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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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 jason@jasonhalf.com 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.”
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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.
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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 Jason@jasonhalf.com by Tuesday, December 21. Thanks to everyone who took part this week!
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Book Review: OBELISTS EN ROUTE (1934) by C. Daly King

11/30/2021

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With much fanfare, The Transcontinental is set to begin a three-day non-stop train journey from New York to California. There are many people on board, of course, but the reader of Obelists en Route is conveniently allowed to dismiss the majority and focus on a handful of essential travelers. Specifically, they are the employees, relatives, and attendants orbiting the powerful banker Sabot Hodges, a man who has the personality and attributes that make him a suitable murder mystery victim. Hodges is very wealthy, there are rumors of a recent change in the particulars of his will, and he has made at least one onboard enemy. So it is perhaps not a surprise when the man’s body is found at the bottom of the train’s novelty boxcar-length swimming pool.
 
But an en route autopsy reveals that Hodges didn’t die by drowning and may have had a heart attack on or near the pool prior to an early morning swim. No poison is detected in the dead man’s system. As a police detective wonders whether the banker’s death was due to an accident, an illness, suicide, or something more sinister, a dangerous bout of gunplay involving Hodges’ secretary, his daughter, and a potential son-in-law points to murderous intentions.
 
Obelists en Route improves greatly on the formula American psychologist Charles Daly King employed for his nautical predecessor and début detective novel, 1932’s Obelists at Sea. The critical change is this: instead of drafting a quartet of psychologists to interview suspects and investigate the crime (with a passive ship’s captain acting as baffled referee), this train-set mystery appoints and stays with one capable and active policeman. Lieutenant Michael Lord assumes the role of sleuth, and the story is all the better for it. While I wasn’t sure whom to follow as leader at Sea – and in whom to place confidence, if anyone – there is no such problem en Route. Additionally, the murder mystery seems cleaner and the scenario doesn’t evoke quite the disbelief that is generated by the previous story’s plotline and events.
 
It is true that we are still comfortably traveling the terrain of Crime Fictionland, and the central mystery – was the financier murdered without a mark on his body, and if so, how and by whom? – is a suitable and enjoyable puzzle for the genre. King plots and writes his murder mystery well, and the trainbound investigation has a lot of period charm. (In later paragraphs I explore King's literary Achilles’ heel.) And true to American form, the author adds in almost as much gangster-like gunfire here as he featured in Obelists at Sea.
 
It is also one of those stories from mystery fiction’s Golden Age that offers some very entertaining anthropology when read more than 80 years later. The eager to please, dialect-sporting “colored” porter James may be an unfortunate characterization (though common for its time in U.S. fiction and film) but other details of the cross-continental rail trip are very instructive. Modern-day comforts made me ignorant of the realities of a 1930’s “non-stop” train journey, for example, which would need to switch out locomotive engines as well as conductors. The former would need changing to undergo maintenance and inspection – coal- and oil-burning engines would overheat on a cross-country trek – and the latter would swap as one conductor’s familiar route territory ends and another’s begins.

When he learned that I had acquired a copy of Obelists en Route (thank you yet again, academic interlibrary loan!), my well-read mystery fiction colleague Nick Fuller told me, “Watch out for the economics lecture.” So I thought I was prepared when self-described “technocrat” and argumentative passenger Noah Hall began to engage Sabot Hodges in a heated debate about “the Energy Survey” and “greenback inflation”, a mélange of ideas that continues on for eight pages. Little did I know that this passage was just a preamble, and that it is, surprisingly, Lieutenant Lord who talks about economics for an additional ten pages mid-book (p. 198-208), trying to make sense of “social credit” and “national dividends”!
 
To say that the crime plot stops during these strange and circuitous conversations is an understatement; they are so inorganic to an otherwise forward-moving mystery that there is little to do other than attend the lectures or skip over them. No diabolically nested clues to the crime or killer's motive are to be found therein. And as on the pages when his psychologist characters take the lectern and explain at length their field of study, the economics dialogue is augmented by multiple footnotes and text citations, in case the besieged reader is interested in learning even more about the subject.

PictureMystery author and psychologist Charles Daly King.
One has to wonder just how successful (or useful) King thought these heady digressions were. I suspect any editor who wasn’t purblind or spineless would clear his or her throat and tactfully suggest omitting the chapter. Or perhaps his publisher felt indulgent, or even rationalized that the economic theorizing was value added. Even so, it is amusing to see a footnote from C. Daly King that directs the mystery reader to a book called Integrative Psychology (1931) which is co-written by someone named Charles Daly King and is, in the author’s own estimate, “entertaining and instructive with many practical hints”.
 
Fortunately, the digressions are limited and Michael Lord’s investigation into murder on the train (when he isn’t holding forth on economic theory) is focused and engaging. The author’s practice of fair play is indeed scrupulously fair, with a Clue Finder indexing all the clues and revealing page, paragraph, and line where they can be found. I was even able to guess the means of murder of the otherwise undrowned and unmolested Sabot Hodges, and being the dope that I am, I usually don’t tumble to those things. Obelists en Route proves a genuinely agreeable journey, should you manage to find a copy of the book and can afford the ticket. Just watch out for the economics lecture.

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Book Review: OBELISTS AT SEA (1932) by C. Daly King

11/21/2021

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​What a strange, contradictory maiden voyage Obelists at Sea is! American psychologist Charles Daly King launched his first detective novel in 1932, and it proves to be a reading experience quite unlike any other mystery novel from the genre’s Golden Age. Obelists at Sea (for me, anyway) is a study in qualitative contrasts: it is by turns engaging and alienating, intelligent and sophomoric, tantalizing and tedious. The author embraces the best, but also the most artificial, qualities of the pure puzzle story and pushes one’s suspension of disbelief – always indulgently permissive with mystery fiction – to the breaking point. The result is that I can appreciate and admire the game being played, but I don’t believe it for a moment. In that regard, Obelists at Sea is almost a meta-mystery, one that claims to search for a solution through the careful application of human psychology and then offers up a cast of clichéd and unreal characters.
 
But is it a good detective story, worth tracking down and reading? Yes, for its delirious, sensational setup and its unconventional approach to the detective investigation format. We are onboard the Meganaut, an enormous cruise ship filled with pleasure seekers traveling from New York to Paris. As tensions mount during an auction where passengers bid on travel pool numbers, the power fails and the smoking room plunges into darkness. A gunshot rings out. When the lights return, a millionaire named Smith is slumped over his table, dead. But an autopsy reveals that he has two bullets in him, not one – both following the same trajectory – and he apparently also ingested cyanide seconds before he was shot. Although Captain Mansfield has two ship detectives on board, for some reason he places his faith in four psychologists traveling to a conference and encourages them to employ the tricks of their trade to interview suspects, expound theories, and uncover the killer.
 
Fun? Yes, but Obelists at Sea is also a slog, full of endless interviews and ultimate solutions that aren’t so much satisfying as anticlimactic. The U.S. edition published by Alfred A. Knopf is 330 dense pages, and although the prose reads well enough, the story arc itself feels a bit of a marathon as it moves from one episodic event to another. I appreciated the Aristotelian unity of a crime commission, investigation, and resolution happening during a voyage, as setting, time, character, and plot are neatly aligned. But that unity also invites stasis and repetition. 

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By making the amateur detective not one figure but four psychologists with competing analytical theories, it seems King had in mind a satire of his profession. It is a genuinely fertile idea, but the author only gets halfway there: each doctor first delivers pages of monologue explaining his area of study. Dr. Frank B. Hayvier describes the concept of subject conditioning, for example, while Dr. Love Rees Pons holds forth on dominance psychology. And yes, this is how C. Daly King chooses to name his characters, and not just his medical men. Among the passenger suspects are a seemingly trusting soul named John I. Gnosens and a man who doesn’t get in the way, Mr. B.Y. Stander. And might Miss Sudeau be traveling under an assumed identity? The name game is either a strange or appropriate piece of pastiche, depending on how engaged you hope to be by the narrative.
 
It is also disappointing to find that the two most dazzling details of the plot – how did the victim receive two bullets along the same trajectory, and how was a man both poisoned and shot as soon as the lights went out? – are explained early and shrugged off with little fanfare. (Weapon capability and coincidence, respectively.) Instead, the story focuses on the hunt for Smith’s killer. By contrast, the author provides a delightful appendix called a Clue Finder where a dozen categories of incrimination, from X’s “opportunity to commit the crime” to “victim’s fear of” the murderer, are referenced by page and paragraph lines. One would conclude that such fastidious presentation of multiple clues within the text would vouchsafe the story as fair play, and yet I’m not fully convinced. Complete details of the relationship between killer and victim are offered only in the book’s final pages, courtesy of another multi-page expositional confession from another character.
 
It is comforting to know that I’m not the only one who finds the stories of C. Daly King a mixed bag. Sergio posted a smart, fair, and comprehensive review of Obelists at Sea a decade ago on his now-retired site Tipping My Fedora. Over the years, crime fiction historian and mystery novelist Martin Edwards has also been reading and reacting to King’s “barmily implausible” books, and his comment on 1939’s Arrogant Alibi seems equally appropriate here: “It’s one thing to have all the right ingredients for a whodunit, quite another to make best use of them.” Obelists at Sea indeed has the very ingredients that stir the senses of the classic mystery reader; it’s how they’re used – and the incidental discourse the reader must push through – that makes the voyage strangely uneven.
 
An obelist, a separate page note tells us, is “one who harbours suspicions.” It is a term the author made up and used in three book titles. Although Obelists Fly High has been reprinted in trade paperback, the other two Obelist books are difficult to find and prohibitively expensive when run to ground. As usual, I am grateful to a vibrant college and university interlibrary loan system that selflessly makes these books available (temporarily) to curious travelers like me. 

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