Out of the Past by Patricia Wentworth

published 1953

....[X’s] hand went up ‘to the green and emerald scarf which was bound about her head. It came away with the small heavy spanner which had been hidden under the bow., He did not see it come down hard and strong. He felt the blow, but not the deep cool plunge into green water.

Hidden weapons carried by skimpily dressed women! A great Clothes in Books favourite – a key discussion in Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage   ('She hadn't so much as a handkerchief in the top of her stocking’), and then also Christianna Brand’s Suddenly at his Residence – no room for a syringe in a tiny bathing suit.

Early in this book – long before the scene above -  there’s a character who is endlessly dropping stitches in her knitting. It’s all going disastrously wrong, so we know Miss Silver is going to have to be called in. Remember Wentworth’s Mr Zero? The  girl at the centre is in this awful jam. She really did look pretty ghastly. I mean she’d got on the wrong stockings for her dress, and her lipstick all crooked, so I think things are pretty grim.’ That’s not a Miss Silver book, but a comparable cry for help, I think.

Alan Field here is one of Wentworth's most vicious young men – having left a bride at the altar some years ago, he returns and immediately starts blackmailing everyone in sight. So it’s pretty clear who is going to die, and that we are not going to regret them. All the blackmail-ees, if we can call them that, are surprisingly real characters, who may have behaved foolishly, but come over in the book as having real feelings.

‘That very good-looking Mr Field appeared to have had a disturbing effect’ on two different neighbouring households….

There is some very crass dropping in of important info – a lost sister, a character who brings out her paper-knife every day.

And of course a couple whose life is about to be ruined by a complete failure to discuss something. The couples in Miss-Silver-World may be rather wonderful, and good, but they never have the slightest trust in each other, always believe the worst of one another. It’s not very promising, honestly.

Fortunately Miss Silver is close at hand already – she is on holiday in the area, with the much-mentioned niece Ethel Burkett. So, ready at a moment’s notice to busybody around and see what’s going on and give out advice.

There is also a strand of lost treasure and a mysterious foreigner – one does always wish Patricia Wentworth had resisted those temptations.

Miss Silver and Esther (the knitting amateur) have a splendidly described ‘talk about make-up, a subject upon which one would not have supposed them to be particularly informed, but which appeared to interest them in no small degree.’

Make-up is always important of course:

Carmona said, ‘Pippa I wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t what, darling?’

Carmona indicated the lipstick.

‘I really wouldn’t – it’s too bright. And that headscarf – I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

But the young woman concerned (she changes the scarf but refuses to give up the lipstick) isn't entirely foolish - it is she  who realises that they must bring in Miss Silver. Immediately.

And there are some excellent clothes:  

... She wore a sleeveless linen frock and a big shady hat. Her legs were bare and she had green sandals on her feet.

...Pippa in scarlet slacks and a sleeveless jersey, sprang out and embraced her. When last seen her hair had been a fair brown. It was now platinum. She wore dark glasses with scarlet rims which shge took off and snapped away in a startling red and white bag.

...She came down the terrace steps. The dusk drained the colour from her pale green dress, but a tracery of sequins glittered. [She wore] a double row of pearls.

There is also a bohemian but posh artist – Penderel Field – who has a touch of the Amyas Crale, from Christie’s Five Little Pigs, and also would fit in with the discussion of stereotyped artists in the post on AJ Cronin’s The Crusader’s Tomb. Blogfriend Marty pointed this out in the comments back then: "In Out of the Past the letters of a dead artist play an important role in the plot. The artist doesn't sound like as bad as some other depictions, but he apparently did misbehave a bit." A very helpful description.

The patent Miss Silver Checklist:

I am adding a new question for this checklist:

How many people were out and about that night? 

SEVEN people visited the key location, the beach hut, more than were in the house.

Coughing

Miss silver coughs 14 times:  indicating dissent, with a note of reproof (twice), and there is a ‘slight preliminary’ cough as well as  a slight introductory one

Unusual names

Carmona, Penderel, Octavius, Darsie, Minx (only mentioned in passing, but described as ‘only too appropriately nicknamed’)

Ladylike occupations

Keeping a boarding house only it’s called Paying Guests.

There’s a tyrannical maid who won’t let her employer have house guests, not clear what category that is in.

There is a young woman who ‘worked in a beauty parlour and was quite a good advertisement for its wares’

 This was a most entertaining read, and might be up for consideration as the ur-text for Wentworth, holding in its pages all her best and worst features. 

Woman in slacks  The Vintage (tumblr.com)