I cannot believe I did not know this book existed until it arrived in the mail as part of my subscription to the British Library Crime Classics club. Apparently (according to Martin Edwards who writes an introduction to each book published by British Library) it is a "lost classic" first published in 1950. To my shame, I assumed that anything that lost can't be that great, considering how famous Green for Danger is. But I'll say it up front: in my opinion, this is her best book and I canNOT believe Alfred Hitchcock did not make this into a film. It has all the elements that would appeal to him: the lead character is an independent modern woman, very much like the character played by Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes, a creepy collection of characters who are not what they seem and who are obviously keeping terrible evil secrets, a mysterious lord of the manor who is aloof and taciturn and all the sexier for it, and a charming Welshie (should be played by Michael Redgrave if he could do a decent Welsh accent) who makes it his business to irritate our heroine, whipping her into a frenzy of rightenous indignation. Add to the mix the amazing character development that Brand does best: smart women who do silly things all while knowing they are doing silly things but can't stop themselves because they need to prove to everyone around them that they are not silly. Then, to cap it off, a whiz bang ending that has people "tripping" off cliffs onto jagged rocks below, a suicide motivated by unrequited love, a villian monologuing just long enough for the hero to shoot half his face off, and a heroine who staunchly refuses to fall in love with her rescuer only to fall head over heels in love with him. Music swells. Fade to black.
Let's begin at the beginning: Our heroine, Katinka (yes, really) writes an agony aunt column for the magazine Girls Together. Miss Friendly-wise, the BFF workmate of Katinka's, kicks her painful high heels off and pads down a hallway to tell Katinka (who writes under the name Miss Let's-be-Lovely) that another letter from "Amista" has arrived, only to find Katinka on the floor of her office, legs in the air, vigorously bicycle peddling. (Katinka advises all her readers to do so during dull moments at work.) Then the two sit together, reading over the latest missive from their mysterious letter writer who, once a week, writes asking for advice on how to get a man. "Amista" (they refuse to believe that is a real name) has spent the past year telling them about her love for a man, a Mr. Carlyon, who refuses to notice her. Each week, Katinka chivvies Amista along and provides valuable advice: use a mud mask to clear bad skin, get a fashionable hairdo, buy a bold color of lipstick, change up your nail polish color every few days. Amazingly, over the course of a few months, the letters become less morose and more optimistic: the gentleman in question has noticed Amista and is taking an interest--his hand brushed against the back of her hand once! Taking full credit for this positive turn of events, Katinka advises Amista on how to reel in her love and get a wedding band on that finger. And, even more astonishingly, it seems to have worked as the letter that arrived today tells them that she and Mr. Carlyon are now engaged and the wedding date is set--all thanks to the wisdom of Miss Let's-be-Lovely!! Katinka is pleased but not overly surprised--of course her advice worked--she's brilliant! Yet, she secretly wonders, why then is she so miserably alone, only able to capture the attention of cads and roués who grope and paw her clumsily when she goes out evenings, hoping to find loving companionship? It's a puzzle....Fed up with everything, Katinka decides she needs a holiday--a real one--that will get her far from London. Then she has a brainwave: Amista lives in Wales and Katinka is Welsh (in the sense that until she was five or six years old she spent summers there with distant relatives) and, get this, she has one distant relative (Great Uncle Joseph, known by locals as Jo Jo the Waterworks because he lives near a huge reservoir) who is still alive and lives on the outskirts of Swansea, a town not very far from where the letters from Amista get posted. So...why not head out to Wales and hunt down this Amista and see if she can give further advice to Amista so that her wedding is all that it should be? Off she trots.
Katinka assumes she will blend right into the Welsh landscape but, to her amazement, everyone who looks at her laughs and takes joy in teasing her. One man in particular rubs her wrong, a tall man who could be handsome if he didn't find such joy in giving her a hard time for not knowing where she was going or who anyone is. And to make matters worse he is wearing a suit that is "just too brown a brown." Eventually, she gets them to reveal that the house she can see perched atop a huge craggy cliff (like a vulture--not a good omen) across a long inlet from the sea belongs to Carlyon. But, they insist he lives alone and that he certainly is not engaged to be married nor ever was. Katinka, wobbling on her fashionable high heels dismisses them as ignoramouses and sets out to walk to the house. It's one helluva walk and requires her to wade through 6" of fast running water that is quickly rising with the incoming tide. Exhausted, bedraggled and dirtied, she finally manages to reach Carlyon's house. And, surprising to no one but Katinka, he isn't thrilled to see her--indeed he's extremely rude--and insists that (a) there is no "Amista" and (b) he isn't engaged or recently married to anyone and (c) no, she can't come in to look around to see if he is lying. THEN, to her astonishment, up trots the man in the too brown suit who introduces himself as Mr. Clucky (a name too stupid to be real, Katinka concludes) who claims to be a police detective hired by Carlyon for protection against nosy journalists, which he assumes Katinka is! Mystified, Katinka agrees to leave (she knows when she isn't wanted) but then notices there, right next to Carlyon on a small table by the door, a letter waiting to be posted .... from Amista!!!! Sputtering in shock, Katinka is hauled away when suddenly her ankle twists and down she goes, unable to walk another step. Of course Carlyon thinks she lying--using her "twisted ankle" to work her way into his house. But unable to be a complete cad, he allows her in to have tea, telling her that as soon as she is recovered, she has to go. But her ankle really does swell up amazingly and the inlet tide is rising so it seems no one is going anywhere anytime soon. Feeling extremely pleased with herself, Katinka has succeed in getting an invitation to stay the night.
And what happens then? A series of bizarre events that leave Katinka certain she is going mad: the household has a live in nurse who nurses no one and a helper named Dai Jones Trouble--another silly name--who runs various errands, many of which require him to lope across the crags doing God knows what. She is shown to her room, given a drink that sends her into a deep uneasy and delirious sleep and awoken at 3 in the morning by a someone wearing a featureless mask and a bloated white claw dripping with blood. Unable to move--from fright or because she's been tethered to her bed, she can't tell--she passes out. The next day, finally freed from her room, she tells everyone her story and no one believes her: no one else lives in the house and no one looked at her or crept about her room while she slept. Then things get really weird: while Mr. Carlyon is out on the hilltops walking off his endless rage, Mr Clucky grabs Katinka and drags her into the attic where he shows her stacks and stacks of boxes and suitcases, all filled with extrenmely expensive women's clothing as well as photos of him getting married not once, not twice, but three times! Where are these women now? Convinced that "Mr. Clucky" is (a) no policeman but a journalist and (b) Mr Carlyon is a victim of a terrible tragedy (well, maybe several terrible tragedies) and (c) Mr Carlyon is incredibly handsome and (d) she's madly in love with him and (e) Mr Clucky is a most annoying buttinski who keeps ruining every moment she finagles to get alone with Carlyon and (f) Mr Clucky can't decide on how thick his Welsh accent is and (g) keeps calling her "bach" and other sweet Welsh terms of endearment to cause her to sputter in indignation.
All this within just twenty four hours of arriving in Wales! Before another 24 are up there will be a murder, a suicide, an attempted murder and then a killing and all questions answered most satisfyingly. There needs to be a new category of books invented for such a book: "comedy romance mystery psychological thriller farce" would almost capture it.
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