I didn’t realise until I started writing this review that The Voice of the Corpse is Murray’s first crime novel. Like my recent read, Midsummer Murder (1956) by Cecil M. Wills, this is also a poison pen mystery, although in this situation it is the poison pen writer who gets killed.
Synopsis
‘Angela Pusey had sung her last song. At 3:30 one fine afternoon, a small blow to the back of the head cut her off in mid-note and a grateful village breathed a sigh of relief. Aside from an outraged music lover, who would’ve wished the middle-aged spinster permanently silenced? Actually, who wouldn’t have?! Until her final breath, the vicious, prying snoop had meticulously collected bits and pieces of other people’s lives from scraps of conversation, pilfered correspondence and spying moments. Angela Pewsey knew something about everyone in the village of Inching Round and everything about some folks. In gloating, threatening letters, she let them know their secrets were no longer safe and those poison pen letters spelled an invitation to murder. Now Angela’s venomous pen had been stilled but her hate-filled diary remained to reveal the murderers name! The bumbling village police are quite off the track with their ‘fanciful tramp’ theory; none of the locals believe it and certainly not young London solicitor Firth Prentice or ‘Long Tom’ Fowler, the sombre inspector just down from Scotland Yard.’
Overall Thoughts
This being my third read by this author, I was not surprised by the breezy tone of the opening, nor its more relaxed attitude towards murder:
‘Even in death there was something arty and crafty about Angela. The grim reaper had caught her as she sat at her spinning wheel, at the moment when she was taking the first steps towards converting a heap of unsavoury hair that she had plucked from her Chow into a pullover for Celia Sim. She had died a thoroughly unnatural death, and in spite of all the skill in her cunning fingers, she could not have done it herself. Somebody else had hit Angela on the head. If Angela had not thought it necessary to sing appropriate folk songs as she sat at her spinning wheel, she might have heard her approaching end. But on this occasion, as the saying goes, she never knew what hit her. That certainly made a change for Angela. It was the first time in many years that someone had done something in her vicinity about which she was not thoroughly informed.’
The narrative voice almost takes pleasure in Angela’s death, not because of the violence or the act itself, but because it finds amusement in the idea that the busybody didn’t see it coming, and how that would have galled the victim, who prided herself on her knowledge of what was going on in the local area and the lives of its inhabitants.
From this initial image, the narrative moves straight on to who benefits from Angela’s death, although it only mentions one person, tongue in cheek:
‘Celia Sims, naturally, because Celia was going to dislike wearing a pullover made of Chow’s hair even more than she disliked the donor of the raw material […] But let it be said now that Celia, benefit or no benefit, did not remove Angela.’
This writing style is not quite direct address, but it has a conversational tone at times: ‘But back to the corpse.’ I think one of the things which makes comedy in crime fiction work, is the choice of little details that the author chooses to focus on, and the pullover being made from dog hair used here, is an example of this. Another one is how the hired help reacts to finding the body – she is far more upset about having to use the telephone to summon the police. On the whole I would say I really enjoyed the narrative voice of the story and the social setting that it creates.
In a way the first chapter presents the victim as a toxic and horrible version of Miss Marple when she is set up in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). For example, in Agatha Christie’s mystery, the vicar’s wife, Griselda, describes Miss Marple as a ‘nasty old cat’ and as ‘the worst cat in the village’, further adding that ‘she always knows every single thing that happens – draws the worst inferences from it.’ Consequently, Miss Marple is identified as being ‘dangerous’ and we are additionally informed that: ‘Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.’
This description does not seem a million miles away from how Angela is described:
‘But apart from the church, Angela could see from her window and spinning wheel quite a comprehensive amount of life and habitations of the village. She could and she did. When she was not at the window, she was attending one or other of the sources of slander and collective endeavour, such as the Institute and Mothers’ Union, or the Church Guild. She knew something about everybody and everything about some, and in every case far too much.’
These community groups are the kind Miss Marple would have joined, yet I think the line which follows this passage, sets out a difference between the two characters: ‘She was arch about it, whether the knowledge concerned a mild flirtation or incest, a few arch references were enough to give the victims a clue to her knowledge.’ I don’t think Miss Marple would act like that. Angela’s knowledge is put to use in fuelling poison pen letters, whilst Miss Marple uses her to solve mysteries. Miss Marple is unsettling but not universally disliked in the way Angela is.
I enjoyed the introduction of Firth Prentice (the son of Celia Sims and her mother’s solicitor) into the story. The Sims have brought him down to investigate the poison pen letters, (Celia having received one) but once they learn of the murder, they soon expect Firth to look into that instead. As a trio of characters, they worked pretty well together. The conversation Celia and Firth have on the train journey reveals much about her personality and her living situation with her mother, who is apparently meant to be very vague. You expect, consequently, for Mrs Sims to play a comic role within the piece, and whilst she does do that, she is a far more surprising and interesting character (probably more so than her daughter). For instance, her extreme competency in bridge questions the suggestion that she is mentally vague, moreover, she herself implies it is partially a choice/an act: “I find it so much easier to be absentminded as a rule,” she said. “Otherwise people do expect you to concentrate on so many things that aren’t worth while.”
Furthermore, she is the driving force behind the amorality which creeps into this novel, as she wants the killer to be uncovered/proven to be guilty, yet for this information to then be suppressed:
“You know, Firth, I must confess that I’m mildly disappointed in you. You’ve had all the afternoon to find out all about this affair, and I’m sure you don’t know who was responsible. Now I’m afraid that by the time you know who the murderer is we may not have time to make up our minds.”
I like how this passage of dialogue showcases the humour to be had in the unreasonable being delivered in such a way that the sensible person comes across as being in the wrong. In addition, Mrs Sims even goes as far as concealing the victim’s diary and later mentions that she thinks she knows the name of the murderer, but that she won’t disclose it. This feels like quite a contradictory position to maintain as a character, but arguably her external wooliness is useful in making this work.
Firth definitely fits the category of reluctant amateur sleuth, for most of the book, having the murder thrust upon him by the Sims. It is not long before others start treating him as the sleuth with two boys bringing him some actually very good evidence. Most sleuths would be happy with this cooperation, but Firth is not…
‘Firth was not laughing. He was unreasonably angry. Here, without the slightest inconvenience to himself, there was placed in his hands information of a vital character, supported by facts and corroborated by a witness. He was angry because he felt himself being propelled into something he wanted to avoid.’
Even the local doctor hands in his anonymous letter to Firth, leaving Firth fed up with people wanting him to be a receptacle of clues and information, dumping the responsibility of when to share it with the police on his shoulders. So, it is quite surprising that despite his qualms about Mrs Sims’ plan to shield the culprit, he still offers the evidence to the local police in such a way that they refuse to take it.
From this point onwards Firth becomes increasingly obstructive, impeding the investigation of the competent Scotland Yard Inspector Fowler, refusing to hand over the very evidence he didn’t want to be given in the first place (despite it not implicating either of the Sims). It would be fair to say that Firth becomes a hinderance and as a consequence plot development grinds to a halt about halfway through the story. That is often the problem when you put too many obstacles in the way of solving the case. It is only on page 174 out of 223 that Firth finally decides to do some proper amateur sleuthing, off the page naturally: ‘For two says he had been haring about the country like an amateur sleuth, lacking only the false moustache. He had been so mysterious about it that Celia had described his behaviour as nothing short of furtive.’ And his findings are unsurprisingly not shared with the police. This lack of cooperation with legal justice seems to be something Murray wove into his novels a lot, but I do think it can muzzle the pace and action of the story and information suppression from the police or the reader can become something of a structural irritant (not least when a character lies about the police not having asked them a question when they had). Part of me wishes Firth had got going quicker. The reluctance to solve the mystery also makes the arrest and subsequent trial very abrupt, being delivered in the final 20 pages.
As heralded earlier, the resolution of the mystery is intermixed with plenty of unorthodox justice and even though this is a mostly humorous novel, it has its moments of unexpected pathos, as well as a denouement with dark notes (which I had not expected). I liked the solution, but I wish the middle of the book had more plot/effective detection in it. This affected my final rating of the story, but what stopped it from dropping lower, is how well-written it is.
Rating: 4.25/5
Source: Review Copy (Galileo Publishing)
See also: Moira at Clothes in Books has also reviewed this title here.