"Oh yes, if that woman had left well alone—and left Kimberly at Gurnard Wells, all slender and that, ripe for another young fellow to turn her head—"
"Or not been too clever by half, fattening her up like an entry for the Bath & West livestock show, Gordon might have gone off her,” Mary struck in. “She beat herself in the end. Cheats never prosper.” Mr. and Mrs. Paraly nodded at each other, united in human-nature delight over the schemer's downfall.
Fine for them, less so for me. Belatedly I remembered Mary Paraly's deplorable—in a respectable grandmother—taste for teasing. Forgive a writer's flowery phrases: She had conned me rotten, sold me a pig in a poke. She well knew that a rural saga of true love and poetic justice was no earthly use to me. “You told me this was about a murder,” I accused.
Mary widened her eyes and patted my arm. “Have patience, my dear, there is more. Gordon and Kimberly wed at St. Peter's. Some of his regiment came and made an arch of rifles. It was the biggest event here in ages. Betty put the best face on it she could, squeezed out a few tears during the service. Hah! Crying with mortification, unless she had a raw onion hid in her hankie.
"Now Sophie Farrow was a good loser, she agreed to be bridesmaid and behaved ever so well. Still intent on making Gordon happy, poor soul, trust her not to spoil the day.
"Kimberly didn't have a penny, no family to foot the bill. Betty and Tom stumped up for everything. Full choir, Rolls Royce to church for the bride, reception in a big marquee on the green, come one, come all. Cost over a thousand pounds, I know for a fact. That was salt in Betty's wounds, she watched the pennies.
"I caught sight of her face when the happy couple were leaving. Bless my soul, there's an old picture of Medusa in the church hall, her with the snakes for hair? Betty Barney was Medusa for a split second, and it came to me she had lost a battle but the war was still on."
"Scorched earth,” was Jim's laconic summary. “The thought of ‘that empty-headed chit’ queening it over her farm someday was more than Betty could bear. She started seeing a lot of her cousin, him as was on the County Council planning committee, and next thing we knew the Barneys were selling up. The whole shooting-match—stock, machinery, house, and land. That went to the developers.
"If she couldn't keep the farm, then nobody would have it, least of all Kimberly—for being Kimberly—and Gordon for not knuckling under. That was Betty Barney. Cherry Garth Acres it's called now. Ruddy great Monopoly board with houses in rows wherever you look."
"So it was murder, just as I said,” Mary sighed. “She killed off a good farm that had been in Tom's family for generations. Purely to come out on top in the end. They went off to Canada; he had people there and maybe they were happy. Vancouver, I believe. Tom sent Father a postcard once, said the fishing was grand and the scenery knocked Wessex into a cocked hat. But they didn't last long, neither of them, passed on years ago."
Jim Paraly turned meditative. “Came out on top? Cut her nose off to spite her face, as the saying goes, but Gordon still came in for their money, nobody else to leave it to. That was the year he got out of the army, so he was well set up. For a single man with only himself to please."
Alerted, I looked a question and he made a dismissive noise. “You and your murders! Kim was right as rain, he'd never have laid a hand on her. Gordon kept in touch with Sophie Farrow, regular letters, is how we know how things turned out.
"Kim took to being an army wife. Bit of a queen bee herself eventually. Gordon was the Regimental Sergeant Major and she bossed the NCOs’ womenfolk. The trouble started when they were based in Hong Kong—"
"We are into the nineteen sixties now,” Mary interrupted. “Bikinis and miniskirts and Kim wanted to be Queen of the May, look her best. She dieted with a vengeance, and exercising was all the go, so she went in for that. They came back here for Sophie Farrow's wedding—she'd found a nice chap, seed salesman, a widower—and I swear Kimberly was thinner than when she first landed Gordon. Stand her sideways and she disappeared."
Jim Paraly rapped his pipe out. “More fool her. Turning herself into the very sort of woman Gordon didn't want. Starvation thin, forever looking in mirrors. And his mother was right about one thing. Kim did get on his nerves with her chat-chat about nothing beyond herself.
"They drifted apart, Sophie Farrow said. Trust her to cover up for him. Gordon came right out with it when he was done with the army—Kim had run off with a chap that owned an aerobics gymnasium, she dumped Gordon as soon as he got posted back to England.
"Betty Barney had hopped the twig by then. Just as well, otherwise she'd have learned that doing that to Cherry Garth was needless destruction. The brainless chit wouldn't ever be taking charge of Betty's kingdom."
Reluctantly I conceded, though only inwardly, that there was something in Mary's half-serious claim to have shared a murder story. (Of course, the pair of them had also unfolded a favourite saga to punish me for tiresome nagging. Serve me right, as Mary would put it.)
Killing of a sort was involved. The farm turned into a housing estate, and Gordon's taken-for-granted future eliminated. An army pension and whatever savings made during Kimberly Stottle Barney's high-maintenance era wouldn't buy him another farm. He might run to a few fowls in the back garden...
That thought led to another. “Gordon came back to the village? Surely he wasn't hoping to start up again with Sophie. She's happily married, according to you, and he wasn't the sort to chase somebody else's wife."
Husband and wife exchanged another of those looks. “Don't know where you got ‘happily’ from,” said Jim. “We only said married. Not even that, it turned out. Mr. Seeds Rep was a liar, not a widower. Wife One was alive and well in Plymouth, and when she got on his track and the applecart was tipped over, Sophie slipped down the batting order to bigamous wife Number Three. That was the end of that."
"Patience,” Mary Paraly beamed. “If only Betty had shown more of it. Her Gordon and Sophie did get together, just as she wanted. It took a sight longer than she'd expected, is all. Bert Farrow was tapping on by then, ready to retire. He'd kept going in the hope that Sophie would marry a better ‘un next try, and then the farm would stay in the family. Up pops Gordon Barney with a tidy bit of capital behind him, made for the job. It all turned out surprisingly well, considering."
"Very well, and not only for them. We still get our dozen fresh eggs, without the walk. Sophie drops them off on her way to pick up their grandchildren from school,” said Jim.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Jeffry Scott
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Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
Our annual Sherlock Holmes round-up begins with a piece of nonfiction that may be the book of the year in mystery scholarship: Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters (Penguin, $37.95), edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley. From childhood on, Dr. Watson's agent was a prolific correspondent, and his letters add to our understanding of his remarkable life and character, including such sidelights as the remarkable rigor of a nineteenth-century British education.
**** Donald Thomas: The Execution of Sherlock Holmes, Pegasus, $25. With respect for the canon, deep knowledge of Vic-torian and Edwardian Great Britain, and the writing chops to replicate the Watsonian style, Thomas is the all-time best at Sherlockian pastiche. These five novella-length cases begin with the remarkable title story's account of Holmes's imprisonment by his enemies in the recently deactivated Newgate Prison. Along with excellent detective work, a sense of the cultural, intellectual, and political scene gives the stories added distinction. (Added bonus for these times of linguistic decay: on page 222, Thomas correctly employs the currently abused concept “begging the question.")
*** Richard A. Lupoff: The Universal Holmes, introduction by Gary Lovisi, Ramble House, $18 trade paper, $30 hardcover. Baker Street is cross-pollinated with the worlds of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip José Farmer, and Jack Kerouac in five stories (some straight, some comic; a
ll previously published but most newly revised) by one of popular fiction's most accomplished literary chameleons. ("God of the Naked Unicorn,” with its gathering of superheroes, also appears in Lupoff's The Compleat Ova Hamlet [Ramble House, $18 trade paper, $30 hardcover], comprised mostly of science-fiction parodies but including his hilarious deadpan take on ‘50s paperback private-eye fiction, “Death in the Ditch,” and “Phannie,” a previously unpublished parody of Stephen King's Carrie with a background of science-fiction fandom.)
** Gary Lovisi: The Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, afterword by Richard A. Lupoff, Ramble House, $18 trade paper, $30 hardcover. The first of these three stories is pretty weak, the second much better, the third an Edgar nominee, “The Adventure of the Missing Detective.” Lovisi has a tin ear for language but boundless enthusiasm and a way with off-the-wall plots.
*** Nancy Springer: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, Sleuth/Philomel, $12.99. In her second case, Enola Holmes, Suffragist younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, evades her non-feminist brothers, does good works as the East End's mysterious mute Sister of the Streets, and fronts a missing-persons agency for a fictitious male sleuth. Real detection and rich 1880s background demonstrate why the author has won two Edgars for young adult mysteries. The vocabulary level is uninsulting to her target audience of nine and up.
** Alex Simmons and Bill McCay: The Raven League: Buffalo Bill Wanted, Sleuth/Razorbill, $10.99. With Holmes and Watson vacationing in Scotland, the young Baker Street Irregulars spin-off group are on their own in saving members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show from suspicion in the scalping of a London policeman. Though designated for the same ages, this wildly plotted action adventure addresses a less sophisticated audience than Springer's.
Historical mysteries, more numerous and varied every year are fertile ground for lovers of old-fashioned clued detective stories. Some recent non-Sherlockian examples follow.
*** Peter Tremayne: A Prayer for the Damned, St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95. A much-hated bishop, who supports celibacy of the religious and protests the wedding of lawyer detective Sister Fidelma to her longtime lover/Watson Brother Eadulf, delays the ceremony by being murdered. A detailed background of seventh-century Ireland, including a description of a wild boar hunt, and a cast of characters vividly realized and well differentiated despite their unusual and sometimes similar names highlight a well-constructed, generously-clued whodunit.
*** Michael Jecks: The Malice of Unnatural Death, Headline/Trafalgar, $24.95. In 1342 Exeter, Sir Baldwin Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock investigate murders possibly attributable to necromancy, which shares with voodoo the use of pins in wax dolls. As usual, much cross-cutting among a large cast of characters inhabiting an immensely complicated plot demands an attentive reader. Maps, a character list, and an author's note help bring the history to life. *** Kathy Lynn Emerson: Face Down O'er the Border, Perseverance, $14.95. In 1577 Scotland, Susanna, Lady Appleton comes to the aid of her friend and relative by marriage Catherine Russell, accused of the murder of her mother-in-law. The latest in a consistently rewarding ser-ies has the usual strengths in pace, plot, prose, and background detail.
*** Kathy Lynn Emerson: No Mortal Reason, Pemberley, $17.95. All the characters in this third novel about 1880s American journalist Diana Spaulding have something to hide, including the sleuth. Without consulting her, fiancé Ben Northcote has registered them at an upstate New York hotel as husband and wife, a pretense she tries to go along with without actually lying. The hotel's owners are, unbeknownst to them (and she isn't telling), Diana's uncles. A murdered female skeleton found during a renovation of the property exposes still more secrets. The treatment of this entertaining and well-researched whodunit is not as comic as this summary suggests.
*** Tess Gerritsen: The Bone Garden, Ballantine, $25.95. In 1830 Boston, the continuing need for fresh cadavers and the crimes of a slasher known as the West End Reaper complicate the lives of several medical students, including the young Oliver Wendell Holmes. The briefer present-day story, allowing a perfunctory early role for series sleuth Maura Isles, might profitably have been jettisoned. Before going slightly off the rails in a tidy sentimental conclusion, the novel delivers superbly its harrowing account of early nineteenth-century med- ical practice.
*** Rosemary Rowe: A Coin for the Ferryman, Headline/Trafalgar, $24.95. The latest case for Longinus Flavius Libertus, pavement maker and sleuth of second-century Roman Britain, begins with the ceremony to free his young slave Junio and includes a fulsome, sometimes disgusting description of a banquet honoring a visiting dignitary. The mystery: Who is the young man in woman's clothing found murdered on Libertus's property? For Roman Empire detection, Rowe may rank second only to Steven Saylor.
Saylor's latest, Roma (St. Martin's, $25.95), is a multi-generational saga rather than a case for Gordianus the Finder, but one chapter, “An Architect of His Own Fortune,” can stand alone as a fine crime story.
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels and stories weren't historicals when they were written, but research into the between-World-Wars period for their adaptation for British television gives added resonance to the well-illustrated coffee-table book by Vanessa Wagstaff and Stephen Poole, Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion, first published in 2004 and now in trade paperback (Aurum/Trafalgar Square, $19.95).
Copyright (c) 2007 by Jon L. Breen
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Fiction: FALSE COLOURS by Judith Cutler
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Art by Ron Bucalo
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Judith Cutler is best known for two series of crime novels set in Birmingham, England, one featuring amateur sleuth Sophie Rivers, the other police inspector Kate Powers. In Oct. ‘07 something a little different by her was published by Allison & Busby, the historical novel The Keeper of Secrets, about a young parson sleuth in 1810 Warwickshire.
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"Lina, my sweet, he really is such a delectable young man that were you not clearly smitten, I might make eyes at him myself,” Griff declared, rapping his almost empty glass of mostly diet tonic but also a little gin on the table in the hopes of more.
"He is beautiful, isn't he?” I ignored the hint.
"The mot juste," he agreed. “Those lovely, luminous dark eyes, the palely interesting skin, that shock of hair that wouldn't have disgraced Byron."
"A bum to die for. And those lovely broad shoulders."
"And, most important, keen to buy one of the most precious items in our shop."
"Not exactly keen. Not now he knows the price,” I admitted.
"But he has taste, that's the main thing. He's bought so many other pieces. And he hasn't said he won't buy. After all, when a vase heads towards the four-thousand mark, you can't expect everyone to press a roll of cash into your sticky paw and dash off with it. It's not like buying a mug from IKEA."
It certainly wasn't. The vase in question stood in pride of place in the best-lit and most securely locked display cabinet in our shop. Actually, of course, the shop was technically Griff's, but when he'd taken me in, “an orphan,” he always said lugubriously, “of life's storm,” he'd insisted that what we had was a partnership. Tripp and Townend. (We didn't change the sign over the shop from G. Tripp in case it might encourage our village graffiti artists to cross out the “and” and spray in “to.")
Griff, despite his campness and tendency to bend his elbow too often, was the dearest person in my world, and was a far better mentor than my biological parent would ever have been.
Actually, it was me—I mean, it was I—who'd originally found the vase, a wonderful early-twentieth-century piece with a swirly purple-red glaze called sang de boeuf: bull's blood, in other words. The glaze was dappled with irregular green and black spots. Sounds a mess: in fact, a miracle.
When I'd come across it at a country auction, the vase had been covered with the sort of dust and muck you'd expect to find in a derelict conservatory. But I'd been so sure that I was on to a bargain
I hadn't even wiped the base to disclose the maker's imprint lest other bidders catch on. It stood about a foot high and was the sort of shape that said it must simply be looked at for itself: Though at a push it might have held flowers, it didn't want to, and certainly didn't need to. It had come as part of a lot with a couple of rotting rugs, some terracotta flowerpots, and a selection of plastic flowers: a fiver all told.
A tender wash and brush-up had revealed that it was not only Ruskin, but also perfect. Even chipped, it would have fetched in the hundreds, Ruskin is so collectable: Flawless, it was worth at least what we were asking. If we decided to nip along to a top-class antiques fair at a venue like the NEC, we'd be able to notch the price up at least another K.
In its new home, it had drawn Simon to it like a magnet. Most customers pretend not to be interested in what they really want to buy, drifting sideways until coming at it by chance and only reluctantly showing interest. Then, if they know anything about the antiques trade, they ask for your best, that is, the lowest price you're prepared to accept, haggling you down from what's on the label.
The price tag was our best.
"It's so lovely,” Simon had breathed, as if in a church.
"And perfect.” I added firmly, “And it's got the maker's mark.” I murmured the price discreetly. I didn't offer to get the vase out of the case. It was too precious to drop. Oh, our insurance would have more than covered it, but that wasn't the point. As Griff always said, the world was a paler place when a work of art was damaged or, worse, broken.
"Tell me about it,” he invited.
"It's Ruskin. Decorative ware made in the first third of the twentieth century in the West Midlands. The process was top secret, and it died with the maker. So it's rare and lovely."
"Rare?"
"Not many pieces were ever made. A lot of them were destroyed because they didn't meet the factory's high standards. It's said the firm spent over ten thousand pounds experimenting before it went into commercial production—and that was nineteen-hundred's pounds, not today's!"
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