RogerBW's Blog

The Beckoning Lady, Margery Allingham 20 June 2017

1955 classic English detective fiction; fifteenth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. Campion's friends and country neighbours the Cassands are having their annual party; but three corpses will go some way towards spoiling the fun.

The first is that of Uncle William, who was a suspect and a motivating force in earlier books (Police at the Funeral and Dancers in Mourning); here, it seems, he may have taken one of the two remaining roles available in such a drama, and become the victim. Matters escalate with the death of an Inland Revenue official (except he isn't exactly) and someone else. Meanwhile the Cassands' Midsummer Eve party at their house, the Beckoning Lady, must go on.

Indeed, there's rather more party planning than there is investigation here, with Local Characters ranging from the consciously eccentric to the unconsciously ditto. Not to mention that Charlie Luke, rising young Detective Inspector, is busily having a passion for someone whom everyone regards as Entirely Unsuitable for him.

The wars had wiped out the Glebe line and the attendant revolutions the last of their fortune. Somewhere in the middle, all the great purposes for which they had bred themselves so carefully appeared to have gone too. Poor wretched girl, she had been born too late, and had arrived, meticulously turned out, for a party which had been over for some time. He understood from the Revver that as a somewhat desperate measure she had been given five years in the W.R.N.S. but had emerged from the experience just exactly the same as when she had enlisted. Looking at her, Mr Campion was no more surprised than if he had heard that two seasons with the Pytchley foxhounds had left an Afghan practically unchanged.

We're out of London and the fogs, but this is now a world of surtax and spiralling liabilities, and the remains of what used to be the aristocracy (and, one may suspect, Allingham herself) finding themselves suddenly helpless in the face of the culture of the official.

Mr Campion resumed his spectacles. 'It must be something to do with officialdom,' he said. 'Everything in the free world is, today. It'll pass, but at the moment we're in the midst of it. I know. I've lived through the Jazz Age, the Age of Appeasement, the Battle Age. Now it's the Age of the Official. By the law of averages we ought to move on to something more cheerful next time.'

There may be some dancing on the edge of the grave here, but at least Allingham's heroes still know how to enjoy themselves. There's a musical instrument apparently developed as a way to use up war-surplus perspex…

There have been many attempts to describe the glübalübalum and even the one submitted to the Patents Office was not particularly successful. As Tonker had pointed out, it was very large. It was also very simple, being in effect a very long tube with an immense horn at one end and a cork at the other. In between there were, so to speak, digressions. The newspaper which is called by its detractors the Daily Bibful had once employed a psychiatrist to explain to its readers the mechanics of their own reactions to it, but the articles were not convincing. It was only at Oxford that it was noted that the position of a person playing the glübalübalum approximated very closely to the attitude of the central figure of the Laocoön. Children, on the other hand, observed at once that its true charm was that it had obviously got out of hand.

and a pleasing pot at the "artistic temperament":

'Artist!' Luke spoke with withering contempt. 'People talk about artists as if they went about in flying saucers. The only artists I've ever met were just like me only more so.

Quite a few old friends show up here, including Campion's inamorata from The Case of the Late Pig:

'It always seems fine,' said Mr Campion, smiling fondly at her because he was so grateful that she had not married him. 'And that man is your father's Superintendent.'

'Oh well then—' She was a little pettish because she knew quite well what he was thinking, and although she was very fond of her husband, who was an even vaguer edition of the same type, she held it ungallant of him to be happy too.

I think this book must be considered mostly for the Campion fan, or at least for someone who's already read a few of the earlier books. The case is large and hard to keep distinct (some but not all editions include dramatis personae), and many names are thrown at the reader at the start of the book without any real sense of who's going to be a significant character and who, like "Genappe", is going to be a mere background presence. More seriously for the detective-fiction reader, the mystery is developed very slowly, and wrapped up rather quickly in a slightly unsatisfactory manner. On the good side, there's plenty of a domestic Campion with wife and son playing significant parts, and a decent cultural feel of the 1950s even if most of the people here would rather be pre-war.

Followed by Hide My Eyes.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: The Tiger in the Smoke | Series: Albert Campion | Next in series: Hide My Eyes

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.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 essen 2024 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1