How Old is Old? The Anthony Berkeley Version

The Top Story Murder by Anthony Berkeley

published 1931

 

 

I was in two minds on whether to do a blogpost on this one, and the main reason to do so is to put a line in the sand. It is often very noticeable that GA authors, very much including women, are more than ready to dismiss women as ‘old’ or very old at quite remarkably early ages. Ngaio Marsh is particularly prone to this.

In this book we hear

‘Old woman been done in’ and later she is described as  ‘a most unpleasing old person’

And?

‘Age about forty-eight.’

So there’s the benchmark. Can anyone come up with a worse example? Please tell me any you find.

There were other reasons why I did not love this book, which I found a dull and unconvincing procedural with the strange addition of Roger Sheringham, anchorman for an earlier post:

Annoying Detectives - a list

The murder happens in a small block of flats off the Euston Rd in London, and the victim is shown as having a squalid and rather bleak life.

There is a whole theory that burglars always have their own way of working, and that by cross-checking your burglars with your events you can spot the culprit. So here comes ‘Detective-Inspector Beach, who specialised in this type of crime, burglary in flats’. Then there is a lot of chasing after alibis and suchlike, and sudden changing decisions about the time of the crime. More and more details are piled on to make the culprit an awful and sordid person (not criminal, just her personal habits). And there is the usual proving of Roger S to be completely wrong.

A couple of things save the story. Roger meets the niece of the dead woman, Stella, and ends up employing her as his secretary. They have an unusual and very enjoyable relationship – not at all sure what they make of each other, though it is clear that Stella admirably has no time for many of Roger’s ridiculous ways.

In pursuit of the investigation, Roger and Stella go clothes shopping, to try to reach conclusions about the woman in the shop, a possible suspect. They are acting parts: Stella a young woman on the make, aiming at refinement, Roger her American sugar daddy.

I love a view of a 1930s dress shop of a certain kind:

[The manageress] was coming towards them, a professional smile on her lips. She wore a black dress, and with her tall figure and erect carriage looked really distinguished. ‘You wish to see some afternoon dresses?’ she said. Roger noticed that she did not add the customary ‘modom’; nor did she offer him more than a fleeting glance…

 ‘Ay shall want a dress, and a hat to wear with it, yes.’ ‘Say, don’t forget the other trimmings too, baby,’ Roger put in. ‘I guess we’ll want some stockings for the lady too, miss, and some gloves, and—’

‘That will do, Hannibal,’ said Miss Barnett. Mrs. Ennismore Smith turned to the pale-haired assistant who had followed her. ‘Miss Hall, run upstairs and get that beige lace and the jade peau de soie, please.’

 

Though this storyline becomes quite uncomfortable when Roger decides to provoke the manageress to anger, which he and Stella do in a very horrible & humiliating way. The manageress throws them out, and they feel bad about it afterwards, but that doesn’t really make it OK. It’s a pity because it leaves a bad taste after what would otherwise be an enjoyable scene.

There is also one of those odd references to public school ways, all too prevalent in Golden Age detective stories. I expected better of Anthony Berkeley, but here it is:

The solitary question he had put to Ennismore Smith last Tuesday had not proved irrelevant after all. It was a large point that Ennismore Smith had been to a public school. For the kind of thing one really learns at a public school is not the capes of Africa (when one is never in one’s life going to Africa), but far more practical things, such as that one must never borrow money from a woman (because one certainly is going to be hard up earlier or, more unfortunately, later); and that even if one does sink to that, there is still one thing that remains simply impossible even to contemplate, and that is to borrow money from a woman whom one knows intimately.

 

This is pointless and irrelevant and rather cringe-y, but also it is surely wholly untrue? It is contradicted everywhere.

[Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot says “if you please, no reference to examples in books”. But, Jane, I could give you so many examples….]

(see another recent post for more public school propaganda)

Stella ends up with a midnight blue dress, a new  hat and various other accessories. The top picture seems to do a reasonable job of that.

The photo of modelling is much grander than what Roger and Stella were off finding, but when you read the caption you will see why I had to use it:

“Group of women modelling different styles of undergarments and dresses, apparently for different body types. The platforms read: Type BH (Big Hip); Type SB (Sway Back); Type BA (Big? Abdomen); Type A (Average); Type SBW (Short Below Waist). The women are posed on and around a stage in a hall”

 

Fashion models parading a number of styles of dresses and … | Flickr