Consider the Lilies by Elizabeth Cadell

Consider the Lilies by Elizabeth Cadell

pubished 1955

 

 

This author has come up in the comments a few times – she wrote so many books that I may have read one in the past but I don’t remember. I decided to go with this one because it is a murder story of sorts – though it is also a comfortable village story with a romance, of the kind by much-loved authors such as DE Stevenson and O Douglas.

The lilies in question are for decorating the church – a subject of much interest round here last Christmas

Decorating the Church for Christmas, again

This time it is for Easter so a pity I didn’t time my reading of the book better.

An unmarried young woman, Caroline, comes to stay with her very-much-married sister in the village: she is taking time off from her Universal Aunts type job. (There was a similar example in this Margery Sharp book – I said there, the kind of job you could imagine Diana Spencer doing before she became Princess of Wales.) The family is very much involved in village life in the usual way. There is a neighbouring house, a very odd set up with an old lady and her rather grotesque staff: because of a division of land, there are issues with a shared pathway. The miserable old lady has beautiful lilies every year, but refuses to let the church have any.

The old lady dies – accident? A policeman comes to investigate. There are all kinds of goings-on in the village. The sisters’ stepmother comes to stay, bringing trouble with her, but also sitting up in bed in a ’ frothy, pink dressing-jacket.

There is a young handsome policeman – down from London, nephew of a local landowner – asking demanding questions. Mmm, I wonder where that is going?

He was about thirty; tall, good-looking and dressed in a way that showed him to be a visitor—those were not country clothes. She eyed him cautiously.

 

A stranger turns up and is quite soon dead. There is a will, there are lost heirs – a lot is packed in here. Walking along the pathway gives people the shivers, and can prove dangerous for some.

Surprisingly, it isn’t remotely cosy – the crime, the people, and the atmosphere become very dark indeed, while at the same time the vet – Caroline’s brother-in-law – is doing his job, and the children are going to a birthday party. I found the massive changes of tone to be quite exhilarating.

When I do the Miss Silver Checklist for Patricia Wentworth books (eg here, but many on the blog) I have a question which is: ‘how many people were in the graveyard when the murder was committed?’ (covering whatever venue is at issue). This works very well here too, as despite the general isolation and loneliness of the dead woman, there was a quite large number of people knocking about at the key time, just to confuse matters.

There was this about those strange servants - and see top picture:

Miss Parry [was] usually in grey, Braddock in dark-coloured coats covering her print dresses. Now she stood before Caroline in a suit and hat which, though black, were of a design that would never have been tolerated by Mrs. Lauder— … her days were done, her power and influence at an end; her maid had put off her working clothes and was parading—sleek and smart, and with a deliberately leisured air, in the village for all to see…. A jaunty black suit.

As Caroline thinks, ‘condolence appeared to be uncalled for’.

The main family also have their own servants with their own issues (I did get somewhat confused as to who was who), and the attitudes to the servants (as ever) brought out the bolshy in me.

But it was an enjoyable if very strange reading experience, like a mashup of Dorothy Bowers and O Douglas. I will read another by her to see what the un-murder stories are like.

Woman in jaunty suit and hat from The Vintage

 Woman in bed is the actress Arlene Dahl - the picture is my goto for women who look like this….

John Christian with Ted Shawn - NYPL Digital Collections

A useful picture of men’s clothing of the era (actually 1957)

Used for this blogpost

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

Where I said

I think it would take you a long time to guess the profession of the man on the right – hard-nosed reporter? Successful businessman? Corrupt but charming politician? Actually it is Ted Shawn, one of the pioneers of modern dance in America. He and Ruth St Denis (whose photo has appeared on the blog several times – she had wonderful costumes) founded the company Denishawn, and were amongst the first people to employ the luminescent blog favourite Louise Brooks as a dancer, before she went into films.