Royal Bed for a Corpse by Max Murray

Royal Bed for a Corpse by Max Murray

 

published 1955

 

Comments  are still pouring in for the Smugglers' post - I delayed posting again to leave the field open, but now it's time for a new topic. However, smuggling comments still more than welcome, and they will be read. Also comments on Georgette Heyer, and a detailed discussion on the actor Patrick McGoohan, and I would defy you to guess why he came up. But if you want to talk about The Prisoner - fill your boots. Also, how I have spent my whole life thinking two different authors are one person - the Hodge family - and was Theseus a flawed personality? Prohibition is discussed, and also: how many children does Gladys Mitchell's Laura have? 

I have given up being astonished by the wide range of topics that can develop from quite a niche original subject - and am ever grateful for the diversity, the sharing of knowledge, and the good nature of everyone involved. Thank you, Clothes in Book-ers.

 

If Inspector Jim Wilson could have seen Judith and me at the bar of the Crown sitting at the counter drinking cocktails he might have thought he had made a foolish bargain…

 

I really enjoy Max Murray’s books – there’s a few on the blog – they always have very different settings, there’s no series sleuth. They have solid backgrounds, and discuss some serious issues, but are also very funny and nicely short. And they ususally give me great picture opportunities.

This one – a present from my friend Chrissie – is well up to standard, being a weird mix of spy thriller and traditional country house mystery. Our hero is part of a posh family who have taken to opening their house to the public: coach parties arrive all the time.

I very much enjoyed the detail that his Lordship showed the visitors round in person on some days, but the days the butler did it were actually more popular – ‘a genuine butler these days is rarer than a peer of the realm’.

I liked also: ‘there are two streams of life that are said to have saved the British aristocracy from running to seed – American girls and the English stage.'

Then one day, as the Lord is about to show the visitors the Royal bedroom, he finds there is a corpse in there already. We are only on the second page and the story is very much under way.

Our narrator, Brian, is the nephew and heir of the Lord, and after a ‘good war’ in the RAF, has been involved in some spying business. The corpse is someone he has had considerable dealings with, and so he, Brian, comes under immediate suspicion.

Incidentally – these are all traditional poshos who went to the right schools and so on. And the Lord insists that Brian would never have committed a murder in the house: he doesn’t rule out a killing, and even a killing by Brian, but ‘certainly not under my roof’. This is repeated several times, by Brian himself too, throughout the book: but this is not an etiquette/honour/shame rule that I was aware of. I haven’t come across it before in my extensive reading of traditional Golden Age mysteries. And I also once wrote an etiquette book and plainly failed in my duty of including this rule. I don’t quite know why this would make it so much worse.

Anyway, on we go. Mysterious spies turn up all over the place, a female reporter tries to find out more. Brian is repeatedly told he will hang for this murder. The wife of the dead man, it turns out, has been tucked away in the gate-keeper’s lodge by Brian.

The tone of the book varies a fair bit – as if Murray not sure whether he’s doing John le Carre or the Famous Five. Both equally welcome round here of course. Brian has a friend called Hilary who is rather PG Wodehouse and cheers things up a lot – he’s the young idiot who isn’t.

The young people – Brian, Hilary, & the lady reporter (the Chief Constable’s daughter, a key player, is for some reason left at home this time) - go on a strange trip to a very creepy mental hospital. It is reminiscent of a scene in Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear which I featured recently. As is traditional, it's an imposing former country house. Hilary talks about playing tennis there before the war, and there is a take on the long-lost world in which being an amateur or a professional at sports is of vital importance.

There’s an oddity – early on, we are introduced to a pony, and a second gardener, who are both named Henry. Nothing is made of this, and both then disappear completely from the story.

Brian takes time out from his derring-do to lecture one of the women at length about the future of the planet, the horrors of war, and the likelihood of nuclear meltdown. And then, how all this affects his feeling about patriotism, treachery, willingness to take hits on behalf of his country. It was thoughtful and reasonable, but didn’t fit in well.

The climax comes.

#justsaying – if 2x people are meeting and one tells the other to wear ‘old clothes… without tags’ would this not suggest something dire, would it not be better (if you are a very experienced spy) not to say this? But Brian has a suitable outfit, you feel he is hoping for some praise from the other chap:

I had an old seaman’s jersey that I used to wear when I went sailing. I put that on with a pair of slacks and down-at-heel shoes and a cap

(Picture perhaps a little too smart)

All in all, great fun and good value as both spy thriller and mystery.

 

Top picture: In a Bar by Frederick William Elwell