Can you Predict which Books I will Feature? - Fortune Tellers

 

We saw this post coming....

We started with jumble sales, moved on to White Elephant Stalls, which are a feature of more general fetes – church or village, held at the big house. And so we slide on to the question of 

fortune-tellers

This may be the moment for me to reveal that I took the role of Madam Fortunata to do some fortune-telling at my children’s school fetes, and revelled in it. (I was careful to emphasize that this was in the nature of a joke, I was not dabbling in the dark arts, and no-one should take it seriously).

I like to think I brought a certain gusto to the role, with my curtain-ring earrings. And no-one tried to murder me - it seems I was lucky… they feature in an awful lot of crime books. Can you predict which ones I will mention in my list?

If you notice I have missed your favourite do say so, BUT I had far too many instances for one post, so there are others lined up –John Dickson Carr & Agatha Christie  for example. I'll add your great suggestions to those future posts.

A couple of people already mentioned the Catherine Aird book, Passing Strange, 1980, which is set at a Flower Show in a village – although the event covers a lot more than just flowers.  And yes there is a fortune-tellers tent, and the popular local nurse has dressed up and is looking into her crystal ball. And fails to foresee that someone is going to murder her. But who and why?

So in comes series sleuth Inspector Sloan, sandwiched as ever between his awful superior and his useless underling Crosby, doing his best to see what is going on. The owner of the Big House died recently, and there is some doubt about the next heir, who has lived most of her life in South America. Is she who she says she is? What could that have to do with the murder?

Despite the presence of a fete, a White Elephant stall (“Why they always put the second-hand books with the White Elephants defeats me,” says the Rector, “It’s not logical”), fortune teller and (possible) impersonation, all such favourites round here, I did not take to this book. I was impatient with Sloan’s meanderings eg a long description of how to worry suspects into giving information – completely irrelevant, and really rather unpleasant. And above all, it infuriated me that when Sloan comes to talk to the young heiress – who is 18 - she is wearing jeans and a jacket, and she and he agree drearily that every teenager wears these clothes, it’s a uniform, and that there are no other clothes available in the UK. This was sufficiently stupid to madden me, unreasonably so. I was alive, sentient and shopping (and I like to think stylish) in 1980, and what they say is completely nonsensical, all aspects of it. Perhaps I let this put me off more than it should… but it is the main thing I will remember about the book. (And I refuse to find a picture for this ‘universal’ outfit)

 

The setup is similar to

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edmund Crispin

-       Again, village fete and fortune telling. Many thought this book was a sad falling-off from Crispin, published 25 year after his previous book, but I have a soft spot for it, and particularly admire one of the explanations of the impossible crime.

And in the recently featured Murder Fantastical by Patricia Moyes, there was a fortune-teller at the fete:

The fortune-teller’s tent had fallen down for the second time, nearly suffocating Ramona who, as the annual incumbent, had been inside inspecting her quarters…She wore earrings made from large brass curtain rings, and a scarlet silk headscarf  “to be in character” as she put it. In fact she need not have bothered. She looked perfectly in character without any such aids.

She predicts a darkness is coming and almost immediately the tent falls down when someone trips over a guy-rope in the frantic search for a missing item.

A tangle of torn canvas and twisted ropes was all that remained of the fortune-teller’s tent.

In the Graham Greene book Ministry of Fear, it’s the fortune-teller who passes on the key information for cheating at the guess-the-weight of the cake event, inciting all the events of the book. The post tells all:

Graham Greene: The Man for a White Elephant Stall

 

In Gladys Mitchell’s The Saltmarsh Murders, the young curate Noel dresses up as a gypsy fortune-teller – in this respect if no other he resembles Mr Rochester, who makes the same venture in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I think it’s significant that I had forgotten all about Noel’s moment, which would be a major incident in any other book, but amid the madness of Mitchell, not so much. “I vote we make it sixpence, with an extra sixpence for advice about their love affairs… [the vicar and wife] might not like the idea of the curate doing a stunt like that” – so of course the answer is to keep it quiet, not, like, not do it.

In the Catherine Aird book at the top of this list, the rector is asked to fill in for the fortune teller when she goes missing, but says he can’t because of his vocation. In my own adventures at the school fete, the Parish Priest said he had no objection to there being a fortune teller, but he could not himself visit me. I cheerfully gave him a prediction anyway – ‘you will become a Bishop!’ - and it CAME TRUE.

Blogfriend Johan recommended a Martha Grimes book, The Anodyne Necklace (1983), when we were looking at mad families. When I read it I remembered why I don’t like Grimes’s books – but, there was also a village fete with a fortune teller, so I will include it here:

Madame Zostra with her crystal ball, jewelled turban, and redoubtable accent….revealed her cut-throat self. Fortune tellers were there to make one feel  happy and hopeful: beautiful strangers and money and exotic ports-of-call… [But she predicted] a life of ravaged dreams. He wouldn’t make a fortune, but lose one, probably at the hands of a dangerous (not beautiful) stranger, who would fall across his path like a dead tree.

He left the tent and did not wonder at the lack of customers outside. Word must have got around that to enter this tent was truly to abandon hope. If the fete’s fortune were left to Madame Zostra’s fund-raising abilities, the church window would have to wait until hell froze over. That appeared to be where all her clients were heading, anyway.

 

In Gladys Mitchell’s My Father Sleeps (coming to the blog soon), a young woman reads palms for fun, and does that for a chance-met man in a dark Scottish house. Later this man is found dead – but she sees the body and says it is NOT him, because he has the wrong palm - she would always recognize a palm that she had read. This is very satisfying, and I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in more crime stories. She says, by the way, that she doesn’t tell fortunes, so doesn’t really belong here – she reads character, qualities and talents.

Do bring your own favourite fortune-tellers to the comments  

If you look back at my many past posts featuring fortune tellers and fetes, you will find the same pictures coming up. They are, I think, splendid ones – but I am also delighted to have found a new one.

Lady Mayoress meeting a fortune-teller | Violet Grantham, La… | Flickr

The lady in black is a Mrs Inez Stiness, from the Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.

The fortune teller painting is by Colin Campbell Cooper from the 1920s.