1980 mystery. Virginia is staying in the country with some friends,
but when her estranged husband Felix turns up there's bound to be
trouble…
It's an interesting secondary source of tension: there's a double
murder and a limited pool of suspects, but there's also the ongoing
question of what Felix is up to and what he'll do next. We're assured
that there's no malice in him, but he's at best a fabulator and casual
thief, and nothing he says can be trusted.
Meanwhile, the corpse of the first victim vanishes while the
discoverer is calling for help. Everyone seems to be planning to
marry, or already be married to, everyone else. Everyone has a dark
secret.
By this point in her writing career, Ferrars has come to terms with
the way that normal women are not prone to casual hysterics, so when
someone does indulge it it's worthy of note and possibly relevant to
the plot. But what I think works best here is the way Virginia,
first-person narrator, comes to suspect everyone, because even the
nicest people can start to seem odd as the tension rises.
In style this could easily have worked as a pre-war mystery with only
minor changes, but Ferrars carries it off well, and I enjoy the
additional complication that Felix represents.
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