Category: Mitchell Mystery Reading Group

Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: THE ECHOING STRANGERS (1952) - Post #4

5/4/2023

Welcome to the final reading group post of 1952’s The Echoing Strangers, where the final five chapters are summarized and discussed. Apologies for the belated posting; life has unfortunately been far too busy for me to find some spare time until now to read and organize the contributors’ comments.

While I thank regular readers José and Chris for trying to stay away from SPOILERS as they discuss this section, it is almost impossible to keep the final revelations of these pages alluded to but unnamed. Because Gladys Mitchell herself focuses much of the dialogue and action on culprit and solution, I have decided to quote the readers as they react to the story’s accusations and events. If you have not yet read The Echoing Strangers, you might want to remedy that before proceeding.

SPOILERS AHEAD

We start with

A DRIVING MOTIVATION

José: [Mrs Bradley] sets out to go back in time to the accident that killed the boys' parents ten years ago… [She] drives to Addersdale where, thanks to her business card, she finds out that the Sister-in-Charge was there at the time and she remembers the case very well. In fact, she heard the boy's first words when he regained consciousness and confirms that the he did not become deaf or dumb for at least a week after his admission. He was beginning to get over the accident when his grandfather first came to see him, and the second time he returned, he took the child away with him.

It seems clear enough that the boy told his grandfather something that caused his grandfather to threaten him. However, there is no proof whatsoever, and that has been the difficulty throughout this case.

Theda: Now that Francis is talking, Sir Adrian is again threatened by Francis’ knowledge that he caused the car accident. Campbell is killed to frame Francis and damage his credibility. But it’s poorly done, as the fact that Sir Adrian had bought the metal hoops to fix the body to the dinghy was easily determined. I’m still not sure if Campbell was killed because he was a blackmailer, or because he was always out in remote places where it would be easy to kill him without being seen.

Elle: The conversation at the end of the book was very enjoyable and enlightening. I had wondered why something so seemingly idiotic was done to Campbell's body, mainly strapping him to the underside of the boat – anyone who used the boat would surely notice the balance; murder would certainly win out.

Chris: I don’t feel that we have been provided with a satisfactory explanation here for the bizarre stapling of Campbell’s body to the keel of a dinghy. The ‘solution’ is supposedly that the person who arranged this has hoped to implicate a certain suspect, although at the extraordinary risk of himself being identified by the blacksmith – a risk that he takes no steps to reduce: it is the blacksmith here, and not Malachi the diver, who belongs in the thriller role of the Man Who Knows Too Much, and yet nobody attempts to silence him.

A STICKY WICKET

Tracy K: Mrs Bradley persuades Tom Donagh to get together a cricket team and challenge Sir Adrian to bring a team to play against them. She assumes that the game will be played out on Sir Adrian's field, and that she can use that opportunity to gain access to his home and test out some of her theories of how Witt's death could have occurred. So Tom Donagh comes back into the picture even though he isn't heavily involved in these last few chapters.

José: Sir Adrian accepts Tom Donagh's challenge, although he suspects Mrs. Bradley to be behind it and he expressly declares her persona non grata at the match. However, Mrs. Bradley manages to get in and confirms some of her suspicions. If it wasn't Derek who killed Witt, who did it? When the match is over, Sir Adrian's team is completely demoralized by their captain’s bad conduct and worse temper.

Joyka: I had decided on Sir Adrian as the killer but no explanation is given as to his tracing Campbell to his lair, killing him with a chunk of concrete Sir Adrian brought from home, and then hauling his body back to the river cottage of Miss Higgs to nail under the boat. That he meant to implicate Francis is the reason given but it seems an overly ambitious plan for Sir A. Sir Adrian is certainly painted as a twisted old man and no loss to society.

Chris: [Also] implausible is the story eventually revealed of the murder weapon employed to kill Campbell. We are supposed to believe that the murderer has transported this object two hundred miles across England (along with a few spares for an equally sinister purpose), even though similar such weapons could readily be found at Wetwode. If the point of this is to plant a clue that indicates the guilt of another character, then it presupposes the arrival of a sleuth so ingenious and lucky that she will be able to find the weapon and then reconstruct its exact history.

ECHOING STRANGELY

José: At the last chapter, before the denouement, Mrs Bradley sums up what it is known so far. To begin with, there are two twins and two murders, each murder being connected, as far as locality is concerned, with one or the other of the twins. The murders have two points of resemblance, but other factors are all different. The murders were each committed in the same way. However, the weapons used were not the same. Both the murdered men were blackmailers. In addition to this, it turns out that at one time they were acquainted with one another. Therefore, there is reason to see a connection between the murders.

Elle: Why would Derek faint when he first encounters Francis with everyone around??

Tracy K: I would have liked to learn more about the twins. They play a large part in the book because they are connected to two murders in two different locations. However, since Francis is deaf and dumb, there is never much conversation between them or even with others. And I would have liked to have more of an explanation of the why of the murders. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story and it did have a satisfying and surprising ending.

Chris: The climactic event unveiled on the final page is an echo of George Eliot’s classic novel The Mill on the Floss, in which a pair of estranged siblings – although not twins – is reunited in an especially watery finale.

Joyka: I read this book many years ago but all I could really remember was the death of the twins. Two beautiful boys, flawed from the beginning or created by a twisted old man? And there is Miss Higgs, content to live out her life in a cottage where so much hate festered.

FINISHING THE GAME

Elle: The ending: how neatly tied up, with three suicides.

Chris: Gladys Mitchell is not a cheat like Sir Adrian Caux, but she doesn’t exactly play fair with her readers when it comes to setting up and solving the criminal puzzle. The solution turns out to hang on the evidence of a minor and nameless character of whose existence we have been unaware all this time, and then – as if it needed corroboration from a member of the propertied classes – a titled lady, also previously unknown to us, is wheeled on for this purpose. The plot machinery gets especially creaky at this point.

Theda: The ending disappointed me, although I’m not sure how all of this could have been wrapped up otherwise without arrests, court cases, and a lot more exposition. It was fitting, however, that the twins died together.

Joyka: As is often the case with Gladys Mitchell’s mysteries, I found the ending rather abrupt and unsatisfying. I dearly love the Mrs Bradley books except, usually, for the endings. I picture her publisher standing at the door, checking his watch, while GM dashes off the final chapter. And, also, as usual, justice is served but the legal system is thwarted once again.

Theda: This was truly a psychological tale, befitting Mrs Bradley’s area of expertise. This is the first Mitchell book I’ve read; I’m now curious if her other tales are as dependent on the psychology of the characters.

Tracy K: It is pretty clear that there would probably have been no resolution at all to the murders if Mrs Bradley had not stepped in, and that justifies the police asking her to look into the murder in Hampshire. Amateur sleuths often irritate me because they keep running into corpses, and put themselves into unnecessary danger, but in the case of Mrs Bradley, it makes a bit more sense because of her background as a psychologist and her long-term relationship with various law enforcement agencies. Even so, with stories featuring Mrs Bradley, I do have to suspend disbelief quite often. Fortunately, I have never had a problem with that.

Chris: This also [illustrates] what some of us are already accustomed to with Gladys Mitchell: that she is less interested in perfect puzzle-plotting than in such novelistic features as characterization, scene-setting, dialogue, and – we could now add – thematic ‘echoing’.

José: All in all, a reading that I have enjoyed much and one that is well worth reading, in my view.

A heartfelt thank you to all those who participated in this latest Mitchell Mystery Reading Group discussion! I would like to invite all readers to another book reading and conversation from the Mrs Bradley series soon, but my life needs to return to normal first. I will let people know on this blog and over at The Stone House when I am ready to launch the next reading event. Until then, may your May days be free of hearses!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: THE ECHOING STRANGERS (1952) - Post #3

4/24/2023

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Welcome to the third post in the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group discussion of 1952’s The Echoing Strangers. This section, covering Chapters 13 to 17, proves difficult to talk about with its developments and hypotheses, and spoilers are practically unavoidable. As usual, though, the group has made many enlightening points and I do my best once more to organize and present them!

THE ENIGMATIC TWINS

Tracy K: In this section, Mrs. Bradley and Inspector Gavin follow up on more of their theories related to the murders of Mr. Campbell (in Wetwode) and Mr. Witt (in Mede). Sometimes they interview the people involved together, sometimes they go their separate ways and come back to discuss what they have found. There continue to be surprises in this section, although much that is learned here just confirmed earlier suppositions.

Joyka: Since blackmail is the obvious motive for both victims, it appears that the twins must be involved and perhaps are even the murderers. But could they have murdered Campbell and fastened his body to that boat? Didn’t Mrs. Bradley prove they could not have done that murder? And why would Witt be blackmailing the twins?

Elle: With regard to the twins, why would one sound the alarm about Campbell being dead?? With one twin having an alibi with Miss Higgs – presumably Francis – that leaves Derek, but he can't swim thus being unable to tie Campbell up....then.....but...maybe it was Derek in Francis' place while on holiday with Miss Higgs; Francis then "stayed away from the river" after Campbell's death, which was later opined because he couldn't swim.

Theda: It becomes very clear that the twins’ changing places is a poorly kept secret, yet one that no one talks about – ‘everyone’ knows, but they all think they are the only one and are strangely reluctant to admit that they knew. Miss Higgs makes an interesting comment: “Nobody knows, even now, how twins react to one another”. And that brings up an interesting lack of information - how do the twins relate to one another?

José: Miss Higgs confesses that, after their first encounter, the two boys met every year at the summer holiday time. On the initiative of Derek, she doesn't even know how he managed to do it, for a week every year Derek has been with us at whatever seaside place I choose for Francis. Mrs Bradley has no doubt of one thing: Campbell was killed because he new too much. Knew that there were two boys and that they changed places. Could the same apply to Witt?

Joyka: Poor Mrs Higgs, just dim enough not to realize the danger she has unwittingly unleashed in this family.

Theda: The link between Campbell and Witt becomes clear, but were they really killed for blackmailing? Or were they killed because the murderer did not want knowledge of the twins’ deception to derail their ultimate plan (and escape from justice). And did Witt really know about the deception? I can only assume that either Campbell told him, or that Witt’s demise was due to him having information on Campbell’s murder.

Elle: Why would a blackmailer be killed over what seems to be misdemeanors, if that?! Having the police around due to the murders seems like biting off the nose to spite the face.

INTERVIEWS AND “ACCIDENT”

Chris: In regular consultation with Gavin, Mrs Bradley now gets to interview Miss Higgs; Malachi Thetford; the fishermen Tavis and Grandall; Mabel Parkinson; the Cornishes (one of whom conveniently drops dead on the spot); Darnwell and his latest chorus-girl Sadie; the village boy who knows Malachi and his nephew; and finally Sir Adrian himself.

Tracy K: Again I am interested in the relationships that Mrs Bradley has with others. When she first came to Wetwode, she was not eager to meet up with [acquaintance] Mabel at all, but since then Mabel has proved to be resourceful and helpful in parts of the investigation. Inspector Gavin was quite impressed. "Gavin found himself rather in love with Mrs Bradley’s old school chum. She might be a tedious old duck, but of her good-nature and loyalty there could be no doubt at all."

José: Mrs Bradley can't get anything clear with the servants at Mede and decides to address Cornish once again. 'We want to know who, besides yourself, had a motive for wanting Mr Witt out of the way', said Mrs Bradley. 'We know you didn't kill Witt', she said. 'Who did?'

'I reckon it was young Caux,' Cornish answered. 'But ask me why ... I don't know, It's just as it seemed to work out.'

Shortly after, Cornish collapses and falls dead, and the only thing that Mrs Bradley manages to find out, thanks to Mrs Cornish, is that there was some sort of connection between Campbell and Witt.

Elle: Was Cornish murdered? and was he murdered by yet another criminal??!

Tracy K: Mrs Bradley decides to talk to Mr. Darnwell again. Darnwell rents one of the bungalows along the river year-round and was interviewed after Mr Campbell's body was discovered. He was the first person to point out to Mrs Bradley that Campbell was a snoop and a blackmailer. She describes Darnwell to Inspector Gavin thusly: "The entertainer of nieces. The joy and the scandal of Wetwode. The expert on Easter Island art. The most interesting man I've met since I first met you."

Chris: The interviews are interesting, not so much of Tavis, a cardboard Stage Welshman, but certainly of Darnwell. Mrs Bradley’s admiration for Darnwell becomes evident, as it emerges that he has self-confidently rebuffed Campbell’s attempts to blackmail him. Being a self-confessed sinner helps him both to understand and to defeat Campbell’s methods, so Mrs Bradley appreciates Darnwell as what was then called a ‘man of the world’, commending him for having ‘the virtuous vice of tolerance’ (Chapter 16). Compared with Campbell or with the wife-beater Cornish he appears almost saintly.

Joyka: [And then we have] Sir Adrian Caux — GM makes him out to be a pretty repulsive character, even hinting that he was responsible for the death of his own son and his wife so that he, Sir Adrian, could raise the one remaining twin on his own! And he did not care which twin survived! It takes the preeminent psychiatrist, Mrs. Bradley, to figure that out.

José: After her conversation with Sir Adrian, Mrs Bradley doesn't make anything clear and she is left asking herself: 'Well, I wish we could see through the trees, then. Motive, motive, motive! That's what's holding everything up.'

Chris: The least convincing part of this section is the regatta and the non-drowning of [potential witness] Malachi, who is with police connivance spirited away to enjoy Henri’s cuisine at Wandles Parva so that Sir Adrian will not learn of his survival. Sir Adrian ought to be checking up on this anxiously, but seems unconcerned, and there’s no shock or grief in the village at the young man’s supposed fate.

Tracy K: I enjoyed seeing Miss Higgs and Mabel Parkinson again in this section but I missed Tom Donagh who had featured so prominently in the first half of the book.

DANGLING THREADS AND CONFOUNDING QUOTATIONS

José: Thanks to Darnwell's information, Mrs Bradley manages to tie up loose ends, although I must admit that part of Mrs Bradley's reasoning escapes me. In any case she believes that Sir Adrian life is in real danger and rushes to warn him.

Theda: “I’ve lost the thread,” said Sir Adrian uncertainly. “You were saying?”
I think this quote best describes my feeling about the many conversations Mrs Bradley has (with Cornish, Gavin, Sir Adrian and others) in which she speaks so obliquely that I’m not sure that either I, or the character, truly understands what she is saying. But, strangely enough, there is always a kernel of information that I can grab and move on with.

Tracy K: In the light of Inspector Gavin's position with Scotland Yard, it is amusing that Mrs B often addresses him as "child." Of course he is younger than she is, but still they must know each other quite well and have worked together a good bit in the past. At some point we are told that he is her secretary's fiancé.

Elle: [The introductory quotation for Book Two:] ‘But if you talked to yourself, you did not answer yourself. I am certain I heard two voices.’ Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer. This quote makes no sense to me. Since “You did not answer yourself, I am certain I heard two voices”: would there not be only one voice instead of two?? Or is this a reference to the twins??

Joyka: It is interesting that Gladys Mitchell uses the word Echo in the names of all of the remaining chapters. The sins of the past are definitely echoing throughout this book. But who are the Echoing Strangers? Does this refer to the twins, their grandfather, the victims, who?

Chris: [So] the action begins with Mrs Bradley’s account to Gavin of Sir Adrian’s private regatta – an event ‘twinned’ with his earlier cricket-match – and of his failed attempt to bring about the drowning of the young diver Malachi in a faked accident… This set of chapters concludes with Gavin’s recognition, heavily prompted by Mrs Bradley, that the crucial distinction between the twins is that of swimmer and non-swimmer: this echoes the geographical opposition between ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ locations and their terrestrial/aquatic sports.

Theda: Some loose ends have been tied up, but more have unraveled, and the various pieces of information that lead to, or support, or contradict the many theories have multiplied in these chapters. Looking forward to them being woven together.

Check in next week to see how Gladys Mitchell manages to weave together this book’s plot, character, and theme and learn whether the reading group finds the resulting tapestry rich and vibrant, cluttered and wanting, of something in between!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: THE ECHOING STRANGERS (1952) - Post #2

4/16/2023

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Welcome to the second post discussing Gladys Mitchell’s 1952 mystery The Echoing Strangers. Thanks to everyone who is reading along and thanks to those who are contributing comments. Note that there are incidental story spoilers mixed into the conversation, as Mrs Bradley spends much of her time in Chapters 7 to 12 considering potential connections between victims and suspects.

A special welcome to Elle, a new group reader who joins us here. You can also visit the great websites of contributors José (A Crime Is Afoot) and Tracy K. (Bitter Tea and Mystery) by clicking on the links.

MRS BRADLEY ON THE MOVE

José – Mrs Bradley decides there is nothing else for her to do at Wetwode and returns to her residence in Hampshire. Next, she writes to her friend the Chief Constable of Hampshire, explaining that she'll be at The Stone House in the village of Wandles Parva the next weeks and is very much interested in hearing how events unfold at Mede.

Chris – A disappointment to me is that the admirable Cockney philosopher and chauffer George is so invisible after rescuing Miss Higgs in the opening chapter. Mrs Bradley needs to take several journeys between the two locations, separated by approximately 200 miles, but the narrative skips over these, cutting George almost entirely out of the story, at least to this point.

Elle – Beatrice is the address for Dr. Lestrange, and then she's referred to as Adela, thanks to [author] Helen Simpson [who provided the additional name for Mrs Bradley when she featured Mitchell’s detective in her chapter of the round-robin story Ask a Policeman (1933) - JH]. I remember this being a bone of contention for Lady Diana's (Rigg) portrayal: the use of the moniker Adela.

Theda – Mrs. Bradley doggedly gathers more information, lays out her ‘points’, and confirms some things that she already ‘knew’. Her psychiatry experience provides much insight into what is going on, but she also seems somewhat arrogant in that she ‘knows’ these things, not just ‘believes’ or ‘suspects’. But perhaps she does.

FORGING RELATIONSHIPS

José – Mrs Bradley learns that Tom Donagh is still in Mede. Apparently, Sir Adrian wanted him to stay there since he cannot cope with the twins.

Tracy K. – She returns to the Mede area and meets up again with Tom Donagh, my favorite character in this book next to Mrs Bradley and George, the chauffeur. Tom is delighted to realize that she is the well-known Mrs Lestrange Bradley, and invites her to give a talk before his Detection Fan Club at the school where he teaches. Quickly Tom and Mrs Bradley become the best of friends. She may be described as "reptilian," and "leering hideously" and "grinning like an alligator," but she is very good at making friends.

Joyka – I find Mrs Bradley’s attitude towards the twins interesting. This is the only GM book I can recall that deals with twins. She remarks to Tom, Derek’s tutor, “Your half of this nutshell appears to be sensitive to superstitious ideas,” when Derek faints upon seeing Francis. It seems a bit insensitive.

Tracy K. – Later, Mrs Bradley returns to her riverside bungalow and decides to hire a local housekeeper, who she hopes will be a good source of local gossip. Her school friend Mabel, who lives in Mede, helps her decide on a woman who could be very useful, and eventually she gets the information that will move her investigations further on. That is a very entertaining chapter.

Chris – The title of Chapter 11, ‘Dorcas’, alludes to an early female saint of the Christian church, noted for her charitable work among the poor. Mrs Bradley here devotes her time to the poor, although from investigative rather than charitable motives, by hiring and interviewing Mrs Sludger and her daughter ‘Efful’ (Ethel).

Theda – The pace at which the information unfolds and inferences or conclusions are made keeps the plot moving along and keeps me guessing.

PRACTICING (AND PERFECTING) DECEIT

José – Gradually, Mrs Bradley’s suspicions begin to take shape. Could it be possible that the twins have been interchanging their personalities? But this suspicion creates more questions that need answers.

Tracy K. – By the end of this section, Mrs. Bradley has successfully confirmed that the twin boys were in the habit of changing places. How long that has been going on, she does not know. Inspector Gavin of Scotland Yard, who Mrs. Bradley knows well, has been sent to investigate the murder in Mede.

Joyka – The twins are said to be so similar that they can pass for each other. The descriptions so far, as noted last week, are totally dissimilar. Derek’s femininity is derided by all, yet no one says the same of Francis. Mrs. B. alone, it seems, has rumbled their secret, that they are switching places and that they are more similar than anyone knows.

Chris – A general problem with the use of twins in a mystery story is that we know in advance what will happen with them. Twins in real life are just people, but in storytelling and especially drama they are inevitably fated to be used in contrived episodes of mistaken identity or deliberate impersonation. Another thing we already know if we encounter twins in a story is that they are never perfectly identical: to the expert – and usually parental – eye, there is one small trait that allows them to be told apart. In this case, one has a healthier appetite for food.

Theda – The author’s device of Derek-Francis and Francis-Derek helps to keep the pair straight in my mind. It’s also clear now why their attributes are so distinct and even exaggerated – this allows them to perpetuate the ruse and obscure the fact that each of them plays both roles. I tend to believe, however, that the the deaf and dumb attributes of Francis were actually real to begin with. This elaborate scheme must have come later; it seems unlikely to have started at age 6 or 7 (and why is there so much confusion about the age?).

Joyka – When I read the comments last week about the dual locations, I realized how clever Gladys Mitchell was to put each twin in a different locale that actually mimics their status with their grandfather.

AN INFAMOUS DUO

José – One might assume that Sir Adrian could be at the bottom of all the trouble, but it is highly unlikely that he would have used his beloved Derek as an accessory to Witt's murder. On the one hand, Sir Adrian himself could not have killed Witt as he had an airtight alibi. Besides, it is futile to speculate on the identity of the killer until more is known of Witt's blackmailing activities… On the other hand, Derek Caux seems to be the prototype of a panic killer.

Theda – I like Scotland Yard’s Inspector Gavin’s wondering if they are the UK version of Leopold and Loeb. And if so, which of them is really the leader?

Chris – As often in the Mrs Bradley mysteries, Gladys Mitchell mentions a famous true-crime case of the recent past, here beginning to invite comparisons with it. The Leopold & Loeb case of 1924, mentioned by Gavin in Chapter 12, was one in which two wealthy Chicago students, widely believed to have been a gay couple, decided to pull off a ‘perfect’ motiveless crime by capturing and murdering a teenage boy. It became the basis for Patrick Hamilton’s drama Rope (1929) and for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 screen adaptation under the same title. In The Echoing Strangers, we have several mutterings about the perceived ‘girlishness’ of the twins, along with suggestions that they are ‘young decadents’ in ways comparable with Leopold & Loeb.

Joyka – Mrs Bradley states there is not much doubt that both boys were “to some degree abnormal and degenerate…possibly sufficiently lacking in conscience to have been accessories to murder…” She speculates their disparate upbringings might make them capable of criminal activities.

Elle – Does Sir Adrian fear his grandsons? This is doubled down by the name of Chapter 12, “Castor and Pollux”.

LOVE OF NATURE AND LITERATURE

Tracy K. – One of my favorite aspects of Mitchell's writing is her lovely descriptions of nature and the countryside, which show up in this book also. For example, when she and Tom ride up the river in a launch, there is this wonderful passage:

"Between intervals of falling in love with wet woods more nostalgic than those of Kipling, and of listening entranced, in the intervals when they shut off the launch’s engine, to the green and soil-laden waters of the river washing amorously up to the roots of the foremost trees, they discussed the two murders until both were bored with these, and the slight tide up from Thurne Mouth, slapping into the reeds and running up into and washing back from the black-avised and super-natural banks, seemed the only thing worthy of philosophy."

Chris – Mention in Chapter 9 of ‘wet woods more nostalgic than those of Kipling’ seems to allude to Kipling’s most nostalgic evocation of woods, in his 1910 poem ‘The Walk Through the Woods’, but those woods are not described as being wet. It is his earlier prose tale ‘The Cat That Walked by Himself’ (from the Just So Stories, 1902) that repeatedly names its setting as ‘the Wild Wet Woods’, which may also be the basis for the invented place-name Wetwode.

Elle – Beatrice's allusions to Byron, Lord Tennyson's poem "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" as well as Danae is very interesting.

Joyka – GM paints such a detailed picture of the countryside in all of her books. It is one of her techniques I like the best, but I often read that others feel she puts in too much detail.

AND FINALLY, THE VICTIMS

Elle – So far I have no idea why either of the victims have been killed (though Witt might have brought his own death onto himself???).

Theda – There still isn’t any connection between the two murders, but it is starting to look like the Witt murder involved both twins – if not in the commission, perhaps in the planning or coverup. Witt was a blackmailer, that much seems certain, although I don’t recall any witness actually using that word; instead, “people went to his house and came away crying”. But it doesn’t seem likely that the twins’ role-playing would be blackmailable – it would more likely be related to the “problem with a village girl” that keeps being alluded to.

José – When Francis was fifteen, Miss Higgs feared that the boy was growing up and becoming too much for her. Mrs Bradley thinks she may have been referring to Francis’s interactions with the village girls, and this knowledge provides a clue to set up a successful scheme. Thanks to her plan, Mrs Bradley finds out all that there is to know about the village and gets a local lass to talk frankly about Francis.

Chris – the two murders have been ‘twinned’ by the discovery that each murder victim – Campbell in Wetwode and Witt in Mede – had been suspected of engaging in blackmail. It remains to be discovered who was being blackmailed by them, and so who may have had motives for the crimes.

The investigation continues next week as we read Chapters 13 to 17 of The Echoing Strangers. Thanks for reading and joining the discussion!

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: THE ECHOING STRANGERS (1952) - Post #1

4/9/2023

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Hello, and welcome to the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group discussion of 1952’s The Echoing Strangers. In this first post, readers have sent me their comments on the book’s initial six chapters which I will organize around topics and present here. I try to avoid major plot and solution spoilers as I craft the conversation and we work our way through the story. If you want to join in, you can visit this earlier post to see the April submission timeline.

This time around, we have some reading group veterans as well as a new voice, and I welcome you all! Joyka and Chris join us once more, as does mystery fiction author Catherine Dilts. As well as penning multiple book series, Catherine’s new short story “Claire’s Cabin” appears in the current issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (March/April 2023). We also have busy crime fiction bloggers José and Tracy K. on board. You can visit Tracy’s great site at Bitter Tea and Mystery while José oversees A Crime Is Afoot, his excellent blog offering visitors an in-depth, self-described “random walk through classic crime fiction”. And a hearty welcome to Theda, who joins the reading group for the first time; we are so happy to have you with us!

This time I will structure the observations as a sort of group discussion roundtable, moving from the comments of one contributor to another without building them into narrational paragraphs. This saves me some energy (which is in depressingly low supply these days) and I think it will move the conversation along a bit more fleetly. We begin, aptly, at

THE BEGINNING

José – The Echoing Strangers, a mystery detective novel by British writer Gladys Mitchell, is the 25th entry in her long-running series featuring psychoanalyst and amateur detective Mrs Bradley. The story was first published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd. London in 1952, and it has been reprinted several times, the latest in 2014 by Vintage Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Catherine – Mrs Bradley still endures Gladys Mitchell's harsh physical descriptions, but seems more human than in earlier novels. She has a reputation for solving mysteries. Mrs. Bradley sniffs out an intriguing one when she witnesses a youth pushing a middle-aged woman into the river. Her chauffeur fishes a soaked Miss Higgs from the water. She is apologetic for the boy Francis, who is deaf, dumb, and beautiful. Mrs Bradley settles into the village of Wetwode and is soon directed to a body when Francis sculpts a macabre scene in plasticine.

Joyka – This is my favorite type of Mrs Bradley book: she is the psychiatrist. I get so immersed in her “sessions” that I forget she is totally fictitious. Her work getting Francis Caux to open up was first class.

Tracy K. – Mrs Bradley discovers very quickly that the boy is the grandson of Sir Adrian Caux, and has been living with Miss Higgs for several years. He is deaf and dumb, and has a twin brother.

THE TWINS

Theda – The differences in how the twins are described are striking – at least in part due to the presumed observer (Mrs Bradley for Francis, [cricket player and tutor] Tom Donagh for Derek).

Francis: large eyes, a saintly expression but focus is on the fact that he is troubled, traumatized, and unable to communicate, but is teachable in other things (ex: chess).

Derek: exquisitely beautiful, but girlish traits emphasized in descriptions: “hand as slender as a girl’s”, “shrieking in a high girlish voice, near to tears”. To Tom, he is most often repugnant, in how he sings, in how he and his grandfather Sir Adrian interact, in how much his eating habits are commented upon. Even his own words disparage him: “I’m sure I shall find myself telling them things, true and untrue, if they begin to question me”.

Catherine – The attitudes toward differently-abled people is true to the 1952 era. Francis' issues were caused by the shock of seeing his parents die. There is sympathy for him, but people treat him as defective.

José – The twins’ parents died in a car accident. Francis, we are told, was in the car with them and managed to get out unscathed, but the shock left him deaf and dumb. His grandfather got rid of him while taking the other son, Derek, into his care, making him his sole heir.

Catherine – Tutor Tom Donagh finds the doting grandfather's relationship with his grandson Derek peculiar. Tom catches Sir Adrian cheating during games. The man takes cricket way too seriously. And then a player on an opposing team is murdered.

TWINNING IN THEME AND STRUCTURE

Tracy K. – In this section of the book, the chapters alternate between Mrs Bradley and her investigations, and Tom Donagh and his time spent with Sir Adrian and Derek. I like that style of storytelling; it builds suspense and keeps me interested in the story.

Chris – From the distinct settings of the opening two chapters, we learn that Gladys Mitchell has set herself the challenge of constructing a mystery with two contrasting locations, one familiar - the New Forest in Hampshire - the other a ‘holiday-adventure’ scene, the Norfolk Broads being a wetland of linked rivers and lakes enjoyed by boating enthusiasts. As becomes clearer in these first six chapters, the locations are contrasted thematically as dry versus wet, on the basis of their summer sports activities: cricket cannot seriously be played in the rain - although Sir Adrian tries his worst - any more than swimming and boating can be conducted on dry land.

The contrast appears also in the dramatis personae: Mede is a traditional village hierarchy dominated by the lord of the manor, who has both the local clergyman and the pub landlord in his pocket along with all the servants, while Wetwode is a more accidental association of weekenders and summer tenants, among whom identities and social relations are opaque. The connections made between these settings rely in part on unlikely coincidences, and in part on the use of a highly traditional device of European comedy (Plautus via Shakespeare), the separated-twins plot. The locations themselves are separate and yet ‘twinned’.

This split-location structure invites us to assign special importance to any discerned links between them, whether overt, as with the reuniting of the Caux twins in Chapter 6 (effectively the dramatic ‘curtain’ to Act 1) or half-concealed, as with certain clues to the two murders: when we learn that the murdered cricketer Witt originally came from East Anglia, and that the mystery man who commissioned the iron hoops for Campbell’s corpse from the Wetwode blacksmith spoke with a West-Country accent, we suspect that the two sites may be twinned in ways that are yet to be disclosed.

CRICKET, WIT, AND WITT

Tracy K. - The fourth chapter is entirely about cricket, and the games that the local teams are playing, with lots of details which went way over my head. In this plot thread, one of the cricket players is murdered. Are the two murders connected?

José – What follows might be a bit difficult to understand for those who, like me, are not familiar with the game of cricket. Anyway, suffice it to say that when the day of the game between Mede and Bruke comes, the game has an unexpected end when Witt, Bruke’s captain, is found dead in the dressing rooms. According to Sir Adrian, Witt was known to have one great enemy, Peter Cornish. There was bad blood between them for years. It began during the war, though nobody ever quite knew what was all about.

Theda – Cricket: I have even read a book on this sport and still don’t fully understand it. I wonder, however, if the game is simply to provide tone, location, or possible motives for the murder. It’s also a good look into Sir Adrian’s character, which may prove important not only to the murder but to how the twins move forward. Still, I wonder if how the game is played, its rules, will somehow be important to the plot later on – because there is a great deal of detail about the actual game play.

Chris – The story can be understood and enjoyed without detailed knowledge of cricket, although it helps to know that the basic principles are akin to baseball. Bowling in cricket, though, differs from baseball pitching in that the bowler usually aims to make the ball bounce up to the batsman unpredictably from the grass surface in front of him. Hence the significance of the ‘bowler’s wicket’ (the title of Chapter 4), otherwise known as a ‘sticky wicket’, meaning a grass playing surface that is treacherous for batsmen on account of its unevenness or dampness.

More important here than these technical features of the game are its social and ethical contexts. We are told in this chapter that the ethic of English cricket is Decency, although Sir Adrian’s many ways of cheating and fixing clearly prompt us to question this claim.

Also significant is the ironic title of Chapter 2, ‘Amateur Status’, which more directly concerns the social prestige of Sir Adrian’s (and Tom Donagh’s) class. In the 1950s a clear distinction was observed in cricket between Players, who were working-class men paid to take part, and Gentlemen, whose participation was strictly amateur and thus untainted by money. It’s worth noting that although Tom Donagh idly boasts at first that ‘I wouldn’t mind being paid for a week’s cricket’, in the event he scrupulously declines any payment for playing (while accepting the tutor’s fee), thereby salvaging his status as a Gentleman.

Joyka – The “cricket house” is certainly odd. I have never understood cricket. By the time I finished Chapter 4, I realized I will not get an understanding of cricket from this book. I definitely am getting a good understanding of Adrian Caux.

Chris – What I usually enjoy most about Gladys Mitchell’s novels is her creation of lavishly eccentric characters, and I’m reminded here of Mrs Puddequet in The Longer Bodies, who also asserts her power and wealth by setting up an unlikely sporting contest. Sir Adrian, along with his dubiously hired domestic entourage, is a particularly vivid example of the type, combining obsessive mania with satirically exaggerated social stereotype.

REFLECTING AND LOOKING FORWARD

Tracy K. – This story seems to be moving at a faster pace than the other Mrs. B books have done. Two murders have been discovered in the first quarter of the book, and there has been a good bit of investigation of the first one.

Catherine – Chapter Six ends with the climactic moment Mrs. Bradley reunites the twins by bringing Francis to Sir Adrian's home.

José – To everyone surprise, Francis begins to speak: “You are Derry. I am glad to see you. I am Francis. We are twins. There was a dead man underneath the boat. I do not like dead men. Do you like dead men?”

Theda – I’m eagerly awaiting the interactions between the twins now that they are together (and Francis is speaking! Albeit as a 7-year-old would).

Tracy K. – I am very enthusiastic about this story so far. It is unlike any Gladys Mitchell book I have read, but I have only read four so far. It has been a fun read to this point and I laughed out loud at some of Mrs. Bradley's behavior.

Joyka – I think I should keep a list of my favorite GM expressions. In this story, we are told that Mrs Bradley could “charm the jewel out of a toad’s head!”

And that concludes the comments on the first six chapters of The Echoing Strangers. Thank you everyone for contributing! Join us next week as plots thicken and discussion continues.

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