Dress Down Sunday: Knock, Murderer, Knock! By Harriet Rutland

published 1938

LOOKING AT WHAT GOES ON UNDER THE CLOTHES

Mrs. Marston was thinking how disheartening it was to try and arrange an outing which would please them all. Charles always contrived to be more than usually irritable on such days. He tried to make out that it was because she nagged him about taking medicine and exercise. But if she didn’t take the trouble to remind him he simply made no attempt to take either, and she had to sit up with him all night if he had one of his attacks….

She was growing tired of his temper. The real reason for it this morning was that she had asked him whether he had remembered to wear his thermogene. Perhaps it had been rather tactless of her, in front of other people, but still, standing about in the draughty front porch was enough to give him a severe chill, and he should have had the sense to know it. If it were not for the girls, she might...




commentary: Never has ‘what goes on under the clothes’ been more accurate. 

Thermogene was medicated wadding worn as an extra layer between underwear and skin. (And, btw, isn’t the French advert for it so much more delightful than the boring British jar? – though this is a rub version, as opposed to the textile version)

It was much used to try to deal with conditions such as rheumatism and lumbago - it ‘warms away the pain’. According to their advertising, it can be ‘worn beneath one’s clothes without showing. When its healing work is done, it can be removed little by little, thus avoiding the sudden exposure which so often causes chills and starts a fresh attack.’ Mmm, sounds lovely doesn’t it?

Interestingly (well, I thought it was) one of the characters in the book scandalizes several of the others by reading aloud from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and thermogene is mentioned in that book: ‘Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs’, a reference to the incubation process which is a key part of life in the future dystopia.

Knock is set in a Hydro (supposedly in Devon, though it seems likely Rutland took details from a Hydro in Cork in Eire, where she lived for a time). Hydros probably equate to contemporary health farms or spa hotels, and always provide a great setting for a novel – Miss Marple spent a Christmas at one once, and Catriona McPherson’s formidable Dandy Gilver found murder and mayhem at a Scottish one.

The characters and staff are introduced quickly and expertly, and murder follows: rather gruesome, with the victim being stabbed in the back of the head with a knitting needle. Soon afterwards, an arrest is made, but there are more murders to come, and another detective is needed to solve the case.

The book races along, and is very funny: the characters are well-rounded and distinct, and the author has a light-hearted and modern attitude to various sexual matters – she has much more open discussions than, say Agatha Christie. In this respect she reminded me of another blog favourite, Ethel Lina White. One character says:

They say that when a man gives a woman a fur coat he gives her something to put under it.

Which I’m guessing is rather a risqué remark…. And there is this from the doctor [added later: it is actually the police inspector who has this thought, see comments below]

[Both] were young, good-looking, unmarried girls. In his profession accuracy was a habit, and he had learned to be careful in his usage of the old-fashioned word “virgin” in these enlightened days.

And I liked this idea:

you don’t really expect a low-born adventuress to know how to play the piano, do you?

There are excellent clothes descriptions throughout – such as

She wore a brilliant cerise-and-white ensemble, evidently not

intended for church-going

And

glancing at the lace bertha with which Miss Astill had decorated her black taffeta dress, and at the insignificant blue silk dresses worn by the Marston girls…

And just before the Brave New World scene, we get this excellent passage – the book referred to is by Kate O’Brien, and is an unexceptionable family saga:

“The last book I saw you with was the one with the rude title,” said Mrs. Marston. “In All My Nakedness, I think it was called.”

“Without My Cloak,” corrected Miss Blake. “You wouldn’t call me naked just because I took off my coat, would you?” 

“Yes, I should,” came a booming whisper from Mrs. Napier, who had apparently been asleep through the rest of the conversation. “Some of the frocks she wears under that thing she calls a house-coat are no bigger than vests.”

(Kate O'Brien took the phrase Without My Cloak  from Sonnet 34 by Shakespeare – the blog is an expert right now, after attending Sonnet Sunday at The Globe last week.)

Knock, Murderer, Knock is a quite splendid book, a real Golden Age crime story: the wit, details and scene-setting don’t preclude a good mystery. My friend Curtis Evans has written a fascinating and informative introduction to the new edition published by my favourite publishers, Dean St Press.

And John Norris, at Pretty Sinister Books, and Kate at Cross-Examining Crime have both done helpful reviews of the book.

Cerise-and-white from the NYPL, a collection of 1930s fashion illustrations.