1946 detective fiction; third of Brand's novels of Inspector Cockrill.
Sir Richard's grandchildren visit his country house in the summer of
1944 as flying-bombs descend on London; he decides to disinherit them
all, goes to spend the night in the lodge dedicated to the memory of
his deceased first wife, and is found dead in the morning. US vt The
Crooked Wreath.
So we have Philip, the doctor, married to Ellen and with a baby,
but having an affair with his cousin Claire, the journalist; we have
Peta, the VAD nurse and heir-presumptive, in love with the family
solicitor but made so nervous by his presence that she plays up
idiotically; we have Edward, grandson of Sir Richard's second wife,
who was always "delicate" but now spends his time seeing psychiatrists
and pretending to be decorously mad to get attention. Then there's
Bella, said second wife (and former mistress), and the Broughs, all
that's left of the garden staff now that the war's taken all the
younger men.
They're all, frankly, a pretty hateful bunch. Peta's probably the most
sympathetic, but they each have their moments of horrible-ness. Even
the house is ghastly.
It had been a beautiful house in its day and the hall and principal
rooms still wore the distinction of their Georgian elegance; but it
had been much added to, and on either side of its plain brick front
sprawled whole wings of glass-houses, squash-courts, orangeries and
a swimming bath, with a nightmare of marble terraces and balconies.
[…] Serafita's influence had clotted the grounds with little bowers
and temples, each quite charming in itself, but utterly ruining the
character of the park; and on either side of the gates stood two of
them, highly ornamental lodges in pseudo-Grecian style. In one of
these tiny houses lived Brough, the gardener and his wife; and in
the other, Serafita had died.
As for the plot, one suspects that Brand was trying to pep things up a
bit: the first murder is constrained in time by Brough's sanding of
the paths to the lodge where Sir Richard was spending the night, since
they're free of footprints in the morning, and the second is a
locked-room mystery. This works, but as usual it's mostly a novel of
character and motivation.
"[…] they've had a rotten time up in London for the past few weeks
with the flying-bombs and all that. I mean, it's enough to make them
all a bit edgy—you must make allowances," said Stephen, as steady as
a rock after the "rough time" in Normandy.
Cockrill himself mostly sits back and observes, occasionally tossing
in a brand to get the family to flare up at each other; partly that's
his style anyway, but partly I think he's frustrated that they just
won't take anything seriously. (Maybe I'm reading too much into it;
I was similarly frustrated.)
Grandfather was dead, who had been so splendid in his benevolent
autocracy; and all his family could think about was who had killed
him and why and by what means. The world had gone mad about them,
there was no longer any room for ordinary grief and tenderness,
remorse and regret. Grandfather dead, was forgotten in Sir Richard
March, murdered. It was an arid and terrible thing to have no room
left for sorrow.
While everyone has at least occasional sympathy about them, there are
one or two lovely extremes of narratorial bitchiness.
Ellen […] thought with deep bitterness that it was just like Claire
to come in, cool and beautiful, from the garden, looking all
soulful, and sweep Philip away from the horridness and drudgery
which she, Ellen, had rightly kept him to; thus deliberately drawing
attention to her own crumpled hot yellow linen, and the hardness of
her heart. In this she did an injustice to Claire who looked only
inwards and reflected very little upon the effect of her dealings on
other people.
The ending is a strange one: there's something approximating a
traditional revelation, but it's interrupted by a flying-bomb hitting
the house, followed by an unexpected action sequence. This does its job in
making sure the murderer is safely dead (and Cockrill makes sure that
nobody gets too sentimental about the killer), but it's a wrenching
change of pace into a thriller rather than a mystery. It doesn't quite
work to cap off the story, but it does a very good job of pointing out
that the old conventions just don't apply any more.
"Time for a glass of sherry," said Sir Richard, with the naïve pride
of one who in 1944 still has Amontillado to offer.
Followed by Death of Jezebel.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.