Martin Fone's Blog, page 102

Hearse Of The Week

With quieter, more environmentally conscious funerals becoming increasingly popular and on trend, Parisian undertaker, Isabelle Plumereau, believes she has the perfect solution to the problem of how to convey the coffin in a greener way. She is hoping to launch Paris’ first bicycle hearse service.

Using a specially designed cargo bike made of lightwood and black in colour, adapted to meet French regulations, she believes it will offer a more down to earth pace to the funeral cortege. “Everyone walks at the same pace [behind it]”, she enthuses, “and we hear each other, we hear the sounds of nature around us, the wind in the trees, the birds. In my view, this is the best way to console yourself”.

She is now waiting for the green light from her insurers before launching the service in earnest. Several countries, including Switzerland and Denmark, already have bicycle hearse services.

It might just catch on.

Christmas Decoration Of The Week

With the festive season upon us there is always the temptation to come up with something bigger, better and wilder in the Christmas decoration stakes. Residents of Dallas in Oregon were recently treated to a new twist on mobile decorations – a buck whose antlers had become entangled in Christmas lights.

Officials from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) were alerted to the walking light show by the Dallas Police, tracked the deer down, shot it with a tranquiliser dart, and removed the lights. The animal was apparently unharmed and quickly went off on its way. Bucks rub their antlers against objects in the autumn as a display of dominance and to mark their territory. This one must have become entangled in some low hanging lights.

Curiously, the ODFW officials put a yellow tag on each of its ears for identification purposes. I would have thought if the had left it alone it would have been easier to spot.

Green For Danger

A review of Green For Danger by Christianna Brand

The second in Brand’s Inspector Cockrill series, Green for Danger was originally published in 1944, was the inspiration for a popular film two years later, starring Alistair Sim as the Inspector, and is now reissued as part of the British Library’s impressive Crime Classics series. It is a clever, compelling, entertaining, sometimes amusing, closed circle murder mystery, but with so much more.

The story is set in a hospital in World War 2 and is both wonderfully atmospheric, there are bombing raids and air raid sirens about which Brand’s characters are cheerfully and stoically blasé, a criticism that forced her to add a note of explanation in later editions, and she captures the hustle and bustle of the hospital, with casualties coming in and out, periods of feverish activity interspersed with quiet moments for introspection. Brand’s husband worked in such a hospital during the blitz, and she uses her second-hand knowledge to good effect. There is just enough medical verisimilitude to make the story believable without overloading it with unnecessary detail.  

Brand cleverly plays on the reader’s concerns about ending up on an operating theatre, entrusting your life into the hands of a team of strangers you have never met and being enveloped by the fumes of an anaesthetic, never knowing whether you will come round again. Of course, there is a death in the operating theatre, Joseph Higgins, a postman, who dies during a routine operation, much to the surprise and distress of the operating team.

In a neat touch Higgins is used in the opening chapter to introduce us to the suspects, delivering their acceptance letters for positions at Heron’s Park, allowing her to give a thumbnail character of each of the suspects. Each has a secret and/or is embroiled in a romance with one another. Gervase Eden is a lady’s man who had a Harley Street practice, Mr Moon, an elderly surgeon, is grieving the loss of a son who was killed when he was knocked off his bicycle, Dr Barnes is an anaesthetist who was cleared of wrongdoing when a previous patient, Jane Woods who has become a nurse to repay for her previously frivolous life, Esther Sanson whose life has been dominated by her hypochondriac mother who subsequently dies in a bombing raids, Marion Bates who is on the look-out for a husband, and Frederica Linley, a flighty young girl escaping the clutches of her stepmother.

Doubts about Higgins’ death indicate that he has been murdered and the chain-smoking Inspector Cockrill is called upon to investigate. He quickly realises that the murderer can only be one of the seven identified in the opening chapter and the field is narrowed further when Marion Bates, who indicates that she has some vital evidence that will unmask the culprit, is killed in the operating theatre, dressed in gown and mask and stabbed twice, once after she had been died, and an attempt to gas Felicity Linley is thwarted by her discovery by Sanson.

A smear of black paint gives Cockrill the clue to how Higgins was murdered, a theory that he tests with a dangerous experiment when William, whom Sanson has fallen in love with during his stay in hospital, undergoes a near fatal experience on the table during another routine operation. Cockrill’s methods are unconventional to say the least and he cranks up the pressure on the remaining suspects as he keeps them housed together, waiting for one to crack. Inevitably, one does, and the murderer is revealed as well as the motive for the crimes.

Brand cleverly racks up the pressure and the latter part of the book is as much a psychological thriller as a straightforward whodunit. Even with a limited field of suspects she throws in enough red herrings and misdirections to keep the reader question whether their idea of the culprit is correct and the denouement leaves an element of doubt until the true chain of events is straightened out.

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish and am glad that with such a long NHS waiting list I am unlikely to be on an operating table in the next decade or so!

A Meaty Chunk Of Mince Pie

For a quarter of Britons, the first mouthful of a mince pie, a delicious concoction of buttery, crumbly pastry filled with spiced mincemeat and flavoured with a generous dash of liquor, marks the start of the Yuletide season, a treat to be reserved until the first door of the Advent calendar creaks open. After that, there is no holding back, with 800 million of them eaten each year, usually served warm rather than cold and with cream or brandy butter as an accompaniment. Second only to pigs in blankets as festive favourites, we spend around £100m a year on mince pies.

While the idea of mixing meat with dried fruit and spices was a by-product of the Crusades, pies, particularly those containing finely chopped meat, were already firmly on the British menu. The “coffyn”, a pastry case made of flour and water, was so solid after the ingredients inside it had cooked that it was barely edible and was often discarded to be distributed to the poor or fed to the animals. Aside from adding extra flavour and masking meat past its prime, spices were thought to preserve the pie so that it could be eaten up to a year after baking, the pastry also acting as a formidable barrier to unwelcome microbes and vermin.

An early recipe for such a pie is recorded in the Forme of Cury (1390), a compendium of English recipes produced by Richard II’s master cooks. “Tartes of flesh” were made by boiling pork and then grinding it along with hard-boiled eggs and cheese into small pieces. Powders, whole spices, saffron, sugar, and salt were mixed in and placed in the pastry casement. Before the pie was sealed, a top layer consisting of ground pieces of meat from small, stewed birds (species unspecified) and rabbit was added. The pie was then baked.

Each pie was large and oblong, enough to feed a family and guests in one sitting. Although the royal cooks used pork, mutton was more normally used. Intended to be eaten during the winter, the pies were expensive to make as the spices had to be imported, making them beyond the reach of all but the rich.

Consequently, they were often reserved for important religious occasions, such as Christmas, and became known as Christmas or December pies. They began to assume a religious significance, the oblong shape representing the crib of the baby Jesus, the pastry topping was folded to become swaddling clothes and a pastry Jesus placed on top. The pie’s thirteen ingredients symbolised Christ and his twelve disciples and the spices the gifts brought by the Magi.   

By the time that Gervase Markham published his recipe in The English Huswife in 1615, pastry had become more edible, thanks to the addition of fat to the flour and water mix and was now enjoyed as part of the pie. Markham’s recipe called for an entire leg of mutton and three pounds of suet which were mixed with salt, cloves, mace, currants, raisins, prunes, dates, and orange peel, a list of ingredients that, save for the meat, which is remarkably like that used today.

Final Curtain

A review of Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh

Published in 1947, Final Curtain is Ngaio Marsh’s fourteenth book in her Inspector Alleyn series. After two novels set in New Zealand, this is a country house murder set in England. Once more Alleyn’s wife, the painter Agatha Troy, rather like Bobby Owen’s fiancé, Olive Farrar, is a magnet for trouble and a one-woman generator of work for her husband.

One of the sub themes of the book is the anticipation and trepidation of couples reuniting after the war. In many ways it is a chance to reset relationships, a moment of intense joy to be reunited with a loved one after so long, in Alleyn’s case over three years serving King and country, one in which to reflect how their marriage could be improved and yet a sense of dread that the person they married may have been changed irretrievably by the long separation and the hardships of war. It is a theme sensitively handled by Marsh and Agatha, who has always been appalled that the result of her husband’s day job is sometimes the judicial murder of someone, decides to become more appreciative and understanding of the stresses and strains caused by his cases.  

With just three weeks to go before Alleyn’s return, Agatha is approached by Sir Henry Ancred, a famous actor, to paint his portrait to mark his seventy-fifth birthday and one which on his death he would bequeath to a grateful nation. Initially unwilling to accept the commission, she eventually agrees and makes her way to Ancreton Manor where she meets the rest of the actor’s extended family.  

They are an eccentric lot, rivalling the Lampreys, but a bit more rounded. The characterisation of Cedric, the heir to the Ancred fortune, will strike the modern reader as controversial and homophobic, a sign of our respective times and attitudes, I suppose. The Ancred apple cart has been upset by the arrival of Sonia Orrincourt, a rather full-on chorus girl whom Sir Henry has installed as his mistress and subsequently decides to marry. The rest of the family, probably correctly, see her as a gold digger. As is the way in Golden Age detective fiction, Sir Henry uses his will as a stick to obtain his family’s compliance and frequently either changes it or threatens to, as the mood takes him.

When Agatha arrives at Ancreton Hall, a series of practical jokes are played, including the daubing of Agatha’s portrait at the great unveiling. The family attribute the pranks to Sir Henry’s youngest granddaughter, who goes by the nickname of Panty, but at the time of the vandalism of the painting she was confined to the dormitory of the school which now occupies a wing of the house, after receiving treatment for an outbreak of ringworm. Sir Henry reads the latest version of his will out at the party to celebrate his birthday and it causes consternation amongst certain parts of the family.

Sir Henry retires to bed in a bad mood and is found dead the following morning. It turns out that he has been poisoned and that just before his death, he had changed his will once more leaving the estate to his fiancé, Sonia.

Agatha and Alleyn are reunited, and she tells him of the strange goings on at Ancreton Manor and, surprise, surprise, he, along with his longstanding sidekick, Fox, are sent to investigate. It was Sir Henry’s wish to be embalmed using an old-fashioned method involving arsenic. The presence of arsenic in the body, which is duly exhumed, could have caused a problem in ascertaining what was used to kill Sir Henry, but none is found as the undertakers who carried out the embalming ignored his wishes and used a modern method. The poison found in his body was thallium, used to treat ringworm.

Another murder, this time of one of the principal suspects, narrows the field down and a moulting cat helps Alleyn discover the truth. In what is a well-constructed plot, with Marsh spending time building up the tangle of relationships and passions in a dysfunctional family before unleashing the inevitable murder and investigations on her reader, the identity of the culprit will surprise the reader, especially as they did not benefit directly from their crime. Marsh spends.    

This is one of Ngaio Marsh’s better stories.

Death And Mary Dazill

A review of Death and Mary Dazill by Mary Fitt

Mary Fitt, the nom de plume of the Classics lecturer Kathleen Freeman, is another one of those writers who have unfairly fallen into obscurity. Death and Mary Dazill, the sixth in her Superintendent Mallett series, was originally published in 1941 and has been reissued by Moonstone Press. Although it can be read as a whodunit, it wears its detective clothes lightly and is much more of a psychological exploration of a once cosy household that has been disrupted by the arrival of a newcomer, the eponymous Mary Dazill.

Superintendent Mallett, together with Doctors Fitzbrown and Jones, whom we met in Death on Herons’ Mere, attend a funeral of a policeman and their attention is arrested by the sight of two elderly women accompanied by their chauffeur who carries a large wreath which is placed on the grave of their father and brother. The trio are invited back to have tea with the vicar and his wife and learn that the women are Lindisfarne (Lindy) and Arran de Boulter, and they repeat the ceremony every week. The vicar’s wife, whose mother, Lucy, was a close friend of the de Boulter sisters, regales them with their unhappy saga.

The book is divided into three unequal parts, the first leading up to the death of the brother, shot, apparently suicide, and the second to the death of the father, Ralph, who struck his head after an accident in his carriage. The vicar’s wife’s narrative takes up most of the first two parts, but to spice it up Fitt goes back and forth in time, cleverly changing the perspective, tone, and pace of the story.

The third part, the much shorter of the three, provides a resolution of what really went on in the house, with Mallett, acting as an armchair detective, drawing upon, in part, the recollections of Lindy shortly after the death of her sister. Mallett’s analysis of what really happened is plausible enough, although there are precious few clues to allow the reader to be certain and the book ends in further tragedy.

The most intriguing and powerful character in the story is Mary Dazill, who was brought to the house by Ralph de Boulter on the recommendation of Lady Millburn to act as governess-cum-companion to the sisters when their father had returned from Burma and was dissatisfied with the education they had received. Instead of the battle axe the girls were expecting Mary Dazill is a beauty, not much older than her charges and one who seems to exert a fascination on the men at Chetwode Lodge. Without her doing anything to encourage them, her very presence make both the father and son fall in love with her, Ralph intends to marry her, and earns her the enmity of the girls.

Fitt’s portrayal of Mary Dazill is nuanced. Is she the catalyst or the innocent victim of the swirling passions that are unleashed in the house? All she seems to want is some stability in her life. Fitt uses her to demonstrate how difficult it is for single women who have a chequered background to make their way in the world, especially if their looks and behaviour are out of synch with what is expected. She is like a heroine from Greek tragedy, the eye of the storm, whose presence unleashed the forces of envy and, ultimately, destruction. Her end is tragic, and the pathos of her situation is emphasised is emphasised by her lonely, untended grave in the same churchyard as the de Boulters’ grave which is marked with lavish ceremony.

It is hard not to think that the power of Freeman’s portrayal of Mary Dazill is drawn from her own experience, living in a same sex relationship, and trying to make her own way in the male-orientated groves of Academe. Not for nothing did she call herself Miss Fitt. This is another powerful book from her pen and Mary Fitt is an author well worth seeking out.

Another Slice Of Pork Pie

Melton Mowbray was a curious nexus of three factors, cheese, pigs, and hunting, that put it at the epicentre of the pork pie world from the 18th century. By this time the dairy farms in the area had concentrated on the production of cheeses, not least Stilton, and one of the by-products of the process was whey, protein-rich and a free source of food for livestock, especially pigs. Willing to eat almost anything, pigs were relatively inexpensive to keep and provided a much-needed source of protein in rural communities. When the supply of whey dried up in the winter, the pigs were slaughtered, and, as there was no need to preserve the meat, uncured pork would go into the pies that labourers ate.

Three local fox hunts, Quorn, Cottesmore, and Belvoir, based their operations around Melton and the huntsmen must have seen the local grooms and servants tucking into a portable pie that seemed almost indestructible. Although a local hunting correspondent thought in 1872 that it was unlikely that “our aristocratic visitors carry lumps of pie with them on horseback”, so ideal were they for eating on the hoof that the huntsmen’s provision bags must have included them.

The secret of the pork pie was out. The aristocratic huntsmen could not get enough of them, insisting that they be served for breakfast, and news of the local delicacy reached London’s clubland. Spotting a commercial opportunity, in 1831, Edward Adcock was the first to supply the capital with Melton Mowbray pork pies, sending them down on the daily Leeds to London stagecoach.

In northern England, they have their own version of the pork pie, the “Growler”, a name said to refer either to the anticipatory rumble of a tummy just before eating one or the noise the stomach makes after consuming it. They are slightly smaller than the Melton Mowbray pork pie with moulded cases and a distinctive crimped lid. Made from cured pork, the meat is pink, which aficionados claim gives the pie a hammier flavour.

Regional and generational preferences have fuelled a debate as to how the versatile pork pie is best served. Should it be warm, fresh from the baker’s oven, served with mushy peas or is it better at room temperature with either a dash of brown sauce to the side or pickles or mustard? Should the jelly be removed carefully so that the meat can be enjoyed in its unadulterated state or left to bring another flavour profile to the pie? Should pork pie be eaten for breakfast on Christmas Day, an East Midland tradition, fervently embraced by the family of D H Lawrence? And are pork pies with flavoured toppings and stuffed with exotic ingredients beyond the pale?  

The passion a pork pie can rouse in some is evident from the website of the Lancashire Pork Pie Appreciation Society (LPPAS)[1], established to appreciate the very best pies the county has to offer. “For a pork pie to be worth its name, it must consist of CURED pork”, it bellows. “On no account will insipid pies, using uncured pork, such as the Melton Mowbray pie, be considered. There is a disturbing trend towards the appearance of the “artisan” pie. In the pie world, artisan is merely code for expensive. Pies must be affordable in order to be acknowledged by the LPPAs”. Less bellicose but equally as fervent are the members of the Pork Pie Appreciation Societies of Rutland and Yorkshire. Gamely fighting their corner in this melting pot of emotions is the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association.

One thing is certain; pork pies have come a long way from being often the only foodstuff to be found in a public house, sitting uninvitingly in a Perspex container on the bar. With vegan traditional no-pork pies now available, there is one to suit every taste and pocket.

[1] https://lancashireporkpieappreciationsociety.com/about/

Beards Of The Week (2)

For American pogonophiles one of the attractions of the year was the Honest Amish National Beard and Moustache Championships, held recently at the Ford Wyoming Centre in Casper, Wyoming, which is held, inevitably, alongside the Bacon and Booze Festival.

As a warm up to the main events, 72 men with beards at least eight inches long stood side by side on the stage at Gaslight Social. They clipped their beads together to make a continuous chain 150 feet long. This beats the current Guinness World Record of 62 feet, 6 inches set in Germany in 2007. Organisers are awaiting official confirmation that they smashed the record.

It is a sport which grows on you.

Smoker Of The Week

Never having had occasion to be the first to bring the news of a major military victory, I have never seen the point of running a marathon. Still, each to their own.

Giving the lie to the idea that to compete you must be in the peak of physical health is a 50-year-old Chinese man, Chen Bangxian, affectionately known as Uncle Chen, who has a particular trademark style. He chain-smokes the whole way round and that does not seem to stop him from completing the 26.2 miles in a respectable time. Chen has recently completed the Xin’anjiang Marathon in Jiande in 3 hours 28 minutes, coming a respectable 574 in a field of around 1,500 finishers.

He has done it before, completing the Guangzhou Marathon in 3 hours, 36 minutes in 2018 and the Xiamen Marathon the following year in 3 hours, 32 minutes. News of Chen’s achievement has gone “viral”, the organisers sharing photos of his completion certificate to dispel rumours that it was just fake news.

Some competitors are fuming, complaining that Chen’s unusual running style puts them at risk from passive smoking, and making the decision as to whether to pass him dependent upon which way the wind is blowing. Perhaps they are a little miffed that a middle-aged man with a gasper in his mouth is doing as well as them with their elaborate training regimes.  

I wonder what he does with the dog ends.

The Case Of The Flying Donkey

A review of The Case of the Flying Donkey by Christopher Bush

This is one of the rarest of Christopher Bush’s Ludovic Travers yarns, the twenty-first in the series and originally published in 1939 under its initial title of The Case of the Flying Ass. It has now been reissued by Dean Street Press. For those of us who are enjoying exploring the Golden Age of Detective fiction and discovering authors who are new to us, it is easy to underestimate the enormous amount of time, patience, energy and, yes, sleuthing that publishers like Dean Street Press and their team of helpers put in to plug those missing gaps. We should be eternally grateful.

Travers and his new wife, Bernice, are on a jaunt to Paris but for the amateur sleuth it soon becomes a busman’s holiday, the result of his meeting up with Inspector Gallois, whom we last met in The Case of the Three Strange Faces. It is another story of an Englishman abroad, seemingly unshakeable alibis, and a foray into the art world.

Travers had bought a rather expensive painting by an up-and-coming French artist, Henri Larne. It is banished to his private quarters, and he dare not tell Bernice how much he paid for it – the joys of married life are beginning to impinge upon him. At an exhibition featuring some works of Larne in London, Travers came across a Parisian art dealer, Braque, who seemed to be behaving oddly and examining the signature with extreme care.

On his arrival in Paris Travers is invited by Braque to view his private collection. Wary, Travers tells Gallois but decides to go. On his arrival, he finds Braque’s body still warm. He had only just been fatally stabbed. It seems that Travers’ invitation was designed to establish a time for the murder and, by implication, an alibi but whose and why was Braque murdered? Braque’s business partner reveals that he had spoken of two “gold mines”, one of which had failed but the second was proving profitable. What was he up to and how are Larne’s half-brother, Henri, and the artist’s model, Elise Deschamps, involved?

Gallois has a certain approach to investigating a case, regarding it as a piece of theatre and an opportunity to how patience and finesse. He takes delight in withholding information from Travers while his junior, Charles, plays the part of a go-between, a master of disguise. There are the inevitable red herrings, aided and abetted by Gallois’ Gallic aloofness, a clever plot device by Bush, but despite feeling out of the loop, it is Travers who spots the link that eventually unravels the case.

Henri Larne signs his pictures with a hieroglyph in the form of a flying donkey, in part a pun on his name, âne being donkey in French, but more intriguingly, the body and legs look like two capital Ms, one above the other. Armed with the knowledge of the importance of the signature, Travers and, to a lesser extent, Gallois unravel a plot to sell counterfeit paintings. The carefully constructed alibi unravels – it is not difficult to see how it was done – and the culprit is revealed, the identity of whom might seem a surprise to some, but the clues are there for all to see.

The book ends on a note of optimism, which sadly with the imminence of war proves unfounded, hindsight bringing a touch of pathos to a tale that was engrossing and enjoyable, although the plot was not as complex as some that Bush has hatched. I enjoyed the book and am grateful that it was rescued from an undeserved obscurity.