Careful with that knitting needle…
😀 😀 😀 😀
The long-term residents of Presteignton Hydro are mostly an elderly bunch, solid middle-class people, retired military men or the wives or widows of the same, and the occasional member of the titled gentry. So beautiful young Miss Blake stands out and becomes the subject of envy and gossip among the women and the target of lust among the elderly men. When she is found dead with a knitting needle through her brain, Inspector Palk finds himself up to his armpits in suspects, but soon catches his murderer… or so he thinks. And then another woman is found dead…
This is quite a fun mystery in the typical Golden Age style. The Hydro setting means there is a small circle of suspects, each with secrets and possible motives, while the police detective soon has to give way to the talented amateur – not that Mr Winkley, with his background in the military and his links with Scotland Yard, is exactly an amateur, but he doesn’t work through the normal police structure. He also doesn’t show up until the book is more than half over, so although poor Palk is upstaged at the end, it’s him we spend most time with in the early parts of the investigation.
Rutland has a keen eye for class and snobbery, and has a lot of fun with her characters, from the lowly housemaids all the way up to the not-quite aristocratic Lady Warme (her title a relic of her dead husband, knighted for being the man behind “Warme’s Patent Cornflour”, as her fellow residents can’t help reminding her from time to time). Palk is also fun, though we rather laugh at him than with him which I’m never as keen on. He jumps to conclusions, and having jumped is reluctant to ever admit he may have been wrong, so even the introduction of a second corpse, murdered in the same way, doesn’t shake his belief that he has caught the right person for the first murder. The second murder must be a copycat, he feels. But then the third body turns up and even he has to admit that three separate murderers might be stretching coincidence too far…
Although I enjoyed reading this overall, there were a couple of things that didn’t work for me and that I felt stopped it from reaching the top ranks of vintage crime. The first murder was of a perfect Golden Age victim – mysterious, shady background, not quite suited to her surroundings. The second victim, however, is a young woman who didn’t “deserve” to die and she left behind grieving relatives, whom I felt Rutland didn’t handle particularly well. The third murder was of someone else who, in my opinion, was too innocent to be a suitable victim, and I found it hard to reconcile the overall tone with these latter two murders. I also felt that the motive was a bit hackneyed and also a little obvious – I had a good idea of who the murderer was from quite early on, and also of why they were doing it.
As a result of these points I enjoyed the first half considerably more than the second. The characterisation of all the residents is well done – not too in depth and perhaps a little caricatured as “types”, but no less fun for that. As well as the Cornflour Widow and a variety of others, there’s the nurse seeking a husband, the put-upon doctor having to deal with as much hypochondria as genuine illness, the rivalry between the elderly men for beautiful Miss Blake’s attention, and the aspiring mystery writer whom Rutland uses to poke gentle fun at her own craft. In such a small, enclosed community there’s plenty of gossip along with the usual petty squabbles and resentments of those with too much time on their hands. Based on the first half it was heading for the full five stars from me, but I found my enthusiasm wore a little thin when the events darkened to a point where I found the light, humorous tone increasingly jarring.
Four stars, then, and I’d be happy to read more of Rutland in the future, though it appears she only wrote three books and then stopped, for reasons unknown.
This was The People’s Choice winner for September, and another good one – you’re on a roll, People!
Book 9 of 12
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On a personal note…
Last week I had to make the difficult decision to have my dear little Tuppence put to sleep after a short but terminal illness. I tell you this not to seek condolences – I know fellow pet lovers out there know how hard these things are – but because I’ve always joked about her on the blog and didn’t want her disappearance to go unexplained. She was a little cat with a big personality, and her brother Tommy and I are missing her very much.
