More Irish murder, More Sheila Pim

 A Brush with Death by Sheila Pim

 published 1950

 

 

Another in this short series of mysteries – they are light and gentle, might be considered cozies, but they are good-hearted and funny, full of witty observations and unexpected turns. They have the comedy-of-manners entertainment value of Angela Thirkell or EM Delafield, and a slight mystery overlaid, and a wonderful picture of middle-class Irish life in the years just after the War.

In this one, artist Fergus Gandon is taken ill with arsenic poisoning. He goes to stay with the Fennellys – his sister Hester, her husband, and grown up daughter Barbara. There is a half-hearted attempt to wonder what is going on. An artist friend comes to call, and ends up painting a portrait of Barbara – my vision of this above. (Actually by William Orpen, one of my great favourites, a painting of Gladys Cooper.)

The Fennellys live near Dublin – the Gandons (he has a wife and children and servants) much farther into the country, in the Dower House of a big house owned by Lord Kilscour.

Well! I do like a Dower House, and an Irish big house…

The book starts with an auction:

The contents of the old “big houses” in which, as may be gathered from many novels and plays about Ireland, everybody except the peasantry at one time use to live, are now being turned out and transferred, by way of the salesrooms, to the modern labour-saving villas in garden suburbs in which the whole population will be housed in a few years’ time.

 

I have featured the exteriors (and house-parties) of many a Big House in past posts, so this time we have a drawing-room full of pictures: similar to the one which has some importance in the book. (From the National Library of Ireland).

Pim’s previous books dealt with a lot of gardens, and the gardening content is diminished here, except for one coup de theatre – dahlias were not introduced to Europe until 1789, so if a still life from an earlier date seems to feature them…?

There is a splendid discussion of whether a beautiful painting or a fur coat is more useful to a young woman. She has £50 to spend from her 21^st birthday: she eventually chooses to have her portrait painted.  

I learned an entirely new expression: ‘pompier’ as a French insult in art. Pompier means fireman, and the term was used to describe big  paintings of allegorical, classical or Napoleonic subjects. The helmets on the warrior subjects were very similar to those worn by firemen at the time. I strongly recommend the Wikipedia entry on this, with pictures so you can compare those helmets.

Barbara helps host a teaparty ‘sheathed in a wool jersey frock which had drawn from Fergus the epithet ‘snakehips’’

 

I liked the collection of items used in a modern still-life (no dahlias): 'a wire egg whisk, an electric light bulb unscrewed from the landing light, an unripe pear, the head square that went with Barbara’s country tweeds, and two lemons that were wanted to flavour the pudding.'

Aesthetic considerations are unimportant: it is the inconvenience to the household. Later the artist takes ice-cube trays, and a gadget belonging to the vacuum cleaner – the final straw for the maid, who gives in her notice.

I loved the description of Fergus’s wife when the policemen are discussing her;

“Regular scarecrow… Goes about dressed in slacks and with her hair streeling. You couldn’t accuse her of laying herself out.”

 

This drew protests from [the others, who] had got an impression of a smartly dressed woman wearing bright red and lipstick to match. Silk stockings, too… or rather nylons”

The first description is so very typical of Irishmen of a certain generation (who would be horrified by the idea that this was objectionable) – it made me smile because I could just hear it.

And there is an excellent bit of art talk - no judgement from the author:

Gandon seems to be moving from abstraction towards realism, but without sacrificing his linear rhythms or his unique mastery of the whole keyboard of colour. The great question is, can he integrate this vital interior humanism with the syntax of his exterior composition.

The most shocking moment to modern eyes comes when the police come to question the ailing artist in hospital: he says “Do smoke…Never mind dropping ash on the floor; the nurse can sweep it up.”

Is everyone horrified? No: “In a short time the room began to seem quite cosy.”

The climax of the book comes, excellently, at an art opening, where Nell is tremendously chic in her red tweed suit, matching lipstick and a lapel ornament, while Barbara wears ‘the spring’s first straw hat, a saucerful of spring flowers, looking as if Primavera had been taken in hand by Vogue'.

It is truly not the best crime story anyone has ever read, but I enjoyed it hugely as a comedy of manners and a picture of life.

Woman in slacks is probably much smarter than the Guards think of her, but I wanted to give her a nice look – Toni Frissell at LOC, 1946 so very much on point.

Hat is by Lilly Dache, a frequent flyer on the blog, and is from a date later than the book, but was such a perfect fit for the description that I had to use it...