A Bullet for Rhino by Clifford Witting
published 1950
****IF YOU HAVE READ THIS BOOK, THERE IS A FASCINATING DETAILED DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS BELOW BETWEEN BLOG REGULARS ADRIANDOMINIC AND SOVAY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. THEY ARE CAREFUL NOT TO SPOILER, BUT IT WOULD BE OF MOST INTEREST TO THOSE WHO HAVE READ IT***
When I first
became aware of the works of Clifford Witting a few
years ago I heard good things about this one but couldn’t get hold of a copy by
any means. So I’m delighted that Galileo Press has brough it back into print,
and it was a really enjoyable read.
It has classic GA elements, and is very well-constructed.
Mereworth is a very recognisable type of minor public
school in the Home Counties, and is having a reunion of Old Boys, complete with
a cricket match and an evening entertainment. There are two very important
participants: DI Harry Charlton, regular Witting sleuth, who is staying with an
old schoolfriend, Sir James Hollander, for the weekend so they can attend
together. And ‘Rhino’ Garstang, a frightful man: school bully, now a famous
explorer and soldier, but still extremely badly-behaved in all kinds of ways. Colonial to the core.
It is perfectly obvious that he is going to be murdered
during the weekend, and Witting does a good job of keeping up the tension of exactly
when this will happen, as well of course as we consider who might be the guilty
party.
My previous
reading of Witting meant I wasn’t surprised that the murder
happens very late in the book – he likes to work up to things in unusual and
elaborate ways. Here he is busy establishing just how many people have cause to
hate Rhino: including two young couples who may have their romances blasted
away. There are a lot of guns featuring in this quiet small town.
Rhino, though hideous, becomes a very real character: huge,
solid red-faced, immoveable, certain he is right, and not one to be put off by
others’ hatred or threats. ‘Chutney and high blood pressure’ is one description
of him.
It is claimed that his father ‘died raving in Calcutta
through trying to quench an unquenchable thirst with eau-de-cologne.’ As is
often the case in these books, there is leaning on heredity: a nice boy shouldn’t
be marrying a girl with such a grandfather.
This all leads to plenty of bad feeling leading up to the
murder:
‘What’s happening out there?
Not another row?’
‘Gale warning’ said David.
‘Cones have been hoisted at Cromarty.’
There is a long detailed description of the cricket game,
the match of the year, where the Old Boys play the current First XI (so with
some father and son opponents). I can’t ever get interested in that, but I
thought it was fair enough to feature it, and I had that nice top picture. It’s
one of John Verney’s magazine covers from 1948, so spot on for era, and I
explain about the pictures here:
Midsummer
Murder by Cecil M Wills
(Confusingly, Witting wrote a book called Midsummer Murder
in 1937, this is different author)
Everyone is in a very bad mood:
‘Where is that nice Mr – what
was his name?’
‘If you mean Mr Longdon’,
Margot answered crisply, ‘he’s over on the cricket field with Eric Randall.’
[These two Old Boys are fighting for her hand]
‘What are they doing dear?’
‘Swapping stamps,’ said
Margot.
Which made me laugh a lot.
There were plenty of safeguarding issues in the way the
school and the event were run, frankly, but the major victim was Rhino, who was
really no loss.
Other old-fashioned ideas included this: ‘If you really
loved him as a woman should love a man, you’d sacrifice everything to stop him
going to his death.’ (This is because a 19yo girl thinks she’d like to see
something of the world before settling down).
And then, there were aspects of the final discussion that
left me extremely po-faced, something I have commented on before. Here is my
patent #spoilernotspoiler system – if you are interested in what
I am talking about, there is a similar
situation in this book. I had
good reasons to suspect a certain person, as it turned out.
Clothes aren’t very much
of a Witting thing, though there is a lot about handbags (as this early cover shows).
‘She wore a loosely
fitting beltless summer coat of dark blue silk
and shoes with 2 inch heels and she held under her arm a small handbag
of black leather… ‘
(The picture is from much
later but did have the feel of the summer coat)
Altogether a most
enjoyable book, and a school setting always welcome.
And, btw, if you Google
this book you will get a lot more information than you want about actual
bullets to kill actual rhinos, which is slightly depressing.
****IF YOU HAVE READ THIS BOOK, THERE IS A FASCINATING DETAILED DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS BELOW BETWEEN BLOG REGULARS ADRIANDOMINIC AND SOVAY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. THEY ARE CAREFUL NOT TO SPOILER, BUT IT WOULD BE OF MOST INTEREST TO THOSE WHO HAVE READ IT***
Cheering schoolboys in Australia
Cheering
schoolboys | Creator: Unidentified. Location: Queen… | Flickr
I remember enjoying this quite a lot - though, honestly, these days I do have to read something very recently to remember the details - or even the solution! He did like to experiment and did not write the same book over and over, and I respect him for that. In fact I am going to post a review of one of his other novels soon.
ReplyDeleteThat was Chrissie
ReplyDeleteI agree with all you say. You kindly sent me one once! I will always read another
DeleteI'll admit I've not read this one, Moira. But I have liked the Witting that I've read. You're right that he builds up tension effectively (and develops some characters). Very GA, but to me, that's part of the appeal, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteYes - he has those classic tropes and uses them to good effect
DeleteI enjoyed this one as I have done most of his books. As Chrissie says he avoids repeating the exact formula. even if Chorlton is his normal detective. I did appreciate the one-liner about Rhino being the Black Man's Burden.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, he did set up the old-fashioned remark with a reasonable excuse for making it.
With Witting I find it hard how to
calibrate my enthusiasm so as not to set up a false expectation. He's good, but not great, (apologies, but I accidentally posted the draft too early.
ReplyDeleteGood summing up of his work (as usual from you). I still didnt think it was her job to save the young man!
DeleteYes, that's exactly it. I have enjoyed everything I've read by him, which is most of them now, but couldn't pick out a masterpiece. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy - but don't race to read another
DeleteThe Collins Magazine cover – are the batting team up against St Trinians? If so, it looks like the calm before the storm.
ReplyDeleteEchoing several comments above, I’m always happy to read something by this author if I come across it, but don’t seek out his books. A school setting is always good value though .. and I’m curious to know how the young man is going to his death and why the young woman should take responsibility for stopping him.
Sovay
Loving the prospect of St Trinian's at cricket.
DeleteI think this might be worth your while...
Are those skirts that the cricket-playing girls are wearing? They look like straight skirts too, not the kind like tennis skirts that let you move freely. I'm curious about their headwear and hair too--some look as if they have horns! (Is that why Sovay thought of St Trinian's?)
DeleteI think the garments are intended to be the classic girls’ school uniform staple of the early-to-mid 20th century, the gym slip - originally designed for exercise, as the name suggests, but they quickly established themselves as normal daytime wear for schoolgirls. Essentially it’s a pinafore dress – jumper in the US – with a blouse underneath and usually a blazer over the top. It has a yoke and full-length box pleats for ease of movement, but John Verney hasn’t shown the box pleats.
DeleteThe horns are odd – hair ribbons tied in large bows, perhaps?
Sovay
The more I look at that picture, the more questions I have. For example, are the batters male? They are in full cricket whites - could it be a father's vs daughters' match?
DeleteAt least some of the fielding girls are wearing hats, which I presume are elasticated under their chins to avoid them falling off too easily.
I thought about bows as well, but more in a Catwoman design. Some look remarkably like rabbit ears, suggesting that they are St Trinian's and are either wearing "Viking" helmets or are sixth-formers who moonlight at the Playboy Club.
Happy to agree with Sovay's suggestion about the gym slip. Certainly, the bowler doesn't seem to have any problem with striding.
But who is the person behind the bowler? Mrs. Bradley?
DeleteNerys
Colour choices certainly make it a possibility, especially if she's meant to be the umpire.
DeleteThe gym slips make sense, especially with the girls' outfits all looking the same. (Did I mess up that gerund, Moira?) Not to mention their hair, which looks quite unnatural on many of the girls and some of the spectators. I suppose the artist wasn't aiming for accurate representations, and probably had no time for box pleats! The males don't look any bigger than the girls so I ruled out fathers. Maybe they were drafted from a nearby boys' school? I wondered about the woman behind the bowler, too, and the little boy chasing a butterfly, who may be heading for a collision. It's a wonderfully-peopled picture.
DeleteI can just imagine Mrs Bradley as an umpire in a cricket game! She would probably alarm the players at first, and what would be the effect on them if she let loose with one of her cackles or screeches?
DeleteI love every moment of this discussion, thank you all!
DeleteYes exactly - gymslips had the boxpleats so you could move easily in them. there was also a 'divided skirt' which became culottes, but I don't think so here.
The item, gymslip, appears in old school stories, but then disappeared from fiction and from real life. Except for one usage: which was tabloid newspapers like The Sun, the redtops, for years would refer to 'gymslip mum' in headlines: this meant an unmarried pregnant girl who was still at school. It would be interesting to know what year they stopped using this shorthand
I was reminded of Sarah Caudwell’s The Shortest Way to Hades, in which one of the characters has a wardrobe full of role-play costumes and Julia is persuaded to try on the schoolgirl outfit, which is a navy-blue gymslip. That was in 1984 but Googling ‘UK schoolgirl fancy dress’ brings up plenty more gymslips, even now.
DeleteSovay
Have you ever read On Your Marks, a book by Mitchell that I'd never heard of, about a couple of young women in a physical-education school. They're not schoolgirl age, but I'd bet that there are gymslips involved somewhere!
DeleteI didn't realise she wrote junior fiction! I'm not sure gymslips would be worn at a teacher training college in 1954 though - they certainly weren't in evidence at the college in Laurels are Poison which was published ten years earlier (and probably written earlier still - there's no mention of the war). I suspect the gymslip above all was the garment that school-leavers would cast aside with great relief and swear never to wear again under any circumstances.
DeleteSovay
Sarah Caudwell's books are on my regular re-read list, and I keep finding new reasons to move them up!
DeleteFascinated by the sound of On Your Marks, which I too had never heard of.
My mother attended university in the late 1940s (doing academic subjects, not PE) and represented her university at netball. I have a photo of her (cup-winning) team, and all the young women are in very traditional gymslips, knee-length.
Interesting! My mum remembers playing hockey in a gymslip at much the same time, but she was still at school, not at college. As far as I recall Laura, Kitty and Alice and the other students at Cartaret College wear shorts for PE, including gym.
DeleteSovay
When I went to secondary school in the 1960s we had hideous PE tunics to do gym in - two oblongs of fabric sewn together with holes in. Fortunately they were dropped soon after, along with hats and ties...
DeleteI'm trying to envisage this and succeeding only too well - it sounds very economical (easy to run one up at home, like a pillow-case with gaps) but hideous and impractical.
DeleteTies and hats survived into the late 1970s at my school, which I suspect may have been one of the last non-fee-paying schools in the UK to require a uniform hat. It was made of navy-blue felt, suited no-one and shrank if it got wet - local buses were full of girls stretching their hats back to wearable size over their knees as they neared the school grounds.
Sovay
Yes, our school sounds the same a few years earlier. Except we were chancers who didn't wear our hats on the bus, risking trouble if we were caught.
DeleteYes that is what the tunics were like, so horrible. There were matching shorts, and both items were supposed to have our names embroidered on them in red thread - done obviously by us or our mothers....
I remember what we call gymsuits, but they had shorts instead of skirts. In a sort-of-related subject, shorts were taboo in the US, even illegal in some places, until a deadly heat wave hit in 1936. The air-conditioning industry also got a shot-in-the-arm because of the terrible heat.
DeleteOh interesting! I have one of those random memories: country singerTammy Wynette (born 1942) lived with her grandparents growing up, and when she played school basketball her grandfather insisted that her shorts were adapted to make sure no-one could see too much...
DeleteI enjoy Clifford Witting’s books mainly for their evocation of the life of their times. My favorite is Measure for Murder. I did wonder if the detective Daffy Lemaire is a parody of some other spiffily-dressed, floridly-spoken investigators.
ReplyDeleteNerys
I very much enjoyed Measure for Murder, a most unusual book
DeleteI have never heard of him but it sounds a hoot, and I like school settings.
ReplyDeleteGoing off at a tangent, the other day I went to Basildon Park to see an exhibition of Lady Iliffe's clothes, or some of them, and thought it's just your sort of thing, Moira. Givenchy, Dior, St Laurent, etc., etc.
I think you might enjoy...
DeleteOh fascinating, i will look tht up
Having decided I’d only pick this one up if I happened to come across a copy, I promptly came across a copy in a splendid second-hand bookshop in Great Malvern, and enjoyed it despite strong disapproval of the final outcome (no acknowledgment at all from those implicated that they are benefitting from the terminal despair of an innocent party).
ReplyDeleteThe marriage doesn’t promise well – Diana clearly has a taste for adventure, given the opportunity, and I suspect (and rather hope) she’ll find herself someone more interesting once she’s had time to recover from the family tragedy.
I wish the publishers had invested in a classic Golden Age map of Mereworth and its environs, rather than the not particularly helpful frontispiece of the school quad. A plan of Mereworth School and Grounds wouldn’t go amiss either …
Sovay
Yes I agree with all you say - that ending happens all too often in GA fiction and I am nearly always shocked and annoyed.
DeleteYes a map would've been nice.
While I mostly agree with that analysis, there is room for a slightly more ambiguous interpretation of Charlton's position. By telling the person taking advantage of the despair that he knows the truth, he is effectively ending the friendship. If he wanted the status quo, he would have kept quiet.
DeleteI didn't get the feeling that either Charlton or the other person expected the self-sacrifice, but once it had been made, there is an argument for respecting the decision.
There is a frequent trope in some of the 1930s to 1950s books that certain murderers are one-and-done offenders, and it is only because of the particular circumstances that it happened. (Admittedly, one of Marsh's characters goes to extremes in deciding that employing murderers is a way of getting cheap servants and even suggests that the killer in that book might hope to be employed if the jury settles for manslaughter)
I would also be a bit more optimistic about the marriage - the boyfriend isn't afraid of danger and is happy to take the risk.
Thanks for a more positive view! I need to think about your very interesting perceptions...
DeleteIt’s so hard to discuss the outcome without spoilering – which I’d hate to do as I enjoyed the book a lot and think others will too. I’m not sure the friendship is a great sacrifice – it doesn’t seem to be very active. Not sure about one-and-done either – another frequent trope in GA crime fiction is that once a person has resolved an issue in their life by killing, it’s that much easier for them to see this as a viable solution in other situations – for example, within this group of characters, if a certain undesirable person had NOT been seen off, and had consolidated their influence …
DeleteGordon didn’t come across as particularly adventurous to me - his willingness to go to Nigeria is down to his belief that he’ll only hang on to Diana if he doesn’t let her out of his sight (and he’s probably right about that). I think he’s caught Diana on the rebound, as it were – she’s dealing with bereavement and the loss of an exciting opportunity for a new life, but once she starts to recover she may well decide that other opportunities will be out there and that settling down close to home with someone she’s known all her life (which is what Gordon is offering her) isn’t really what she wants.
Sovay
I am loving this detailed discussion! I agree with whichever one of you I last read
DeleteSovay, I'm certainly not saying you are wrong. I think we can agree that Witting is a good enough author to leave some ambiguity and implied questions at the end of his novels and also that some aspects of the story resonate differently now than when it was written. I agree that it is also hard to talk about this without risking spoilers. I also recently lent my copy to a friend, so I am doing this from memory.
DeleteOn the friendship point, I think many of us have friends from school or university who we see only once a year or so, but when we do, the conversation flows as if it were only yesterday. One of the reasons so many go to reunions and Gaudys. I would say that they are still valued friendships and perhaps closer than those who are daily acquaintances.
I accept that the alternative trope exists, but would diffidently suggest that Charlton having the conversation significantly reduces the risk in this case, as there would be no risk of a feeling of omnipotent invulnerability
Having recently read the Ysenda Maxtone Graham books on girls' boarding schools up to 1979, school holidays up to 1979, and women in the workplace up to 1989 or so. I appreciate why she would want to take the opportunity of having three years out of the country while she had her likely only chance. However, I rather doubt she would have wanted to marry a man who shared the characteristics of her father, and I wonder whether, in the early 50s, marrying a husband who was a pleasant enough man and had a good chance of not rejecting out of hand your requests for how you wanted the marriage to go would be seen as a good outcome rather than just settling. Thirty years later, it might well have gone the other way.
Fascinating. I particularly like the discussion of marriage opportunities...
DeleteI think my attitude to it was partyly based on the fact that this is always upper class people who are offered these getouts, because we know they are the right kind...
AdrianDominic – You’re right about the friendship – it seems to be many years since they met, but they are clearly very comfortable together as soon as they do meet again and it’s made clear in the final chapters what a strong bond they have had in the past.
DeleteI take your point about the conversation between Charlton and the murderer, but I think it could go either way – Charlton has made it clear to the murderer that he knows what happened, but has also effectively condoned their actions: the murderer may think, why would he not do so again, especially if the threat were similar? I have to say that a lot of my disapproval is aimed at Charlton; if I were in the murderer’s shoes I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be stepping up nobly to make a full confession and stick my head in a noose! But Charlton has accepted a position of authority and made a commitment to uphold the rule of law, and he’s putting that aside for a personal relationship. Witting has made it easier to swallow because the victim is such a reprehensible character, but that shouldn’t make a difference to Charlton.
I seem to be taking this very seriously!
I think people in Diana’s circle probably WILL see marriage to Gordon as a good outcome for her; I’m not sure she’ll feel the same in the long run. A door has opened and she’s had a glimpse of a different world; that particular door has closed, but there may be other doors to other worlds, not necessarily populated by people like her father.
Sovay
Sovay - Witting weighted the scales in favour of Charlton's keeping quiet in other ways. The fact that it wasn't really his investigation, and those in charge of it are dismissive of him and the Sergeant, as well as delighted to grab at a convenient solution, makes it plausible that he could convince himself that they would have ignored him anyway. The friendship allows him to judge that this was an act of desperation rather than reaching for murder as a first choice.
DeletePerhaps the fact that capital punishment was still around then made letting the decent chap (or chapess) go, especially if they killed a blackmailer, less controversial in the 19th and first 60 years of the twentieth century.
Perhaps my toleration is increased by my enjoyment of Gladys Mitchell - to be fair, Mrs Bradley is an equal opportunity coverer-upper with lower middle class women making the best of themselves, foreigners with a fatal illness and the villager of very little brain who has been manipulated into killing, receiving her protection.
She also pushes the trope to its breaking point in one book, where the killer (probably not a murderer) loses it with Mrs Bradley and earlier with another, considerably less strong, character, which, if either had been less agile, could have resulted in another corpse. Both potential victims seem to regard it with amusement and as only to be expected for pushing the killer's buttons. The past is indeed a foreign country.
I understand your argument with Diana, but perhaps I remember too many real-life stories where a marriage or relationship with a strong man with adventurous tendencies did not go well for the woman involved. It also seems in accord with the times to think what good would be done to either of the young people if the truth was revealed now that so many eggs have been broken.
Witting does do a good job of making Charlton’s decision understandable, and whilst Rhino may not be a blackmailer there seems no doubt that the murderer has done the people of Port Douglas a huge favour by ensuring that he will never be their Resident.
DeleteMrs B is a law unto herself! As you suggest, she certainly doesn’t limit her covering-up to personal friends …
I think the outcome as it stands harms Diana, imposing an extra level of guilt over the fate of someone she loves in addition to the grief, but ironically it may also have given her more freedom to change her life - the back of my mind has decided overnight that she should forget about marriage for now (after all, she’s only 19 or so), emigrate to Australia and train as a pilot.
Sovay
This is such a great discussion - thanks both. I have flagged it above in the main post for anyone who happens along later...
DeleteGood idea to flag it - despite all the careful pussyfooting round the spoilers, I think we have let the cat out of the bag!
DeleteI was surprised by how protective I began to feel towards Diana – it’s sad that the only person who seems to have any awareness that she might want, and be successful at, a role beyond that of conventional middle-class wife is her ghastly father, and even then he has his own interest clearly in view, not hers.
Sovay
So good for anyone who has read it!
DeleteYes, I think the treatment of Diana does show how far we have come in the intervening years, no-one would treat the situation like that these days (we hope)