A book for Patricia Wentworth Day: The Blind Side

I was trying to decide what to read next when I realized that Patricia Wentworth's day was coming up on Jane's Birthday Book of Underappreciated Lady Authors. I have a couple of the Miss Silver books left, among the last published. But I chose this one instead, from 1939. The cover of my Dean Street Press edition labels it "An Ernest Lamb Mystery." Inspector Lamb of Scotland Yard features in many of the Miss Silver books, generally in need of her wisdom and insight to solve the case, no matter how much he resists. He is usually paired with Detective Sergent Frank Abbott, a former pupil of Miss Silver's who has no hesitation in asking for her help or following her direction. As Jane commented once, how can they solve crimes without her? As it turns out, in this book at least, while Scotland Yard investigates a crime, it's the other characters who actually solve it for them - so par for the course.

The story opens up on a Victorian note, with a large house in Chelsea (re-made into flats) and four generations of the Craddock family who give the house its name. I made a family tree to keep them straight, only to find one in the book itself, to clear up Inspector Lamb's confusion. The current owner of the house, Ross Craddock, is shown to be a villain from the start. He is in the process of evicting his elderly cousin Lucinda from her flat next to his, just weeks after her sister Maud's death. He is also pursuing a young cousin (and Lucy's niece), Mavis Grey, to Lucy's distress. Lucy is persuaded to go away on a cruise, to recover after caring for her sister, and yet another cousin, Lee Fenton, comes to stay in her flat. Still another cousin, Peter Renshaw, is staying in the late Maud's flat, on the other side of Ross's, to deal with her estate. Most of the other residents are off on holiday, but the house's porter Rush is in residence in the basement with his bed-ridden wife, and a Miss Bingham is at home in the flat above Maud's. The daily cleaner Mrs. Green also comes in and out, moaning about her bad turns and hinting that a bit of brandy is just the thing to set her up again.

One hot evening, Peter meets Ross and Mavis at a nightclub. Later that night, he hears a crash in Ross's flat and finds Mavis fleeing from him, her dress torn. She has clipped Ross over the head with a decanter to escape, leaving him covered in blood. Peter gallantly allows her to sleep in Maud's bed, while he takes the uncomfortable sofa. He wakes to find that she has slipped out, claiming it's to look for her bag. She is trying to distract him from the blood on her dress, which wasn't there before. Over in the night, Lee wakes up in Lucy's bed to find her feet and nightgown red with blood, and a trail of bloody footprints leading to Ross's door.She immediately washes away all traces of the blood that she can reach. But in the morning, when Ross's man arrives to find him dead, shot through the head, she realizes her prints lead right up to the body.

All of this takes place in the first 50 pages - quite an elaborate set-up for the murder. When Inspector Lamb and DS Abbott arrive, the various members of the family do everything they can to confuse the case by concealing evidence and making ambiguous statements. Peter is trying to protect Lee, who has confessed her bloody state to him, and Mavis is out for herself. It turns out that Miss Bingham was creeping around the house in the middle of the night, and she has important information for the police. And then Mrs. Green calls in to say that she too has something vital to tell. (In Patricia Wentworth's stories, a character who hints that she knows something is usually doomed to be murdered before she can Reveal All.)

This story is packed with red herrings and blind alleys. The Scotland Yard detectives are headed in completely the wrong direction (as usual) when Peter finds the crucial evidence to solve the crime. I had an inkling of who the murderer might be, but I couldn't figure out how it was carried out. Everything is explained in detail in a death-bed confession (one I found a bit unlikely in the circumstances). I did enjoy this book, and I have another of the "Ernest Lamb" books on the TBR stacks, Pursuit of a Parcel from 1942 (war-time espionage, according to the cover blurb). Frank Abbott was rather subdued in this one, perhaps missing Miss Silver.

When I first discovered Patricia Wentworth, her books were hard to find, at least in the U.S. Now many have been re-issued, both the Miss Silver and the stand-alone books. I'm so glad that her books are more easily available, and I hope that more people come to appreciate her classic Golden Age stories. Thanks to Jane for celebrating her! Now I'm off to see what other people have been reading.

Mr. Zero, by Patricia Wentworth

It is a truth universally acknowledged that going to a book signing always results in the purchase of more books. At least that is my experience at Murder by the Book. I get there well ahead of time, and then I wander through the shelves. Each visit, I check for new releases in the British Library Crime Classics series. I also check for Patricia Wentworth's books. There are some lovely new re-issues of the Miss Silver books, which I've managed to resist while I have my battered reading copies. The Dean Street Press re-issues of the stand-alone books, the ones without Miss Silver, are a different matter. Here, though, I have become selective. I've found that the earlier books, from the 1920s, are entertaining enough but sometimes a little thin for my tastes, sometimes verging on the silly. I think the books from the later 1930s and the 1940s are the best. This week I found two from 1938, Mr. Zero and Run! - the exclamation point in the title gives that one some urgency.

When I felt like a break from my recent science fiction diet, I chose Mr. Zero, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. As much as I enjoy the period illustrations on the DSP editions, though, they don't usually relate to the book itself. The cover for this one is particularly misleading:

At no point does a character lounge around provocatively en deshabille, and to my mind that image looks more like the 1920s than a woman in 1938.

The "Mr. Zero" of the title is a blackmailer. His victim Sylvia Colesborough has lost £500 at cards and cannot confess the loss to her husband, who has forbidden her to play for money. Mr. Zero offers to make good her loss, on the condition that she steal a document from the Home Secretary during a weekend house party. Sylvia complies, but she is then met with a second demand, to extract more documents - from her own husband. At this point she panics, and with her sister enlists the reluctant help of their old school friend Gay Hardwicke. When Gay tries to confront the blackmailer, she walks instead on Sylvia holding a gun next to a dead body. But it is her escort Algy Sommers, a secretary to the Home Secretary, who becomes the prime suspect.

This is quite an exciting story, with a neat twist at the end. I guessed the identity of one of the villains, mainly because there was such a small cast to choose from, but I didn't expect the second to pop up. I must say that I have rarely met a stupider character than Sylvia Colesborough. Though fun to read about, she infuriated most of the others in the book. At one point the Chief Constable "Colonel Anstruther was given up to whole-hearted wonder as to why, if murder was the order of the day, Lady Colesborough had escaped."

Drawn into the case is the local doctor and coroner, Dr. Hammond. He is at home with his wife Judith, asleep next to him, when he recollects a vital clue. He wakes Judith from a dream about a child to tell her. "'What fellow?' said Judith, half cross and half forlorn. Perhaps she and Jim would never have a child. Perhaps -" I ended the book wondering if we might meet the Hammonds again, and if Judith ever had her baby. Miss Silver is always relaying news of marriages and births in her books, not to mention knitting for the babies. I don't remember any characters crossing over in the stand-alone books, though.

Outrageous Fortune, by Patricia Wentworth

This 1933 book is one of Patricia Wentworth's "stand-alone" stories, and it is quite a wild ride. It begins with a young man lying in a cottage hospital, unconscious but occasionally muttering about Jimmy Riddell. He was found lying on a ledge of rock, above a treacherous bay where a ship was recently lost. A woman named Nesta Riddell arrives in response to a radio appeal, announces that he is her husband, and whisks him away. A short time later, another woman shows up, also in search of this young man. But she is looking for Jim Randall, the cousin she hasn't seen in seven years. It was clear from her first appearance that this young woman would be our heroine:

    "Miss Leigh?" said the day sister.
    "Oh yes," said Caroline Leigh in that warm dark voice of hers.
    Someone once said that Caroline's voice was like damask roses. He was an infatuated young man who wrote poetry. Caroline laughed at him kindly but firmly, and all her friends chaffed her about her crimson voice. All the same there was something in it.

Hearing that the unknown Jim has been taken away, Caroline resolves to track him down, just confirm that he isn't her Jim. Meanwhile, he wakes up in a small house in a small town. He has no idea who or where he is, but he has a nagging memory of a string of emeralds, shining in lamplight. Informed that he is Jim Riddell, husband of Nesta, he finds that hard to accept. And then Nesta tells him that he has stolen a string of emeralds, and she wants her share. Jim also learns that the owner of the emeralds, an American named Elmer Von Berg, has been shot, presumably during the robbery, and is at the point of death.

The story alternates between Jim and Caroline, as he tries to figure out who he is and what is happening, and she tries to find out where and who he is. There is considerable tension in those sections. In between her sleuthing, Caroline goes home, to the house that she shares with her older cousin Pansy Ann. Pansy (christened plain Ann) "sketched a little, and gardened a little, and painted a little on china. She also wrote minor verse..." Perhaps Patricia Wentworth meant her to add some humor to the story, to lighten the tension from time to time, but I feel like those sections interrupted a much more interesting story, and put it rather out of balance.

This was a fun read, even without Miss Silver. I still have a few of the non-series books to read, as well as two Miss Silvers, and two others featuring her frequent collaborators Ernest Lamb and Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard. I can't imagine how those two will manage to solve any crimes without her! I'm sure I'll still have something of Patricia Wentworth's on the TBR shelves when her turn comes in Jane's reading celebration (on November 10th). But if not, I've already discovered the joys of re-reading her books.

Touch and Go, by Patricia Wentworth

When I first came across the recent Dean Street Press reprints of Patricia Wentworth's books, I had no idea where to start. I have been collecting and enjoying her "Miss Silver" books for a couple of years now, without realizing that she wrote so many others without Miss Silver. From the helpful list in the front of the DSP books, I discovered there are three mini-series with different detectives, and a raft of standalone books. I'd hoped to collect the three featuring Miss Silver's frequent collaborators from Scotland Yard, her favorite Frank Abbott and his boss Ernest Lamb. But Murder by Book doesn't have those yet. So I decided to look at the books were published in the 1930s and early 1940s, since so many of my favorite Miss Silvers fall in those years. The DSP books helpfully include the publication date on the back cover.

Touch and Go was published in 1934, in the UK as Devil in the Dark. It isn't a mystery so much as a novel of suspense. Sarah Trent, a young woman of good family and no money, gets a place as companion to 17-year-old Lucilla Hildred, who has just lost her mother and step-father in a car crash. Lucilla's father died in the Great War, as did his younger brother. The recent death of another uncle has left her the heiress to the Hildred property. Lucilla's guardians are worried about her, not least because she had to be taken away from her school, after mysteries fires kept breaking out in her room. Sarah meets her young charge when Lucilla falls down nearly under the wheels of Sarah's car. There have been other incidents - is Lucilla causing them? And why is a man named John Brown wandering around the grounds, supposedly painting the scenery - but what's his excuse in the middle of the night?

Sarah is one of Patricia Wentworth's independent and sassy heroines, and Lucilla is more than a match for her. I enjoyed watching them run rings around Lucilla's elderly guardian Aunt Marina Hildred - actually a cousin, as she will explain in great detail to anyone she can catch (I deal with enthusiastic family historians on a regular basis). And I knew that Patricia Wentworth is a fan of Charlotte M. Yonge's books, but I was still happily surprised when Lucilla of all people quoted from The Pillars of the House.

I had a pretty good idea of where the story was going, but I still peeked ahead to see if I was right. I was in the essentials but not in the details, which had a couple of nice twists I didn't see coming. I toss the term "favorite" around a lot with Patricia Wentworth's books, but this one went straight to the top of my list.

Silence in Court, by Patricia Wentworth

Ever since I learned that Patricia Wentworth wrote mystery novels that don't feature her detective Miss Maud Silver (I think first from Jane at Beyond Eden Rock), I have been keeping an eye out for them. When I stopped in at my beloved Murder by the Book the other day, I was thrilled to find several shelves of the recent reprints from Dean Street Press. This was the first time I have seen any of them in print, and I was glad to see a list of all the titles. I hadn't realized that some of them feature Miss Silver's frequent collaborators Frank Abbott and Ernest Lamb of Scotland Yard. Nor did I know just how many stand-alone books Patricia Wentworth wrote!

Jennifer at Holds Upon Happiness recently wrote about one of them, Who Pays the Piper?, which sounds like a good one. But it wasn't on the shelves - not that I wasn't spoiled for choice. I was trying to restrain myself, so I only bought two to start with, this one from 1945 and The Dower House Mystery (published in 1925). I didn't remember at the time that this was the very book that Jane had written about.

As it turns out, it was a lucky choice. I think it's one of the best I've read by Patricia Wentworth, and an excellent example of a Golden Age mystery. It opens as Carey Silence steps up into the dock, to face the charge of murdering her relative Honoria Maquisten. The story then moves back to introduce us to Carey, a young woman just out of the hospital, recovering from a German air attack that killed her employer. She hasn't fully recovered, and with no job and no resources, the offer of a place to stay from her distant relative Mrs. Maquisten is very welcome. Carey isn't the only family connection living in the old house at Maitland Square, nor the only one dependent on the old lady's generosity. Mrs. Maquisten is generous, but she also enjoys holding her money over her young relatives' heads, re-writing her will on a regular basis. The arrival of an anonymous letter one day puts her in a rage. A summons to her solicitor follows, and an announcement to the family that one of them will be finally cut out the next day. Instead, the next day finds her dead, and Carey Silence accused of her murder.

I realized part-way through the book that I was subconsciously waiting for Miss Silver to arrive. I know just how she would have insinuated herself into the house and made herself at home. I did worry for a bit how the case would be solved without her. And then I realized that while I had some idea how the story would turn out, if Miss Silver were on the case, Patricia Wentworth might have written an entirely different type of story here. In none of the Miss Silver stories I have read so far has the main protagonist been the criminal (or the victim, for that matter).

One of the main differences I found in this story was how much of it focused on the trial itself. We experience it from Carey's point of view, standing in the dock, realizing that her life is at stake, in the hands of twelve men and women. I thought this part was very well done. It reminded me of one of my favorite Peter Wimsey stories, Strong Poison. Carey is as lucky as Harriet Vane in having a strong advocate at hand, a large American cousin named Jefferson Stewart. It's too bad she couldn't have Sir Impey Biggs for the defense!

I also enjoyed the brief biographical sketch of Patricia Wentworth that introduces the book. It mentions the historical fiction that she published before turning to crime. It might be interesting to find those books. I know I'll be adding more of these new reprints to my shelves before too long.

A double dose of Miss Silver

I've been trying to ration my reading of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver mysteries, partly because I don't have that many left to read, and partly because it would be so easy to binge on them. I gave into temptation recently and read two, though not in a row. They were both published in 1955, which I only realized as I was writing this. I've been a little dubious about the later books in this long series, but I found these two very entertaining.

The first was Vanishing Point. I remember Vicki (skiourophile/bibliolathas) saying that she enjoyed this one. Here is the blurb from my later Coronet edition, which has I think a great cover:

    Hazel Green was as quiet a place as you could imagine. Nothing ever happened there except polite afternoon tea-parties spiced with village gossip. But suddenly something rather strange did happen. Maggie Bell went out one evening for a breath of air - and never came back.
    Was her disappearance linked to security leaks at the nearby Air Ministry experimental station? Miss Silver is called to clear up the mystery. Just in time for the next disappearance...

She is called in by the police, to be exact. I think this is the first of her adventures to involve espionage! And Miss Silver goes to work on the case while knitting a hood and scarf in cherry wool for her great-nice Josephine, and she has time to start a twin set and then a pair of leggings for the child as well.

What amused me most about this book involves the central characters. Rosamond and Jenny Maxwell live with their cousin Lydia Crewe. Jenny was badly injured in a car accident, and she needed somewhere quiet to recuperate. Rosamond, who cares for her, is also working herself to the bone for Cousin Lydia in return for their keep. Jenny at twelve is bright and precocious, with dreams of being a writer. She has in fact sent some of her work to a publishing firm. One of their agents, Craig Lester, comes to Crewe House to meet her. He gives Jenny some advice about the writing life, and I presume he is speaking for his author here. Jenny chatters to him about her own favorite authors, particularly Gloria Gilmore and Mavis la Rue. Lester and Rosamond are rather scathing about their books, with titles like Passionate Heart and A Sister's Sacrifice. Lester advises Rosamond to "see that she has the right things to read - don't let her fritter away her taste on trash." He recommends a solid diet of Victorian novelists to "Stop the rubbish." I couldn't help but be amused at this attitude from an author whose books inevitably feature an angry young man who must rescue a beautiful young woman in danger (did I mention Craig Lester's temper?). But then Miss Wentworth's books are far from rubbish.

The second book was Poison in the Pen (a Christmas present from my friend Nancy, who noticed I was collecting Miss Silver books). Here is the back-cover blurb from the Harper edition I read:

    When a mysterious suicide follows an outbreak of poison pen letters in the quiet village of Tilling Green, Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard dispatches Miss Silver to investigate. Disguised as a vacationer, the retired governess stays with Renie Walsh, the town gossip, and learns of the marital and financial difficulties among the Reptons at the Manor House as well as all the petty details of life among the other village inhabitants.
    It soon becomes apparent to Miss Silver that the suicide was murder...

Here again it is Scotland Yard that calls Miss Silver in. I thought this was a nicely twisted mystery, and I admit that Wentworth neatly pulled the proverbial wool over my eyes. I never saw the final twist coming. What particularly caught my attention in this book however is that it features a crazy cat man. James Barton, the village recluse and misanthrope, lives in Gale's Cottage with his seven tabby cats, all with Biblical names starting with "A" (Achan, Abijah, Abimelech and so on). Every night they join Barton in his rambles around the village, but neither he nor they are seen during the day.

Tilling Green is in the county of Ledshire, whose Chief Constable, Randal March, was once a pupil of Miss Silver's. I have met him in other books, but I haven't been keeping track of which ones. I think that his wife might have been involved in one of Miss Silver's cases as well. I am starting to think that Ledshire is rather like Midsomer County, at least in its homicide rate.

Oh, and in this book, Miss Silver is knitting a red-wool cardigan, a Christmas present for her niece Ethel, Josephine's mother. Hopefully the reds will look well together!

Through the Wall, by Patricia Wentworth

Like many of Miss Maud Silver's clients, I have begun to find her company restful and calming. When I was left a little shaken by the end of Margaret Kennedy's Troy Chimneys, I headed for that section of the TBR stacks. I wanted a story with a tidy neat ending, where virtue is rewarded and lives happily ever after. I was glad to find exactly that in this later book in the series, published in 1950.

Like the last two Miss Silver stories that I have read, the central character here inherits the family fortune. Marian Brand and her sister Ina grew up never knowing their father's family, whom he disowned as a young man. So Marian is shocked to learn that her uncle Martin has left his entire estate to her. This cuts out his brother's widow and son, who have lived with Martin for years in his home. Marian even inherits that house, which Florence and Felix Brand share with Florence's sister Cassy and a young cousin, Penny Halliday. The household also includes the resident cook, Eliza Cotton, and a very superior cat named Mactavish.

Marian has been supporting herself and her sister Ina (who "isn't strong"), as well as Ina's feckless actor husband Cyril, on the £5 a week she earns working at an estate agency. She puts up with Cyril, but she has no intention of supporting him in luxury. He soon learns though, as the other Brands do, that by the terms of the will the money goes to Felix, Florence, and Cassy in the event of Marian's death.

The house that Marian has inherited, with its inhabitants, is in the seaside town of Farne. Cove House was once two houses, now thrown together, and connected by doors on each floor. Marian decides to take Ina to live there, with the houses divided once again. The other side is a bit crowded at the moment, because Felix has invited the singer Helen Adrian to stay. A pianist, he often plays for her shows, which leaves him with little time for his own composition work. Before she travels down to Farne, Helen visits Miss Silver, to consult her about a little matter of blackmail. However, she chooses not to take Miss Silver's advice. She doesn't mention that she is going to stay in Farne, so Miss Silver has no reason to say that she is as well, to join her niece Ethel Burkett, whose small daughter Josephine is being sent for the sea air. (In this book Miss Silver is constantly knitting socks for Ethel's three school-boy sons.)

It's a nice little set-up for a mystery story. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, but I very much enjoyed the way it all developed. I took an instant liking to Marian, and to Penny, Eliza and Mactavish. Ina is also an interesting character: not physically or emotionally strong, but loyal to her sister, and trying to deal with her difficult husband. There is a romance for one character, begun rather dramatically in a railroad accident, which proceeds quietly and comfortably, in contrast to more lurid and unhappy events that draw Miss Silver to Cove House. In the end, it is she who sets in train the denouement that solves the case - at one point even moving through the house in her stocking feet, though she makes sure to resume her shoes before the police arrive.

Nor is this the only incident of disrobing. Thanks to Vicki, I knew that this book features a strip-search of the female inhabitants. There has been a murder, and a female officer is checking for bloodstains. Miss Silver, staying in the house at that point, volunteers to be searched along with everyone else, which sets a good example. The officer, Mrs. Larkin,

being passionately addicted to crochet, became quite warm in her admiration of the edging which decorated Miss Silver's high-necked spencer and serviceable flannelette knickers, which had three rows on each leg, each row being a little wider than the last. On being informed that the design was original she was emboldened to ask for the pattern, which Miss Silver promised to write down for her. After which they parted on very friendly terms.

They soon meet again however, when Eliza Cotton asks Miss Silver to be present during her turn.

After which she stalked up to her room and gave Mrs. Larkin and even Miss Silver the surprise of their lives when the removal of her black afternoon dress displayed pink silk cami-knickers with French legs. Nothing more compromising than this came to light.

This book was featured on the Clothes in Books blog, with some great pictures of cami-knickers and underwear knitted and crocheted (including a bra, the thought of which gives me hives). I'm sorry that Moira didn't enjoy this book as much as I did - it's definitely one of my favorite Miss Silver adventures.

The Benevent Treasure, by Patricia Wentworth

I have been working on a theory that the earlier books in the Miss Silver series are better than the later, or maybe I just like them more. But I really disliked the third book, Lonesome Road, from 1939. It features Rachel Treherne, who inherited her father's fortune, to the disappointment of her relatives - starting with her sister Mabel. She consults Miss Silver, because she has come to the reluctant conclusion that someone is trying to kill her. Of course Rachel doesn't want to believe that someone in her family could really want to kill her, and she resists Miss Silver's advice. In every other book in this series that I've read, people who ignore Miss Silver's advice end up dead. Not content with ignoring sensible advice, Rachel announces one day to these relatives that she will be walking along a cliff-side path that night. When she sets off on the walk, she discovers that the battery in her torch is dying, but she knows the path so well that she has no qualms about proceeding. She is much more surprised than I was when someone looms out of the dark and pushes her over the cliff. Luckily for her, she manages to cling to a small outcropping until she can be rescued from above with a rope.

When we first meet Candida Sayle, on the first page of The Benevent Treasure, she is clinging to a small outcropping on the face of a cliff. She manages to hang on until she can be rescued from above with a rope. She didn't fall over, though. Arriving at a small seaside hotel, she found the friends she was meeting were delayed. She decided to take a walk along the shore, after two elderly ladies she met in the reception area told her that the high tide would be at 11 PM. She was caught by the high water at 9 PM and had to make a dash for the cliff face.

When the story picks up three years later, we learn that Candida is alone in the world, having lost both her parents and the aunt who brought her up. She is surprised to receive an invitation to the home of two great-aunts on her father's side, Miss Cara and Miss Olivia Benevent. She is even more surprised to learn that she is the next heiress to the family fortune, after Miss Cara. And that fortune includes the mysterious Benevent Treasure, which their ancestor Ugo di Benevento supposedly brought with him when he fled Italy in the 1700s. No one knows exactly where the treasure is - if it really exists - but an old family legend warns Ugo's descendants "Touch not nor try/Sell not nor buy/Give not nor take/For dear life's sake."  It isn't too long before Miss Silver arrives in the small town of Retley. A distant cousin of her own lives there, but she has also been asked to investigate the disappearance of Alan Thompson, who worked as a secretary to the Misses Benevent. He vanished one day, along with jewelry and money from their home, but his step-father doesn't believe him guilty. Nor is his the only mysterious disappearance.

I thought The Benevent Treasure was great, over-the-top fun. The Benevents live in a massive old house, the kind with nooks and crannies everywhere - and rumors of secret passageways. Of course, if you're going to have a hidden family treasure, you need secret passageways. And of course there is a romance for Candida, with the type of imperious young man that so frequently turns up in these stories. (Patricia Wentworth seems to have had a soft spot for angry young men in love.) There is also a surly manservant, and a slightly hysterical female one. Both are Italian, and not quite free of stereotypes (o dio mio). This is another point of similarity with Lonesome Road, where Rachel has her maid Louisa, a hysterical and smothering woman whom I found really irritating. I think Rachel should pension her off immediately, but Louisa would probably kill herself and/or Rachel at the thought of being separated from her.

I have been trying to figure out why I enjoyed The Benevent Treasure so much, and Lonesome Road so little. I think it's mainly because the first is just plain fun - a Gothic and gruesome ending, with bodies everywhere, and buried treasure - while the second feels not just serious but rather dreary. Maybe the latter reflects the unsettled times in which it was written. I still have a good few of these to read, mostly from the 1950s, and they may prove my theory completely wrong.

Oh, and for anyone else keeping track: in this book Miss Silver knits several pairs of grey stockings for her niece Ethel Burkett's three sons, and then starts on a blue jumper for Ethel herself.

The Ivory Dagger, by Patricia Wentworth

I enjoyed this outing with Miss Silver, originally published in 1950.  It is a country-house murder, which finds the house's owner Herbert Whitall stabbed with the dagger of the title.  Discovered standing over his body, with blood on her ivory dress, is the fiancée he was to marry in four days, Lila Dryden.  Lila's aunt Lady Dryden, staying there with her niece, rings up her friend Ray Fortescue in the middle of the night, to order her to collect Miss Maud Silver and bring her down to Vineyards with her.  Ray is very reluctant to do so, until she arrives at Miss Silver's neat flat with its comfortable Victorian furniture.  There she falls under Miss Silver's spell.  When Scotland Yard is called in later, Miss Silver's old friend DI Frank Abbott is as usual completely unsurprised to find her already in residence and full of helpful information.  The case proceeds in fits and starts, as different people disclose key points of information, until finally the solution falls into place.  This felt more like a case of using "the little grey cells" rather than actual investigating.  But overall it is a fun story, with two nice romances in the middle.

Since I started following the Clothes in Books blog, I've become more aware of the descriptions of dress in different books.  When we first meet Ray, she is wearing "her new autumn suit,"

because nothing gives you so much confidence as to feel that you are looking your best.  The suit was a success, and so was the little off-the-face hat that went with it.  They were perfectly matched, and they were just two shades lighter than her dark brown hair.  There was a spray of autumn leaves and berries on her hat, repeating the gay lipstick which went so well with the clear brown of her skin.

I was not prepared however for the first glimpse of Miss Silver in this book.  Ray has rung her up on the morning after the murder and is on her way over.  Miss Silver's devoted maid Emma has just brought her in a cup of tea. 

Removing her new bright blue dressing-gown with the practically indestructible hand-made crochet trimming skillfully transferred from its crimson flannel predecessor, Miss Silver stood revealed in a slip petticoat of grey artificial silk and a neat white spencer whose high neck and long sleeves had also been adorned with a narrow crochet edging.

I do not need to meet Miss Silver in her bedroom, let alone "three parts dressed"!  I cannot think that Miss Silver herself would want us in there.  I much prefer to wait with her clients in the drawing room.  However, I cannot help wondering what a spencer is in this context.  I am only familiar with the Regency-era spencers, which are short-waisted jackets - with long sleeves and high necks, like Miss Silver's, but worn over dresses, not as underclothing.

I did have one quibble with this book, which applies to a lot of the "cozy" mysteries that I've read lately.  Generally, the future victim is obvious from the first pages.  He or she is clearly marked out as a bad person - rude, selfish, cruel, loud-mouthed, carrying on feuds with family and neighbors, threatening or blackmailing them.  Often this person is trying to do something wicked like evicting a widow, tearing down a beloved landmark, or ruining local businesses.  She or he might be guilty of kicking stray cats and children.  Within a couple of chapters, the reader has a pretty good idea who is going to be killed and why, as well as who has a motive to murder.  Sometimes it feels like the author is setting up a straw-man, and these books can start to feel a bit rote.  Awful character => motives for murder => murder => investigation of motives, with means and opportunity => solution.  I'm starting to find this type of story rather unsatisfying.  Patricia Wentworth has written several along these lines, but I find the same thing in recently-published books.  I think I like my mystery stories with a little more mystery.  What will Peter Wimsey discover at Pym's Publicity, or Robert Blair in the old Franchise house?  What will interrupt the Emerson family's archaeological work this season?  How will the latest case that Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid are investigating for Scotland Yard unfold?  I guess it's about finding the authors that write the kind of mystery stories that I enjoy.  I think the library may be the place to carry out this kind of investigation, rather than spending money on books that I find so unsatisfying.  Which isn't to say though that I won't be reading more of Miss Silver!

Spotlight on murder

Spotlight, Patricia Wentworth

An alternate title for this book is The Wicked Uncle, which I learned the hard way (i.e., buying two copies).

I am reading a really excellent history of the women's rights movement in the United States, on which I am taking pages of notes and about which I expect to write a gushing review.  But as the long holiday weekend dawned, I suddenly wanted to read something a bit less demanding, something with story and characters (though the history is full of wonderful characters and some unbelievable stories).  Reading Jenny's review of Grey Mask and Jane's of The Case is Closed put Miss Silver in my mind, and I chose this one pretty much at random.  I have enjoyed all of them that I've read so far, but this is my new favorite.

The story begins with Dorinda Brown returning to the Heather Club, the dreary private hotel in London where she has a slip of a room.  She has just gotten a job as secretary to the fragile and fluttery Linnet Oakley, and the salary of £3 a week will keep the proverbial wolf from her door.  In her relief and joy, she rings up her cousin Justin Leigh.

Dorinda flicked the dial, put her pennies in, and waited. If anyone had been passing they might have thought she made a pleasant picture.  There are so many sad faces, so many tired, lined, cross, difficult, irritable faces that it is pleasant to see a cheerful one.  Dorinda nearly always looked cheerful.  Even on her solitary visit to a dentist, when she had secretly been a good deal daunted by the unknown and rather terrifying apparatus which appeared to be lying in wait for her, she had contrived to smile.  She went through life smiling, sometimes resolutely, but for the most part in a pleasantly spontaneous manner, and when she smiled her eyes smiled too.

I think it was the "sometimes resolutely" that made me like her so much straight off.  That, and her composed way of dealing with her cousin, who feels free to comment on any and all aspects of her life, including her appearance.  His comments aren't compliments.  But it is clear from the start that he takes a close personal interest in Dorinda, watching out for her, more carefully than she may realize.  He reminded me more than a little of the "amiable snake" Randall Matthews, from Georgette Heyer's Behold, Here's Poison.

The next chapter introduces us to Gregory Porlock, a businessman with a country house near the Oakleys' Mill House.  He is telephoning various people to invite them for the weekend.  Most of them refuse initially, but as they talk it becomes clear that he has some hold over them, and in the end everyone reluctantly accepts.  Later he calls Mrs. Oakley with an invitation to join the party for dinner one evening, and Dorinda is included in the invitation.  Since she has nothing suitable to wear, she is sent back up to London to buy an evening dress, in the process of which she meets Miss Maud Silver (luckily for her).

I won't say anything more about the story, to avoid spoilers.  As usual, while I spotted the future victim straight off, I had no idea who the murderer would turn out to be. I enjoyed this one very much, both for the mystery and for the sweet romance at its heart.  I had ordered a copy of The Case is Closed, which arrived over the weekend, and I also came across a copy of Eternity Ring at Murder by the Book, keeping the Miss Silver section of the TBR stacks well-stocked.

A possible spoiler follows:


In all but one of the other Patricia Wentworth books I have read, the killer has always been a woman, so I was a little surprised that it was a man here.  The only other exception so far was more of an execution than a murder, with no personal motive.  I have actually wondered if she preferred women as murderers.  I will say, she is good on motive - no falling back on serial killers or homicidal maniacs, which as Harriet Vane pointed out is "dull, and not really fair to the reader."

Love and murder at the Priory

The Chinese Shawl, Patricia Wentworth

I waited out my turn in the library queue for a much-hyped new mystery, set at an English seaside hotel in the 1930s.  I lost interest in it about half-way through, though I did flip to the end to find out who the murderer was.  It left me in the mood for a real Golden Age detective story, so I turned to the Miss Silver section of the TBR shelves.  The Chinese Shawl, published in 1943, is one of the first that I found when I began looking for her books, earlier this year.

The story is set in motion when Laura Fane comes up to London just before her 21st birthday. There she meets some distant cousins for the first time, including Tanis Lyle, a femme fatale well-known for appropriating other women's fiancés and even husbands.  An orphan like Laura, she was raised by an older cousin, Agnes Fane, who lives on the family's country estate, the Priory.  Another umarried cousin, Lucy Adams, lives there as well. Laura's father was once engaged to Agnes, and when he jilted her for Laura's mother, it created a breach in the family.  Laura technically owns the Priory, which Agnes rents from her, but she has never seen it.  Now that she is coming of age, Agnes wants to buy it from her.  As part of her campaign, she invites Laura down to the Priory.  Tanis will be there with a party that includes her latest victim Alastair, his almost-fiancée Petra, and a young man who has just gotten over Tanis, Carey Desborough.  Agnes is convinced that Carey and Tanis are about to announce their engagement, when in fact he and Laura have fallen in love at first sight.  Fortunately for everyone in this tense situation, an old school-friend of Cousin Lucy's is also staying at the Priory: Miss Maud Silver.

In the Miss Silver books that I have read so far, it has been pretty easy to spot the future victim(s).  I have also noticed that sardonic young men, particularly if they are in love, are never the murderers, no matter how good a motive they may seem to have.  The household staff are usually in the clear as well.  But that can still leave a wide field of suspects, and here again I had no idea until the end who done it.  I will say that there is a passage in this book that gave me the cold shivers, and made me wish I wasn't reading it late at night.  While enjoyable as mysteries, none of her other stories has built to that level of suspense.  To balance that, this was  easily the most romantic of her books that I have read, with Laura and Carey's rather sweet courtship, carried out under difficult circumstances.  There are other couples as well, who must deal with the damage that Tanis has done to their relationships.

This was a tricky little story, and I enjoyed it very much.  I am glad to have a few more Miss Silver stories on the TBR shelves, to carry me through the Double Dog Dare.

Death by drowning, in shallow water

The Watersplash, Patricia Wentworth

I have to be careful, or I will find myself binging on Patricia Wentworth's books - perhaps alternating with Emily Kimbrough's (if I were only doing the 20th Century of Books, I could knock out of couple of decades with their books alone).  I've read several of the Miss Silver mysteries now, and I've enjoyed each of them, though not all to the same degree.  I think this is my favorite so far. It was a recommendation from vicki at bibliolathas, in a comment on a post about cats in books.  Her words "there is a wonderfully funny Crazy Cat Lady" were enough to send me searching for a copy of this book, and I'm so glad they did!

This story, published in 1951, is set in the small village of Greenings.  The residents there are pleasantly scandalized by the unexpected return of Edward Random, who has been missing for five years.  His widowed stepmother Emmeline never gave up hope, but his uncle James did, making a will that left everything to his brother Arnold rather than his nephew.  Now James is dead, Arnold has taken possession of the estate and the family home, the Hall, and he shows no signs of sharing the inheritance with his suddenly-resurrected nephew.  Edward doesn't help matters by refusing to say where he has been for the past five years.  Many in the village assume he was in prison for unspecified but obviously dark crimes.  Edward's own father had nothing to leave his son or second wife.  Emmeline lives in the estate's lodge, courtesy of James and now Arnold.  She has filled it with cats and kittens, though "She would rather have been making believe that Edward's children were her own grandchildren . . ."

Two newcomers arrive in the village shortly after Edward's return.  Susan Wayne, whose Aunt Lucy lived in the village for many years, has been hired to catalogue the library at the Hall.  She met Edward on her previous visits and is very glad to see him home again.  Clarice Dean, a nurse who cared for James Random in his last illness, is even gladder.  She had contacted the local doctor to ask if there are any patients who might need her services, as she would like to return to the area.  Dr Croft recommended her to Miss Ora Blake, who "enjoyed ill health, and her nurses never stayed."  As soon as Clarice meets Edward again, she begins a blatant pursuit.  She is distracted from that, however, when a man is found is found drowned in the watersplash outside the village.  On a visit to London, she meets Maud Silver, whom she knows by reputation, in a tea shop and confides her uneasiness over the man's death.  Later Miss Silver decides to pay a visit to an old friend's daughter, now the wife of the Vicar of Greenings.

I won't say anything more about the plot, to avoid spoilers, except to say that Patricia Wentworth led me down the garden path with this one.  In the last of her books that I read, The Traveller Returns, Miss Silver had a rather passive role, consulting and advising.  Here she takes a much more active role, and in fact she drives the denoeument of the mystery, over the objections of the police. I couldn't help thinking what a formidable team she and Miss Climpson would make.  She also helps both Edward and his Uncle Arnold in moments of crisis, in part simply by listening to them and then giving them her advice.  I've noticed throughout these books that people who ignore her advice usually come to regret it (if they survive to regret it).

The cats and kittens in this book are great fun, though they are never allowed to take over the story as they have Emmeline's house.  She and Susan are both lovely characters.**  I couldn't help envying Susan her job, working through a library of old books.  Well-read herself, she can't resist dipping into some of them.

Susan spent a dusty morning finishing up the Victorian novelists. There seemed to be an incredible number of them. An entire set of Mrs. Henry Wood, including no less than three copies of the famous East Lynne. A notorious tear-jerker - but three copies!  There were also sets of Charlotte M. Yonge, an author beloved by Susan's Aunt Lucy, and whose descriptions of vast Victorian families she herself had always found enthralling.  There they were in their original editions, and obviously well-read. . . There was something tranquilizing about the ebb and flow of of these family histories, even when they dealt with such tragedies as this.

I need to find a copy of East Lynne!  And I am glad that I have built up some credits at Paperback Swap, because Patricia Wentworth's books are hard to find around here.  I came across a copy of Spotlight at Half Price Books, and when the clerk scanned it, she told me that the aged paperback was $60.  Fortunately, she was able to correct the price by 95%.  I've requested a copy of The Ivory Dagger, because that case is mentioned several times in this book.


**Possible mild spoiler:  I can just picture how happy Emmeline will be with the ending of the story.  I found it very satisfying myself.

A trio of thrillers

I read three books in a row last week that would be shelved in the mystery section of the bookstore, but they were more novels of suspense than traditional whodunits.  They had little in common, in terms of plot and setting, but they were all three great fun to read.

A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters

Published in 2010, this is Elizabeth Peters' last book.  It features her most popular characters, Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson, as well as the usual supporting cast of their son Ramses and adopted daughter Nefret, their young friend David, the inquisitive butler Gargery, and Egyptian assistants Daoud and Selim.  Unusually for a Peters book, though, there is only one cat, who makes just a single cameo appearance.  The setting is also unusual: rather than working in Egypt, the Emersons are drawn to Palestine, where Ramses is already working on a dig in Samaria.  Since Emerson has been banned from excavating in Egypt, he and Amelia are at something of a loose end when they are approached by a Major Morley, who claims to have an ancient scroll that reveals the location of the lost Ark of the Covenant.  He intends to travel to Jerusalem and find it (the theme song from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" immediately began playing in my head).  Though Emerson all but throws him bodily out, at the request of His Majesty's government he later agrees to follow Morley to Palestine and keep an eye on him.  Meanwhile, Ramses stumbles upon evidence that the German government might be trying to stir up trouble for the British in the area.  I thought this was a really fun read, with Amelia in particularly fine form.  Though the last book written, it is set earlier in the series, in 1911.  Elizabeth Peters had begun filling in some of the gap years with her last books (as Laurie R. King is doing with her next Russell and Holmes book).  This one is set just before the big Romantic Drama with Ramses and Nefret takes center stage - a storyline I find a bit tedious, while fully appreciating Ramses as the Romantic Hero.  I'm glad there were only hints of it here.  I still have one more of the Emerson books to read, Guardian of the Horizon.  I've been putting it off because it's a return to the setting of The Last Camel Died at Noon, Peters' homage to H. Rider Haggard, which with all due respect to one of my favorite authors, I find a little silly.


To Dwell in Darkness, Deborah Crombie

It has been a long nineteen months since Deborah Crombie left us with an awful cliff-hanger on the last page of The Sound of Broken Glass. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak last Friday at Murder by the Book. I had just finished this new one earlier in the day, in case she left us hanging like that again. Which she does, but I found the ending here less frustrating.  (Ms. Crombie seemed disappointed when I told her that.)  This story revolves around London's St Pancras Station (in her talk, Ms. Crombie mentioned that she is having a love affair with Victorian architecture). Duncan Kincaid, formerly of Scotland Yard, has been transferred and effectively demoted, without explanation, to head a murder investigation team out of Holborn Police Station.  When a group of eco-protesters, intending to set off a smoke bomb in St Pancras, instead sets off a white-phosphorous bomb, killing the young man holding it, the case lands on Duncan's desk.  As he and his team investigate, they find that the protest group is not exactly what it seems, particularly one member, who in the wake of the incident has disappeared.  Meanwhile, Duncan's former sergeant Gemma, now his wife and an  officer herself, is tracking a young woman's killer.  But her own sergeant, Melody Talbot, who was present when the bomb went off, is drawn more into helping Duncan with his case.  Here also I enjoyed meeting these characters again, they feel like old friends.  While Gemma's case is a traditional police procedural, Duncan's felt more like a thriller, and with the terrorist element, very much of the moment.  It also links to the previous two stories in intriguing and rather disturbing ways.  On the other hand, the book does feature a litter of adorable kittens (though at one point, I was distinctly uneasy about their fate).  I really hope it won't be eighteen months before the next book.


The Traveller Returns, Patricia Wentworth

How appropriate that my Hodder re-print of this book has a quote from Mary Stewart, though "Very well written" isn't the most exciting blurb.  Reading this, I was instantly reminded of The Ivy Tree.  The book opens with Anne Jocelyn returning to England in mid-1944.  Everyone thought she was dead, shot on a beach in Brittany as her husband Philip tried to rescue her by boat from the advancing Nazis.  Philip brought the body of his wife home and buried her.  Now Anne arrives, insisting that in the confusion of the evacuation he made a mistake: it was her cousin Annie Joyce who was shot, while she was left behind to face the Germans.  Her cousin Lyndall and Aunt Milly stifle their doubts and welcome her home.  Philip however refuses to accept her.  I admit, in the first three chapters, I changed my mind about Anne four times.  I wasn't the only one, though an old friend of Annie Joyce is sure that she would know the difference between the two.  That old friend, Nellie Collins, meets Miss Maud Silver on a train up to London, and tells her the whole story.  When Miss Collins is later found dead from an apparent road accident, Miss Silver calls the police.  Meanwhile, Lyndall follows Anne into a beauty shop and overhears some very disturbing words, which she eventually brings to Miss Silver.  Ensconced in her cozy sitting room with her knitting, Miss Silver still manages to stay one step ahead of the police, though the plodding Chief Detective Lamb ignores her suggestions and scoffs at her deductions - until she is proved right, and then he claims all the credit.  His sergeant Frank Abbott, an old friend of Miss Silver's, is smarter than his boss and will probably go further.  So far I've read three books with Miss Silver, all set during the Second World War.  By my count, there are twenty-four more, and I can easily see myself collecting them all (I already have two more on the TBR stacks).  They may tend toward the cozy side, but Miss Silver is one tough cookie, and those who do evil tend to get what is coming to them. She sees herself as an agent for justice, "which she would certainly have spelt with a capital letter."  But she isn't self-righteous or pious about it, she just gets on with the job at hand.

My introduction to Miss Silver

The Clock Strikes Twelve, Patricia Wentworth

As I have confessed elsewhere, for many years now I have had Patricia Wentworth confused with Patricia Highsmith.  It was Katrina of Pining for the West who set me straight, with posts about Wentworth's books.  I am a big fan of mysteries from the Golden Age, and I don't know how I missed these.  When I started looking for Wentworth's books, I discovered that she wrote over 60, with 32 featuring the detective Maud Silver.  There is a handy list of all her books here.  I chose a couple from the 1940s to start with, pretty much at random.  This one, published in 1944, proved to be a perfect introduction to her books.

The Clock Strikes Twelve centers on a family, the Paradines.  Their firm, the Paradine-Moffat Works, is involved in war work, and as the story opens, a crucial set of blueprints has gone missing.  The head of the family and the firm, James Paradine, tells the designer that he knows who took them.  "This is a family matter," he says, "and I propose to deal with it in my own way."  When his extended family gathers that evening, for a New Year's Eve dinner, he announces that someone in the family has been disloyal, has betrayed the family interests.  As he know who it is, he is offering that person a chance to confess privately and take the consequences.  James tells the group that he will wait in his study until midnight.

After that announcement, I was not in the least surprised when the New Year dawns and James's body is found lying below the terrace outside his room.  The family wants to believe that he fell, but the police find evidence that he was pushed. After learning of his accusation, the police naturally focus on the family.  One of the family, learning that Maud Silver is staying with relatives in the town, asks her help with the investigation. As usual I spent most of the book suspecting the wrong people, so I was in the dark until the end.  I thought the solution was very clever and well-plotted, with a couple of twists that took me by surprise.  I enjoyed the family drama as well, which reminded me of some of Georgette Heyer's mysteries.

I couldn't help comparing Miss Silver with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, another amateur detective who assists the police in investigating crimes.  Both are single women, not bright young things.  I don't remember whether we learn much about Miss Marple's background (the recent TV series with Geraldine McEwan added some non-canonical details).  Miss Silver is described as a "gentlewoman," a former governess, with an Edwardian air about her. There is no mention of a fee, but she seems more of a professional than Miss Marple.  She has built up quite a reputation as a detective, both with the police and the general public.  Her cases seem to come by referral, with those she has helped in the past recommending her to those who might need her services.  She is quiet but confident.  She doesn't dither, though her constant coughs for attention reminded me irresistibly of Dolores Umbridge and her "Hem! Hem!"  Miss Silver's strengths seem to be in her listening and her attention to details.  She can deal easily with servants and their employers, and her background as a governess comes in handy in getting people to talk.  At least in this book she doesn't gather everyone together for a dramatic revelation of The Murderer, but she works with the police to solve the case.

Reading this also made me consider how few of the Golden Age mysteries that I have read feature women detectives, Miss Marple aside.  Miss Climpson, a favorite of mine, assists Lord Peter Wimsey, but as his employee, under his direction.  Harriet Vane initially takes the lead in Gaudy Night, but it's left to Peter to solve the case.  In Margery Allingham's books, Amanda is on the periphery of some of Albert Campion's cases, but aside from Fear Sign (aka Sweet Danger) I don't remember her taking an active role.  Heyer's mysteries generally involve Scotland Yard, not private detectives.  Josephine Tey has Miss Pym, but that's a private investigation and a one-off book - and then Miss Pym gets everything completely wrong.  With Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Troy is sometimes involved in the cases of her husband Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, but as I remember he like Peter Wimsey takes the lead and solves the case in the end.  I haven't read enough about detective fiction to know when this began to change, or whether I am missing other female detectives, particularly from the Golden Age.  My favorite modern series have women detectives as the central characters, including Deborah Crombie, Rhys Bowen, Elizabeth Peters, Margaret Maron and Laurie R. King.  Recommendations for earlier books are always welcome!  In the meantime, I will be collecting more of Patricia Wentworth's books - and probably filling a few more years in my Mid-Century of Books.