A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Mary Kelly's brilliant 1962 novel, Due to a Death. A central character in that novel is the rather mysterious Hedley Nicholson who, we gather, has taken time off whatever his work may be to process events that he has recently experienced. What those were is never revealed in that excellent novel, but in The Spoilt Kill, published the year before and the winner of the CWA Golden Dagger Award, Hedley is centre stage and narrator. We know from the start that he is a private investigator: he's been hired by the head of a long-established pottery firm in Staffordshire to investigate the leakage of their original designs to foreign competitors, who then flood the market with cheap copies. Posing as a writer of a history of the firm, he's allotted an office and given free run of the factory. This much we know about him from the start, and we also learn that he feels his age - he's in his early 40s but has grey hair about which he is very self-conscious - and that he's had a relationship that went wrong. And it soon becomes clear that he likes women - he's strongly attracted to a young woman who works in reception though he would never approach her, and he soon finds himself falling in love with one of the prime suspects.
The Spoilt Kill, not unlike Due to a Death, begins with the discovery of a body. Here it is discovered floating in a vault full of liquid clay. But the identity, and even the gender, of the dead person is not revealed until much later in the novel. After this opening come two sections: 'What Happened Before' and 'What Happened Afterwards'. In 'Before', of course, Hedley gets to know the factory personnel, all very pleasant people. He soon realises that the most obvious way the designs could have been stolen would be via the designers. They are of course highly valued in the company, but perhaps one of them might welcome a bit of extra money? He soon homes in on the top designer Corinna Wakefield, an attractive, talented, but obviously unhappy young woman. He soon befriends her, initially with a view to spying on her life and her movements. But it doesn't take long before he realises he is falling in love with her. And the more he falls for her, the worse he feels; she's lonely and welcomes his friendship, but he dreads the moment when she will inevitably discover his real purpose in getting to know her. In 'Afterwards', of course, the identity of the victim is revealed and the process of denouement starts moving inexorably forward. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that someone confesses but is shown to be covering up for someone else. The identity of the killer is a sad shock - sad because of the story that lies behind their actions. Sad too is the ending of the novel.
It's impossible not to be mysterious about the plot. But the plot is only part of what Mary Kelly is doing here. The life of the factory is wonderfully evoked, as is the rather grim landscape of the Potteries. Here's what Hedley sees when he looks down in the valley called Etruria, where the Wedgwoods once had their factory:
I stared down into the pit, at the black buildings silhouetted against the flushed sky, buildings, some of them, flickering within, as if a river of liquid gold were rolling through them. Clouds of steam and smoke drifted across the shadowy vale, rosy steam, lit from the fires below. There was a continuous hollow rushing sound, broken by clanks of shunting. An engine, raised on a bank, black and red, like a slide, moved slowly backwards and forwards. The whole pit seemed to breathe as it worked; for though it was past midnight on Saturday, and the Newcastle neighbours’ windows were dark, naked lights on gantries and signals glittered all over Etruria.
It's not too fanciful to see this as a sort of vision of an Inferno, and it seems to reflect Hedley's gloomy and fearful state of mind. Kelly's portrayal of this is wonderfully strong and evocative, as is that of Corinna, about whose life the reader learns more and more as the novel proceeds. This is superb piece of writing, unquestionably worth its Golden Dagger.
