Graveyards, Corpses, Casual Slaughters: Village Mysteries in the Golden Age

Casual Slaughters by James Quince

published 1935

 

 

 

How could you not want to read a book where one of the chapter headings is ‘A Fat Man in Bed’? I have listed all the chapter titles at the end of this post, as it seemed to me to be the archetypal structure for a Golden Age village mystery.

Casual Slaughters is splendid, I really enjoyed it. JJ did it last week over at The Invisible Event: I had never heard of James Quince or this book. I read his review, downloaded it, read it, and here’s my post. If only it was always that simple and quick.

Jim only gave it 3 stars, because he is stricter on the subject of detection that I am – I will forgive a lot for a book that makes me laugh without being a comic crime caper, and this one was hilarious. Martin Edwards featured it as a forgotten book over on his blog Doyouwriteunderyourownname – but that was more than 10 years ago, so it isn’t being revived in a hurry.

It is a very classic village mystery, set in the Devon village of Bishop’s Pecheford, narrated by a local gent, Blundell, who is a chicken farmer, and well in with the local rector. When the policeman turns up from Scotland Yard, they make friends and Inspector Lawless actually stays in Blundell’s house.

The story gets going in the churchyard, where the sexton is set to ‘levelling the mounds’ on the graves. The first one he comes to – this happens:

“’Tis Sarah Mant. Her’ve come out of her coffin.”

“Come out of her coffin?” The Rector took this surprising news with complete calm. “Come out of her coffin? Well, well, she shouldn’t have done that. What makes you think Sarah has taken such a rash step? Is she walking?”

But of course as experienced crime story readers – see for example Dorothy L Sayers’ The Nine Tailors from the previous year – we know that it won’t be Sarah, the legitimate resident, it will be someone else. And it is the headless corpse of a man.

“Remember, Barlow,” I said, “that the poor remains lying here are those of a fellow-creature.”

“Ay, but they ain’t no call to lay top of poor old Sarah Mant. Wouldn’t ’a dared to do it so long as her was alive.” At that the doctor again guffawed.

Village life is quite exciting even apart from murder – there is a whist drive: ‘the nearest approach to a religious ceremony that we have.’

And then there was a visiting circus recently

Do you remember that Circus—Sampson’s, wasn’t it came here in the autumn? Now, just when did it come? I can get the exact date because I baptized the clown’s baby—”

Sadly the circus doesn’t feature nearly enough – it’s thought the body might be one of the workers, but no. (The worker seems to change his name from Henry to John or Jake during the course of this). Though there is an enjoyable if brief picture of the fascination of the circus for the villagers, the young man cutting a swathe through village maidens, and fighting with each other.

And then there is a Flower Show, a key event in the village calendar – very much as in Sheila Pim’s books set in Ireland, written 10-15 years later. (They are very similar in their charming and funny view of the world.)

The policeman down from that London is dressed in ‘well-cut, well-worn tweeds’ – very much a Golden Age phrase, and one that annoys me, though it always safe to say that a one dressed like that will not be a villain.

There is a brief mention of tithes in the book – it also comes up in The Nine Tailors – the archaic system by which at this time the Church of England was financed.

There is a blacksmith who is of a traditional build:

Vinnicombe sat down. If you can imagine a York ham glowing with conscious rectitude you will know what he looked like.

It is true that most of the detection is not a serious matter, though there are absolute scenes when the members of the Parish Council are sent out in pairs to interview other villagers. They learn next to nothing, but the conversations are wonderful.

I would be predisposed to this book anyway because I have considerable form with graveyards and coffins:

-      Guardian article on digging up bodies

-      countless other posts featuring such goings on

-      repetition of my favourite quotation from James Thurber, eg here.

There is a wonderful gravedigger in one of Angela Thirkell’s books August Folly, here, who made me think of AE Houseman and Thomas Hardy. (And I nicked the picture for this post,  it is from the National Library of Wales via Wikimedia Commons and shows Dick Nancy, a gravedigger from Ruthin in North Wales.)

'Clown and policemen', top picture, does not show any scene from the book, but was so very appropriate that I felt I had to use it. From Tyne and Wear Museums, who say they have no info on the picture.

The array of vegetables is - obviously – not from 1935, but a splendid picture from modern day East Lothian. As we all know, it’s not (on the whole) the flowers that bring trouble and dishonesty to the village Show, but the vegetables: and that is what happens here. (Not, obv, among the respectable people of East Lothian, but in the book)

And another modern picture of a Devon church and graveyard, Woodbury, with suitable tower and no walking corpses, taken by David Smith.

 

List of chapter titles:

Chapter I The Fateful Resolution

Chapter II The Dead Hand

Chapter III A Fat Man in Bed

Chapter IV Enter Inspector Lawless

Chapter V The Flower Show

Chapter VI Tracing the Taxi

Chapter VII An Impostor

Chapter VIII The Coming of the Fear

Chapter IX The P.C.C. Plans

Chapter X A Legacy from Scotland Yard

Chapter XI What the Gardener Knew

Chapter XII The P.C.C. as Sleuth

Chapter XIII Ministering Angel

Chapter XIV The Trouser-Leg Clue

Chapter XV By One and Two and Three

Chapter XVI The Final Session

Chapter XVII Mounds For Ever!

 

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