JASON HALF : writer
  • Home
  • Full-length Plays
    • The Community Play
    • Kate and Comet
    • Sundial
    • Tulip Brothers
  • Short Plays
    • Among the Oats
    • Holly and Mr. Ivy
    • Locked Room Misery
  • Screenplays
    • The Ballad of Faith Divine
    • My Advice
    • Finders
  • Fiction
  • Blog

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

5/4/2019

4 Comments

 
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.
4 Comments
Joyka
5/5/2019 03:33:22 pm

I love reading GM in a group. It is like a favorite class at college where one’s own short falls in reading the text are supplemented by the wisdom of others. Thanks to all for the insights-they are much appreciated!

Reply
Jason Half link
5/5/2019 07:10:44 pm

Thanks so much for your contributions, Joyka! I know from our email conversations that you are very much a Gladys Mitchell fan, and I'm grateful that you agreed to revisit this story and provide some new observations. Hope you'll be able to jump into future group readings as well -- I promise the next chosen title will be available as an eBook for American readers as well as being easy to find in reprint!

Reply
Mar
8/26/2022 03:25:10 pm

The title is finally available on Kindle!
I've enjoyed this discussion nearly as much as I enjoyed the book, itself.

Joyka
5/6/2019 03:44:45 pm

Just wondering-would average readers in the 1930’s have understood the mythological allusions to a greater extent than readers in 2019? Is it a difference in the English education system vs the American system?

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    BLOG

    Lots of book reviews and discussion of classic and contemporary mystery fiction. I welcome comments and continuing conversation.

    Subscribe below to receive updates!

    Subscribe

    Categories

    All
    19th Century Novels
    Andrew Garve
    Anne Morice
    Anthologies
    Anthony Boucher
    Appalachian Authors
    Bill James
    Book Review
    Catherine Dilts
    C. Daly King
    Craig Rice
    David Goodis
    E.C.R. Lorac / Carol Carnac
    Erle Stanley Gardner
    E.R. Punshon
    Freeman Wills Crofts
    French Authors
    George Bellairs
    George Milner
    Gladys Mitchell
    Golden Age Mystery
    Gregory McDonald
    Hardboiled Detectives
    Helen McCloy
    Henry Wade
    Herbert Adams
    Hugh Austin
    James Corbett
    J. Jefferson Farjeon
    John Bude
    John Rhode/Miles Burton
    Leo Bruce
    Maj Sjowall / Per Wahloo
    Margery Allingham
    Martin Edwards
    Michael Gilbert
    Michael Innes
    Mignon G. Eberhart
    Milward Kennedy
    Mitchell Mystery Reading Group
    New Fiction
    New Mystery
    Nicholas Blake
    Nicolas Freeling
    Noir
    Philip MacDonald
    Play Review
    Q. Patrick / Patrick Quentin
    Rex Stout
    Richard Hull
    Ross MacDonald
    Russian Authors
    Science Fiction
    Vernon Loder
    Vladimir Nabokov
    William L. DeAndrea
    Winifred Blazey
    Writing

    Mystery Fiction Sites
    -- all recommended ! --
    Ahsweetmysteryblog
    Beneath the Stains of Time
    Bitter Tea and Mystery
    Catherine Dilts - author
    Countdown John's Christie Journal
    Classic Mysteries
    Clothes in Books
    ​A Crime is Afoot
    Crossexaminingcrime
    Gladys Mitchell Tribute
    Grandest Game in the World
    In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
    The Invisible Event
    Martin Edwards' Crime Writing Blog
    Mysteries Ahoy!
    Noirish
    The Passing Tramp
    Past Offences
    Pretty Sinister Books
    Tipping My Fedora
    

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Unless otherwise stated, all text content on this site is
​copyright Jason Half, 2023.