Measure for Murder by Clifford Witting

Measure for Murder by Clifford Witting 

published 1941

 

Clifford Witting was one of the subjects discussed at the recent Bodies From the Library conference, and after hearing Richard Reynolds and Robert Hyde’s talk, this seemed a good book to read next. I always love a crime story connected with a theatre.

I enjoyed it very much, but it did have the feel of three different books slapped together, like a Battenberg cake. But then Battenberg cake is definitely a good thing…

On the first page we find out someone has been murdered in a small-town theatre. No details.

Then we move onto a  first-person section telling the story of a young chap who goes into business in the 30s. He describes his schooldays, his first job, his venture into business, a road accident he was involved in. He moves to a small town where he establishes a different business, and then gets involved in a new amateur dramatic company in his town. There is a lot of detail about setting up the theatre and company. It reads like the kind of first novel which is a thinly-disguised memoir.

Finally we reach the point where the book catches up with the murder on p1. Then there is a lot of standard investigating, some of it rather humdrum, a lot of who was where at what time. We have been made very familiar with the complex relationships that might have led to violence. But the story also has a very clear timeline, and much of it takes place over the summer of 1939. So war breaks out, and now we are looking at various potential thriller-ish aspects. It is all very readable, but the separate aspects did seem rather glued together, and the solution came from nowhere (And there was one clue that no reader now would be likely to get).

The amdram group is putting on Measure for Measure, as you might guess, and there is a lot about the play: Witting plainly had strong feelings about acting, Shakespeare, professional and amateur theatre, the characters. The morals of the play, the morals of the characters, and of the cast. Can’t really go into it for spoilers, but again I had a complaint. It is really interesting, but in the end…

Picture from Wikimedia Commons is an Illustration by Czech painter Artuš Scheiner for Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure from the 1920s

There is also a lot about transport, motorbikes, cars, roads – Witting was obviously enjoying the freedom of the new era – so I was glad to be able to use the top picture which I have been saving for ages: an advert for Chevrolet cars from 1934. It is American, obviously, and it usually doesn’t seem to fit with UK books of the 30s, but this time I’m going for it.

The book was all very well-done, and you very much got a feel for the boarding-house where many of the characters lived, and the different ways people might view others. Many aspects that we concentrated on turned out to be irrelevant – I felt my time and investment had been wasted – but I am prepared to forgive that. 

There were various minor mysteries as well as the murder. In the unnecessary description of his early days, our hero tells us

I was christened Walter Vaughan, in commemoration of the fact that I came into the world on the same day as Mr. Walter Vaughan Morgan was made Lord Mayor of London. With the name of Walter, one thing seems inevitable, yet I never had to answer to “Wally” or the even more horrible “Wal.” My parents always used my second name and when I went to school I was known by my surname until some bright form-mate was struck by the significance of my birthday and thereupon dubbed me “Turtle” Tudor.

This was completely mystifying to me, and I imagine most people. Some digging revealed that his birthday was the day of the Lord Mayor’s show, November 9th (apparently a fixed date) and at one time there was a tradition of turtles being fattened up for the banquets. I wonder how clear this was to readers even in 1941? I found this online ‘in England the Lord Mayor’s banquet traditionally began with a bowl of green-turtle soup, so that name was applied to the Caribbean green turtle.’ (Ie Lord Mayor’s turtle, I’m guessing) And there are references on this webpage.

That was some explanation, but then we had another character with a nickname.

Just as I was called Turtle, so was he known to us as Tiddler 2. Tiddler 1 was his much senior brother, who left before my time and was killed on Messines Ridge. His initials were T. W., from which it was a natural step to Tiddler, and as at our school a nickname was a fraternal monopoly, young Peter Ridpath became Tiddler 2.

And I can make no sense of that at all.

When he is out on a motorbike with a friend we have this:

As we roared along the straight, Harvey shouted over my shoulder: “We’re knocking up the parasangs!”

Which I was able to look up - parasangs are a Persian measure of distance. They are mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses in fact (‘Thence they advanced five parasangs’) but there are not many other mentions outside books about the Middle East. It’s the kind of word Robert Byron (actually pictured in this entry, in fancy dress) mentions in his travel writings, and occasionally people use it in that arch, jovial way.

I very much enjoyed a description of the evening of the murder  from Hobson, one of the lower-class characters. Normally I am very  resistant to such alleged comedy, but this was splendid:

[She was] sweeping off ’ome, like Josephine after the battle of Waterloo. She’s as full of tantrums as a sick camel, is that young woman!.... she swep’ past ’em, like Josephine retreating from Moscow.

There was a ‘perky little woman with the audacious red feather in her hat’

(from the NYPL)

And I Iiked this description:

“That girl of mine’s like an obstinate jellyfish that comes floating back as soon as you’ve scared it off.”

The people sitting round look just like the Lulverton Little Theatre members having a discussion – actually from the Smithsonian – members of the American Psychological Association in 1937.

The Galileo Press is reprinting Witting’s books, and I do recommend them to any fans of Golden Age detective fiction.