BTLS has been in Italy (again)

 

The Case of Colonel Marchand - E C R Lorac

Firstly - quick warning - this book is not widely available. I utilised the British Library again to get my paws on a copy. 

It's a shame because I really enjoyed it, even though (perhaps because) there was nothing incredibly innovative or original about it.

Following on directly from A Greenwell Mystery by the same author, I was relieved to get a relatively straightforward murder mystery with a reasonably straightforward cast of characters.

First of those is Colonel Marchand, merry if maturing bachelor of old London town twixt the wars. 

Irritatingly as I read this book a little while back I can't actually remember if we ever see the Colonel alive. What I do know however is that the Colonel has invited a young lady to tea, and the servants are below stairs discussing what a nice young lady she is and how often she has visited him now, and should such a nice young lady really be seeing the Colonel, who at the age of 50 has been attractive to women all his adult life and knows it. 

All this conversation over and around a game of bridge, which passes the time until the bell is rung for the butler to take away the tea things (I admit to being a little surprised by this. I have always associated bridge with little baize card tables and cocktails or sherry up in the drawing room, not servants round a kitchen table). 

At about 6.30 though the butler (Gibbs) starts to think it odd that the bell hasn't been rung, and off he goes upstairs on his own initiative, finding the lady gone and the Colonel dead.  

Then, after some tangles where the secretary and the dead man's nephew go all gentlemanly and refuse to share the name of the Colonel's tea time companion with our old friend MacDonald of the Yard, and he points out they're doing her no favours but they still don't budge, she reads about the case in the paper and very sensibly comes forward of her own accord (making them look even sillier than they already did but, well, early 1930s, lingering Victorian chivalry, you know the drill).

It struck me at this point in the book how hard it would be to get that element right if you set a book in the era. A young woman could live independently (as this one does) travel across the globe (she's Australian) have an occupation (she's a musician) and yet there this lingering sensibility about needing to protect her in this hugely unhelpful way.  

Just as complex as what women themselves understood (or didn't understand) about their relationships with men - also illustrated rather nicely in this case because Karin (her name is Karin) has to explain to MacDonald that she had an on-off friendship with the dead man, refusing and shying away whenever he tried for anything more, but responding when he contacted her again because she really did like him and enjoyed his company and they had things like music in common. 

Again this feels very much of it's time. To a modern mind it's so obvious the Colonel was never going to get over it and be friends, and a Victorian miss would of course be chaperoned, but Karin is kind of caught in the middle of those two cultures and really rather naïve.   

As she tells it to MacDonald she only properly understood Marchand was serious when, on the afternoon of his murder, he proposed to her over the tea things, presenting her with his grandmother's pearls and an engagement ring, and becoming terribly hurt and shocked when she declined him (he being about as good at listening to what the other person is actually saying as she is, apparently, but again it makes perfect sense in it's era - he's been successful with the ladies before, is a good catch financially speaking, and perhaps doesn't get that things have changed and women who say no aren't just holding out for marriage.). 

Anyway, appalled at what she had done and not knowing how to fix it, Karin simply ran out to the hall, grabbed her things and left. 

Thus we have a motive and also a mystery. Marchand was not killed in the tea or cakes, he did not take patent medicines and yet he was poisoned. And although the jewellery boxes are still there the ring and pearls are gone... 

Anyway, really enjoyed this one. Hopefully if not republished it will be available in the public domain fairly shortly as I believe copyright should expire in 2028 in the UK and a little later elsewhere. 

Canal Walk - quick catch up and Wolverton to Fenny Stratford

I've done a few more sections of the Grand Union Canal since I last posted about it. Some hasn't changed much since I last did it over 10 years ago. Some seems to be much busier (Stoke Buerne, in particular, had a small museum, a decent size café, boat rides and ice cream), or far more developed - walking around the Braunston tunnel (you can't walk through) was better signposted, and the path led through an open park with landscaped grass. 

I have done a bit more wandering this time - checked out Rugby, which felt like a town of two halves - lovely thatched cottages seen from the bus, well kept bits and then the shopping centre and the part near the station where there is clearly less money (found a good chip shop though). 

Rugby Station, February

There are still long stretches of not very much. 

Busier though, the more it moves south. Locks and villages and new flats. Up market pubs where it's table service and feels a bit awkward just asking for crisps and cider (although the staff have been consistently fine about it) and little local ones with cheese rolls and Kitkats on the bar because they can't get kitchen staff. 

As part of exploring more off the canal I also visited the library and small museum at Rugby and nosed around a few churches. I've read quite a lot of plaques and notices about Bletchley Park and how people were billeted around and the buses they took, and others about long-gone railways and factories. 

In one eye and out the other, some of it, but it's giving me a sense of the place I didn't get last time. 

Then there are big things - like the huge Milton Keynes park and fun fair I realised I was skirting yesterday and decided to go and look at.  

Fenny Stratford, where I finished yesterday, is still served by the railway - a small train that shuttles back and forth on the same tracks between Bedford and Bletchley. So my plan is to go to Bletchley, actually have a wander there first (although probably not visit Bletchley Park as that feels like a whole day thing) and then head to Fenny Stratford and continue the walk. 

Catch Up Post on Crime Reviews

Anthony Berkeley - Jumping Jenny and Not to be Taken

It's a little while since I read these books now, but my main take away from both was how we are introduced to intelligent characters – not just in their own estimation but by the estimation of those around them, and also borne out in other areas of their lives - and they then proceed to do incredibly stupid things. Monumentally stupid things. Things you can’t imagine anyone doing.

For example, in Jumping Jenny (having decided the victim was thoroughly unlikeable and whoever killed her has done a public service), our sleuth (and he is a sleuth so absolutely should know better) then proceeds to run around covering things up and moving chairs and generally giving the impression either he is guilty or someone else in the household is. 

Actually, the constant dinging in the reader’s ear about how unlikeable the victim was is also an issue. It’s true she is irritating, and I certainly wouldn’t care to be married to her either, but there is really something quite pathetic in her need to be the centre of attention, and drink as much as she does. It all seemed to me more likely due to low self esteem than any of the more judgemental pseudo-psychological reasons given here (incidentally, this reminded me of the modern habit of people who know little about mental health ‘diagnosing’ ADHD or autistic traits in strangers. You can just imagine this scenario in a modern setting, with everyone blaming ADHD or a personality disorder, and not giving a thought to why this woman is so unhappy and attention seeking).  

There is also something very unpleasant about the detective’s eagerness to meet her and then reaction against her, as if it’s her fault she doesn’t live up to the picture he apparently had in his head, and the people at the party who keep on telling him how awful she is, which she surely must be aware is happening, and which must be making it all so much worse. 

Of course, even if she was a monster it would be no excuse for a conspiracy to cover up murder – but I’m letting Berkeley off that one as I think I can detect a kind of macabre humour that just didn’t quite land for me, and became increasingly convoluted and therefore boring. It may work much better for someone else.

Pluses are that the set up is strong – a Halloween party with everyone dressed as famous murderers and a gallows set up on the roof with two male and one female cadaver, and the kind of amicably divorced ex-couple that I assume would be rare at the time (1933) but clearly not non-existent.

 

With Not to be Taken (1938) the book felt a lot tighter, and I found I could forgive a lot because I liked the narrator.

It starts, more or less, with one of those discussions about eugenics that seem to have been in the zeitgeist in the 30s and 40s – there’s one in Curtain, and it comes up in Gladys Mitchell too. I suspect there was a reaction against this sort of thing after WW2 (the TV production of Curtain, while excellent, is set after the war, and this discussion struck a false note for me as it would no longer be a purely speculative discussion and you'd expect some reference to the fact).

I also enjoyed the sibling relationship between the doctor and his sister - although I was a bit boggled that the dispensing was generally done by the sister, who however talented, is not qualified and presumably has taken no oath (and all the neighbours are apparently fine with this and after there is a poisoning, and it's explained in court, the court are all fine with it too).

Impossible to tell, nearly 90 years later, whether that would be realistic. 

I've also been reading a lot of Catherine Aird. She's someone who has been on my radar since I read about her in, I think, one of Martin Edwards' books, but who I didn't get to until after her death in December last year. The series starts with The Religious Body in 1966, which is a really strong start - the murder of a nun in a convent, our police detective out of his comfort zone, the nuns irritatingly determined to neither help nor hinder. I've been dipping in and out of the series after that, and haven't yet found one I didn't like, although I did eventually gorge myself to the point the humour became repetitive. That's a me problem - these books were not meant to be read in quick succession. 

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand was another early summer read. The only note I've made on this book is that murderers are by nature horrible, but the murderer in this book is particularly nasty. I can't really say much more without spoiling it. A great start, with the agony aunt in a women's magazine going off to visit one of her correspondents essentially on a whim, and then finding, when she gets there, that there's no such person.

Or at least, that's what she's told...

 

Death Under Sail, by C P Snow was apparently his first ever book and only ever murder mystery. Of course he was a very popular writer of both fiction and non fiction (I seem to remember him being one of the authors mentioned in Howards End is on the Landing as not being much read anymore). 

This is a tidy little story, although at first my brain kept defaulting to thinking it was written in the 70s not the 30s, I think partly because of the 'cover' (it's an ebook) and partly because of the set up with two young men and their girlfriends or fiancees and two older chaps all on holiday sharing a boat, and the casual way even the oldest member of the party takes it.

Of course the cabins are segregated – but when the police arrive one young woman is in a cabin on her boyfriend's lap and people are surprised the police officer is a little shocked.

Later, when they all have to move off the boat and into a friend's house, the heavy disapproval of the only servant (and the fact there is a servant) rooted it much more firmly in it's time. 

Other crime reading has included some George Bellairs (Death of a Tin God got a tiny bit involved, lots of moving from France to Ireland and back out to the Isle of Man). Margery Allingham, Georgette Heyer and Richard Hull.  I seem to remember all being enjoyable, but none have really stuck. 

BTLS has been in Italy

 

The Greenwell Mystery - E C R Lorac

I would normally start a review like this with the mild disclaimer that I’m not a huge fan of thrillers, so I might be missing some of the enjoyment others would find in this book.

That said, I don’t think the issues I had with this one are going to be unique to me. Mostly, frankly, it’s a question of pace. There is so, so much talking, even for a book over 90 years old. Too many cases of men sitting down over a drink or a smoke and describing their activity in far too many words when it would be better for the author to describe the action and leave the conversation as ‘X told X what had happened and the address of the house they had finally followed him to…’

It opens promisingly. A talented young scientist (Campbell) has been working on a way to make fuel more efficient. If successful it will of course be worth a fortune.

The very night Campbell makes a breakthrough he disappears. Supposedly the owner of the business, Blakely, had rung him and invited him to his country place that evening, and all excited to show his mentor his work, Campbell packed up his papers (luckily not quite all of them) and went. 

But that invitation wasn’t from Blakely. 

Blakely believes it’s kidnapping, and calls in Scotland Yard to get MacDonald on the case, but of course all through our sleuths have to consider the possibility that it's a blind, that Campbell always meant to run off to the highest bidder as soon as his work was complete. 

There are good bits – the girlfriend fails to fall into the fairly standard trap of someone pretending to be Campbell’s friend and trying to kidnap her, and turns the tables rather nicely. Campbell’s ingenious use of a cat to get a message out. 

There's no lack of action - stake outs and break ins and a pilot who flies MacDonald across the country to stage an emergency landing on someone’s country estate (as with other earlier Loracs I have read MacDonald still has a bit of gentleman sleuth about him, and has some posh friends).

But still there is so much talking, and often in such a long winded way, that the plot just stagnates. I also felt cross that a very, very significant telephone call happened off the page, which meant that the reader didn’t know what the main sleuths knew.

That call is between MacDonald and Blakely, which leads to my other whinge. Throughout the book Blakely remains one of the main sleuths, and however much he protests he believes in Campbell’s innocence and however avuncular Lorac makes him every time he appears,  I can’t help feeling he has a vested interest and shouldn’t be involved in the investigation at all.  

Finally, as well I think I had a problem with stakes. Frankly, I didn't see enough of Campbell to feel worried about the possible kidnapping. I did feel some engagement with the brother and sister who are his girlfriend and friend, but they seemed to fade out after a bit and only came in again at the end.

As far as the industrial espionage element went I just didn’t care (I mean, so what if one rich person might end up not as rich as he expected, and another rich person might be better off?), and every time it came up in the text I had to resist the urge to skip forward.

I should add that I read this in the British Library reading rooms, as copies of the book are quite rare. It’s not one that’s been republished yet (only 3 years from falling out of copyright in the UK though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was fairly shortly) and I can only see a few reviews online.

All are more positive than mine.   

Birmingham to Calias Lane (via the Canal)

Strictly speaking this is two buildings in Birmingham, one in Leamington Spa and a stretch of canal that happened to be nicely framed by a tree. I've walked three stages of the canal now, and the next (Calias Lane to Long Buckby) gets me past the long stretch without a train station, and as the days are getting shorter as well it should all become much more manageable without my having to be too hot on timings or stop overnight. I started in February, so it was a bit of a muddy one but thankfully no actual rain.  

I've been attending an art class as well. Oil painting, which is incredibly messy (I always manage to get paint on my face and fingers) but good fun. It's an evening class and the teacher keeps saying it's not long enough to paint in really, but I think most of us don't expect to turn out a Rembrandt - just learn some more techniques and restrict the mess to somewhere that doesn't have a carpet. 

Anyway this is the painting I'm happiest with so far.