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.
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