Harriet Devine's Blog

The Strange Case of Harriet Hall by Moray Dalton

I was so delighted to have a chance to read this book, newly published by Dean Street Press. Don't worry if you've never heard of Moray Dalton; for a start this is a pseudonym, adopted by Katherine Mary Dalton Renoir (1882-1963). And in addition, though she wrote nearly 30 crime novels between 1929 and 1951, all have been out of print for a long time. The Strange Case of Harriet Hall came out in 1938, and features the series detective of a number of Dalton's novels, Inspector Hugh Collier.

As the story begins we meet Amy Steer, a young girl down on her luck in London. She's been struggling along on part-time work, but the agencies have no more to offer her and she's getting desperate. Then by pure chance she spots an advertisement in the newspaper, asking for relatives of Julius Horace Steer, Amy's deceased father, to make contact. Curious, and with nothing to lose, Amy agrees to meet the advertiser, Mrs Harriet Hall, in the first class waiting room of a large railway station. A large woman, flashily dressed and heavily made up, Harriet Hall tells Amy that she is her aunt, her father's sister, and that she wants to offer Amy a home with her in the small country village of Larnwood. She gives her niece £100 to buy some nice clothes and arranges to meet her at the station in a few days' time. Puzzled but relieved, Amy kits herself out with a wardrobe as recommended by her aunt:

'You'll need a couple of evening dresses and an evening coat or cloak. You'll be dining with the Denes and I daresay you'll be invited to other places...Two or three silk frocks for tennis and a couple of woolly suits and a tweed skirt and jumpers for wet days. Then you'll want shoes for different occasions, stockings, hats --'

Overwhelmed by such opulence, Amy agrees and on the following Monday she boards the train for Larnwood. A young man who gets into conversation with her tells her he is heading for the same place - his name is Tony Dene. They seem to be getting on well,. but when Amy tells him she is going to visit her aunt Harriet Hall, he rushes out of the compartment and doesn't speak to her again. Even worse, when she arrives at the station nobody is there to meet her and she is forced to walk the five miles to her aunt's cottage. Strangely, no-one is at home, though the door is open and the stove still warm. Mrs Hall does not reappear, and the next day Tony Dene, come to visit, finds her body in the well in the garden. 

Now the focus shifts to the neighbouring Dene family - the silent, apparently ailing Mrs Dene, Tony and his two sisters, the elder one of whom, Lavvy, has managed to snare a local aristocrat and is planning a grand society wedding. It becomes clear that Harriet Hall had some kind of hold over the family though it's unclear what that might have been, and this puts them in the front of the line where suspects are concerned. Very soon an astonishing discovery puts the whole question of who Harriet Hall really was at the centre of the investigation. Lots of tense moments for the Denes and for Amy before the whole mystery is finally cleared up.

This is a really lively and entertaining book, and comes complete with a full introduction and biographical material. Dean Street Press have brought out several of Moray Dalton's novels, including One by One They Disappeared (1929, and her first in the series) which I've already got and will be reading soon. They are all available as paperbacks or on Kindle, where they are only 99p. Why not give yourself a treat? You won't regret it.

Woman with Book

This is 'Girl in Grey' by Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012). Born in Dublin, he painted a lot of famous people including WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney.

The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths

Can this really be the 11th outing for Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson? How time flies. I'm not a great follower of series but there are a few that I won't miss and this one is pretty much at the top of the list. I enjoy the crime plots - they're never too visceral and it's interestingly challenging to try to guess the perpetrator - but, like many others, I imagine, I'm also always anxious to know how things are progressing with the complicated love life of Ruth and Nelson. He is, of course, the father of her now seven-year-old daughter Kate, but he has a home and family, whose problems have been looming rather large of late.

As an archaeologist, Ruth is often brought in by the police to assess bones that have been discovered, and this time is no exception. In fact two sets of bones have been uncovered in the course of a dig at a prehistoric circle, a dig that Ruth is not herself involved in. One set of bones clearly dates from the ancient origins of the circle, but the other set looks much more recent, and the police quickly ascertain that they belong to a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared without trace some thirty or more years earlier. The girl's family has mixed feelings: relief that closure can be found at last, grief at learning that all hope of Margaret still being alive has to disappear. And as if this were not enough, a baby of less than a month old, the daughter of a young family member, is abducted. Can there be a link between the two events - the long dead daughter and the new born one?

Meanwhile, this time around it's not just the relationship between Ruth and Nelson that is hanging in the balance - or rather, another expected event is going to have a great influence on how things go for them. Nelson's wife Michelle is in the final days of her pregnancy, and so it will soon become clear whether the new baby is Nelson's or whether the father was Michelle's lover Tim, a black detective sergeant who was killed in the last book. I'm not about to spoil things by telling you the outcome of this particular cliff hanger, but the family dynamics are particularly well drawn here - not just between Harry and Michelle, but also with Laura, the older of their two daughters, who is living back at home while she completes her teacher training course. 

Nelson and Ruth rarely if ever discuss any possible outcomes of their affair - they see a lot of each other in the course of work but occasions when they are on their own are very rare indeed. What is clear to both of them is that the arrival of Michelle's new baby is going to have an important bearing on how things will progress in the future. One crucial factor in this novel is the increased openness that is forced onto the family by developing events. Michelle has unwillingly accepted that Kate is her husband's daughter, who he takes out every two weeks. But Laura and her sister have no idea of the relationship, and Harry thinks it's time they were told. How will this affect family dynamics?

These are thoughtful, intelligent novels and Ruth is a terrific central character. What will happen next? Time will tell.

 

Woman with Books

This is 'Juliet, daughter of Richard H. Fox of Surrey', by Alfred Lambart (1902-1970). Looks like she can't decide what she wants to read - or maybe she's looking for a quotation she wants to amaze the dinner guests with.

Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson

I first encountered Peter Swanson when I read his second novel, The Kind Worth Killing, back in 2015. I was hugely taken with it and wrote a rave review for Shiny which you can read here if you're interested. I subsequently read his first, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, and indeed everything he has written since. All have been good but nothing blew me away like my first experience - nothing, that is, until now. Before She Knew Him, published today, is a superb, twisty, disturbing picture of a plausible, charming man who happens to be a psychopath, and the young woman who knows what he is but cannot convince the police of his guilt.

Hen (short for Henrietta) and her husband Lloyd have recently moved into a new house in West Dartford, Massachusetts. When they are invited to a neighbourhood party, they are pleased to meet another couple about their own age, Matthew and Mira Dolomore. Not only are the Dolomores equally childless, but it turns out they live next door. The couple invite Hen and Lloyd to dinner, but while she is in their house Hen spots something that deeply disturbs her. On the mantlepiece in Matthew's study is a small skiing trophy, which Hen is convinced originally belonged to a young college student, whose unsolved murder she is interested in. A few days later, she returns to the house when Matthew is at work, and persuades Mira to give her another tour, saying she's looking for ideas for designing their own place. But when she reaches the study, the trophy has gone.

Certain that Matthew must be guilty - why else would he move the trophy, which he must have seen her reaction to? - she contacts the police to tell them her suspicions. Unfortunately Hen is not believed, on the grounds of her own personal history. For Hen is bipolar, and until she was diagnosed and put on the effective meds she is now taking, she was involved in a situation at college in which she became wrongly convinced that a fellow student was guilty of a terrible crime, and actually attacked the girl concerned. So the police politely dismiss her allegations.

You might think at this point that the novel is going to be a 'did he or didn't he?' sort of book. But you'd be wrong. There are numerous shocks in store which I have no intention of revealing, but the first one - which was indeed a profound shock when I encountered it as early as p.30, was the fact that Matthew is definitely guilty. I feel a bit worried about telling you this as it does I suppose count as a spoiler, but it's impossible to get any further with the story of the plot without revealing this crucial element. We get to see inside Matthew's head, and it's not an attractive place. Profoundly damaged by his appalling childhood, Matthew sees himself as a saviour of oppressed women, and to carry out this role he kills the men who are oppressing or deceiving them. He's careful to use different methods each time and to prepare convincing alibis, and feels confident that he won't be caught.

Matthew is clever and perceptive, and soon becomes aware that Hen has guessed his secret - indeed, she actually witnesses him committing his latest crime, though once again the police don't believe her. Knowing this, Matthew visits Hen and tells her the whole story of his exploits, secure in the knowledge that she will be unable to convince the police that any of this is true, given her history of mental problems. A terrible dance is thus set in motion, with Hen and Matthew locked in a secret, compulsive relationship.Who will Matthew murder next?

Matthew is a brilliantly conceived character. A popular college lecturer, pretty much teetotal, faithful to his wife, he has a strong though perverted morality, believing he is doing the world a favour by ridding it of untrustworthy men. Beneath his surface confidence, though, he suffers from a nervous stomach, throws up easily, finds it difficult to eat when he's worked up about something. We learn a great deal about his dysfunctional childhood and it's not a pretty picture. So his revelations to Hen, secure in the knowledge that they will go no further, act as a form of release for him. As for Hen, who has her own problems, she is forced to keep his revelations secret but determined that in the end she will be able to find a way to bring him to justice. 

This was the kind of book you whizz through, and think about when you're not actually reading it. I can't recommend it highly enough.

 

 

Woman Playing the Piano

This is actually a detail from 'A Favourite Melody' by Bernard Louis Borione (1865 – 1920). I just love her jacket!