The Dancing Druids by Gladys Mitchell

 

The Dancing Druids by Gladys Mitchell

published 1948

 

A most enjoyable farrago (words that can be used about most Mitchell books) but strangely unmemorable: a couple of weeks after reading it I have not much to say about the plot.

The Dancing Druids are standing stones -  much like the Mocking Widow in a recently featured John Dickson Carr book.

I think that is a slap-up, truly compelling title. And then comes a good setup: some young men are doing a cross-country hare and hounds (ie the group chasing one of their number) and one of them gets diverted (a mistake or deliberately misled?) and encounters a strange group of people, obviously up to no good, and a lot of talk of moving a very ill man to hospital.

Two of the young men are mulling over what this could all mean, and they end up consulting Dame Beatrice Bradley, though they have their doubts: ‘She still believes in Freud – 1856 and all that. Still, I believe she’s 90’. Mrs B of course investigates with vigour, and with the help of assistant Laura who is ‘entranced by what she called the boys-book atmosphere of the proceedings’. Quite.

There’s a lot of thriller stuff – waiting, watching, flashing the torch, keeping lookout, climbing over hedges. But Laura  also poses for a portrait by a dodgy artist, with some mention of painting her in the nude. ‘I’ll let you know about the rudery.’ The poet Philip Larkin, who loved to read about Laura doing nude swimming, must have been agog at this.

Meanwhile, Mrs B is sparring with the chief constable, an old friend:

‘Look before you leap has always been a motto of mine’ [she says]

‘Not when you used to go skiing in the old days’ said the chief constable with a reminiscent chuckle….

There is a whole plot strand to do with a film crew, and the employment of extras, and real and fake paintings also come into play. A smugglers’ cave features, would have fitted in well with a recent post:

Heyho for Smugglers’ Rest

There is an ice delivery lorry, so normal then, so much gone now, and a sudden description of music hall artiste Max Miller.

That comes from her chauffeur George, who really blossoms in this book. Though really, I was shocked by this:

George had that old-fashioned conception of a wage-earner’s loyalty to an employer which socialism has done so well, no doubt, to deflect, emasculate and destroy. He saw it as his plain duty to provide the police with their victim in the form of his own person rather than in that of Mrs Bradley’s nephew, and was cheerfully prepared to be detained at, and, if necessary, incarcerated in Cudchester police station. Noblesse oblige was not George’s familiy motto, but it was his philosophy where his employer was concerned.

This is so completely absurd – it defies logic, ethics, morals, justice – that you can only think socialism came just in time.

George reveals that he is pursued and harassed by women so much that he is changing his name by deed poll to Cuddle-Up in the hope of putting them off. No, this makes no sense at all. He also says that he is willing to pretend to be drunk as part of an investigation:

‘I have often played the part of an inebriate at domestic festivals in order to amuse my mother’s guests, and shall not be at a loss.’

There is a splendid scene on a boat-ride when the sleuthing party has claimed archaeological interest as a cover for visiting the smugglers’ cave. Mrs B has had the forethought to borrow some items from a friend, so that they can pretend to have found them.

A 15 year old boy is the mate, and he leans over and says

If you found them there in that ‘ole, it’s where somebody must ‘ave dropped them…’ To the horror of three of his hearers, the stupefaction of the fourth, and the cackling delight of the fifth, he continued, pointing: ‘That there be be a bone of bos longifrons; that be part of the blade of a Stone Age sickle; that un be a bit of the turnover top of a Neolithic collared urn. I don’t hardly reckon none of them would be found in a hole like that ‘un.’

Weirdly – naming stones after ‘the eight great planets’, doesn’t seem to count Pluto (recognized in 1930,18 years earlier, and downgraded relatively recently) and they can’t agree a name for the ninth…

In fact the idea and placement of the stones most resembles the Rollright stones in Oxfordshire – colour photo – though there are a lot more than 9 of them.

File:Rollright - Rollright Stones - 20240921145641.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

And the youth group out for a hike, a few years later, had a look of the young people rushing round solving the crime.

The top photo is from Ireland: Druids circle at Lissivigeen, so wrong location, right idea. The boys look exactly the kind of children who would feature in a Mitchell book, and the era – 1940s – is right.

The two Gallans! No not the boys, the rocks! | The title of … | Flickr

An Australian cross-country race in the 1940s

Start of the Toowong Memorial three mile cross country rac… | Flickr

Youth group on hike France | Citation: Mennonite Board of Mi… | Flickr

The artist and his model?

HC07134 | A photograph of John E. Meyer with a wood carving.… | Flickr