Accident by Design by ECR Lorac


published 1951




Last year I featured the highly enjoyable Two Way Murder by the same author, and in the comments, staunch and always entertaining blogfriend Shay mentioned another book: she described it in such intriguing terms that it needed my highest level of response: I tried to obtain the book before even replying to Shay. Well, it wasn’t easy to get hold of Accident by Design, and I had to justify an extreme budget breach, AND it had to be sent to the UK from America – but it made it very quickly and I read it very quickly, and I can quite see what Shay means (even though it has taken me a long time to get round to blogging on it).

Lorac has a very split view on the world: her ‘good’ characters are often extremely snobbish, and they are quite fantastically so here: it brings out the bolshy in me. The setting is post-war rural England. You are told clearly what to think about the dreadful Gerald and his awful low-class wife Meriel (I mean, she is Australian) – who stand to inherit the lovely traditional estate. Lorac has her thumb firmly on the scales here. But then tucked in there she has Meriel saying this: ‘I stuck it out in that bloody Jap prison camp… I fought for my life and [our son’s]… while Judith was driving a WVS car and talking about equality of sacrifice because she had no butler. God, she makes me sick!’

Right behind you Meriel. But still, there is no redemption for Meriel: she doesn’t even know how to bring up her son in the proper English way, and Lorac isn’t about the make her a heroine at all.

We meet all the people on the estate – most of them very concerned that when feeble Gerald inherits, their comfortable lifestyles will be swept away. There are convenient deaths: described as accidents but we know better. Then more incidents ratchet up the tension. Anyone might be guilty, anyone might be next for the chop. It is a tight sharp book, and Lorac’s final conclusions about the people involved are somewhat unexpected. Can’t say more than that.




I very much enjoyed a setpiece picnic (the pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, and the Enid Blyton Society) which lurched between the Famous Five and something much more Gothic: Lorac was particularly good on what people said about it afterwards.

The setting c 1950 is fascinating. The attitudes to children make the mind truly boggle. This is the family decision about what will happen to a child of around 12 who is suddenly and traumatically orphaned:

‘I got Ardenly, the psychiatrist, to see him. He advised sending him away for a bit, to a woman who is trained to deal with cases of shock and maladjustment. Later on, he’s going to a [boarding] school Mr Ardenly recommended. It seemed the kindest and wisest thing to do. He will get over it more easily when he’s away from everything…’

Grim, much? There is a lot more about child-raising, very much of its time, and interesting to contrast with more modern ideas.

In an Agatha Christie book of the same era (Taken at the Flood, 1948), I noted the use of the word ‘negatived’ and it comes up here as well:

‘I asked you right out - does the Inspector think it is murder – and you haven’t negatived the suggestion.’

It is on my list of things that I suspect many would think anachronistic: ie if a contemporary writer put it in a book or drama set then, they would be criticized for too-modern language.

The top picture, from Kristine (whose photostream now seems to have disappeared, a great loss to me), shows fashions of 1950, Judith and Meriel as it might be, or perhaps Elizabeth, a ‘sensible young woman’ who is going to marry the estate manager. You might think the clothes are very smart for country girls, but Judith (surprisingly) goes to visit the haymaking in the fields looking

‘cool and pleasant in a light tussore silk suit, and she moved across the cut grass with a deliberate graceful swing.’

I enjoyed this book, and although I did guess the final turn (there were some very late clues…) I found it a satisfying and thought-provoking plot, one with considerable nuance. So thank you Shay…

Comments

  1. You're now the second person I trust who liked this one, Moira. And I'm not surprised, really. Lorac was so talented! She's one of those writers whose work is only just being rediscovered these last few years, and it makes me wonder how it every disappeared in the first place. Strange how that happens. Anyway, it's interesting to see all these classist views in this one; it's of its time, but still, I can see how it brought out your bolshy.

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    1. She's an interesting writer isn't she? Although the settings and the kind of characters can seem unvarying, she makes very different stories about them, which I like.

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  2. I enjoyed it, too, though as you say Lorac's instincts are definitely conservative - and I remember being startled by the treatment of the bereaved child. To us it seems so obvious that it is a bad idea - no doubt people in the future will be thinking the same about various notions of ours ...

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    1. Exactly, views on what's proper change so much. I don't expect many people would have worried about it at all at the time. SO bleak to modern ears, but similar sentiments in various other books of the time.

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  3. No doubt, I hope they will. There was a prevalent idea that children "were tough" and "forgot". Probably translates as "they stopped talking about it when nobody would listen", even "they stopped crying when nobody came". Sending children to boarding schools was child abuse.

    I've only just realised how much 50s fashions looked back to the 1840s (unpack that!). Look at those nipped-in waists in the picture - produced by "waspee girdles". Oh, plus 10 years of rationing. (Forties clothes looked back to the 1880s and 90s, much more flattering.)

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    1. Also, children told never to tattle, never to show their feelings, never to feel sorry for themselves - it runs through juvenile books of the time like a black thread.
      Those waists - I have had endless discussions in my time over Barbie proportions (if you are going to have a specialist subject, make it a serious one). Women (people) vary, over a wide spectrum of measurements. A 'fashionable body shape' is of course ridiculous, and hard on whoever is out at the moment. But has been going on a long time...

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  4. I read your post and was intrigued by the book and went to look at abebooks and see what copies were available. I was very excited to find a Detective Book Club edition that included Accident by Design and also Alias Basil Willing by Helen McCloy and The Watch Sinister by Marie Blizard. It was the only edition of Accident by Design available and it was a reasonable price. So I ordered it. But this morning they canceled the order, said it was no longer available. Oh well. I am disappointed but I can keep looking for that edition.

    Although, I can say that bit about sending a child away to deal with "maladjustment" would bother me.

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    1. That is the exact edition I had, with the three combined stories! I was just looking to see if I still had it (I have been ruthless about books lately) and then I saw the happy ending below - so glad you found it on Kindle.
      I think you will enjoy the post-war setting, but some of the attitudes are hard to take...

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  5. I quite enjoyed this one - and I'm starting to recognise some ECR Lorac tropes (farmers almost always portrayed v sympathetically) but the description of the poor orphaned child is horrific.
    One character even says "He'll continue to be pitiable - a puking, sickly, half-witted little misery. That’s what I meant when I said it might have been better if he’d been . . . snuffed out . . . with his parents.”
    Eek.
    It's now available on Kindle for 99p if people don't mind that format.

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    1. Thanks, Susanna. The kindle is $2.99 here, also a good price, and I did not even think to check that out. I did get a copy.

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    2. Thanks Susanna, and very helpful info, I'm glad to see it's readily available now.
      Yes, as I just said to Margot, her settings and people don't vary much, but she does ring the changes on plots.

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  6. My goodness, I'm chuffed.

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