Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

By chance I recently happened to notice The Death of Lucy Kyte, Nicola Upson's latest addition to her excellent series of mysteries featuring Josephine Tey, the alter-ego of writer Elizabeth Mackintosh. This time the story is set in 1936 — a date firmly established both by Josephine's faltering attempts to write Claverhouse, Mackintosh's biography of John Graham, and by the Abdication Crisis simmering away in the background.

The book opens with Josephine Tey learning that on the death of her godmother, the actress Hester Larkspur, she has inherited a cottage in Polstead, the Suffolk village best known for the murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn in 1827, on condition that she take over the house and provides the elusive Lucy Kyte with anything she might need from the place. Gradually coming to know the godmother she'd only met rarely in life, Josephine realises that she was a proud woman with a keen appreciating of memorabilia from Maria's case whose independence was gradually being eroded by her failing eyesight.

While sorting through Hester's desk, Josephine realises that her godmother was also concealing another secret: the manuscript of a novel, told from the first person perspective of one of Maria's friends, of the years surrounding the murder. Devouring the book in a single sleepless night, Josephine has the acute sensation that the narrator's unhappiness has spilled over into the cottage and, worse still, that something is very wrong about Hester's death and that someone or something may well have driven a lonely, blind old woman over the edge into madness.

The Death of Lucy Kyte skilfully blends the contemporary elements of Josephine's investigation of the cottage and godmother's death with the historical details of the Maria Marten Murder, which unfolds through the device of the discovered manuscript. The diary, at the heart of which is the relationship between the stay-at-home narrator and the daring Maria, mirrors the relationship between Hester and Josephine's mother but with the relationship inverted — Hester being the one who left Inverness to tread the boards.

As with the other novels, Josephine Tey is a likeable, rounded and occasionally sharp lead with a knack for charming those around her. Her relationship with Marta Fox is charming and sensibly grown-up, despite the complication that Marta is also Lydia Beaumont's lover while Lydia and Josephine remain friends, and Marta is a strong presence throughout the book. Only a handful of the Polstead locals appear but those that do are well drawn. Hilary Lampton, the local vicar's wife, is a great delight and her very non-ecclesiastical appearances lift the scenes.

The book skirts the edge of the supernatural, just as Maria Marten's story does — for the uninitiated, Maria's body was discovered after her mother dreamt that it had been hidden in the Red Barn. But these moments are borderline, either explicable by other means or coming at moments when the characters are tired or on edge — the section in which Josephine reads through the night working herself into a state of something close to terror is particularly effective. The only other potential mystery is the Warbler, who could either simply be a woman at a harvest supper or might just possibly be Hester coming to take a last look at her goddaughter.

I liked the book very much in indde. In fact the only minor quibble I have with the book is the treatment of 1930s Inverness, which I can't believe to be quite as insular as Josephine frequently says...

Escaping the worst of Christmas Day, I closeted myself with Nicola Upson's excellent Angel with Two Faces. Set a few months after the events of An Expert in Murder, it follows Josephine Tey as she heads down to Cornwall to visit Archie Penrose's ancestral home, partly to work on a new novel — A Shilling for Candles — and partly to strengthen her friendship with Archie.

But Josephine's arrival in Loe comes at a bad time for the village. A young stablehand has died under mysterious circumstances, possibly by his own hand, and his death has sent ripples through a claustrophobic community where everyone seems to have something to hide. Events come to a head midway through a performance of The Jackdaw of Rhiems at the Minack Theatre, and Archie finds himself officially in charge of a murder investigation. Josephine, meanwhile, has somehow become confidante to half the village and finds herself struggling to reconcile her conscience with what she believes Archie ought to know.

As with Upson's previous novel, Angel with Two Faces assembles a cast of excellent characters and sets them against a wonderfully brooding backdrop. Aside from Archie and his immediate family, the principle characters are the Pinching family: poor, dead, Harry; his twin sister Morwenna; his 14 year-old sister Loveday; and, in the background, the memories of their parents killed in a fire 8 years before. Devastated by her brother's death and barely able to cope with Loveday's vagueness and wandering nature, Morwenna is a convincing portrait of a woman collapsing into deep depression and anger.

Of the other characters, Nathaniel the troubled village curate is particularly fine. Having struggled with painful shyness, Nathaniel has managed to get himself into a position where he will take over the parish when the current vicar retires, only to be confronted with the realisation that he is in love with Harry Pinching. As if that wasn't enough Nathaniel has become close to Loveday and has found himself burdened with one of the Pinching family's secrets — something that promises to further alienate him from Morwenna.

The key to the book is the character of Morveth Wearne, the shrewd village schoolteacher, who is respected by everyone in village as some sort of wise woman. It is Morveth who collects each individual secret and who, with the best of intentions, gently guides each of the villagers into doing what she believes to be the right thing. But as Josephine quickly realises, Morveth's attempts to help actually cause great harm because her knowledge is necessarily imperfect and she often acts on what she believes to be the truth of a situation and not the situation as it actually is.

Delightfully gothic.