I surprised myself when I discovered that the last time I had read a mystery by Anthony Gilbert, was in October 2022. Lack of availability in physical copies has not helped, but I think with Gilbert there is a sense of risk, as her Arthur Crook mysteries vary a lot in their complexity. Given the style of sleuth and lawyer Crook is, he can arrive quite late in a story, which influences pacing and how the overall mystery is packaged.
Synopsis
‘In the spring of 1946, the redoubtable Lady Bate arrives at The Downs, built by the eccentric Colonel Anstruther years before. The aftermath of war has forced the colonel’s daughter to take in paying guests, but only Lady Bate knows the secret of Mrs Anstruther’s past life and the mystery behind her hermit-like existence. When Lady Bate is found dead, a chance remark puts detective Arthur Crook on the right track, which he follows – at risk to his life.’
Overall Thoughts
The novel starts by establishing the rural home setting and the Anstruther household. The colonel is at his most present here, when the story recounts how he came to move into the property pre-WW2 and the challenges this unfurled:
‘It was clear that whoever chose the site had done so for a whim rather than with any sense of convenience, for it was isolation itself, and when it came to putting in a water supply two builders flatly refused to take on the job. They said it would cost as much as the house itself.’
The opening paragraphs reveal an exasperated and determined character, who won’t take no for an answer when the builders complain. Furthermore, it takes his equally strong-minded daughter, Rose, to get electricity put in, which her father was not keen on. He considered electricity to be ‘a new-fangled idea – anything less than fifty years old was new-fangled to the Colonel – and only a fad to make life easier for a pack of lazy servants eating their heads off and getting machines to do work for them.’ The Anstruther household is one which exudes expectations of privilege, but Gilbert uses this to good effect.
At the beginning of the book, we learn of Rose’s abrupt departure from her father’s house when she decided to marry Gerald Fleming. We also see her return years later, once he has died, the marriage not being a success due to Gerald’s gambling problems. Rose, in her autocratic way, acts as though nothing has changed, ready to resume her old life, like the past 6 years had not happened and her father is happy to acquiesce in this. In the interim the colonel’s brother Jospeh has also moved into the household and he is said to be interested in true crime and detective fiction:
‘He read innumerable detective stories, perpetually writing to authors to point out blunders, backing his opinion with actual judgements or cases in real life, and stressing the ideal location of The Downs [where he lived] as a scene for murder. But it is improbable that he anticipated what lay ahead.’
Care is taken to build up this picture of the Anstruther family, including the impact of the war on the household’s finances. As part of their mental makeup none of them consider getting a job as appropriate and Rose is never expected to help around the house. This self-indulgence is fed into by the devoted manservant, Jock. Yet money must be found from some source so to avoid evacuees during the war they decide to take on paying guests. By the sounds of it the Anstruther’s think they are doing their boarders a favour by letting them into their home:
‘However, it was so quickly made obvious to the guests that they were an inferior form of life, who could only expect attention when the household proper had been attended to and their rare encounters with the family were so alarming that few of them stayed very long.’
This attitude towards guests is further reinforced a page later:
‘A decent body lived in his or her own house. If they quitted it for any reason whatsoever, even though it had been blitzed over their heads, they sank unequivocally into that lower social stratum known as lodgers.’
I don’t think we are supposed to warm to the Anstruthers and this might have been intentional on the author’s part, as Lady Bates (the latest paying guest) is quite a fun introduction as a character, as you know she is going to be a right pain for the Anstruthers. She is so demanding that hotels insist she leave after a week. There is a real battle for power, sometimes the Anstruthers winning and other times Lady Bates, more so once she recognises Rose. The social privileges Lady Bates exacts from Rose makes for an interesting variation on the blackmail theme. Lady Bates is as self-centred and autocratic as the Anstruthers so you don’t feel sorry for any discomfort these characters face.
However, that does not mean the novel is without likeable characters. I enjoyed the two other paying guest characters, Miss Twiss and Mrs Hunter. It is interesting seeing the characters through Mrs Hunter’s eyes, as there are no flies on her when it comes to this unusual house setup. Both her and Miss Twiss are also designed to irritate Lady Bates and again this makes for some entertaining reading:
‘During that week she was like the beasts in the Revelations, she had eyes before and behind, spying out the land for possible weak lines of approach, making up her mind as to the best course to adopt with her fellow-boarders. She had hoped that when she both saw and heard her title Miss Twiss, that most contemptible of all things, an elderly spinster, would see the fitness of handing over the guardianship of the teapot, but although Miss Twiss was amiability itself it did not seem to occur to her that any change in the regular routine was called for.’
I think in these moments Gilbert gets the character interactions just right.
The author’s depiction of postwar life is another strength of the book and there are certain details which make me curious as to whether they were based on real life. For example, the colonel was given a special allowance of petrol (not the guests) for shopping and church and Gilbert further adds that:
‘If you lived more than two miles from a church you got priority, and an official of the Fuel Ministry observed that it was amazing how many churches seemed situated on golf courses since the outbreak of war, while the number of golfers who suddenly took to religion might also justify an official enquiry.’
This seems such a specific image to create that I wondered if it was tapping into something she had experienced or read in the newspapers.
Unfortunately, the main problem with this story is that it is just too simple and obvious. There is little mystification, and it is all too easy to predict, making this short read quite a slow one after the halfway point. The who and the why of the solution are signalled too early and there is no compensatory cat-and-mouse tension. Furthermore, Arthur Crook’s investigation is relatively short, as he is aided by the victim’s diary which joins most of the dots. Moreover, compared to some of his other cases he gets the most brief and banal trap to end the book on. The Saturday Review of Literature similarly wrote that this novel was ‘transparent as mystery’. However, they also said that it ‘has most graces of characterisation, suspense, action and background that captious readers may demands.’ I am not sure I hundred percent agree with this statement, particularly regarding the action and suspense, but I would say the opening, with the introduction of the boarders is the strongest part and it is very interesting from a social point of view.
So, all in all, I probably wouldn’t suggest this as a read for someone new to Gilbert’s work. However, some titles I would recommend are: The Clock in the Hat Box (1939), Don’t Open the Door (1945), The Black Stage (1945), The Spinster’s Secret (1946), Death Knocks Three Times (1949), Riddle of a Lady (1956) and She Shall Die (1961).
Rating: 3.75/5