The Longer Bodies (1930) by Gladys Mitchell

The last time Gladys Mitchell and Mrs. Bradley graced this blog was in 2017, greatly enjoying The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935), Laurels Are Poison (1943), Groaning Spinney (1950) and The Echoing Strangers (1953), but around that time, the number of reprints and translations began to serious mushroom – which distracted my attention away from the Great Gladys. Well, that and an inexplicable, all-consuming obsession with locked room mysteries. So the titles I had intended to go through in 2018 slipped down the big pile, but recently had the urge to return to the detective fantasies of Mitchell.

Nick Fuller kindly reviewed those to-be-read novels like Brazen Tongue (1940), Here Comes a Chopper (1946), Death of a Delft Blue (1964) and The Greenstone Griffins (1983) in the comments of The Devil at Saxon Wall review. The long standing recommendation that recently came back to my attention is that of the third Mrs. Bradley novel.

The Longer Bodies (1930) has been described as one of Mitchell's most orthodox, conventionally-structured detective novels and essentially a parody of the English country house mystery with nods to S.S. van Dine's The Canary Murder Case (1927) and The Greene Murder Case (1928). However, you have to keep mind descriptions and terms like orthodox and conventionally-structured always comes with a huge asterisk when discussing Mitchell's zestful mysteries. Even at her most traditional, Mitchell's detective fiction stands in a class of their own and seldom lose their vitality or surrealistic qualities. I've not read Mitchell's reputed humdrum and routine affair Winking at the Brim (1974), but where else except in "a Gladys Mitchell novel would the heroine be winked at, or the murderer eaten, by the Loch Ness monster." So with that out of the way, let's take a look at The Longer Bodies.

Great-aunt Matilda Puddequet, "a cranky old girl of ninety," is reputed to be enormously wealthy with "a tradition in the family that she was extraordinarily mean" and a willingness to impart unasked-for advice – causing a separation with her nephew, Godfrey Yeomond. It only took about thirty-two years and Godfrey becoming a prosperous man for Great-aunt Puddequet to forget her quarrel. So invited herself to have a look at his children. During their reunion, they attend an international athletics match, between Sweden and England, which leaves Great-aunt Puddequet unimpressed with the results of the English team. So devices a plan to leave her entire fortune to the grandnephew who's first to represent England in an aesthetics field event. And to this end, she had turned ten thousand square yards around her home into a training camp.

A rough pasturage had been dug up, leveled, drained to rise a sports ground with a oval running track, a long jump pit and places for the high jump and the pole vault. Great-aunt Puddequet invited three branches of the family to come to Longer to train and compete for a shot at inheriting half a million pounds. Not everyone is looking forward to acting like "a monkey on a stick for the sake of her rotten cash," but everyone goes and participate in the games. Mitchell's detective stories and characters always seem to be bursting with health, energy and vitality as they never seem to be able to sit down for long. The characters in a Mitchell novels constantly move around with purpose like burying, exhuming and reburying bodies or stamping up and down the spiral staircase of a lighthouse. This is reflected in the busy, often convoluted way in which Mitchell's murderers produce and desposes of their corpses.

It does not take very long, before the Puddequet Family Games are interrupted by murder, but the victim is a villager. Jacob Hobson, "a drunken lout," is found in a nearby lake tied to the statue of a mermaid. Only the long-suffering Mrs. Hobson has plenty of motive and no alibi, but neither has she a traceable accomplish who could have helped with the physical demanding dumping of the body. So what's going on? More than one character remarked that the case is all wrong ("it ought to be all to do with the old lady's money, and it isn't") with the baffled Inspector Bloxham remarking, "what the deuce anybody can make out of the murder of a drunk by somebody who couldn't even have known he was coming to the house, and the murder of the young man who ought to have set to and murdered all the other claimants, passes my understanding." That second murder finally brings Mrs. Bradley into the story.

I can see why Mitchell decided to wait until the halfway mark, because I began to look forward to the inevitable meeting between Mrs. Bradley and Great-aunt Puddequet, two formidable characters, following the first couple of chapters. Mrs. Bradley is one of the most striking and unique characters from this period of the genre. A descendant of witches who looks like a benevolent crocodile or shoebill trying to pass for an elderly lady with her black, birdlike eyes, yellow claws and loudly cackling or screeching with "eldritch glee" – who sometimes condones and even commits murder herself. A unique and unforgettable detective character. Mrs. Bradley is in fine form during her third outing as she immediately understands the significance of the body being tied to the statue ("...when I set eyes on the statue of the little mermaid that half the truth dawned on me"), while the plodding Bloxham concentrates on the alibis and lack of motives. A very done combination of Mrs. Bradley psycho-analytical methods and Bloxham's painstaking police routine, which nicely worked towards Bloxham's false-solution and Mrs. Bradley presenting him with a written confession from the murderer.

A marvelous play on the usually disappointing written confession and an even better parody of the detective story ("...only in fiction that the motive is worthy of the crime"), but the solution to the tangled problem is another demonstration why Gladys Mitchell is an acquired taste. Mitchell's novels have always taken place in a caricature of the real world with its own set of bizarre rules and slightly cracked logic. So whether they work, or not, as detective story depends on how far the reader is willing to go along with it, which needs some consistency and convincing. I think Mitchell pulled it off here and called Michael Innes' What Happened At Hazelwood (1946) to mind. Both are deliberately improbable in order to spoof the country house mystery with a plot ticking according to its own internal mad logic and should be taken on their own terms in order to appreciate what they tried to accomplish, but can see why it's not going to be everyone's liking.

However, if you want to see the traditional country house mystery getting strapped down to a bath chair, raced around a track field in the dead of night before getting chucked into a lake, The Longer Bodies has you covered.

Stratagems in the Snow

"But I'd much sooner have a jolly good murder in the village. A jolly good murder... would make Christmas jolly well worth it."

- Denis Lestrange (Gladys Mitchell's Dead Men's Morris, 1936)

Gladys Mitchell's Groaning Spinney (1950) is the fiftieth title in her series of wonderfully written, often unconventionally plotted, mystery novels about her cackling, basilisk-like psycho-analyst and criminologist, Mrs. Bradley – described by Mitchellites as a wintry story with "a vivid, picturesque seasonal backdrop" and one of her "most satisfyingly, well-clued solutions." Excitedly, this book is about to be reissued as a special Christmas edition, under the title Murder in the Snow, which is scheduled for release in early November.

So this fairly recent tradition of republishing classic, often obscure, Christmas-themed mystery novels continues to snowball ever larger. This year also saw the republication of Christopher Bush's Dancing Dead (1931), Anne Meredith's Portrait of a Murderer (1933) and Cyril Hare's An English Murder (1951). Curiously, the detective novel by Hare has not been reissued under its alternative title, The Christmas Murder, while Ellery Queen's The Finishing Stroke (1958) remains completely ignored in this category.

But who knows? Maybe next year some of these publishers will set their sights on these kind of holiday detective stories from the United States. But for now, I'll be looking at an earlier edition of Groaning Spinney.

Groaning Spinney takes place in the Cotswolds, nestled in south central England, which is famous for its ancient landscape with its rolling hills, rustic villages and charming hamlets. Jonathan Bradley and his wife, Deborah, had chosen the place to settle down and had purchased an old manor house, which came with a plot of land in a hilly, partially wooded area with "a dashing stream" and "a very well-authenticated ghost" of a nineteenth century parson, Rev. Horatius Pile – who can be seen hanging over a gate on moonlight nights. So the perfect place to raise a family.

Deborah had acted as a Mrs. Bradley's Sub-Warden at Cartaret College, in Laurels Are Poison (1943), where she was introduced to Mrs. Bradley's nephew, Jonathan, which led to their engagement by the end of the book. At the time, Mrs. Bradley had "greatly desired to find place in the family circle for the lovely Deborah" and her nephew had been "the vehicle for this inclusion." So Jonathan and Deborah invited their "Aunt Adela" to spend the Christmas holiday with them in their new home, but her arrival marked the beginning of a series of events that resulted in several deaths. And it all started very innocently.

On the morning after Christmas, the priestly ghost had left a trail of footprints, "like stockinged feet," in the snow and a witness claimed to have glimpsed the parson by "the snow-laden ghost-gate" at the top of the wood known as Groaning Spinney. But these locals stories of a ghost in the snow takes a macabre turn when Jonathan finds a corporeal form "slumped over the five-barred gate" and the body was "dusted over into ghostliness" by the last fall of the snow.

The body at the ghost-gate belonged to one of two cousins, Bill Fullalove, who lived with his relative, Tiny, as bachelors and according to the police examiner he had died of heart-failure due to cold and exposure, but a year ago he got himself medically examined for a life insurance policy and the company doctor had never seen a healthier man – or "tested a heart in better condition." So could the winter cold and snow have killed a healthy and robust man like Bill Fullalove?

It should be noted here that Mitchell was not necessarily a mystery novelist who was known for crafting elaborate, overly ingenious, murder methods, but she did come up with a couple of original gimmicks (e.g. The Man Who Grew Tomatoes, 1959) and this definitely one of them. A murder method as cold and clever as the one from Rex Stout's "A Window for Death" (collected in Three for the Chair, 1957).

Interestingly, the death of Bill Fullalove turns out to be nothing less than a perfect crime, because Mrs. Bradley admits that obtaining proof of murder is practically impossible. She does piece together how the murderer brought about heart-failure, based on such clues as dog-chains and trees, but dealing with the guilty party requires an unorthodox approach. Mrs. Bradley admits around the halfway mark that, "in this instance," revenge is her aim. And if you have read Speedy Death (1929), you know what she means by that.

There are, however, other problems complicating the matter of the dead man at the ghost-gate. An anonymous letter writer is littering the village with poison-pen letters and one of them suggests that the dead man had been murdered – even accusing the local doctor of "conspiring to hush it up." Another letter tells the cousin of the dead man, Tiny, that the police suspects murder and advises him to prepare for an exhumation. The doctor observed that this "sort of round-robin stuff can have serious consequences" and these words prove to be prophetic when the poisoned remains of the Fullaloves' missing housekeeper, Mrs. Dalby Whittier, is found in a deep dip in one of the farmer's fields.

And from these various plot-threads, Mitchell weaved an intricate, but discernible, tapestry of a potential insurance fraud, disputable identities, missing animals, wholesale blackmail and a double murderer. Mitchell really deserves praise here, not only for crafting a clever and well-imagined plot, but also for telling the story in clear and straightforward manner without getting entangled in a confusing web of plot-threads, which (admittedly) was not something she always succeeded in doing – c.f. Hangman's Curfew (1941) and The Worsted Viper (1943).

One other thing that has to be mentioned about the plot is that certain plot-strands evidently took their cue from Agatha Christie's Peril at End House (1932), which pertained to both the insurance policy and an attempt to use a "ghost" to bring the murderer to heel. Nevertheless, that should not be taken as criticism of Groaning Spinney, because the book by Christie had only been used as a source of inspiration. But you'll see what I mean when you get to it.

If Groaning Spinney has any flaws, particularly when measured against her own body of work, it is that the murderer's revelation does not come as an earth-shattering surprise and the ghost-element is not used to full-effect. Mitchell can do so much better with ghostly legends. I also missed the presence of one of her convincingly drawn, plucky children or teenage characters. Such as Mrs. Bradley's great-nephew, Denis, who provided the opening quote for this blog-post. I believe the presence of such a character would have greatly enhanced the already excellent atmosphere and cast-of-characters of the book.

Otherwise, Groaning Spinney is pleasantly lucid, well-written and lively entry in the Mrs. Bradley series with an ingenious murder method and an active detective with a sense of humor. But what is perhaps the strongest aspect of the book is its splendidly realized country-side setting. Whether it is the wintry, snow-laden landscape of the opening chapters or the approaching spring thaw of the later half, you have to admit that bringing a setting to life with mere words is a talent she shared with her Arthur W. Upfield.

So this was an auspicious, and early, beginning of my 2017 reading of the Yuletide Mystery Novel. There are three additional titles on my TBR-list and might add one or two more to that list. So stay tuned.

The Ghost of Athelstan

"School seems in a bit of a mess."

- Carolus Deene (Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey's School, 1967)

Last week, I posted a review of Gladys Mitchell's The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935) and was helped in the comment-section by the editor of Sleuth's Alchemy: Cases of Mrs. Bradley and Others (2005), Nick Fuller, with picking my next read in this series by going through the titles residing on my to-be-read pile – starting with a dozen possibilities and ended with two candidates. My choices had boiled down to either The Longer Bodies (1930) and Laurels Are Poison (1942).

I decided to go with the latter as it was a personal favorite of Mitchell, who drew on her own, "fondly evoked," memories of attending a teacher's trainer college for the story's setting. The result is a mystery novel "filled with high-spirited dialogue" and "camaraderie," written around an unusual plot, which was eerily bizarre and weirdly humorous. And the book introduced several characters who'll make regular appearances in subsequent novels (e.g. The Worsted Viper, 1943). One of them even becomes an occasional stand-in for Mrs. Bradley, but more about that later.

Laurels Are Poison is not an unimportant milepost in the series history and the plot, with some minor qualifications, delivers on the promise made by its reputation.

The story casts Mrs. Bradley, often referred here to as Mrs. Croc, in the role of Warden of Athelstan Hall, Cartaret College, where her presence had been requested by the Principal, Miss Du Mugne, who desired a discreet inquiry from the famous psycho-analyst and criminologist – concerning the disappearance of the previous Warden. Miss Munchan was taken ill at the College End of Term Dance, but not "the slightest trace" has "come to light" of her whereabouts in the ten weeks that have since passed. There's a reason to believe something serious might have happened to the previous Warden.

Miss Munchan had been a biology teacher at Cuddy Bay's County Secondary School for Girls and "a child was killed in the school gymnasium," briefly before she took her leave, but the death was officially ruled to be an accident and the school was exonerated from all blame – which the girl's grandfather refused to accept. And had to be temporarily hospitalized in a mental asylum. Only a month after the inquest the police received a letter, written in Miss Munchan's name, suggesting she wanted to come clean about the death of the girl. However, when the police questioned her she denied all knowledge of the letter and vacated her teaching position.

So Mrs. Bradley has a lead to work on when she arrives at the teacher's training college, but her attention is initially occupied by a rash of jokes, rags and some outright malicious pranks plaguing the college dorms.

During a math lesson, a cabinet in the classroom burst open and "a couple of assorted vipers" spilled out, which created quite a sensation, but the pranks got progressively worst. A bath was allowed to overflow and a thick piece of string had been dangerously stretched across the floor. The clothes of two poor sisters, whose family had sacrificed in order to get them to college, were torn to shreds and the hair of another girl was cut short as she slept. One night, the peace was disturbed by an chilling, unearthly noice, which was ascribed to "the ghost of Athelstan." All of this culminates in the violent death of the college cook, Mrs. Castle, whose lifeless body was dragged by the police from a nearby river.

Mrs. Bradley has a lot to deal with in this case and early on in the book took the new Sub-Warden of Athelstan Hall, Deborah Hall, took into her confidence. She looks favorably upon the young woman, like "a benevolent snake," and plays cupid by engineering a meeting between Deborah and her nephew, Jonathan, who are engaged by the end of the book – who return, as a married couple, in My Father Sleeps (1944), The Croaking Raven (1966) and Lovers, Make Moan (1981).

And then there are the three plucky students, Alice Boorman, Kitty Trevelyan and Laura Menzies, who refer to themselves as the Three Musketeers. They would appear together in the previously mentioned The Worsted Viper and Death and the Maiden (1947), but Laura became Mrs. Bradley secretary and reportedly took center-stage in some of the middle-period novels (when Mrs. Bradley became Dame Beatrice). Those three are primarily responsible for the high-spirited, energetic tone of the story and even do some (unintentional) detection (e.g. when they fished the victim's corset from the river). However, their presence also had two noticeable drawbacks.

One of them is that they were, partially, used as a vehicle for Mitchell to indulge in a stroll down memory lane. It's true that the rags and pranks were an important cog in the machine of the plot, but, until the cook was murdered halfway through, the story felt like Mitchell was taking the time to enjoy the setting of the teacher's college. Or to put it more accurately, the plot often felt like it was a pace or two behind the spirited story-telling. Secondly, I knew that Deborah, Laura, Alice and Kitty would become (semi) regular characters in the series and this practically dried up the entire pool of potential suspects. Those girls really usurped the character-department of the book.

So it's to Mitchell's credit that the revelation of the murderer's identity was both memorable and did not disappoint, but, out of necessity, this person had to be mentally unbalanced in order to explain some of the inexplicable actions that drove the plot – such as the whole rigmarole with the college skeleton or throwing the corset into the river. A slightly more sane murderer would probably have acted very differently.

Overall, Laurels Are Poison might not be the best entry in the Mrs. Bradley series, but the story is told with zest and gusto, which served perfectly as an introduction to a host of new characters and a new phase in the series. On top of that, the solution to the case, although not entirely perfect, is memorable and better put together than the explanations found in some of the subsequent novels (e.g. The Rising of the Moon, 1945). So the book did not leave me disappointed.

Devil's Drought

"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"
- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

Gladys Mitchell's The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935) is the sixth recorded case of her psycho-analyst detective, Mrs. Bradley, which was reportedly inspired by lecture on witchcraft given by her personal friend and fellow mystery novelist, Helen Simpson – who famously gave Mrs. Bradley her second name, Adela, when they exchanged detectives in Ask a Policeman (1933).

The Devil at Saxon Wall has a hell of a reputation with Mitchell's acolytes and has often been cited as one of her best novels. Nick Fuller even listed the book alongside the well-known masterworks by Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, but can the book hold its own in such esteemed company? Let's find out!

The story begins with what is, essentially, a lengthy prologue covering the first three chapters, which take place during the early years of the 1920s and tells the gloomy tale of Constance Palliner. A story that ended in a double tragedy.

Constance had been an unhappy woman, destined to the existence of a spinster, but her life took an unexpected turn when, at age twenty-four, she accompanied her parents to Naples, Italy, where she met Hanley Middleton at Pompeii – a physician attached to the R.A.M.C. Middleton proposed to Constance mere hours after they first met and she accepted. So they return to England and took possession of a large, old house, called Neot House, standing in an ancient village with a slightly backwards population. And that's where the problems begin to manifest themselves.

The village of Saxon Wall lies in "a remote part of Hampshire" and gives the impression of a place out-of-time. A holdover from the days before Alfred the Great ruled over the island. The villagers looked like a pre-medieval population, described as having "thick, dirty, fair hair, unkempt and more like frayed rope," who "feared and loathed" witchcraft and paganism as much as they participated in it – such as the practice of fertility rituals. I think the depiction of pagan survival in a dark, dilatory village, as old as the hills, is the best aspect of the book. You can feel the presence of history and an ancient history all around the place, which Mitchell used to great effect to further the plot.

Hanley is a silent, preoccupied man, "enamored of long lonely walks" and "whiskey by the half bottle," but a change occurred after the passage of nearly two years and his personality took a turn for the worse. One day, he brought a woman home from a conference and she left after a fortnight with a bruised eye-socket. He began to ill-treat animals and manhandled Constance when she happened to be in his way.

Briefly, Constance leaves her husband and returns to her parents, but when she comes back her husband has descended into debauchery and she finds him with their half-clad maidservant in his arms, Martha Fluke – who's the daughter of the local witch. Old Mrs. Fluke is said to have made a pact with the devil and rumored to have the ability to make adders "dance on their tails by moonlight." Or make them "spell the names of the angels of darkness" at witches' sabbaths. She is said to have a hand in all evil going on in the village and was even implicated by the doctor in the death of her infant grandson. A child who had been born during Constance's absence and had died in her own house. Something she should have taken as a cue to turn around and leave cartoon smoke in her wake, but she stuck around and in the end gave birth to a baby boy, Richard, but passed away soon thereafter. Hanley followed suit when he died during an emergency operation.

A period of almost ten years passed and "the village peaceable returns to its dirt." The wickedness died down for the most part and the new vicar, Rev. Merlin Hallam, immediately put a stop to the cock-fighting, which had enjoyed "an unbroken survival from the fourteenth century or earlier." On top of that, a persistent drought is slowly resulting in a water shortage and the vicar wants to use this as a leverage against the pagan ways of the villagers. Because his well still holds plenty of water.

So a relatively peaceful period for the village, but it ended when an outsider arrived in their midst.

Hannibal Jones had earned "a dishonest livelihood for seventeen years" by "writing sentimental novels," but suffered a nervous breakdown and severe case of writers block. So he consulted the famous psycho-analyst, Mrs. Bradley, who poked him between the ribs with a yellow claw, cackled horribly, and gave him an unusual piece of advice: go on a hunt for a secluded village and become a part of it – without trying to write about them. After nineteen days of driving, Jones ended up in the remote, drought-stricken village of Saxon Wall and there he blissfully sank into peaceful obscurity.

However, his task to immerse himself in local affairs exposes a number of skeleton and lays bare one of the most twisted, serpentine plots Mitchell ever conceived. A tortuous plot that hard to discuss without giving anything away, but let's take a shot at it anyway.

Jones hears of the deaths of Constance and Hanley Middleton, who had been dead for the better part of a decade now, but local rumors whisper that their child, Richard, was mixed with the supposedly dead baby of the maid – which would guarantee trouble when the boys came of age. One of the boys is believed to be a changeling. There's another tall tale telling of Hanley Middleton's supposed twin brother, Carswell, who was patiently waiting to claim his inheritance. Or the story of a local sailor, Pike, who vanished from his sickbed around the same time Hanley died on the operating table.

All of these whispers are suggestive, mostly unsubstantiated, gossip stories compounded by local obfuscation and plain old superstition. But then a very real and tangible murder is committed at Neot House.

Hanley Middleton's hypothetical twin brother, Carswell Middleton, proved to be more substantially than assumed, because his body was found at the vacant house of his late brother – bludgeoned to death with a poker. Jones dispatches a telegram to Mrs. Bradley, requesting her presence at Saxon Wall, who arrives "grinning like an alligator" and "dressed like a macaw." And luckily she's at the top of her game when she started to pluck at the threads of this intricate skein.

I should remark here that, while the plot is admittedly ingenious, it just might be a little but too much of the good stuff. I know, I know. What is this world coming to when even I begin to complain about a detective story having too much plot, but I think there's an important difference between a complex mystery novel (e.g. The Echoing Stranger, 1952) and a convoluted detective story – which here required an addendum to the final chapter, titled "End Papers," clearing up all the loose ends. Once again, the plot is absolutely ingenious and Mitchell deserves admiration for not losing herself in this labyrinthine story, but this is type of detective novel that can easily leave a reader disoriented. And unsure whether he understood the solution.

However, when you have everything figured out, checked the "End Papers," you can't help the artificial conveniences Mitchell had strewn throughout the book that kept this plot from going. One of these conveniences is that the real Richard must be color-blind, which is used to determine the real identities of both nine-year-old boys. A second one is the handy fact that "the inhabitants of Saxon Wall were incapable of making straight-forward statements" or how the murderer's madness is used as an equally handy linchpin to keep a number of the plot-threads together.

For a third time, you have to admire the intricacy of the plot and how Mitchell plotted a route through this contorted maze, but it all felt very, very contrived. Mitchell has handled similar, trickily constructed, plots with more aplomb (e.g. Come Away, Death, 1937) and grace (e.g. St. Peter's Finger, 1938).

So, plot-wise, Mitchell has done better, but the story-telling is, as always, absolutely top-notch. Something that's exemplified in the final chapter when the murderer's demise coincidences with a massive downpour relieving and cleansing the long-suffering people of Saxon Wall. A powerful scene that has been likened to the fall of Lucifer and the manifestation of God's mercy. But what else could you expect from the Great Gladys.

Overall, The Devil at Saxon Wall went completely into the deep end with the plot, but the story-telling and characterization is vintage Mitchell, which, on a whole, might not have resulted in her best detective novel, but the book definitely deserves a place among her better and more memorable titles. Just take the time to carefully read the explanation and the explanatory addendum cleaning up all the loose ends.

Torn Twins

"Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them."

- Msgr. Ronald A. Knox (A Decalogue: Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction, 1929)

The Echoing Strangers (1952) is Gladys Mitchell's twenty-fifth mystery novel about her incomparable, witch-like series-character, Mrs. Bradley, who is a consulting psychiatrist to the Home Office and probably had the longest lifespan of any detective from the genre's Golden Age – debuting in Speedy Death (1929) and bowing out in the posthumously published The Crozier Pharaohs (1984). During that fifty-five year period, Mrs. Bradley's cases filled the pages of sixty-six books and one collection of short stories (i.e. Sleuth's Alchemy, 2005).

As a mystery novelist, Mitchell was as prolific as she was original and imaginative. However, she was not always as consistent in the quality department and even her greatest admirers acknowledged her output suffered a decline during the 1950s, which lasted until the seventies – when she reportedly returned to the fantastic plot-elements that defined her earlier detective stories (e.g. The Greenstone Griffins, 1983).

So that would place The Echoing Strangers in Mitchell's dodgy period, but the book is still held in high regard by Nick Fuller and Jason Half of The Stone House. And was recommended to me personally by John Norris in the comments on my review of Late, Late in the Evening (1976). Purportedly, the book is a bizarre mixture of identical twins, a homicidal grandfather, blackmail and cricket, but also stronger than usual on detection and clueing.

Naturally, my interest was piqued and placed the book on top of my to-be-read pile, but forgot all about it until my previous review brought it back to my attention for obvious reasons. Since it has been a year since the last time I looked at one of Mitchell's novels, I decided to finally pluck this often praised title from the big pile.

The Echoing Strangers opens with Mrs. Bradley traveling down to the village of Wetwode, situated on the River Burwater in Norfolk, where she planned to a pay a visit to an old school-friend of hers, but upon her arrival she discovers that a family emergency called her school-friend to Gateshead – which leads her to hire a boat and sail down the river. When she navigated "a pronounced bend" in the river, Mrs. Bradley witnessed a bizarre scene on the lawn of one of the river-side bungalows. A middle-aged woman being pushed into the water by "a slender, handsome youth."

The adolescent is a seventeen year old deaf-and-dumb boy, named Francis Caux, who was orphaned at age seven and subsequently separated from his twin brother, Derek, which done by their despicable grandfather, Sir Adrian. A truly villainous character reminiscent of Dr. Grimsby Roylott from Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band" (from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892).

Sir Adrian Caux abandoned his damaged grandson and placed him under the wing of a guardian, Miss Higgs, who Mrs. Bradley witnessed being pushed into the river by her ward. On the other hand, Derek was brought back to Sir Adrian's home in the village of Mede. Consequentially, Francis and Derek have not seen one another for nearly ten years. Or so everyone assumed. But the river incident places Mrs. Bradley on the scene when the first, of two, murders is committed that are closely intertwined with the Gemini game the brothers have been secretly playing.

Mr. Campbell is "a misanthropic naturalist" and local blackmailer, who loved to observe "courting couples through his field-glasses," but someone had battered in his skull and his assailant found an original way to dispose of the body – attaching the remains to the bottom of dinghy by iron bands and staples. And the dinghy belongs to Francis!

Meanwhile, Sir Adrian engages a schoolteacher, named Tom Donagh, as a holiday tutor for Derek, but specified in the advertisement an "opening batsman and slip fielder" is "preferred." Even asking any applicants to supply their "last season's batting average." Sir Adrian loves cricket and heads the village cricket team, which in one scene has to play against the patients and doctors of "a sort of second-class Broadmoor." However, the main event is the annual game against the team of the village's longtime rival, the neighboring village of Bruke, but the game ends with the murder of the visiting captain, Mr. Witt, whose body was found in the showers of the cricket pavilion – beaten to death with his own cricket bat. Once again, the victim was a known blackmailer and Derek lacked a much needed alibi.

Evidently, this is a case requiring the hand of an expert and, luckily, Mrs. Bradley is in superb form with her eccentricities almost completely expunged. So she doesn't poke any ribs with a yellow claw or let loose a sudden, pterodactyl-like shriek that can be interpreted as a form of laughter. She sinks a lot of time in questioning the people occupying the neighboring bungalows in Wetwode case or theorizing about the role of the twins in the cricket murder in Mede. Despite being in top form, Mrs. Bradley is slightly reluctant to solve both murders.

After all, the victims were known blackmailers and they were about as popular during the Golden Age as kiddie diddlers are today. Mrs. Bradley is of the opinion that blackmailers are worse than murderers and considered the killing of these "poisonous pests" to be "a distinct gain to society," which is a sentiment often found in detective stories up to the 1960s and a very famous example can be found in Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" – collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905). She would not have touched the case had she not been plagued by "a personal desire" to know if and how the twin brothers are involved. And the role Francis and Derek played in the story also showed Mitchell was at the top of her game.

Mitchell does not underestimate the intelligence of her readers and confirms before the halfway mark what most have probably figured out by that point, but this revelation only complicates the case even further. And it definitively turns the story in who-did-what-and-why instead of a traditional who-dun-it, which actually makes the book more mystifying than you would expect. The presence of identical twins in a detective story can be a spotty business, but The Echoing Strangers is one of the rare exceptions and arguably the best possible use of the Gemini gimmick. I would even argue that the twins were put to better use here than a certain and somewhat famous Ellery Queen novel from the 1950s, because the reader here is mystified by throwing pretty much all of the cards on the table.

This well-written, cleverly constructed story succeeded in being both utterly simplistic and maddeningly complex at the same time. Not an easy accomplish, but Mitchell pulled it off. She also deserves praise for the creative explanation that answered why the murderer used such a round-a-bout way to dispose of Campbell's body. Mitchell always had a penchant for bizarre murders (e.g. severed head in the snake-box in Come Away, Death, 1937), but this was a particularly good one. It showed the truth behind the Shakespearan saying that, sometimes, there's method to someone's madness!

Once everything has been revealed and explained, a dark, grim shadow falls across the characters and the story ends on a tragic, but inevitable, note driving home the truth that this is one of Mitchell's greatest triumphs. One that ranks alongside the previously mentioned Come Away, Death, The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (1929) and St. Peter's Finger (1938).

Personally, I'll never understand people who don't like Mitchell, but The Echoing Stranger has convinced me to return more often to her fantastic detective stories. Luckily, I have several of her reputedly good and excellent titles on the big pile, which includes The Longer Bodies (1930), the illustrious The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935), Brazen Tongue (1940) and Groaning Spinney (1950). I also want to know whether Laurels Are Poison (1942) is as good as scholastic mystery as Tom Brown's Body (1949) and want to read Death of a Delft Blue (1964) for obvious reasons. So don't touch that dial!

In Days Gone By

"Has it ever struck you... that the majority of these so-called and self-styled grown-ups behave very, very much worse, more stupidly, more selfishly, than they would ever expect children to behave?"

- Mrs. Bradley (Gladys Mitchell's Tom Brown's Body, 1949) 

Late, Late in the Evening (1976) was the fiftieth novel in Gladys Mitchell's voluminous Mrs. Bradley series, which lasted from 1929 to 1984, and to mark the momentous occasion Mitchell returned to an earlier point in the books – when Dame Beatrice was still Mrs. Bradley. One of the characters mentions that, "many years later," they were the first to congratulate Mrs. Bradley when she was made a DBE. So the book takes place some time before Watson's Choice (1955), which was the last book before Mrs. Bradley received her Damehood.

The story is laced with nostalgia and reads as if the genre itself is reminiscing about its childhood days spent in the many small, quaint and picturesque villages that stud the English countryside. You can even read the description of the book's setting, Hill Village, as an allegory of the changes the landscape of the detective story has seen in the decades succeeding World War II.

It's described how the village has "become an urban overspill" where "factories have grown up," a "motorway runs nearby" and "council houses and tall blocks of flats" were erected on a vast common once known as The Marsh, but story being told takes place long before progress marched across its rustic landscape – during a period when a charming village could still play host to one or two murders without being shamed as hopelessly old-fashioned. However, being hopelessly old-fashioned is an accusation not easily leveled against even the most traditionally structured and plotted of Mitchell's mystery novels (e.g. The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop, 1929). Late, Late in the Evening is no exception to that rule!

There are several narrators in the story, but the best-drawn and most memorable ones are a brother and sister, eight-year-old Kenneth and ten-year-old Margaret, who came down from London to spend their school holidays with their grandfather. The first quarter of the book is a lovely depiction of village-life in the early part of the previous century, which imparted such important knowledge on whether to buy sweets from old Mother Honour's post-office and general store or Miss Summers' bread and confectionary store – both of them offered advantages and disadvantages to the village children.

We also get to learn the layout of the village and some of the people who live there. Where and with whom they play. How they struck up a friendship with a boy, Lionel, who's the grandson of the local matriarch, which becomes important later on in the story and everything is littered with references to food: brandy balls, sugared mice, chocolate cream rabbits, biscuits and bars of chocolate cream. Mitchell had an uncanny knack for creating believable child characters that were neither miniature adults nor could be cast as Damien in The Omen, but I don't remember reading a novel of her before, which prominently featured children, that were this obsessed with sweets. It was just very noticeable.

 

Anyhow, the highlight of their story is attending the yearly village fair, which had "its roots in the dim and distant Middle Ages," but the "only remaining vestiges of its original function," besides the trade from outside merchants, are the small stalls, boots, tents, roundabouts, swings and other "exciting and noisy pleasures." It's an annual happening children save up for all year to have money to spend on the fair grounds. A significant part of this chapter takes place inside a tent to a watch, what would be considered today, an American-style wrestling match and the contest is between Tiger-Cat Bellamy Smith and Jacques Collins. Of course, one of the attendees is heard muttering how it's a rigged game, because "the winner knew he was booked to win and the loser knew he was to lose" as they "both knew exactly when the dénouement would come." It was a fun, lively and interesting chapter, but you're probably wondering at this point what happened to the plot.

A quarter into the book, Mrs. Kempton, local matriarch and Lionel's grandmother, writes a letter to Mrs. Bradley about her troublesome and supposed brother, Mr. Ward, whose back story echoes John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938) and E.R. Punshon's Ten Star Clues (1941). Ward is a lodger of the next-door neighbors of the Clifton's grandfather and Mrs. Kempton is worried about his mental health, because he was seen digging apparent random holes all over the village. She also fears for the safety of her grandson. Lionel is an obstacle to a full-inheritance.

It's a fear that seems justified when a birthday party Mrs. Kempton threw for her granddaughter, Amabel, ended with the discovery of the battered body of a young girl in a dinosaur costume. Lionel was seen wearing a similar outfit and Ward is nowhere to be found, which is suspicious to say the least.

There are not many suspects and the observant, experienced reader will probably identify the murderer early on in the story, but the scarce number of suspects was handled with more skill than I expected from late-period Mitchell. Gladys Mitchell is somewhat of an acquired taste and some of her work misses the lucidity once expects from detective stories, because Mitchell saw her books as fairy tales and rarely took crime itself seriously – which can result in an incomprehensible mess (Hangman's Curfew, 1941) or a what-the-hell type of story (The Rising of the Moon, 1945). But when she gave her plots and clues as much attention as the writing you were in for a rare and original treat: Come Away, Death (1937) is one of my all-time favorite mysteries and St. Peter's Finger (1938) is still one of the book I would recommend to lure people to both Mitchell and Golden Age mysteries.

Plot-wise, I would rank Late, Late in the Evening somewhere below Mitchell's best work, but above most of her middling-efforts. However, the best (and saddest) aspect of the book is its depiction of how effectively time can obliterate the past. When the book opens, the village no longer exists and all of the events that are described took place many years before. The final chapter takes place a year after the murders and Kenneth and Margaret pass by the village, but they don't "want to go any further," because the changes had already began to manifest themselves. And then there's Margaret's question to Kenneth, "do you believe there was every any treasure hidden," which is answered with the final line of the book: "I did when I was younger."

I think those last lines are a good description of the genre and how it changed from the days of Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. When there was high-adventure waiting everyone who would dare seek it, but then the genre was forced to "grow up" and forgot how to dream and wonder as it wallowed in the soul-murdering drabness of modern realism. So Late, Late in the Evening is a fond, but sad, reminiscence of the genre’s earlier and happier days. On that account alone, I would recommend the book.

Anyhow, I've blabbered on long enough and will cut-off the blog-post here, before I start ranting and raving about the contemporary crime novel. I'll return with something less bittersweet for the next review.