The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth

The Gazebo  by Patricia Wentworth

published 1955

‘the afternoon of Mrs Justice’s cocktail party’ – a dress suggestion for Althea, from the Clover tumbler

While I was reading The Gazebo I wondered if there would be enough to say about it to make a whole blogpost, as the plot is not a great one. But it turned out that the side issues were full of interest, and I had a very full set of notes by the time I got to the end. Strap yourselves in.

The book is a strange mixture of suburban life and an exotic treasure hunt, and the title has suffered its own problems. When it was written, a gazebo would have had an air of upmarket exoticism: ordinary people didn’t have a gazebo. But now (in the UK anyway) it is a temporary structure you have in the garden for barbeques, or a quick solution to any outdoor problem. Dirty white plastic, drooping on poles – it’s a sad comedown for the word, and hardly one Miss Silver could have predicted. Though there is a luxury ‘Wentworth Gazebo’ on the market, very fancy and with a price to match:

So let’s move straight on to:

The Patent Miss Silver Checklist

Coughing

Miss Silver only coughs 12 times in this book, a very low count, but they are some of  her more active ones: reproving, meditative, to draw attention to an important remark.

Knitting

Pink vests for a small child. A ‘deep smoky violet’ twinset for lucky Ethel, to go with her new skirt.

Clothes

Here comes Myra to provide contrast for the heroine, in some fine bright clothes:

 

She was a decorative creature, vivid as a poster in brown corduroy slacks and an orange cardigan above which her hair glowed like a newly minted penny… There was colour in the cheeks, there was a brightly painted mouth.

 

And later:

bronze hair, scarlet lipstick, and a dress with a halter-neck in a surprising shade of green.

(Trousers from Clover  Halterneck dress, from the Clover Vintage Tumblr)

‘Coatee’ is interesting –  there are a few of them on the blog. The word was in common use, both with a specific meaning in military uniforms and as a  short fitted jacket for women or babies, but is very rare now. Miss Silver herself is one for a coatee – and a recent Agatha Christie entry has a character ready to wear one over an evening dress for extra warmth. Here a character gets a coatee to match her new dress.

‘I’ll say that for her, she pays for a bit of brightening up!’ I have said before: ‘I am always fascinated by the idea of ‘pays for dressing’, a great favourite phrase from books of the era.’ I discuss it at some length in this post.

Noteworthy occupations The hero, Nicholas, goes in for travel journalism by visiting unknown places: he mentions ‘an Asian desert scourged by Polar winds [and] leech-infested swamps.’ Then there is this exquisite bit of affectedness:

In some of those places the merest momentary failure to control himself could have meant instant and imminent danger. He had walked strange paths, watched strange rites, kept strange company.

Others believe his occupation makes him more likely to be a murderer. ‘life in those sort of places would be calculated to rub off some of the finer scruples.’

There is someone who can use rods to divine not just water but other materials.

Unusual names

Disappointing. Althea, known as Thea. Dulcie: pretty much unknown now? I have said before that only wrong’uns get the name in Noel Streatfeild books: I think a Dulcie must have done her down in childhood. Dulcie is one of the main characters in Barbara Pym’s 1961 No Fond Return of Love.

We are given the surprising news that ‘You hardly ever hear of anyone called Frank nowadays, do you?'

It’s a long way from the glory days of Wentworth – there’s mention of a name from Danger Point some years earlier. About that book I said: ‘Lisle and Dale Jerningham have about the most archetypical Wentworth names ever. You can just roll those over in your mind can’t you? And do you know for sure which is the man and which the woman?’

Furniture Watch + Unusual Word

And something of a mystery. Althea seats herself on ‘one of those square upholstered dumps a good deal in vogue at the time of Mrs Graham’s marriage….The dump on which she was sitting afforded no back against which she could lean.’

I read this book on my Kindle, and I actually wondered if ‘dump’ was an error in the OCR, and another word was meant. I went to the trouble of checking in a print copy, and it most definitely is ‘dump’. But I cannot find any other such usages of this word. From context it would seem to be an upholstered footstool or pouffe? Has anyone else (@lucy Fisher) come across it? Mrs Graham’s marriage would have been in the late1920s, if that helps. (Though the hideous Mrs G, hilariously, is forever making free with her age now, and at marriage, ‘moving the date for years…beyond 16 she would, unfortunately, not be able to go’)

Etiquette

The policeman says ‘Thank you, Miss Pimm’ to one of three gossip-y sisters, and an older sister says “with an edge on her voice, ‘Miss Lily, if you please, Inspector. I am Miss Pimm.”

-back in the day, this was important naming custom. So using Pride & Prejudice as an example, oldest sister Jane is Miss Bennet, and then there’s Miss Elizabeth, Miss Mary and so on. Always good to spot historical TV dramas getting it wrong (as they do all the time, without horrible Miss Pimm to correct them)

How many people were in the Gazebo around the time of the murder?

Three people meet there. They disperse, but then some of them definitely come back, and another two characters turn up. Yet another person is reputed to be arriving, but it is not clear if he ever gets there. So: 6 or 7 separate visits.

A new category: heartless behaviour

Wentworth always does a good line in bad selfish mothers, and there is a particularly monstrous one here: draining the life out of her daughter, and calling for pillows, hotwater bottle and the blue bedjacket.

But for sheer ruthless callousness, we must turn to a bad man who is about to kill someone, and objects to paying for a nice tea beforehand:

Fancy cakes and chocolate biscuits for a woman who was going to be dead and out of his way before the day was an hour older – well, there wasn’t any sense in it, was there?

He makes your blood run cold.

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All round, plenty to enjoy in the book. Miss Silver does some solid detecting– rootling round in the attic looking at old books, and conducting a very fine interview with those gossipy Pimm sisters.

The romantic problem is not as stupid as normal. There is a villainous tactic that resembles one in Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger.

The plot isn’t the selling point here – too guessable – but there are excellent elements, and some interesting characters.