Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

published 1931

 

I recently wrote a list for the i newspaper of what I consider to be the best cosy crime novels. I enjoyed doing that enormously, and stand by my choices, even though there was a lot of argument here and online. But there was one author I really regretted not being able to include, and that was Margery Allingham. There wasn’t a single standout from her, and I was trying to do a mix of old and new, and there was a strict limit on numbers. She got put on the bench.

So I decided I had to do an entry on her now…. And chose this one, partly because it is so very much set in Cambridge, and I had recently visited the city and its new crime bookshop.

I used to live in Cambridge, and when I first moved there as I walked the streets I would literally try to choose a house where I thought Police at the Funeral was set. The plot centres on a highly dysfunctional family, the Faradays,  whose now-dead patriarch was the head of a university college, the fictional St Ignatius. His widow, known as Great Aunt Caroline, rules the entire household of descendants and other relations as if they were children, although they are well into middle age. This actually worries the reader more than Allingham – she obviously thinks it’s funny, and it is very good for various plot devices. Their home, Socrates Close, has a huge role to play in the novel, and is beautifully and imaginatively portrayed - this is the case for all Allingham's fictional houses.

On re-reading it just now, I was surprised at how long it takes Albert Campion (series sleuth) to reach Cambridge, and also that it is very clearly stated exactly where the house is, so I was wasting my time choosing a location for it. I did find the house where real-life Victorian adventurer Mary Kingsley lived, and also the place where – I was told - Thorn-Birds-author Colleen McCullough once lived.

(You can read about the strange connection between McCullough and LM Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables, in this bogpost. Anne herself much featured on the blog.)

Back to Allingham. Uncle Andrew has gone missing: has he been murdered? Who might be next? Campion talks to everyone and isn’t very successful in stopping the carnage, but eventually solves the crime. There is a young woman, Joyce, who is living in the house as a companion, and she cheers things up: she is the beloved of the family solicitor, who is also a friend of Campion’s. there is an excellent moment where it is revealed that every evening after dinner Joyce is sent up by Great-Aunt Caroline ‘to write letters’ – it turns out this is an excuse for her to smoke a cigarette without being a bad influence on her much older aunts. The younger generation is allowed liberties forbidden to the older ones…

The solution to the crime is very very unusual, and rare in a full-length novel: I couldn’t think of any other instances, though the situation turns up in short stories. I look forward to hearing from anyone who has other examples.

Allingham – often very good on clothes – doesn’t really describe anything much here, apart from Aunt Caroline.

 

Great-aunt Faraday sat at the head of the table in a high-backed armchair. Her black taffeta gown was cut with elbow sleeves, although her tiny forearms were covered by the frill of cream Honiton, which matched her fichu and the cap she wore…

Honiton is a kind of lace, and a fichu is a light triangular shawl, usually lace, worn over the shoulders with the points meeting at the chest in a v-shape. (picture, NYPL)

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As implied earlier, I couldn’t get on with the character of Aunt Caroline, who seemed to me to be a sociopath. But you were obviously meant to think she had a certain charm, and that there was some justification for her cruelties.

I chose this photo of an American artist, Peggy Bacon, to represent Joyce:

I should now read again  Dancers in Mourning – one of the (few surviving) family members from this book re-appears with one of my favourite passages in Allingham, about how they wrote their memoirs.

The top picture – Elderly Lady in a Black Bonnet – is by Mary Cassatt 

The next old lady picture  is by Sandor Bihari, and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

The third is from the Library of Congress, via Flickr, and shows a Queen of Romania – apparently Queen Elisabeth.