Another mystery by E C R Lorac, a pseudonym for Edith Caroline Rivett, who wrote at least 49 mystery novels, most of which feature Chief Inspector Macdonald. Macdonald has many of his cases in London but he also solves murders in Lancashire. Fell Murder, Lorac's 25th mystery book, was written in 1944 so by this point, Macdonald has mastered the criminal mind. Why is Macdonald in Lancashire so often--or at all? Well, this is his first time there and the excuse is that the locals are so overwhelmed with patrolling rationing, they can't take on anything else. Apparently English people just cannot stop themselves from breaking the law when it comes to reporting the number of egg laying chickens they have or the number of bees one needs to feed during winter. So, with a dead body and an impossible mystery on their hands, the locals send for help and Macdonald arrives. Immediately, he falls in love with the scenary--this book has a LOT of descriptions of "fells" (whatever those are) and "tidy" stone walls. At some point in this story he decides he wants cows. In later Lancashire novels, he decides he wants a pretty piece of land there for those much desired cows. I don't know if he ever doees, but since he features in Lorac's books through 1959, he may eventually become a (mystery solving) farmer.
In this story we have the usual loathesome old man who bullies his adult children. He isn't the richest guy in the area, but the family has been on that land the LONGEST so that makes him the most important person. He owns a lot of land but is obligated to allow other farmers to use it--hundreds of acre's worth--but he isn't a landlord in any sense that I understand. Apparently, the use of this land passes down through families so future sons have a legal claim to farm the land merely because their families have been doing so for centuries. Weird.
So here are the children who are the prime suspects:
The oldest son, Richard: He married the love of his life and his father had a fit of rage and kicked him off the land and out of his life forever. Richard joined the navy and hasn't been seen since. At the start of the novel we learn that 25 years have passed since he left, his wife has died, and he has a serious case of Fell Lust. So he comes home--not to see his family but to see the land. He arrives in town at the train station and sets off on foot to walk over all the fells that he remembers from childhood. He has two week's leave and intends to spend the whole time walking, figuring this is the last time he will ever see the place. He doesn't contact anyone in his family, so they all think he's in the middle of the ocean or dead. But is he? Nope. In fact, he's just a stone's throw away on the morning of the murder!
Then we have son number two, Charles: This guy is the classic know-it-all loafer who is too cool to farm. He's spent all his adult life managing a quasi-government/quasi-privately owned company that is exploiting Malayams until just a few months ago when everything went south and he barely got out alive. He came back to England with nothing but the ragged clothes on his back and a serious case of resentment. He spends most of his days bumming smokes off other people and venting rage because his father expects him to work but won't pay him a living wage. He says over and over that he has no intention of ever being a farmer, but he also makes no effort to leave.
Then there's Marion: She's the only daughter and works her ass off on the farm. She's actually the one that runs things and works from sun up to past midnight every day. She secretly accumulated her own batch of chickens so she can sell the eggs and keep the money to herself. Her dream is to buy a few heifers of some special sort of breed. (There's a lot of cow talk in this book.) But she felt she had to ask her father for permission, even though she has the money. Her father is perpetually cruel to her, telling her that it's "unnatural" for women to run farms and that he has no intention of ever giving her anything, let alone the farm--and he CERTAINLY isn't giving her permission to buy cows to keep on HIS land. The night before the murder, she decides that she is through with asking; she is going to TELL him she's getting cows and he can accept it--or else!
Malcolm: The only son of the old man's second wife (he convinced two women to marry him??) so really a half brother to the three older siblings. He is weak and prone to fainting, and wants to be a poet--an occupation that his father is, unsurprisingly, disgusted by. He spends most of his time tending his bees and sleeping in hay lofts or behind stone walls so no one can see him. He announces at every opportunity how much he LOATHES his father and wishes him dead.
Hired help: There is the requisite easily flustered older lady and a simple teen boy who can do small tasks if everything is explained slowly. And there is Elizabeth, an unnaturally beautiful university student who is studying literature. Guess which sibling she is crushing on? She is spending her summer learning how to farm as part of some sort of "work program" that requires university students to do useful things for the state. Sounds communist, to me.
So on the day in question there is a fox hunt, but not the kind with horses and red coats and bugles, but the kind with farmers with guns walking around in fields with "beaters"--their simple farm help--(it seems each farm has a teen boy who is simple in the head--must have been the fashion at the time) who walk around, trying to flush foxes so they (the foxes) can be shot. The dead foxes are collected and auctioned because, as everyone knows, every farmer's wife like like to get fancy with a fox coat sometimes. So just before everyone else is done foxxing, Old Man Garth heads back home and enters a small shed building of some sort, and is shot dead, smack dab in the middle of his forehead.
And, as with many of these cozy mysteries, Old Garth was not loved by anyone and won't be missed. To give you some idea, on the evening of the day his dead body is discovered, all the farmers gather in the local pub to get the gossip. At first, no one is really comfortable saying anything so Garth's nearest neighbor, Stanby, stands up with his beer in his hand. He holds it aloft and announces that he's going to say a few words about Garth. Everyone quiets down and waits eagerly as Garth desperately tries to think of something nice to say. Finally, he comes up with, "Well, he worked hard." All the farmers nod and mutter in agreement making comments like, "He sure did" and "Nowt anyone worked harder." Beer still aloft, the neighbor tries to think of something else kind to say. He can't come up with anything both kind and true, so he says, "And he always said what was on his mind." Everyone heartily agrees with that and cheer in agreement. That terrible task taken care of, they all settle down to talk about what REALLY interests them, which is who dunnit. They quickly agree that Marion is most likely the murderer--she had cause, she's tough and she can handle a gun. But they don't hold that against her--"She's as good a farmer as any man--and better than many!"--and all promise to fulfill the contracts with her as they would have with her father.
Into this scene lands Macdonald. He instantly realizes that he's not going to get anything useful out of the farmers if he swoops in like some fast talking city slicker so he puts it into 1st gear, dusts off the Scottish accent, and starts wandering around the fells, waiting for a shy farmer to come to him. Eventually one does--it's the neighbor Stanby. Macdonald compliments Standby a few times, mentions how "tidy" his farm is, and pretty soon Macdonald has a new best friend. Now that he's thoroughly embedded in this tightly knit community, he learns everything: who loves who, who hates who, who owes who money, who's useless with cows, that sort of thing. And, as with all Macdonald mysteries, he figures out who did it long before anyone else know anything and he sets a trap to get them to reveal themselves. In this case, by using someone as bait without their knowledge or permission. He announces everywhere he goes that the person in question (a) saw something significant (wink , wink) just before and after the shooting, (b) is weak in bed with fever and has been given a MASSIVE sedative and (c) the house that person is in will be ENTIRELY EMPTY that evening. Yep, just as he knew would happen, the murderer steathily creeps into the house and up the stairs, ready to kill the alleged key witness as they lay in bed snoring. But it's all a trap: Macdonald jumps out just in time to save our feverish snoozer and begins his chase of the murderer across the fells. (Again with the fells!) And, as usual for a Macdonald mystery, the murderer does the honorable thing by hiding behind a "tidy" stone wall and shoots themselves dead to save the family the embarassment of a trial.
One of these days Macdonald's superiors are going to start questioning how he solves every murder but never manages to arrest a single criminal.
No comments:
Post a Comment