The Attic Murder by Sydney Fowler
published 1936
You can’t fault the opening of The Attic Murder: a young man has escaped from police custody just after being convicted of an unspecified crime, and takes shelter in a nearby boarding-house, pretending to be just a random new lodger.
In this house he will meet other
residents, and will get involved in another crime (non-spoiler hint: this house
has attic rooms).
I do like a lodging-house as a setting, and the book is a short easy read, and full of events, but it is, in the technical phrase, ‘all over the place’. Fowler truly seems to be making it up as he goes along, and sometimes it feels like one of those books where chapters are written by different authors, wrenching plot and character round to suit themselves.
To start with: the hero has
three different names during the course of the book, and several other people
have more than one. He has been wrongly convicted (of course!) but we have only
the vaguest idea what of – there is surrounding detail, but I’m not sure it is
ever really spelled out what the crime on the charge-sheet was. There is a lot
of discussion about what exact grounds he might have for an appeal, but that is
even more odd when we don’t know what he was accused of. There are many scenes
in legal offices, consideration of the judge’s thoughts, and a trial for murder
in the middle.
Characters are introduced then
disappear – there are two female lodgers, Miss Jones and Miss Brown, and I feel
that Fowler may have tossed a coin as to which will actually have a continuing role
to play.
The story winds around,
sometimes unexpectedly, and does require our belief in a massive coincidence –
again I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that two different crimes are
connected. Investigators are slow to catch up, and most readers will be rather
waiting for them, and will be exposed to this strangely-constructed sentence: ‘The
gang among whom Francis Hammerton got mixed up may have no connection with the
murder.’ Readers will also catch on quite early as to who may be on the wrong
side.
Fowler has a series character,
a quiet fussy solicitor called Jellipot, who steps in to help out, and he is good
value. His method of getting a lost witness to talk, against his thieves’ code
of honour, was enjoyable.
There is mention of someone ‘underletting’
a room, which I presume is an older phrase for subletting.
A key witness sees someone climbing out of a window in a dark room in the middle of the night: all she sees is the bottom half of the leg, but rather unconvincingly she recognises this again as a man gets out of a taxi. I sometimes comment on 'how many people were in the graveyard the night of the murder?' in Golden Age books: here the question concerns people climbing over rooftops on a regular basis, among several different houses, in and out of windows, down the stairs in houses they don't live in, other people listening and watching. (I think there is a loose end in the final solution, as to who was visiting whom...)
There are zero clothes descriptions
in the book, so I felt free to choose my own. There is a late appearance by
someone who could safely be described as an adventuress:
She was on a couch against the farther wall, her head lying back, a half-smoked cigarette between carmined lips, and her eyes fixed on the ceiling in frowning thought.
So it was obviously time to
get out my all-purpose adventuress picture (and occasional avatar):
And then the action moves to an
airfield, something I always enjoy (see
this post) and have a source for good photos – this 1936 image from the San Diego Aerospace
Archives:
I can’t say everyone should rush out and read this book, or that it should be republished, but it certainly gave me a few hours enjoyment, even if I did find aspects to complain about. There is a zest for life in there, even though there were some loose ends, including a question mark over the future romantic life of the hero….
Sydney Fowler was an extremely prolific writer of both science fiction and crime books, though he is now mostly forgotten.
From my limited reading of his works I had assumed he was in the legal profession, as he likes to deal with the minutiae of legal detail, and has long courtroom scenes and strong views about the law – but this is apparently not the case. He left school at 11 and was self-educated, and worked as an editor and writer. He also didn’t believe in birth control and had 10 children by 2 x wives. He seems to have had strong views about many different aspects of life: industry, eugenics, Nazis. He is described on wikipedia as having been a 'conservative political activist' though very roughly speaking - and I am judging on summaries of his work - he doesn't sound particularly conservative.
The book of his that survives is, I would say, Rex v Anne Bickerton – written in 1930, becoming a green and white Penguin in 1947**: the only book of his that did so, Penguin book no. 585. It is a phenomenon that this series is the surprising key to survival…I don't think people at the time would have been expecting that, viewing the paperback Penguins as rather down-market.
** If our civilization disappears (as in one of Fowler's sci-fi books) and future researchers are trying to reconstruct it from glimpsed docs, will they be utterly mystified if they come across the idea that a book became a green and white Penguin?
There is an absolutely splendid idea floating round the internet that those potential future researchers will find a distinctive blue Tiffany's box, and eventually conclude that it must be from a 20th century breakfast cafe.
Oh dear, Moira, where was his editor in all this, I wonder? Love the aerodrome picture, which made me think of the transformation of Aunt Ada at the end of Cold Comfort Farm. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteIf ever I saw a book that wasn't edited it's this one! I think it probably was a potboiler...
DeleteYes great comparison! there is a lovely collection of photos from an early aviation pioneer called Helen Richey - I think she just must have donated her albums to the aviation museum, so there are great pics of planes, but also her family photos.
Hmm...it sounds a bit as though this book wasn't sure what it wanted to be and what direction it wanted to go. And I had the same question Chrissie did: Where was the editor? Still, the premise as you explain it at the beginning sounds interesting, and I agree that boarding houses are interesting settings for stories.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm not sure how hard he was thinking about the plot. So light entertainment - you just have to skim over the surface and enjoy it where you can.
DeleteHave you ever done a post about boarding-house stories? I remember some on individual books set in boarding-houses. Wentworth wrote a couple and DE Stevenson wrote some that sound like the voice of experience!
ReplyDeleteMarty, it is indeed one of the items I am thinking about! I have a folder which contains files where I collect references on certain topics, and boarding houses is most certainly one of them. I'll be doing a Margery Sharpe book soon, and O Stevens had quite a good one too....
DeleteEF Benson's "Paying Guests" might be one to consider for your list, though the inhabitants of Wentworth would regard it as a private hotel rather than a boarding house.
DeleteSovay
Yes, another one for the list...
DeleteAlso perhaps Myles na gCopaleen's stories about The Brother?
DeleteSovay
I would have to re-read to remind myself!
DeleteAn author I've never heard of - not putting this one on the list though if I came across a reasonably priced copy by chance I might pick it up. My nearest Waterstones has for some years had a bookcase full of vintage green and white Penguins and another of orange and white Penguins, and I've found a few interesting books and authors I wasn't aware of amongst them (I'm pretty sure they haven't been ordering individual books but have just got a job lot from some kind of wholesaler as and when). Sadly they seem to be winding it down now.
ReplyDeleteHow is the aviatrix going to get into the plane in that skirt? She may need a crane ...
Sovay
I think he, and his books, don't crop up much, apart from the occasional Rex v Anne Bickerton. I can't remember where I got this one from!
DeleteInteresting about Waterstones, I don't think I've seen 2nd-hand books there. I am drawn irresistibly to shelves of old Penguins, I cannot walk past without checking them out.
Given that I spend a lot of time thinking about clothes of the olden days, I also spend a lot of time thinking about how they managed, and I have no idea! Even walking upstairs carrying something awkward or heavy, I think 'but suppose I had a long full skirt to cope with?' There was always that claim that posh young women in miniskirts learned how to get in and out of sports cars w/o showing too much leg - perhaps lady aviators had to learn....
Walking upstairs in the dark, carrying something awkward or heavy (as it might be, a baby) plus a candle or oil lamp ... there must have been so many accidents. Also, I have a tendency to knock things off occasional tables even in modern dress - how Victorian ladies in crinolines manoeuvered round those furniture-crammed drawing rooms without leaving constant devastation in their wake is beyond me.
DeleteSovay
Exactly! I have those thoughts all the time.
DeleteBoarding houses would be a wonderful theme, so Yes Please. Many fascinating books are set in them for good reason: Doris Hay's Murder underground, Helen Mcloy's Burn this, Norman Collins' London belongs to me, Muriel Spark's A far cry from Kensingtonl, Balzac's Père Goriot, Maupin's Tales of the city are some of my favourites. They celebrate, if that is the right word, the pains and pleasures of this form of semi-communal living where clothes are so important as indicators of state and status.
ReplyDeleteThe Girls of Slender Means, too - the May of Teck may pretend to be a club but it's really a boarding house.
DeleteYes to all these, many of them great favourites. I did a piece for the Guardian about women sharing accommodation, mostly flats, but some boarding-houses, including Slender Means. After all, the shared Schiaparelli dress is the ur-item in these matters.
Deletehttps://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2013/10/women-sharing-flats-clothes-lives.html
Another less well known Boarding house story is Patricia Brent Spinster by Herbert Jenkins
ReplyDeleteI did that one a long time ago! https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2014/10/patricia-brent-spinster-by-hubert.html
DeleteTrollope's "Small House at Allington" has some very funny boarding-house scenes, in which Johnny Eames's landlady schemes to maneuver him into proposing marriage to her daughter. Living up to my name....Your blogfriend, Trollopian.
ReplyDelete"Communal living" nowadays, at least in large U.S. (and perhaps European?) cities, seems to consist of entire group houses, rented by mostly young adults, who each have a bedroom and own or shared bath and negotiate common spaces like kitchen and living room/parlor. Housekeeping is done, or not done, by agreement. Decor and cleanliness standards vary. The "board" in "boarding house" has vanished. I'm not sure why. One hunch is that there used to be more widows, left with property, for whom this was a respectable way to eke out a living in the absence of other job opportunities. -- Trollopian
DeleteAnother reason boarding houses have disappeared, I think, is that with modern conveniences of various kinds housekeeping is no longer a full time job, which it most certainly was in the days before central heating, dishwashers, washing machines, etc. Also, working hours were longer. I remember a 1930s novel about a girl who works in the "library", i.e. the book department, of a large department store in London. (I acquired after having read about it here, read and liked a lot, but can't remember the title. Help me, Moira!) The protagonist only moves from being a lodger to a flat of her own when she can also afford a daily help. I can't imagine that happening today.
DeleteContemporary young people may have more housekeeping skills too – when my father first left home in the early 1950s it was taken for granted that he would go into lodgings rather than rent somewhere of his own, not just because of cost or the time element but because it was assumed that he simply wouldn’t know how to cook or look after himself, and the same assumptions would probably be made about middle-class girls from families that employed servants.
DeleteThe “library” in the London shop may well have been a library rather than a book sales department – one of the small private “circulating libraries” that were common in the early-mid 20th century. Jarrolds, the biggest department store in Norwich, had one, for example – it cost 14 shillings and sixpence to subscribe for a year in the 1910s.
Sovay
Trollopian: yes indeed, I loved the lodging house, and said in my post 'the young men sharing a lodging house in London are constantly advancing and retreating in their dealings with the young women in the house.' And crinolines feature again!
DeleteTrollopian, Birgitta and Sovay: Excellent sociological discussion of that huge change in the way people lived. It must have seemed a settled way of life: the woman (prob a widow as you say) running the house, a constant throughput of lodgers, the inability of most people to housekeep. there's a 1960s Anthony Gilbert book that features a big shared house, and it's definitely gone over to people looking after themselves, though still having the air of a lodging house.
DeleteBirgitta - I think the book might be Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford? I mentioned it, just a para, in an unlikely place, a post on drug distribution. I was contrasting the book dept she worked in with the one in an Ellery Queen book.
There are all the romantic/sexual complications as well as the housekeeping issues – does one’s visiting girlfriend/boyfriend have to sneak up the stairs in stockinged feet to evade the notice of the landlady, who prides herself on keeping a respectable house? Inspector Quill in Brahms and Simon’s “A Bullet in the Ballet” lives in lodgings, run by Miss Treakle (I think) who doesn’t allow visitors of the opposite sex in her lodger’s room – he’s expected to come downstairs and freeze along with his visitor in the unused and unheated parlour. And how old does a widow need to be before she can take in a young male lodger without giving rise to gossip?
DeleteSovay
So many considerations! And of course this is why a new generation didn't want to live with a landlady - up to a certain point in time, respectability was paramount, you had to show you lived in a vaguely chaperoned way. Once that was fading, you wanted the freedom to entertain your guests, smoke, and come home late, or not at all.
DeleteBusiness as Usual, yes, that's the one, thank you! As for housekeeping skills: My mother and father were both lodgers before they married (not in boarding houses though, just renting a room from a family or a single woman who had extra space and needed the extra money). My mother had some housekeeping skills, but my father had no idea whatsoever. Some months after the marriage he told mother that they would have to call in an electrician as the lamp in the hallway wasn't functioning. "But isn't it just the lightbulb?" said my mother and changed it, after which there was light again. Turned out he had no idea that lightbulbs need changing now and then and thought she was tremendously daring to do it herself.
DeleteWhat a charming story! So long as people learn, it's OK not to know.
DeleteI visited a female friend who asked if my husband could come round and change a lightbulb for her. I was taken aback, and said 'well I could do that?' and she plainly wasn't sure I wouldn't electrocute myself. (She did have a mobility issue which meant she wasn't climbing up on things herself)
I’ve been considering the recognisable lower leg – distinctive socks, maybe? Or even jazz spats, like Bertie Wooster’s short-lived Old Etonian pair?
ReplyDeleteSovay
Do you know, I think there were spats - well thought-out!
Delete