Dancing With Death
A review of Dancing with Death by Joan Coggin – 240102
Well, what a transformation! The last time I met Lady Lupin, in Who Killed The Curate?, she was a ditzy, scatter-brained, former socialite who was trying to integrate herself into parish life as a new bride of the local vicar. Fast forward ten years, although Dancing with Death, now reissued by the admirable Galileo Publishers, was actually originally published three years later, in 1947, she has matured. She is still apt to make a socially gauche comment and her synapses seem far from conventional but there is a less frenetic atmosphere when she appears and what she lacks in intellect, she more than makes up for in intuitnder the terms ive powers.
Another reason why the book, the fourth in Coggin’s Lady Lupin series, is less a social comedy and more a slightly more conventional murder mystery is that Lady Lupin is called in by her best friend, Duds Lethbridge, to help her in a moment of crisis rather than being at the epicentre of the problem. After she decides to come to Duds’ aid, Lady Lupin disappears from the pages for almost half the book as Coggin fills in the backstory of Tommy and Duds Lethbridge’s disastrous house party over the Christmas period.
The house party trope allows Coggin to introduce a motley collection of guests, including Duds’ cousins, the twins Jo and Flo. Under the terms of their grandfather’s will, the proceeds of his large estate go to the eldest, Flo, who was the first of the two to be born. Although Flo has offered to share the legacy, Jo has flatly refused and the pair have become estranged. The atmosphere of the house is not helped by the presence of Tommy’s cousin, Sandy, who spent four years as a prisoner of war and whose demeanour is morose, nor by Henry Dumbleton, Duds’ former lover, and his chatterbox of a wife, Irene. Flo’s husband, Gordon Pinfold, completes the guest list.
The predictable disaster strikes when Jo is found dead in her room, still wearing her fancy dress costume of Carmen, having apparently committed suicide by ingesting diamorphine, which is prescribed to asthma sufferers, of whom Henry is one. But was it suicide and why is Flo confining herself to her room, only seeing her husband and eating her meals in her room? Remarkably she is spared attending the inquest and after the funeral she is whisked away supposedly to London.
Into all of this steps Lady Lupin and sensing a strange atmosphere sets out in her inimitable fashion to understand the reasons for Jo’s death, unearthing a suspicion of blackmail, and some surreptitious comings and goings into Jo’s bedroom around the time of her death. A heart to heart with Flo which reveals some surprising gaps in her knowledge only heightens Lady Lupin’s suspicions. She engages a private detective to cover the London end, principally to discover why a tin of weedkiller was sent to Tommy, and ropes Duds, Tommy, and Sandy to follow Gordon and Flo with surprising results in what is a tale of greed.
There is a twist to the ending of this tale, although an alert reader, sensitive to the possibilities afforded by twins, might not be as astonished as Coggin might have hoped. Nevertheless, she does a good job in maintaining interest and raising the pace as the story hurtles to its denouement.
For me, one of the fascinating aspects of the book was the insights it offered into life in the immediate post war period. Food is scarce and barely edible, drink is scarce and has to be eked out, making the prospect of a successful house party remote, even without a group of seemingly ungrateful and distracted guests. At one point Duds longs for the return of the old established order of the pre-war world, but realises that that world has gone for ever and that she must reconcile herself to the new order. There is more than a hint of wistfulness in the tone of the book.
It is full of humour, sharp observation and is a satisfying conclusion to the Lady Lupin series. I wonder if Galileo Publishers will reissue the middle two books. Let’s hope so.
