The Theft of the Iron Dogs by E C R Lorac

It's 1946 and Macdonald's friends, The Hoggetts, are up to their eyeballs in end of harvest tasks: fences have to be mended, outbuildings repaired, woodpiles restocked, and fields cleaned up and readied for winter.  These tasks necessitate walking around the whole property, taking stock of one's things and their condition.  While doing this, Mr. Hoggett notices strange things: things missing, a woodpile toppled over, ash and old, burned food cans in the fireplace in their "cottage" [an "outbuilding" next to the river that friends and relations use when visiting in the summer, where kids can play, fish and get out of the city and get into nature], his favorite old coat missing from the barn...all inconsequential events by themselves but taken together, imply someone making themselves too comfortable with their things and on their land. But, aside from the loss of stuff so tatty that even rag and bone men wouldn't take them, nothing seriously criminal has happened. Yet Mr Hoggett--who is featured in earlier Macdonald mysteries, has decided that he's not too bad at the sleuthing business and so decides that something very sinister is happening.  Mrs. Hoggett, being a practical farmer's wife, thinks that the family children who visited in the summer didn't clean up properly, or lost things, or moved things so they could play dress up and so assuming crimes have taken place is ridiculous.  But, she suggests teasingly, perhaps he should call up his Scotland Yard friend who can race out and track down his moldy old coat.  ("It's a really good coat!" Mr. Hoggett laments. "It was MOLDY!" says Mrs. Hoggett.  Mr. Hoggett half wonders if SHE got rid of it when he wasn't looking. She won't even dignify that with an answer.) So, he decides he WILL call up his London policeman pal to find out what he thinks of it all.  And if he gets to sit by the fire and jaw with Macdonald, all the better.  

Conveniently, a petty crook who Scotland Yard had been keeping track of on the theory that a small fish lead to big fish, has slipped his tail and was last seen heading west--all the excuse Macdonald needs to spend more time in his favorite place--where he STILL hasn't purchased farm property!  (Each time he visits he moans about how much land costs-well, it ain't getting cheaper!) Once he shows up and hears Mr. Hoggett's recitation of facts, he sets out to meet with every local who claims that they, too, have had something stolen: a leaky pair of boots, a hat that was on a scarecrow, a few old tins of beans, some really nice fishing line, moth-eaten drapes kids were using for dressup...and this is what perks up Macdonald's 6th sense for evil: a pair of "iron dogs" taken from Hoggett's cottage. [No one explains what "iron dogs" are but I gather from the things the characters say that they are heavy iron things that are usually in a fireplace to keep logs up off the floor. I would call that a chimney grate.] ANYWAY: The reason these iron dogs pique Macdonald's interest is that all the rest can be explained by tramps or travelors crossing the country and taking things they need to keep warm, or eat or sleep comfortably, or kids playing with things and not putting them back, or simply poor memories of what things one owns or where one actually left them. But none of those explanations account for missing iron dogs: a tramp would never schlep a pair of iron dogs around while trekking across country.  And if a travelor wanted to steal things to sell for cash, there were dozens of much more valuable things they could have stolen (tools, say), but didn't.  So why would someone want really heavy not valuable pair of iron dogs?  Hmmm...and then Macdonald has one of those brain waves he's always having and asks if anyone has gone missing recently. Nope, not so's you'd notice. Any strangers been hanging around or passing through?  Just the usual sorts..but wait!  There was that odd city fellow who pretended to be local and who fits the description of the crook who fled London! After weeks spent wandering across fields in the daytime and hanging around pubs getting sloshed at night, he just up and vanished! 

Macdonald quickly realizes that he's too old for the sort of larking about that this mystery is going to require so he calls back to London and asks for Reeves to come up to help out. We last saw Reeves in Checkmate to Murder, the young copper who loves nothing more than leaping over fences, scaling walls, running across rooftops and--best of all--nabbing bad guys and hauling them away.  Of course Reeves is keen and promises to get there as fast as 1946 transportation will allow.  Macdonald is relieved but also concerned: Reeves is a dyed in the wool Cockney.  How is he going to handle this collection of back of the beyond locals who don't take kindly to strangers?

It turns out that Macdonald's fears were completely misplaced and Reeves takes to Lancashire like a sheep to a field of "bent grass". And what about the locals, how do they feel about Reeves?  Well, Reeves does two things to win them over: (1) he incorporates "champion!" into every conversation which makes him friends with the menfolk; and (2) he insists on taking over cooking the "farm breakfasts" for himself and Macdonald and on cleaning up, lightening Mrs. Hoggett's To Do load significantly, which makes her very fond of him. (Breakfasts include: 6 farm eggs, half a loaf of homemade bread, fresh coffee from a giant pot, farm honey, farm butter and one pound bacon each.  This meal is to last them to "tea" (which is served around 5 pm), which features pretty much the same food except tea instead of coffee, cheese instead of bacon, and a fat slice of "seed cake" (whatever that is).  By my calculations at least 4 loaves of homemade bread are eaten every day by just 4 people.  If Macdonald planned to miss tea (because he was going to be out in the fields or in the woods looking for clues), Mrs. Hoggett would pack up a GIANT "snack" for him--an entire meat pie, several apples, boiled eggs, and cheese.

So Macdonald and Reeves set out to examine the river (the Lune), up and down the shore, mile after mile, looking for a suitable place to hide evidence of a crime. Finally they find the perfect spot: right at a bend, under a willow tree that is growing over and within the river, there is a spot that is always at least a few feet under the water, even during the dryest months.  So into the water they go and finally they find it: a human-sized object wrapped in old curtains, tied up with fishing line, and weighted down with iron dogs.  Once reinforcements come out, they can begin the nasty business of pulling the thing out, unwrapping it, and finding the missing London petty thief. But who did it and why?  The local police are convinced this is the work of a big city gang who bumped off someone who double crossed them.  But Macdonald is convinced that it must be someone who lives locally as otherwise how could they know about that spot in the river, or where to find the necessary bits and bobs that were used to conceal the corpse?  And yet...it couldn't have been someone VERY local as they would have known to not mess with a farmer's wood pile or leave a mess of ash and food cans in a fireplace.

And then there is that slightly unhinged artist renting out a farm house so he can find inspiration to paint (but is really hiding from military service).  Macdonald looks through his stunning (but disturbing) portraits stacked all over his place and finds...a painting of the dead man!  Add in a family of "potters" (which is the local term for Gypsies or Travelors) who leave trails through woods and over fields by tying tiny bits of colored fabric--the same fabric that was used to wrap a corpse--to branches, trails that pop up and then disappear just before other crimes are discovered. And then the very nervous wife of the leader of the potters (who, it turns out, is on the run from a wealthy family and using her potter life to hide until she suddenly disappears without a trace) turns out to have borne twins years ago and given them up for adoption and now they're exactly the same age as the London crook and the painter!  Coincidence?  Hardly! And then there's Mr. Shand, the wealthiest landowner in the county, nosing around, always popping up where no one wants him, hell bent on convincing Macdonald that there is nothing to see and that he should just head on back to London where he belongs--what's he hiding?

Thirteen Guests by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon

Farjeon--his real name--is famous for writing "creepy" thrillers. His most famous was Number 17, which was turned into a fantastic film, Number Seventeen, in 1932 by Alfred Hitchcock. He comes from a very arty family: his grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, was a famous actor; his father, Benjamin Farjean,  and sister, Eleanor Farjeon, were novelists; his brother, Herbert, was a playwright; and the other brother, Harry, was a composer.  Our Farjeon started his writing career by getting a very nice gig at Amalgamated Press (AP Press) where he learned the ropes and then went rogue when he was about 30 years old.  He cranked out 2 or 3 novels a year and all were highly regarded and successful--a great combination.  If you consider the characters in this novel, it's not difficult to imagine them arising from stories his family members told him about their experiences on the stage and in publishing. 

Thirteen Guests features a classic set up: an ordinary guy, John Foss, was just dumped by his girlfriend and so he gets on a train to anywhere, convinced he is going to "do something drastic" when the train gets to the "end of the line."  But, fate intervenes: when the train pulls into a rustic station in the middle of nowhere, John is too wrapped up in his self-pity to notice and just snaps out of it when the train starts reversing out of the station, back to London. Since London chewed him up and spit him out, he bolts off the train, flings himself out the door, and does a stupendous pratfall onto the station platform, snapping his leg. The few people at the station all circle around him. worried, and John assures them he is fine --and then flops over in a dead faint. "Coo, 'e's gorn off!" announces the porter. Then, just when things couldn't get any worse, the most amazing older woman--a real woman, not a mere girl like the one who dumped him--orders a chauffer there to pick her up to load John into the car and off they set to the nearest doctor. This mystery woman, Nadine (very Southern Gothic sort of name and person), intends to leave him at the doctor's but he's in such a sorry state she can't bear to abandon him. So, once the doctor wraps up his leg and tells him to stay off it a few weeks (!--that wouldn't happen now, he'd be forced to do PT and get back to work) she insists he accompany her to a nearby stately home (again with the stately home) owned by Lord Aveling.  Apparently the Lord is having a "do" and it promises to be amusing. Or at the very least, diverting. The fact that John hasn't been invited is no problem--everyone brings friends and relations to Aveling's shindigs.  So they arrive and--ominous music--they learn that, now that John has been added, there will be thirteen guests. "You know what that means!" Nadine says to John who clearly does not. "Whoever is number 13 is going to get killed!"  John assumes she's joking.   

Well, eleven guests arrive and everyone is keen to learn who 12 and 13 are going to be--and which will enter the house first and who will seal their fate by entering after?  Finally, a car pulls up the 50 mile long driveway (it's not that long, but it IS long--everyone comments on it) and out pop a very unpleasant looking couple, Mr. and Mrs. Chater.  She looks spiteful and suspicious and he looks grasping and dangerous.  And, because of a tussle with a suitcase, she enters first and he last.  Yikes, bad news for him.

I now know why closed circle mysteries involve only 5 or 6 people as too many more is just too much to manage. And thirteen is IMPOSSIBLE.  And on top of the 13 guests we have four residents (Lord, Lady and the adult daughter, Miss Anne, Aveling, as well as an ancient, dying grandmother, Mrs. Morris.  And then there is the house staff: the voluptuous Bessie and her insanely jealous and prone to outbursts fiance, Thomas the butler, and a Chinse cook, Leng, who (to everyone's astonishment) makes  standard English food really well.

John is brought into the house and arranged comfortably on a divan in a "front room."  I'm not sure what a front room is, but this one has a fantastic view of the entire front and right side grounds, has a lot of books, and has three doors that are very thin so even if they are closed, one can hear everything going on in the front hall and on the stairs leading to the upstairs bedrooms. John is fed, covered with heavy blankets, loaded up with pain pills and a few shots of whiskey, and off he slips into a psychedelic delirium. (What was in those pills the doctor gave him?) The house occupants are fascinated with him and treat him as an exotic creature and one by one they stop in, bring him tidbits to eat and all sorts of drinks, books and magazines--some even sit and get to know him a bit. And then they leave him to have massive meals in the dining hall, dance to wild music, go on hunts, and sneak around at all hours playing musical chairs with their bedrooms and sleeping partners.  John can only see a bit if someone forgets to close one of the sliding doors all the way, and he can only make sense of what he hears if he hasn't taken too many of those pain pills. So he isn't the most reliable narrator but he learns enought to make clear that strange things are going on in that house.

So here are the 12 guests, besides John: 

Mr Chater: The guy who is certain to die and no one cares as he is a blackmailer that it turns out no one invited because he is loathesome and has dirt on half the people in the the house.

Mrs Chater: She talks to no one and vaccilates between being terrifed of her husband and hating him with a passion.

Sir James Earnshaw: An experienced MP whose political perferences are entirely determined by the  most generous donor. He wants to marry Anne Aveling to get the family money and keeps trying to get alone with her in dark corners.

Zena Wilding: A middle aged stage actress who fears that she is becoming irrelevant.  She unwisely married an actor named Ted Turner (who did not go on to create Turner Classics Network), a no goodnik who was actually married to someone else at the time, so their marriage is null and void.  But that doesn't stop him from pestering her for money at awkward moments.  She has managed to find the perfect play to relaunch her career and hopes Lord Aveling will finance it.

Leicester Pratt: An artist who paints attractive portraits for money and paints fantastic abstracts for art's sake.  He has been asked to paint a portrait of Anne Aveling and so has set up his tools of the trade in the large studio, a separate building behind the house. He's decided to go bold and is painting a very arty and very unflattering portrait of her that enrages her "just a friend" boyfriend.

Edith Fermoy-Jones: a "large lady with impressive glasses" who writes silly murder mysteries. No one can stand being with her because she is a know-it-all who steers all coversations to plot points in her books.  No one has read any of her books but they pretend they have to keep her from getting even more annoying.

Mr. and Mrs. Rowe:  The sort of boring couple that show up to these sorts of things because someone invited them to a weekend years ago, and they just keep coming. They like to play bridge, gossip and go to bed early.  Mr. Rowe is particularly worried if the meal schedule gets interupted. He's made his wealth "in the sausage business."

Ruth Rowe: Weak with big shadows under her eyes.  She doesn't say much and is under the controlof her opinionated mother.  

Nadine Leveride: We've already met her. She's in her late 30s (she won't give her age, but assures John that she's "much too old" for him), was married to an extremly wealthy much older man who tolerated her silliness, died, and so she's here, to her surprise, to mend her broken heart that she thought couldn't be broken. 

Taverly: I don't think I ever learned his first name.  He's a "strong, big" guy who loves Anne but (for reasons I'm not clear on) pretends he doesn't.  I think it's one of those things where he's known the family forever and now that he and Anne are finally adults, it's obvious that they should marry and merge their wealth, but neither can be the first to suggest it in case the other laughs.  He likes to talk about cricket and is good at riding horses and hunting. He also always has a cigarette on hand to give to anyone whose nerves have been shattered from finding a corpse. He refuses to dish any gossip and when asked about anyone always says, "He's all right."

Lionel Bultin: Here's an interesting character.  He started his adulthood with dreams of becoming a serious journalist who would expose the rot but one day, ten years ago, he was sitting in his hideous bedsit on the verge of starvation when he made a momentous decision: no longer would he care about truth or justice but instead he would write to make piles of money. And in that instant he transformed himself into a gossip columnist: he spends all his time drifting from one social event to another, writing up juicy bits of conversations he overhears or invents. Everyone who is on the way up or down the social ladder wants to be near him, hoping he'll drop their name into one of his columns so their career gets a boost. He's completely coated his idealism with a thick shell of cynicism. He's miserable and tells everyone that anything but misery is idiocy. All he needs is to get invested in something that really matters and maybe, just maybe, that crust of cynicism will chip off and a real journalist will emerge. Here's hoping!

That's 13. I won't go into the murders or the mysteries (there's all sorts of back stories that get these people into trouble) as it involves too many people, all eavesdropping on each other by hiding behind doors and pressing glasses against walls (does that actually work?) and creeping about in dark hallways at all hours of the night (did anyone actually get any sleep during this weekend?) that results in: four dead bodies (one dead man found at the bottom of a cliff, one dead man in the woods, one dead woman at the side of a road and one dead dog found behind the studio). At one point, they just start stacking up the corpses in the studio. 

Into this fiasco steps Inspector Kendall with a team of young officers whose job is to make sure no one destroys evidence or leaves the property while Kendall questions everyone and pokes around.  Naturally, Ms. Fermoy-Jones has excellent suggestions on how to sleuthe, none of which interest Kendall.  Indignant, she vows to create an "Inspector Kendall" (she tries to think of a last name that rhymes with "Kendall" but can't come up with one) in her next book--and it will NOT be a flattering portrait, she promises herself. Kendall is no nonsense, extremely observant, clever and, though many of the guests are feeding him false clues, Kendall trusts no one and has no qualms about using guests without their knowledge to test out his theories.

Romance, murder, comedy, and farce swirled together with fistfuls of pills and big swigs of iced whiskey and warm brandy result in: one broken engagement, two marriage proposals, one rescued marriage and three resuscitated artistic careers. It's a great story but I really wish I had drawn up a map and time table so I could have kept track of all the people sneaking around the house, the grounds, in and around the studio, in the woods, at the three nearby pubs, and at the top and bottom of a handy cliff. 

Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

It's 1955 and Inspector Cockrill is getting on in years.  Against his better judgment, he is convinced that he needs to have a bit of fun and so allows himself to be pressured into joining one of those tour packages that take a small group of people around European cities, beaches, churches and restaurants that serve strange food and icky alcoholic drinks. (He just wants chips and a beer.) He is cranky and a poor conversationalist and finds his tour group mates--all of whom act way more happy than anyone has a right to be--tedious.  All he wants to do is read his book--a murder mystery, unsurprisingly--in peace.  (But, secretly, he really enjoys watching little dramas play out among the members of the group: one couple's marriage fall apart and not for the first time, two women fall in love--one for the first time and one for the thousandth time, a flamboyant fashion designer's status is far less impressive than he claims, the tour guide's charming Italian accent fades every time he gets bad news from the company he works for...)

Luckily for Cockrill, just a few days in, one of his tour group mates is murdered so he gets to do what he really wants to do, which is investigate a crime. And, as usual for Brand, this murder is both impossible and too possible: our small group is on an island at the seaside and everyone is dozing in the later afternoon sunshine when one claims she has a headache and decides to lay down in her cabin for a while. And then she is found dead, after having been stabbed repeatedly near her cabin door and then (this is the disturbing part) rearranged so that she is laid out on top of a bright red cape on her bed like Snow White in her glass casket. The problem is that all the suspects were in one another's line of sight the whole time, so none of them could possibly have done it. Yet, we also find out that the murder victim wasn't nearly as nice a person as she pretended to be as she got sadistic pleasure from blackmailing people. She had no need of money, she did it simply to yank their chains. And every one  of the suspects has at least one secret they desperately want to keep hidden.  Except for Cockrill, of course...

So how was it managed? As usual, Brand's style is to have Cockrill ask questions and then come up with a hypothesis of how the murder was done by Suspect #1 but then discover one crucial bit of material evidence that doesn't quite fit.  So, he asks more questions and finds Suspect #2 to be the killer, until ANOTHER material clue is found which proves that theory impossible.  And on it goes, through all the suspects, which leaves us with 6 people, all of whom had an excellent motive for killing her, but it being absolutely impossible for any of them to have done it. By this time, the facts and events have been described and redescribed with corrections, edits and deletions that the whole thing is a complete muddle.  Fortunately, Brand supplies a map so we can keep things (and everyone's line of vision) in mind:

The line of windows at the top of the map are cabins that the tour group members use to sleep in.  The murder took place in one of the middle ones. The huts are where people can get towels or change clothes after swimming. "Jasmine Tunnel" is a tunnel completely covered with jasmine vines and flowers--and is the only place where someone could hide completely out of sight of anyone.

NOTE: Cockrill did NOT go swimming but spent the afternoon sitting in a deck chair reading his murder mystery and snorting derisively at the poor plot points. "Nothing like real life," he thinks over and over. As much as he hates the book, he hates it more when the others interupt his reading with their inane comments and questions. You can see him in the upper portion of the map on the left side, next to Louli, a vivacious woman who wears outlandish red wigs and vivid pink lipstick and sparkly orange toenail polish--Cockrill finds her alarming but also strangely sweet and charming--except when she gets self-conscious and turns into a chatterbox.  

The local police have no interest in investigating as they prefer to spend their time inspecting ships coming into port and collecting "tarriffs" (that is, taking fixed percentages of the goods along with hefty bribes). Cockrill is obviously disgusted and laments their lack of Englishness. So he cuts a deal: if he can lead the investigation, he'll identify the culprit. The police (none of whom speak English well) don't understand what he is saying and he tries to explain his plan by comparing his department in Kent to the CID at Scotland Yard. Once they hear the phrase "Scotland Yard" they are ecstatic: they think he's a Scotland Yard detective and are thrilled to be in the company of someone connected to such an esteemed organization. (You can imagine how this makes Cockrill feel if you remember his experiences working with youthful Scotland Yard colleague, Charlesworth, in other novels.) Yet they are itchy to execute someone--anyone--in the town square as, they believe, this will inspire the townsfolk to be lawabiding. So they compromise: Cockrill has three days to solve the murder and if he can't do it, they will grab whomever they want and execute that person at dawn on day 4.  

So with the clock ticking, Cockrill puts his brain to work and...comes up with diddly.  On the eve of day 3, he resorts to drastic measures: he's going to have everyone recreate their actions of the afternoon of the murder (with him adding a secret twist) with the hope that their actions will expose a murderer. I won't spoil the story by revealing the solution--which was completely unexpected by me, at least--but I will say that, at usual, Brand delivers an excellent cast of absurd characters who all desperately try to hold their shit together but ultimately fail. Unsurprisingly, when the dust settles and the culprit is hauled away, they want nothing to do with one another and each heads for home, sadder but wiser.

The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons

This book is really unlike the other books I've reviewed by this publisher so far.  For one, it was published in 1964 and so the world wars are over but in exchange for rationing struggles we get darker mental states and also a blacker sense of humor.  And while it has the requisite drug use we also get explicit homosexual relationships, one even involving a central character--and no one seems to think much of it.

Julian Symons sounds like an interesting, curmudgeonly person: he was born into a very poor family in London in 1912 so by 14 he had to drop out of school and work to bring money in for his family.  That probably wasn't such a terrible thing for him as he had a stutter and so was forced to attend a "school for backward children" (his phrase).  As a result, he had to teach himself to read and write and, basically, everything else he wanted to know.  He started working as a typist and clerk for an engineering firm, but soon was publishing stories and able to make a living doing that.  He self-identified as a communist and hoped that that would allow him to avoid military service in WWII but no luck, and found himself in the Royal Armoured Corps (so he did something with tanks) for two years before being invalided out. Apparently he didn't have much respect for the cozy murder mystery authors like Agatha Christie yet still wrote murder mysteries that were structured pretty much identically to those classics: stately homes filled with hateful family members all fighting tooth and nail for an inheritance with bodies piling up.  Yet there is no way you could confuse this book with, say, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie's first stately home mystery and features Hercule Peroit): Symon's characters have an absurd nastiness that makes you hate them all while you are laughing at them.

So, what's going on here?  Well, it starts as they always do with an utterly ordinary child, Christopher--the narrator of the book--who has wonderful parents who both hate the mother's family because they are mean, insane and hurtful.  So, cut off from that family they are also cut off from their wealth and so both have to work.  They are getting by, but only barely.  It's unclear what Christopher's father does for a living. Christopher tells us that his father boasts he is a "filmaker" but never says which films he's made. And what exactly does he do when making these films?  Then, as must happen otherwise we wouldn't have a story, tragedy strikes: both Christopher's parents die in a plane crash and he is an orphan.  He has no idea until a huge Daimler pulls up outside his friend's house and out steps a woman wearing a crushed cobalt blue gown and a black hat with a giant feather stuck into it.  She informs Christopher that she is his grandfather's (mother's side) sister-in-law and the only relative he has willing to take him on--then adding that she is only doing it out of a sense of duty. They are going to live at Belting, which is the name of a ridiculously large "stately home" filled with crap "Lady W" (that is what Christopher calls her) has collected. This crap not only includes the ordinary stuff colonizers collect (masks, animal heads and skins, old weapons) but roomfuls of maps of places where battles were won.  Lady W informs Christopher that he is going to earn his keep by finishing the book Lady W's husband was working on when he died. The book is an ode to Sir Wainwright's glory and immense skill at amassing wealth at the expense of others.

There are six people in the household: 

Stephen Wainwright: The oldest living brother. He doesn't work but acts busy and feels aggrieved.  Christopher hates him on sight.  Stephen thinks he is far more clever than he is, and far better at keeping secrets than he is.  At one point he thinks he's scored a verbal victory over Christopher and Christopher describes him as "tossing his hair like a girl" and smirking as he leaves the room.  He never talks but screeches, or squeals, or whines.  

Clarissa, Stephen's wife: She breeds bulldogs and looks like one, as she is short, thick and her legs are bowed.  She is greedy and has an explosive temper. She considers herself very poorly used for having to "take care of" the old lady for YEARS so she is damned well going to get a big cut of the Wainwright wealth when the old lady finally dies.  She actually does nothing to take care of the old lady or anything helpful at all, really, as she spends all her time in the "stables" with her dogs or at the dining table inhaling enormous plates of food. Clarissa always brays or bays. She is also prone to slapping her own thigh "as if with a riding crop" when frustrated.

Miles Wainwright: The youngest brother: He is short and fat and bald--not thin haired, but bald with a shining head.  He is also inance and could be mistaken for an idiot as he laughs at inappropriate moments and amuses himself with odd spoonerisms and word plays that no one else appreciates.  He used to be married to a wild acress/artist/heavy drinker and was for a brief moment an actor in Paris, but somehow his mother ("Mamma") reeled him home and back under her thumb.  He allows himself one hour a day to secretly place bets on horses. 

Lady Wainwright/Mamma: The formidable elderly lady who controls everything.  She makes no secret that she has no respect for Stephen or Miles. The fact that they are still alive when their older brothers, David and Hugh, both died tragically in the war just proves how pathetic they are.  According to Lady W logic, gods die young, which explains why she worships her dead husband and two oldest (dead) sons.  David was her absolute favorite: the smartest, best looking, funniest--one of those people that is larger than life--well, according to Lady W, that is.  Hugh looks almost exactly like David but just slightly lesser than: not as tall, not as slim, and not as handsome. But he is still sublime...Unless you talk to people outside the family who knew him and then he was an arrogant, lying user who never paid for anything and backrupted all those around them. David was a "writer" (he hadn't actually written anything because he died in the war, but if he had lived...) and Hugh was a "poet" (he, too, had never written any poems because he died in the war but if he had lived...). What about Miles?  Pfft, says Lady W, actors aren't artists. At one point, when Christopher is about 16, he cannily tells Lady W he intends to be a poet and she beams--and tells him she will add him to her will, leaving him 20,000 pounds. (Keep in mind this is the mid-60's.)  She also allows him to take over several rooms on the third floor of the house to read and write in so he can develop his artistry.  (Stephen and Miles do not like that at all and from that point start keeping a very close eye on Christopher.)

Peterson:  An elderly housemaid who takes care of Lady W.  She's cranky and has a moustache.

Thorne: An elderly gardener and chauffer who is kind to Christopher if Lady W isn't looking.

Christopher is sent off to the local private school. The first time he sees it, he is AMAZED at how large and old it is.  He is certain he is going to get an EXCELLENT education there.  Then he discovers that it is no different from the education he was getting at ugly public school in London.  This shift in perspective is a theme throughout the book.  When Christopher finally breaks loose from Lady W's orbit and learns what other people have to say about the Wainwrights and about life in general, he realizes how far less wonderful Wainwrights are and how perverted their values are. He does well in school, gets scholarships and gets accepted into one of the Oxford colleges.  (He doesn't say which, but it's the one all Wainwrights go to, so Lady W approves.)  He finishes school and returns to Belting for the summer holiday before he has to leave for university in Fall...and then all hell breaks loose. 

He's barely stepped through the door and the household is in an absolute panic:  Lady W has received a letter from David!  He's alive!  He wasn't killed but captured by Germans and then traded to the Russians and tortured for years. Somehow he escaped and made his way across Germany and into France, and he's been living in Paris since!  And he's coming home!!!

Well, Lady W is estatic as finally one of her good sons will be with her. Christopher, too, is pleased and intrigued. But Stephen and Miles are NOT happy: in fact, right before Christopher's eyes they transform from fools into scheming vipers hell bent on doing WHATEVER IT TAKES to keep this "interloper" ("Obviously it's not David!" shrieks Stephen....) from getting a cut of their inheritance. Unbelieveably, the first thing Lady W announces at dinner that night--before even seeing the guy claiming to be David--is that she is having her lawyer visit the following day as she has already rewritten her will so that it includes "David" and one of her primary heirs. Well, if Stephen and Miles (and Clarissa, of course) were angry before, now they are incandescent.

And then the man calling himself David arrives.  Lady W recognizes him at once but Stephen and Miles are equally convinced he is a fraud--yes, he can describe perfectly all their shared secret childhood stories and he even has an appendix scar in exactly the same place (along with a lot of other scars that imply the torture stories are true) but he's been gone 20 years!?  It simply can't be!  Peterson thinks he's a fraud.  Thorne thinks he's David.  Who's right?

Then Thorne is killed--a bullet right in the middle of the forehead. What does that mean?  Did he find out "David" was a fraud so "David" killed him?  Or did Miles or Stephen or Clarissa kill him because he allied with David?  

Then, as if things couldn't get any odder, the police show up and drop the real bomb: This isn't the first time the police have investigated this family for murder!  And though they couldn't prove Hugh had killed his "business partner" (because Hugh had double crossed the guy and absconded with all the business profits and the guy wasn't going to stay quiet about it), the police inspector makes clear that this time, the murderer isn't going to buy their way out of the noose! And now the real sleuthing begins.  Christopher follows clues to seaside magic shows, a boat ride to Paris, slummy hotels, alleys fill with drug dealers, art houses, more hotels, empty theatres showing an Ibsen play...you name it, if it's beatnick artsy illegal and dangerous, Christopher blunders through...and during his adventure unwittingly solves both murders, reveals the identity of "David" and falls in love! (Elaine, his sleuthing partner and crush, hates the Wainwrights with all her being as she is convinced that one of them--she doesn't care which one--killed her uncle and so destroyed her father twenty years ago.  She's one of two journalists writing for a tiny "newspaper" in a tiny seaside town and wears glasses when she wants people to take her seriously.  Christopher likes her curvy legs and fails to listen to her brilliant deductions because he is too busy trying to figure out how to softly lay his hand on her hand and then casually, as if by accident, start holding her hand.) 

Epilogue:  Stephen, Clarissa and Miles are feeling smug.  Lady W is dead and they are the primary beneficiaries of the massive estate...but guess what?  Lady W, like her son Miles, is a terrible with money and made many, many "unwise investments".  In fact, there are so many debts, the bank owns everything and they all have to move out of Belting immediately.  So... was that David?  And if not, who was it and how did he know so much about the family? And who killed Elaine's uncle?  And who killed Thorne? And what's going to happen to Miles and Stephen and Clarissa, now that they are penniless? And if Christopher can't go to university now because he can't afford it, what will he do?

The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude

This novel was first published in 1936 and is set in an impossibly beautiful coastal area where people make a living processing chalk to turn it into lime (which is then used to make cement)--and this process turns out to be the key to the whole terrible mess at the center of the story.

How to make lime from chalk:

(1) Chalk is quarried and broken into (relatively) small chunks.

(2) The chunks are loaded into the top of HUGE--25' tall--brick kilns set up against the side of a quarry pit wall. Alternating layers of chalk and coal are loaded from the top of the kiln and, once full, a cap is placed on the kiln and the coal/chalk mix is fired up to cook at 1000C degrees.  Once it has cooled, the kiln is opened at the bottom and the lime shoveled into big sacks and taken to a nearby train depot to be shipped off to wherever. The kiln is allowed to cool and then loaded up again.  There are three kilns right next to each other, placed centrally among the chalk farms in the area, and they are run round the clock, every day of the year. (That's a lot of lime!)

As you can imagine, that kiln is the perfect place to dispose of a dead body.  And as you can also imagine, that chalk gets all over clothes and shoes and is nearly impossible to clean off and so is an easy way to see who has been near the chalk kiln recently and what a murderer has been up to. So now that that is explained, what's the mystery here?

Well, for once we do not have a loathesome patriarch who needs killing.  Instead, we have a pair of brothers in their mid 30s who co-own a chalk "farm" called, unimaginitively, Chalklands Farm. In looks, the brothers are identical: very tall and beefy from man-handling chunks of chalk and sacks of lime day in and day out.  But in all other regards, they couldn't be more dissimilar. John is loud, fun, brash and full of beans.  And unmarried. The other, William, is quiet, reserved, unimaginative and hard working. And married to Janet, who is about 10 years younger than him.  She is described as "attractive," "fine featured," and as having a "brilliant intelligence in her eyes" that is at odds with her "Gosh, I have no idea!" behavior.

So the story starts with another fight between the brothers.  This is nothing new as they disagree about everything, but mostly about the best way to manage the money generated by the farm. Is that all the fights are about?  No, because it seems that Janet has long since stopped loving William and has started getting a bit too touchy feely with John--and William may be slow on the uptake, but he isn't that slow. Since both have a 50% share of the land, they are required to cooperate with each other, a fact that both resent.  To William's annoyance, John announces that he has plans for the weekend that require him to drive up the coast in his brand new expensive roadster.  This leaves William to work a double shift by himself.  If John notices how much William is seething, he acts like he doesn't care.  So, John sets off around 5 pm, intending to get to his destination around 10.  (This is mid summer and the days are long.)  But he never gets there.  Instead, his abandoned car is found at the side of the road.  It looks like he had car trouble, pulled over and was never seen again.  Worryingly, his cap is laying on the ground about 20' from the car in a field and there is blood on the car seat and a trail of blood on the road.  

So, police are called in and William is notified.  He doesn't say anthing (he never does) but he seems nervous and worried--is he worried for John or for himself?  Unluckily for William, he doesn't have an alibi as he spent the evening working alone and then went to bed early.  What about Janet?  She "went for a long walk to think" and didn't get home until about midnight.  (A witness later cooroberates that, saying that she saw Janet walking around, carrying a large, covered basket.) Oh, and who owns the farm now?  William owns it outright, unless he gained the land by crime...

Superintendent Meredith is called in.  As usual, he is highly competent and has no family or personality problems.  Interestingly, we actually go home with him on weekends and meet his wife who is funny, pretty, friendly and wholly competent, and their son who is about 10, loving and has a real passion for "cops and robbers" stories--he is really proud that his dad catches "bad guys" for a living.  

Meredith finds a lot of clues. So many, he concludes that either the murderer is the stupidest person ever to have lived or somebody is laying out clues like Easter eggs for him to find. Among those clues are the large bones of a human male and a few buttons and cuff links at the bottom of the kiln William said he used on the night John went missing.  So, that seems to mean that William incinterated a man and his clothes.  Well, that doesn't look good for William. And it all makes sense except for the fact that there is no skull.  Why burn the body and clothes but not the skull?  And where is the skull? 

THEN he finds out that, although John's body was found only 4 miles from home, the gas tank (which was full when he left the farm) shows he had driven over 40 miles before pulling over.  So did he drive around in circles for a hour before pulling over?  (Perhaps the MOST interesting part of the story is that that John's 1934 convertible got 40 mpg!)  

Meanwhile, William is a nervous wreck: he can't account for his actions on the night of the murder, a witness saw a large man (William-sized) wearing a big floppy hat and swirling cape while riding a bicyle on the road near where John's car was found just after the time John would likely have been attacked. But what does it all mean?  Then, Janet calls up Meredith in a panic: her husband, William, is dead!  His body was found at the bottom of the chalk pit with a big dent in the side of his head, made (it seems) after he dove (head first) onto a giant piece of chalk.  Did he slip?  Well, the suicide note and full confession to his brother's murder says otherwise.  So, that's that, right?  William waited for John at the side of the road, killed him, road back home on his bicyle and burned up the body in the kiln. But, stricken with grief, he does away with himself and tosses himself off a cliff but not before carefully explaining how he did it.  Janet is saddened, but tells Meredith that it all makes sense, and there is no reason for Meredith to keep hanging around. And, she adds, the whole place now gives her the heeby jeebies so she is moving--she's not even going to pack anything up--far, far away and never come back. (Wait--does Janet own the entire farm now?  It looks like it...)

Well this IS a pretty kettle of fish! Meredith is deeply unsatisfied:  Did William sabatage John's car or flag his down at the side of the road?  But how the hell does a bicyle outpace a sports car--even if it is driving around in circles?  And how did William get John's body to the kiln if he rode back home on a bicycle?  The guy is big but he isn't THAT big...

Then things really take a strange turn: there is talk of a "caped man with a big bushy beard on a bicyle" who for the past few months has been renting a house in the middle of nowhere about 10 miles away.  Here's the witness we need! He'll tell us what happened at the side of the road!  But wait--a few days ago we thought that the caped bearded bicycle man was William making a getaway from the scene of the crime...what happened to that theory?  But it gets weirder: no one ever sees the guy LEAVE the house--they just see the caped man ride TO the house.  What they do see is ANOTHER guy--no cape, no bicycle, no hat, no beard--walk away from the house, through the fields and on to the next town where he catches a train to London. Are these two guys just one guy who uses the house to change identities?  Why would anyone do that?  What the hell is going on here?

And, finally, FINALLY, the shoe drops: Meredith has had the whole thing wrong from minute one.  And what tips him off?  A report that came from a pathologist who said that the bones found in the kiln were not fired in the kiln but in fact were cleaned and preserved as human bones are when they are prepped to be used as models for medical schools.  So someone stole a set of bones--but not the skull--to fake a death by kiln...So was ANYONE murdered???  And where the hell is Janet?  And what was she carrying around in that basket at midnight on the night of John's disappearance?

Crook O'Lune by E C R Lorac

We are back in Lancashire with Inspector Macdonald who, again, finds himself dealing with a murder mystery in a teeny weeny community that has been crime free since the dawn of time--except every six months or so when they are plagued with a series of crimes so mysterious that Macdonald has to leave London and put his understanding of the criminal mind and his Scottish accent to work.

This book was published in 1953 so finally we are out of WWII, rationing has officially ended, and life is returning to normal. The story begins with Gilbert Woolfall, a savvy businessman from the big city, sitting in a comfy chair by a big fire in the sitting room of his uncle Thomas Woolfall's farm house.  The uncle has recently died in an accident (or was it?) that was surprising and doubly tragic as he had just recently finished getting the family's financial messes in order and spent much of his inherited wealth on fixing up the farmhouse and outbuildings so that they are comfortable, beautiful and practical: the roof is repaired, the stone walls fortified, the kitchen plumbing fixed and the floors in the cattle barns clean, level and disease free for the first time in two centuries.  Then, just when he was hoping to actually put the farm to real use by getting "real" (profitable) cattle, he died in a "farming accident."  So here sits his nephew Gilbert who is himself nearing 50, in the perfect chair, trying to make sense of his uncle's vast piles of papers, both legal and personal. (The Woolfall's are a litigious lot so there are a lot of deeds, contracts, settlements and rental papers PLUS Uncle was nearly finished with his "tell all" book that would shine a bright light on one of the oldest--and very suspect--families in the area.)  

Soon Gilbert realizes that, though he intended to make his visit as brief as possible so he could get back to the city and his job, this house and land is the most beautiful place he's ever been and he starts to wonder if he could seriously settle down and continue his uncle's task of restoring the family's farm, wealth and legacy. Then, just when he is feeling cozy and dozy, he hears a knock on the door.  Resentfully, he gets up and lets in the rector, Mr. Tupper.  If Charles Dicken's had described Mr. Tupper, he would have used the words "pinched" to describe his face, "darting" to describe his eyes, and "jealous, resentful and greedy" to describe his personality.  Mr. Tupper feigns to welcome Gilbert to the neighborhood but his real mission is to find out if Gilbert will give him what he wants, which is a legal claim to an old rectory that is on the Woolfall land.  Gilbert quickly sizes up Tupper and tells him right out that, no, he has no intention of handing over a giant chunk of land to the church.  Then we get the full backstory: many centuries ago, a Woolfall donated a massive chunk of land to the church on condition that they would build and maintain a school providing a free education to all children in the surrounding areas.  So, they did--until just after WWI when families left farms to move to the larger nearby cities and took their children with them and the school was closed. Since the church failed to keep up their end of the bargain, the land reverted back to the Woolfalls.  Well, Tupper doesn't see things that way: he tells anyone who will listen that the Woolfalls are a bunch of cheats who stole from the church. Then the real reason comes out: he is tired of traveling over narrow, rough roads to get to a rectory in the nearest larger city (by no means a big city--but it has a pub).  Tupper wants to give his sermons in the local rectory, which is tiny.  Also, the locals don't even attend church so, really, he wants a job, a salary and control of land here all while doing nothing at all. Still Gilbert refuses.  Sputtering with rage, Mr. Tupper storms off, reminding Gilbert how poor he (Tupper) is, how crappy his car is, and how likely it is that he'll die on the roads and it will all be Gilbert's fault! You may think we are getting foreshadowing but we aren't--Tupper isn't going to die any time soon as he is a whiny jerk that hassles people throughout the whole novel. 

Seconds after Tupper leaves, Mr Hardwick shows up to have a talk, too.  According to Hardwick, Gilbert shouldn't stay as he can't really make good use of the land.  Hardwick and his adult sons, however, have been serious farmers for decades and actually know how to do an honest day's work.  PLUS--who do you think actually did all the work repairing all the buildings Gilbert is enjoying?  They did.  Of course, Gilbert points out that they were paid fairly--sure, Hardwick concedes, but that isn't the point: the issue is who deserves to be able to farm the land--the person who knows how to farm the land or the person with more money to throw at the land?  It's a tricky point and one that almost works on Gilbert. He promises to think about it.

Then, the housekeeper shows up. Will Gilbert EVER get to sit down and relax?  Mrs. Ramsey was his uncle's housekeeper and announces that she has stocked the kitchen with foods that even a man can manage to cook and that she is heading off to her sister's.  She is done working and the uncle's sudden death brought things home: she wants to retire, live with her sister and her family and enjoy what time she has left. Gilbert understands, thanks her, and wishes her well. She heads out the door to catch a ride with Mr Tupper who promised to take her to the bus stop a few miles a way.  FINALLY Gilbert gets some peace and quiet..no, in pops Betty Fell, a local farm lass with a good head on her shoulders and a strong back. She comes right out with it: Gilbert, you are useless and there is no way you are going to manage a farm and this house without help. So here is my offer:  My boyfriend and I will get married, live here and work the land. You go back to the city, work until your retirement in a couple of years and then, when you are really ready to retire, you can come back to live and by then, we'll have saved up enough money from farming your land so that we can buy a house of our own.  Hmmmm....that's the first offer that interests Gilbert: he keeps the land, keeps his job back in the city until it makes more sense to retire, and then he settles here when he's good and ready. Gilbert doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no, and both understand that the deal barring unforeseen circumstances is as good as made.

That same day Macdonald shows up to visit friends (The Hoggetts) he made on one of his many previous visits to Lancashire when called in to solve mysteries.  He's not there on business but has decided that he really, really wants to buy land and this time he's going to do it.  The day after he arrives, he hears the news: the old Woolfall house had a fire in the celler and the house half burned down!  Fortunately, no one was in the house: Gilbert had gone back to his city job, Kate and Jock hadn't yet gotten married and moved in, his housekeeper had moved on...But then, once the smoke cleared and the house (what is left of it) is examined, the facts are revealed: the housekeeper had NOT left as Mr Tupper had refused to give her a lift to the bus station (he was mad at all Woolfalls and took it out on her) so she missed her bus and decided to spend one more night at the house before leaving the next morning. So now everyone hates Mr. Tupper even more than they did before. And Gilbert starts suspecting that his uncle didn't die because of an accident because, given that the fire would have destroyed his uncles papers thereby preventing the tell all book from being published if he (Gilbert) hadn't fortuitously moved the papers into the sitting room near the comfy chair. If someone was willing to burn a house to stop a book from being published, wouldn't they also be willing to kill the author?  So: arson and manslaughter and possibly murder and plenty of suspects (Tupper, Hardwick and anyone who wanted to stop Betty/Jock from getting a leg up). AND, just to complicate things more, there has been a rash of sheep stealing and everyone thinks that a sheep rustler is hiding behind every clump of grass.

Why steal sheep?  Because the price of wool had gone up 1000 fold so sheep are just living sacks of money with four legs. Why would sheep theives set a house on fire? yeah, that doesn't really make sense...unless they were trying to get someone who was getting in their way arrested for arson...Does that make sense? Not really.

So once again Macdonald has to emesh himself into the local culture to get people to reveal their shameful secrets. But before all is revealed we are going to have to deal with more sheep stealing, attempted murder and another murder. As for the title, the river near the land has a sharp bend in it which the locals call a "crook," one peron is nearly killed by a shepherd's staff ("crook") and the master mind is, of course, a crook--stealing sheep, trying to steal land and, in general, causing all sorts of havoc.  

So does Macdonald end up buying any land?  Nope. Here's a painting of the actual place done by J M W Turner, painted around 1818:

Suddenly At His Residence by Christianna Brand

Here is a classic closed circle murder mystery set in a stately home that was the the style in the 20s and 30s, yet this was published in 1947.  As she often does, Brand's authorial voice announces right at the start that we are about to meet 10 people, two of whom are soon to be killed and one who is a murderer.  Even with that information, it isn't possible to figure out who did it as Brand is a master at setting a scene that quickly implicates every single person (except our intrepid Inspector Cockrill) and then, just as easily (as more information is discovered), proves that none of them could have done it.  So: either the people are lying or the physical evidence is not what it seems...or both. It's both.

A complicated and emotional and wealthy family is the center of this story and, as is often the case, the patriarch is extremely disappointed with all his adult grandchildren because he (rightly believes) they have spent their adult lives squandering opportunities and embarassing themselves.

Sir Richard March:  The wealthy grandfather who married a ridiculously beautiful woman, Serafita, who died after having three children. Those children all married, had children--the characters in this story--and then died, too. Serafita was a ballet dancer/actress whose portraits are all over the massive home.  There is even a "small" (four large rooms) cottage on the property that has been turned into a kind of shrine that features a pair of her amazingly dainty ballet shoes literally on a pedastal.  Brand repeatedly mentions how tiny they are and how large and clunky the feet of the two granddaughters are.  The yardstick of excellence in this family is whether they could wear those shoes and it's obvious they cannot. The anniversary of Serafita's death is coming up and all family members (so the grand kids and one very young great grandchild) are required to show up and pay homage to her amazingness. And on the eve of that anniversary, when all are gathered together, Sir March announces he is going to cut all family members out of his will THAT NIGHT and have his lawyer arrive, witness the signing of the new will the next morning, and then take the only copy to the lawyer's office in town. Unsurprisingly, the old guy is dead within a few hours and the new will--if indeed one was ever made--is nowhere to be found.

Peta: the oldest and most beautiful grandchild--but she's no Serafita--is unmarried and so has no children, and is a bit of a flake. She almost just about could have been a ballet dancer (ooh--so close to being acceptable) but then she had a growth spurt and became long and leggy--more of a model than a dancer.  So of no value to anyone, believes the old man.

Philip, second oldest grandson, is married to Ellen: He's doctor and so is exhausted and crabby because the war is dragging on, all medical supplies are in scarce supply, all well-trained medical staff are in short supply, so he decided to have an affair with his cousin, Claire. His wife, Ellen, knows all about it, though Philip doesn't know she knows as Ellen works very hard at pretending she doesn't care--very "modern," she tells herself.  She's also busy with their baby daughter who is just learning to walk and talk and so is delightful. She may have failed as a wife, Ellen tells herself, but she won't fail as a mother.

Claire: The youngest grandchild who is also unmarried and has decided that she really likes having an affair with her cousin primarily because she believes no one knows about it and is hoping that snagging a doctor means she can quick her full-time job which is boring.  In fact, everyone knows about the affair and they don't like it.

Bella: Sir Richard March's second wife who began her career as a mistress to old man March while Serafita was still alive. While they were having their affair, he repeatedly talked of how much he hated his wife and was dreaming of the day he was rid of her. Then, once she does die, he rewrote the narrative and turned Serafita into the most fantastic human to ever have lived.  He married Bella before Serafita's body was cold and her primary task is making sure masses of Serafita's favorite flowers are in vases in every room.  And for god's sake, don't bump the roses in the yard when they are in peak bloom as then their petals drop and you have ruined EVERYTHING!  Because, of course, those were Serafita's favorite flowers.  Don't even look at them!!  Bella is perpetually sad and is always told she'll never get anything once the old geezer dies but she will be allowed to live and maintain the property but ONLY AS LONG AS SHE MAINTAINS ALL THE ALTERS TO SERAFITA!  Unsurprisingly, everyone assumes she hates her husband and her life.

Edward: The one grandchild of Bella and who is a weakling prone to fainting.  (There's always one.)  Because this is the 1940s, Edward spends all his time on psychiatrists' couches being told what his mental illnesses are.  He has been seeing multiple psychiatrists who each charge a small fortune since he was 10 or 11 and has been given dozens of different diagnoses. The latest one, of which he is very proud, is "fugues." One of his doctors told him that the reason he is a mess is because he is constantly losing consciousness (and the reason he didn't know that is because he is always losing consciousness) and so warns him gravely to NEVER look upward otherwise he could explode his brain once and for all. No one in the family believes there is anything wrong with Edward, other than the fact that he is a spindly good for nothing loafer, and so he becomes increasingly resentful that no one will listen to his stories of how broken his brain is. (To be fair, they have been hearing this for 15 odd years--since he was about 7--and it's getting old.) He is particularly jealous of the baby as everyone adores her and she doesn't even have a rare mental illness!!

Mr and Mrs Brough: The faithful servants.  Mrs spends all her time cooking and picking up petals as they fall to the floor underneath all the vases and Mr spends all his time raking the sand walkways (not gravel, sand, because Serafita preferred it) so they don't show footprints.  It's a living.

Ok, so after the family all arrive, have a massive meal, have a massive fight (lots of quips by people who call each other "darling"), the grandfather storms off to sleep in the cottage/shrine so he can spend all night staring at the giant protrait of Serafita. No one is sorry to see him go. There is much drinking and much time spent "toileting" the baby.  (I think, but am not certain, that that means putting her on a potty to see what comes out as a way of weaning her out of diapers. All I know is that every hour or so, someone had to "toilet" her, like you would a puppy who isn't housebroken.) All this toileting gives people an alibi at a different time of the evening but also means they have no idea what the others were up to during that time.

The next morning Claire carries a tray of coffee and breakfast things out to Old Man March--making the only footprints in the otherwise perfectly raked sand walkways--and finds that the door is locked from the inside.  She bangs and bangs but eventually gives up, puts the tray down and peeks into a window with a curtain pulled aside, and sees the old man, dead, sitting in a diningroom chair, slumped over onto a dining table, with nothing but a glass of water on the table.  And a vacuum next to the table. (Sounds oddly random but it turns out to be important.) She runs back to the house to tell everyone, but before they can even figure out what she is saying, the lawyer arrives (thinking he is going to be picking up a new will), sees the hullabaloo and orders them away from the cottage, off the sand walkways, and into the main house until a dear friend of his, Inspector Cockrill, shows up and to find out what happened.  

All the windows in the cottage are locked, of course, and the door key was inside, in the door lock.  So the family insist that the lawyer is being ridiculous, the Old Man just had a heart attack. Yeah, as if!  Of course he was murdered--POISON in that water glass! Worse, the poison is exactly the kind Philip carries in his medical bag which he keeps with him at all times. (But not when he is toileting his daughter...keep that in mind!!!) 

Well, Cockrill does show up and doesn't like what he finds: a bunch of unskilled liars that are easily tripped up.  And then there's Edward who is convinced he accidently looked upwards, slipped into a fugue state, and killed his grandfather. Everyone's assurances that he isn't that interesting do not comfort him. But the real puzzle is that the only foot prints in the sand leading to the cottage door are Claire's which she made when she was walking toward the cottage with the breakfast tray, and the second set, she made when she was running away from the cottage back to the houset!  So who did it and how? Well, as usual for Brand, seven solutions are proposed--each pointing to a different suspect--and then each proven impossible.  Only the baby is in the clear.  

Did Philip come to his senses and realize that he really prefers Ellen to Claire?  Will Ellen take him back?  Will Peta finally decide to get serious and do something of value to society with her life?  Will Edward ever get it together and realize that all his brain problems are just life problems?  Will Bella get out from under the shadow of Serafita? Will the baby ever get out of diapers? 

Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg

Sprigg was the pseudonym of Christopher Caudwell, a Marxist theorist and "activist." He wrote nine murder mysteries as Sprigg, but his real value to the world was his socialist activism, academic writing and his commitment to killing fascists while saving the lives of his comrades during the Spanish Civil War.  He was killed in Jarama, Spain, when he was only 29 years old.  E P Thompson said of Caudwell, "It is not difficult to see Caudwell as a phenomenon--as an extraordinary shooting-star crossing England's empiral night--as a premonitory sign of a more sophisticated Marxism whose true annunciation was delayed until the Sixties."  

So Caudwell was a smarty-pants.  But how good was he as a murder mystery writer? Annoyingly good, actually.  Death of an Airman was published in 1934 when Caudwell was only 27 years old and there are a few things about it that are striking right from the get go:  

(1) Most significantly, the murder victim, George, is an incredibly charming, likeable character: an intelligent, funny yet serious pilot who is trying to earn a living by doing air taxi and shipping work. And, he is the ONLY likeable character in the whole novel.  The rest are scheming, stupid, or utterly selfish and unwilling to lift a finger to help anyone unless forced to at gunpoint.  This is the first murder mystery by this publisher that I've read which really seems sad. 

(2) Religious devotees are annoying and tend to hinder rather than help situations: Early on we meet a Bishop from Cootamundra Australia who is "on leave" (what exactly does that mean for a bishop?) and decides that he wants to learn how to fly a plane to fill his empty hours. Instead, what he does is fumble around, get in everyone's way, unwittingly withhold important evidence from the police, and almost manage to get himself killed because he's too stupid to realize that the character who keeps pushing  drinks on him is the killer who has spiked the whiskey.

(3) Women are crueler and smarter than men, but they also work harder and are therefore better pilots, managers, witnesses and criminals.  Here are three of note:

Sally: manages the airfield by keeping a bunch of loafing mechanics in line and by covering the booked air taxi requests at the drop of a hat--she is perpetually complaining because she really is the only employee at the airfield who earns her wage. She's there from 5 am until well after midnight and doesn't seem to have a private life.

Laura: is a stunt pilot who gets her blood pumped early in the morning by flying upside down so close to the ground that no one can see or hear her plane engine approach. "Better than coffee!" she explains to the befuddled Bishop. Students can hire her to teach them to fly, but they need to be prepared for her to get to ridiculous heights, put the plane into a tailspin and then let go of the controls to see if they can handle themselves in an emergency.  Most barely survive and vomit impressively when they get their feet on the ground.

Lady Crumbles: a matronly Countess who spends her seemingly inexhaustible energy organizing people and parties to raise money for various charities (always paying herself first, though). No one wants to be alone in a room with her, not even her husband, because they'll get volunteered to do something really unpleasant. Her latest brainwave is that the air field is a mess and so she needs to raise money by  organizing a charity air show. And to get people really excited, she is going to collect together a group of pre-teen girls who will be mascots of the Air Field, "like Brownies but in the air," she explains. Her initial name for the girl troup is Air Fairies but her husband convinces her that she needs to work harder.  She's offended by his innuendo, but decides that Airies--because it's more like Brownies--is a better name anyway.

There are various male pilots and male mechanics, too many to go through in detail. Most of them drink and complain a lot. 

The action starts right away when George decides to have an early flight and does his usual loop di loops and such forth, then ducks behind a wooded area out of sight and then....that's the last of him.  People idly watching his stunts slowly start to wonder where the hell he could have gone, since the cleared area over there is too small to land a plane safely on.  First one, then another, head over to see if he's all right and, no, he very much isn't all right: the plane is down, flipped onto its back and he's collapsed against the controls. Dead. No one can understand as he is way too good a pilot (and person) to have died so stupidly. And, anyway, the planes are designed to propel pilots out during crashes so they suffer a broken arm at most. But then the Bishop steps up (he's been waiting for George so they can begin his first lesson with him) and then announces that (a) he has extensive medical training and (b) George didn't die of a headwound but of a bullet to the brain  and (c) notice that the seatbelt was tied around his waist and so he couldn't have been thrown from the plane AND (d) George has been dead for more than 12 hours!! (This is the last time the Bishop/Doctor says or does anything useful.)

Welp, in come the detectives.  The guy in charge is Inspector Creighton, a no nonsense inspector who suspects everyone of everything, which is good because there is WAY more going on at this air field than meets the eye. 

For starters, teaching students how to fly is the least of what these pilots get up to. A far more lucrative job is using their planes as "air taxis". The basic idea is that someone can call the air field and reserve a pilot and their plane to take them anywhere in Britain and pay per mile.  And the crazy part, it isn't that expensive--just a few pence per mile!  One guy (who is utterly irrelevant to our story but allows the Inspector to discover some of what is going on at this place) regularly has someone fly him to Scotland in the morning and back home before dinner that same day. But the big money comes from running shipments of newspapers from the printer to the news agent centers in various cities all around the UK. It works like this: suppose the air field is outside Exeter, which has a local newspaper, The Exeter Gazette.  Each night it prints up tens of thousands of copies of the day's issue. But they need to get those papers to news agents all over the country--London particularly--before people wake up in the morning.  So vanloads of the papers arrive at the air field and load up their service (LARGE) planes with stacks of papers tied up in big bundles.  Then, the plane flies to various cities where a local van is waiting for them.  They load up however many bundles the news agents of that city are committed to selling.  Those vans, then, drive the bundles to the news agents and the plane heads off to the next city.  All this goes on every day--sometimes twice a day if the paper has two runs, which the big ones do.  That is a LOT of flying--with no customs agents checking the bundles because who would check thousands of bundles of newspapers in every plane every single day?  If they did, no one would get their papers in time!  Plus, these trips require the pilots to enter and leave such disreputable cities as Paris and Hamburg--drug capitals!--to bring German and French papers into the UK.  Inspector Creighton marvels: Are there really that many people in England reading French and German papers? Hey, they only need enough to justify one flight to and from each of those cities once a week --a very nice set up for dope dealing, right?  Yep, that's the real story here: George (too smart for his own good) discovered that a "newspaper" is running cocaine and heroin (the drugs of choice in England at the time--AGAIN with the drugs!!!) and it cost him his life.  But how did he die from a bullet wound 12 hours BEFORE he flew his plane? And how can anyone prove that this air field is involved in drug smuggling and, even if they can, how can they prove which pilots are involved?  So Creighton and his minions set up a very clever sting operation--working with counterparts in Paris--to catch them in the act.  And then in steps the Bishop to muddle everything up, drink a cocktail loaded with enough sedative to kill a horse, get bundled into a single engine plane (like on the cover of the book above), which the pilot (but who is the pilot? Bishop is too sozzled to see clearly...) then flips over to dump the Bishop onto the ground which is, at that moment, 3000 feet down.  Fortunately, Inspector Creighton has figured it all out and one other pilot is willing to help him save the day...They catch the Bishop, but do they catch the killer?