RogerBW's Blog

1971 mystery, tenth in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. Recent widow Jane Weston goes to live in a small Swiss village; her housekeeper is accused of murdering her unfaithful husband, and Jane's evidence helps to get her convicted. Then the Tibbetts turn up to visit…

This is a story told from multiple viewpoints, the first time Moyes has done one of these – and it works, even as it flirts with unreliable narration. Each of the narrators, Jane herself, Emmy Tibbett, and Sylvie Claudet, whom Jane runs into at a ski class but who turns out to be the wife of an up-and-coming French politician, tells things in their own way and with their own biases, though never to the extent of actual falsehood – and we even get their impressions of each other.

Of course we get the usual biases of the time, with Tibbett clearly regarding a married couple who don't share a surname as a bit dodgy at best, and probably dissolute. But I suspect Moyes herself had less of a problem with this than her characters do; the narrative appears at first to be dealing with the lifestyles of drug-addled celebrities, then takes a much darker turn, with a strong suggestion that, whatever someone has done, the rich will always regard closing ranks to outsiders as far more important than justice.

There is perhaps a bit of a slow start, establishing various personalities of the village, and much of this ends up being irrelevant. From the return of the Tibbetts things pick up a bit, in part because rather than experience things happening gradually, Henry arrives suddenly in the unfortunate situation, and his instinct for justice is aroused.

The multiple narratives allow for even more impressions of people than usual, and that's Moyes' real strength: yes, there's a gesture towards a puzzle of timetables and travel, but the point of this story is less who could have done the deed and more who would have, who was the sort of person who would see murder as the best solution to their problems.

I continue to regard Moyes as a forgotten treasure of English mystery fiction.