Hymn Tunes and a Bookshop and lost gems

The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A Birmingham

published 1930

 

Recently I was lucky enough to visit Bodies in the Bookshop in Cambridge, which is exactly what it sounds like: a bookshop selling mystery fiction. It has old, new, modern, classic, secondhand books. It has little rooms leading into one another, and wooden shelves, and rickety stairs, and chairs to sit on, and tables piled high with more books. It is the bookshop of your dreams.

Those responsible for the shop also curate a collection of classic crime at Oreon, part of the Oleander Press. Naturally I had to buy a lot of books while I was there (14 in total) and this is one of the Oreon books – and it is a little lost gem. 

The book is set in the fictional cathedral town of Carminster, and most of the action is within the Cathedral Close. The characters include the dean, the archdeacon, the precentor and the verger. As I have said before, I live in a Cathedral town, and after a long time I finally have an idea about how it works - the key is always that the Bishop is very senior, but is out of the way, the Dean has all the power IN the Cathedral, and the Archdeacon annoys everyone.

The organist is thought to have a drinking problem, so when he dies apparently after falling off his stool in the organ loft late at night, it seems obvious that it was an unfortunate accident. The dean is puzzled by the assumptions, because he was in the Cathedral, late at night when the death happened, and it doesn’t seem to make sense...

-       and I have to say here that any scene involving an organ being played with vigour in an empty, dark deserted Cathedral late at night is an instant winner for me – see  the wonderful The Nebuly Coat by J  Meade Falkner.

John Dennis ends up investigating: he is a young and rather casual Precentor, ie minor canon with responsibility for Cathedral music. Most people around him are staid and formal and slightly disapproving, particularly the Archdeacon (never named) and the Dean’s daughter Sybil, a fearsome young woman who bullies her father. Everyone thinks the Dean is a bit dotty in his comments on the death. He is losing his power... 

But then Elsie turns up: the dead organist’s fiancée and, frankly, a breath of fresh air. She is the only person whose clothes are described in detail in the book:

She wore a kind of skull cap, blue in colour, fitting very closely to the head… Her clothes were silky and fitted her from her collarbone to her knees like a tight sheath. It was difficult to suppose that she had on any garments beneath those which were visible. Her stockings were exactly the colour of her legs. 

She is later described as ‘that kind of girl’, and it is stated that she must be a stranger in town, because ‘Carminster, a cathedral city, only produces girls of the other kind.’ (In case it's not clear this is obviously meant as irony)

Elsie is desperate to get hold of a piece of paper she gave the dead organist, but it has gone missing. Others are equally anxious to find it. She refers to it as ‘a tune’. A lot of searching and discussion play itself out.

There was a jewel robbery some years back, and the valuable emeralds were never found. Eventually everyone realizes these items may be connected.

Now, we can congratulate ourselves on getting there a long time before the protagonists, first of all because we are so clever, secondly because they don’t know they are in a crime book, but thirdly because we have all read The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers (often on the blog, and one of my 9 top cosy crimes for the I newspaper last week, and boo to everyone who chose to tell me it wasn’t cosy)

Both books involve a jewel robbery, a big church, the prospect of the jewels hidden somewhere, a cryptogram that requires specialist knowledge – bell-ringing in Sayers, music in Birmingham.

This book was published four years earlier, and isn’t truly in the same league as the Sayers (which is one of my top crime novels of all time) but it is still interesting to compare. And – circular – Sayers says she was much inspired to write Tailors  by The Nebuly Coat which I mentioned above.

Part of the action takes place in the Choir School, and two aspects are very much of their time: a lot of guff about boys not sneaking, honour, shame and brutal punishments. And, interestingly, there are choir scholarships for ‘town’ boys and this is seen as infra dig, not a particularly good thing, with a strong implication that it will raise boys beyond their station. Thank goodness that’s all gone now.

Apart from that, the book is full of funny lines and sly comments on Cathedral management. There is a nice example when Lord Carminster wants to get rid of his valet “because he was too clever”, so palms him off on the Cathedral. 

“Brains, a disadvantage in a valet, are no drawback to a cathedral verger. In that profession there is little or no opportunity for the use of brains, which are therefore of no disadvantage to their possessor.”

Altogether this isn’t a lost masterpiece but it is highly enjoyable, and kudos both to Oreon and the Bodies in the Bookshop: long may you thrive.

Sybil is never really described, but this is my idea of her, from an Irish wedding photo of the 1920s.

Recently featured on the blog, Casual Slaughters by James Quince is an Oreon book.

And, Victor L Whitechurch’s Murder at the College – on the blog here – has also been republished by Oreon.