Fault In The Structure
A review of Fault In The Structure by Gladys Mitchell – 250830
Fault in the Structure, the fifty-second in Mitchell’s long-running and often perplexing Mrs Bradley series, originally published in 1977, charts the extraordinary career of Alfriston Calliope Swinburne, only child of Osbert Swineborn, who as a condition of his marriage to an American heiress, Dora Ellen, had to change his surname to something less objectionable in her opinion. The name A C Swinburne is the first manifestation of the theme of minor English poets and other historical characters that runs through the novel.
By any standard Swinburne’s life has been a story of ill-luck and good fortune. He survived a fatal car crash when he was at the wheel which accounted for his father, an event which meant he no longer had to leave school and earn a living and was free to pursue an academic career. When as a lecturer and now going by the name of Thaddeus E Lawrence, he gets into severe financial difficulties miraculously the kindly benefactor, Sir Anthony, who took Lawrence under his wing when he was orphaned, suddenly dies from an aneurysm after Lawrence failed to get him medical attention and leaves him a small fortune.
Lawrence’s love life is equally tangled. He married and seemingly divorced a chorus girl by the name of Coralie St Malo and then married a secretary to a College who after an altercation with a couple of porters about a missing parcel containing a valuable watch belonging to Sir Anthony disappears. Her body is found in a partially excavated swimming pool with her throat cut. She was very close to her brother, Bill Caret. Perhaps fearing some fraternal retribution, Lawrence allows himself to be incarcerated after pleading guilty to driving while drunk and insulting the judge for two years.
The book falls into four parts and the final two sections focus on the Chardle and District amateur dramatic, operatic and literary society who decide to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the English printer, William Caxton by staging John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. Laura Gavin, secretary to Dame Beatrice, as Mrs Bradley is now known as, lands a star part. The pace and focus of this part of the book is radically different from that of the first two parts, concentrating on the squabbles, bitchiness and back stabbing that goes with an amateur production.
As a result of Laura’s involvement in the production, Dame Beatrice attends a rehearsal and recognizes two of the participants, although they are masquerading under different names, the man calling himself Rodney Crashaw, a name not dissimilar to that of an English metaphysical poet, Richard Crashaw. You get the gist now. In a change to the final scene the actor playing Macheath stands on a cart with a noose around his neck. The cart moves, the man is strangled to death and there is only one person whose movements cannot be accounted for given the constraints of the production. Oh, and there is someone living in the area by the name of William Caxton, whom Dame B persuades to play a role in the festival, someone close to the second Mrs Lawrence, whom we encountered in the second part.
Dame Beatrice’s role in making sense of all of this and putting her finger on the identities of Macheath, his murderer and Caxton is down to a combination of coincidence, being in the right place at the right time and her phenomenal memory and power of recall. There is much fun along the way including a ghostly figure stalking the cloisters of a women’s college, dragging a heavy sack. No prizes for guessing what was in it.
There are moments of comedy and, for a Mitchell story, it is written in a brisk, straightforward style, although the writer is not afraid to show her knowledge of folklore and English poetry. Dame Beatrice’s saurian-like characteristics and her irritating mannerisms have been toned down which is welcome and Laura Gavin is a lively companion.
It is accessible but for me the book lives up to its title: it reads very much like two distinct novellas joined together by a handful of common characters and there is barely any mystery. I found it enjoyable but is neither one of Mitchell’s best nor by any stretch amongst her worst and probably is not one to start an exploration of the ouvre of la Mitchell with.
