Originally published in 1941 and the twentieth in Lorac’s Robert Macdonald, this is one of those cheap but welcome reissues that seem to appear out of nowhere in the Kindle repository, having been rereleased in 2023. For the Lorac aficionado, these are gems to be savoured wherever they have come from.
In truth, this is an average murder mystery story, the first half far better than the second and a story which teeters into the world of spiritualism, disembodied voices of the recently deceased, laced with a large dollop of paranoia before regaining control and providing a comprehensive if somewhat rushed explanation of what really went on. With only three credible suspects Lorac does a fine job keeping the whodunit aspect of the case going until the end and I was never quite sure I had fingered the right person until the big reveal. Oh, and there is an ingenious murder which will make me think twice about pointing the garden hosepipe at my wife’s carefully labelled shrubs.
One of the problems of being a crushing bore is that no one has the patience to last the course to hear what you have to say but there was something in Grendon’s story of what happened at a lunch party he had just attended which piqued Falkland’s interest. The vicar, Reverend Anderby, had dropped down dead for no apparent reason in front of his wife and his host, Lee Gordon. Grendon then provides some information about Mrs Anderby’s backstory. Before her recent marriage Mrs Anderby was known as Nurse Pewsey who had an unfortunate record of nursing the elderly and benefiting from legacies left to her by her grateful patients in their wills after they had died unexpectedly. Falkland cautions Grendon to either shut up or put up.
Both Falkland and Grendon are recuperating at a home run by an osteopath, Brook, and one night Grendon, who has a widely known penchant for sleeping with windows and doors open, is found dead having been overcome by gas fumes and any notes he had written about his suspicions have disappeared. Nurse Pewsey’s name rings bells with Falkland. She had nursed a relative of his who then died suddenly and she was associated with a local doctor, Chenner, who had also died suddenly. Was Grendon on the right track and there was something suspicious about Anderby’s death and had Nurse Pewsey been getting away with murder? Then Mrs Anderby disappears and the local spiritualist is convinced that not only is she dead but is passing back messages from the beyond.
The local police cannot make much of this tangled web and by the time Macdonald of the Yard is called in, ably assisted by Jenkins, it is as cold a case as you can get. Macdonald is not a showy, grandstanding detective. Rather his method is to be painstakingly thorough and with his empathetic nature he is able to get his interviewers to open up and disclose more than they intended to. It proves to be effective but can make the narrative slow going.
What adds to the sense of confusion is that there is a lot of the investigation that takes place off stage, the results of which are dropped into the reader’s lap during the periodic meetings between Macdonald and Jenkins and that a second line of enquiry, unorthodox for sure, but just if not more effective is being pursued by one of the suspects. This is a clever device as the character’s somewhat suspicious behaviour seems to cement the impression that he, after all, might just be the culprit.
The fact that the principal dead trio are a doctor, nurse, and a vicar is telling, Grendon being collateral damage for knowing too much, as is the recent inheritance of one of the minor characters. The crux of the case is a birth that sheds a different light on where the estate should go and the lengths that are taken to obfuscate the truth.
While Lorac’s love of nature is missing from the story, there are some wonderful tidbits giving a distinctive sense of time thrown into the story. A vacuum cleaner is the latest must-have domestic gadget, cars can reach the heady speed of 70 mph and telephone exchanges are now automatic, making it difficult to trace calls.
Having high expectations from a Lorac murder mystery, I found this a tad disappointing. There was a good story in there but in the end she just failed to deliver.
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