It has been a full couple of weeks and I have fallen back on some old favorites for my night reading. It is always a pleasure to visit Albert Campion and his 1930s milieu exquisitely rendered by Margery Allingham (1904-1966). Like the classic poem 221B written by Vincent Starrett in praise of Sherlock Holmes that ends “And it is always 1895,” in my mind Albert Campion is always part of that aristocratic English world in the years leading up to World War II.

So much has been written about Allingham that I will only say that she published 18 novels featuring Albert Campion between 1929 and 1965 and five collections of short stories. Her final novel was completed by her husband Youngman Carter who wrote another one in the series, which was then carried forward by Mike Ripley. My very favorite Campions are those from the 1930s; Flowers for the Judge (1936) may rank among the best mysteries ever written.

Among those five or six books released during the 1930s is Campion’s sixth case Death of a Ghost (William Heinemann, 1934). Campion is invited by the widow of painter John Sebastian Lafcadio to the unveiling of a painting left in storage by Lafcadio. Outrageously conceited and flamboyant, Lafcadio was determined to be remembered after his death. He left a dozen paintings, to be released one a year beginning some years after his death for two reasons. One, the event would continue to remind the public of him and his work, should the mercurial world have the audacity to forget him, and two, selling the paintings over time would provide Belle, his widow, with a reliable income, his idea of a pension. His belief that they would sell for outrageous prices was accurate. The annual presentation of Lafcadio’s work had turned into a media event over the years, and buyers began to try to acquire the latest painting before it was even unwrapped.

The showing of the eighth painting was a glamorous affair attended by the cream of society as well as artists, models, gallery owners, and others in the art world. During the hubbub the power failed suddenly. When it was restored, Tom Dacre, a young artist, is found stabbed to death. Dacre had been engaged to Lafcadio’s granddaughter Linda before he went to Europe to work. Upon his return from Italy he brought Rosa, a young woman he had been using as a model there. Linda was shocked and distressed to learn that Dacre married Rosa in order to bring her into England. The audacious cad proposed that he and Linda should continue as they had been regardless of this marriage of convenience. Linda had angrily declined and thereby was the immediate object of police suspicion. Campion is convinced that she didn’t do it and, when the second murder occurs a few days later while the granddaughter is in Paris, the police are forced to reconsider. Campion places himself in considerable danger to gather enough evidence for the real killer to be arrested.

Stylish writing, beautifully conveyed sense of time and place, the characters are wonderful. Campion has moved on a bit from his Lord Peter Wimsey imitation in the earliest books and has developed a more distinct personality. He is presented here as thoughtful, perceptive, and highly intelligent, as well as intensely likable. Allingham re-invented him over the course of the series but I like this version of Campion the best.

Allingham’s work has been described, discussed, and dissected from almost every conceivable angle. It isn’t hard to find a dozen articles and blog posts about her. I was intrigued to find a post written by a member of the 2017 class on Mystery & Detective Fiction at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. The class assignment was to read and review a work of importance to the mystery genre and then read a more contemporary mystery. Hannah Krauss chose Death of a Ghost as a work of significance; I found a review of this much-analyzed classic composed by a relatively inexperienced reader interesting.

Here is the link to her review and the entire set of reviews by the class:

https://blog.mcdaniel.edu/mysteryreviewsfa2017/1920-1939/death-of-a-ghost-by-margery-allingham-1934/