Almost from the moment I wake up in the morning, I am reading the news. My country is at war, and I am obsessed with knowing what’s happening and how things are going. I can readily identify with the sentiment expressed in Wordsworth’s poem “The World is Too Much with Us” and have lately felt a strong, almost overwhelming, desire to escape, to run away, if only for a little while.
My most common form of escape comes from reading, especially fiction. Reading brings comfort and a temporary interruption from war’s stubborn, painful reality. I was looking for a new book to read recently, and my wife handed me one, a murder mystery. I finished it early last week. It was the perfect anodyne.
Can you name, without looking it up, “The Four Queens of Crime,” prominent female authors known for their detective fiction? All four left an enduring mark on the genre. I’ll give you three: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Who’s missing; do you know? She’s the one I read and want to talk about.
The missing author was born in 1904; she wrote her first detective story in 1928. The tale appeared not in book form but as a serial in the British Daily Express newspaper. Publication as a serial required elements in the writing that would not be part of the story if it had been originally conceived and printed as a book. With a book, readers have the entire story before them all at once. With a serial publication, that’s not true. So, often, the author must reiterate points from earlier installments or re-emphasize details not easily accessible to the reader, perhaps tossed out weeks earlier with the paper waste.
Her subsequent stories were published as books. As her fame grew, her publisher asked her to revise the serial format of her first detective story to turn it into a novel. But she never did, never seemed to have the time. She died in 1966. The story finally appeared in book form in 1974, her sister having done the necessary editing, primarily cutting out repeated details. The book is The White Cottage Mystery, and the author is Margery Allingham. It’s the book I read.
Agatha Christie once said of Allingham that she “stands out like a shining light.” Indeed! I have read many murder mysteries over the years; this is the only one I can remember in which, upon reaching the book’s last chapter, I had no idea who committed the murder. The author had to tell me. It was brilliant. I’ve read mysteries written more elegantly and with more sophistication, but I cannot remember a better plot.
The murder occurs in the book’s first chapter. Several suspects are quickly identified and interviewed one by one by Detective Chief Inspector W. T. Challoner. They all have a powerful motive for killing Eric Crowther, a mysterious man who somehow knows their deepest, darkest secrets. They live in constant fear of him, and they all want him dead. But only one person dares to pull the trigger. The search for that one person takes Detective Challoner and his son Jerry from a village in England to Paris, to the French Rivera, and into the suspects’ past before a surprising discovery is made. At one point, a frustrated Challoner says: Everyone ought to have done it, but by the evidence nobody had. Not a single one could be identified as the murderer. The novel contains common detective novel features: red herrings, blind alleys, and untruthful testimonies. But it has an extraordinary plot.
The suspects include everyone in the White Cottage at the time of the murder: Roger William Christensen, a WWI veteran and invalid, the owner of the White Cottage, his wife Eva Grace Christensen, who finds the murdered man, Eric Crowther. The couple has a baby named Joan, who is cared for by a nurse named Estah. Grace has a younger sister named Norah Bayliss. Supporting Cottage staff include a parlormaid, Kathreen Goody, and a cook, Doris James. The dead man had a valet, Clarry Gale, a cook, Mrs. Elsie Fisher, and a companion, Mr. Cellini. Well, there you have it. That’s your lineup.
None of the characters are robustly developed. We learn of them only what is relevant to their role as suspects. I didn’t find myself relating much to any of them. But again, the story’s strength is its well-crafted plot, not its characters or setting. But there are occasions when the author’s description of a building or place is very engaging. One example, for me, comes late in the book when Jerry, Challoner’s son, and one of the suspects, the young Norah Bayliss, are alone together. The scene takes place in Mentone, on the French Riviera.
He was staring out across the town to the sea. Somewhere hidden in the blackness he knew there were great mountains falling up against the sky, a world of incredible loveliness hidden under the coverlet of the dark. He felt rather like that about himself. His mind was in the dark. There was a screen between him and something, something utterly beautiful, and tonight very near.
What is utterly beautiful and very near is Norah Bayliss.
As I said at the beginning, I was looking for a temporary escape from a world that, for the time being, is too much with me. My wife handed me the perfect one. I heartily recommend The White Cottage Mystery if you are in the market. It may be a bit hard to find, but it is worth the search.
I’m looking forward to my first Albert Campion novel by Allingham. It’s already on my Kindle.
All the best,
Gershon
Gershon Ben-Avraham 