The Longer Bodies by Gladys Mitchell


published 1930







[book extract]

[A judgmental old lady is trying to make her relations into top athletes. One of the nephews is reviewing the situation]

‘Don’t forget that she’s now seen:

1. Malpas muff the high jump at five feet eleven;

2. Frank make his record long jump of nineteen feet seven inches, a distance which a schoolboy champion can equal;

3. Cowes put the shot once on his own toe, twice behind him instead of in front, once into the bathchair— luckily when she’d just got out of it to hobble over to Kost and curse him for letting us get slack— and once a distance of nearly fifteen feet, after which he retired to bed for two days, suffering from strained eyebrow or something;

4. Brown-Jenkins persistently refuse to make any attempt at mastering the pole-vault action ever since Kost handed him backchat on the subject nearly three weeks ago;

5. Me make my record throw with the discus of fifty-eight feet nine inches—’

‘That sounds good to me,’ said Priscilla meekly.

‘Well,’ returned Hilary, ‘I know that the world’s record figures for the event are one hundred and fifty-eight feet, one and three-quarter inches, that’s all.’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t an Englishman,’ retorted Priscilla.

‘U.S.A.,’ said Hilary patiently. ‘And M.C. Nokes’s English native record is one hundred and twenty-six feet one inch,’ he added, ‘so poor H. is a bit of an also-ran, isn’t he?’


comments: It’s all somehow very unlikely. YES, yes, Gladys Mitchell plots always are, you’d think it was hardly worth mentioning. But this one is positively surreal. An old woman wants to improve England’s chances of winning international athletics events, and also wants to decide who to leave her money to. So – obviously – she organizes training sessions at her country house, and all the putative heirs have to compete. The first one to make the England team gets the dosh. Mayhem and murder are the result, amongst a wide range of characters.

It is moderately entertaining to read the facts as they looked in 1930:
No, it’s the field events that do it— and they always will do it until something pretty drastic is done about training boys early enough for them. As long as men with a 21-foot long jump or a 6-foot high jump or a 40-foot shot, and chaps doing 11foot-6 over the pole vault, are in the championship class in England, our case is hopeless.
For interest, the current UK long jump record is almost 28 ft. The pole vault record is just over 19 feet. High jump: 7.7 feet. Shot put: 70+ feet. Discus (see excerpt) is now something over 223 feet. (All records are of course in metres now. Never say I don’t do research and work for these blogposts.)

This book must have been very disconcerting to readers in 1930. The same year Agatha Christie was producing Murder at the Vicarage: superficially similar but actually on a different planet. And from my extensive reading of crime books of the era, Christie is a lot more typical than Mitchell.

In fact it’s more like Evelyn Waugh’s writings of the time – it reminded me of Sports Day at Llanabba school in Decline and Fall, published 1928. But then it was all very confusing: Who are all these people? What is going on? I like reading her books on Kindle now where possible, so you can check back to see if she has indeed just mentioned a completely new character without introducing him, and called him, mysteriously, the Scrounger throughout. Her style is unique, and very complex.

In this one, the set of young people should be interesting (obviously all the young men – women can’t be athletes or initially heirs – have brought their sisters along). But in the end they had little character…

One of the rural policemen was having no truck with the ideas of the other:
‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Bloxham,’ objected the sergeant. ‘Them sort of large, blowsy females are seldom strong in the brain-line, sir. Sort of passionate and excitable underneath an otherwise placid exterior, if you get me, inspector, but real bright, no.’ 

‘Boy,’ said the inspector, eyeing his henchman and supporter with grave concern, ‘those talkies are doing you no good. Take my tip, and spend your evenings at home. Help the missus wind the wool. It’ll do your nerves good.’
Though to be fair, you can imagine series sleuth Mrs Bradley making the same observation to great applause all round.

She makes quite a late appearance in this book – she is so much Mitchell’s trump card that it’s always a shame when that happens: she cheers things up just by her presence.
‘I have heard of your work,’ [Great-Aunt Puddequet] said. ‘More: I have read your books. Utter rubbish. How do you do?’ 

Mrs Bradley acknowledged this informal comment on her work with an appreciative leer which gave her never extraordinarily attractive countenance the expression of a satyr. ‘I hesitate to commit myself to sentimentality,’ she observed, in her rich, deep, beautiful voice, ‘but my heart goes out to you, Mrs Puddequet. How you must have enjoyed the murders!’
As always, the details of life are interesting: There is no electricity upstairs in the house, yet people are using a cine camera to record the athletes. There is the usual snobbish claptrap about the good families in the area. There is a completely incomprehensible sub-thread about rabbits.

But the details of the murder plot are beyond description and so completely impossible as to be dismissed from your head the moment the book is over (how exactly did the criminals get the shot into the concrete ball? And why?). The point isn’t really in the search for a murderer. I’m not really sure what the point is, and I fully sympathize with those who say she is not worth the effort of trying to follow the plots. But I do always come down on the side of her being worth reading…

Putting the shot in 1935, from the State Library of New South Wales. High jump, same source. Both by the blog favourite Sam Hood, whose photos of daily life in Australia in the first half of the 20th century are lovely, and invaluable in my researches. (The winning shot at the event was 45 feet, perhaps proving mad old Great Aunt Puddequet’s point.)

There is mention of one young lady in an evening frock, no description: the only other clothes mentioned are the hideous outfits worn by Mrs Bradley and various people doing muddy jobs outdoors. But I had to use one beautiful evening dress from 1930, so I found this one from Kristine’s photostream.


























Comments

  1. Moira, I usually don't read novels centered in and around sporting events, though I can see there is a lot more, including a murder plot, to "The Longer Bodies" than just athletics. Ditto with films. I do, however, confess to having read Dick Francis' fiction about horse-racing but that was a very long time ago.

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    1. I haven't read a Dick Francis in years! He was very popular. Sport in general does not attract me as a setting, I am with you there Prashant. I wouldn't recommend this one to everyone - but that's not because of the sport!

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  2. I think you do have to read Mitchell with a certain frame of mind, Moira. As you say, her work does get surreal, and keeping track of the characters can be a challenge. But in their way, the books are fascinating, aren't they? And I do like the wit, and even the weirdness, if that makes sense.

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    1. You never read Mitchell for the mystery, you read her for those unexpected bits that pop up unexpectedly and elbow you - hard - in the ribs before flitting off.

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    2. Margot & Shay: Exactly. As I've grown older I have become more tolerant of her weird ways, accepting them for the small pleasures. Love your description of that, Shay.

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  3. I love it when the (uneducate) policemen assert "That's just barminess of a female kind, sir". They are often - well, sometimes - right.

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    1. The writer holds all the cards! Mutual incomprehension between the sexes is such a feature of books of the era - I can't decide if that has got better or not.

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  4. I share your befuddlement about this Mitchell mystery. Disliked it intensely. I barely finished it and would never bother with a re-read. I can easily get excited by the iconoclasts who shunned formulae and conventions, but the ending is ludicrously arbitrary and the supposed motive for the murders just pissed me off. Plus there are those unanswered questions you point out that Mitchell doesn't seem to caer about. Sometimes I'm amazed that she was part of the Detection Club when so many of her early books -- this is only #3 and hardly traditional -- were not at all following the rules or resembling anything remotely like a traditional detective novel. Took me years to grow to like Mitchell's books. I prefer those from the late 40s through the early 60s. One from her final years published in 1983 is excellent. The Greenstone Griffins is excellent for me (at least) because it sticks closely to expected conventions.

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    1. Yes yes yes and yes. But I still don't quite throw them across the room when I finish them: that's my ultimate condemnation. I just tried to get Greenstone Griffins on your important reco, but only v expensive copies. Not on kindle apparently.
      I am mystified as to who was reading them, and what they were making of them, in the 1930s.

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  5. It makes me think of "She Shall Have Murder" - not because it seems to resemble Delano Ames's novel in any way, but because the old lady seems to be in for it.

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    1. I thought 'oh I haven't read that one by Ames' and then was terribly surprised to find I have a whole blogpost on it! The titles don't stick with me. Apparently I enjoyed it a lot!
      Not saying anything about the victims in this one...

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  6. She can be infuriating but she can occasionally be very good.

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    1. Worth it for the good bits, I feel, but I can see why other people don't think so!

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  7. I haven't given Gladys Mitchell enough of a chance to say yea or nay. My first outing with her was A Hearse on May-Day, a copy that you sent me with skeleton dancing on the cover. I liked it but it was a bit strange. I have one other to try on my shelves (Watson's Choice). Doesn't sound like I would be too fond of this one.

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    1. You have to forget all your ideas of what a crime story should be Tracy before you read her! I resisted that for years, but have slowly mellowed... I am very curious to know how people reacted to them at the time, they are just so weird.

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  8. Replies
    1. Even people who like more traditional mysteries than you - a lot of them don't like Gladys. So no argument from me.

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