A review of Shroud of Darkness by E C R Lorac – 240318
The fortieth in Lorac’s long-running Robert Macdonald series, originally published in 1954, is as much a thriller as a murder mystery with a tale that involves the settling of scores that have lingered on from the Second World War. Sarah Dillon is travelling by train from Exeter to Paddington and is enjoying the company of a young man, Richard, who seems to become more distracted and agitated, especially when the train, whose progress is impeded by a thick pea-souper makes an unscheduled stop at Reading and two men, one a seemingly respectable middle-aged businessman and the other a bit of a thug, join them in the carriage.
To her surprise, Richard leaves the train abruptly as soon as it reaches its destination but is seriously injured in an attack. Who was Richard, why was he attacked, and by whom? At the same time there is an old case running, reopened for the third time, the discovery of what happened to an American, Darcourt, who disappeared in 1941. Inevitably, the two cases are intertwined.
Lorac has chosen her title well. The Shroud of Darkness not only describes the thick fogs that enveloped the country, especially London, in the early 1950s, making conditions ideal for miscreants to go about their work and especially difficult for those tasked with apprehending them, but also the fog that has descended over Richard’s mind, struggling to piece together what really happened on a traumatic night in 1941 when his life was transformed dramatically.
Shrouds, of course, lift and the book focuses on unravelling and explaining what happened that forced him to flee the Plymouth blitz with his clothes on fire and be taken up and adopted by a kindly but austere farming family in the wilds of Dartmoor. With her fine descriptive ability and her enhanced sense of place, Lorac brings the Plymouth blitz and the remote way of life on the Devon moors to life.
There are a couple of murders along the way but these are incidental to the plot, more red herrings and collateral damage than germane to the unmasking of Richard’s attacker and the unravelling of his backstory. Potential suspects come and go, a jealous brother-in-law, a gang who operate around the Reading area, Richard’s best friend, some unsavoury characters who hang out at the Whistling Pig, but it is pretty clear that there are only two realistic contenders and, frankly, while Lorac tries to cloud the reader’s assessment of one, the other was always the favourite.
That said, the whodunit is not really the focus of a book that shines a light on some of the murkier aspects of clandestine warfare and the role of sleepers and intelligence gatherers on the ground. We tend to think that this was the specialty of the Allies but the roundups of Germans and other nationals at the outset of the war shows that the concerns that German spies were operating in England undercover leading seemingly innocuous lives was very real. It is interesting to think that even in the mid-50s Lorac saw that as a subject upon which to build a story.
One fascinating feature of the book, at least to fans of Golden Age Detective Fiction, is the name checks that Lorac gives to her contemporary writers. On the train Sarah and Richard exchange books, she receiving a Josephine Tey for a Ngaio Marsh, getting the better end of the bargain. A homophone of the Tey title, The Franchise Affair, provides Macdonald with the final piece of the jigsaw.
Macdonald is an empathetic investigator with an approach that quickly wins the confidence of those he speaks to, but is not averse to overhearing conversations and a bit of action. The denouement played out on a ferry to Dunkirk makes for a dramatic ending to what is an impressive story and a welcome variation to the tried and tested murder mystery.
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