Death and the Pleasant Voices by Mary Fitt
published 1946
Marcel was sitting at the grand piano singing…Ursula was
standing beside Marcel with her hand on his shoulder…laughing across at each other,
quite absorbed. She was singing with him now…
[picture from date of publication rather than my
theoretical timing of the action, see below]
comments: I have a love/hate relationship with Mary Fitt – I’ve read
a number of her books, and blogged
on a couple, but she is not a favourite. I think because
the books can be quite compelling, and have interesting plots, but never a
slice of humour or good-heartedness or a joke in them. She’s not, of course,
the only author of whom that can be said, and I don’t demand a hearty laugh in
my crime books, but she doesn’t seem to offer enough to make up for the lack.
She takes herself VERY Seriously – see my comments on her author bio in this
post:
New
Year’s Eve Party: Goddess Guests
-but then look at those wonderful pictures she enabled me
to use.
The first thing to be said about Death And The Pleasant
Voices is that despite its publication date, it is, I think, set in the
1930s – it becomes clear that the narrator is remembering events from several
years before, and that in the story that unfolds he is a medical student, but
he is looking back as a qualified doctor.
The book has a clunky opening, where his car and navigation
are failing him, and he turns up at a remote country house in the dark. A
family is gathered there, and it becomes obvious that they think he is someone
else: a lost heir, Hugo, who may be coming to displace them.
They are all ready for dinner, one of them in a 'Shining yellow frock with her sparkling manner…’
Now, this is very similar to the plot of a recent,
much-enjoyed, book by E Philips Oppenheim, The Interloper – which I blogged on here. In both cases, the recently-deceased patriarch turns out to have had an
early marriage and a legitimate heir, who will inherit everything.
So – excellent setup.
Our narrator, Jake Seaborne, completely fails to pretend he
is Hugo (that would have cheered the plot up) and is plainly exactly who he
says he is – he is vouched for by a distinguished doctor who knows his brother
- but he then stays on at this house for something like a week or ten days for
absolutely no reason that anyone can explain. Admittedly, there are some crimes
in that time, so perhaps he has to stay on then, although traditionally don’t
they go to stay in the inn in the village and just wander up to cause trouble? Fitt really doesn’t bother to explain how he
gets away with it. He is a clunky narrator, and we are privy to many of his
rather dull thoughts. He seems only vaguely aware of what is going on around
him, and easily led astray. I kept thinking there would be some secret
explanation for the role of Jake in all this, and #spoiler there isn’t.
On we go. Is Hugo
really who he says he is? Who is the dead body in the shrubbery? Who can shoot
with accuracy? Who could have left the room in time to go out in the moonlight?
Inspector Mallett – old friend from this
book, with the post looking at other important Mallet(t)s –
turns up, but doesn’t have much to do. Jake gets stupider and stupider.
But it’s a short sharp book, and I kept on reading, and
honestly I did not guess exactly what had happened, which is quite an
achievement given the very small cast.
The family dynamics were pleasingly complex and horrible:
truly dysfunctional. (I’ve just been reading
a lot about the British Royal Family, so am currently an expert.)
I liked the sharp comments on each other, and looking at some of the situations
from different angles.
There was a disappointing lack of interesting clothes: the ‘young woman in
a yellow frock' and then 'U
Green dresses – well we discussed recently how hard it is to find them
We had an appearance of sedative bouillon cubes – there’s three words you never thought you’d see together, but they came up in Clues to Christabel, so some explanation in that post, along with the chipette box and my favourite ever reason why something was difficult to look up (it involves a Madonna song).
Given a missing heir plot, The Interloper was a lot more fun, but Mary Fitt did manage to create a good sour story here.
[Portrait of Clyde Lombardi, Barbara Carroll, and Chuck Wa… | Flickr
Women in yellow and black evening gowns, front and back views - NYPL Digital Collections
Flat crepe print dress - NYPL Digital Collections
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