Forgotten Book Friday: The Blank Wall

Miss Lemon is not entirely sure it's fair to saddle  The Blank Wall, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, with the Forgotten Friday label. Nevertheless, from the book's original publication in 1947,  it has had a tough go at remaining at the forefront of the reading public's mind.

Efforts by such discerning literary admirers as Raymond Chandler, who entreated his publisher, Hamish Hamilton, to bring Mrs. Holding's works to England, came to naught. Even laudatory reviews that appeared in respected periodicals such as The New Yorker, and the adaptation of The Blank Wall into two cinematic hits -- first The Reckless Moment in 1949 and then The Deep End in 2001 -- did little to keep this gem of psychological suspense from slipping the collective cultural memory.

A pity, as this wartime story of one woman's snap decision to conceal the body of a man who may or may not have been murdered by one of her family has a resonance one doesn't soon forget. Isn't it always the thing done on instinct, without a moment's thought, that causes one the most trouble to explain later?  Certainly that's the case for Lucia Holley, who is forced again and again to choose between the urge to protect her family and her own peace of mind.
   

Endpaper design for No. 42

Fortunately for us, those wonderfully intuitive editors at Persephone Books chose to republish The Blank Wall as Book No. 42, and the novel has been saved, in Miss Lemon's view, from obscurity. The publisher's note in the Persephone edition rightly points out that the acuity with which Holding depicts the psychological underpinnings of her characters' motivations sets the bar for the British masters of the genre who were to follow her: Celia Fremlin, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Yorke.  

Indeed, Miss Lemon's readers who enjoy any or all of the aforementioned authors will most certainly enjoy The Blank Wall.

Speak for the Dead

Miss Lemon seems never to tire of Margaret Yorke. There's something about the crispness of her sentences and the simple delicacy with which she tells complicated and compelling stories that draws Miss Lemon back again and again.

What's more, her range of psychological portrayals is nothing short of virtuosic. She can convey the motives of a middle-aged, middle-class serial rapist with as much realism as she can the mental workings of a common street thug. The characters she creates for Speak for the Dead (1988) are no exception to her great ability.

She presents us with Gordon Matthews, an intelligent but directionless product of a privileged home. His mother is obsessed with the rigidity and grandeur of the Russian tsars, while his father whiles away his retirement drinking beer at the pub and making futile passes at the woman who runs the till at the local hardware store. Gordon, it's revealed early on, has spent time in prison for manslaughter; but what actually precipitated these charges -- and the validity of the charges themselves -- is a matter of perspective.

Upon Gordon's release, he meets Carrie Foster, a vibrant and clever girl, much more able to fend for herself than Gordon's previous wife. But not all is straightforward beneath Carrie's pleasant and capable facade. Carrie, in her turn, meets Nicholas Fitzmaurice, a sweet and innocent seeming boy -- 'such a pet,' as she likes to refer to him -- until the truths that surface become more than he can handle.

The characters' collective foibles prove to be a volatile mix and make for a mesmerizing story.

If you've not yet tried reading Margaret Yorke, you really must. Many of her titles are now out of print but are easy enough to find second-hand. They would also make an excellent candidate for Felony & Mayhem re-issues.

The Hand of Death

By now, my dear readers, you must know what a devoted admirer Miss Lemon has become of Margaret Yorke. Reading the sometimes grim -- but never dull -- The Hand of Death (1981) has done nothing to alter that opinion.

Like Agatha Christie's genius for hiding her murderers in plain sight, Margaret Yorke has the uncanny ability to dip into the most ordinary stock of Englishmen -- in this case, it is the quiet antiques dealer, Ronald Trimm -- and pull out the ones capable of the most shocking crimes. Though you'd hardly guess it from the face they put to the village at large, their secret lives and outrageous crimes are made completely plausible by Yorke's pen.

When Trimm's (aptly named in this novel, as he likes everything just so) advances are rebuffed by the marvelously depicted widow, Dorothea Wyatt, he sets off on a violent sexual spree. Almost as difficult to take as Trimm's selfishness and brutality, is the plot twist that puts the lonely widower and loyal friend to Dorothea, George Fortescue, into the frame for rape and murder.

Miss Lemon must warn her fans of cosy mysteries that The Hand of the Death is not one. For those who can stomach a bit of fictional violence, however, this novel is well worth the read -- indeed it is impossible to put down, once one has picked it up.

Within pages, it becomes clear why the pathetic Ronald Trimm behaves so abominably, proving again Margaret Yorke's mastery of psychological character study. She throws in a bit of good police procedural, too, but with just the right touch.

All of the characters in this novel, sympathetic or despicable as they are, are fully realized, which is what, Miss Lemon reckons, so ofter draws her back to Margaret Yorke.

Safely to the Grave

Miss Lemon doubts she has ever met a character in mystery so unrelentingly pernicious as Mick Harvey.

He's a villain to outdo all of Margaret Yorke's villains. And she, the mistress of the psychological thriller, knows how to paint startling portraits of evil.
 
When we first meet Mick, he is not only rough with his wife, Beverley, and a thundering bully to his neighbours, but he also quickly reveals himself to be mean, cocksure, prone to drink and quick to blame others for all of his own shortcomings. His hair is permed, he wears a weak mustache and the beginnings of a beer belly.

Just the sorts of things one hopes to find in an anti-hero, aren't they?

But there is nothing redeeming or heroic about Mick Harvey. After cleaning out Beverley's purse and spending the evening at the Cricketers, Mick tries to run two women off the road who are returning from a night at the ballet. When Marion Quilter and Laura Burdock decide to report the incident of dangerous driving to the police, they set off a chain of events that seems as much the product of ill fate as random chance.

Miss Lemon isn't revealing too much when she says that Mick proves more than once that he's not afraid to kill anyone who stands in his way: not even a dog.   

This is in many ways an upsetting novel. And yet ... as much, my stalwart readers, as you will want to put down Safely to the Grave (1986), Miss Lemon tells you that you will not be able to do so.

The Smooth Face of Evil

Miss Lemon recently took a holiday jaunt to New York City, where she spent time browsing in The Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street in TriBeCa. This august emporium (devotedly exclusively, one might guess, to Miss Lemon's favourite subject) is the place in North America to acquire new, second-hand and rare copies of a broad range of the novels of crime, mystery and suspense most worth having.

To wit, for $3 Miss Lemon picked up The Smooth Face of Evil (1984), a gripping tale of vintage psychological suspense by Margaret Yorke.

If it is cliche to say that once she began reading this story about the smooth talking con artist who meets with his comeuppance in a most unexpected way, she could not put it down -- well then, you will have to excuse Miss Lemon's triteness, for it is the truth.

From the moment Terry Brett smashes his stolen Vauxhall into Alice Armitage's illicitly borrowed Volvo, and then alters the details of the event to make things seem like they happened the other way round, Miss Lemon was hooked. She suspects her readers will be, too.

As is her wont, Ms. Yorke graces The Smooth Face of Evil with the most telling points of psychological detail. Alice Armitage, for instance, is a lonely and aging (though in now way frail or elderly) widow who is manipulated into going to live with her son, Giles, and daughter-in-law Helen far from the Bournemouth coast where she lived independently and happily. When Alice arrives at Harcombe House, she quickly sees that she is welcome only for the money she brings from the sale of her house, as Helen quickly dispatches her to a frigid attic apartment. In short, isolated and unwelcome, she is ripe for conning.

Terry Brett is the sort who can talk his way out of trouble and into the hearts and purses of even the most worldly of British housewives. The rewards for these endeavours, along with an occasional car theft, are handsome.

Sue Norris, a tenant of the Harcombe House Lodge, who lives there, unmarried, with Jonathan, meets Terry after the smashup. Worldly is not quite the way to describe Sue. Despite Terry's charming curls and neat suit, Sue picks him out for what he is, and a strange alliance is formed.

Just who ends up conning whom -- and who runs the risk of murder Miss Lemon shall leave for her readers to discover. The journey to the crime's unraveling is nine-tenths of the fun.