The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham
Penguin
Pp.139
The blurb on
the back of the book informs us that, “The White Cottage Mystery was Margery
Allingham’s first detective story, published initially as a newspaper serial.
Her sister Joyce has now skilfully revised the text to reveal a sharply plotted
period piece stamped with the genius of a great and familiar hand.” Mostly this
revision is apparently removing some of the repetition which would occur in a
serialisation to remind readers of the story from last week rather than the previous
page.
It is a country house mystery of the type favoured by
the Queens of Crime and follows the formula expertly. The blurb also summarises,
“Seven people might have murdered Eric Crowther, the mysterious recluse who
lived in the gaunt house whose shadow fell across the White Cottage. Seven
people had good cause. It was not lack of evidence that sent Detective Chief
Inspector Challenor and his son Jerry half across Europe to unravel a chaos of
clues.” The clues involve people trying to cover their secrets, such as blackmail,
homosexuality, adultery, class pretence, and other sins. Attitudes may have
changed, but the well-plotted drama and general motivation to keep things
hidden remains.
On one occasion, W.T. Challenor is exasperated with a woman
who doesn’t appear to grasp the sliding scale of the importance of secrets. He
tries to explain, “An elephant is large compared with a mouse, but it is
ridiculously small compared with Mount Etna. That secret may have been immense
six months ago, but now we are faced with a larger and much more terrible
secret. Don’t you realise what a murder means?” Women frequently exasperate
W.T., and he dismisses them as stereotypes. “Grace Christensen was a woman of
the pretty, graceful, feminine type that is not too clever.” Other of-the-era outlooks
are reserved for foreigners and ‘abroad’, where father and son head later in
the novel to track down a suspect. There is an unwritten code of conduct and
honour, which is also familiar from early 20th century novels. W.T.
states plainly, “I am an Englishman, and we like our facts like our food –
without subtlety. If you will honour me with your trust you will find that I
shall respect your confidence.” Far more serious is the stance towards
childhood trauma and the notion that the best way to approach distressing
events is to forget them.
As with all Golden Age detective mystery
fiction, however, the crime is treated as something of a game. W.T. muses on
the suspects, “They all behave as if they were innocent, and yet each one is
hiding something. Each has a motive for killing Crowther, and admits it freely.
No sane person would dare to do that unless they felt safe.” It is, of course,
baffling to the duo attempting to solve it. The White Cottage Mystery is
a gripping, short caper, capable of being consumed in a day, and the fine
plotting ensures that everything is neatly tied up with a bow after all. This
is highly recommended for fans of the genre.
