1955 classic English detective fiction; eighteenth of Marsh's novels
of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The quiet village of Swevenings has seen
two deaths recently: Sir Harold Lacklander of the Foreign Service died
of old age and heart failure, leaving his memoirs to his good friend
and neighbour Colonel Cartarette to edit and publish. But now
someone's stove the Colonel's head in.
After the foreign misstep of Spinsters in Jeopardy, this is a
much more conventional country-house murder story. It's clear in the
first chapter that there is something discreditable in Sir Harold's
memoir, something that'll reflect poorly even on his son and grandson.
And the grandson, a doctor, is wooing the Colonel's daughter, which
adds extra complication. And then there are the neighbours along the
road between the two houses, the toxophilite alcoholic and the rather
strange cat-fancier. And the district nurse, who calls things as she
sees them (and discovers the body). And of course there's the
Colonel's second wife… and here things start to deviate from the
script. Kitty Cartarette is the thing that's obviously out of place in
this rural setting.
Lady Lacklander in the course of a long life spent in many embassies
had encountered every kind of eccentricity in female attire and was
pretty well informed as to the predatory tactics of women whom, in
the Far East, she had been wont to describe as "light cruisers."
She has a Past, and she seems to be getting involved with George
Cartarette even before her husband is killed. So much, so stock
character.
She told him repeatedly how chivalrous he was and so cast a glow of
knight-errantry over impulses that are not usually seen in that
light. She allowed him only the most meagre rewards, doling out the
lesser stimulants of courtship in positively homeopathic doses.
But she has a streak of realism, and that's where she breaks out of
the mould.
She looked up at Rose. "O.K., Rose," she said. "Not to fuss. I'll
make out. I wasn't expecting anything. My sort," she added
obscurely, "don't."
Everyone assumes she's a Bad Person because of the sort of life she's
led; but that doesn't necessarily make her a Bad Person in other
respects, and being willing to give house-room to this idea shows a
remarkably liberal attitude in a writer who (like most authors of
mysteries, I suspect) mostly tends to the conventional and
conservative.
Of course, the Colonel is done in, and a huge and famous trout – the
"Old 'Un" that all the locals have been trying to catch for years –
left next to his body. (The temptation to say whether this is a red
herring is almost irresistible, and Marsh does not quite resist it.)
Alleyn is called in, bringing with him Fox and Bailey, and has to go
through the usual routine, including liaising with the local force.
"Did you form any opinion at all, Oliphant?" Alleyn asked. This is
the most tactful remark a C.I.D. man can make to a county officer,
and Oliphant coruscated under its influence.
The setting feels dated; there are some references to Nazis, and some
of the characters were in Singapore before the War, but it would take
only very minor surgery to set this in the 1920s or 1930s, where it
would all seem rather more plausible. I don't find that a bad thing,
because I'm reading all these books as historical documents anyway,
but I can see that contemporary readers might have been disconcerted.
The conclusion, involving the identity of the murderer, was gravely
disappointing to me; it's reasonably consistent and so on, but it
seemed like a drearily conventional answer, with the interests of
justice most definitely not served.
In spite of all this the book mostly works. Followed by Off With His
Head.
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.