Crime-Book Society paperback edition - 1936?
Good. Back to a more pleasurable experience with a Crime-Book Society 'thriller'. The tale was quite what I would call a 'gentle' one. No murders or awful 'baddies', just a couple of thieves planning an audacious robbery and then getting away with it. Louisa Woolfe is a cat burglar, who had already featured in two previous novels of Winifred Graham - A Wolf of the Evenings and The Last Laugh. I haven't read either, so I come to Miss Woolfe afresh. She has recently returned from Russia (her deceased mother was Russian) and her cousin, Augustus Woolfe, receiver of stolen goods, retired yet unrepentant rogue of fortune, already has a potential 'job' lined up for her. It means travelling from Norfolk, via London, to Home Park House, near Hampton Court, where an old client/friend - the great art critic, perhaps the greatest in the world - Maurice Twyford lives. On their way there, 'Gus' fills Lou in about Maurice - he is the brain, but not always the limb, of big sensations. He knows who to employ and he seldom backs a losing horse. So far, it has been his boast that he never trusts a woman. Women, he said, may have iron nerves, but sometimes iron is apt to melt, if the furnace is too hot.
Undoubtedly a challenge for Miss Woolfe! Her first impression of this man, with the sharply pointed thin-cheeked face, was one of surprise, for that face had a sort of glacial purity about it remarkably deceptive. She saw at once that under his short moustache the mouth was resolute, while the apparently gentle eyes looked to be capable of lightning-flashes. You are ahead of me - of course, they fall for each other. What's the big plan? No less to steal a painting from Hampton Court Palace. It is Margaret by Rubens: Lou studied the head so perfectly poised upon its young shoulders - every point appealed. She noted the subtle gradations of colour, the pure arch of the eyebrows, not put in with the usual sweep of a brush, but with separate cross touches in their line of growth. And Maurice desperately wants it; it is to be concealed behind a panel in his bedroom. Can Lou purloin it for him? Of course she can. The subsequent descriptions of her hiding behind the hangings of Queen Charlotte's bed; of her escape across the park in a fog; of its concealment; of Maurice's ecstasy; and, then, his realisation that the longed-for painting was no match for his growing adoration of Lou herself. The author skilfully charts the changes, including Lou's own growing realisation that she would like to forsake her life of crime for a settled domestic bliss. No more Louisa Woolfe stories, then.
Early on in the tale, Maurice catches a night-time burglar (ironic!) in his house. Lou is there too and thought she had never seen anything so thin or pitiful - bones protruded from the emaciated cheeks. Not only do the two let Horace Brown go, but he departs with a basket full of cold food and a bottle of wine. Noblesse oblige? Certainly, but the upshot is a vital part of the denouement two hundred pages later.
The fly in the ointment is Violet Tracey, Maurice Twyford's ward; her face was oval and silky-skinned, a type to melt the heart of any man to sudden tenderness, if only the eyes had not been so uncompromisingly hard. To Violet, Maurice is "sort of God. Sometimes, when he's very nice, I call him God." Oh dear, not only is she in love with her guardian but she discovers the two thieves and where the painting has been hidden. Her declaration of love for her guardian is firmly rebuffed and off she goes to drown herself in the nearby Thames. Although Lou plunges in and rescues her, Violet then experiences a mini breakdown. The author cleverly uses this to ensure Maurice and Lou are not reported to the police and Violet ends up realising Maurice is not for her. All live happily ever after - apart from tubby Augustus, who is on an enforced teetotal diet back home in Norfolk.
I thought the narrative pace was sustained throughout; the characters were alive and realistic; and the scenes in Hampton Court Palace were well done.
Winifred Graham (1873-1950)
Winifred Graham is another in the Crime-Book Society list who was a prolific author - of some eighty-eight books. She began in the 1890s, with a short story Through the Multitude of Business (1894) in the Belgravia magazine. Her first book-length novel, On the Down Grade, was published in 1896. Thrillers and romantic novels followed, as well as a three-volume autobiography and a critical popular history of Mormonism. Apparently, recurring themes included the perils of romantic love entangled with class hierarchies and infidelity, often resolving in tragic loss or redemption. In addition, to her criticisms of Mormonism, she published works critical of Zionism, Christian Science, Roman Catholicism and the Women's Suffrage Movement. She was some stuff!
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