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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Butcher's Shop Post #4

11/22/2018

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Welcome back to the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group and our continuing discussion of 1929's The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. This week, we focus on Chapters 13 to 18, a busy section wherein Mrs. Bradley reconstructs the crime, interviews all and sundry, and gets an arrow shot at her head by a man dressed in full Robin Hood costume (to which, characteristically, she reacts after the fact by "hooting joyously").
ON DIALECT AND LOCAL COLOUR

There was one topic that every contributor mentioned in his or her comments: Gladys Mitchell's effective presentation of regional dialect when relating the speech of local characters. This is an element that appears throughout Mitchell's books, and it adds a great flavor to the stories, both in its definition of who those characters are (such as their education and class status) and as a colorful way to let these people tell their tale in their own words. It's interesting to remember that, in Mitchell's hands, Mrs. Bradley's speech never strays from the King's English; if she employs an idiom, she will almost always qualify it, drawing attention to the turn of phrase.

With her supporting characters, such as those who live in rural, rustic settings (such as the Ditches of Dead Men's Morris [1936]) or the proletariat working-class (like The Moon-Rocket Kid of 1970's Gory Dew or the landlord of the "Queen's Head" bar in Butcher's Shop), the author seems to delight in reproducing the syntax and sounds of these people on the page. Doing so often makes the reading and the dialogue come alive for the readers.   

Mark Philpott observes that "Gladys Mitchell uses accents sparingly to give us necessary flavor of local dialogue. The scene where Mrs. Bradley is pumping the barman about the fight that occurred between Galloway and Wright does not overtax our patience as 21st-century readers in the way Ngaio Marsh can sometimes do. The fight description is brief and to the point. Mitchell moves on with her story, taking the reader with her."
J.F. Norris credits GM with "a finely tuned ear for vernacular, the rhythms, the speech patterns and slang… In these six chapters we get two excellent examples of regional speech in the telling of the bar fight when Mrs. Bradley interviews the owner of the pub and… [later when] Lulu talks about her problems with George’s jealous nature and his suspicions of her carrying on with another man.  Both speeches are like the work of a playwright.  It’s rare to find this kind of dialectical work that is both exemplary of real speech as well as revealing character.  This is one skill that Mitchell carried off extremely well throughout her career. In fact, I think her ear only got better with the variety of regional dialects she managed to pull off.  North Country, Scottish, Yorkshire and Welsh all come to mind in the books I’ve read over the years."

Perhaps one of the satisfactions for the reader of these dialect passages reflects the point that they are often colloquial and evocative, painting a vivid and amusing verbal picture such as a writer for the stage might do through finely observed character dialogue. For example, the "Queen's Head" landlord, in describing the impromptu bar fight, uses boxing terms to make the telling of it immediate and alive:
"It wasn't too bad, mum, for about a round and a 'arf. Mr. Wright was nicely inside 'imself, and looked to me to 'ave the style and the science in 'itting. But at the end of Round Two 'e lets Galloway put 'im to the ropes—which is to say this 'ere counter—with a nasty left 'ook, and only the call of time saved 'im from punishment."
Martyn Hobbs describes the dialogue here as "Pinteresque", further connecting the idea of prose and stage writing. I will note that the landlord's re-creation here is also intriguing because the detective and the reader are trying to decide whether Wright deliberately provoked a fight in order to provide an excuse for blood on his clothing; therefore, the witness's description that Wright "let Galloway put 'im to the ropes" may be significant even while it is metaphorical.

Catherine Dilts writes that she "didn’t feel Mitchell’s continual, lengthy reproduction of regional accents mocked the 'lower classes' but saw it as an affectionate appreciation for dialect." I would agree, and would note that the characters who use dialects throughout the Mrs. Bradley series of books are often sympathetic, lively, and content with and quietly proud of their lifestyles. Gladys Mitchell, a career schoolteacher, demonstrates a fondness for the working individuals who are not in the same social orbit of her moneyed, professionally-set detective.

My interpretation coincides with Joyka's: "When her characters start talking, they just leap off the pages for me. He or she may be routed for other reasons but never because they have less education or less money than 'their betters'." She notes that the language in Gladys Mitchell's books brings great enjoyment: "It is rich without being overwhelming, serious without lecturing. There are obvious cultural expressions we would not use today but their use is part of the story, not added for unnecessary effect."

ON STAGE MANAGING AND SPECTACLE


From Martyn Hobbs: "No one can rival Mrs Bradley in her dominance of the stage, both as protagonist and, as she says herself, 'stage manager'. She pops up all over the place like some devilish sprite or flibbertigibbet. She is a grotesque chimera, only human in parts. She is ghoulish, tigerish, saurian. Even her outer vestments are clashing and ill-matching (a rainbow-coloured jumper with checked tweeds) or simply ghastly (a hideous magenta silk dress and ludicrous black hat). She is a shapeshifter, a play-actor, sometimes appearing as a 'poor old thing... harmless... a case for a mental home', beaming with a smile of 'futile senility'; at others she is leering, smirking, with the smile of a 'Chinese executioner' or Cheshire Cat; and a past mistress of the fake coughing fit! Mrs Bradley (and GM) take pleasure in all these grotesque manifestations."

Martyn goes on to note that, at times, the author also imbues her predatory and monstrous protagonist with a more human, accessible side that creates an intriguing paradox. Is she a dangerous beast or a benign, even maternal presence? The answer, I presume, depends on the guilt or innocence of the person trying to calculate her personality. Kate writes that Chapter 17 "does reveal a small, softer, more domestic side to Mrs Bradley when she shows concern over Aubrey's flannels, which got ruined in the reconstruction of the crime. Normally, 'great detectives' do not notice such piffling matters, or if they do they don't feel there is any need on their part to do something about it."

Kate continues with this smart observation: "You may be thinking that if Mrs Bradley had been reading this book about herself, her self-esteem may have been knocked to smithereens. Yet interestingly we see her not only unbothered by criticisms and insults, but that she actually derives pleasure from identifying negative feelings towards her in others":

He disliked and mistrusted Mrs Bradley to a singularly flattering extent (at least, she thought his attitude flattering, for she had a habit of taking anybody's dislike of her person and character as a compliment of the highest order!).
Let's return to the idea of stage managing, something Mrs Bradley engages in literally here, using young Aubrey Harringay as a proxy for the missing-and-all-but-deceased-and-dismembered Rupert Sethleigh in a re-creation of the crime. J.F. found this moment – and Mrs B's motives – frustrating and unhelpful:

"In the overly detailed and entirely unnecessary dramatic re-enactment of the murder, using Aubrey rather cruelly as a stand-in for the victim, she starts to undress him roughly and we get this odd line: '…and with the deftness born of nursing experience in mental hospitals she turned him over and pulled the shirt off.' This entire scene strikes me as a sign of an innate sadism in Mrs Bradley (she also slapped Felicity earlier in the book) that crops up every now and then in the series. I was really bothered by it and didn’t really find it funny. I thought all the play-acting was ludicrous, frankly. She could easily have just told everyone her theories of what happened in the woods rather than humiliating Aubrey in the role of the victim.  A weird sense of humor on Gladys's part here, I’d say. Of course the other way would probably be dry and boring and with the re-enactment we get all sorts of farcical action. But still I thought it just dumb."

I offer a friendly and well-intentioned rebuttal to J.F.'s comments (both of which I'm very grateful to include here, since subjectivity and debate are always to be embraced!). Personally, I had no problem with the re-enactment stylistically or narratively. It does feel in keeping with the on-and-off-the-stage activity established in the first two chapters, where the Druid Stone and clearing is the performance set and space and the circle of trees acts as backdrop or audience or both. (Catherine noticed this continuation of a stage motif also.) Mrs. B's treatment of Aubrey – who is more precocious than he need be – is merely a meeting of cheek for cheek, and like Felicity, Aubrey doesn’t feel at all victimized. On the contrary, Mitchell includes the limited-third-person lines, "Aubrey walked on, around the immense Stone. This was rather a rag."

And finally, the re-enactment does serve a purpose, in my opinion: it gives the reader insight on how the sequence of events may have occurred, and it tests the theory of when, if Sethleigh's body were at the spot where Jim Redsey left it, the ambulatory Aubrey would have first noticed it. And you're absolutely right about how the restaging allows for showing and not telling, which is essential in theatrical story presentation. Whether GM incorporates this information effectively into the plot's conclusion is perhaps another conversation!

ON FERDINAND AND PHYSIOLOGY

Mrs. Bradley's barrister son Ferdinand Lestrange was memorably introduced in the prior story Speedy Death, where he took on the task of defending his mother against a charge of murder. Reference to him in the sequel has made a couple readers take note. Joyka writes, "Ferdinand has not coalesced yet. In this book he seems to be a different man [than in Speedy Death]. Cleaver Wright is trying to figure out Mrs. Bradley… He thinks her wrinkled yellow face is mild and sweet as a grandmother, and then this thought interrupts: "which owing to the extreme distaste displayed by her only son for the whole female sex, she certainly was not!”  What??  I have to say these inconsistencies in the Mrs. B books delight me more than annoy me."
​

In Butcher's Shop, there is also the singular appearance of the strange Savile, clad in various garments and, at one point, oiled and wearing a loincloth. Martyn brings back Ferdinand for an analysis of character attraction: "We are clearly told that Mrs Bradley can delight in Savile's perfect musculature development and his 'beautiful creamy skin'. However, perhaps there are also hints at other types of sexual interest. We learn that her son, Ferdinand, displays 'an extreme distaste...for the whole female sex'. We don't know how he considers the male variety. And there is this beautiful, quiet observation in Chapter 16. Conducting her investigations, Mrs Bradley asks Felicity to remember the movements of the suitcase. There follows this short intimate paragraph":
Felicity's grey eyes, lovely in their sweet seriousness, gazed unseeingly into the blue haze of the July morning. She had seated herself on the broad step which led into the garden and her hands were clasped round her knees. Mrs Bradley, looking at her, sighed inaudibly.
Continues Martyn, "That silent sigh seems to me the closest one gets to Mrs Bradley in this novel, and possibly even to Gladys Mitchell herself."

FINAL THOUGHTS (on Chapters 13 to 18)

Despite a dissatisfying crime scene re-creation, J.F. found these chapters to deliver on genre expectations: "The detective story elements are finely tuned in this section and the reader is truly engaged in the multiple mysteries. The game is on at this point."

Kate, referring specifically to Chapter 16: "Mrs Bradley is definitely not really working with the police, who in fact are not hugely grateful for her information. Interestingly, there are times where the police are actually farther ahead in some of the evidence than Mrs Bradley is. Yet this distance between the police and Mrs Bradley does slacken the pace of the novel and give the investigation less direction, as Mrs Bradley is not great at showing what she has in mind."

And I will echo Kate's comment that the inclusion of both the police investigation and the psycho-analyst's sometimes intuitive, enigmatic deductions can make the narrative feel meandering or unfocused, but the match between the amateur sleuth versus the conventional coppers to find a solution is a long-standing tradition of the murder mystery puzzle story. GM may have felt an obligation to use this structure here – or she may have been trying to gently parody it – but she soon abandoned the convention, preferring to use the police in most of her later novels mainly as vessels of information for Mrs. Bradley/Dame Beatrice whenever she would need them.

Next week, the reading group concludes with a (mostly spoiler-free) conversation about the final chapters of The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. Comments are due via email to me by Monday, Nov. 26. Thanks to everyone who contributed so far!

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Butcher's Shop Post #3

11/14/2018

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Welcome back to the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group, where we now investigate the strange goings-on to be found in Chapters 7 through 12 of The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop. The comments received explored two main foci within these pages: the humdrum hypothesizing of two representative police figures and the arrival (mostly alluded to in the previous chapters) of Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.

Meanwhile, a skull is discovered in a seaside cave and presented to a bathing bishop and later to a temperamental artist named Wright, who is tasked with reconstructing a face out of clay from the found object; he reproduces the visage of the absent Rupert Sethleigh. But the inspirational skull, it appears, has been swapped out with a coconut, and something new has been added to a display in the local museum...

ON PACING AND POLICING

I agree with the readers who observe that these six chapters feel a bit plodding in pace and narrative. Kate from crossexaminingcrime remarks that, “to be honest, it feels like it has taken a long time to get going and I think this is because of a lack of lead character.” We are treated to the expository dialogue of two new officials, Superintendent Bidwell and Inspector Grindy, and it’s uncertain whether their appearance is a parody of the mystery genre or an earnest nod to convention. Either way, they are far less memorable than the suspects surrounding them.

From J.F. Norris of Pretty Sinister Books: "[Butcher's Shop] is beginning to adopt the formal structure of a detective novel now. The police enter the picture, but in Mitchell's hands are a mix of methodical and foolish. There is one scene I felt between Grindy and his superintendent that seems utterly redundant, a recap scene -- or tabulation scene as American mystery writer Carolyn Wells called them -- that occurs right after the first police investigation sequence. Utterly unnecessary, in my opinion. The only point it seemed to have was to belittle the rigid thinking of the police."
​


Martyn Hobbs
offers this take:  “It starts well enough with the unlikely comic duo of the Bishop of Culminster (of the 'whimsical eyebrows') and the long-suffering insufferable Mrs. Harringay leading us into the grotesque Tale of the Head. But as the Plods take over and Inspector Grindy and the Superintendent conduct their plodding investigations, there is a slackening of energy and the style and interest drops. Gladys Mitchell seems to lose interest, too. She's fabulous at creating individual voices, but Grindy and the Superintendent blur into each other. One example: a little phrase like 'you see' could easily be part of somebody's idiolect. And in fact, on page 130 of the Vintage edition, it occurs four times. The only thing is, within six exchanges, the Superintendent says it twice... but so does Grindy! Maybe their sometimes literal investigative spadework has to be done for the plot, but with Mrs. Bradley offstage, GM seems to be going through the motions.”

ON MRS. BRADLEY (at the forefront this time)

Catherine Dilts: "Mrs. Bradley Is becoming a more interesting character. She’s clearly a self-confident woman, dressing in bright unusual clothing, and boldly taking charge of the murder case. If this novel was written as a send-up of Christie novels, then Mrs. Bradley is an anti-Miss Marple. There’s nothing subtle about Mrs. Bradley."

Kate: "Her entrance here reinforces in stereo the unconventional, outlandish and dangerous side to Mrs. Bradley, which I feel is justified by the novel’s end. The ornithological semantic field is continued from the description in Chapter 1 with Mrs Bradley being described as:

‘A small, shrivelled, bird-like woman, who might have been thirty-five and who might have been ninety, clad in a blue and sulphur jumper like the plumage of a macaw, came forward with that air of easy condescension which is usually achieved by royalty only, and fixed the vicar with an eagle eye.’
"I find it interesting how the initial impressions we might get from the phrase: ‘small, shrivelled, bird-like woman,’ are completely upended by the end of the sentence with the suggestion of ‘royalty’ and the vibrancy of a Macaw parrot. Bradley’s indeterminate age is also unusual, as 35 to 90 is quite a wide range! But I think it emphasises how hard Mrs Bradley is to understand and pin down, as even physically she does not seem one thing or another."

Joyka: "I think Mrs. Bradley has not quite gelled for Gladys Mitchell at this point. She seems mean at times, which is not the Mrs. Bradley we all know and love. Case in point:

'Impudence,' said Mrs Bradley severely, 'is the weapon of the very young. Chastisement'—she seized Felicity in a grip of iron and smacked her hard—'is the reply of the extremely old.'
"Everyone knows you need to stand far enough away from Mrs. Bradley to avoid a sharp claw poking you in the ribs, but she doesn’t usually smack people hard or at all. As usual, though, Felicity takes it in stride, even finding out 'to her secret amusement that people always did as Mrs. Bradley told them.' Young people, in particular, seem to 'get' Mrs. Bradley." 

ON THE SUPPORTING CAST


J.F. Norris connected Felicity Broome to a character that would become the psycho-analyst's secretary and companion in crime investigation in later novels: "Felicity reminds me of what Laura Menzies would develop into in the later books. She is in awe of Mrs. Bradley and follows instructions without hesitation. Mitchell mentions that Beatrice Bradley has the ability to get people to do her bidding without questioning her, as if to imply between the lines that there is a hypnotic power at work. Yet another instance of making it appear that Mrs. Bradley is a 'witch' of sorts."

Catherine Dilts is "still amused by Mrs. Bryce Harringay. 'It was a thousand pities to miss a chance of being really dramatic.' But concerning drama, no one seems especially distressed by the continued absence of Rupert Sethleigh. Characters are abandoning the theory that he arbitrarily left or disappeared, and are focusing on solving his presumed murder. Mrs. Harringay is most concerned about the shadow that might be cast on her son Aubrey’s social reputation if his cousin James is hanged for Rupert’s murder."

Erin Cordell writes, "I very much enjoy the story and the character developments. Jim has gone from a lazy lay-about to a sort of sympathetic incompetent, the inspector is being used to pull threads together, but my favorites are Mrs. Bradley and Mrs. Bryce Harringay.  I loved their interaction, so British, so like a BBC mystery series scene."

And Joyka describes an affinity for Mitchell's handling of the clergy here: "I love the way Mrs. Bradley tweaks the religious men in [Butcher's Shop]. Both the bishop and the vicar seem to be nice men but just a little incompetent in their field.  It is a theme that is repeated often in the GM books." 

ON THE ARBITRARY AND THE EMOTIONAL

Before I offer J.F. Norris's comment, I quickly add as a preface that Gladys Mitchell explained in an interview with B.A. Pike that her plotlines evolved as she wrote the story, and that it was not unusual that the identity of the murderer and related specifics would change during the writing, from initially conceived idea to completed draft.  

J.F. writes, "there is always an element of arbitrariness in Mitchell's mysteries. The stuffed trout and the initialed suitcase and the burial of both is a perfect example of the typical Mitchell gimmick. Aubrey intends to bury the suitcase, changes his mind, goes for the fish, comes back and suitcase is gone. So he buries the fish. Later the suitcase is found to be exactly where he intended to put it and inside is the fish. All supposedly baffling, meant to stall the investigation perhaps and distract the police with silly games. Of course it will all prove to have some significance in the end."

I connect the idea of arbitrariness also with the recurring curiosity of the strange detail or the odd object, items that pop up consistently in Gladys Mitchell's mysteries, both early and late in her career. These are details that the author and her detective underline and spend time pondering, and their presence contributes to the strangeness of the tale: the possibly poisoned grated carrot in When Last I Died; the deadly mushroom pieces pushed into a bludgeoned victim's wounds in The Death-Cap Dancers; the bizarrely enigmatic drowning attempt (or was it?) in Death and the Maiden. They're clues of a kind, but they also seem included for their oddness. And yes, such strange specifics provide yet another reason why I often find the Mrs. Bradley stories so beguiling.

I will let Martyn Hobbs conclude this installment with his observations about Mitchell's exploration of her characters' emotions. Even as the author hands them a farce to perform, she still takes time to define their feelings. "What always fascinate are the sexual undercurrents in the story: whether it's the queasiness of Felicity's feelings toward the artist Wright, who 'stirred her blood in some queer, exciting, vaguely improper way' (hinting at DH Lawrence), or young Aubrey and his adolescent attraction to Felicity herself, 'fired by her loveliness, agonizingly conscious of the inadequacy of his words, but bashfully incapable of adding so much as a syllable to them.' Gladys Mitchell sees the skull beneath the skin. In fact, in this story, she sees a lot of it! But in all the comedy, grotesquerie and caricaturing, she sees the humanity of her characters, too; their passions, hungers and secret thoughts."

Thank you, contributors and readers, for making this online reading group a very agreeable and informative event! Until next week, when we look at Chapters 13 to 18. If you want to take part, please email your thoughts to me at [email protected] by Monday, November 19. Happy reading!

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Butcher's Shop Post #2

11/10/2018

4 Comments

 
Welcome back to the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group! This is a continuing discussion of Chapters One through Six of The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. You can view the first installment here.

Before we jump in, I want to acknowledge a couple contributors to this group conversation who have already reviewed the book on their blogs. Kate from Crossexaminingcrime has posted her recent Butcher's Shop critique, as well as a very enjoyable post about which detective you would want to investigate your crime, Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley or the less riotous but equally shrewd Miss Jane Marple.

Next, over at his site The Grandest Game in the World, you can find (among lots and lots of incredible reviews and academic analyses of GAD fiction titles) Nick Fuller's review of Gladys Mitchell's second published mystery.

In the previous post, I wanted to include Gladys Mitchell fan Mark Philpott's comments about the author's ability to draw in the reader of The Mystery of the Butcher's Shop in the opening chapters, but ran out of time (and energy). Mark writes, "Mitchell uses point of view skillfully to throw us into the plot's action. I feel like I’m also in the woods in darkness fumbling for a path. Mitchell keeps us hanging in suspense, forcing us to read on." Mark also notes that he is reminded of the television show Damages, which "uses a non-linear narrative, giving the viewer a little and then a little more in next episode."

ON SOCIAL ATTITUDES

Pavel Dmitrievich observes that "what strikes me is the attitude toward women, stated both by the men in the novel (gardener Willow telling his wife that she wasn't important enough to be murdered) and the aunt, Mrs. Harringay (admitting to being a 'subnormal specimen of humanity, belonging to the weaker sex'). Those comments stand out pretty starkly in today's human rights struggles. Those were the times, and the lines were not meant with the malignance with which they're encountered too frequently today. I can almost see Miss Mitchell with her tongue in her cheek as she writes them, though."

ON PSYCHOLOGY

J.F. Norris from Pretty Sinister Books raises a great point regarding Mrs. Bradley's use of psychological observation as presented by her creator. It's an important criticism, and I think it's another reason – along with a merely casual, and not zealous, interest to deliver meticulously clued fair-play puzzles – that may keep fans of Golden Age Detective fiction from enjoying GM's mysteries.
​

J.F. explains that, in Chapter Six, "we get a sample of her kind of 'working things out logically' and she surprises Felicity with announcing how she figured out Lulu is married to George Savile.  But it reminds me of why I disliked Mrs. Bradley’s 'psychological detection' in The Saltmarsh Murders because her logic has nothing to do with psychology and has everything to do with class prejudices. She calls Savile a “rigid pedant” and gives a long-winded lecture (that could easily have been stated in two sentences) on why he prefers to be thought of as being not married rather than to be thought of as conventional. Mrs. Bradley says he insists that Lulu retain her maiden name rather than his surname so that George can keep his secret and still be thought of as a bohemian, free-spirited man.

"None of that follows logically at all. He could have decided to not tell he was married for any number of reasons! It’s all based on surmise and reveals a lot about Mitchell’s view of what she thinks is conventional and unconventional. In fact it’s a very stereotyped and prejudicial way of thinking of artists and the typical devil-may-care Bright Young Things that pop up in 1930s genre fiction. I wouldn’t want to be analyzed by Mrs. Bradley (or Gladys Mitchell either!) because I’d feel I was constantly being judged rather than being empathized with. That Mrs. Bradley thinks that she has “worked out logically” George Savile’s character is really off base.  Or is Mitchell also lampooning this style of “detection” in detective fiction? I guess that could be true, too.  Still, sometimes Mitchell's writing can be way too clever and I’m often irritated by Mrs. Bradley’s supercilious tone in summing up and dismissing people."

I will add to J.F.'s thoughts that there is, for me, the idea that Mrs. Bradley has always been rather otherworldly or omniscient as Gladys Mitchell writes her. It feels like the character's occupation as a psycho-analyst provides an excuse to support this all-knowing, or at least smarter-than-thou, depiction (which, I should confess, is one of the reasons why I'm attracted to the character). But the central criticism is a valid one: Mrs. Bradley's psycho-analysis demonstrated in the books is not so much detection but judgment based on the detective's beliefs and worldview. It's easy for the analyst to always be right if her creator shares her perspective and can confirm Mrs. Croc's findings by making them true on the page.

ON WEALTH
My great epistolary friend in Paris, FJ de Kermadec, wrote to further discuss a line I included in the initial reading group post. I wrote, o'erhastily, "To highlight [her] wealth would be, to me, to muddle or mute the idea of Mrs. Bradley's independent personality." My thought was poorly presented and left unexplored, but I meant that her creator didn't use the detective's wealth as an element that defined the character in a primary way.

Mrs. Bradley is not the "rich" detective, she is the elderly, fearsome psycho-analyst. Her independence is one of spirit rather than one of entitlement, in my view.
 
But FJ correctly illustrates that her high-class status does indeed give her a freedom and agency in society that enables her to assume the role of objective investigator from a position of social power. I provide FJ's wise observations here: 

"While it is fair to say that Gladys Mitchell immediately gave up the idea of avaricious relatives preying on Mrs. Bradley’s possessions (although I would put nothing past Lady Selina), preferring instead to introduce us to a loving, caring, dynamic, and supportive family… I would be tempted to argue that her actual wealth is always mentioned in some way, until the end of her career.
 
"We must remember, after all, that Mrs. Bradley owns a clinic in London, a house in Kensington, and the Stone House itself. She employs five full-time servants at least (Henri, Célestine, Laura, Zena, and George), plus a mysterious caretaker to keep the Stone House aired at all times (who’s mentioned in a book in passing), in addition, presumably, to a similar person in Kensington and the small platoon of doctors and secretary that appears to man her clinic and to cope with everything she throws at them.
 
"We are afforded few glimpses of her residences, but we are told the Kensington house is “tall” and the Stone House has enough wings for Laura and Gavin to rent independent flats within both, away from Mrs. Bradley’s own quarters… In Three Quick and Five Dead, we are told of cooked breakfasts with sideboards and dressing up for dinner, which is very grand for the period in which the book was written. In The Croaking Raven, Mrs. Bradley rents a castle on a whim, just to please [godson] Hamish, and I remember her flying to Lascaux in similar circumstances in Faintley Speaking.
 
"In a way, I believe Mrs. Bradley’s wealth actually served to highlight her independence in the early years: wealth meant having a chauffeur, being mobile, not being bound by the dictates of society because she never had to depend on the approval of a husband. (Remember the old chestnut: if you are poor, you are crazy, if you are rich, you are eccentric.)"
 
FINAL THOUGHTS (on the first six chapters, anyway)

From Catherine Dilts: "Because Mitchell is often compared to her contemporary, Agatha Christie, I will note that this novel seems much faster paced than Christie novels. Grizzlier. Funnier, too. I'm having many laugh-out-loud moments. Compare the authors if you wish, but Mitchell is clearly in a league of her own."

Nick Fuller: "Butcher's Shop really must have been a breath of fresh air. Methodical, scientific detection was all the rage in Britain; the genre's kings were Freeman Wills Crofts and R. Austin Freeman, neither noted for their wit or playfulness. Only Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, and H.C. Bailey were interested in humor and characterization, rather than in laboratory tests for arsenic or calculating how long it would take sea water to leave a box."

Picture
J.F. Norris: [Having read Butcher's Shop years ago,] this time I’m paying more attention to the characters and Mitchell’s fine descriptive writing, especially when she turns up the volume on the Gothic atmosphere. The section when Felicity first encounters the sacrificial stone is exceedingly well done.  Mitchell spares nothing in layering on the macabre touches.

Martyn Hobbs: "I love the humor, the running gags (Grayling's gifts from clients), and her occasional literary and classical allusions ('What dread ecstatic dances, what strange and awful sights, what deeds of violence and cruelty' echoes Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn). Oh, and at the very end of the sixth chapter, happy coincidence, we finish with that image of Mrs. Bradley as some menacing, feral beast of prey. So far, a delight!"


If you want to join the discussion, you can email comments about Chapters 7 through 12 of The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop to me by Monday, November 12 at midnight. Happy reading!
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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Butcher's Shop Post #1

11/7/2018

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Welcome, everyone, to the first official post to discuss the title inaugurating the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group, Gladys Mitchell's spirited 1929 tale The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. The respondents proved a fun mix of Mrs. Bradley reading veterans and some who are sampling Gladys Mitchell's creation for the first (or almost the first) time. I am looking for observations of any kind and on any topic related to the book, and for this first installment wanted to focus on only the first six chapters.

I have decided to divide this initial discussion into two posts instead of one. I will happily continue the conversation with a Friday blog post incorporating the topics of social attitudes, psychology, and concluding thoughts about the first chapters of the book! If you wish to add to the discussion on any of the ideas here, please use the comment tool below.

There is no better way to start the discussion than by yielding to the esteemed GAD scholar Nick Fuller (his site is The Grandest Game in the World), who sets the tone right from the start.

Nick writes: "We're going to take a butcher's at Gladys Mitchell's second novel. For those of you who don't speak fluent Cockney, a butcher's = to look at (intransitive verb), from butcher's hook. And speaking of which, what's this dangling from one?"

To summarize, the plot through Chapter Six is busy, satirical, and makes me think tonally of a French farce crossed with a cheeky parody of the English village murder mystery. We learn about the disappearance of Rupert Sethleigh, an unlikable man who had quarreled with Jim Redsey, now the prime suspect. Indeed, the author wants us to wonder about the hapless young man; he tells a visiting solicitor that Sethleigh has departed for America and is caught digging a suspicious hole by the Stone of Sacrifice in the woods.

Matronly Mrs. Bryce Harringay is put out by all the strange incidents, but that appears to be her usual state. Aubrey Harringay, an energetic and precocious lad of fifteen, and the vicar's daughter, Felicity Broome, are soon caught up in the affair. Events take a sensational turn when human joints are discovered displayed in a butcher's shop window.

ON MRS. BRADLEY
PictureMrs. Bradley, from the dustjacket of Brazen Tongue (1940).
Although she is mentioned briefly, Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley doesn't appear significantly until Chapter Six, and, as mystery author Catherine Dilts points out, she's "birdlike", with her clothing described as "like the plumage of a macaw". This is Catherine's first time meeting the formidable detective on the page, and she notes that she is "slow to warm up to her, as she seems rather bossy, and cackles a lot." She adds that "by the end of the chapter, I'm starting to see her as an interesting character."

Joyka observes that Mitchell's description of her detective (it was only her second appearance, after all) was "as I remembered with one major exception. The Chapter One line, 'age no longer interesting except to the more grasping and avaricious of her relatives': if this implication of avaricious relatives waiting for her to die occurs elsewhere, I don't remember it." Nor do I; the relations we meet in future stories don't have a single greedy nephew or niece to be found. That is likely connected with the character that Mrs. Bradley becomes as shaped by the author, which is not a woman known for her wealth but rather for her strength (mental and physical), her professional success, and her command for the situation. To highlight wealth would be, to me, to muddle or mute the idea of Mrs. Bradley's independent personality.


Kate, the prolific GAD reviewer over at crossexaminingcrime, writes that, with our first glimpse of Mrs. Bradley, "the descriptions right from the start present her as non-human or with a sense of otherness." Her example is this striking passage:

"Twice widowed, black-eyed, claw-fingered…she smiled the saurian smile of the sand lizard and basked in the full glare of the sun in the charming old-world garden of the Stone House, Wandles."

ON YOUTH

Kate notes that Butcher's Shop's opening pages demonstrate how "Mitchell generally treats her characters. The most pleasant, the ones the reader will be most sympathetic towards and who are generally the happiest and most vital are 'the very young' and 'the rather old'. The characters who tend to be the most unpleasant, least intelligent, and most pompous – and of course the most suspicious – are those who are middle-aged."

Indeed, it's clear that Gladys Mitchell (a lifelong educator at girls' schools) has an "affinity for young people" in this book and in others, as Jennifer Clement points out, especially as her sleuth is "quite elderly, although physically strong." Margaret Plichta adds that Mrs. Bradley goes further and bonds with the youthful Aubrey and Felicity, taking them into her confidence.

Margaret continues: "One thing that has always stood out to me is that children in some of her books seem to skew older than their ages, and I find that here with Aubrey. I thought this to be true as well in The Rising of the Moon with the two brothers…but in Come Away, Death, the boys seem to be typical for their age. Comparing these young people with contemporary kids shows a stark difference in the sophistication of Aubrey and Felicity's thinking."

This is Erin Cordell's first time reading a Gladys Mitchell mystery, and she mentions that the unsettling, gruesome nature of the murder on display is tempered by the author's well-drawn characters: "I can see Jim, Aubrey and Felicity sneaking around the woods in the dark, Mrs. Bryce Harringay's imperious, self-absorbed demeanor, and the seemingly hapless vicar and bishop… It does seem that the young lady of the book will be our heroine, or at least I hope.  As a teacher, Gladys Mitchell must have been acutely aware of the limited choices in life that were open to the girls she taught, so it might be irresistible for her not to make Felicity the cleverest of them all."
ON STAGING

J.F. Norris over at Pretty Sinister Books shares his impressions: "The opening chapters are rife with wry wit and obvious satirical touches. The chapter titles alone tell us we’re in for a raucous fifty-plus pages.  The humor works best when Mitchell is in farce mode.  I’m not so keen on her class prejudice and superiority. [The chapter titles] 'Farcical Proceedings during an Afternoon in June' and 'Midsummer Madness' are signals to any reader that this mystery novel is not to be taken too seriously.  Mitchell seems to like her characters, but clearly isn’t going to play favorites with anyone.  Everyone’s faults are fair game for her trenchant humor and merciless attacks."

From Martyn Hobbs, who has the wonderful distinction of living in Gladys Mitchell's birthplace home (!):

"I love the wit and theatricality of these first six chapters: GM introduces her dramatis personae in bright, brisk consecutive paragraphs; the opening scenes recall a drawing-room comedy; there are allusions to theatre and performance, entrances and exits; there are even cucumber sandwiches, while Mary Kate, the maid, is pure stage Oirish… The concise descriptions of her characters are also like a dramatist's notes – efficient, precise, witty. The whole narrative suggests a fabrication, a confection, carefully directed by the author."

And with this, Martyn identifies a reason why Gladys Mitchell's writing is so special to me: especially in her books of the first two decades, there is a wonderful sense of experimentation and conscious style. The fact that tone and style are malleable and subject to the author's curiosity is wonderful, as it makes her many mysteries feel like unique, different experiences. With Butcher's Shop, GM has great fun with theatricality and the concept of farce – the episodic early scenes and the well-timed activities and misunderstandings in the woods are fine examples – but other titles tackle other moods and methods. The Saltmarsh Murders comes even closer to Wodehousian comedy (an influence mentioned by Kate, Nick, and Martyn); When Last I Died feels to me like an ode to Wilkie Collins, with a ghost story told through artifacts; The Rising of the Moon is loving nostalgia and a celebration of the innocence of youth; while the curious wartime mystery Sunset over Soho feels hallucinatory and haunted.

I'm not the only one who gets caught in Gladys Mitchell's spell. From Pavel Dmitrievich: "Rereading this mystery recalls why I became drawn to GM's writing many years ago. I found some of her Mrs. Bradley novels in a used book sale and spent a summer reading them slowly. What I enjoyed most then was her descriptive passages of the countryside and the night skies, and the night itself. I thought of the books as 'pastoral' mysteries. [Reading Butcher's Shop] is like hearing a favorite piece of music unexpectedly."
Further discussion of Chapters One through Six – and some justified criticism of the author and her detective – will be posted on Friday. Topics include Social Attitudes, Psychology, and a word from Canadian fan Mark Philpott!

The next call for group reading comments is Monday, November 12 on Chapters Seven through Twelve; please email me your stray thoughts care of [email protected] .

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