by Anne Morice
‘The first one is easy,’ I replied. ‘Alison is a dedicated gardener, but obviously she couldn’t afford expensive weed killers. Phil had studied agriculture at the university and must have been in the way of procuring paraquat for her, in concentrated form, which, when the moment came, he fed to Irene.’
‘But when was that moment?’
‘Any old time; in her early tea, her breakfast coffee, her scotch and soda, but probably more than once. I looked it up and, although it’s a poison which is fatal in large enough doses, it doesn’t take immediate effect. In fact, there’s more likely to be a delay of several hours.’
Toby glanced enquiringly at Robin, who nodded back and said,
‘Yes, there’s always been evidence to suggest there was no poison either in her last drink or in the pills, although Powell chose to keep that under his hat. It widened the field, you see, because the murderer didn’t have to be present when death actually occurred.’
‘And I feel sure Phil devoutly hoped not to be,’ I went on. ‘Alison badgered him into taking her to the wedding, but when she sent him home to fetch her shoes he flew off like a bird on the wing and I don’t suppose he had any real intention of returning. However, when in my somnolence I allowed the telephone to go on ringing and ringing he must have felt that the furies were after him; or maybe the habit of obedience to his mother proved too strong. Anyway, back he came and by that time he’d read Desmond’s letter and substituted him for the scapegoat. All those wild threats must have seemed like the answer to a prayer.’
‘So that was when he got hold of the letter, was it?’ Toby asked. ‘I always winder that anyone should read other people’s correspondence! I have enough trouble with my own.’
‘I suppose Phil saw the address book, with everything tumbling out of it, when he passed the front door. Some of Caspar’s work there, no doubt, for I don’t think even Jez would have been so careless. Phil was in no hurry and he probably stopped to pick it up, as one would, but never got further than Desmond’s letter, which presumably went straight into his pocket after a single glance at the contents, and the first thing he did, when I met him coming back with the shoes, was to float the idea that one of the waiters was actually Desmond in disguise which one wasn’t totally unprepared to accept after that ridiculous scene in the church. Unfortunately, as with so many of Phil’s clever schemes, this one hardly got off the ground, so he decided to tickle things up by sending the letter to Scotland Yard.’
‘And now you really have scraped up a surprise for us,’ Toby said admiringly. ‘For what astonishes me is that he should then have killed Desmond. In the circumstances, one would rather have expected it to be the other way round.’
‘Ah, but you see, if this campaign was to succeed, it was essential to find out whether Desmond had a solid alibi for the period after he was thrown out of church, and I think Phil was plugging away at that for quite a while.’
‘Until he found to his chagrin that Desmond did have an alibi, so was obliged to kill him and make it look like suicide?’
‘Either that, or Desmond saw through him and hit on the truth. He wasn’t entirely composed of hot air and alcohol, you know, and, like many actors, he was extremely observant,’ I said, modestly lowering my eyes.
As this brought no response from the audience, I went on,
‘He was also completely amoral and, although he might have twitted Phil with it, he wouldn’t have dreamt of turning him in; but of course there was no knowing what he might say in his cups and I dare say Phil realised that his only permanent safety lay in grabbing the opportunity to get Desmond totally stoned and then to tip a few dozen sleeping pills into his nightcap. There can’t have been much problem about it because, as I learnt from the girl next door, he had already been in the house at least once before. As a matter of fact, she mistook him for Ellen’s new love, but that was because she’d seen them at the theatre together. Somehow, I didn’t think Ellen would have practised putting her hair up when she was out with Jeremy, for it was meant to be a surprise. And, anyway, Jeremy’s a Scorpio,’ I added by way of postscript, ‘so his birthday must be in the autumn.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Robin asked, being the one to show surprise now.
‘Nothing whatever. I just threw it in as an example of how lucky I was in being so close to the heart of things and in knowing so much about all the case histories. With the exception of Jeremy, who was a bit of an enigma to start with, I had the advantage of knowing all the protagonists so much more intimately than either of you did. Even Ellen, I think you would admit, Toby, is in some ways a closed book to you?’
‘I prefer it so,’ Toby replied. ‘I love her dearly and to me her looks and character leave nothing to be desired. If I knew her as you do, as a contemporary, that is, I might find sides to her that were less than perfect, and that would not suit me at all. I think that probably sums up what I have heard described as the generation gap,’ he added, solemnly raising his tea cup. ‘If so, let us drink to its continuance!’
T H E E N D
Felicity Shaw
The detective novels of Anne Morice seem rather to reflect the actual life and background of the author, whose full married name was Felicity Anne Morice Worthington Shaw. Felicity was born in the county of Kent on February 18, 1916, one of four daughters of Harry Edward Worthington, a well-loved village doctor, and his pretty young wife, Muriel Rose Morice. Seemingly this is an unexceptional provenance for an English mystery writer—yet in fact Felicity’s complicated ancestry was like something out of a classic English mystery, with several cases of children born on the wrong side of the blanket to prominent sires and their humbly born paramours. Her mother Muriel Rose was the natural daughter of dressmaker Rebecca Garnett Gould and Charles John Morice, a Harrow graduate and footballer who played in the 1872 England/Scotland match. Doffing his football kit after this triumph, Charles became a stockbroker like his father, his brothers and his nephew Percy John de Paravicini, son of Baron James Prior de Paravicini and Charles’ only surviving sister, Valentina Antoinette Sampayo Morice. (Of Scottish mercantile origin, the Morices had extensive Portuguese business connections.) Charles also found time, when not playing the fields of sport or commerce, to father a pair of out-of-wedlock children with a coachman’s daughter, Clementina Frances Turvey, whom he would later marry.
Her mother having passed away when she was only four years old, Muriel Rose was raised by her half-sister Kitty, who had wed a commercial traveler, at the village of Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, near the city of Margate. There she met kindly local doctor Harry Worthington when he treated her during a local measles outbreak. The case of measles led to marriage between the physician and his patient, with the couple wedding in 1904, when Harry was thirty-six and Muriel Rose but twenty-two. Together Harry and Muriel Rose had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1906. However Muriel Rose’s three later daughters—Angela, Felicity and Yvonne—were fathered by another man, London playwright Frederick Leonard Lonsdale, the author of such popular stage works (many of them adapted as films) as On Approval and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney as well as being the most steady of Muriel Rose’s many lovers.
Unfortunately for Muriel Rose, Lonsdale’s interest in her evaporated as his stage success mounted. The playwright proposed pensioning off his discarded mistress with an annual stipend of one hundred pounds apiece for each of his natural daughters, provided that he and Muriel Rose never met again. The offer was accepted, although Muriel Rose, a woman of golden flights and fancies who romantically went by the name Lucy Glitters (she told her daughters that her father had christened her with this appellation on account of his having won a bet on a horse by that name on the day she was born), never got over the rejection. Meanwhile, “poor Dr. Worthington” as he was now known, had come down with Parkinson’s Disease and he was packed off with a nurse to a cottage while “Lucy Glitters,” now in straitened financial circumstances by her standards, moved with her daughters to a maisonette above a cake
shop in Belgravia, London, in a bid to get the girls established. Felicity’s older sister Angela went into acting for a profession, and her mother’s theatrical ambition for her daughter is said to have been the inspiration for Noel Coward’s amusingly imploring 1935 hit song “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington.” Angela’s greatest contribution to the cause of thespianism by far came when she married actor and theatrical agent Robin Fox, with whom she produced England’s Fox acting dynasty, including her sons Edward and James and grandchildren Laurence, Jack, Emilia and Freddie.
Felicity meanwhile went to work in the office of the GPO Film Unit, a subdivision of the United Kingdom’s General Post Office established in 1933 to produce documentary films. Her daughter Mary Premila Boseman has written that it was at the GPO Film Unit that the “pretty and fashionably slim” Felicity met documentarian Alexander Shaw—“good looking, strong featured, dark haired and with strange brown eyes between yellow and green”—and told herself “that’s the man I’m going to marry,” which she did. During the Thirties and Forties Alex produced and/or directed over a score of prestige documentaries, including Tank Patrol, Our Country (introduced by actor Burgess Meredith) and Penicillin. After World War Two Alex worked with the United Nations agencies UNESCO and UNRWA and he and Felicity and their three children resided in developing nations all around the world. Felicity’s daughter Mary recalls that Felicity “set up house in most of these places adapting to each circumstance. Furniture and curtains and so on were made of local materials. . . . The only possession that followed us everywhere from England was the box of Christmas decorations, practically heirlooms, fragile and attractive and unbroken throughout. In Wad Medani in the Sudan they hung on a thorn bush and looked charming.”
It was during these years that Felicity began writing fiction, eventually publishing two fine mainstream novels, The Happy Exiles (1956) and Sun-Trap (1958). The former novel, a lightly satirical comedy of manners about British and American expatriates in an unnamed British colony during the dying days of the Empire, received particularly good reviews and was published in both the United Kingdom and the United States, but after a nasty bout with malaria and the death, back in England, of her mother Lucy Glitters, Felicity put writing aside for more than a decade, until under her pseudonym Anne Morice, drawn from her two middle names, she successfully launched her Tessa Crichton mystery series in 1970. “From the royalties of these books,” notes Mary Premila Boseman, “she was able to buy a house in Hambleden, near Henley-on-Thames; this was the first of our houses that wasn’t rented.” Felicity spent a great deal more time in the home country during the last two decades of her life, gardening and cooking for friends (though she herself when alone subsisted on a diet of black coffee and watercress) and industriously spinning her tales of genteel English murder in locales much like that in which she now resided. Sometimes she joined Alex in his overseas travels to different places, including Washington, D.C., which she wrote about with characteristic wryness in her 1977 detective novel Murder with Mimicry (“a nice lively book saturated with show business,” pronounced the New York Times Book Review). Felicity Shaw lived a full life of richly varied experiences, which are rewardingly reflected in her books, the last of which was published posthumously in 1990, a year after her death at the age of seventy-three on May 18th, 1989.
Curtis Evans
About The Author
Anne Morice, née Felicity Shaw, was born in Kent in 1916.
Her mother Muriel Rose was the natural daughter of Rebecca Gould and Charles Morice. Muriel Rose married a Kentish doctor, and they had a daughter, Elizabeth. Muriel Rose’s three later daughters—Angela, Felicity and Yvonne—were fathered by playwright Frederick Lonsdale.
Felicity’s older sister Angela became an actress, married actor and theatrical agent Robin Fox, and produced England’s Fox acting dynasty, including her sons Edward and James and grandchildren Laurence, Jack, Emilia and Freddie.
Felicity went to work in the office of the GPO Film Unit. There Felicity met and married documentarian Alexander Shaw. They had three children and lived in various countries.
Felicity wrote two well-received novels in the 1950’s, but did not publish again until successfully launching her Tessa Crichton mystery series in 1970, buying a house in Hambleden, near Henley-on-Thames, on the proceeds. Her last novel was published a year after her death at the age of seventy-three on May 18th, 1989.
By Anne Morice
and available from Dean Street Press
1. Death in the Grand Manor (1970)
2. Murder in Married Life (1971)
3. Death of a Gay Dog (1971)
4. Murder on French Leave (1972)
5. Death and the Dutiful Daughter (1973)
6. Death of a Heavenly Twin (1974)
7. Killing with Kindness (1974)
8. Nursery Tea and Poison (1975)
9. Death of a Wedding Guest (1976)
10. Murder in Mimicry (1977)
Published by Dean Street Press 2021
Copyright © 1976 Anne Morice
Introduction copyright © 2021 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
First published in 1976 by Macmillan
Cover by DSP
The publisher thanks Mike Morris for providing essential material to this publication
ISBN 978 1 914150 08 1
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk