Find Me a Villain

Miss Lemon was just ruminating on the insular English village. One doesn't find anything quite like it in other English speaking parts of the world, like, say, America or New Zealand -- does one?

With names like Hanging on the Wold, Bishop's Cleeve and Little Tipping, there's a netherworld charm to these places that so stubbornly resist the modern tread of time. They are places where, not so many years ago, one had to sort out in advance which neighbors were or were not on the 'phone. It hardly mattered in any case, as the neighbors are never more than a few hundred yards' walk away.

They are places that, even today, some English know only through the novels of Agatha Christie. At least that's the idea of village life held by Nina Crowther, the protagonist of Margaret Yorke's excellent mystery called Find Me a Villain (1983).

The Mrs. Crowther in question is a lifelong Londoner, and she's just been chucked by her philandering husband. Having no profession or training beyond housekeeping, she goes to the village of Netherton St. Mary to act as houseminder for Priscilla and Leonard Blunt, owners of a stately village pile called, simply, The Hall.

Rivaling its stateliness is the nearby Manor, owned by Col. and Mrs. Jowett. The two families' lives have intertwined over the years in a manner akin to Virginia creeper and village stone masonry.

Lacking the village parallels that prove so useful to Miss Marple as she susses out the villains in St. Mary Mead, Mrs. Crowther hardly knows what to make of the requisite eccentricities of her neighbors. Col. Jowett, retired from the Army and now a painter of dubious talent, wanders off from time to time, sometimes forgetting where or, indeed, who he is.

Heather Jowett is earthy and dotty, known to wander the village fields randomly planting bulbs and clearing brush. Then there's the Blunts' gardener, Dan Fenton, retired from an unspecified career in civil service, who makes frequent and unexplained trips to London.

Margaret Yorke, a former librarian and chair of the Crime Writers' Association, deftly evokes the mood of classic village mystery. The Hall, for example, is too distant from the village centre to receive delivery of a daily paper. And during an especially violent gale, Mrs. Crowther loses her telephone connection.

Alone with herself for the first time in perhaps twenty years, Mrs. Crowther quickly begins to suspect that her kooky neighbors perhaps aren't quite as harmless as they first appeared. Meanwhile, when the telephone is in order, Nina receives a series of calls in which the person at the other end utters nothing but a baleful sigh. Add to that, the disappearance and murder of several young runaway girls, two bodies of whom turn up near Netherton St. Mary.

The title of this suspenseful and moody novel, Miss Lemon begs her readers to note, is ironic. For the last place Nina Crowther expects to find a villain is in the sleepy English village she supposed would provide refuge from the rough sea of urban existence.

Death on the Nile

In between organizing case files and preparing Mr. Poirot's tisanes, just so, Miss Lemon happened upon a most enlightening essay by her fellow countryman, W. H. Auden. In it he makes the delightful, if not sheepish, confession that he is addicted to reading detective stories.

Bravo, Mr. Auden! Miss Lemon suffers from just the same affliction.

In "The Guilty Vicarage" (1948), the learned poet makes several astute observations about the mystery genre. He smartly sums up the form thus: "A murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies."

According to Mr. Auden, a really good detective story requires the following elements:

1. A closed society that by its nature excludes the possibility of an outside murderer. An English manor house will do nicely; likewise a vicarage or a railway car. All in this society must bear some relation to the others and all must be considered suspect.
2. The characters in the story must be aesthetically interesting -- i.e., eccentric -- and inherently good. They are living in a state of grace. Evil must be expunged.
3. The innocent in a detective story must at some point appear guilty, and likewise the guilty must seem innocent.
4. The job of the detective is to restore the state of grace to the closed society and reconcile its aesthetic appeal with ethical virtue. Furthermore, the detective should be an exceptional individual and living in his or her own state of grace.
   

Death on the Nile, the 1938 novel by Agatha Christie, has all the elements set forth in Mr. Auden's essay and is a hypnotizing whodunit to boot. The closed society in this case is the Nile vessel called the Karnak, and on its ill-fated voyage are the newlywed Simon and Linnet Doyle; Simon's just-jilted fiancee, Jacqueline de Bellefort; the oh-so-eccentric mother and daughter duo, Mrs. and Rosalie Otterbourne; the cantankerous communist, Mr. Ferguson; Signor Richetti, an archeologist; the cultured Mrs. Allerton and her layabout son, Tim; Andrew Pennington, Mrs. Doyle's American trustee; the imperious American heiress, Miss Van Schuyler, and her unfortunate nice, Cornelia; a German physician, Dr. Bessner, various maids, stewards and other holiday assitants....

And of course, Hercule Poirot. Colonel Race also makes a coincidental appearance, and provides scarcely-needed assistance to the great Poirot.

Indeed, Miss Lemon thinks that perhaps this one could be retitled "Poirot's Finest Hour." There is no shortage of pride (dare one say arrogance?) on Mr. Poirot's part.

As the reader has surely noticed: the field for the innocent who must all in turn appear guilty is vast and wide. The characters have no shortage of quirks. Mrs. Otterbourne is an obnoxious novelist, obsessed with sex (between the pages) and her own declining book sales. Like the real-life Agatha Christie, Mrs. Otterbourne doesn't touch alcohol. She's also written a novel called Snow Upon the Desert's Face. (Mrs. Christie's first novel -- written as a child -- was titled Snow Upon the Desert.) Also represented among the passengers of the Karnak are jewel thieves, kleptomaniacs, hypochondriacs, gamblers, jealous lovers and spies.

Miss Lemon didn't leave out murderers ... did she?

But through all this confusion -- and the spectacular backdrop of the Nile and Egypt's ancient and foreboding ruins -- Mr. Poirot sees clear. When he readies to reveal an embarrassing secret about one of the travelers, she asks, "But then, how do you know?"

"Because I am Hercule Poirot! I do not need to be told."

And there, Mr. Auden, is your exceptional detective, returning the passengers (who remain alive) on the Karnak to a state of grace.

Close Her Eyes

Miss Lemon wonders if her readers ever feel the same sense of privation that she sometimes feels after finishing a particularly good whodunit.

Such was the case when she turned the last page of Close Her Eyes, an especially absorbing mystery from the pen of Dorothy Simpson, first published in 1984.

Although the murder was solved and all the fraying ends that emerged during the investigation neatly nipped, Miss Lemon hoped the story would continue. She enjoyed it that much.

The work of Mrs. Simpson is new to Miss Lemon, who picked up this entry (number four in the series featuring Inspector Luke Thanet) at a second-hand bookshop only the week before last. And please let her say that the $1 given over for the purpose (yes, Miss Lemon confesses to occasionally purchasing books from the other side of the Atlantic) was worth every cent.

Although editors, publishers, librarians and other such people who like to organize, classify and label literary works would probably call this novel a police procedural, Miss Lemon found herself particularly taken by the psychological explorations of victim, criminal and investigator. She suspects that if her readers like the work of Ruth Rendell, then they will also like that of Mrs. Simpson.

In Close Her Eyes, the author elegantly illustrates that too often, man is the author of his own torment and unhappiness. The mystery here centers on the death of Charity Pritchard, the unlucky daughter to a martinet father and passive and ineffectual mother -- and all of the family members of a fanatical religious sect called The Children of Jerusalem.

Needless to say, Inspector Thanet's investigations turn up behavior on almost every character's part that many would consider less than Christian. At the same time, the Inspector tries to exorcise a demon of his own.

What Miss Lemon likes best about the Inspector's cerebral approach to crime solving is his careful analysis when it comes to questioning suspects and witnesses. He not only calculates how and what he'll ask before he asks it, but also tabulates the response or lackthereof with a facility and precision not seen in even his most luminescent literary forebears -- Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Monsieur Hercule Poirot included.

Fortunately, Miss Lemon had the foresight to snap up two other works by Dorothy Simpson during her recent acquisitions spree. She'll be reading Last Seen Alive (1985) and Element of Doubt (1987) and reporting back to her readers shortly.

A Pocket Full of Rye

Miss Lemon has just finished reading a delightfully chilling take on the old Mother Goose nursery rhyme, "Sing a Song of Sixpence." She's sure you remember how it goes:

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Now wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?

In Agatha Christie's version, titled A Pocket Full of Rye and published in 1953, the dainty dish that's set before the king is a cup of poisoned tea. The king, in this case, is the financier Rex (she's sure the allusion won't escape you) Fortescue, and the poison is taxine, the byproduct of the leaves and berries of the yew tree.

As every bookish child knows, more verses follow the two quoted above, and Mrs. Christie, true to form, makes sure the trail of murder falls right in step with the rhyme, if not reason, of Mother Goose.

A Pocket Full of Rye is -- in Miss Lemon's estimation -- a neat and clever little mystery, made all the more intriguing by the rare appearance of Miss Marple outside the gates of St. Mary Mead. A personal involvement with the maid "hanging up the clothes" draws Miss Marple to Yewtree Lodge, trailing with her a fantastic string of village parallels which she uses to help Inspector Neele tie up this puzzling case.

Miss Lemon couldn't think of a cosier way to pass a rainy Sunday afternoon than with A Pocket Full of Rye.

Taken at the Flood

"In every club there is a club bore."

Has a truer or wittier opening line ever been written?

Miss Lemon thinks not.

Indeed, she feels that one can find one of the cleverest beginnings of all time among the opening pages of Agatha Christie's 1948 detective novel, Taken at the Flood.

(Disclosure: Agatha Christie also created Miss Lemon; but she promises that this coincidence in no way influences her partiality.)

The fact is that from this rousing starter, the novel only gets better. The club bore in question is one Major Porter, late of the Indian Army. Mrs. Christie continues: Major Porter "rustled his newspaper and cleared his throat. Every one avoided his eye, but it was no use."

Ah, one can't help but feel the same sense of captivity -- the dread certainty that one will be regaled with a monologue of such colossal dullness that escape to quiet sanctuary becomes the impossible dream.

No one listens to Major Porter as he drones on about his neighbor, Gordon Cloade, blown to bits in an air raid, and the woman he'd married -- quite unexpectedly and late in life; no one cares.

'Got married while he was over there. A young widow -- young enough to be his daughter. Mrs. Underhay. As a matter of fact I knew her first husband out in Nigeria.'

Major Porter paused. Nobody displayed any interest or asked him to continue. Newspapers were held up sedulously in front of faces, but it took more than that to discourage Major Porter. He always had long histories to relate, mostly about people whom nobody knew.

No one seems to care, that is, except one M. Hercule Poirot, the sole auditor among this unwilling audience -- the only one who has the grey cells limber enough to perceive that the details of the saga being recited may one day prove significant.

And that's exactly what happens when the extended Cloade family, a breed of decaying gentility, find themselves embarrassingly dependent upon the new Mrs. Gordon Cloade, who survived the bombing.

When a stranger turns up in Warmsley Heath who might perhaps be the original Mr. Underhay -- and then is murdered -- there's plenty of motive and opportunity to go around. And plenty of skeletons that want airing from the family cupboard.

Miss Lemon thinks that Agatha Christie nears the height of her powers in Taken at the Flood -- with characterization, with verbal repartee, with setting and scene. This should also be counted among her most tightly plotted novels. Elements of disguise, mistaken identity and the frailty of first appearances add to the narrative intrigue.

The title, Miss Lemon begs her dear reader to note, is taken from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, IV.iii:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

A clever framework on Mrs. Christie's part, as the tragedy of the Cloade family begins to look quite Shakespearean indeed by the close of the novel.

Miss Lemon's only quarrel with Taken at the Flood is the final scene -- a superfluous resolution so sentimental that Miss Lemon shudders to recall it. But as it has nothing to do with the commission or solution of the crime, Miss Lemon can overlook it. She trusts the reader will do the same.

Now if you will please excuse Miss Lemon, she must get back to her filing.

A Library for Miss Lemon

"Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration."

Were Miss Lemon, Agatha Christie's paragon of organization and efficiency, not employed as private secretary to two of the world's top detectives, one can't help but think that she'd make a librarian, nonpareil.

Even if her appearance is a bit severe, Miss Lemon's judgment is impeccable; her reason unshakable. What she may lack in imagination, she more than makes up for in exacting good sense. In short, Miss Lemon is a woman who errs almost never and who can be relied upon always. She's even set plans afoot to patent the perfect filing system.

Connoisseurs of crime fiction fist make Miss Felicity Lemon's acquaintance in Parker Pyne Investigates. But it's Hercule Poirot (that perennial student of human psychology) who sums her up so smartly in Hickory Dickory Dock: "She was never ill, never tired, never upset, never inaccurate. [...] She knew everything, she coped with everything."

Who better to turn to when one needs a good mystery recommendation?

But fiction being what it is -- and Agatha Christie's detective fiction, especially, being so unforgettable -- Miss Lemon will be forever fixed among the pages of Poirot's phone messages, client calling cards and case files and Mr. Parker Pyne's statistics. Even so, it's not difficult to imagine the library of crime fiction Miss Lemon would amass if given the proper resources.

Her first-hand experience with the masters of armchair detection has doubtless developed a palate for only the choicest whodunits, which she will periodically recommend in "Miss Lemon's Mysteries."

Occasionally, Miss Lemon may find it prudent to recommend books that are not technically crime fiction but yet are works that she feels possess such adequate intrigue or suspense to warrant notice in this column. We hope you can forgive Miss Lemon the occasional peccadillo. She's never really wrong, you see...

Next time, she promises to take on the work of her own creator in her review of Taken at the Flood (1948). Of course, if in the interim one feels the urge to read up on the redoubtable Miss Lemon herself, one should look no further than the above-mentioned Parker Pyne Investigates (1934) or the equally good Hickory Dickory Dock (1955). You'll also see her in Dead Man's Folly (1956) and the aptly-named Elephants Can Remember (1972).