More Moray Dalton: The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman

The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman by Moray Dalton

published 1936

(following on from yesterday's post)

In yesterday's post I mentioned a surprise that came with a revelation about a character… that was Moray Dalton’s Death in the Dark. The heroine received a letter from an unknown man, and I said I wondered if this was going to be the romantic interest for Judy, and looked forward to meeting C. Fleming. 'Judy and I were both in for a surprise.'

So – the point is that C Fleming is a schoolboy, one who appeared in an earlier book by Dalton: this one! So I read it next, and am covering them out of order.

Here is the Kneeling Woman:

 

“What do you think we’re going to find under this, Inspector? It might be a clue to hidden treasure.”

The brass represented a woman wearing the voluminous gown and starched ruff of the late sixteenth century. She was kneeling at a fald stool, and her four boys and five girls were ranged decorously in a kneeling row behind her. The name of Eleanor Chapman and the date 1578 were just decipherable in the worn lettering at the foot of the panel.

The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman starts in a very traditional Golden Age manner: a small English village, and the vicar has come to spend the evening with a local nob to play chess and talk about books. Their conversation takes an intriguing turn:

“I am expecting visitors very shortly… I’ve half a mind to tell you more about it, Vicar. Your face is so expressive.”

“You talk in riddles,” said Clare rather stiffly.

“If I confide in you I must first exact a promise that you will neither repeat nor act upon any information I give you.”

Unsurprisingly, all kinds of things follow on from this, and soon there are deaths and investigations.

Christopher Fleming, always known as Toby, is 12 years old. He encounters a dying man in the woods, and hears his final words. He is the son of a widow recently moved to the village. An Inspector comes down from Scotland Yard to investigate. The plot winds its way on, very Golden Age and village-based, before taking some quite surprising turns, and becoming very political. There is also a fairly awful incident where poor Toby is sent for a day of playing with a boy who bullies him at school – he is not able to tell his mother that this is a terrible idea. He is treated very badly, and the day has fierce consequences for several people.

There are poisoned chocolates – always a favourite round here – in a very traditional manner:

There was a brown paper parcel on a side table by the open window. “What’s this? Chocs, by gum.” He had thrown the crumpled brown paper into the fender where it flared up, caught by a falling spark from the grate, before he untied the rose coloured satin ribbon that was wound round the box and lifted the lid, and flicked off the sheet of silver paper.

[Destroying the wrappings always essential, did people really do that so fast?]

There is also an awful story going back to the First World War, and the incidents of the white feathers.

Poor Toby ends up in his house alone overnight, and:

“They came in the night—two of them.” Toby’s face changed and his lips began to quiver as he remembered. “They—they made me tell them what I was going to tell you this morning. They tied something over my eyes, and they did this—” Collier’s eyes hardened as he looked at the angry red sore on the boy’s thumb.

And finally the message from a dying man comes into play…

This is a very intriguing book – you never know where it is going next, and there are some most unexpected turns. Yet again – well done Dean St Press, and thanks to Curtis Evans for the introduction.

Not much in the way of clothes, disappointingly.

The double picture in fact shows a woman with her schoolboy brother, but I thought it would stand in. From Wikimedia Commons.

Kneeling woman is Blanche Killigrew from a church in Devon (obviously not brass) is from Wikimedia Commons: File:BlancheKilligrew TawstockChurch.JPG - Wikimedia Commons

(A while back I did a number of posts on tombs in churches.)

Chess players from the Library of Congress.

The next b/w photo is my idea of how Toby’s mother (the widow) might have looked. It shows the artist Peggy Bacon, from the Smithsonian collection.