The Crime-Book Society No. 11
My final book in the eleven Crime-Book Society paperbacks I bought this year. Dominic Mary (Paul) McGuire (1903-1978) was an Australian diplomat and writer. He was born in South Australia and attended the University of Adelaide, where he was the Tinline Scholar in History. He began story writing with detective stories, publishing ten novels between 1932 and 1936 as well as a book of poetry. He claimed that his detective stories took three weeks to complete, one took only four days! By 1940, he had published fifteen mystery novels. During the Second World War, he was an officer in the Royal Australian Volunteer Reserve, Demobilised in May 1945, McGuire became the special European correspondent for The Argus newspaper. He died in June 1978, in North Adelaide, South Australia.
A good start - with its first sentence: There were innumerable reasons, most of them excellent, for Spender's death; a decent, often amusing, middle; and a rather 'losing' the narrative thread towards the end. Perhaps the famous 'curate's egg' might best describe the novel. The story is written in the first person by Professor George Collins: I am in my sixty-third year, and it is only during these last half-dozen years that I have surrendered my professional labours at Ripon and settled wholly in Seacliff...I am unmarried, entirely as a matter of my own preference: my human affections and responsibilities have been sufficiently catered for by my niece, Genevieve, who has lived with me since she was five.(Towards the end of the story, there is a footnote by Genevieve: The reader understands that I have made no alterations in Uncle George's script, which further suggests her dear uncle was now perhaps communing with Spender in the heavens.) Genevieve (now twenty-three) is a most attractive young woman, though somewhat masterful in her disposition. She hopes to marry twenty-eight year-old Jack, Admiral Blake's son, who is painter - his pictures are curious...the shapes are very extraordinary shapes indeed, and his angles would have appalled Euclid.
George introduces to the reader other inhabitants of Seacliff, the little Dorset coastal - and unspoilt - village. There is the local cabal or junta, who control the Council: Admiral Blake, a domineering personality...somewhat gruff and perhaps a little too like the eternal figures of Bateman...he has a quarter-deck manner; Commander Byng - a decent, rather dull sort of fellow who had settled in Seacliff because the Admiral had settled there. I do not admire Mrs. Byng. She seems to me a light-headed-creature: she is far too light with her tongue; Colonel Malabar, a good fellow, but he was also a decided crank in some things. He was a teetotaller and non-smoker, for one thing; little Blackstone the solicitor and treasurer of the Golf Club, and George himself; Catchlove, the village carter with a wife who was probably of gipsy stock - both are despised by Spender; Henderson, the secretary of the Golf Club, a pleasant little fellow [whose] efficiency was not great and neither, as it appeared, was his honesty; but his manners were good, his bridge tolerable (I detest the expert at bridge); Lord Ravenscraig, whose estates bound the village on the east and north, a rancher from Canada who came to the title two years ago and now was giving his principal attention to the rehabilitation of his inherited estates - I have dined with him on several occasions; there is also the vicar, the Reverend Mr. Anselm Dunstan, a singularly patient individual, patient and tolerant to a degree beyond my understanding...he is, indeed, the most latitudinarian of men, and the embrace of his charity is embarrassingly inclusive. He seems to me the typical Anglican. Finally, there is the mysterious Mrs Quest, who arrives from America, dreadfully poor, and very, very charming: an exquisite creature, with pale golden hair, and dimpled cheeks, and troubling blue eyes: light and graceful as a petal, lissom: sometimes a little petulant, sometimes plaintive as a child, sometimes gay as an elf (George's niece is responsible for this effusiveness on George's part!)
As for Dr. Ralph Spender? He was a scrubby man: scrubby-faced, scrubby-mannered, scrubby-minded; scrubbiness was with him an instrument to probe and prod and torture his unfortunate acquaintances...he blackmailed his way on to the committee of the Golf Club; he picked his teeth and quoted from H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw at dinner-tables (both picking and quoting done with a horrid Fabian glibness); he made love to other men's wives; he spread tittle-tattle and barbed each arrow of scandal with malice all his own; he swore at his servants, lent them Karl Marx, and measured the whisky in front of his man... All in all, a thoroughly decent fellow then, who delighted in making enemies. George couldn't stand him: I can play golf with a dishonest financier, but I cannot endure a man who openly sneers when I slice my drive. Moreover, Spender intends to build bungalows on the revered cliffs of Seacliff. He has to be dealt with. But by whom?
It is Henderson who discovers Spender hanging from a wayside tree, with a placard across his chest reading Death To All Traitors. The story develops around George trying to disentangle the motives that nearly all the above named would have for murdering Spender. There is plenty of light - often ironic - humour, some of it at George's expense. often initiated by his niece; quite a lot of 'name-dropping' throughout: these include Virginia Woolf, the Powys family, Wyndham Lewis, D.H. Lawrence, Warwick Deeping and Mrs. Leavis. I enjoyed the novel, but there are definite signs that the author may only have taken three weeks - or less - to write it. The characters are well drawn, but the plotting is uneven. He loses his way with a long explanation of Mrs Quest's mysterious background and the final unmasking of the murderer is underwhelming.
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