Category: Mitchell Mystery Reading Group

ANNOUNCING DECEMBER'S MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP TITLE!

11/11/2019

October into November has seen a lot of time-intensive events and experiences, some of them sublime – such as my 10-day trip to visit friends and see the sights of London, Oxford, and Paris – and others merely humdrum, such as catching up with office work. But before too much more time goes by, I must announce the Mrs. Bradley mystery chosen for December's Mitchell Mystery Reading Group project: 1936's winter tale Dead Men's Morris.

Initially, I had planned to select a title published in the 1940s, but Dead Men's Morris, published a year before the previous Reading Group selection Come Away, Death, proved too enticing. For one thing, almost 15 years have passed since my one and only reading of this book; for another, the Christmas setting (with Mrs. Bradley arriving with a stuffed boar's head as a gift for her nephew Carey Lestrange) felt appropriate and appealing for the group's first December read. And while I was visiting Oxford, friends Julia and Martyn provided a tour of some of the Morris locations described in the book, so I had the opportunity to see first-hand places like Iffley and Shotover Hill and Stanton St. John!

Note that Dead Men's Morris is available in reprint under the title Death Comes at Christmas from Vintage Books and as a Kindle eBook in the United States. Print copies are also available from earlier Rue Morgue Press and Michael Joseph Jubilee reprint editions.

As with the previous group reads, I wish to offer all interested readers (whether those brand new to Gladys Mitchell or veteran Mrs. Bradley fans) an invitation to take part in the discussion by emailing me any comments and observations you wish to share. With past titles, I moderated a post a week where readers could discuss a group of chosen chapters. With Dead Men's Morris, Gladys Mitchell has separated the book into three sections, with chapter headings incorporating the directions for the Headington Traditional Morris. I am happy to take that cue, so anyone wishing to join us in the dance next month should do so!

Please send your remarks, general or specific, to my email address Jason@jasonhalf.com by the dates below. I will sidestep spoilers in the posts. Here are the dates and itinerary:

FIGURE 1: Fossder's Folly (Chapters 1 to 6) – send comments by Dec. 8 for the Dec. 10 discussion post
FIGURE 2: Shotover Simith (Chapters 7 to 12) – comments by Dec. 18 for the Dec. 20 post
FIGURE 3: Parson's Pleasure (Chapters 13 to 17) – comments by Dec. 28 for the Dec. 30 post

I always enjoy the mix of comments I receive, and participants should feel free to write anything from a few sentences to multiple paragraphs in response. I will then look for common topics and do my best to represent everyone who contributes in the blog posts. If you have any questions, please email me. I hope you will consider joining the discussion. May your holidays be filled with dancing, detection, and the inimitable Mrs. Bradley!

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #4

5/4/2019

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It has been an interesting – and, for some readers, frustrating – journey through 1937's Come Away, Death for those completing April's Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event. This final, belated post examines the last five chapters in particular, where a body is finally discovered (more accurately, a head), an investigation begun and concluded, and a murderer confronted. It's a very unusual structure for a classic murder mystery, but as I remarked in the previous post, I suspect Gladys Mitchell was more interested in generating atmosphere and intrigue than in delivering a schematically presented puzzle plot. As such, this novel reads more like fatalistic Greek tragedy and less as a conventional whodunit.

And that's fine with me, and it also appealed to Martyn Hobbs, who references some wonderful text examples supporting this idea. Namely, Come Away, Death shows Mrs Bradley as an instrument of justice in the classical sense but not at all concerned with the machinery of modern law, which lacks the nuance to deliver an appropriate fate to the person who rids the world of a blackmailer and sadist.

Martyn writes, "There’s never any question of her bringing the murderer to court. And the idea of the law, British or Greek, seems on holiday with our cast of characters. Greece is another country, a sort of Shakespearean Forest of Arden where normal service no longer applies. And as we have felt before, the actions of the present day appear so mean and tawdry compared with the tragic misdeeds and suffering of the past. Marie Hopkinson says near the end,

"Athens isn’t like London… And what’s more, one doesn’t feel the same here about these things – murder, and being suspected of it, and regarding it as something belonging to the Sunday papers, and so on. One remembers all the old stories – one sees things as Homer saw them, and as Aeschylus and Euripides and darling Aristophanes saw them – and they seem – death seems – trivial compared with – I don’t know how to put it – great things looming, and slaves’ lives meaning nothing, and fate hovering – great wings, great mountains, great, clean, sweeping skies."

I return to that parched and inhospitable landscape of Hellenic ruins that the author renders with such sensory description, and I again feel great admiration for Gladys Mitchell's literary intent with this novel. It's not an enjoyable book in terms of light-reading detective fiction, but it is a fascinating and full one. After the discovery of decapitated vipers (originally kept, when alive, in a locked strongbox), Mrs Bradley searches for and finds the original container, which now carries the photographer Armstrong's head.

Martyn remarks that "after the much-delayed arrival of the murder victim, his actual identification is quite perfunctory. No fanfares for Mrs Bradley or any show of horror or hysteria; it is all very dry and matter-of-fact. If anything, we’re given more information about the condition of the box than about her horrific discovery":

She rewarded the husbandman, carried away her treasure trove, and, away from all observation, opened the lid, for the lock had been broken off and the lid lifted easily. Inside the box was the putrefying head of Armstrong. She pushed the box in among some bushes, wrapped up the head in a large coloured handkerchief which she had been wearing as a turban, and walked out on the road which led to Selçuk.

The scene – and especially the detective's strange quasi-forensic decision to poke and bury the gruesome evidence – made an impression on reader Catherine Dilts: "While I was not surprised Armstrong became the murder victim, I was utterly horrified that Mrs. Bradley played with his head, and then left it in a hole. She is remarkably calm, even while noting the hideous odor and appearance of Armstrong. Perhaps that is due to her reptilian nature?"

The decapitated snakes and the indifferent disposal of a human head were not the only moments which highlight the savagery of the setting. The sight of Ronald Dick hanging from the bent branch of a young tree, his feet just touching the ground, is a ghoulish, merciless image. Martyn adds that the rental by Sir Rudri Hopkinson of dangerous, half-starved village dogs delivers an additional element of "horror and revulsion. Shaggy, snarling, half-wild but wholly savage, they are ‘black as the hounds of hell’. Dick, insisting that they must be humane, had fed the beasts on pieces of rotting meat. Guessing that Dick may have been the assassin, I imagined that he was gorging them on Armstrong’s dismembered remains…"

Joyka noted that the strangely menacing, rather atypical tone of this story (when compared to the other Mrs Bradley mysteries) made her fear for the elderly investigator in this instance. She writes, "I was really worried when I first read this book that Mrs Bradley was going to be the next victim. She will just not leave Armstrong’s “slaying” alone. And despite the fact that everyone in the group is willing to tell any amount of lies to mislead her – except for the small boys – she does solve the mystery."

Mitchell allows Mrs Bradley to transition from passive observer to active theorist and interviewer in the final three chapters, and I enjoyed the change. It can be legitimately argued by critics that she sometimes doesn't approach fair-play puzzle plotting as her contemporaries do; indeed, she often seems more interested in character, situation, and mood than in carefully clued and alibied scenarios. But this difference in perspective and intent is largely why I respond to Gladys Mitchell's stories far more than those from other GAD authors. I would argue that, in her strongest works, Mitchell can generate great interest and mystification in her plotting and clueing. Chapters 19 and 20 here have an energy and clarity that I found extremely satisfying.

Others take a different view. Martyn, who otherwise greatly enjoyed Come Away, Death, did not like the late-chapter change in the old lady, perhaps due to a genre obligation: "There’s the vague sense of Gladys Mitchell going through the necessary motions when she describes Mrs Bradley’s investigation and solving of the mystery. Having been treated with subtlety throughout the story, Mrs B now begins to ‘cackle’ again. And again. In fact, her cackling gets out of hand, breaking out from page to page."

Joyka, who notes that the author revisits a few of these characters in 1971's Lament for Leto, was surprised to find that this group was chosen for a sequel. "Most of the characters are weak-willed and/or self-centered. Even her schoolmate Marie Hopkinson does not trust Mrs B with the truth."

Come Away, Death may be the first Mitchell title to end with the hint of a supernatural occurrence. (From memory, 1978's Wraiths and Changelings and the 1967 Malcolm Torrie title Late and Cold feature similarly ambiguous events.)

From Martyn: "It seems that there was indeed a miracle at Epidaurus, and Aesculapius, god of healing, was in fact the white figure who haunted the maze. Yet in spite of everything and all his endeavours, Sir Rudri never saw him. Megan says ‘there’s death in that’, but Mrs Bradley contradicts her. ‘Not death,’ she says, ‘but only a summing-up of life.’ What is that summing up of life? If not death, is it that all we strive to achieve in life ends inevitably in frustration and defeat? Or are our endeavours lost by simple mischance, by accident, by something as banal as looking the wrong way?"

I'm grateful to all the readers who shared their thoughts on this mystery based on the Mysteries of Eleusis, including JF Norris and Nick Fuller (who says astute readers should be able to guess the murderer early if they have been paying attention to the literary clues). I hope to announce another Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event before the year is out. Next time around, it will be a Mrs Bradley title first published in the 1940s, and there are a lot of great options to choose from! All best wishes, intrepid travelers --- Jason H.

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #3

4/21/2019

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This week our group surveys the relatively short Chapters Eleven through Fifteen of 1937's Come Away, Death. I am happy to report that we have picked up a fellow traveller and Gladys Mitchell fan: Joyka joins us as Sir Rudri Hopkinson's ensemble returns to Athens. She confided that this title is her least favorite of the Mrs. Bradley stories. For one thing, Mitchell's impressive detective "is definitely more subdued in this book. To me, it is almost apathy or the impersonal view point of the psychiatrist rather than the psychiatrist/friend/avenger/companion I like in her other books."

That said, Joyka is a true fan who feels that Gladys Mitchell's writing is usually among the best to be found in Golden Age Detective fiction. I would agree.

Catherine Dilts is experiencing the story as an audiobook, and has found it greatly entertaining. She calls the book "a hoot" and adds, "I laughed so hard listening to it on my way to work, I nearly had to pull over. Despite the peculiarities, I am enjoying this novel more than The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop."

Of the journey thus far, Martyn Hobbs has found much to like: "Even in Chapters Six to Ten when the journey felt a little desultory, I have never been frustrated or bored. The whole trip has been a pleasure and the company, if fractious, always entertaining."

APPRECIATING THE TEXT

It is always difficult for me to limit (due to space) the observations I get from Martyn, as he consistently illuminates Gladys Mitchell's style, prose, and techniques in fascinating ways. The best writing rewards close analysis, and "best" isn't always a guarantee in the prose of classic mystery stories. But a closer look – as Martyn offers here – shows Mitchell's carefully deliberate use of imagery, scansion, and characterization. Martyn's summary and examples from the text:

"[Sir Rudri's manservant] Dish, in Chapter Thirteen, the shortest chapter of them all and my personal favourite so far, is shown to be a Man of Mystery and some kind of laconic lowlife Jeeves. In just over two pages, we learn of his free-time habits, observing the ships in the harbour through his telescope; then chartering a small boat to be rowed about by ‘two sweating Greeks’, to be followed up by a possible cinema visit, a drink or two, and a smoke. On this occasion, however, he comes across a boastful bragging Armstrong in a bar, who flings the content of Dish’s glass into his face. There follows a fabulous paragraph almost entirely made up of monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon words and brief, repetitive sentences in which Dish methodically destroys his insulter:"

The ex-A.B. put down the half-empty glass and wiped his face. Then he spat on his hands. Then he hit Armstrong in the belly. When Armstrong got up – and it took him some time to do that – he hit him on the nose and among the teeth. Then he slogged him in the ribs. Then, with his great horned palm, he struck him across the face. To conclude he put his hand across Armstrong’s nostrils and literally pushed him over. Then he sat down and began to drink again, etc. (My bolded italics)

"Wonderfully, he finishes his evening by watching Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, vomiting in the theatre (seen by Dick), getting drunk again, and returning apparently sober in the small hours (witnessed once more by the ubiquitous Dick). Dish has no love for Armstrong and is clearly able to do some harm.

"Jumping ahead to the sea-voyage to Ephesus in Chapter Fifteen, Gladys Mitchell displays her mastery of style, again employing short words and repetition, but in contrast to Dish dishing out the punches, this time her prose is all soft and languid and musical:"

The sea was calm, the islands, like banks of green morning, rose high out of the sea as the ship approached where they lay, and dropped astern in faint and lovely haze as the ship passed gently onwards. (…) They spent all of the second morning leaning over the rail and gazing at the islands, rising in greenness, declining in purple and grey, fading in faint blue far away, beautiful as a former life remembered in this life, or the recollection of an old story once told, and ever afterwards groped for in the golden clouds of the mind.

MRS BRADLEY AND THE BOYS

Once more, readers noted the connection between the aged detective and the young boys who view her as a respected elder and, when needed, reliable protector. Joyka writes that "Mrs Bradley loves small boys. They almost always provide vital clues and important information that other adults might disregard. Stewart’s list of Armstrong’s photographs is a good case in point. Although she doesn’t elaborate, one gets the idea that list is very important to Mrs Bradley."

Painting by Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century.

Martyn notes that "Mrs Bradley has continued to act more as a moral guide and relationship counselor than a detective. That work, we discover, has been undertaken by the kids. Like Emil’s detective mates, we discover that Stewart, Kenneth and Ivor have been doing some serious spying on Armstrong and his photographs."

And Catherine suggests that the drinking game she mentioned regarding the opening chapters – taking a shot each time one of the boys says "You ass" – be amended to include the sleuth's use of the word child, "which Mrs. Bradley uses to refer to everyone from the boys to the middle-aged men."

Speaking of children and child-like adults, Joyka sees a parallel between Come Away, Death and a future narrative. "This whole book reminds me of an early Lord of the Flies. You take a group of fairly normal people and put them in a situation where they are severely tested. We saw a lot of individual flareups in earlier chapters. We see some disintegration of everyone but Mrs Bradley."

Two more intriguing observations from Joyka: she has traveled Greece and reports that she "was in Ephesus 2008 and it was still possible to crawl over everything. It was a totally deserted site. I have no trouble imagining Sir Rudri’s troupe lounging among the ruins." She also mentions that she has chaperoned high school students when visiting the sites, "so I do feel some affinity with Mrs. Bradley. I would say they are an intrepid bunch to sleep on the ground in these areas. So, hats off to Mrs B for being a good sport!"

Next week, the story concludes. Ironically, we will get the murder victim (definitively), investigation, and solution all in the span of five chapters. It is a structural choice that might frustrate some readers and delight others. Until then, I leave you with this quotation from Plutarch on the Mysteries of Eleusis, courtesy of Nick Fuller: "Because of those sacred and faithful promises given in the mysteries... we hold it firmly for an undoubted truth that our soul is incorruptible and immortal. Let us behave ourselves accordingly."

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #2

4/14/2019

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As we explore Chapters Six through Ten of Gladys Mitchell's 1937 crime story Come Away, Death, our contemporary travelers in the reading group have lots of ground to cover. The dark clouds of Greek tragedy, simmering tensions between the characters, and Mrs. Bradley's relationship to reptiles are all points of interest…

ON GREEK TRAGEDY (AND WELSH MARTYRDOM)

Nick Fuller, who provided so much great information to me last time about the Mysteries of Eleusis and the Demeter/Persephone myth, calls our attention to the doomed figures in the House of Atreus:

"The gods ordered Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to summon a wind to bring the Greek fleet to Troy. (In some versions, Artemis rescues the girl at the last moment, and brings her to her temple in Tauris.) When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan Wars 10 years later, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon in his bathtub. To avenge his father, their son Orestes then killed his mother and her lover, with the help of his sister Elektra and his friend Pylades... Mitchell refers to Aeschylus's Oresteia - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephori), and The Eumenides; Mrs Bradley mistakes Megan on the battlements for Clytemnestra watching for the beacons at the start of Agamemnon."

Martyn Hobbs noticed Gladys Mitchell's winking juxtaposition of the tragedies found in the ancient and current worlds. He observes: "While the threat of murder hangs over Sir Rudri’s motley crew, there is a contrast between the rather petty enmities of the moderns and the tragic passions of the ancients, whose ruins they tread among:

"The legends of the Atrides hung brooding over the heavy, broken walls of the Lion Gate, and round the unguarded graves. The dark passion of Clytemnestra, the anguish of young Orestes, made heavy the lowering atmosphere, soaked beyond bearing already, with the heat of the dead air before a storm.

Sir Rudri was not [Mrs Bradley's] only source of anxiety. The little boys, bored, and tired… had been by turns listless and tiresome. Alexander Currie had been severely attacked by flies… Armstrong, too, was a perpetual menace… and Gelert had given up any attempt at cheerfulness…"

And, while far removed from the time and setting of Hellenic mythology, JF Norris of Pretty Sinister Books informs us of the Welsh inspiration for one of Mitchell's more intriguing character names. JF says that the following is "taken verbatim from the English inscription (it's also in Welsh) on a monument in Beddgelert in Wales":

"In the 13th century, Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert "the faithful hound" who was unaccountably absent. On Llywelyn's return, the truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince, alarmed, hastened to find his son, and saw the infant's cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged the sword into the hound's side thinking it had killed his heir. The dog's dying yell was answered by a child's cry. Llywelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed but nearby lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain. The prince, filled with remorse, is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called Beddgelert."

JF concludes that "Mitchell's hotheaded Gelert is aptly named – quick to throw a punch, but always as a means to defend and protect just like his namesake." I add that knowing this background also makes clearer the author's descriptive choice of Gelert as like a lean and angular greyhound!

ON STORY SATISFACTION

Having delved into some historical background, what do readers make of this section? We approach the novel's midway point but, despite Cathleen's premonitions of death, some bitter professional rivalry, and occasional knife fights, we have yet to claim a murder victim. Examining the initial chapters, this delayed approach to a detective story was frustrating to some. I was heartened, then, to see JF's opening remark for the current section: "It’s picking up in intrigue and gaining my interest. There is actual crime in this crime novel!"

Tellingly, Gladys Mitchell's choice to focus on character friction and conjure an uncomfortable, even hostile setting in this 1937 Mrs. Bradley story is exactly in keeping with her historical and contemporary fiction novels she wrote in this decade under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby. In my opinion, the Hockaby books are some of her most accomplished works, and they share many of the elements found in Come Away, Death. In the Hockaby stories, death, violence, and character conflict are treated as everyday and natural occurrences. There is something similar at work here: the characters are at the mercy of the land and the fates; animals such as vipers (and, later, hyenas and savage dogs) are mere extensions of the arid and inhospitable landscape; and murder, when it does occur, is a necessity of the world order rather than an obscene sacrilege against it, as most moral Golden Age mysteries present the act.

From Nick: "The Mycenae section is stifling and oppressive. The attempted sacrifice is one of my favourite scenes in Mitchell; Mrs Bradley, "like some ancient prophetess", menaces Sir Rudri "with her hideous, leering lips". Mitchell often hints that Mrs Bradley is more than mortal. She's compared here to the Pythoness of Delphi; in other books, she's a witch (Tom Brown's Body), or the crone aspect of the Triple Goddess (The Whispering Knights)."

Our previous group of chapters ended with an act of violence against Armstrong, the photographer with blackmailing tendencies, and now, at the end of Chapter 10, there is another moment of impromptu violence, this one involving a knife fight between Gelert and an angry Greek man. Given that pattern, one can reasonably expect Chapter 15 not to end happily…

Speaking of which, JF is tracking the foreground villain's misfortunes: "I was delighted to watch Armstrong the vile sadist, way too vain and handsome for his own good, get beaten up by both Ian and Gelert. Nothing more I like than to see bullies get a taste of their own medicine." He adds, "I peg Armstrong to be the murder victim. He certainly seems destined for a cruel Fate if not a cruel murder."

Another interesting detail is that Gladys Mitchell has purposely varied the size of her chapters here. (In most of her mysteries they are fairly uniform.) Martyn observes that "a formal pattern is suggested by the lengths of the chapters. Up to now, they have been long and leisurely, subdivided into numbered sections. Now, suddenly, in this tenth chapter, it is all over after just four pages. The preceding chapter also stretched to only six. Glancing ahead (without reading!), Chapter 11 reaches up to nine, Chapter 12 makes it to five at a pinch, Chapter 13 hardly gets to page 3, while Chapter 14 recovers to achieve a more familiar extent. Does this compression portend an acceleration of action, of significant events, of that long-awaited crime?"

More from Martyn: "The symmetry of the groups of five chapters and the succession of brief chapters suggest GM is playing with the structure of her tale. It reminded me (vaguely, because I read it long ago in the last century) of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones where the central chapters of his huge novel cover the shortest periods of time in his narrative – the opening and closing chapters extend over years but at the heart of the book they cover only hours. I may be wrong on the precise timings, but the pattern is definitely there."

ON THE SNAKES AND THE SLEUTH

JF gives us a thoughtful text analysis and ties the book's slippery snake imagery into a neat bow. "I’m very taken with the snake motif running throughout," writes JF, "and it started on Page One: the ship that brings Mrs. Bradley to the shores of Greece is the Medusa. There is a section back in Chapter 4 where she talks about her affinity with the reptile world and how she is often likened to a lizard. When she shows concern for the snakes Sir Rudri brought for his odd rituals, noting that they should be exercised, he asks if she is afraid of snakes and she replies: 'I am almost the incarnation of one' and goes on to describe herself as 'definitely reptilian', 'sometimes saurian', but at least 'one or the other'. First time I’ve ever read the words from Mrs. Bradley's own mouth rather than being described as such by others."

He continues, "Later, when Mrs. Bradley is talking to Alexander Currie, Mitchell writes that 'she grinned disarmingly at him, as a cobra might possibly grin before it struck.' The section where all the snakes decide to curl up in bed with many members of the group as they try to seek warmth is one of the more surreal moments. Mrs. Bradley even puts her hand on the snake in her bed as if it’s her companion! I wish there was more of this in the book. This is what I read Gladys Mitchell for – the eerie touches, the bizarre moments, the nearly supernatural events that defy logic."

Martyn adds on: "The short early morning scene with the boys and the snakes makes me feel that GM could have written some great adventure stories for children. Incidentally, Mrs Bradley displays perfect (and fitting) sangfroid in her dealings with the serpents, entering with one coiled about her skinny arm – they even share a similar grin."

My note to Martyn's children story mention: she did write some entertaining, if not too remarkable, adventure stories with young readers in mind. The closest in spirit with the boys of this book may be 1940's The Three Fingerprints, where a trio of curious lads finds themselves investigating Nazi spies and avoiding an alligator in the course of their travels!

Next week we look at Chapters 11 through 15. Fewer pages but closer to that inevitable murder...

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ANNOUNCING DECEMBER'S MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP TITLE!

MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #4

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