The Case is Closed by Patricia Wentworth


published 1937






[extracts from throughout the book]

She was so comic when she talked like that with her colour glowing again, and her eyes as bright as a bird’s, and the little brown curls all shining under her perky hat.



She was still in her outdoor things – the brown tweed coat which she had had in her trousseau, and the brown wool beret which Aunt Emmeline had crocheted for her.


All day long she turned a courageous mask upon the world. She had her living to earn. She earned it as a mannequin. All day long she stood, walked, and postured in clothes that were sometimes beautiful and sometimes hideous, but always staggeringly expensive.

Marion Grey was showing a dress called Moonlight. There was very little of it, but what there was was quite well-named.



comments: 
‘That was the worst of getting into a wrong train, 
you never knew where it was going to take you.’ 

It takes you to a totally unbelievable coincidence to start the unravelling of the plot.  Start as you mean to go on.

Patricia Wentworth is ideal lockdown reading – and she wrote a ton of books, over a long period of time, without varying them any too much: they all exist in what I have described as the Strange and Wonderful World of Miss Silver.


This one has many familiar tropes: starting with the broken engagement which seems to be obligatory. But this is a relatively un-annoying breach, and is treated with a light touch and a lot of – of all things – humour.

And there’s a good setup: Hilary lives with her cousin Marion, while Marion’s husband is in jail for murder. But of course he must be innocent! Hilary must try to sort this out. But the evidence looks very black, how could anyone else have done it? It is more intriguing, and less instantly explicable, than many of Wentworth’s setups, and Hilary’s investigations are wide-reaching and entertaining. It falls off towards the end, in all honesty, and if you don’t see one of the plot tropes coming then you perhaps have never read a crime novel before…

But I read PW for the fun and the details more than the plot, in the end, and this was great fun. Miss Silver busybodies around in pursuit of truth - around 16 coughs in this book, one of them 'in a refined manner'. Another is a 'hesitating cough' - not what we expect of Miss S, who is never troubled by lack of confidence.

There is a ‘peter-grievous’ female – apparently this means a whiner, a whinger, a complainer. Two characters are ‘dreeps’ – I can’t find the word with this meaning, although it is apparent what it must mean ‘a dithery dreep of a woman...  a poor thing, a dreep – a frightened poor thing.’

Hilary is quite the sleuth, racing round the countryside on a bike, being kidnapped and dragged through the mud, so I chose what I consider to be an excellent investigating outfit for her, from exactly the right era. 



The miserable Marion works in a dress shop, ‘showing’ gowns with names like ‘triste journee’ to rich ladies:  a phenomenon we love here on the blog. There’s a black velvet number in the book called Lucrezia Borgia. The picture is (of course!) Greta Garbo playing Queen Christina, but I thought would make a good standin.


This post on an Agatha Christie book looks at this kind of shop, though they feature all over the blog – click on dress shops below.


The ‘perky hat’ is from 1937 and is from Kristine’s photostream.

The crocheted beret (and that is some neat, tight crocheting on show in the picture above) is from the free vintage knitting pattern site, and I cannot recommend highly enough the page of hat patterns I found it on – see the hats that people used to make for themselves in the Olden Days, and then go out in the street in: this is just a few of them.





So all in all, a good honest lockdown read. You could do worse than catch up on your Wentworths right now.


Comments

  1. Coughing or not, I think Miss Silver is a fun character, Moira. And I know what you mean about these novels being great lockdown reading. Funny you'd mention the whole broken engagement thing. As soon as I started to read your comments on the book, I thought, 'Yup, it's a Miss Silver novel, so there's got to be some misunderstanding or other impediment to a couple's happiness.' As far as coincidence and tropes go, well, I think that may be a part of the fun, if that makes sense. You do have to send your disbelief out for snacks, though...

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    1. You are so right Margot. When I was younger I tended to dismiss Patricia Wentworth for her slightly predictable tropes, but now I actually enjoy them - I don't know what that says about me! And sometimes, just sometimes, you get the feeling Wentworth is poking fun at herself and at Miss Silver, though only in the most genteel and ladylike way, of course.

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  2. Only 16 coughs? I picked up a Miss Silver last year just to see if I could perhaps read her after all (I've tried before). No. Still not my cup of tea.

    Not only for the coughs, which were numerous. Since it was an e-book, I did a quick search. 42 coughs. Forty-two! The equvalent of the answer to Life, the Universe, Everything.

    I do like the sound of the fashion bits, though; the Dress Shows In some English books from the 1930s,, I've seen the term Mannequin Parade. Though admittedly, it sounds to me like something from The Twilight Zone, it has a certain elegance when I remind myself that Mannequin meant a live fashion model, not a staring department store dummy.

    Oh, lovely hats.

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    1. I know, dear Miss Sliver was very restrained in this one. I'm pretty certain I've counted higher numbers than that. I love the huge variety of ways Wentworth finds to describe them.
      Always good on clothes, and hats. And mannequins...

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  3. Yes, you'd have to crochet very tightly and use crepe yarn - and they'd probably still flop!

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    1. Yes! Crocheting is something I never got the hang of, though I can knit almost anything. But I think you would have to be very skilled to tackle some of those patterns.

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  4. I agree that Patricia Wentworth is good lockdown reading, I recently read The Ivory Dagger (1950). There was a good bit of coughing by Miss Silver, that never bothers me though. At first I thought it was not going to be that good, with stereotypical characters, but soon it turned around and got interesting and I was guessing who did it all the way to the end, which I like.

    It is so refreshing to find someone who talks about crocheting knowledgeably. And I love that crochet site you linked to. I keep thinking I should crochet in lockdown but right now I am getting more pleasure from reading and blogging and my projects are gardening and cataloging books.

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    1. Oh dear, Tracy, as I have just admitted to Lucy, I am not good at crocheting at all! But I know enough to recognize aspects of it. Also, any mention of knitting and crocheting does have pedantic me on the alert for mistakes by authors, I do tut often.

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    2. And, Tracy, you have decided me that Ivory Dagger will be my next Wentworth (after one I am about to blog on shortly)

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  5. I read a few of Wentworth's Miss Silver mysteries back in the days of my youth when they were easy to access via the local library, but they've all merged into one in my memory by now. Nevertheless, it's lovely to have a reminder of them. That Moonlight dress is gorgeous!

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    1. Yes, all too true, they blend! But they give harmless enjoyment at the time, which is invaluable right now. And of course you can re-read them after a certain length of time without remembering plot details.

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  6. They are all pretty much the same novel, but that is part of their attraction. This reminds me of an Elizabeth Bowen short story set in a hat shop, 'Ann Lee's.' Do you know it, Moira?

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    1. Indeed, I think we are all in agreement here!
      No I don't know that story, and am off to look it up, thanks.

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  7. I enjoyed myself so much following various links in various posts, I quite forgot about Miss Wentworth! Now I cannot decide whether to buy this, or The Blue Train, or to re-read The Railway Children or Love in a Cold Climate, or hunt out London Belongs to Me and The Matriarch, both of which are languishing among the TBRs. And what about that strange alternative life of Princess Diana...

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    1. Thank you Christine, NOTHING makes me happier than reading a comment like this one! And now I want to re-read those books too.... hope you pick something good...

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  8. Pretty sure I have one somewhere.

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    1. One day you will really get to grips with reading teh contents of the tubs.

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