Murder in the Mews – BooksPlease

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we start with Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, the winner of the Booker Prize in 2023. It’s set in a dystopic Ireland as it’s in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

I haven’t read Prophet Song so I decided to start my chain by linking to the word song in the title.

My first link is The Hangman’s Song by James Oswald, the third in his Inspector McLean series set in Edinburgh. a dark, tense book; crime fiction with elements of the supernatural and parapsychology thrown in. McLean is working on two separate cases – one investigating a group of prostitutes and the subsequent death of their pimp, Malky Jennings, who was beaten to death – and the second, two suicides, which he and his DC, MacBride consider to be suspicious. Digging deeper, McLean finds answers something terrifying stalking the city streets.

My second link is Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie, one in a collection of short stories, featuring Hercule Poirot. At first it looks as though a young widow, Mrs Allen has committed suicide, but as the doctor pointed out the pistol is in her right hand and the wound was close to her head just above the left ear, so it’s obvious that someone else shot her and tried to make it look like suicide. The plot is tightly constructed, with a few red herrings to misguide Poirot and Inspector Japp and a moral question at the end.

For my third link is a book I read just before Murder in the Mews – The Frozen Shroud by Martin Edwards. It’s the sixth book in his Lake District Mystery series. It begins at Halloween in Ravenbank, an isolated community on the shores of Ullswater. Gertrude Smith who was murdered on Hallowe’en, just before the First World War was found, battered to death, her face reduced to a pulp and covered with a woollen blanket like a shroud. Her murderer wasn’t hanged and the story goes that her tormented spirit

I enjoyed the previous five, featuring historian Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Cold Case Review Team and this one is no exception; it kept me guessing almost to the end.

My fourth link is The Shroud Maker by Kate Ellis, the 18th Wesley Peterson Mystery.

It’s the Palkin Festival in Tradmouth, a town in Devon, when the body of a strangled women is discovered floating out to sea in a dinghy. A year earlier Jenny Bercival had disappeared from the festival and her mother returns to look for her bringing with her anonymous letters claiming she is still alive. DI Wesley Peterson and his boss DCI Gerry Heffernan are investigating the two cases. Are they connected and is there a link to a fantasy website called ‘Shipworld’ which features the 14th century mayor and privateer of Tradmouth, Palkin as a supernatural hero with a sinister, faceless nemesis called the ‘Shroud Maker’?

My fifth link is to another book set in Devon, Murder in the Mill Race by E R C Lorac, a Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald book.

A few months after the Dr Raymond Ferens’ arrival at Milham in the Moor in North Devon Sister Monica, the warden of a children’s home, is found drowned in the mill race, the stream leading into the water mill. Everyone says that Sister Monica is a saint – but is she? Chief Inspector Macdonald faces one of his most difficult cases in a village determined not to betray its dark secrets to a stranger.

My final link is to Once Upon a River by Dianne Setterfield, in which a drowned body is also found, this time it’s that of a little child in the River Thames.It’s mystifying as hours later the dead child, miraculously it seems, takes a breath, and returns to life. The mystery is enhanced by folklore, by science that appears to be magic, and by romance and superstition. It is a beautifully and lyrically told story, and cleverly plotted so that I was not completely sure at times what it was that I was reading. It’s historical fiction with a touch of magic that completely beguiled me.

What is in your chain, I wonder?

Next month (April 5, 2025), we’ll start with Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

I don’t usually find short stories as satisfying as novels, but the stories in Murder in the Mews are good, mainly, I think, because with one exception they are novellas, longer than the average short stories. The collection was first published in 1937.

There are four stories about crimes solved by Hercule Poirot:

Murder in the Mews – at first it looks as though a young widow, Mrs Allen has committed suicide, but as the doctor pointed out the pistol is in her right hand and the wound was close to her head just above the left ear, so it’s obvious that someone else shot her and tried to make it look like suicide. The plot is tightly constructed, with a few red herrings to misguide Poirot and Inspector Japp and a moral question at the end. The book begins on Guy Fawkes Day and I like this conversation between Poirot and Inspector Japp:

(J): ‘Don’t suppose many of those kids really know who Guy Fawkes was.’

(P): ‘And soon, doubtless, there will be confusion of thought. Is it in honour or in execration that on the fifth of November the feux d’artifice are sent up? To blow up an English Parliament, was it a sin or a noble deed?’

Japp chuckled. ‘Some people would say undoubtedly the latter.’ (page 7)

The Incredible Theft – Poirot is called in to investigate the theft of top secret plans of a new bomber from the home of a Cabinet Minister, Lord Mayfield, where a number of guests are gathered for a house party: Mrs Vanderlyn is an American siren who had formed friendships with ‘a European party’ (this was written in 1936). Air Marshall Sir George Carrington wonders why she is there. Lady Julia Carrington, Sir George’s wife is a keen bridge player, who has ‘the most frightful overdraft’ and their son Reggie, fancies the French maid. Also present are Mrs Macatta MP, and Mr Carlile, Lord Mayfield’s private secretary. This is perhaps the weakest story in the collection.

Dead Man’s Mirror – a conventional murder mystery. Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore is found dead in his locked study, shot through the head. The bullet had shattered the mirror on the wall behind his desk. Again it looks like suicide, but the question is why he should kill himself. Poirot considers it’s all wrong psychologically – Sir Gervase was known as The Bold Bad Baronet, with a huge ego, much like Poirot, considering himself to be a man of great importance. This is another story, complicated by family relationships. Things of interest I noted are that Poirot studies the footprints in the garden outside the study, Mr Satterthwaite (seen in later stories) makes an appearance, and on a personal note I wondered if this was Agatha Christie’s cynical view of divorce?

I can’t see it makes a ha’p’orth of difference who you marry nowadays. Divorce is so easy. If you’re not hitting it off, nothing is easier than to cut the tangle and start again. (page 115)

Triangle at Rhodes – although this is the shortest story, not my preferred length, I think this is the best one in the book. It’s similar to her later book Evil Under the Sun in that it is about a love triangle and a crime of passion. Poirot is on holiday in Rhodes and observes the jealousy and passion between two couples as he sits in the sun on the beach. He foresees trouble ahead and is worried as he traces a triangle in the sand. There aren’t many people on holiday there and he wonders if he is imagining things , reproaching himself for being ‘crime-minded‘. But he is not wrong and Valentine Chantry, a famous beauty, married to a commander in the navy, a strong, silent man, is murdered.

These stories demonstrate some of Agatha Christie’s plot elements and endings – the locked room murder, the murderer conceals the motive, Poirot foresees murder, the clues (often odd clues) are there hidden or in plain sight, there are red herrings and bluffs, chance remarks that have significance, and the final denouement, explaining the solution to the mystery.