Category: Gladys Mitchell

MItchell Mystery Reading Group: April event announced!

3/16/2023

It has been a while since I hosted the Gladys Mitchell reading group. The last go-round was in December of 2021, when observant readers weighed in on 1950’s snow-covered Groaning Spinney. The last year and three months have been personally busy and sometimes burdensome (including some health and energy issues), and that feeling persists now. So once more I paused to consider before offering to moderate another month-long reading group event.

I have decided to take this approach: let’s keep the group reading of The Echoing Strangers (1952) for April. The group discussion – always lively and illuminating – will be available for all who want to contribute. Readers can send me comments on a section of the book every Wednesday, which I will organize and present for a weekend blog entry over at www.jasonhalf.com . The reading and response schedule is listed below.

This time I plan to take a step back as editor, however. Previously, much of my time was spent reading all the entries, then categorizing the comments into topics and carefully writing transitional text that allows me to quote each respondent in flowing paragraphs. I will still be very interested to read and group the comments by topic, but I choose to list each person’s writing separately with attribution, as you might find with a group interview. So the new format would be along the lines of:

THE TOPIC OF TWINS
Kitty T. – “Kitty’s thoughts.”
Ferdinand L. – “Ferdinand’s two cents.”
Laura G. – “Offering a new idea on the subject.”

This takes some pressure off of me while the contributors get a chance to share their views. There will also be few or no archival images to accompany the conversation, alas. Recent skirmishes and payment demands from holders of copyrighted images have discouraged the use of found photos, even as this post and discussion are presented for educational, non-profit purposes. Such distinctions don’t matter to Internet copyright trolls.

I still believe we can have a spirited group discussion of The Echoing Strangers, and I am excited to organize and contribute to the posts. If you want to send me your thoughts on each section (or if you just want to read the book and enjoy the comments of others), here is the timeline for April’s read. Thank you for understanding, and I look forward to learning what you think about this wonderful mid-period Mrs Bradley mystery!

Mitchell Mystery Group Reading Event – April 2023
THE ECHOING STRANGERS (1952)

Chapters 1 – 6, “Deaf and Dumb Alphabet” to “Mede”
Comments due Wednesday, April 5 for weekend post
Chapters 7 – 12, “The Questing Fairy” to “Castor and Pollux”
Comments due Wednesday, April 12
Chapters 13 – 17, “The Echo Under the Bridge” to “The Echo from the Past”
Comments due Wednesday, April 19
Chapters 18 – 21, “The Echo of a Crime” to “The Echo of Gemini”
Comments due Wednesday, April 26

Please email your comments about each section by the date listed to [email protected] . Try to avoid spoilers in your comments if you read ahead. Happy reading and I look forward to hearing from you!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: GROANING SPINNEY (1950) - Post #4

12/31/2021

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Welcome to the fourth discussion post of 1950’s Groaning Spinney, where the reading group discusses the final five chapters. As I have done with the concluding sections of past group titles, I will try to present spoiler-free comments that stop short of revealing the who and why of the mystery puzzle. That said, readers do discuss a few plot details that factor into the story’s solution; for that reason, it’s recommended that people planning to eventually visit the world of Groaning Spinney finish the book before proceeding through this part of the woods.

Indeed, the comments on Chapters 16 to 20 cover much familiar ground first trod in prior posts, and it’s nice to track these topics to a close. Nature, narrative, fate, and foreshadowing are all used effectively by author Gladys Mitchell, giving the reading group contributors much to talk about.

BACK TO NATURE

With these concluding chapters, Tracy from Bitter Tea and Mystery once more felt that the author’s evocation of the landscape was very engaging. Tracy writes, “I really like the excursions out into the countryside, and in this book they fit well into the overall resolution of the crime. Thus in this last set of chapters I liked Mrs. Bradley taking part in the fox hunt and seeing more of the countryside. I don't particularly like the idea of fox hunts in general, but this was a good introduction for me to the activities of the hunt.”

Martyn Hobbs was less taken with the riding scene and its ballyhoo, commenting that “The hunt seems something of an unnecessary digression, although perhaps it’s just my distaste for aristocratic and upper-class blood sports. It bored me while I was hankering for the conclusion.” He adds that “It does allow for a quick Wilde allusion” quoted in the book by Jonathan Bradley: ‘The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.’

I felt that the fox hunt – whose description and sequence in the book turned its focus away from the barbarism of the sport and towards Mrs Bradley’s medical ministrations of fallen riders – was a fittingly active metaphor for the pursuit of the villain(s) by detective and police.

Chris B. and Martyn saw much renewal in the imagery and plotline of this story. Chris continues an earlier conversation with these thoughts: “Returning to the novel’s thematics and recurrent motifs, I’m increasingly convinced that although it appears to be a ‘Christmas’ mystery, it is really an ‘Easter’ narrative in which everything revolves around resurrections, disinterments and exhumations. The earth is repeatedly made to yield up what has been hidden in it: foxes, badger cubs, plant life – concluding with the wild strawberry of the last lines – dog leashes, Bill’s corpse, a typewriter, dogs and cats, and most unusually through a kind of staged ritual Ed Brown himself, who is seen to ‘die’ into the earth and then be lifted out of it so that he can be ‘resurrected’ later, in an obvious parody of the Easter myth and of the death/rebirth of the ancient vegetation god.”

Side note: of this plot turn, José explains how the deception continues: “We learn that Ed was hiding in Will North's cottage to keep up the deception that he was dead while letting the rumour circulate that his corpse had been seen by the police doctor.”

Chris adds that Ed is also “the ‘natural’ who communes with birds and beasts, and serves as an embodied nature-spirit, compared with a Puck or Satyr when we first meet him.” He writes that “Spinney’s story does not, however, literally end with Easter but with the last fox-hunt of the season and with – the final paragraph tells us – lambing-time, both of which would normally be in March or early April (Easter Sunday in 1950 fell on 9th April). The lamb and milk-bottle of the last paragraph point us forward to the conclusive emergence of new life which will come later with the Nativity of Deborah’s twins.”

Martyn was following the same thread, commenting that “The final paragraph is given over to innocence and the resurgent spring”:

They were standing by Will North’s cottage. In Farmer Daventry’s field a lamb cried out for its mother. A blackcap flew out of the lilacs and pecked around the cardboard top on a bottle of milk. The lush land rose to a hawthorn hedge, the stable tower, and the trees. Behind the house, on the woodland bank, the wild strawberry ambled in faint flower.

A DOG NAMED WORRY

José from A Crime Is Afoot has provided excellent, detailed summaries of each section read by our group, and by necessity I have only been able to incorporate a few lines each week into our sprawling discussion posts. He has created a blog entry offering a comprehensive summary and his critique of Spinney over at his site, and you can visit the page by following this link!

Mindful of spoilers, José explored the story threads just before Mrs Bradley’s reveal of the murderer. One of these threads is tied to a dog, Will North’s astute and aptly named canine Worry. José writes: “On their way home from the Fullaloves' bungalow, the dog was terrified upon reaching Groaning Spinney. Worry wouldn’t go through the gate until his owner arrived.” He provides Mrs Bradley’s explanation of Worry’s worried reaction: “The dog hated that gate; he didn't see a ghost that day but smelt someone he didn't like.”

Matters are complicated further when the dog disappears. Mrs Bradley intuits who might be responsible with no real evidence: the woman claiming to be Bill Fullalove’s widow may have become a temporary dognapper. When Jonathan asks his aunt to explain her logic, Martyn finds much humour in the justifiably frustrated nephew’s reaction. Says Martyn, “When Mrs B gives an extended, wide-ranging but ultimately inadequate answer to Jonathan’s question (‘But whatever made you think of her?’), his riposte is perfect: ‘If you don’t know what made you suspect she had the dog, why don’t you just say so straight out?’ I thought so, too!”

The ultimate fate of Tiny Fullalove’s absent dogs and cats, revealed in Chapter 20, and the owner’s behaviour throughout proved satisfying to Countdown John, who maintains Countdown John's Christie Journal. While I don’t want to spoil anything by offering specifics, Countdown John says he enjoyed one related clue that was provided in a much earlier chapter and Tiny’s reaction to his animals, showing a compassion that he doesn’t seem to extend to humans.

Speaking of clues seeded in earlier chapters (and of treading lightly to avoid spoilers), Joyka also admires the author’s ability to give the reader information at the beginning that proves right by the story’s conclusion. Joyka writes, “I stand by my original statement that many of the clues necessary to solve the puzzle were present in the first section. Motives were hinted at, and the suspects were presented to us… from the outset.” She then outlines six early observations that prove relevant during the puzzle’s solution, concluding that they are “small clues but very obvious when you look back.”

MRS BRADLEY’S MACHINATIONS

And about that famous (or infamous) intuitive streak Gladys Mitchell bestows on her sometimes superhuman detective, it certainly is a trait that can prove both frustrating and fascinating to a reader. Tracy feels that the series detective’s flashes or insight are tempered by her determination to collect all the clues. Tracy observes that “Mrs Bradley may be just as intuitive as many female sleuths but she digs for the clues and is persistent. I like a persistent sleuth. The only negative is that she likes to talk a subject to death but then not share all of her results.”

As the group discussed in the previous post, the conversations in Groaning Spinney (and other GM mysteries) involving theorizing and speculation that fail to resolve or even move matters forward can overwhelm and confuse a reader. But these passages can also be helpful (i.e., summarizing events and clues to date) and entertaining. Martyn found the scene between the psychoanalyst and the Chief Constable surprisingly agreeable, describing it as “a lovely playful dance of conversation, of question and answer, quite unlike the endless speculation of previous ones.”

Martyn provides this exchange as an example: “Mrs Bradley is at last coming to the point and revealing her cogitations and deductions. Her colloquy with the Chief Constable is particularly pleasing as he patiently elicits more or less everything that she knows. Chapter 16 finishes with a nice exchange between the two. Mrs B has declared her intention to break off their chat and leave but the policeman is having nothing of it: ‘No, you don’t. You’re coming indoors again. I want to hear more about all this.’

JUDGMENT AND JUSTICE

Tracy considers Mrs Bradley’s position as a potential judge: “At the beginning of Chapter 18, Mrs Bradley seems to have determined the solution to the murders but doesn't think she can prove it.” She adds, “In the end, the resolution was pretty dark, but it made sense, and I did not expect it.”

Joyka notes, “I have remarked before that Gladys Mitchell rarely brings her murderers to trial.” She mentions a surprising exception to the rule in the author’s first published Mrs Bradley story Speedy Death (1929) but of Groaning Spinney observes that Mitchell “stays true to this tradition in this book and even [has Mrs Bradley] remark that she ‘dislikes the thought of hangings’.”

Countdown John says that, once it’s fully revealed, the murder method employed on Bill Fullalove “is both literally and metaphorically chilling.” It is indeed a particularly cold-blooded crime, and John observes that “Mrs Bradley is not in a merciful mood, but is still surprised by” an unforeseen double killing even as she connives to “deliberately frighten [one character] to death.” Countdown John concludes that Mrs B “has her own notions of justice, somewhat aligned to those of J.J. Connington's Sir Clinton Driffield (see Murders in the Maze and The Mystery of Lynden Sands).”

Martyn was tracking both the Shakespearean and Greek tragic echoes between the book’s characters. He observes that “There is lovely play between the cultured detective and the changeling Ed (he is Caliban to Mrs B’s Prospero, straying away for a moment from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). But although Ed had ‘never heard tell’ of Arkady ‘in these ‘ere parts, as I knows on,’ he has his own poetry when he warns, ‘you didn’t ought to call up sperrits from the vasty deep.’ Chris recognized Ed Brown’s colorful line as “Glendower’s boast in Henry IV Part 1 (III, i). Adds Chris, “Mrs Bradley’s reply, ‘Only the deadly nightshade from its flowering bed’, with its further allusion to Titania, is meant to sound like a Shakespearean quotation, but is not: deadly nightshade is never mentioned in any of Shakespeare’s works.”

Martyn continues, “Mention of Arcady seems to put Mrs Bradley in a Greek frame of mind, and twice in these last pages she quotes ‘in solemn and sonorous Greek’. Picking up on the Greek theme (and, by the story’s conclusion, multiple off-stage deaths), the Chief Constable observes of Mrs B, ‘I won’t ask by what means you’ve taken the place of the Furies’. And at this late stage, she concedes her fallibility: ‘I did not foresee’ [the fate of two characters].”

LITERARY TURNS

Throughout multiple group readings, Chris and Martyn have been alert to identify allusions from literature and history. I appreciate their sharp eyes and their tireless research efforts.

For me, one reason I return to (and champion) Gladys Mitchell’s writing is the joy I find in her prose style and her evocation of landscapes. It aligns with the appreciations that Chris and Tracy share in their comments above (see Back to Nature), and it runs through Martyn’s admiring observations that follow. He finds, as I do, that “Mrs Bradley’s country walk to meet Ed Brown contains some fabulous descriptive passages. There is a vivid particularity and specificity to the scenes. GM fixes us in the very spot:”

The sky was blue and the slight clouds were high; here a stream ran, and there a bird flew suddenly out of a coppice… Here and there in the valleys a chimney smoked or a small train puffed… Here was a terraced town… and here was a huddled village…

“Later on,” continues Martyn, “the springtime details that precede the hunt – ‘the first wild daffodils… the gorse was in honey-scented flower… the sinuous treachery of blackberry sprays’ – are wonderfully evocative.”

Chris brings up a moment from Chapter 17 that speaks to a British boy’s psychology that I found quite enjoyable. Chris explains, “In conversation with the Chief Constable, Mrs Bradley casts doubt on Emming’s story of his choirboys complaining about being clouted by Tiny. Her grounds for doubting this involve general ‘political’ claims (as the Chief Constable remarks) about British boys and indeed the national character: the typical British boy does not complain about mistreatment, but ‘takes it’. The allusion here is to Humphrey Jennings’s short propaganda film London Can Take It! (November 1940), which testified to Londoners’ ‘Blitz Spirit’ of stubborn endurance under bombing.”

Both Chris and Martyn noticed the title of Chapter 19, ‘Goblin Market’, and connected its reference to “Christina Rossetti’s hallucinatory, weird, and wonderful poem” (Martyn). Chris reports on the quotation ‘Yet there, where never muse or god . . .’: “These verse lines are quoted from the poem ‘Genius Loci’ by the minor English poet and novelist Margaret L. Woods (1855-1945). An error has crept into the opening line, whose second word should be ‘here’.”

And, as with the fox pursued by hounds mentioned earlier, Chris finds another animal metaphor perfect for detective fiction. “‘The bleating of the lamb would tend to excite the tiger’: adapted from a line in Rudyard Kipling’s school story Stalky & Co. (‘The bleating of the kid excites the tiger’) which had become one of Gladys Mitchell’s favourite quotations: versions of the same adage had appeared previously in Laurels Are Poison (Chapter 2) and Tom Brown’s Body (Chapter 20).”

REACHING A VERDICT

This book is notable because Mrs Bradley is allowed to state her case and reveal the villain(s) in Chapter 18, two chapters before Groaning Spinney concludes. I was still engaged by the story, partly because the detective’s admission that there is not sufficient evidence to arrest her quarry means that she must act to force a resolution. (See Judgment and Justice above.) But the structure is a little unusual, and other readers may have a different experience. Of the last chapters, José comments that, “as far as the investigation goes, they don't really add much.”

As with other entries in the Mrs Bradley series, sometimes the logic of incidents melt like snow under a hot sun if they are left to the elements. Countdown John offers this example: “I still didn't really get why Tiny faked the [injury to his knee] and the rigmarole around getting Jonathan at a particular place and time given the murder method was almost foolproof and was meant to look like accidental death. All that faffing around only raised suspicions that may not have happened otherwise.”

Martyn points to another Tiny-related enigma. He asks, “What reason or motive is brought forth to justify the extravagant set piece of Tiny’s failed break-in? Mrs B only offers ‘he came to tell me that he was in possession of information that would incriminate [another character]’. All well and good, but couldn’t he have rung the doorbell like other callers without damaged knees? And was the commando knife strictly necessary?”

Curiously, even with such lapses in logic and confusions of detail, one can still have an enjoyable time with a Gladys Mitchell story. Here are some final reader reactions to this book:

Martyn – “The plot feels satisfyingly resolved, with perhaps any troubling details happily forgotten.” (See above.)

Joyka – On the identity of the villain(s) and their relationship(s) to other characters: “That was a surprise!”

Tracy – “Many reviewers don't like Mrs Bradley but I do. I like that she is different and older but without being a Miss Marple clone. I like Miss Marple and I love Miss Maud Silver, but there is room for all types in the mystery genre.” Groaning Spinney was “not my favorite. Of the four I’ve read, Sunset over Soho was the best, in my opinion.”

José – “[Sometimes] I can't figure out how Mrs Bradley comes to any conclusion and I wonder what I am missing. On the positive side, the strength of the story resides mainly in the portraits of the characters and in the description of the environment in which the story takes place.”

Countdown John – “Overall, I'm not a massive fan of Mrs B. I'd picked this up secondhand primarily because it was published as Murder in the Snow - A Cotswold Christmas Mystery and it isn't really a classic Christmas country house case, which is what I was expecting. However, it was better than the titles I've read most recently such as Death and the Maiden and The Twenty-Third Man.”

Thank you to the many wonderful contributors who shared their thoughts and discoveries on this Gladys Mitchell detective story, and thanks to everyone who read Groaning Spinney along with us and visited this site.

The next Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event will take place during the summer of 2022. I want to stay in this decade, so please recommend a GM book or two that you would like to (re)read that was originally published between 1951 and 1959. You can find a list of titles here, with many interesting Mrs Bradley mysteries appearing in those years. Post your title recommendation(s) as a reply below or email me at [email protected] . Happy New Year to all!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: GROANING SPINNEY (1950) - Post #3

12/24/2021

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Welcome to the third reading group discussion of Gladys Mitchell’s Cotswolds-set mystery Groaning Spinney (1950). The book is currently in print as Murder in the Snow from Vintage. Chapters 11 to 15 usher in a number of alarming events for our cast of characters, including a riotous home invasion, an attempted murder by hunting rifle, and the decisive disposal of potential evidence by omniscient detective Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley.

Without further ado, let’s get to know our characters and our contributors better!

THE COUSINS, PLAYING THE NAME GAME

José, who maintains the mystery fiction website A Crime Is Afoot, shows us where we stand regarding likely murder victim Bill Fullalove and prime suspect Tiny. In this section, reports José, “Mrs Bradley has begun to suspect something is wrong regarding the true identity of the Fullalove cousins. Oddly enough, Bill's true name is Clarence and Tiny's real name is William, and this gives rise to dark suspicions. Mr Tiny may or may not be a murderer, but he [might now] be suspected of fraud.”

Could the interchangeable names be grounds for collecting on a one-size-fits-both life insurance policy? Mrs Bradley thinks so, as does Countdown John, who runs Countdown John’s Christie Journal and reviews Agatha’s celebrated stories there. He comments that “The business of the names is both amusing and quite British, and the source of a possible fraud. I very much like the idea of being able to insure two people under one premium.” Indeed: it’s economical and doubles the chances of a payout.

Veteran reading group members Joyka and Martyn also approve of Gladys Mitchell’s name complications and permutations. Martyn finds the title of Chapter 11 especially apt – “‘What’s in a Name?’ is lovely” – while Joyka remarks, “Isn’t the name mix-up an interesting conundrum? It couldn’t happen today, of course, but even as recently as the 1990s it was easy to just call yourself another name and get away with it.”

She adds, “I am hoping that someone will be able to explain why Clarence is not an appropriate name for a Navy officer.” This is a reference to an opinionated exchange between Mrs B and Jonathan Bradley, where her nephew announces that “Bill’s real name was Clarence, so, of course, he had to be called Bill.” Mrs Bradley’s response takes it a step further: “Yes. Clarence Fullalove does not, somehow, suggest a Naval officer.” Perhaps it would be the amorous surname rather than the gentrified Christian one that would offend at sea?

And another complication: a woman has arrived claiming to have been married to the departed Bill (or Clarence), but just what does her accompanying marriage certificate prove? José explains that the mystery female “calls herself Carol Letchworth Fullalove and is in her early 30s. [But] her marriage certificate is dated in 1920.” If the present story is happening in 1949, that would make the young lady an astonishingly youthful child bride…

THE NATIVES, SIMPLE BUT SAVVY

Joyka compliments the author on her characterizations of rural residents, and I agree that the personalities she creates are vivid, surprising, and fun. Joyka writes, “Gladys Mitchell excels at portraying country people like Ed Brown. He is simple but she doesn’t for one minute allow us to think he is stupid. He has an intelligence that is in tune with the natural world, true, but he can move back and forth between the culture in which he lives and the natural world in which he belongs. And, I think he has seen more than others realize, except perhaps Mrs B as she notices his ‘sly, shy grin’.”

Martyn agrees: “Ed, the Puckish changeling, makes an interesting appearance here. He expresses dark thoughts (‘Queer how nature prey on nature. Parson talk about the brotherhood of man, but Nature know better I reckon’) which seem to implicate Obury.”

I also enjoyed the sketches of the Wootton brothers, two rustic men who are employed as handymen at the neighboring women’s college, much to their chagrin. Martyn explains that the brothers “have been smeared by the phantom letter writer for sexual misdeeds with the students up at the college. One Wootton, we learn from Miss Hughes, is called Abel. The other, Harry, regards women with ‘complete detestation and fear.’ Could he be Cain to his brother’s Abel? I imagine it’s just another red herring to lead us astray.”

Chris B. sheds some turnip-light on a phrase that puzzled me, and its use in the dialogue speaks comic volumes about the brothers as rendered by GM. The line from Chapter 13: ‘We’ll have turmut lanterns and put sheets on us.’ Chris explains that “turmut is West-Country dialect for turnip, as in the Wiltshire anthem ‘The Vly be on the Turmut’. Them there ‘uzzies’ at the College will be making Halloween jack-o’-lanterns from turmuts, in accordance with Irish and British rural tradition, the use of pumpkins at this period being exclusively North American.” A fascinating bit of trivia and a look at West-Country customs, even if, as Harry Wootton disapprovingly remarks, ‘Young immen be a bit too lively nowadays.”

THE NATURALISTS, SURVEYING AND EXCAVATING

Tracy K., who manages the crime fiction website Bitter Tea and Mystery, responds favorably to the story’s outdoors setting and the characters interested in exploring the landscape. She says that “Mr. Mansell and Mr. Obury are particularly interesting; one is an archaeologist, the other is a naturalist. They had both visited around Christmas, then left the area. Now they have returned to work on their projects.”

Indeed, their excavation work moves both the Cotswold dirt and the cluttered plot. Tracy continues: “I loved the long walk to the barrow that Mrs. Bradley, Jonathan, Deborah, and Sally take with Mansell and Obury. Per the dictionaries I consulted, a barrow is a large mound of earth or stones over the remains of the dead. Mr. Mansell plans to dig at a site alongside the barrow since the barrow itself has been dug up and studied in the past. Later, a significant shooting takes place [here].”

Martyn fills in some (plot) holes with this summary and speculation: “It seems that Ed saw Obury with Bill (or Clarence) the night he died, which provokes a sharp glance from Obury. We note that Jonathan didn’t register this exchange, so it could be significant. Especially with the revelation in Chapter 14 that a probable attempt was made on Ed’s life (the rifle attached to the gate at Groaning Spinney), followed by the indubitable shenanigans around the shooting of Ed in Chapter 15 when he lies in the trench for safety.”

Indeed, the naturally wise Ed plays possum by falling into the trench when someone shoots at him, a dodge that Mrs Bradley wholeheartedly approves of. Chris helps us define the item that whisks the shamming Brown away. In the text it is a called a hurdle, which Chris reports is “a section of crudely made latticed fence, employed here as a makeshift stretcher.”

Countdown John appreciated Mrs Bradley’s subtle syntax and the clever way Gladys Mitchell presents a line with alternate meanings for speaker and audience (in this case, Emming, Mansell, and Obury). Here’s Mrs Bradley’s line of dialogue with the accompanying text: ‘“Ed Brown was shot at, just after half-past twelve.” The comma indicated in her voice prevented the statement from being a lie, but this fine shade of meaning was lost upon her hearers.’ Adds Countdown John, “What a great line that is.”

THE PSYCHOANALYST, SELF-PRESERVATION EXPERT

Judging from her dialogue and actions, Mrs Bradley has a clear idea of how the many threads tie together. For the readers and characters trying to keep up with her logic, however, the experience is generally more frustrating. Joyka explains that “Mrs B has started to investigate, quietly and on her own finally, and she must be on the right track. Why else would she have to plug a balloon at the spinney gate with her revolver after the exhumation!”

Tracy also likes to see a busy Mrs B. She writes, “In the later chapters of this section there is more action, less talk, which is more to my liking. Mrs Bradley has returned to London and gets an invitation to an event. She immediately figures out that this is part of a plot but decides to go along with the invitation. We get to see George, her chauffeur, in this section of the story.” Joyka applauded the appearance of Mrs Bradley’s reliable factotum: “I was so happy to see solid, dependable George.”

The event meant to ensnare the undeceived detective is, amusingly, an invitation to attend the Ideal Home exhibition. This, Chris informs us, was “an annual exhibition of new home design, furniture, and consumer durables, held at Earls Court, west Kensington since 1908. The first microwave oven had been unveiled there in 1947.” Personally, I adore imagining the formidable Mrs Bradley strolling through a showroom of modern domestic appliances! Adds Chris, “If you’re curious to see what Mrs Bradley missed by not showing up there, a British Pathé newsreel of the 1950 exhibition can be viewed on YouTube, featuring state-of-the-art cocktail cabinets, kitchen gadgets, and mops.”

It is always fun when Gladys Mitchell sends up the image of the elderly detective through her own exotic creation. It is perhaps the author paying homage to benign but astute old lady characters like Miss Marple. Martyn says, “It was a real treat to see the return of the eccentric, grotesque Mrs Bradley, provoking horror with her ‘repulsive bundle of dead-looking natural-coloured wool’, and her huge wooden knitting needles.”

But the highlight for many readers was a wonderfully comic set-piece where the hapless Tiny Fullalove attempts to break into Mrs Bradley’s Kensington home. While Tiny seems to act with murderous intent, Mrs B is not so sure. Martyn captures the spirit of the nighttime siege: “The attempted break-in of Mrs Bradley’s home could have come from the pages of one of P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings novels. The extravagant rigmarole of the record player (and the ‘unearthly sound’ of the dogs that barked in the night); the crashing entry of Henri, her French cook, brandishing a carving knife; the ‘Gallic screaming’ of his wife, the housemaid, ‘issuing commands and injunctions to the ghostly and intangible dogs’, is pure orchestrated farce. In fact, we’re told that it had all been ‘previously rehearsed’!” Countdown John also found the description and delivery of these events hilarious.

As comical as the scene is, it is not without menace. Asks Martyn, “Yet even though the intruder carries a commando knife, and is clearly intent on something nefarious, Mrs Bradley lets him off with a caution. Why?” But the still-hobbling Tiny seems ill-matched against his adversary. Joyka remembers that “Mrs B chucks Tiny’s knife onto the roof with a flick of her wrist.” Indeed, it’s a gesture in keeping with her persona of earlier tales, where the aging analyst could ensnare a culprit’s arm in a grip of iron or throw a knife at a paper target and hit the bullseye every time.

THE PSYCHOANALYST, MEDICALLY MISTAKEN

One of the many clues to be discovered and considered in these chapters is an “empty packet of aspirin tablets” found half buried in the badgers’ sett. Mrs Bradley concludes that it was not there while the winter snow blanketed the area, and with that realization she makes a rather surprising (although perhaps characteristic) choice. Countdown John observes that “Mrs Bradley's deliberate destruction of what she believes to be a false clue to avoid muddying the waters is interesting. It is also very arrogant –she should at least have kept it in case it is important.” I’m inclined to agree.

But there’s another headache-inducing aspect to the aspirin business here, and it’s a mistake that Countdown John’s wartime dispensary nurse Agatha Christie would never have made. Chris B. reports.

“I think I’ve stumbled upon one of the most elementary blunders that Mrs Bradley ever commits. Upon discovering a discarded – or perhaps planted – aspirin packet at the spinney, her hypothesis is that Tiny might have caused Bill’s death by somehow feeding him an overdose of aspirin before he went out into the snow, so that ‘Once Bill had fallen asleep, nothing could save him in such weather’. The problem is that an overdose of aspirin could not even render Bill drowsy, never mind unconscious. The worst that could happen would be rare side-effects such as tinnitus or gastric bleeding. This is because aspirin is simply an analgesic (pain-killer), and certainly not a soporific (sleeping-pill), which was exactly why it was widely available without prescription. Mrs B’s usual medical expertise suddenly deserts her, and she is permitted to confuse the two kinds of medication.”

I have only one rather weak, hypothetical point to offer in the author’s defense. We learn that Mrs Bradley believes the packet was planted by someone to throw suspicion on Tiny for drugging his cousin. So it is just possible (although a stretch) to believe that it was a villager who was uninformed of aspirin’s effects and not the psychoanalyst, who saw through the clue and its anticipated deception. If that were the case, though, one wonders why Gladys Mitchell didn’t just have her criminal leave an empty packet of sleeping pills on the ground instead. A packet featuring pills of even the mildest no-prescription dosage would create the desired suggestion.

Continuing a thematic thread from last week’s discussion, Chris also notes that “her deduction that aspirin ‘of course, suggested the presence of a woman’ does not seem reliable either. Possibly this is a further instance of 1950s gender assumptions, as if no real man would stoop to self-medication even for a migraine.”

THE AUTHOR, AND A TELLING WEAKNESS

Tracy gets to the heart of an unsatisfying narrative choice often found in Gladys Mitchell’s later mystery stories (and sometimes in her earlier ones). Tracy observes, “I find that sometimes the investigating portion of the Mrs Bradley mysteries is less than satisfying. Possibly because I get confused by all the theories and mention of important discoveries that don't move my understanding of the story forward, even if they satisfy Mrs Bradley. I prefer the scenes with more action, or when the possible suspects interact with Mrs B.”

Adding to this justifiable criticism, José observes that too many clues are sometimes more defeating than too few. He writes, “I don't feel able to differentiate what might have some relationship with the case at hand and other aspects that might end up being insignificant. At times, the plot seems clear and straightforward, though occasionally it turns out to be more convoluted than what might be desirable.” José continues, “The characters are very well drawn, but it is difficult to determine accurately the role they play, and it would have been advisable, like in theatre plays, to offer a list of dramatis personae (characters involved) to help the reader.”

I think José and Tracy are reacting in part to Mitchell’s penchant for characters theorizing through conversations that cover multiple topics in bewildering fashion, with little or no resolution of ideas by the end of the scene. In a way, they are playful examinations of clues in the spirit of a fair-play mystery story: the detective (via the author’s hand) reminds and teases Watson and reader with the evidence collected to date. The sleuth here is not ready yet to reveal the significance of, say, the discovered dog leashes or the glowing balloon tied to the gate, and when asked about them, Mrs Bradley will answer elliptically and her questioner will then move to another unexplained element. The cumulative result can be frustrating, and many readers – me certainly included – find themselves uncertain of what to save and what to dismiss after these exchanges.

Martyn vividly describes the characteristics and exhausting effects of this approach, writing that by the end of this section “the cloud of unknowing (for the reader, and presumably for every character except Mrs Bradley) hasn’t lifted. I think that if I was one of Mrs Bradley’s interlocuters, I would find her pretty irritating by now. She has become gnomic, knowing, and inscrutably sphinx-like. She nods, she smiles, she quips ‘This falls out better than I could devise,’ but what she is thinking, and why she is thinking it, remains a mystery. She is playfully Socratic, asking questions, challenging other people’s thinking (or lack of it), while all the while keeping her cards close to her chest. Whatever Mrs Bradley knows, Gladys Mitchell isn’t telling, which leaves the reader all at sea.”

THE READERS, CAUTIOUS YET OPTIMISTIC

As we make our way to the final chapters, the group contributors all seem ready to persevere, despite some rocky ground and, occasionally, poor visibility. Even with an uphill climb, everyone seems to have found much to appreciate, and I have greatly enjoyed hearing from the group and seeing the landscape through their eyes. I’m especially grateful that my fellow trekkers consistently point out all the fantastic flora and fauna that I would surely have missed walking this remarkable countryside on my own!

Final thoughts before we finish our tour:

From Martyn: “I found these chapters to be brisker, more entertaining, and after a quick second read, more satisfying than the previous five.”

From Tracy: “As usual, I have no idea where [the many plot points] are heading, [but] I am enjoying the story and look forward to finding out how it all ends.”

And Joyka shares a line from the text that’s “pure GM gold”: ‘Here she squatted like a benevolent toad and appeared to lapse into meditation.’

Next week, we meditate on Groaning Spinney’s final five chapters. Squatting like a benevolent toad is optional. Please send your comments – NB that we will avoid major spoilers in the blog post – to [email protected] by Tuesday, December 28 if possible. Happy holidays and thanks for reading!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: GROANING SPINNEY (1950) - Post #2

12/17/2021

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Welcome to the second group discussion of 1950’s Groaning Spinney, where we will explore and critique Chapters 6 to 10. This section of Gladys Mitchell’s mystery tale is a busy and sometimes exhausting catalog of incidents and speculations, and the contributors this week have done well digging into the snow and finding much to investigate.

POISON PENS AND PREJUDICES

Tracy K., who maintains the crime fiction blog Bitter Tea and Mystery, offers this overview of the circulating poison-pen missives: “In this section, we learn more about the anonymous letters received by various people in the village. Mrs Bradley talks to Robert Emming, the choirmaster, about the two he received and then the doctor calls and says he has received two also. Tiny Fullalove receives one at the nursing home he has been confined to after his accident. Most of them are typewritten, so there has been a search for who has a typewriter or access to one. Many of the letters mention Bill Fullalove's death; they indicate that it was murder and that the body should be exhumed. So the letters and the murder (if it was murder) seem to have a connection.”

The letters mix malice with calls to action, specifically for authorities to look more closely at Bill Fullalove’s cause of death by having his body exhumed. José from his site A Crime Is Afoot notes that some letters “go so far as to say that the doctors who examined the body are guilty of having issued a false death certificate.” And Countdown John, on loan from his website Countdown John’s Christie Journal, wonders, “as the anonymous letters all seem to have a grain of truth in them, does that mean Bill was murdered? And if so - and this question will come up again - how was it done?”

Countdown John also neatly explains the quandary facing Justice of the Peace Jonathan Bradley and the constabulary: how do they deal with the anonymous letter writer and those typewritten accusations? “An exhumation would give [the writer] some excitement, they have achieved their aim, and the [police] force may become a laughing stock - but it also puts any rumours to bed or demonstrates that a crime has been committed. Is it always true that there's no smoke without fire?”

Martyn Hobbs found these chapters rough sledding, and I agree that the author’s stage managing of plot and characters here can cause fatigue. Martyn’s first comment, however, concerns the odd “scarcity of typewriters in the Cotswolds. Why are they so thin on the ground? We know that Jonathan possesses one. It seems that Bill Fullalove once used to have one. But what about the other professionals in the neighbourhood? There’s at least one doctor; there’s Emming the choirmaster; there’s a vicar; then there are all the young women and administrators up at the college. And aren’t there any aspirant writers holed up in the countryside? Can there really only be one typewriter (or two if we find Bill’s) between them all?”

Joyka had difficulty following the many characters, who are often referred to but are not figures we readers are invited to know. She writes, “I am finding it hard to grasp the characters in this book. They seem more nebulous than previous books except for Mrs Bradley’s bunch, of course. Jonathan is starting to step up to the role of squire in these chapters, I find, but he has a rather mundane mind. He can’t imagine an anonymous letter writer being anyone other than a frustrated spinster, for example. The Chief Constable rings true to stereotype: ‘no intuition on my patch - only facts.’ Come to think of it, all of the men seem to have mundane minds!”

Joyka notes that even Dr Fielding automatically assumes the poison pen writer is a woman, and Martyn asks why the assumption of female authorship is so prevalent in these chapters. I suggest that Gladys Mitchell may be toying with the presumption of gender connected to certain types of crimes.

In mystery fiction of the 1920s to the ‘50s, it is not uncommon for detectives, police, and suspects alike to separate men’s methods from women’s, as stereotyped and psychologically questionable as the cataloging by gender may be. For example, stabbing (especially with a stiletto or another elegant knife) and poisoning are considered a woman’s preferred method of dispatch, where shooting or bludgeoning are the messy domains of man. The fact that the story’s “mundane” men – Jonathan, the Doctor, the Chief Constable – all have no problem assuming a secretive, spiteful act like anonymous letter writing is the work of a woman may be winking commentary from an author whose series features two extremely capable women characters (Mrs Bradley and her athletic assistant Laura Gavin) investigating and solving mysteries.

REPRESSION AND REPRODUCTION

Martyn noted in the earlier post that the village presented in Groaning Spinney has more than its share of repressed bachelors, spinsters, and widowers tucked away. He offers this update while trying to keep track of all the characters and their neuroses: “The simmering pot of sexual turmoil in the Cotswolds spills over in these chapters. We already know that Tiny had pressed his attentions on an unwilling Deborah. Now we learn that cousin Bill, full of love or lust, made advances to Miss Fielding, the doctor’s daughter (and note well, a brilliant expert in chemical research – that revelation certainly made Mrs B think – after all, Bill might have been poisoned). Emming was born out of wedlock to Mrs Dalby Whittier (‘hot stuff’, according to the sergeant); Jonathan had once contemplated proposing to cousin Sally; and Bill turns out to be married to his ‘dear wife Amabel Lucinda’. Even Jonathan’s horse is called Truelove!”

Chris B. makes a connection between the villagers’ thwarted desires and Nature’s inevitable course. He writes: “It cannot be said of this Cotswolds scene that its hills are alive with the sound of sexual reproduction; but there is one striking exception to that pattern. The key fact we have been given in the first chapter is not a mystery-clue but the news of Deborah’s pregnancy (typically, she takes charge of her own Annunciation here): she is carrying twins, due to be born in May. So while the unfolding mystery-plot will necessarily be retrospective in reconstructing exactly what happened during the snowbound days of Christmas, the narrative arc of the story is, like Deborah herself, expectant: renewed life in the New Year is awaited.”

Chris continues, “As soon as Mrs Bradley hears Deborah’s news, she agrees to be the twins’ godmother, promising to count the days off on her calendar. This is a hint for readers also to pay attention to the calendar, and so to the seasonal cycle. With Chapter 6, we move into a January thaw, when the streams are swollen and everywhere is ‘either incredibly green or incredibly muddy’ (p. 56 of Murder in the Snow, Vintage edition). By the end of Chapter 9, the snowdrops have appeared, again announced by Deborah (p. 96).”

Chris finishes connecting theme, setting, and time with these thoughts: “Considered in the light of early 20th-century anthropology – Gladys Mitchell’s awareness of which had been most abundantly displayed in her early masterpiece The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935) – the symbolic significance of Christmas, whether as Christian festival or as a much older pagan one, is that it celebrates the germ of new life that is hidden within Nature’s ‘death’ at the midwinter solstice, destined to emerge as rebirth at springtime/Easter. The novel’s underlying mythic design imagines fertility (motherhood, spring) as the eventual destiny of apparent infertility (midwinter darkness and cold, linked to at least one premature death at the mystery-plot level). Readers of the earlier Christmas mystery Dead Men’s Morris may recall that its action begins just before Christmas 1935 and closes on Whit Monday (the first day of June in 1936). Groaning Spinney also starts just after the winter solstice, although we don’t yet know when it will end.”

WHITTIER AND WRITING

We’ll start this section with another W: the weather. Tracy finds the story’s winter-to-spring seasonal change enjoyable, and I do too. Tracy comments that, “For the first half of the book, the thing that I like the best is the descriptions of the environment around the manor house, the setting of the scenes, the people from the village and their interactions with Mrs. Bradley and Jonathan and Deborah.”

José reminds us that “The thaw brings another surprise. The body of a woman identified as Mrs Dalby Whittier is found in a deep dip in one of the farmer's fields.” Countdown John noticed Jonathan’s reaction to news of the freshly revealed corpse: “Amusingly, Jonathan, a practical man, wants dinner immediately, to Deb's horror, as they may start to get busy pretty quickly.” And Martyn enjoyed the detail that the inquest would be held on the weekend in the schoolhouse, frustrating the schoolchildren who, “to their annoyance, were, of course, strictly excluded”.

The dead woman’s identity card offers a chance for police to compare her handwriting with that found on the very first anonymous letter, which was not typed. (Assuming that the writing on the card was done by Mrs Dalby Whittier.) Chris tells us that “Identity cards were introduced as a wartime measure for all residents of Britain, including children, in 1939. Details of name, address, date of birth, and occupation were entered by hand, and there was no need for a photo. The requirement to carry one was not abolished until February 1952.”

As mentioned earlier, a couple contributors found the writing of these middle chapters uneven and sometimes confusing. I would agree: as with many later Gladys Mitchell stories, there are several developments and discussions of events in these chapters, but it can be difficult to know what to pick up and what to discard in terms of information and incident. Martyn has also noted a few careless or contradictory choices in the prose.

Martyn observes: “Towards the end of Chapter 6, ‘Mrs Bradley accepted the change of subject gracefully…’ while barely a page later Jonathan ‘accepted the change of subject with a grin.’ In Chapter 8, we start with a conversation between Mrs B and Sally while they are out taking their morning constitutional. As soon as their conversation ends, Mrs B (who now miraculously appears to be back at the house) dresses for a walk and strides out alone. This uncertainty of location and endless traipsing occurs elsewhere, too.” Concludes Martyn, “Chapter 10 was a bewildering mix of relentless speculation and walking.”

BRADLEYS AND BEHAVIOUR

As was discussed in the prior post, the psychoanalyst detective at the heart of this 1950-published story is more accessible and less alienating than her saurian incarnation of prior decades. The mellowing also makes her easier on her relations, no longer fearful of a sharp poke in the ribs from a bony finger. Tracy comments, “I enjoy Mrs Bradley's relationship with her extended family. I like that they look forward to coming together for Christmas, that they are comfortable with each other (Jonathan and Mrs Bradley bicker lightheartedly over who is going to read the new Nicholas Blake mystery). Mrs Bradley chooses to extend her stay because another cousin, Sally, is visiting Deborah and Jonathan with her dog Rhu.”

Both Countdown John and Chris identified the title of the new mystery story that the Bradleys are waiting to read: it is likely 1949’s Head of a Traveller. Adds Chris, “Gladys Mitchell admired the mysteries written under the pen-name Nicholas Blake since 1935 by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who had been a Cotswold resident with a cottage just outside Cheltenham from 1932 until he had migrated to Dorset in 1938.”

Mitchell’s detective is present and vocal, but Groaning Spinney demonstrates a continuing trend as the book series continues into its later decades: it is often a secondary character – usually a family relation, such as Jonathan here, or Laura – who is more immediately connected with the mystery than Mrs Bradley, now acting as consultant and inquisitive observer. In Spinney, Tracy notes, “Mrs Bradley's role grows larger in this section. Even though it has not been established that Bill Fullalove was murdered, she assumes that is the case (although she has no real evidence) and discusses this issue with local authorities and with Jonathan, Deborah, and the villagers.”

Joyka sees another personality change from those earlier tales where Mrs Bradley would actively make things happen. I attribute it to that transitional shift in character from a force of nature to a more introspective – and less superhuman – detective. Writes Joyka, “Dr Fielding comes to consult Mrs Bradley and is shocked when Mrs B says she, too, feels Bill Fullalove was murdered. But even then she hangs back. Other than encouraging exhumation, why is Mrs Bradley so reticent about tackling this murder? Not her usual style at all.”

In one lively passage in Chapter 10 (the chapter is aptly titled “Peculiar Persons”), the visiting psychoanalyst references a dozen real-life murderers as she explains to her nephew that there is no such thing as a “murdering type.” All of these figures had made it into the rogues’ gallery of villains, their cases infamous and their reputations preceding them. Countdown John observes, “Re-reading Christie, I was surprised at how many real-life murder cases were referred to. [In Groaning Spinney] we have a whole litany. I'd heard of the first half of the list, e.g., Hawley Harvey Crippen, Neil Cream, and Constance Kent, but not of Patrick Mahon, George Chapman, or Norman Thorne.” Readers who wish to seek out entertaining accounts of Edwardian and Golden Age-era true crime would do well to start with collections by Scottish criminologist William Roughead and British broadcaster Edgar Lustgarten.

ANIMALS AND ALLUSIONS

Martyn thinks that subtext could shed additional light on Choirmaster Emming’s character: “It’s said (by Jonathan, I believe) that the choirmaster received two nasty letters while the vicar got a third besmirching him. At least one of these letters (according to Emming) alleged that he murdered Bill to conceal his bastardy. When Mrs Bradley picks up on this at the opening of Chapter 6, Emming, for once, is relaxed. Why is that? Is it because he actually has a different, darker secret? I suggest that he might be a closet homosexual (Mrs B described him earlier as having effeminate hands, a cruel mouth and exaggerated manner – not very coded allusions).” It’s an astute observation; in the pages of Golden Age detective fiction, those character attributes usually spoke loudly and clearly to the reader about male characters of a certain persuasion. And if they were fussy antique dealers calling everyone “Dear” and “Darling,” all the better and clearer for many genre writers of the era.

And there’s unintended humor in an unfortunate turn of phrase that both Joyka and Chris commented on. Chris gives us the line in question from Chapter 9 – “Jon dear, can you mount me? I can’t display my prowess to the Cotswold” – and then he explains: “What an unwary reader might mistake for a startlingly unchaste invitation from Sally – it merits a Bradleian cackle, but doesn’t get one – turns out to be an innocent request to be provided with a horse. The Cotswold in this context means the assembled fox-hunters of the Cotswold Hunt.” Adds Joyka: “Oh dear, the changes and challenges in the English language from one century to the next. Sally asking for a horse to ride certainly caused me to chuckle!”

Joyka also noticed some genuinely suspicious animal evidence. She explains that “The mysterious find of the dog collars and leads in the badgers’ sett certainly puts Tiny Fullalove back into the picture. Jonathan has been skeptical of that knee injury right from the first. There has only been a brief mention so far of Tiny’s much loved dogs and cats. This is an interesting clue.”

Martyn also reflected and genuflected on the humble knee: “As all the characters seem inordinately attached to walking, there’s a fascinating moment when Mrs Bradley reflects on the human knee. An interesting exercise with a class might be to ask, ‘What qualities do you associate with the knee?’ I wonder how many students would come up with Mrs B’s ideas? ‘Tricky things, knees. Limber, prayerful, romantic…’ Very cute.”

For an interesting post-war porcine detail we return to Chris, who sheds light on “the choirboys’ pig-club” from Chapter 6. Chris explains that “Jonathan’s mention of this recent village scandal can be understood only in the context of the food-rationing regime of the time, and the standing temptation for rural villagers to evade it by making undeclared purchases from local farmers.”

FINDING THE WAY FORWARD

Joyka reports that “Things start moving quickly” by Chapter 10. “It is as if whatever Mrs Bradley was waiting for has happened.” Perhaps too much has been happening too quickly. Martyn’s thoughts at the end of this section are these: “There are so many uncertainties, so many characters, so many letters, so much walking, and then the late entry of the missing dogs Lassie and Cripes and Mrs Dalby Whittier’s dodgy curry, that I’ve lost my bearings. So like Mrs B, I too was relieved to find a mention of Sir Thomas Browne at the close of Chapter 10. It was a comforting, substantial sort of reference. After all, he wrote Urne Buriall which, in the context, fits nicely.” Urne Buriall, I should append, has as its subtitle “A discourse of the sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk”.

It is now, José writes, that “the story begins to get more interesting. A first murder emerges and there's a rational expectation that a previous death that was considered accidental could have also been murder. New pieces of information begin to surface, but the puzzle is still far from beginning to shape. Opportunity and motive are not fully clear yet.”

Let us see if the weather clears and if the plot thickens or thins next week, as the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group looks at Chapters 11 to 15. (Personally, I found myself on more solid ground in this upcoming section.) If you are interested in contributing your observations for this part of the story, please email your comments to [email protected] by Tuesday, December 21. Thanks to everyone who took part this week!

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