Back in 2022 I read the first novel in a Nedra Tyre twofer called Death of an Intruder (1953) and I must admit that the intensity of the bleakness and horror of the plot put me off trying today’s read Twice So Fair. The vivid darkness of Death of an Intruder comes from the sheer ordinariness of the protagonist’s situation and how she loses it all, including her very identity, one sliver at a time. However, a few days ago the time seemed right to give Nedra Tyre another go.
Curtis Evans, who writes the introduction to the Stark House Press re-issue, is good at talking about Tyre’s life, and how this informed her writing. As I wrote in my previous review: ‘She was a social worker and her first publication reflected this, as it was a series of monologues based on her experiences, published under the title Red Wine First (1947). For some it was a bit too gritty, but in a 1954 newspaper interview, Tyre commented on how being a social worker was the ‘background for murder’ that ‘was just what I needed.’ Tyre only wrote 6 novels but wrote many more short stories for publications such as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.’
Synopsis
‘The young man who appears at Rosalind’s door is in a panic. Something terrible has happened. He leads her to a campus studio apartment, where her husband Matthew lies dead next to the body of a student, Jeanette Sloan. They have apparently been asphyxiated by gas. Rosalind is stunned. What is her husband doing with this young girl? Were they having an affair? Did he love her? The death is deemed an accident, but now there is a stranger standing in the shadows outside her house, watching her. He enters her house. Soon, Rosalind is listening to his story, the tale of an abandoned orphan and the girl he loved. And she realizes that the mystery of her husband’s death is only the beginning…’
Overall Thoughts
Tyre gets straight to the point in the opening of the story, with Rosalind Wells being abruptly awakened to the news of her husband’s death, news she struggles to take in, particularly the circumstances i.e. her husband, Matthew, having died of gas inhalation inside an art studio late at night, his body next to that of a female student at the university he works at. The bringer of the news is not the police, but another student, who is not the best at being sensitive. I was curious as to why this student, Timothy, wanted Rosalind to see the body ahead of the police. Was there some kind of skulduggery afoot? However, once she has viewed the body, he instantly wants to contact the police. So, all I can conclude is that this is an opening scene which demonstrates character, as it holds little logic, although arguably there is one small detail that feeds into the ending. In addition, having given it some further thought, this scene does seem to exemplify how readily Rosalind will be guided by men, even if their behaviour is a bit off or threatening:
‘The boy’s pace quickened; he dropped her hand, and then he was far ahead of her. He said nothing to reprimand her, but he turned to look back as if to urge her to walk more quickly. She had to trot not to be left behind. Once she twisted her foot on shifting gravel and fell to her knees, but he took no notice of her predicament.’
Personally, if someone woke me up late at night, to inform me of my husband’s demise, and this person happened to be a young man I had never met before, then I think I would hold off following him to an unfamiliar destination. Then again, I have probably read too much detective fiction.
Once the police arrive, it is not long before Rosalind is returning home alone, and I feel the isolation of the protagonist is keenly felt in the opening pages. She is not very connected to the university, she has no family nearby (they’re on holiday and she doesn’t want to spoil it for them), and she does not call anyone to support her. A friend does eventually visit but interestingly for the first day at least, Rosalind is asleep for a lot of the time, so alone again, even when there are people around her.
The police are naturally suspicious about the appearance of two bodies together. Was it murder from a jealous spouse? Or was it a lover’s suicide pact? But Rosalind is resistant to the idea of Matthew being unfaithful, although a phrase here and there, suggests something is needling her. The anxiety nagging at her is explored in the middle of the story, when we learn more about the circumstances of how she and Matthew finally got together (as when they first fell in love he was married). It is not long until the deaths are pronounced accidental, and it is suggested that Matthew went into rescue the student and succumbed to the gas himself. But is this just a way for the university to avoid scandal? I was curious where the mystery would go from here, as everything seemed tied up. As a seasoned mystery reader, you would expect the author to start undermining this verdict, yet Tyre goes in a surprisingly different direction, perhaps leaning into her social worker roots.
One thing Tyre is very adept at doing is portraying the sheer busyness after someone’s death and how many things there are to do and people to deal with. It is the little details which she includes such as the way one of the funeral parlour employees ‘inspected the rack holding Matthew’s suits, deprecating some, commending others as appropriate for the occasion […]’. Moreover, it is also in the way she describes the people who come to pay their respects to Rosalind:
‘Now as earlier some stood at the front door as if to enter a house of bereavement might engulf them in death itself, invite death into their own lives; others stood in the hall iterating and reiterating Matthew’s talents as a professor and a critic; still others settled rather overlong in the living room and assented when she offered them cake and other refreshments. Dr Thompson, of the Philosophy Department, happily consumed three wedges of pecan pie, and Rosalind thrust the rest of the pie upon him to take to his bachelor apartment. He had left cuddling the pie against his plump stomach as if he had been a young guest at a children’s party and had won the prize for pinning the donkey’s tail.’
It is not surprising that after all of this, Rosalind felt washing up ‘was oddly like cleaning up after a party.’ With such high amount of socialisation you would think Rosalind was far from isolated, but Tyre is careful to remind us of how of this interaction is often performative, rather than an opportunity to be herself:
‘The two women then, like actresses who subdue their own emotions to the roles they must immediately play, stood side by side in front of the dressing table mirror and methodically redid their make-up; then they consulted their watches, and as if the call for “Places, please” had bee announced and they must rush onstage, they kissed each other goodbye, and Rosalind ran to take a taxi to the airport while Anne hurried to her car to drive back to New York.’
From a third or so into the story the attention shifts to another character, a young and troubled man, who watches Rosalind’s house many nights before he decides to talk to her alone, in her home, in the dark. Stranger danger does not guide Rosalind’s actions and instead she listens to this man, who seems to have known the girl who died beside Matthew. The more this man talks about himself, the more it seems he has built a fantasy around his life, and it remains to be seen how much of it is really true and what consequences his distorted ideas have led to. Rosalind, perhaps due to her grief, becomes increasingly absorbed in this young man and his difficulties, almost becoming a peripheral character in her own story, as this young man takes over the page. Rosalind vacillates a little at times as to whether she should tell someone else about the man, but her wavering never lasts for long, as she plunges in deeper and becomes more committed. It is hard to sympathise with Rosalind’s approach to the developing situation.
Once the young man enters the narrative properly, the story becomes increasingly bleak. The denouement is intended as dramatic, but the build up of tension is spoiled by allowing the protagonist to have a period of meandering and wandering. This makes the pace more of a ramble than a race. If this story had been more of a detective mystery, then the developments at the end might have come off better. As is, Rosalind’s conclusion takes a lot of imaginative leaps on her part and her way of dealing of with it feels quite random. The story concludes in an open-ended fashion and as such seems a bit flat, but that is perhaps one of the difficulties of writing a strongly bleak narrative, as I think bleakness, whilst interesting, can be quite energy sapping.
Rating: 3.75/5
Source: Review Copy (Stark House Press)