More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham
When I did my post on fortune-telling
Can you Predict which Books I will Feature? - Fortune Tellers
- blogfriend Lucy had suggestions, including Margery Allingham’s More Work for the Undertaker. It’s a while since I’d last read it, but I had no memory of fortune-telling featuring. When I re-read, I found that it is most certainly there, and plays an important role in the plot, but it is very late on in the book – I was almost giving up. But there it is:
‘That’s the gal all right. Call’s herself Pharaoh’s Daughter. She gives readings for a tanner a time and we never bothered her under the Act because she seemed so harmless.’
She is also referred to as Psychic Phoeb.
And so – oh joy – I can use a great favourite picture: The
Pythoness, who is actually the Pharaoh’s Daughter from the story of Joseph in
the Bible.
Pauline
Frederick - Potiphar's wife (LOC) | Bain News Servic… | Flickr
However - I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as I was expecting, or perhaps as much as it deserved. It had so many features that I normally love, such as poison pen letters. There are the Palinodes, a weird family: see recent posts such as this one
Falling in Love with the Whole Family
– the usual thing that I
found them appalling and psychopathic, not charming and eccentric. ‘Campion was aware that she realized that she was being very
naughty…’ is the kind of off-putting remark I object to. I am not charmed by
entitled privileged people who don’t do a hand’s turn, waste their money, and
are rude and unpleasant to others.They have their own language: ‘Im doing a
Cawnthorpe’. How hilarious.
There is the ex-showgirl Renee, who also featured in
Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham
a book that I recently enjoyed hugely, moving
it up the list. She ran a theatrical boarding-house in that book, and has changed into a different kind of landlady, in a way
that is glancingly explained early on, a bit more detail later, but none of it
really convincing.
The events take place around Apron St, one of those corners
of London that Allingham describes so beautifully, making them real. Here the
small shops are trying to recover after the War, and the poshos’ house faces
the titular undertakers.
All this worked so well in another book more than 10 years
later – many of the same tropes but much more readable
The
China Governess by Margery Allingham
I got lost in the middle of this one with all the tradesmen and the
lodgers and the hideous Palinodes. Lugg was – as always – a treat whenever he appeared.
Then it picked up towards the end. There is a small party, like a literary salon, late on, and it’s a pity there wasn’t more of that. Here’s Lugg with the canapes: ‘the old girl persuaded me to ‘and around. She see at once that I could do it.’
The very creepy idea of ‘Going up Apron St’ and why people were scared about it, was hardly surprising in its explanation, but gave us a frisson. The long-drawn-out section chasing the coffin-brake (horse-drawn hearse) through the streets of London late at night, followed by an equally-extended delay while we wait for the coffin to be opened, was terrific. Allingham was in her element with this.
There was a young woman who wore very old-fashioned clothes
at home while having a taste for other styles:
She was in all her glory. A skin-tight bodice revealed the charm of her young bosom. Amightly skirt spread out in exaggerated folds. A spotted scarf made her look like a dressed-up kitten, and a modern boater sat squarely and fashionably on her newly-dressed hair.
Charlie Luke surveyed her.
‘I tell you what,’ he said at last. ‘Take off the scarf and I’ll take you to the pictures Sunday.’
Will anything come of it?
Ah well…. We know.
And the book ends excellently – with a telling letter from
the otherwise absent Amanda.
I couldn't find all the features of the young woman's outfit in one photo, so I combined them.
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