The Wench is Dead by Ruth Fenisong

The Wench is Dead by Ruth Fenisong         

 

published 1953

 

I posted on another Ruth Fenisong book as one of my nominations for Reprint of the Year: the highly enjoyable Miscast for Murder. I could equally have nominated this one: I got them both as a double offering by Stark House Press – intro by Curtis Evans – and they were both excellent. This was an author quite new to me, and I was delighted to discover her.

You can find out about Reprint of the Year over at Kate Jackson's CrossExamining Crime blog - she is the wonderful organizer - and there you will also find out that none of you voted for the first of these books, it came very low down the list. Shocking - I am disappointed in you! But here is another chance to see the joy of Fenisong.

Miscast for Murder had the slight edge in its Manhattan setting – something that always wins me over, particularly in a 1950s book. But this one has an absolutely marvellous protagonist: Bess in Miscast was fine in some ways, but Dene Cameron here represents my favourite thing: an updated Becky Sharp, so fitting in well with recent blog discussions of such characters - in Trollope, here. Dene is on the make, recovering from previous marriages, and obviously determined to pay for nothing herself when she can get someone else to do it.

This is how she is introduced:

She had returned from England after a settlement of accounts with her second husband. She was a woman of exceeding physical attraction, with poise and wit enough to inject vitality into any social gathering. Her acquaintances in New York were pleased to welcome her. For a while she was content with the entertainment they provided, savoring the taste of her new freedom, the meals that presented no view of a hurt or sullen face, the heady knowledge that she could turn herself on full blast for anyone’s benefit without incurring a jealous aftermath from “Mistake the Second.”

So she is enjoying New York – but the summer comes, and she realizes everyone is leaving town. She is picky (though she can’t really afford to be) but eventually accepts an invitation to stay with some people in Long Island. Sam and Vera are chance acquaintances, met while in Europe, and she’s unashamedly not that bothered about them – but they are very rich and, importantly, have a guest house to lend to her.

In best romcom style, she is not impressed by the servant who meets her at the railway station:

She thought that she would give short shrift to a chauffeur who looked and walked so arrogantly. She noted further that his clothes were more disreputable than even the law of informal country living should allow. He wore shapeless moccasins, maroon sailcloth slacks hitched to his narrow waist by a piece of twine, and a white sports shirt that had protested the strain of his great shoulders.

Well guess what – this handsome fellow is not the chauffeur, he is a friend of her hosts, doing them a favour by picking her up. To be fair, the rest of the book is a lot less predictable and cliched than this…

The guest house is provided with a maid, Bridie, who will have to clear up after Dene:

“It will be homelike as soon as it’s been lived in a bit.” Dene removed the jacket of her smart light suit and flung it over the back of a chair. Bridie watched the original hat sail in another direction and said, “I shouldn’t wonder.”

Shortly afterwards, Dene leaves ‘a trail of blouse and skirt and slip… Bridie glanced at the castoff clothes and said flatly, “It’s more homelike by the minute.”

But surprisingly they quickly form an easy relationship: I too am picky about servants in that I hate books where exploitative employers pretend to be friends with adoring twinkly-eyed maids, but this one got past my evil eye, despite Dene being a madam-and-a-half by most standards.

The relationship with the big house is not always easy, and the exact status of Paul (the fake chauffeur) is hard to define: there are a few awkward encounters. And then, is her host, Sam, flirting with her?

“That dress you’re wearing reminds me of strawberry ice cream.”

“Then I hope you like strawberry ice cream.”

She dresses carefully when she knows she is seeing Paul, changing into:

a chaste white silk with full, tightly cuffed sleeves and a neck that buttoned under her chin. She girded the dress with a wide blue velvet belt and fastened star sapphires to her ears.

Come the Fourth of July, there is a wondrously disastrous dinner party at the big house – ‘glowing in strapless sherry voile’ for Dene [see top picture], Vera in Balenciaga, (“At least I bought it from a friend who said it was, only it didn’t suit her”), a blue summer evening dress:

I liked the way Dene tries to rescue the party, starting with flirting with a married man:

His wife took the broken twosome as signal or a threat, and drifted over. Others were sucked into the group. Dene held forth, produced laughter, and Vera’s party awoke and breathed a little.

By the standards of goody-goody heroines she is a floozie, but she certainly shows the social advantages, to the hostess, of being one.

Fenisong is very good on social events, as shown in the earlier book too – funny, great conversations, but also moving the plot on.

Series detective Grid Nelson and his annoying wife Kyrie turn up, but were not a focus for me, although there is this splendid moment when Grid is interviewing Dene

“Are you entertaining some sort of wild notion that I’m a—what’s the phrase—a gangster’s moll?” She looked like royalty outraged. “You can disabuse yourself quite easily…”

Dene is even wearing a bedjacket during this – ‘The long sleeves of a rose-colored bed jacket partially concealed her wrists’ – for the true Clothes in Books seal of approval.

The plot is a farrago of missing letters, possible blackmail, deaths in the past and one very tragic one in the present.

 

SLIGHT BUT PREDICTABLE SPOILER

 It must be said that much suspicion falls on the handsome Paul, and there is something very bad in his past, but perhaps the reader looks elsewhere for guilt.

END SPOILER

So - great social events, fabulous clothes, interesting plot and setting. I can highly recommend this book and this author.

Strapless evening gown IS sherry-coloured. It is by Schiaparelli, from 1948 (courtesy Met Costume Institute) and even someone as well-dressed as Dene would not have worn something so elaborate for a 4^th July party on Long Island – but I did like it so much…

Strawberry ice cream dress, NYPL.

Paul in white shirt – actually a cameraman in 1930s Australia

Dene in a light Christian Dior suit with original hat, from Clover Vintage.

Blue dress is 1950s Balenciaga (I can’t see Vera in it, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that it WAS by him)