The Fashion in Shrouds

Skipping forward several books, Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds is set several years after Sweet Danger and marks the return of Amanda Fitton, now working as an engineer at Alandel Aircraft. Despite a couple of suspicious deaths, the focus of the book is on the three way relationship between Georgia Wells, a brilliant actress, Val Ferris, a successful fashion designer and Campion's sister, and Alan Dell, head of the eponymous aircraft company.

Investigating the sudden discovery of the body of Richard Portland-Smith, once Georgia Wells' fiance, Campion asks Val introduce him into Georgia's circle of friends. From his ringside seat, Campion gets to watch as Georgia tries to seduce Alan Dell away from Val despite the obvious jealousy of her husband, Sir Raymond Ramilies. After various embarrassments, including a scene where Ramilies appears at a nightclub chaperoned by a young model who bears a strong resemblance to his wife, the various parties adjourn to Caesar's Court, a grand country club hotel into which most of the principals have invested considerable sums, where Ramilies is to fly a golden aircraft back to the colony where he serves as governor. But just before the flight is due to leave, Ramilies is found dead, apparently of natural causes. With the help of Amanda Fitton, who is keen extract her boss from his current emotional tangle and get him back to the drawing office floor, Campion sets about untangling the various relationships and determine what, if anything, links the sad fates of Georgia's two very different beaux.

Although the book features a couple of unusual deaths, it isn't really a murder mystery so much as a study of the emotional tangles of the various characters. Georgia, emotional and mercurial, is well drawn as a slightly shallow woman who doesn't really think about the consequences of her actions and always behaves as if she was playing a part on stage, expecting others to turn their emotions on a dime just as she seems able to do. Val comes across as modern, intelligent, capable women, although she is pushed to the limit by Georgia's absurd behaviour, stealing her boyfriend one moment and asking for sisterly solidarity the next. Amanda is more down to earth, casually announcing that she and Campion have got engaged in order to justify her presence at various events, and playing a key role as the detective's lieutenant.

Largely entertaining, although I found some of the rather over-written and over-emotional sections in the middle a bit of a slog...

Is Trac the future?

In need of something interesting to do, I spent part of today digging into Trac, trying to work out whether we could use it to replace both our change logging and source code management systems. Although I think it may require a little bit of customisation to get it to interface with the wider organisation's change control software, all the other desired features — including configurable ticket templating — look like they ought to be pretty simple to implement.

Rattle and the Berlin Phil at the proms

I haven't really said much about this year's proms — one way and another, I haven't caught many of them — but the recent Berlin Phil concerts under Simon Rattle were worth catching. Their St Matthew Passion was beautiful and deeply, although ultimately I think I prefer the intimacy of small-scale period performance, but their performance of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances really was every bit as exceptional and brilliant as the reviewers claim...