Clues to Christabel

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 289
Rating:

Synopsis:

When successful novelist Christabel Strange dies suddenly aged 32, the bequests are hard to fathom. She leaves one wing of the ancestral home to good friend Marcia Wentworth for her ongoing use; the rest of the house remains in the hands of her mother, grandmother and siblings. Christabel made it known that Marcia would write her biography, but leaves her sixteen volumes of meticulous diaries to wily eccentric Grandmother Strange, who loathes Marcia and refuses to allow her to see them. Dr George Caradew, Christabel's childhood friend, finds himself between opposing and increasingly hostile camps, and begins to wonder why Christabel behaved in such a peculiar way, and whether her death was really due to a fever. The possibility of foul play becomes a certainty when another murder occurs and a volume of the diaries is stolen. Gradually, Caradew pieces together the clues to Christabel's hidden life.

Clues to Christabel was the second Mary Fitt book I’ve read, and again, I really liked it. It’s more a psychological bent than some of her peers, and less focused on dogged police work but more on the people on the outside of that (even if they’re also trying to solve what happened). It really dragged me in, trying to figure out who was sincere, who was a bit of a vampire, and whether scheming meant someone was guilty or merely serving some other end.

The end of the story surprisingly made me turn against Christabel, rather — there’s a certain manipulativeness throughout, a too-good-to-be-true-ness, which left me ambivalent about her, but by the end I had my eyebrows fully raised. I won’t explain why, though: that’s definitely for you to find out by digging through the story. That didn’t change my enjoyment, to be clear: you don’t need to like Christabel, since she’s dead already right from the start.

In the end, I worked out the whodunnit part less by clues and more by certain aspects of the narrative structure, but it was fun to play guessing games all the same.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

The Banquet Ceases

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 247
Rating:

Synopsis:

It is 1947 and a sumptuous banquet at Fairfield Manor is underway to celebrate Bernard Smith-William's recovery from a serious illness. Among the guests are Bernard's childhood friend Rupert Lavering and his wife Louise. A war veteran and recipient of the Victoria Cross, Rupert has had trouble adjusting to peacetime, and was given a loan by Bernard to get started as a stockbroker six months previously. The wealthy Bernard is obsessed with Louise and uses the evening to separate the couple, threatening to ruin Lavering's new business unless she agrees to divorce Rupert and marry him. Louise refuses and Bernard takes action, but the next morning he is found poisoned in his study. Circumstances initially point to Rupert, but it turns out several of the guests at Fairfield Manor have grievances against Bernard Smith-Williams, and that anyone in the house could have accessed the atropine that killed him.

I’d never heard of Mary Fitt, a queer mystery writer (and scholar) who grew up and lived in Wales (though she was born in Birmingham). It seems kinda weird, having read The Banquet Ceases, that the British Library Crime Classics haven’t republished anything of hers, because it seems right in line with their usual stuff — but fortunately Moonstone Press have, which gave me a chance to try this out.

It’s very Golden/Silver Age in setup, but I felt it had slightly more interest in the psychology of the characters than some. I felt like I got to know Rupert and Louise, and the victim’s mother, in a way I hadn’t expected to — and it was very much from their point of view, not the detectives. I believe the police officer Mallett is Fitt’s recurring detective, but we get very little from his point of view.

The way it works out is a bit odd/atypical, too; we don’t get a real final answer to the crime until after the mystery has wrapped up with the suicide of the suspect, which looks like an admission of guilt.

Overall I found it an engaging mystery, and interesting as someone who’s studied crime fiction as well. I’ll definitely look for more of Fitt’s work; several of them are (like The Banquet Ceases) on Kobo Plus, so there’s plenty of scope for me to explore!

Rating: 4/5