Portrait Of A Murderer
A review of Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith – 250106
Anne Meredith was one of the noms de plume of Lucy Malleson, a prolific author best known as Anthony Gilbert. Originally published in 1933 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, Portrait of a Murderer is a clever inverted murder mystery story which explores the psychology of a murderer. It is cleverly titled as not only is it a study of a murderer but a painting of the moment that the murder is committed is the culprit’s lasting testament to their crime.
Adrian Gray is the pater familias of an extended family whom he invites each December to his house, King’s Poplar, to spend Christmas with him. Once of old land owning stock, the Gray family is now a pale shadow of its former self. In fact, Adrian is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, following a series of unwise investments made following advice from his son-in-law, Eustace. Married to Adrian’s daughter, Olivia, Eustace is a Jew and is a stereotype of the characteristics associated with that race at the time, a portrayal that the modern reader might find distasteful. Germane to the plot, though, is that Eustace is desperate for £10,000 to shore up his investment business.
Richard, Adrian’s eldest son, is an aspiring politician who has over-extended himself in a desire to impress the powers that be and buy his way into a peerage. Hildebrand, known as Brand, is the black sheep of the family, trapped in a loveless marriage with a brood of children, at least one of whom is not his, forced to work in a dead end job and required to sublimate his ambitions to return to Paris to be an artist. He is desperate for money and he to joins the queue to tap up his father for funds.
Of Adrian’s other daughters, Isobel has returned home after the failure of marriage while Amy has acted as her father’s housekeeper, struggling to make ends meet on a pitiful allowance. Only Ruth and her lawyer husband, Miles, are content with their lot and as the story plays out this is telling.
The atmosphere on Christmas Eve is strained as several of the house guests steel their nerves to approach Adrian. He, true to form and beset with money worries of his own, aggressively knocks back their requests. The following morning Adrian’s body is found in his study, his head having been bashed in. On the desk is his cheque book, the latest entries on the counterfoils being one made out to Brand for £2,000 followed by another to Eustace for £10,000, and an agreement signed by Brand renouncing any future claim on his father’s generosity.
In essence, the book falls into four parts, the set up followed by the murderer’s account of how they came to murder the old man and their attempts to bother cover up their crime and to divert suspicion to another party. The third part shows how the murderer’s plans seem to succeed, putting someone who is innocent of this crime at least into the frame to the extent that they are standing trial for murder and the fourth shows how the murderer’s plan unravels and the truth comes out.
A couple of chance remarks about a silk handkerchief and a previous misdemeanour, together with a confession from a former servant that she saw someone in Adrian’s library around 2am, the time when Adrian was thought to have been killed, which blows wide open one of the suspect’s carefully laid alibi, leads the disinterested Miles to the inevitable conclusion. His dilemma is whether to save the morally repugnant but innocent victim of the murderer’s plot in favour of someone who deserves a break and is to be pitied. Miles, of course, does the right thing but allows the culprit to face their own form of reckoning.
After a slow start, it is a powerful read. Inverted murders, of course, lose one of the key ingredients of a murder story, the whodunit element, but Meredith more than makes up for it by providing the reader with a compelling insight into the mind of her killer and a very convincing rationale for their actions. I enjoyed it.
