A review of Post Mortem by Guy Cullingford
One of my undoubted finds of 2025 is Guy Cullingford, the ghost name, you might say, that Constance Taylor used for her series of a dozen crime fiction novels of which Post Mortem, originally published in 1953, is the third. It is a fascinating book laced with wit and humour, which takes the genre by the scruff of the neck and gives it a couple of sharp and sardonic twists and offers the reader an astonishing new perspective on what is a fairly tried and tested and, dare I say it, mundane set of plot devices.
The victim is the writer, Gilbert Worth, who is a fairly unpleasant character. He has successfully estranged himself from the other family members who live in the house with him and, for good measure, also the staff and in particular the gardener, Williams. Gilbert and his wife have grown steadily apart, continuing to live together for the sake of appearances, he finding consolation in the form of his femme fatale of a secretary who cannot spell, Rosina (Rosie) Peck and she has led on the next door neighbour, Major Toby Kent, into thinking that there is more to their friendship than the need for a friendly face.
Sylvia has also been deeply offended by the portrayal of the subject of Worth’s best selling work, Margueritte, which she sees as a thinly veiled character assassination of her which it is, although the author has deluded himself into believing that she is blissfully unaware of the fact. Juliet, their daughter, is appalled by the treatment of her mother by her father. Julian, the eldest son, has had his ambitions to be an author constantly thwarted by Gilbert and Robert, who wants to be a priest, is also under constant pressure to make his way in the world with a steady job. Both the sons accelerate their interest in Rosie before their father’s corpse has had time to cool down.
Prior to the crisis point there have been two strange incidents. Gilbert’s writing room is in a turret accessible by steep winding stairs. One evening, finding that the light bulb had blown he gingerly made his way down only for his foot to slip on a marble and he took a fall, although was not seriously hurt. Then, blessed with a sensitive sense of smell, he detects there is something wrong with his usual drink of milk and gives it to the kitchen cat which is duly found dead from poisoning the next morning.
The moment of crisis comes early on in the book when Gilbert is found in the downstairs study with half of his head blown off and a gun in his hand. The door to the French windows was open. Despite there being no suicide note and Gilbert being considered of a generally sound mind, albeit of an abrasive character and with an artistic temperament, the death is passed off as suicide.
Worth’s professional advisors, Carus Leach, the solicitor who is characterized throughout as a sea lion, and his publisher, Harry Stein, have misgivings but there is really only one person interested in the pursuit of the truth. With enough characters with sufficient motivation to commit a crime which would give them release from the purgatory in which they are existing there is plenty of material to sift. It would be wrong, though, to characterize the novel as a piece of detective fiction, more an exploration from an unusual vantage point a life lived, the wrong turnings made and the lessons to be learned, a sort of search for redemption.
To say more would give the game away as the book’s structure is wholly dependent on a particular plotting device. Suffice to say that its title is well chosen!
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