Martin Fone's Blog, page 72

The Long Divorce

A review of The Long Divorce by Edmund Crispin – 230914

Also known as A Noose for Her, The Long Divorce, originally published in 1951 and the eighth in Crispin’s Gervase Fen series, is another excellent book from a fine writer who combines an intriguing plot with more than a dash of humorous writing. It is also another book where a bit of knowledge of classics from English literature comes in handy. The title is taken from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII where Buckingham, just before his execution in Act 2 scene 1, says “go with me like good angels to my end, / and as the long divorce of steel falls on me, / make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, / and lift my soul to heaven”. A butcher’s steel plays a prominent part in the story.

The book follows a Mr Datchery who arrives in Cotten Abbas – irritatingly, in my edition the name of the village is misspelt on several occasions, one of many typos in the text – and takes an interest in a spate of anonymous letters which have been sent to leading lights of the village. It does not take long for readers to realise that Datchery is Gervase Fen, who has adopted the name of Dickens’ mysterious character in Edwin Drood, who has been invited to the village by the Chief Constable, Babington, who is feeling the strain of trying to give up smoking and coping with a demented cat which redeems itself at a vital moment as the book moves to its denouement.

An anonymous letter drives Beatrice Keats-Madderly to hang herself, but it was different from the others, arriving in a violet-ink envelope. Then a Swiss teacher with more than a passing interest in psychology, Rubi, is found murdered, having been stabbed with a butcher’s steel. Three medics, two of whom will find themselves under suspicion, confirm the timing of the death as much later than it actually was. Then there is an attempted suicide which leads to a dramatic rescue of Penny Rolt who was driven to distraction by her heavy-handed father, the bluff industrialist.

One of the important points in the saga is whether the spate of anonymous letters, the outlier that led to a suicide, and the murder are the work of one culprit or are they to be treated as separate crimes. Fen, who, perhaps because he is in character, is less idiosyncratic in this book, works his way through the clues – Crispin plays fairly with his readers – until he comes to the inevitable conclusion, which seems to fly in the face of what the evidence is telling him.

The village of Cotten Abbas is full of mildly eccentric types who are desperate to preserve their idyllic rural tranquillity. They are particularly irked by the monstrosity of a saw mill that Rolt had constructed and the evangelical church of which the local butcher, Weaver, is a leading light. The difference in their approach to handling their unpopularity is a key to understanding how events unfolded. In classic detective style, Fen gathers all the suspects together and reconstructs what happened.

There are some wonderful moments in the book and the opening chapters are particularly fine. The tone of the book is more varied than some of Crispin’s earlier works, mixing generally humorous sections, usually involving Datchery/Fen, with a more serious passages, especially when dealing with the struggling and naïve doctor, Helen Downing. Crispin handles his female characters well and Downing, who is the beneficiary of Keats-Madderly’s will and had the butcher’s steel in her possession on the day that it was thought that Rubi was killed, is sympathetically portrayed, as she slowly realises that she is the prime suspect. Her burgeoning love affair with Inspector Casby, the investigating officer, adds to her predicament.  

Once the events are all unravelled, it is a simple set of crimes and the whodunit quickly becomes apparent. However, there is much more to enjoy in this book than a simple whodunit. It is another tour de force from a gifted writer. Thoroughly recommended.

Old Codgers Of The Week (15)

Hats off to 71-year-old Sune Valentin Norlin who, in August 2023, claimed a Guinness World Record by eating 392.7 grams of fermented herring in one minute, the equivalent of almost two tins of the stuff.

The competition organised by the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmő did not feature any old fermented fish, but the Swedish (admittedly acquired) delicacy of surströmming, made from Baltic sea herring. In the spring, the spawning fish are caught in the seas of Sweden and Finland, their heads removed, and their bodies are stored in a series of salted water solutions.

After around two months, the partially preserved herrings are placed in airtight tins where they are left to ferment for up to another year. Traditionally, a year’s batch of soured (surs-) Baltic herring (strömming) could only by sold on or after the third Thursday of August.

It is not for the faint-hearted, a Japanese study concluding in 2002 that it has one of the most putrid odours in the world, one that hangs around for three days after a can is opened. Fans, though, point out that it is rich in umami and that its taste is much better than its smell.

The organisers of the competition had sick buckets at the ready, but Morlin was made of sterner stuff and has set a record that will take some beating.

Lord Edgware Dies

A review of Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie – 230912

Initially serialized in The American Magazine under the title of Thirteen for Dinner, Lord Edgware Dies, the ninth in her Hercule Poirot series published in 1933, sees Christie in fine form. There are the obligatory three murders, that of Lord Edgware, Carlotta Adams, and Donald Ross, for her eccentric Belgian sleuth to exercise his grey cells over. As Hastings, his faithful companion comments, the case is not his finest moment, and he only gets back on track thanks to some unwitting assistance from Hastings and an overheard remark from a stranger.

It seemed apposite that I read this novel at the time that the death of Mike Yarwood was announced, because impersonation of famous people is at the heart and centre of the mystery. Jane Wilkinson, a famous actress, is married to Lord Edgware and is desperate for a divorce. Edgware is a nasty piece of work, over whom no one would or did shed any tears when he met his Maker, and refuses, or at least she says, to free her from an ill-considered marriage. She asks Poirot to plead her case but is also heard boasting that she will kill her husband.

Poirot is surprised to find that his Lordship is amenable to a divorce and even more so when he hears that Edgware has been murdered at his home, stabbed with a sharp instrument – it turns out to be a corn knife – which has been clinically inserted at the case of the brain. Just prior to the murder a woman came into the residence and was recognized as Wilkinson by both the butler and Edgware’s secretary. However, Jane has a cast-iron alibi, having been named in a newspaper as being at a dinner with, ominously, twelve other guests, all of whom can vouch for her attendance.

The other obvious suspect is Ronald Marsh, Edgware’s impoverished nephew and heir, whose pressing financial difficulties are transformed overnight by his uncle’s death and Inspector Japp, who makes a welcome return, inevitably falls into the trap of arresting him, a sure sign of his innocence.

On the same night as Edgware’s death, Carlotta Adams, a famous impersonator who can bring Wilkinson off to a tee, is also found murdered, poisoned with veronal. To complete the trio of corpses, Donald Ross is very much collateral damage, having inadvertently let slip in front of the culprit and Hastings that he has just heard something that has puzzled him. Before he can tell Poirot what he had heard, he is killed in the same way as Edgware.      

It is not difficult to work out the gist of how Edgware was murdered and how the other deaths followed on from it, but the motive only becomes apparent later on and Christie employs all her tricks and wiles to confuse, throwing into the story red herrings, misdirections and puzzling clues, not least the text of a letter that Carlotta Adams sent to her sister in America, a gold box inscribed with a date and initialed D and a pair of pince-nez which Poirot has clumsy fun in trying to establish to whom they belong, to obfuscate what is in essence a simple story.

In typical style, Poirot gathers the principal suspects together for the grand reveal where he can demonstrate his genius, even though he has to admit his failings as he pursued several wrong paths. Some of the antisemitic sentiments running through the book might upset some, but, on the whole, it is an entertaining enough read with enough intrigue to keep the reader interested.  

If you are going to plan the perfect murder, never match yourself against Poirot’s grey cells and make sure you know your Greek mythology. The consequences can be devastating, even for an oddly unrepentant murderer.

False Scent

A review of False Scent by Ngaio Marsh – 230910

At the very least what you come to expect from a Ngaio Marsh murder mystery is an ingenious way of murdering a victim and in False Scent, originally published in 1960 and the twenty-first in her long running Roderick Alleyn series, she does not disappoint. Mary Bellamy, a prima donna actress whose powers are waning, is killed at her fiftieth birthday party by spraying herself with Slaypest, a poison used to control pests on plants, which had been secreted into a bottle of strongly scented perfume which she was given as a present. It is a suitably gruesome death.

However, the switch is so obviously telegraphed in the story that it comes as quite a surprise that a detective as usually as adept as Alleyn should take so long a time over realising what has happened. Once that is clear, the culprit is fairly obvious to spot and it leaves the reader wondering whether Alleyn’s blind spot was just a device to pad out the book.

With her theatrical background Marsh delights in returning to the fertile ground offered by theatrical types. Mary Bellamy is a temperamental old dragon, who believes that the world revolves around her and that her producer (Timon Gantry), writer (Richard Dakers who is also, he is led to believe, her ward), her designer (Bertie Saracen) and the earthly manifestation of the rather sinisterly described The Management (Montague Marchant) are there solely to enhance her fame and extend her career.

When she discovers that Timon and Bertie had done the dirty on her by giving the lead in their next production to Kate “Pinkie” Cavendish, who gives the scent, smuggled in from Paris, as a birthday present, and, to make matters worse, Richard has written his latest play for Anelida Lee, a young aspiring actress with whom he has fallen in love, Mary’s insecurities, paranoia, and volcanic temper come to the fore.

Two of the more interesting characters are Bellamy’s servants, Florence and Old Ninn, the nurse. The two despise each other and were both close to Mary’s room around the time she used the spray. Florence found her in her death throes. For Florence, Mary can do no wrong, while Richard is the apple of the nurse’s eye. Then there is Mary’s long-suffering husband, Charles Templeton, a self-made man for whom his wife has little time, and very fastidious, disdainful of imperfections. He gave away a valuable figurine, simply because there was a chip in it, a psychological insight that has significance as the tale unfolds.

The book’s strength is that it is an entertaining social comedy of manners, and the opening section and the epilogue are genuinely moving pieces of writing. However, for this reader as a murder mystery it fails to set the juices flowing. Although Richard is the obvious suspect, enraged by a discovery about his parentage and with Mary just before she died, Alleyn sensibly holds fire until he can clarify motives, alibis, and opportunities still further. A sensible move as the culprit is right there before his eyes.

Perfection is something to be treasured.

Logan Rocks

Men Omborth, Cornish for balanced stone, sits about thirty metres above the sea on top of the Teryn Dinas cliffs at Treen in the far west of Cornwall, about three miles or so from Land’s End. Known as a Logan or logging stone from the Cornish word “logging” meaning rocking, it is one of several pieces of detached rock to be found in the county that are poised so finely on their base that they move backwards and forwards under the slightest of pressure.

They were once thought to be the work of human hands, connected with Druidic rituals and religious ceremonies. Legend had it that a person’s guilt or innocence could be established by a rocking stone; it would vibrate if they were guilty and remain stationary if guilty. Alternatively, according to William Mason’s Caractacus (1759), “it moves obsequious to the gentlest touch/ of him whose breath is pure; but to a traitor,/ though even a giant’s prowess nerved his arm,/ it stands as fixed as Snowdon”. 

More prosaically, their shape and position are the result of a combination of glacial movement, erosion, weathering, and the laws of physics. A Mr Grove went to great lengths at a British Association meeting, reported The Trove in November 1890, to demonstrate that logan stones were the result of natural rather than human forces, having “by artificial attrition…made several miniature rocking stones”,. He showed “how by the action of the atmosphere on their corners, many large masses of rock, which have a tendency to disintegrate into cubical or tabular blocks, might gradually become rounded into the rude spheroidal shape generally presented by the logan”

Cornwall’s most famous logan, Men Omborth drew visitors from far and wide to gaze upon what Mason described as “yon huge/ and unhewn sphere of living adamant,/ which, poised by magic, rests its central weight/ on yonder pointed rock” and perhaps even see it move. “So evenly poised” was it, wrote Dr William Borlase in Antiquities of Cornwall (1754), “that any hand may move it to and fro; but the extremities of its base are at such a distance from each other and so well secured by their nearness to the stone which it stretches itself upon, that it is morally impossible that any lever, or indeed force, however applied in a mechanical way, can remove it from its present situation”.

It is always dangerous to leave a hostage to fortune, especially when the Royal Navy is around. Hugh Goldsmith, nephew of the poet, Oliver Goldsmith, commanded HMS Nimble, a six-gun revenue cutter which patrolled the Cornish coastline on the lookout for smugglers and attempting to seize their contraband. On April 8, 1824, finding themselves off Treen and close to the famous logan, he and nine of his crew decided to see whether Borlase’s assertion held water.

At around 4.30pm armed with three handspikes, they set about trying to lever the stone from its pivotal rock. As it would not budge, the men then rocked the stone with such vigour that Goldsmith, fearful that it would fall on to them, gave the command for them to stop. It was too late though and while the stone missed the party, it toppled off its mound and fell some feet, an outcrop of rocks breaking its fall and stopping it from plunging into the sea.

Lost Word Of The Day (74)

Mooncalf is a term, now vanishingly rare, used to describe a simpleton, but in the century or so that it was used, it has had several meanings.

In the mid sixteenth century calf was used both as a term of endearment and pejoratively to describe a person. Mooncalf first appeared, in a thesaurus from 1565, to describe the phenomenon of a false pregnancy, one that had been created under the baleful influence of the moon. Ralph Tyler, in Five Godlie Sermons (1602), used it in that context; “…in that they haue not a charge of their bodies but the cure and care of their soules and as Midwiues to discerne the moone calfe from the perfect fruite of weomen so Preachers should not bring forth moone calues”.  

By the time Shakespeare used it in The Tempest, it had the meaning of a deformed monster, Stephano entreating Caliban, “mooncalf, speak once in your life, if thou be’est a good mooncalf”. Presumably, it extended the concept of a malevolent moon that had moved on from producing phantom foetuses to foetuses that were malformed.

Less than half a century later, John Booker was using it in A Rope for a Parret (1644) to denote a simpleton, someone who mooned their time away daydreaming; “Thou Mercury very Ridiculous, Thou Bloxford flye,Thou Moon calfe, born that very hour, on that very dismall fifth day of the moneth (you remember the Gun-powder Treason) when thy brother G. Faux was caught with a dark Lanthorne….”.

This is the meaning that stuck until it fell into obscurity.

Lost Word Of The Day (73)

Some people take a perverse delight in sticking to their old ways even when they have been demonstrably proven to have been incorrect. Such a person might be described as a mumpsimus.

According to a story told by Richard Pace, later to become the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, a monk was challenged in 1517 for mangling the phrase “quod in ore sumpsimus” in the Latin version of the Eucharist as “quod in ore mumpsimus”. When pulled up, the monk replied that he had said the passage that way for forty years and would not “change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus”.

Mumpsimus became a rather recherche way of describing a silly old fool, a stuck in the mud, an obstinate cuss and with this form of behaviour becoming increasingly more evident, it is due a revival, methinks.

The Case Of The Second Chance

A review of The Case of the Second Chance by Christopher Bush – 230907

The Case of the Second Chance, originally published in 1946 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is the thirty-first in Bush’s long-running series involving his amateur sleuth, Ludovic Travers, but, incredibly, just about marks the midway point. Inevitably, with such a prolific writer there will be occasions when the book just fails to meet their usual standard. Sadly, this seems to be one of them.

There are some redeeming features, though. It marks a further development in the relationship between Travers and his partner-in-solving-crime, George Wharton of the Yard. Wharton is on the cusp of retirement and the two are exploring the possibility of setting up their own detective agency, one that would give the grubby business of collecting evidence for divorce cases a swerve, and Travers, to test the lie of the land, has established links with Bill Ellice, who has an agency to sell.

Wharton and Travers are like chalk and cheese and, while they often despair of each other’s methods and propensity to go off at tangents, have a good rapport and working relationship. Wharton tends to be patronising towards the amateur, while Travers takes a good deal of delight in demonstrating that more often than not Wharton has got the wrong end of the stick. They work well and their relationship is often one of the strong points of a book by Bush.

That said, there is rarely a sense that any book is part of a series, something which makes it easier for a newcomer to engage in the book, but for the seasoned reader means that there is too much going over old ground and the move to a first party narrative means that a lot of time is spent reconstructing what Wharton might have thought and what lines he might be following. In other words, there is quite a lot of padding which can detract from both the pace of the book and the storyline.

The central premise to the book is interesting and holds definite promise. Wharton and Travers had collaborated on an investigation into the murder of an actor-manager, Charles Manfrey, in his own home. Despite there being relatively few suspects, and an argument was heard in the room just before Manfrey was struck on the head with a poker, the investigative duo fail to get anywhere, after missing a vital clue, and the murder is marked as unsolved.

They get a second opportunity to solve the crime a couple of years later when a young woman, who turns out to have been Manfrey’s secretary, Violet Lancing, at the time of his murder, approaches Ellice’s agency after an attempt to blackmail her. Travers, who hears the conversation while hidden in an anteroom, recognises the voice, and while he realises that the woman is being economical with the truth, is intrigued to know why she is being blackmailed and whether it has anything to do with Manfrey’s murder.

Of course, it does, but in true Bush fashion, the plot is much more complex than that but the various, seemingly unconnected, strands do come together after a fashion, not before Travers is knocked out by a mysterious character whose role is pivotal and whose identity betrayed by a physical characteristic, and Violet is murdered, strangled in a lonely part of Hampstead Heath. Even so, there are several attempts to come up with a rational explanation of the crimes which fits all the facts, and the resolution, in part, comes from a death bed confession, and finally a realisation that a trick as old as detective fiction itself had been played on Wharton and Travers to get them off the scent of Manfrey’s killer.

Murder, blackmail, ambition, an unfortunate marriage almost instantly regretted all have their part to play in a book which, once it gets going, is entertaining enough, but falls some way short of his best.

Yin And Yang

I do not visit many distilleries but over the summer did have the opportunity to view two representing the different ends of the gin making world, a global brand and an enterprising artisanal operation.

Laverstoke Mill is now the spiritual home of the Bombay Sapphire Distillery, a former paper mill which produced banknotes for the Bank of England and other major currencies until the Portal family moved to newer and bigger premises. Planning permission was obtained in February 2012 to restore the mill and the result is a stunning mix of careful restoration and new features, whilst preserving the chalk river, the Test, whose crystal-clear waters flow through the site.

The most eye-catching feature is Thomas Heatherwick’s two glass houses which give the impression of a liquid, gin of course, being poured out. They display the plants which produce the botanicals used to make Bombay Sapphire, one containing Mediterranean plants and the other tropical, making clever use of the excess heat from the distillation process to heat the houses to the requisite temperatures.

There are two enormous stills in the India House which make around 80% of the distillery’s output, which we could only observe through the window, but we could see the two smaller stills, after complying with the company’s onerous health and safety precautions.

The site only distills the spirit, which is then transported to Glasgow to be diluted and bottled, a marked contrast to the botanical to bottle operation I visited in June, just off the A394 on the outskirts of Praa Sands. Mount Bay Distillery’s operations are run out of an outhouse, with a small still, which as I write has been upgraded to a larger one capable of doubling their production, a tank in which their latest batch of rum was nearing the end of its fermentation process, and shelves of stock, housed in their distinctive, elegant, minimalist bottles, which have all been bottled and labelled by hand. A blue bucket on the floor contained the botanicals, all layered, ready for the next production of their Ebba Cornish Dry Gin.    

There was no mistaking the passion of Lisa Anglesjo and Ben Roberts for what they are doing, making the best possible rums and gins from local produce in as sustainable a way as they can. What they lack in corporate slickness, they more than make up for in their ambitions for their products and their hard work. They have developed a growing reputation and deserve to succeed.

The market spawned by the ginaissance has space for both a global giant and an enterprising family-run regional distillery, something that we should celebrate.

Two-Way Murder

A review of Two-Way Murder by E C R Lorac – 230906

Any book by E C R Lorac, one of the pen names of Edith Caroline Rivett, is a welcome addition to the collection of this Golden Age detective fiction, but Two-Way Murder is an oddity in that it was never published until it was rescued in 2021 from her papers. It was written just before her death, and one wonders how far from her conception of what the finished article would be like it is. Nevertheless, it is a good story, one in which she manages to hide the identity of the culprit until the end. I had my suspicions, but was never quite sure, a sign of a good puzzle.

It is a standalone novel, standing outside of her usual Inspector Robert Macdonald series, and perhaps loses a little focus as a result. Most of the leg work is done by Inspector Waring, but Nicholas Brent and his friend MacBane and even the Maine’s housekeeper, Alice Ridley, have a go at solving the mystery, not always with the best of intentions.

There are two femmes fatales in the story. The first, Rosemary Reeve, we never meet, having disappeared on the eve of the previous year’s Hunt Hall, and is presumed to have thrown herself off the cliffs. The other, Dilys Maine, is very much central to the plot, the belle of the area and over whom two leading lights of the community, Nicholas Brent and Michael Reeve, are squabbling. Brent wins the right to take her to the ball, but on the way back on a particularly misty evening, they find a body stretched across the road. Brent, after discovering that the victim is dead, feels that it is his duty to call the police, but to avoid any scandal, tells Dilys to make her own way back to her house through the fields.

In an era before mobile phones, Brent has to walk to the nearest telephone which happens to be in Reeves’ house. With no one in, Brent breaks in, makes his call, and then is attacked by someone he believes to be Reeves. The police establish that the victim had been murdered and then subsequently run over by a vehicle with the same tyre prints as Reeves’ car.

Reeves seems the obvious suspect, but, as is pointed out, would he be so stupid as to leave evidence so clearly pointing to him so close to his door? In other words, was he set up? Lorac muddies the water by introducing Dilys’ father, a man with a strong puritanical streak, who has an obsession with the goings-on at the local pub and was behaving strangely on the night of the murder. Alice Ridley is particularly concerned to protect his interests. And then there is the publican, Hoyle, who was not averse to organising a spot of gambling and possibly even smuggling, who might have sought to get rid of an informant.   

The identity of the victim takes some time to establish, but once that is done, the motivation for the crime becomes a little clearer. In essence, it is a story of love, revenge, and blackmail, one in which all the principal suspects all seem to have impeccable alibis. The resolution hangs on the presence of the fog and the difficulty of being absolutely certain which route you are taking, especially if you are a relative stranger to the area.

It struck me that there was quite a marked change of tone between the first and second halves of the book, the first lighter and slightly Wodehousian in dialogue, perhaps a reflection of the type of characters we were getting to know, while the second was straighter, more direct, and focused on confusing and then enlightening us. The finale was thrilling, Lorac’s characters were engaging, her fine sense of place and time came through, and the mystery was complex enough to sustain the tension right until the end. Lorac was a sadly underrated crime novelist.