The Christmas Egg

A review of The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly – 251107

The Christmas Egg is the third and final book in Kelly’s Inspector Brett Nightingale series, originally published in 1958 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, who have also re-published her later The Spoilt Kill. It certainly starts off with a bang, with Inspector Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes discovering  the body of an exiled Russian princess, Olga Karukhin, in a gloomy Islington flat within the first few paragraphs. Her trunk, firmly kept under her bed, which contained a hoard of valuable jewels that she had been able to save from the Karukhin Palace, had been stripped bare of its contents. There happens to be an organized gang of thieves operating in the area whom the police have had in their sights.

Any hopes that the dramatic opening is the prelude to a fast moving novel are soon dashed, however. The book becomes an odd mix of police procedure as Nightingale assisted by Beddoes get down to making sense of what happened in the flat – the old woman had been poisoned with an overdose of sleeping tablets – and then a thriller as the second half of the book concentrates on an extensive police operation set in the marshes of Kent. At least that is dramatic with Nightingale captured and then coming close to death as a helicopter hits the car in which he is being kept. The book is redeemed in part by a nice couple of twists at the end.

The problem for me is that from the perspective of a murder mystery there is little doubt as to the identity of who caused the old woman’s death, whether deliberately or inadvertently, and there is precious little in the way of detection, Nightingale’s breakthrough coming by way of that hoary old crime writer’s get out, a tip off from a reliable source. Nightingale, whom we follow throughout most of the story, is an engaging companion, a flawed character who lets his personal feelings cloud his judgment and potentially compromise his integrity and impartiality in the case. He also suffers in the line of duty, getting coshed over the head, a fate that his brother in arms, Beddoes, also suffers, but he also finds time to teach a potential suspect the meaning of a Latin quotation, a nice human if somewhat academic touch.

While the conventional aspects of a murder mystery seem to be rather half-heartedly adhered to, Kelly seems much more interested in exploring the characters that she has created. Olga is a woman locked in the past, still traumatized by the events of the Russian revolution, her haul of jewels representing the last vestiges of the privileged life she once enjoyed, a stark contrast to the miserable and grim existence that she leads in the backwaters of Islington. Although she appears weak and feeble, a reclusive bed-ridden woman, she is more wily than she seems and is more than a match for common or garden thieves.

Perhaps more interesting is the portrayal of her grandson, Ivan aka Vanya, who lives under her shadow, and driven to drink. The temptation put in his way to transform his life is too much to resist initially but then he is filled with remorse, attempts to drown himself only to be saved by Beddoes and then later on during the police operation attempts to find his own path to redemption.

Nightingale misjudges, at least initially, two of the other significant characters, Majendie, the suave sophisticated jeweller who had his eyes on the prize piece in Olga’s collection, and his assistant, the lively Stephanie Cole who becomes besotted with him, wondering whether they are among the plotters or some of the good guys. The come to highlight the flaws in the detective’s character and confirm that he is human like the rest of us.

Set in an era when people were known by their surnames and their first names were rarely used, if even known, Nightingale discovers that Beddoes’ first name is Jonathan. His is David, and this cannot be other than a reference to the Old Testament duo who had a deep and loyal friendship, intense camaraderie and who stood together come what may, qualities that the pair amply illustrate as the tale develops.

Overall, less a Christmas Egg and more a Curate’s egg, if you accept the more modern meaning.

The Spoilt Kill

The Spoilt Kill – Mary Kelly

I had not read any Mary Kelly before, but as The Spoilt Kill, originally published in 1961, came with the imprimatur of the excellent British Library Classic Crimes series, I decided to take the plunge. This book won Kelly the Crime Writers’ Association Critics Award for that yea but, sadly, she has fallen into obscurity, partly because her output was sparse, and she gave up writing fiction in her forties.

The story is set in the Potteries, indeed in a pottery factory, Shentalls, a family firm akin to a Wedgewood or a Spode. There is trouble at t’kiln as someone is stealing the patterns of new designs and selling them on to counterfeiters who are then able to steal a march on the old firm. A private investigator, Henderson, is employed to track down the culprit and he latches on to the designer, Corinna Wakefield, as primary suspect. While he is trailing her around, he is present when she opens a hatch and discovers the body of one of her colleagues in a shaft, reeking of alcohol. We have two mysteries for the price of one, perhaps interlinked, perhaps not, and Henderson, as he is on the scene and knows the characters of the firm reasonably well, assists in cracking the murder.

The story is written in the first person and we see the action through the eyes of the narrator, Henderson. This enables the reader to understand his thought process, suspicions, and methodology. Equally, though, when Henderson is blindsided or takes a turning down a blind alley, so does the reader. The plot is very carefully and cleverly constructed, with little in the way of the usual astonishing coincidences that bedevil many a crime novel.

What is soon apparent is that the employees at Shentalls’ that we meet all have backstories and are generally leading miserable or unfulfilled lives. This, of course, goes with the territory, providing each of them with motives of sorts to want to earn some extra cash, if not to do with the bumptious, interfering finance director. Henderson eventually pieces everything together and while the solution may not come as a shock to the attentive reader, the story is well-paced, and the tension maintained.

Indeed, Kelly is excellent in creating the atmosphere of a dowdy Midland’s town in the late 1950s and her characters are believable. There is enough, but not too much, pottery jargon to give some verisimilitude to the scene of the crimes and the title of the book is a delicious pottery-style pun. I enjoyed the book and would heartily recommend it to anyone keen to explore the more outré byways of the world of crime fiction.

Smashing!