Curiosity Killed The Cat
A review of Curiosity Killed the Cat by Joan Cockin – 240530
Joan Cockin was the nom de plume of Edith Macintosh and Curiosity Killed The Cat, originally published in 1949 and reissued by Galileo Publishers, was the first of three murder mysteries that she wrote. It deals with the consequences of the Second World War both in terms of the requisitioning of a country pile and the resolution of some unfinished business.
Evacuation was a traumatic experience both for those torn from their natural environment and for those who are forced to accept the newcomers. From this time perspective we tend to think of evacuation in terms of children moved from city environments – my mother was moved from Bury in Lancashire to Paignton and, curiously, was bombed out in both locations – to be placed often with unwilling and unsuitable substitute parents. But evacuation also meant the wholesale movement of government departments such as the Ministry of Scientific which took over Wassel House in the village of Little Biggling. There is an undercurrent of resentment running through the book, the locals and the evacuees both longing for the restoration of normality and for the usurpers to return to London.
What is holding up the return of the Ministry to London is its continuing work on developing a new product, Britex, which could be even more successful than nylon and is a closely guarded secret. There is consternation in the higher echelons when it is discovered that there has been a security leak and that some details of the new product have been leaked to some South American scientific journals. However, before we reach that point we have an almost impossible murder to solve, that of a disliked and unlikeable messenger at Wassel House, Parry, who likes to give the impression that he has the ear and protection of the Director General and who has no compunction about reading and rifling through papers on desks. He is found murdered in his billet by his landlady, the unworldly and rather innocent Miss Penny who has been traumatized by the reminiscences brought back by Parry’s frequent drunken and abusive behaviour.
The local inspector, Cam, is allocated the case and with some amateur assistance from his good friend, Dr MacDermot, seeks to solve the case. The early assumption is that the culprit is a member of the Ministry staff and there are only really three suspects, Ratcliffe whose writing is found on a slip of paper hidden in a chess piece giving the name of a South American contact, Dr Robarts, whose chess set it is and who regularly played a game with Parry, and Stone, a surly individual who was injured in the war and held by the Germans for five years.
Robarts and Stone, together with a colleague, Chatsworth, had been studying in Germany before the war. Chatsworth was subsequently convicted and executed for espionage, Parry having a part to play in his detection, or so he claimed. Was Parry’s murder some form of retribution for Chatworth’s death and who played the part of the assassin and was he also the source of the further leaks? Macpherson finally convinces the doubtful Cam that there was a second key to Parry’s room and once that is established he is on the path to solving the murder.
There is more than a little humour running through the story with the romantic dalliance between Miss Penny and Mr Witherspoon who is particularly concerned about his vegetable patch, the staff’s attitude to the pompous and bluff Director General, Sir Arnold Conway, whom Cam has the audacity to name as one of his potential suspects given his rather close association with the victim, and the attitude of Martins, the house’s porter, whose insistence on sticking to protocol imperils the safety of one of the Ministry’s key staff.
The book finishes with the good guys also receiving their just desserts, adding a bit of warmth to a story that was enthralling and entertaining. I am looking forward to reading Cockin’s other murder mysteries, one of which, Villainy at Vespers, Galileo Publishers have already reissued with the third, Deadly Earnest, scheduled for release in August this year.
