at all.
Chronologically speaking Tey fits into the category of Golden Age crime novelists, but her books stand out from the crowd by dealing with issues that would undoubtedly have influenced novelists who followed, such a Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. It's sad that she died in her fifties, leaving such a relatively small output behind her. Thankfully, though, her novels really repay re-reading - I'm planning to get back to The Franchise Affair before too much time has passed. Watch this space.
