Among the authors who tantalized readers with a few good mysteries and then disappeared is Olive Seers Shimwell (1901-1962) who published three mysteries under the name Harriet Rutland. She produced Knock, Murderer, Knock (Skeffington & Son, 1938); Bleeding Hooks (Skeffington & Son, 1940); and Blue Murder (Skeffington & Son, 1942) and then, apparently having gotten it all out of her system, never wrote another one. Dean Street Press, on its mission to resurrect forgotten authors from undeserved obscurity, reprinted all three about five years ago. Curtis Evans contributed a helpful introduction to each one.
Blue Murder has some deeply unpleasant characters. There’s no wonder at all that murder was done. Fiftyish author Arnold Smith tells the story, as he finds refuge in Nether Naughton, away from London and the bombings during the early days of the war. The Hardstaffe family takes him in reluctantly and under pressure, as every other village family has taken in a refugee from the blitz. Mr. Hardstaffe is the local schoolmaster, bad tempered and autocratic; his wife is an invalid who brought a substantial amount of money to the marriage; their thirtyish daughter Leda is unmarried and devotes her time to running the household with no staff to speak of, a miniscule budget, and a father who does not expect to make sacrifices for wartime.
Smith’s agent has advised him to try to write a detective novel as they are all the rage. Smith looks to his host family for inspiration, focusing on how best to kill Hardstaffe, whom he quickly comes to despise. Hardstaffe’s mistreatment of his family and the boys in the school for which he has unaccountably been given responsibility is well known. Worse yet, Hardstaffe cannot leave women alone. His current fixation is Charity Fuller, a young schoolteacher whom he is trying to persuade to elope as the story begins. It is hard to say whether Charity is simply trying to save her job or whether she is an unprincipled vamp.
It isn’t Hardstaffe’s death that brings the police to investigate, however, and eventually Chief Inspector Alan Driver and Detective-Sergeant Lovely of New Scotland Yard are called in.
One of the most striking elements of this story is the incidental revelations of life during the war. The shortages of nearly every consumer good and the consequent reduction in living standards is a running theme. The immigrant maidservant offers chilling images of the life of Jews under Hitler in the most offhand way, making them even more distressing, if that’s possible. Evans points out in his introduction that this book is darker than its predecessors and he suggests the author’s in-progress divorce may have contributed to its mood. In addition, I am wondering if the character of a husband-stealing woman has autobiographical origins.
The ending is not like any other Golden Age mystery I can remember reading. The story is well ahead of its time for that reason alone. An intriguing author. I regret not knowing more about her life.