6 May 2025. ISBN: 978-1-91553092-9 (PB)
Originally Published in 1946.
The second novel in Coggin’s ‘Lady Lupin Quartet’, The Mystery at Orchard House takes place in a Kent country hotel on the eve of World War II. Lady Lupin Hastings, young, attractive, chaotic, dim and the wife of a clergyman as well as being the daughter of an earl, is staying at the establishment, run by her friend Diana Turner, for a rest cure after a bout of flu. As soon as Lady Lupin arrives there is a series of petty thefts and later a possible attempted murder. She finds herself in the midst of the investigation.
The other residents at the hotel form a singular group. Amongst others there is a writer of racy novels, the manuscript of whose current work goes missing and whose erratic driving is responsible for injuries to a small child; a teacher who wants to be an engineer and whose weak chin comes up for comment; an artist who trained as an engineer; a selfish valetudinarian who keeps her daughter emotionally downtrodden; and a married couple who appear to be incompatible and whose individual ponderings on their situations at one point seem to take up a disproportionate part of the story. Some period colour comes in the form of the local garage owner, father of the injured child, an avowed socialist but one who reconciles himself to Lady Lupin’s aristocratic forebears.
The drawing of these characters does sufficient to balance, in the mind of this reader at least, the rather irritating Lady Lupin. Much of the narrative centres on her scatterbrained nature, and her constant babblings about who she thinks is responsible for the thefts and who is likely - or ought - to marry who become more than a little wearisome, as does her ability to get the wrong end of the stick and thereby confuse other people. Her mind, such as it is, rarely settles. As one character observes: ‘She is a lovely little fool and would fulfil a useful place in the world if she would be content to look beautiful and to talk agreeable nonsense, but she must run about trying to do things. She doesn’t do them well and she upsets the general balance.’
Towards the end of the story there
is a small conflagration at the hotel, and it transpires that there were two
calls to the fire brigade. There is also the discovery of an artist’s retreat
in the grounds. The police become involved, as do a private investigator and an
employee of an insurance company. The denouement is convincing if not a great
surprise. The Mystery at Orchard House
is a period piece which can be enjoyed for what it is, as long as you can cope
with Lady Lupin.
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Reviewer: David Whittle
Joan Coggin (1898 - 1980) aka Joanna Lloyd, was born in 1898 in Lemsford, Hertfordshire, the daughter of the Rev. Frederick Ernest Coggin. Her mother, who was the daughter of Edward Lloyd, founder of Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, died when she was eight, and the family moved to Eastbourne, where Coggin lived until her own death in 1980. She was educated, together with her sister Enid, at Wycombe Abbey, a setting she would later use for her girls' school stories, written under the pseudonym Joanna Lloyd. Leaving Wymcombe in 1916, Coggin became involved in the war effort, working as a nurse at Eastbourne. After the war she worked with the blind, and returned to her schoolgirl interest in Guiding. She suffered from a mild form of epilepsy, but aside from the inability to drive, it did not greatly impact her life. Her first novel, And Why Not Knowing, was published in 1929, and was followed by a series of mysteries featuring the amusingly inadvertent detective, Lady Lupin Lorrimer.
David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of The Crime Writers’ Association.
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