Dead Men's Morris (1936)
My review:
Gladys Mitchell’s sixth novel continues in much the same tradition as her masterpiece The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935). The book has a very rural feel, many of the characters are rustics, and a great deal of folklore is worked into the story.
“A jolly good murder would make Christmas jolly well worth while,” remarks Mrs. Bradley’s great-nephew, Denis, introduced here. Sure enough, the body of the elderly lawyer Fossder is found on Christmas Eve, having suffered a fatal heart attack while waiting to see the Sandford ghost—the local belief that “to see the coach means death within the year” is thus borne out. However, Mrs. Bradley immediately suspects murder, and that, even though “out there, in the quiet and the dark, a ghost seemed germane to the landscape, not alien—a possibility, not an old wives’ tale”, the ghost was faked. Her belief that Fossder was murdered is strengthened when a second body turns up, that of the elderly and unpleasant Simith, discovered on top of Shotover Hill by Mrs. Bradley and her nephew Carey Lestrange, also introduced here. Despite the clues pointing to an accidental goring by a savage boar (an original method), Mrs. Bradley believes that “poor Simith was thrown to the boar as an early Christian might have been thrown to the lions—with malice aforethought, and with a very lively appreciation on the part of the murderer that the boar would certainly kill him.”
Mrs. Bradley herself is at the top of her form here, humorous and vivid, “curiously vivacious even in her quietest movements”, yet, as the truth slowly becomes clear, “depressed all the time”. She is described as “a bird of prey flapping its wings, or a witch preparing for evil”, or as eyeing someone, Miss Mitchell's tongue firmly in cheek, “with the maternal anxiety of a boa-constrictor which watches its young attempting to devour their first donkey.” She thrice fends off the attacks of homicidal rustics, as well as running cross-country clad only in her underwear in order to rescue her nephew holed up in a secret passage (these are well-used, and not gratuitous), and defends the police suspect, Simith’s nephew, who has his doubts, feeling that “to bring this terrible little old woman into the heart of his affairs was rather like asking a shark to defend one from cannibals. The shark might, and, he was certain, could eat the cannibals—in this case that particularly nosey inspector of police—but would it not turn upon him and engulf him also as a kind of relish to the meal?”
This being Mitchell, the plot is complicated, but is more than made up for by the strength of the story, the genuine whodunit pull, and the great good humour. The revelation of the murderer’s identity is well-handled, although it becomes apparent long before it should. The solution is well-reasoned, relying, in typical Mitchell fashion, on heraldry, Shakespeare, cryptic statements, and history, as well as psychology, allowing her to eliminate several suspects, as “a physical disability may be no great handicap; but a psychological one is insurmountable.”
The characters are amusing as ever, especially the Wodehousianly priggish (and aptly-named) Pratt, whose dialogue is as follows: “One vaguely likes [the architecture of old houses]. One cannot pretend to knowledge. One recognises salient features, of course. Actually, one confesses to a preference for ecclesiastical architecture. The domestic is not sufficiently impersonal.” There is also the Rabelaisian Mrs. Ditch, with her “trollopsen hussy” daughter Linda, “trapesen and trollopsen over the country to sleep in them there pegpens and woodsheds and the dear knows what an’ all”, a character who is at the heart of many of the book’s complicated romantic relationships. It is interesting to note that Mitchell’s treatment of sex is admirably frank—“the Rabelaisian order of her world” is an excellent description of the shenanigans, with many alibis turning on beddings. Can one imagine Miss Marple saying, “An alibi to cover the dead hours of the dark can often be established by one’s bedfellow, though, if one has a bedfellow, child”?
The setting is rural Oxfordshire (not the university setting of Innes or Sayers), with much of the dialogue being in “the broad Oxfordshire speech so pleasant and homely to hear”, spoken by rustics—“For a mixture of cunning and obstinacy, give me a countryman”, and set around pig-farms, for “everybody for miles around breeds pig, eats pig and talks pig”. There is much map-reading and working out of routes—as Barry Pike points out, this is “Miss Mitchell’s own native heath”.
As mentioned above, folklore is crucial to the story. There is much information on piggeries, heraldry, and Morris dancing, as well as a series of ominous heraldic messages. The local legends are neatly tied in, the first victim “killed by the Sandford ghost, and another by the Shotover boar”—they are useful both as clues and as atmosphere. The climax of the story—the arrest of the murderer as he attempts more murders—comes during the Morris dances at the Whit-Monday revels, with “their pypers pyping, their drummers thundering, their stumpers dauncing, their belles jyngling, their handkerchiefs fluttering about their heads like madde men, their hobbie horses … and other monsters skirmishing amongst the throng.”
A highly acceptable piece of classic 1930s Gladys Mitchell.