Harriet Devine's Blog

Murder by Matchlight by ECR Lorac

I'm just off to London to spend Christmas with the family but wanted briefly to write about this, which I've just finished reading. Yes it's another by Lorac. whose delicious Bats in the Belfry I reviewed a few days ago. This one was published in 1945 and plunges us straight into WW2 London - indeed the novel could not exist without the war, which plays an important part in the action. 

As the novel begins, a young man called Mallaig is taking an evening stroll in Regents Park. In normal circumstances this would be a pleasant enough thing to do, but this is the blackout and he can barely see where he's going. Arriving at a bench by a bridge, he has just sat down for a think when several strange things happen. Someone appears out of the darkness and clambers down to hide under the bridge - Mallaig can't see him but hears his footsteps. Another set of footsteps and another man turns up and stops on the bridge. He evidently gets out a cigarette and lights a match - and, as he does so, a rather ghoulish face appears for an instant behind his shoulder - and the man drops down, stabbed to death. The man under the bridge scrambles out and disappears.

This is a brilliant beginning - the eeriness of the darkness, the anonymity of the participants, the presence of a witness who can't identify anybody. And so it goes on. The victim proves to have been using a false name, having stolen the identity card of someone who was killed in a bombing raid. Later a house where some of the characters live is bombed - the top floor is destroyed and the inhabitants scramble in among the deteriorating lower floors, rescuing their precious belongings before the house tumbles to the ground.

And among all the chaos and destruction, life in London goes on a normally as possible under the circumstances. People go to variety shows and dine out in favourite restaurants. Those who have stayed in London are an oddly self-selected group, defiant in the face of the blitz. Some of them, like the victim's 80 year old landlady Mrs Maloney, even refuse to use the underground shelters, taking the fatalistic view that if their time is up there's not much they can do about it.

This is an exciting and intriguing story with a brilliant set of disparate characters. I'm hoping there's more Lorac on the way from the BL - I'm addicted!

 

Children with Christmas Tree

 

Painted by the Polish-American artist Henry Mosler (1841-1920) this is The Christmas Tree. Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas and a wonderful, book-filled 2019.

Bats in the Belfry by ERC Lorac

I've had a horrid cold for the last few days and haven't felt up to working or serious reading. Obviously the answer was a Crime Classic from the BL, and I found one that came out almost a year ago and has managed to stay on the shelf unread until now. And what an absolute joy it has been.

Written in 1937, the novel concerns a small group of fashionable young people, most of whom live in and around Mayfair. We first meet them all gathered together, drinking cocktails in the house of Bruce and Sybilla Attleton. Bruce is a once-successful novelist, now dependent on his wife's income - she's a hugely successful actress and not at all a nice person. Also present are Elizabeth Leigh, aged twenty and Bruce's ward - she's very pretty (her appearance is often described as childlike) and has managed to stay remarkably pure an innocent considering the atmosphere she's been brought up in. A young journalist, Greville Roberts, wants to marry her but Bruce has vetoed it, thinking Greville not well enough established. Sybilla has a 'friend', Thomas Burroughs, a successful businessman who is also present, as is an old family friend Neil Rockingham. The conversation has turned lightheartedly to the subject of murder - if you'd killed somebody, how would you dispose of the corpse? The general consensus is to bury them somewhere and concrete them in.

Fast forward a few days and Bruce has disappeared. Sybilla has gone off somewhere, nobody knows where, possibly with Thomas, and her husband is nowhere to be found. Nobody worries at first about Bruce - he's known to have at least one girlfriend in London, possibly another in Paris. Then his suitcase turns up, with all his travel clothes in it and also his passport. And there's a very dodgy foreigner lurking around, known as Debrette, who wears thick-framed glasses and sports a black beard with a very startling white streak in it - he may or may not have been blackmailing Bruce. After an eventful few chapters a body turns up but it's been mutilated - no head or hands - so identification seems impossible. It's also been concealed in a way that recalls the lighthearted evening discussion. Could it be Bruce murdered by Debrette? or is it Debrette murdered by Bruce? 

There's lots of action in this enthralling novel, as suspicion (ours and that of the police) glides from person to person. I certainly didn't guess the identity of the perpetrator. But this is all made even more enjoyable by the wonderful period atmosphere Lorac conjures up - who could resist reading about the luxurious, self-indulgent lives of these wealthy socialites? here's Bruce, according to his butler:

He liked his comfort, sir. Good service, good food, a club, Turkish baths, swimming, fencing, motoring and all. [He] is a very pleasant gentleman to work for, appreciates good service, and is generous when he’s in funds, but if anything isn’t just so, he’ll not put up with it. If his linen sheets aren’t always the same quality, his bath water as hot as he likes it, his bath salts just so, he mentions it.

As for the sybaritic Sybilla, it's almost worth reading the novel for a glimpse of her ultra-fashionable taste in interior design - she has one room entirely decorated in silver, including the carpet, with just a few dashes of purple to match the vases of irises which are always on display in niches in the silver walls.

Lorac, whose real name was Edith Caroline Rivett, was a prolific and successful writer in her day. According to Martin Edwards' useful introduction this was not one of her more popular books, but it's hard to see why as I thought it remarkably good. Highly recommended even if you are in perfect health.

Woman Sitting

Yes here's someone neither reading nor writing nor indeed doing anything. But we can take it that she usually did plenty of both, because this painting, by Lewis Baumer (1870-1963)  is of the novelist Noel Streatfeild (1895-1986), whose celebrated works include the wonderful Ballet Shoes and countless other novels for both adults and children. Wikipedia says she was considered the plain one of the family but she doesn't look it here, when presumably she was quite young. Also according to Wikipedia Baumer was a well-known caricaturist, but he obviously had a nice line in portraits as well.

Woman Reading

This one is by Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), whose paintings have been on here before. though not (I think) this one. It was painted in 1905 and is called 'Madame Hessel en robe rouge lisant' (Mme H in a red dress reading). Nice.

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories

The British Library Classic Crime series has come up trumps in this year's run-up to Christmas - not that they don't always pull something out of the hat at this time of year, but this year's short story collection struck me as particularly good. Selected as always by the indefatigable Martin Edwards, the stories are by a mixture of well-known names - Baroness Orczy, Carter Dickson, Francis Durbridge, Cyril Hare, Julian Symonds - and some perhaps less enduring but equally talented, including BL Crime Classics favourites John Bude and E.C.R. Lorac.

There are eleven stories in all, of varying lengths, of which the title story, by Donald Stuart, is the longest. The story begins with a snowy train journey - Trevor Lowe, 'the well-known dramatist', is on his way to visit an old friend who lives in Cornwall. It is the 23rd of December. Lowe has invited his friend Inspector Shadgold of Scotland Yard, to join him on his visit. Changing trains, they find themselves joined in their carriage by a slender, pale girl whose clothes are respectable but a little shabby. No sooner is the train on its way than it grinds to a halt, the result of a heavy snowfall blo[cking the line. Lowe and Shadgold decide to get out and walk to the nearest village, but they haven't gone far when they encounter a bizarre sight - a dim figure on a bridge has managed to lasso the girl from the train and is attempting to haul her up onto the bridge. Our heroes manage to rescue her, and her attacker disappears into the snow. The little party make their way to the nearest village and manage to get rooms in the pub, which has the unwelcoming name of The Chained Man. But their troubles are only just beginning...

Among the shorter offerings are Cyril Hare's 'Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech', a story of blackmail and murder in a dysfunctional family; an apparently deserted manor house in the snow in 'Blind Man's Hood' by Carter Dickson, which contains a deeply disturbing moment:

She had been touching her cheek lightly with the fingers of the other hand. In doing so she touched the flesh at the corner of her lower eyelid, and accidentally drew down the corner of that eyelid -- which should have exposed the red part of the inner lid at the corner of that eye. It was not red. It was a sickly pale colour.

In actual fact this doesn't appear to have anything to do with the main plot, but just adds to the strange atmosphere in the house.

I could go on, but you get the general idea. If you want a present for anyone who loves crime, classic or otherwise, look no further - this will be much appreciated. I enjoyed every minute.

 

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Earlier this year I joined a newly formed book group which has been very enjoyable. There are only six of us, we meet once a month, and take it in turn to suggest books. It's been a bit of a mixed bag and I haven't enjoyed all the chosen books - the October choice was A Man Called Ove, which everyone else loved but which irritated the hell out of me, though its apparently been top of New York Times bestseller list since time immemorial. My own first choice didn't go down very well - it was The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which I'd absolutely loved but couldn't persuade others of its merits. This time round I had a fancy to re-read Alias Grace, which I'd read back in the 1990s when it first came out. When I suggested it I hadn't known that there was a Netflix version which two people had seen, and another two people said they'd tried and failed many times to read Atwood, though not this novel. So, despite enjoying it hugely myself, I was feeling quite apprehensive last week when we met to discuss it. I needn't have worried - everyone loved it.

As I'm sure you know, Alias Grace is set in the mid-19th century and based on the true story of a young Irish immigrant, Grace Marks, who was found guilty of the murder of her employer and his housekeeper/mistress. Her accomplice was hanged and Grace was also condemned to death, but her lawyer managed to get her verdict changed to life imprisonment. She spent some time in an asylum but the remainder of her imprisonment was in a Penitentiary where she became a trusted prisoner and was allowed to help around the house of the prison's Governor and his family. At the age of 45 she was pardoned and released, though history does not record what happened to her afterwards.

The great fascination of the story, both at the time and in the fiction, is the fact that the question of Grace's guilt or innocence has never been established and of course never will be. She was sixteen at the time of the murders, and had led an exemplary life working as a servant in various houses before ending up in her final position. But her fellow servant and accomplice claimed she had been the driving force behind the crimes. How would Atwood handle the story? Very skilfully is the answer. She created a character, a young doctor - Dr Simon Jordan - who has developed a fasciation with Grace, who he sees as possibly helping his research into criminal psychology. He arranges daily sessions with her at the Governor's house, during which she tells him her life story. Will the truth finally be revealed? No - because Grace claims, as she has always done, that she has no memory of the day of the murders. Simon arranged a session of hypnosis, attended by a number of interested parties, but the session develops in an unexpected and disturbing direction and no-one is any the wiser at the end of it.

I would say this is a perfect book for a reading group as it raises so many questions for discussion. Of course the biggest one is that of Grace's guilt or innocence. Most people seemed to dislike Grace and thought her guilty - I liked her and was rooting for her innocence. As for Simon Jordan, whose relationship with Grace comes to an abrupt end owing to developments in a furiously sexual relationship he has rather unwillingly entered into with his landlady, there was quite a lot of disapproval of his weakness in succumbing, though I thought it was understandable in the circumstances.

I was happy to discover from Atwood's Epilogue that she had adhered as much as possible to the known facts of the case, though naturally she had to invent a great deal of the detail. I wasn't entirely convinced by the last section of the novel in which we see Grace's life when she has been released - it seemed a little too happily coincidental, though the book does leave yet another question hanging in the air. 

Woman Reading in her Petticoat

Is she getting dressed in the morning or getting undressed at night? Either way the book - or maybe magazine - has distracted her. The painter is Edward Simmons (1852-1931), an American Impressionist. I'm a little bit surprised by the blue stockings for some reason.

Woman Reading

Painted by the French artist Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942). Born in Paris and more or less self taught, he became a celebrated portraitist - he painted Proust, James Joyce, Aubrey Beardsley, Violet Trefusis, Julia Stephen and many others. He also wrote two books about portrait painting, about which Walter Sickert said "he is liable to twist things he hears or doesn't into monstrous fibs". He made a nice job of this lady's beautiful skirt, anyway.

Sleep No More by PD James

It's no secret that I'm a great admirer of PD James, and have deeply regretted the fact that there are  no more of her excellent novels to look forward to. So what a treat to spot this, subtitled Six Murderous Tales, which has recently come out in paperback. These are stories which share the psychological perceptiveness we have come to expect from James  and generally have a golden age setting. Indeed the longest story in the book, 'The Murder of Santa Claus', takes place in a Cotswold manor,  'in the heyday of the cosy "whodunnits', the Christmas of 1939, the first Christmas of the war'. The narrator is a second-rank writer of detective fiction: 'I'm no HRF Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a PD James'. He's an old man now, but tells the story of something that happened in his youth. As a sixteen-year-old he has been invited to spend Christmas with Victor Mickledore, a step-uncle who he hardly knows, and is to be the only young guest in the small house party. The other guests are an elderly couple, the Turvilles, previous owners of the manor, a distant relative and famous amateur pilot, and a well-known actress. On Christmas Eve a threatening message is delivered to Mickledore, in the form of a cracker containing a poem: 'Merry Christmas Mickledore/Go to bed and sleep no more./ Take this charm and hold it fast/This nights sleep shall be your last./Christmas bells ring merrily;/Bells of hell shall ring for thee'. Determined to ignore this ominous message, the party continues with games and dancing till bedtime. Needless to say, Mickledore is discovered dead in his bed the following morning. The solution takes time to unfold, and has a satisfactorily moral lesson contained in it.

Another Christmas is spent in another small manor house by another teenage schoolboy in 'The Yo Yo'. This time, on the long car journey to his grandmother's house, the boy witnesses a murder. But the circumstances are such that he has to keep quiet about it - the yo yo is given to him by the perpetrator in return for his silence. Now an old man, the narrator wonders what his heir will make of it being among his possessions: 'will he briefly wonder what happy childhood memory made an old man so reluctant to throw it away?'

'The Girl Who Loved Graveyards' starts in the summer of 1956, when an orphaned girl of ten is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in East London. It's a loveless childhood, and her only pleasure is visiting the old Victorian graveyard, 'a place of delight and mystery, her delight and her solace'. We follow her into young adulthood, learn that she did once have a relationship with her father though he is now in prison - and at last, in the final paragraph, learn the disturbing details of her own backstory.

I could go on, but you get the general idea. Each story is satisfyingly twisted, and each has a motive of revenge at its heart. I'm not generally a great reader of short stories, but I absolutely raced through the whole volume, loving every minute. This would be a perfect Christmas present for anyone who loves crime, or PD James, or just thoroughly good writing.