To Study a Long Silence by VC Clinton-Baddeley

To Study a Long Silence by VC Clinton-Baddeley

published 1970

 

I don’t blog on every book I read, and this is one I might have skipped – but in the end I couldn’t resist another commedia dell’arte post. It’s one of my obsessions: posts all over the place, with a roundup here, and a pinterest page here, and a key feature of my recent fancy dress talk for Bodies from the Library.  And it turns out this book’s sleuth, Dr Davie, is similarly obsessed.

The author has featured before – another book by him My Foe Outstretch’d Beneath the Tree was one of my choices for the worst drug-distribution plots of all time. A niche award, I agree.

I said then “VCC-B’s detective is an amiable old buffer called Dr Davie, an Oxbridge academic, detective story fan and all-round busybody.” He spends a lot of time complaining about modern life, and is (in my view) always teetering on the edge of being tedious and annoying. But he does have a certain charm, and that’s what this book has in bucketloads. (And - yet again - thanks to Chrissie for sending it to me)

It was VCC-B’s last book, and it has that feel, in the nicest possible way – Dr Davie is slowing down and needs to take his time. He has a comforting lie-down in the afternoons between whatever detecting, lunch and libraries he has achieved in the day so far. The evening is spent at the theatre or the opera, or dining with friends. This is while he is up in London staying at his club – home is in college rooms in Cambridge. He takes around 6 months to solve the crime. Honestly, it sounds a most attractive life.

He attends a theatre school production, and somebody is found dead. He takes an interest, chats amiably with people, gives his views about food, and about theatre, and about clothes. He admires the modern trousers of a young friend,

His trousers were wide at the ends, close at the knees, and in the more northerly parts fitted him like a skin. He wore a white shirt with a sapphire blue tie and a deep blue velvet jacket. His long hair had recently been tempered by the hand of fashion. It was short compared with the hair of two years ago. It was tidy. Sitting down he looked like someone in a Jane Austen novel. Standing up he looked like the present. That was the trousers.

He would like some, but he thinks Carnaby St won’t go up to his waist measurement, and he couldn’t possibly ask his tailor to make them. (What he needed was a  music weekly such as NME or Disc, to look through the small ads in the final pages…)  

The play where the murder happened featured Harlequin, Pantaloon, the Doctor. Dr Davie spends a tremendous amount of time musing over who was where, how much time passed (stopwatch comes into action), which side people ran on and off stage from, and who moved the costume. He is a dear man, but he takes a long time to realize some basic possibilities. Particularly when many of the characters are dressed in cloaks and masks. And there is a red herring which is not necessary and not really explained away (perhaps for the reason explained below). And there is a red-stoned ring which is obviously going to be important…

In the end he works it out

I enjoyed reading it very much – it was a very gentle story, with some of my favourite features: theatre, commedia dell’Arte and a school. There’s a lovely sense of London as he travels around visiting people.

In fact VC Clinton-Baddeley died before he could finish it, but he’d left enough notes for a nephew to complete it. He seems to have done a seamless job, and the last few lines are very touching when you know the story – he has Dr Davie sit in his armchair. ‘He would rest now. Secretly, peacefully he crossed the frontiers of sleep.’

Picture from the UK National Archives, showing Swinging London, Carnaby St, 1969.

B/W Commedia dell’Arte pictures from NYPL, with no indication of what they are exactly.

The coloured poster is also from NYPL, and gives a clearer idea of why the costumes were such good disguises.

There are many reasons to love the NYPL collection, but one is that this print comes, not from a commedia dell’arte sub-collection (where the b/w ones are from), but from one called ‘Theatrical Dancers in groups of more than two but not in a ballet or theatrical dance scene.’ I laughed when I read that, then started looking through the collection and was entranced. There are 200 pictures, and although many of them are solo artistes, and many of them are in theatrical scenes, I am not complaining.  There are also beautiful pictures of balls, private dances, dance classes, fairs and fetes, country parties, from throughout the past couple of hundred years. Fabulous.