Category: Golden Age Mystery

Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #3

9/27/2020

Once more, the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group discusses a section of 1942's Laurels Are Poison. This week we focus on Chapters 10 through 14. Two caveats/apologias: as much of each reader's submission explored the busy and often confusing plotlines in this section, there will be plot-specific spoilers within this post (but no direct reveal of a murderer) and necessary editing or cutting of the offered comments to avoid repetition.

REFERENCES

Why not begin with the title of Chapter 10? The obscure reference sent us all on a brief search, and Chris B can speak for the group. He writes, "'The Flying Flacoris' names a real variety/circus act, a troupe of trapeze artistes that can be found listed in various showbiz posters in the period 1927 to 1938. It is understood to be an elaborate title for the rival rope-ascending gymnasts of this chapter, Laura and Miss Cornflake." Tracy hopes that the allusive and elusive heading "would have been more obvious to readers at the time the book was written."

Readers of the Mrs Bradley series will know that Mitchell enjoys letting her psychoanalyst sleuth refer to infamous figures from actual criminal trials. Constance Kent, the teen who was accused of killing her stepbrother, is mentioned in multiple GM books, and George Joseph Smith, the Brides in the Bath murderer, also appears as a reference (most notably in 1934's Death at the Opera).

Chris calls these additions "deliberately tasteless references to gruesome real-life murder cases that were within the living memory of her first readers." I often wonder about the synergy of sensational crimes and its effect on then-contemporary mystery fiction readers whenever I come across a notation, and Mitchell wasn't alone in this practice. But I never thought of the references as tasteless, but rather as an acknowledgement of a mystery writer's plot inspiration and as a wink to popular true-crime chroniclers of the time, like William Roughhead and Alexander Woollcott, who wrote up other people's tragedies and delivered them in a highly entertaining, compulsively readable format.

But back to Laurels. Chris reports that in Chapter 11, "Mrs Bradley asks her nephew Jonathan to carry an old trunk across the campus for the purpose of comparing two skeletons, [and Jonathan responds] 'Lead on, Patrick Mahon'. This Patrick Mahon was a notorious murderer who in 1924 had killed his girlfriend Emily Kaye, hiding her corpse in a trunk before partially disposing of its dismembered parts. The crime was known as the 'Crumbles Murder', after the Sussex beach near which it was committed."

On a (somewhat?) lighter note, Gladys Mitchell also shows her familiarity with Mark Twain. Joyka shares: "I do like the image of [Laura and her companions] 'parked like Tom Sawyer at the funeral' during their short stint in the gymnasium gallery."

And Chris provides the context for one further illuminating reference. "A stray literary allusion arises in Chapter 14, during Deborah’s Laura-interrupted English lecture, to Richard of Bordeaux by 'Gordon Daviot' (Elizabeth Mackintosh, the Scottish writer better known as 'Josephine Tey'). This was a notably successful 1932 historical play starring the young actor-director John Gielgud." Thanks for connecting the dots, Chris; this is quite an enjoyable nod to a fellow mystery novelist!

RESPONSES

Based on the responses for this section, it appears that Gladys Mitchell is trying the readers' collective patience as incidents accumulate and, as fresh details emerge, others become more mystifying still. Joyka comments, "I have to say that despite all of the clues strewn about in these chapters… it is [still] very confusing to me. The whole plot seems to be going off in various directions. Mrs Bradley has her ideas, the police have theirs, and Laura is hot on the trail, she thinks."

This from Martyn: "In terms of the greater mystery, I find the motives for these crimes and misdemeanors difficult to fathom. Who’s doing them and why? I’ve no idea. There does seem to be a financial (or penury) angle… and the cross-dressing Miss Cornflake appears to be up to her neck in it. But beyond that? All is dark. Fortunately, it’s the characters and the storytelling that keep me hooked."

And Tracy, a prolific crime fiction blogger from Bitter Tea and Mystery, offers this generous perspective: "It has often been said that Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley mysteries are an acquired taste. I believe that I will grow to love the mysteries in this series, but at this point, reading only my second Mrs Bradley book, I am finding it quite a challenge. I get confused about what is going on, and the forward movement seems to be very leisurely. However, I firmly believe that the joy of reading is in the journey and that everything does not all have to be completely comprehensible. So I am enjoying this new experience."

Tracy's reactions are insightful, and I'm glad that Mitchell's overzealous plotting and eccentric mystery-story logic don't cause her or the other readers to surrender. She also underlines the prime criticism of mystery fans who, after sampling, want nothing to do with the Mrs Bradley series. Readers accustomed to Golden-Age Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers or Nicholas Blake expect a serious approach to fair-play clueing, and justifiably so: the genre entices with just such a promise. With her murder mystery storylines, Gladys Mitchell doesn't "cheat" so much as not confine herself to a puzzle logic, especially when a flight of fancy will result in a dynamic scenario.

The following year's The Worsted Viper will see Mrs Bradley chasing Satanists by boat through the Norfolk Broads, while Death and the Maiden (1947) presents a pair of near-drownings in which motives and specifics remain opaque even after two readings. The conventional fair-play mystery fan will understandably lose patience with such quixotic storytelling and illogical incidents. Personally – and one must speak for oneself, thumbs up or down – Gladys Mitchell delivers delights of characterization, setting, prose, and yes, even plot that allow me to overlook unresolved puzzle points. I still recognize the deficiency, but the journey is what rewards me.

One example of a GM delight? I'm with Martyn, who finds the author's evocative and often humorous turns of phrase – especially as given to her characters – something to celebrate. He writes, "It seems there are three parallel investigations on the go: Mrs Bradley’s, the police’s, and Laura’s. Laura’s has the linguistic verve. I loved her wordplay and her impossibly brilliant analysis of the movements of Mrs Castle’s corsets:

'Can you imagine the cook without them? I bet the murderer gave one goggle-eyed look at the mass of adipose tissue, then took a despairing look at the corsets, decided two into one won’t go, and slung the corsets into the river after the body, never dreaming that they’d fetch up where they did.'

REVELRIES

This week the reading group members also took turns celebrating the fast-developing friendship between Mrs Bradley and Laura Menzies. Martyn states that these chapters show "the evolution of Laura into Mrs Bradley's sidekick." I agree; if Laura had not been so resourceful with her own investigations and as quick-acting as a bodyguard in this first appearance, it would be difficult to believe that she impressed the psychoanalyst enough to be offered a job as secretary and Watson. Martyn adds that "they make a formidable duo, and just as well, as there is a marked increase in danger in this section. Revolvers are employed on more than one occasion."

The dress is 1970s pattern, but 1940s Mrs Croc would likely approve.

But it is the interplay between detective and Kitty Trevelyan, budding cosmetologist, that is most memorable for Joyka. "My absolute favorite moment of the book is Kitty taking Mrs B in hand to get her ready for the dance. When Kitty sees Mrs Bradley decked out in a four year-old orange and blue evening frock, 'her jaw drops, her eyes open wide and she makes an odd gurgling sound.' Mrs Bradley asks, 'Are you ill?' Kitty replies, 'Well, you might call it that.' True to her nature, Mrs B allows Kitty a free hand to work her magic."

Chapter 13, "Harlequinade and Yule Log", provides a charming montage of scenes where the author, sometimes in just a few paragraphs, orients each of the characters in representative activities over the Christmas break. Alice, for example, rejoins her church choir for some carol-singing, much to the relief of a soprano who thought her college friend would now have airs; George asks leave to visit his sergeant-major from the war; and this is how Kitty updates her mother about the goings-on at Athelstan Hall:

'Ghosts, murder, old Dog nearly getting pneumonia, somebody slashing up coats and breaking open trunks and tins of disinfectant, School Prac., all sorts of rumours that the last Warden disappeared at the end of last term, although some only say she was ill, and…'

'What was that about Laura getting pneumonia, dear?' asked her mother, detaching from this welter of rhetoric the one accessible and assimilable fact.

Chris did not enjoy the "pointlessly digressive interlude" – it is accurate to say that the sequence of scenes does not advance the plot – while Tracy calls the Oxfordshire excursion "lovely" and adds, "This is just one small event within the larger story, but it is one the best pictures of a family Christmas that I have run across in mystery fiction." Nick Fuller often refers to Gladys Mitchell's prose as "lucid" and, for me, connected with that is an ability to evoke distinct settings and characters with just a few sentences and well-chosen details. We don't need to know how George, Kitty, and Alice spend their holidays (and we don't get more than these brief glimpses; i.e., they do not overstay their welcome on the page), but Mitchell's decision to do so makes her created world that much more vibrant.

REALITIES

Which brings us to a theme running through this post: the fictional indulgences that the writer engages in contrasted with the realities of life as we know it. (Or at least the delivery of genre expectations.) This bridging of fact and fiction must to some extent be recognized and honored – especially in mystery stories – or else we would have locked-room teleportation and unconvincing coincidences galore, with no one likely satisfied. I want to use the hoary phrase "suspension of disbelief" here, but I also think this ties back to the question of why a person reads a Gladys Mitchell mystery, if he or she chooses to read one at all. What are they looking for in the experience?

There is stylization, or a sense of unreality, that can be highly rewarding for the reader. Martyn comments that "the courtship of Deborah and Jonathan is pure drawing room comedy." He also argued, persuasively, that the constant entrances, exits, and near misses around the crime scene in The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (1929) are a knowing attempt at simulating stage farce.

At the same time, criticism can be directed at authorial oversights that intrude on that suspension of disbelief. The absence of logic – again, not a Mitchell rarity – pulled Chris out of the story when it came to details surrounding Miss Cornflake's identity. Certain behaviours "suggest to Laura that Miss Cornflake is in fact a Secondary School teacher, and therefore almost by definition already qualified ('certificated'), which means that she has no legitimate reason to be studying at Cartaret at all. Mrs Bradley’s subsequent enquiries at the Senior (i.e. Secondary) School in Betchdale confirm that all teachers there are certificated, and this is the school at which Miss Cornflake claimed, in her filed application to Cartaret, to have been teaching."

Chris continues: "The strange thing is that Laura, without any of the evidence concerning that application, detects the anomaly, while [Cartaret College Principal] Miss de Mugne has failed to notice anything odd in such an application, not even the glaringly bogus breakfast-cereal surname. The Principal seems indeed to have acted unprofessionally in admitting Miss Cornflake solely on the strength of an application letter, without seeking any reference from her supposed employer. We must also believe that in faking her CV, Miss Cornflake could somehow be confident that her claims would never be checked out."

There is also a fact-against-fiction dissonance in the story's geography, as Chris explained to me in his notes for the previous post. He writes, "I’m less than convinced by the topography of the setting. We are suddenly told in Chapter 9 that there’s a small public park next to the Carteret hockey-field. But why would anyone lay out a public park on out-of-town moorland? Who would use it? This is one of those cases (Death at the Opera is another) in which Gladys Mitchell gets so deeply immersed in the intrigues of an institution that she forgets to create a credible environment for it."

The criticisms are completely valid, and they likely frustrate other readers as well. I speak only for myself when I state honestly that such lapses in logic or assaults on pragmatic reality never occurred to me, although they are there on the page for all to see. And joyously, knowing the flaws exist doesn't hamper my enjoyment of a book like Laurels Are Poison. And that is due, I expect, to not how I read Gladys Mitchell's stories but why I read them.

Next week we look at the final four chapters – a slim 40 pages by my count! Thanks to all who have contributed and to all who are reading along with us.

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #2

9/20/2020

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Welcome to the second installment of the group reading of Gladys Mitchell's Laurels Are Poison.

THE STORY

While all of the readers write about enjoying elements of the book, the mystery plotline in Chapters Six to Nine takes a backseat to characterization and dialogue. Certainly incidents and events occur, but the initial puzzle that brought Mrs Bradley to the college – to surreptitiously investigate the disappearance of the previous warden (or housemistress) of Athelstan Hall – seems to be overtaken by continuing pranks and the death of a staff member.

Chris B notes: "It’s becoming clearer at this stage that the imaginative and emotional heart of the novel is the bonding of the Three Musketeers [students Laura Menzies, Alice Boorman, and Kitty Trevelyan] through shared trials and teasing banter. The murder-mystery side of the story seems perfunctory and rather slow to develop: no proper corpse until the end of Chapter Eight, and it’s that of a mere bit-part character."

Tracy K relates this part of the plotline: "After an incident with a ghost at Athelstan Hall (actually loud, disturbing noises in the middle of the night), Cook and Mrs. Bradley have a disagreement, and Cook is sacked." She echoes Chris's critique of a slowed-down story. "For several chapters, it seems like many unpleasant events are happening but there is no forward movement on the actual case. Maybe Mrs. Bradley had a plan, but it was not clear to this reader. At this point, I was ready for some action. "

It's a fair assessment, and for as lively as characterization and dialogue (and the steady busyness of incidents and events) are in Laurels, I have never been gripped by its plot the way I have with some other Mrs Bradley books. It's not that the crimes are merely academic; I think it has to do with Mrs Bradley knowing how to proceed while the reader essentially needs to ride the river and trust its current, as Laura does.

Tracy concludes that "It takes until nearly halfway through the book before there is a suspicious death. Usually I am perfectly fine with a crime novel that takes a long time to set up the situation, but this time I was getting impatient. We know that Mrs. Bradley has been hired by the school to investigate Miss Murchan's disappearance and that the school has kept that incident quiet. Mrs. Bradley thinks that all the malicious pranks are meant to get rid of her. But why? and who [is behind them]?"

Indeed, those 'rags' do inspire interest and speculation in this section. Joyka comments that "spilling creosote deliberately is a messy stunt for sure, but cutting the hair of a student who is sleeping while recovering from surgery argues a more pathological tormentor." And that "proper corpse" Chris mentioned earlier takes the form of Mrs. Castle, an insolent cook whose body turns up down river from the college. Joyka mentions an intriguing, related anachronism: "Why would Cook have taken her corsets off before going into the river? Or did she?"

THE SERVANTS

While Chris B is not able to say much about the lightly sketched character of Cook – he laments that "It’s a pity that Cook isn’t made more interesting before getting drowned" – he provides these excellent observations about the author's use of working-class characters in her mysteries:

"Gladys Mitchell’s cast of servant-class characters often throws up surprises. Clearly she doesn’t want to be limited to the stock English types, so her Cockney chauffeur is given demanding intellectual interests (Nietzsche and Freud, in other novels), while an international array of servant characters is brought in, beginning with Henri and Célestine. The unexpected Japanese valet in The Devil at Saxon Wall is another example.

"In Laurels the surprise is Lulu [a maid], who seems rather too obviously to have been parachuted in straight from Gone with the Wind (is there a Mitchell-clan in-joke here?). Her evidently stereotyped portrayal sets up a further surprise, though: after the night of the spooky noises, Mrs Bradley sends her away on the grounds that black Americans are well known to be terrified of ghosts; but when she returns, Lulu turns out to be proudly untroubled by superstition of any kind, and the otherwise infallible sleuth is proved wrong."

Chris adds: "There’s a parallel here to an earlier moment (Chapter Four) when Laura assumes that the athlete Alice will not recognise a literary allusion to George Eliot (to Aunt Glegg of The Mill on the Floss), but in fact Alice does read books, and knowledgeably disputes the relevance of the allusion. The lesson both times seems to be that even the most perceptive characters, up to and including Mrs Bradley and Laura, can be blinded by their assumptions."

THE STUDENTS

All of the readers noticed the strengthening bonds between the women students and, in particular, between Laura and Mrs Bradley. Joyka writes, "I think it is in these chapters that Laura and Mrs Bradley cement their lifelong friendship. Mrs B recognizes in Laura not a troublemaker like other school leaders but a unique, creative thinker. She is well aware of Laura’s tendency to jump into things before looking (the river swimming episode comes to mind [where Laura looks for clues by recreating Cook's downstream trajectory]) but Mrs B knows Laura has an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. And Laura has christened Mrs B 'Mrs. Crocodile' or 'Mrs Croc', which she uses with love, not derision. She says, 'I like the old girl. I don’t care who hears me say so.' Later, Mrs Bradley returns the compliment, 'I like that child. She is intelligent.'"

Martyn Hobbs also notes the growing friendship, with Mrs Bradley appreciating Laura's "adventurous spirit and 'thirst for knowledge' and her linguistic gifts." Martyn goes on to note that in Chapter Eight, "Skirling and Groans," we learn that:

When Monday dawned, students in various degrees of anxiety and nervousness arose (many of them before the rising bell had rung in various Halls) and began to put ready the impedimenta (Laura’s carefully-chosen collective noun, much appreciated by Mrs Bradley when she heard it) for the day.

Tracy says that she "especially enjoyed Laura's detective work following the discovery of the dead body, very resourceful and intrepid. And Kitty is one of my favorite characters. She has no real interest in teaching and would prefer to be a hairdresser. Down to earth and straightforward." I would agree that Kitty's personal motivations make a delightful contrast to her peers: as her true interests are not connected with her success as a teacher in training, Mitchell gives her a situational liberty that delivers some of the book's best comedy. This scene, where Kitty is observed in front of a classroom, is a marvelous example:

'So you see,' said Kitty, 'all you do – Hey, you, in the back row, stop pulling that girl's hair! No, dash it, you weren't doing up her slide. You were pulling her hair; I saw you. Oh, don't argue. You listen to me. Oh, hullo, Miss Topas. Take a seat, won't you… Now, you perishers – that is children – Look here, this is the point. No, not the decimal point, haddock! The point of my remarks. In other words, what I'm saying. Oh, all right, if you won't listen, you won't. Sit up, and we'll do some Pence Table. Don't know it? Don't know Pence Table? How does your father make out his betting slips, then? Come on, all of you. Twelve pence are one shilling. Eighteen Pence are half a dollar. No, I'm wrong at that.'

She got the class laughing. Then she rolled her eyes at Miss Topas and went back to multiplying decimals. Miss Topas gave her an average mark, prayed inaudibly for her soul, and passed out, highly appreciative, but, she feared, wrong-headedly so, of Kitty's capabilities as an instructor.

Joyka was also appreciative of the detective's (and her author's) playful worldview. "I love Mrs Bradley’s quirky sense of humor. After catching Kitty, who went out of bounds to buy treats for tea, Mrs Bradley decides she needs to see fair play during the sharing out so she invites herself to tea and eats two doughnuts and two-pennyworth of crisps which the others have paid for." It's another amusing detail in a book filled with moments of friendship and negotiation among women.

THE SPEECH

For these chapters, Martyn looked largely at language and word choice, and I am happy to share his observations here. Writes Martyn:

"A word on chapter headings. Some are clear but colourful ('High Jinks with a Tin-opener,' 'Revenge upon Goldilocks'), others are obscure ('Evidence of the Submerged Tenth'). This latter I long misread as the case of the submerged teeth. Now that could have made some sense, [but] actually, it was her corset, not her dentures, that had gone missing, which the wonderful Laura Menzies retrieves from the reeds. But the submerged ‘tenth’? That might refer to 'the supposed fraction of the population permanently living in poverty', a term used by the Salvationist William Booth (1890). Is there a financial motive behind all these shenanigans (a sort of rags to riches mystery)?"

As moderator and fellow reader, I am also uncertain what the 'tenth' refers to, although I had not thought of it before in terms of social class labelling! (Very nice detective work, Martyn.) When I had read Laurels previously, I had presumed the 'tenth' might be a British student designation for Laura – although earlier we learn of First-Year and Second-Year student rankings at the college. The athletic ingénue also submerges, and then emerges, with the evidentiary undergarment. If anyone else has a theory about the context of 'the submerged tenth', please feel free to share.

Martyn provides this optimistic observation: "Some of the chapter headings only become clear further on into the story. Those 'promiscuous vessels' of Chapter Four were, in fact, the missing chamber pots, as Mrs Bradley explains in Chapter Six. Up to then I had imagined that that had somehow alluded to the naughty antics of the 'weaker vessels' (women).

But back to Laura: Martyn notes that she is an influence on many. "'Come on my right side, for this ear is deaf' says Deborah to Miss Topas. Then she adds, apologetically, 'Shades of Laura Menzies.' That too is a citation from Julius Caesar. And, of course, a ghost is going to turn up at Athelstan Hall, just as Caesar’s ghost entered before the Battle of Philippi…"

And Joyka recognizes the author's wonderful synthesis of characterization and dialogue (and dialect), working in tandem. Joyka writes: "Another thing I love about Gladys Mitchell is her ability to describe the essence of a character in just a few sentences. The Ditch family is a reoccurring favorite of mine. They may be rural but they are not unintelligent, backwards people. Their comments are based on observations of the world in which they have lived for centuries. Here is Our Walt commenting on Miss Topas and her young man as they study their books and maps: "I say, our young Mam, do ee thenk their brains, like, ul stand et? Tis like so much witchcraft to I."

With readers wondering what witchcraft will come next – and with Martyn curious as to what the Flying Flacoris of Chapter Ten's title might be – visit us next week as we continue our discussion of Laurels Are Poison!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #1

9/12/2020

3 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of the group reading of Laurels Are Poison. As we discuss the first five chapters of Gladys Mitchell's favourite Mrs Bradley novel, we have five readers on board, and I am delighted to share their spirited and informed contributions. I also wish to acknowledge the sad news of the recent passing of Dame Diana Rigg; she portrayed Gladys Mitchell's memorable detective in five episodes of The Mrs Bradley Mysteries for the BBC in 1999 and 2000. Laurels Are Poison was one of the books (remarkably loosely) adapted for the series.

ARRIVING IN STYLE

Nick Fuller and Chris B both note Mitchell's spirited tone found in this title and place it in the context of world events and the author's canon. Nick, whose The Grandest Game in the World is an encyclopaedic website of the mystery genre, observes that Laurels "immediately follows When Last I Died, perhaps her most minimalist work, a story without many diversions or digressions. Laurels is one of her most high-spirited books, going back to the student days she enjoyed so much. It was written during WWII, so Mitchell might have wanted to write something fun."

Chris B adds, "After the depressing realism of Brazen Tongue and the ghoulish horrors of When Last I Died, Gladys Mitchell seems to have decided that what her readers needed in the midst of war was a spot of cheerful escapism, so she serves up what is only a slightly more grown-up version of a schoolgirl novel."

Laurels opens as Mrs Bradley, en route to Cartaret Training College to assume the role of warden or house-mistress, meets and provides a lift for Deborah Cloud, who will become the sub-warden for Athelstan Hall. This gives us another sketch of capable chauffeur George, who has accompanied Mrs B in other stories. Joyka writes, "I really like this characterization of him, 'a stocky, grave-faced, irresistibly respectable man, who spoke quietly, with firmness.'" She adds that "GM has been all over the place with her characterization of George in her books, from a chaser of skirts to a detective in his own right. I am happy to see him irresistibly respectable; he deserves it! It cannot be easy, carting Mrs B around, even in a Rolls Royce."

Tracy takes a brief break from her very enjoyable website Bitter Tea and Mystery and offers an excellent summary. "The first five chapters serve to introduce us to those main characters (I assume) and other characters at the college, instructors and students. We learn that Mrs Bradley was instrumental in Deborah's hiring and wanted her to work on a case with her. This is the disappearance of a Miss Murchan, the previous warden at Athelstan Hall. It is gradually revealed that Mrs. Bradley is an investigator with various degrees. Some of the students also know about this, because Mrs. Bradley is somewhat famous. Since I have read one Mrs. Bradley book (A Hearse on May-Day) and have read about the series generally, I knew what to expect, but I will say that if I was a complete novice to the book, with no background knowledge, I might have been somewhat confused."

It's a fair assessment to say that Laurels Are Poison is both busy and well-populated, as Gladys Mitchell creates the teaching college world – and introduces us to its many inhabitants – over just a few chapters, all the while spinning a plot involving benign and malignant rags, a student's mysterious death, and the disappearance of the prior warden. Added to this, Martyn Hobbs found the Shakespeare text allusions coming fast and fleet:

"If the first five chapters pass in a comic, allusive, highly-wrought whirl, the nine pages of the opening chapter are consummate. ‘Open, Sesame’ is its title: and like Prospero, GM magics up a place, a huge cast of characters, and a mystery to be resolved. I may have missed some literary allusions but the first gag is Mrs Bradley’s ‘So we meet slightly before Philippi.’ These were almost the words spoken by Caesar’s ghost to Brutus, just before his assassin’s fateful last battle… Death is associated with that place, and at this point only Mrs B knows anything about it."

Martyn continues, "Laura Menzies is a comic cornucopia of literary references. She dubs Mrs B and Deborah the First and Second Gravediggers (presumably via Hamlet), while Kitty, awaiting her interview, observes that the door through which students pass is ‘a bourne from which…no traveller returned.’ Death again. For Laura, Mrs B is also ‘the Third Witch’ (Macbeth this time, another play with an excess of corpses.) Macbeth pops up again in Laura’s Cockney ‘Is it a dagger I see before me, its ‘andle to my ‘and?’ and Mrs B’s description of the college atmosphere as ‘cribbed, cabined and confined’ … The auguries for the inmates of Cartaret College aren’t especially good!"

COLLEGES, FACT AND FICTION

Photo of Goldsmiths College, London, c. 1912. Image from Goldsmiths History Project, www.sites.gold.ac.uk

Chris B presents many fascinating points about the marked differences between Cartaret and the teaching college Gladys Mitchell attended. Chris writes that the author "attended Goldsmiths’ College, London, in 1919 to 1921 in order to acquire a teaching qualification. Goldsmiths’ was one of a variety of institutions at which prospective teachers were educated: some of these were departments of larger university colleges (e.g. at Nottingham University College, where D. H. Lawrence had earlier qualified to teach), while others were free-standing specialist institutions usually known as 'teacher-training colleges'. Cartaret Training College in Laurels is clearly of the latter type, although unusual in being a single-sex college.

"Gladys Mitchell may well be evoking some aspects her student experience in Laurels… [but] what she is clearly avoiding is any recognisable portrayal of the college she herself had attended. She goes to great lengths (two hundred miles, to be exact) to ensure that nobody could mistake Cartaret for Goldsmiths’. The real Goldsmiths’ was (and remains) southern, urban and co-educational, being located at Deptford in southeast London and always governed (until 2019, indeed) by a male Principal. The fictional Cartaret is northern, rural and single-sex, being located on moorland two miles or so outside York. The remote location is unrealistic (all actual training colleges are in towns or cities, because they need easy access to a range of local schools), but of course it better fulfils the mystery-genre requirement of a 'closed' circle of suspects." Chris concludes that "the most improbable thing about Cartaret, indeed, is that its entire student body resides on-campus, which would never be the case in any real teacher-training college."

And Martyn mentions the aptness of pairing the titular poison with the story's academic location: "The laurel or bay is also the wreath or crown worn by scholars, so a fitting title for her murder mystery set in the cloistered setting of Carteret Training College."

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

Readers of the Mrs Bradley series will remember that this book introduces four recurring characters, and that one of them, the spirited, jocular, and intuitive Laura Menzies, will become the old lady's Watson for the rest of the series. Laura's Cartaret colleagues, future hair stylist Kitty Trevelyan and the unassuming but physically strong Alice Boorman, will also appear in books published in later decades. And Deborah Cloud, who is sent off to nephew Carey Lestrange's pig farm during a school break – Mrs B wants her out of harm's way – becomes engaged to Jonathan Bradley, whom she meets there. So it is all in the family, with a little of Mrs Bradley's omniscience as a matchmaker.

Martyn comments that "Laura, or Dog, is wonderful," and Joyka considers the personality that Gladys Mitchell provides: "Our first glimpse of Laura shows her to be a rule breaker, a lover of 'ragging,' eminently practical, but very shrewd. She alone has pegged Mrs B as doing a bit of detective work at Cartaret College." Assessing the others, Joyka adds, "Alice, a rule follower and serious student, nevertheless joins forces with Laura and Kitty. She is the steady hand that keeps Kitty and Laura grounded. And Kitty, who is too scatterbrained to remember there are rules, is actually, in my opinion, the glue that melds this unlikely group into lifelong friends. She is organized, creative, willing to lend a hand, and almost always in good humor. "

All of the banter between the student friends can be challenging for a 21st century reader, and especially one based in the United States. Tracy comments that she "was a bit lost during some of the discussions between the students. The young women seem to speak in shorthand to each other, and possibly I just did not understand some of the terminology and customs of the college setting in the UK." I sympathize, certainly. The author's use of a shared school language and allusive style between its young student characters gives their dialogue great buoyancy and cements their bond of friendship, but it also means the non-British (or contemporary) reader might need to do some translating and best-guessing. Still, Mitchell's dialogue shows great wit, and I imagine she had a lot of fun creating the call and response for her youthful characters.

DEMONSTRATIONS AND DISTURBANCES

As warden, Mrs Bradley has to contend with a rash of practical jokes, some harmless and others showing concerted malice. Nick Fuller spots the parallels between this premise and Dorothy L. Sayers' 1935 mystery. Nick writes that "the obvious model is Gaudy Night, which also deals with a series of (non-murderous) crimes in a women’s institution." Nick observes that Laurels' all-female cast does not mean one should expect any stereotypical women-in-peril plotting: "Mitchell’s women tend to be intelligent, level-headed, and enthusiastic; she doesn’t dwell much on emotions or anxiety, in the way the American members of the Had-I-But-Known school would."

And about those rags: Joyka sums them up well. "The incidents seem to be two very clear types – typical ragging and more sinister and destructive events. Dancing around a chamber pot mountain versus a string tied across the doors of Mrs B's And Deborah’s rooms are clearly different minds at work. I am not sure where the vipers fall but destruction of the clothes of the twins is the much crueler incident."

The vipers put in an appearance in Chapter Five, where they intrude on Deborah Cloud's Demonstration lesson in front of a group of schoolchildren. The "Dem." is a truthful highlight that brought out feelings of recognition and empathy in readers, myself included. Tracy comments that "one of the things I really like so far is that normal life is going on at the school. For example, Deborah is teaching a Demonstration lesson, which is part of her duties, and worrying about her performance."

Martyn recalls, "As somebody who once passed out in his first and only teaching practice lesson at a post grad college, I recognized and empathised with all of her mental aberrations and physical symptoms. I had the pounding in the ears and the descending mist (though mine became silently falling snowflakes that obliterated my vision). It was horror in that room. It was ghastly. It was murder!"

Thank you to everyone who contributed, and thanks to those who are reading along with us. Join us next week as the group discusses Chapters Six through Nine – the rags continue and the mystery of the missing Miss Murchan deepens!

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Book Review: LAST FIRST (1947) by Richard Hull

7/26/2020

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Dedicated to those who habitually read the last chapter first.

So states the dedication of 1947's Last First, perhaps the author's boldest experiment in narrative order, where one reads the last chapter first and then spends the rest of the book watching the story build to that moment. It is a gimmick, all right, especially as the mystery genre is often all about the final chapter, with its revelations of who, how, and why crimes have been committed. To provide this information at the very top is innovative, to say the least, with many traps attendant.

But that's not what Richard Hull has actually attempted here.

Let me start at the beginning rather than jump in at the critical climax. Last First follows a small group of visitors at the Portray Hotel, a fishing and hiking retreat in the hills of Scotland. A gruff businessman named Appleyard arrives with his young secretary in tow, a flirty woman named Rosemary Mordaunt. The sole feminine presence within this masculine bastion soon stirs up conflict, and the disagreeable Communist Weston, poetry-spouting Romantic Bourn, and athletic and quiet Fielden are soon all very aware of the pigeon among the cats (or vice versa). The long-time resident and unofficial hotel mascot known as The Admiral also notes the tension and wonders whether the strain will spoil the week's planned fly-fishing excursions. It is The Admiral who will become a (rather slight) amateur detective when Appleyard's body is found on a rock with his head in the waters of the river Deren.

One of accountant-turned-writer Richard Hull's genre strengths is his continued interest in trying new storytelling approaches and set-ups: his celebrated debut novel, 1934's The Murder of My Aunt, is an inverted tale where the hopeful murderer documents his attempts in diary form (which we are reading); the flawed but amusing The Murderers of Monty (1937) hinges on violence drafted and agreed to by a limited partnership committee; and the highly enjoyable My Own Murderer (1940) has us rooting for an amoral lawyer who tries to frame his criminal client. Hull's output is inconsistent, but nearly all his stories show some curiosity about how expectations of the detective fiction format can be subverted and challenged.

So it is with Last First, a book that I found not wholly successful but intriguing in parts. How does the author manage that tricky "last chapter first" gimmick? If all is truly revealed from the beginning, i.e., if the identity of the murderer, the explanation of the crime, and the fate of the guilty party are all announced before the story even starts, then there is no suspense and little reason to read the detective story, as the reader can no longer play the game. To avoid this, Hull paints a climax where the characters are not positively identified. A man is atop a bluff, holding a gun, while three figures below walk across the rocks and grasses that trace the winding waters of Ben Deren. Rosemary Mordaunt, the only person not referred to by a nickname – everyone else is "Bongo" or "Greggy" or "Hoots", a childish naming habit of the flirtatious secretary – joins the man with a gun. Soon, the gun is fired, but is it to "warn off" a man below from stepping away from the path and into a dangerous bog or for a more sinister reason?

So we have a rather disorienting final scene first, followed by the story told chronologically to get the characters to this moment. The striking Scottish setting is agreeable and I was willing to let the story unwind – or more precisely meander – in order to complete the circle. The drama that unfolds at Portray Hotel and environs, however, is not especially believable or engaging, unfortunately. As I have felt with some other Hull novels, such as A Matter of Nerves and Invitation to an Inquest (both 1950), some of the scenes in Last First have a sort of page-filling, time-marking quality, and they are scenes that prove mostly unnecessary to the greater plot and are built upon chattery dialogue that doesn’t offer much in the way of clues or even characterization. I notice that Hull's last six books, including this one, have a tendency to wrap up at exactly 192 pages; it makes me wonder if he was writing to a strict word count, which in turn makes me suspect that those desultory conversations that pad the middle of these stories help to serve that purpose.

Still, Last First has moments of interest, although I have to wonder what a truly brilliant mystery fiction plotter might have done with the challenge of telling a detective story with the last chapter presented as the start of the narrative. (Note that the challenge would lie in tackling a true fair-play whodunit this way; a thriller tale where climax is offered up first seems a lot easier to craft, and in fact that's partly what Hull leans on here.) One wonders what Agatha Christie or Nicholas Blake might have done with the conceit. As for Richard Hull, he makes an attractive fly-cast, but falls short of hooking a fish of any substance this time around.

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Book Review: LAST FIRST (1947) by Richard Hull

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