Yes,
I know I'm misquoting Churchill, but the misquote fits the present book quite
nicely.
First
of all, it is indeed a mystery novel, as you might reasonably guess from its title and its rather garish cover.
I happened to stumble across it when I was idly browsing the catalogue of the
Boston Athenaeum, no less, and I added Boyd to my database as an author to
research. Since I am actually engaged at present in some research with a view
to finally posting a new update to my British Women Writers list, it wasn't
long before I looked into her a bit more. I found nothing except the fact that
the name was a pseudonym.
Which
leads to the enigma surrounding the mystery. When I forwarded my list of new
authors to the great and powerful John Herrington, whose research skills extend
far beyond my own and who is so often a life saver in these situations, he
discovered that the book's publisher had apparently said that "Jane
Boyd" was a pseudonym concealing "the identity of a crime writer of
distinction".
Now,
I was not born yesterday, so I realize that publisher lingo might be a bit more
hyperbolic than reality would reflect. It should go without saying that I, when
wearing my publisher cap, have never engaged in such hyperbole (!!), but some
less scrupulous publishers might, so "distinction" could be a
relative term here. Even allowing for that, however, I was intrigued enough to
want to sample the prose, and an enthusiastic short review I came across sealed
the deal. An Abe Books order followed, and—the book arriving in a
record-breaking two days from placing of the order (from Texas to California,
no less)—I took it as a sign from the literary universe and immediately dived
in, bypassing numerous other books awaiting my attention.
It
turned out to be a good solid little mystery—not an all time favorite, but
quite enjoyable. It opens with Miss Arbutus, the ubiquitous middle-aged
spinster, walking her dog, Caramel, early one summer morning, and noticing, as
she window shops at a familiar antique shop, a body sprawled on a sofa inside.
The body turns out to be that of bestselling novelist Vernon Bran, and the
mystery somehow involves a batch of old furniture which the antique shop's
owner has just acquired from an estate sale. The suspects include Paul Dedham, said
shop owner, who purports never to have seen the victim before, Julie Bran, wife
of the victim and a well-known actress herself, who is none too broken up over
his death, Mr Blaggart, Bran's publisher, who has been eagerly awaiting a
long-promised manuscript from Bran, and Miss Arbutus's godson Michael, who
would seem to have no connection to Bran but who is strikingly fixated on the
crime. Plus there's Michael's fiancée Claire, Claire's new housekeeper Arlene, and
a few others, who behave more or less oddly about it all.
It's
an effectively disparate and seemingly unconnected group of characters, whose gradually-revealed
interconnections and motivations are satisfyingly intricate (but not
impenetrable, so I'm pretty sure it's not a lost Gladys Mitchell!). The
"who" of the whodunnit was a bit disappointing for me, but on the
other hand I certainly didn't anticipate this person's guilt, and the various
plot twists and revelations had me reading quite compulsively.
The
writing is solid and enjoyable, but certainly not lavishly literary or
sophisticated, so it's not a lost Sayers or Tey, and it lacks the brilliant,
focused simplicity of a Christie, the slightly noir edge of an Allingham, and
the perkiness of a Heyer. (And although Miss Arbutus has some very clear ideas
about proper masculine behavior, she's not nearly homophobic enough to have
been created by Christianna Brand!)
There
are certainly some standout moments here and there. For example, I loved the
passage in which Miss Arbutus is just realizing that what she's looking at is a
corpse instead of a window display:
Vaguely at the back of her mind the figure reminded her of
something, not of a particular person but of some occasion when she had seen figures
which looked similar in their stiff abandon. Then it came back to her; of course,
it had been during the raids, once she had come upon a house which had just
been bombed, the inhabitants had been killed and were lying about in the rising
smoke and dust, they had looked just like stuffed dolls, just like this man.
And
there's a touch of humor in her subsequent anxiety about dealing with the
police:
Miss Arbutus, for the second time, repeated the story of her
morning walk and of her sinister discovery. By now it sounded improbable, even
to her. If they asked her maid if she were in the habit of parading the streets
at five-thirty a.m. because she couldn't sleep and Mary said, 'Yes, Madam often
does that,' it would sound strange. If she replied, 'Madam has never done such
a thing before,' it would seem stranger still.
But
the greatest strength of the novel are Boyd's two detectives, Inspector Pobham
and Detective Richards, an intriguing twist on the traditional Holmes and
Watson:
Richards' chief, Geoffrey Pobham, was an improbable person to
find in the precincts of Scotland Yard. Those who knew him felt that an Oxford
college would have provided a more suitable background to his jovial, cynical wit
and his academic qualifications. Richards had been appalled when he first met
him. He had felt that such an apparent lack of zeal and such a sympathy with
the criminal classes could only provide a demoralising element in the Force,
but by now he had learned better. To Pobham, on the other hand, Richards with
his sense of duty, lack of humour and strict sense of justice was a constant delight.
When he had taken up his work at Scotland Yard he had been rather disappointed
to find that his colleagues were far from the stereotyped detectives of fiction,
in Richards alone he seemed to see the model of an inspector. Pobham always
claimed that it was purely on these grounds that he had chosen Richards as his assistant,
but whether this were true or not he had by now developed an irritable paternal
affection for him.
It's
really rather a shame that this was the only appearance of Pobham and
Richards—had Boyd written 20 or 30 books about them, they might now form the
basis of a highly entertaining television series.
At
any rate, it's entirely appropriate that the novel's plot revolves around
questions about whether the murdered Bran really wrote the novels he published,
since the book's own author is also shrouded in mystery.
I
was convinced, in my naïve way, that my handy database of authors would provide
a handful of tantalizing possibilities for the true identity of Jane Boyd.
Assuming that to have been called a "crime writer of distinction" by
even the most unscrupulous publisher, she (I do think it's a woman, though of
course we don't know for sure) must have published at least a few novels before
1953, I sorted the approximately 45,000 titles in my database by year of
publication, and then browsed all of 1950-1952 for authors of multiple
mysteries who were active in those years.
The
result, as I should probably have predicted, was a bit more than a handful.
Apart from the big names mentioned above, who were surely unlikely as
possibilities anyway (under the assumption that a pseudonymous publication by
any well-documented and closely-researched author—with savvy heirs interested
in maintaining a steady income—could not have remained hidden for so long), I
came up with no fewer than 30 possibilities. Ahem. Some are more likely than
others, and many are authors I haven't read, so I can't judge just how unlikely
those are, but the ones I have read I
couldn't quite eliminate from contention (Josephine Bell? hmmmm). Here,
for your consideration, is what I came up with (most of these are on my Mystery
List, if you want to see what I know about them):
Marjorie Alan
Margaret Archer
Pamela Barrington
Josephine Bell
Margot Bennett
Emery Bonnett (pseudonym
of Felicity Winifred Carter and husband)
Caryl Brahms (known
for humorous mysteries, so probably not a match)
Pamela Branch
(ditto)
Zenith Jones Brown
(American, but she had written many British mysteries as David Frome)
Joanna Cannan
Joan Cockin
Alexandra Dick
Doris Disney
Mary Durham
Margaret Erskine
Katharine Farrer
Elizabeth Ferrars
Joan Fleming
Kathleen Freeman (better
known as Mary Fitt)
Mary Violet Heberden
Anne Hocking
Ianthe Jerrold
Lucy Beatrice
Malleson (better known as Anthony Gilbert)
Jean Marsh
Edith Pargeter (had already
written mysteries as John Redfern and Jolyon Carr, though she hadn't yet
created her most famous incarnation, Ellis Peters—this would have been her only
feminine pseudonym, but who knows?)
Sheila Pim (Boyd
isn't funny enough to have been Pim)
Mona Radford (better
known as M. A. Radford)
Shelley Smith (more
a thriller writer than a whodunnit author?)
Nancy Spain (known
for wordplay and camp, so probably not a match)
Patricia Wentworth
What
do you think? Any "Eureka!" moments? Alas, not for me, though I will
say that there were moments as I was reading when I thought the prose seemed
familiar somehow. Probably just my imagination? Or not?
