1934 classic English detective fiction; sixth of Allingham's novels of
Albert Campion. The great artist John Lafcadio left twelve final
paintings, to be shown one per year after his death. At the unveiling
of the eighth, a young artist is fatally stabbed with a pair of
decorative scissors.
The assassination of another by any person of reasonable caution
must, in a civilized world, tend to be a private affair.
I'm starting to think that Allingham just didn't have it in her to
write a conventional mystery story. Here the setup seems fairly
normal, except for a paucity of clues, complete with blatantly false
confession and dark motives round every corner; but after the second
killing, Campion announces that he's quite sure who the murderer is,
he just can't make a case. The remainder of the book is an examination
of how the murderer can be caught and indeed the motives for his
actions; and, at that, Campion fails to spot what's going on when he
offers himself up as a fresh target, or even to bring conclusive proof
of the murders.
There's subtlety here too: that young artist married his impossibly
beautiful but ugly-minded model to get her into England, and proposed
a ménage a trois with his former fiancée, Lafcadio's granddaughter;
and she refused, not on moral grounds, but because she thought his
recent art was commercial dross as opposed to the good stuff he'd been
doing when she met him. The household consists of Lafcadio's widow,
said granddaughter, and two elderly former models and thus presumed
mistresses; but they get on with life under the shadow of Lafcadio's
ghost, even when they intensely dislike each other, because they have
that memory in common and nobody else does.
There's also a sideswipe at other amateur heroes of the day, and I
can't help seeing Dornford Yates and his kin as the target of this:
The fact remains, of course, that the people who say to themselves,
"There is real danger here and I think it had better confront me
rather than this helpless soul before me," are roughly divided into
three groups. There are the relatives, and it is extraordinary how
the oft-derided blood-tie decides the issue, who, moved by that
cross between affection and duty, perform incredible feats of
self-sacrifice.
Then there are those misguided folk, half hero, half busybody, who
leap into danger as if it were the elixir of life.
And finally there is a small group of mortals who are moved partly
by pity and partly by a passionate horror of seeing tragedy slowly
unfolded before their eyes and who act principally through a desire
to bring things to a head and get the play over, at whatever cost.
Mr Campion belonged to the last category.
Lugg and his leavening of humour are absent again, and indeed this is
a fairly grim book throughout, with its focus on death and decay and
might-have-beens from the Gay Nineties. The villain is especially well
drawn, and Allingham does a good job of showing how traits that many
would consider admirable can, by slight exaggeration, push someone to
cunning murder. There's a certain amount of Police at the Funeral
here, with cunning and subtle methods of murder – and with characters
who are simply unpleasant, even if not actually guilty of anything.
A strange but rewarding book. Followed by Flowers for the Judge.
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