‘Murder Underground’ by Mavis Doriel Hay.

Originally Published 1934.
Published by British Library Crime Classics,
31^st March 2014 (PB)

The story opens with the inhabitants of the Frampton Private Hotel, (which is in reality a very ordinary boarding house) departing about their daily business. Amongst them is Miss Euphemia Pongleton, who 'pottered fussily out, hugging an enormous handbag and looking perhaps rather shabbier and more-out-of-date than usual.' When Betty Watson, another resident at the hotel informs her that it was a 'nice morning' Miss Pongleton 'wrinkled her nose as if she didn't like the smell of it.' This beautiful piece of characterisation tells us a great deal about Miss Pongleton. Despite her shabby appearance and parsimonious ways, Miss Pongleton is an affluent woman; she is also a very unpleasant, interfering person, who is fond of exerting power over other people. When she is discovered on the stairs of Belsize Park Station strangled by the lead belonging to her dog, Tuppy, her fellow residents are shocked but not distressed. Indeed, even Tuppy seems indifferent to his mistress's death. Most of the residents enjoy speculating about the crime, especially Mrs Daymer the novelist, but Betty Watson has more reason to care than most, as she is in love with Miss Pongleton's nephew, and probable heir, Basil Pongleton.

The police have several suspects. Chief amongst them is a young railway worker whose girlfriend works at the Frampton Hotel. Miss Pongleton had found out about a foolish, illegal act this young man had committed, and it is not clear whether she intended to report him to the police. However, the police also have good reason to suspect those who might benefit financially from Miss Pongleton's death: her nephew Basil and his cousin, Beryl. Although Beryl was not in the vicinity when Miss Pongleton died, her fiancé, Gerry, admits to passing the old lady on the stairs, presumably minutes before her murder. Miss Pongleton was in the habit of altering her will whenever Basil annoyed her. As Basil is the 'feckless, exasperating' literary man referred to in Sayers's review,  this occurs with unfortunate regularity and leads to a confusing abundance of contradictory wills. Basil's foolish and inconsistent lies mean that he is soon suspected of his aunt's murder. His behaviour is very self-incriminating, especially when he convinces his cousin, Beryl, and his girlfriend, Betty, to cover for his indiscretions. This leads the unfortunate Inspector Caird to speculate that Miss Pongleton's murder was committed by a 'gang' of her relations and fellow residents.

For much of the book Inspector Caird has very little time on-stage. While he is conducting interviews in one room of the hotel, the reader is hearing about it second-hand, through the discussion and speculation of the other residents. Near the end of the book he emerges as a sensible, conscientious officer, who feels angry that the idiotic and selfish antics of Basil Pongleton have led a nice girl like Betty into trouble. However this is a book of amateur detectives and it is they who solve the crime.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) was a novelist of the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three detective novels were published in the 1930s and are now rare and highly collectable books. She was an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject.

Carol Westron is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 5 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. To read the interview click on the link below. 

https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.html www.carolwestron.com
http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/

To read a review of Carol latest book This Game of Ghosts
click on the title.

The Golden Age: Mavis Doriel Hay (1894 -1979)

 by Carol Westron

Remarkably little is known about Mavis Doriel Hay, which is strange when one considers that she was a contemporary of Dorothy L. Sayers and received an education that, in some respects, ran parallel to that of Sayers.

Hay was born  in Potters Bar, Middlesex (North London), into a middle-class family, who were clearly willing and able to encourage their daughter to achieve an education that was unusual for a woman at that time. Hay was a student at St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1913 until 1916 and Sayers was at Somerville, Oxford, from 1912-1915. Neither Hay nor Sayers would have graduated with degrees, because women were not permitted to be members of the university until 1920, when they were at last allowed to claim the degrees that they had earned.

After her time at St Hilda's, Hay seems to have returned to her primary love, the study and practice of rural crafts and, in 1927, she and her co-author, Helen Fitzrandolph published a wide-ranging and authoritative work, Rural Industries of England and Wales.

Hay was part of the generation of women who had lived through the tragic losses of the First World War. Hay had lost one of her brothers at the Battle of Jutland, in 1916. These young women had also seen their hopes of
marriages decimated by the loss of young men in the War, but, in 1929, when she was thirty-five, Hay married Helen Fitzrandolph's brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, a member of a wealthy and influential Canadian family.

It was during the years of her marriage to Archibald Fitzrandolph that Hay wrote and published three detective novels, Murder Underground (1934), Death on the Cherwell (1935) and The Santa Klaus Murder (1936). Hay's detective novels seem to have been well received. Indeed Dorothy L. Sayers wrote an encouraging review of Murder Underground in the Sunday Times in 1934: 'This detective novel is much more than interesting. The
numerous characters are well differentiated, and include one of the most feckless, exasperating and lifelike literary men that ever confused a trail.'

In 1939 the Second World War broke out and Hay again suffered grievous loss. In 1939 her youngest brother was killed when his Tiger Moth crashed in the Malayan jungle and in 1940 she lost another brother, who died after being captured by the Japanese. Hay's husband, Archibald, had joined the RAF and was killed in a flying accident in 1943.

In 1921, The Rural Industries Bureau (RIB) was established by the Ministry of Agriculture. The purpose of the RIB was to develop rural industries by providing technical advice and assistance to country workshops. As well as various booklets and reports, it published a quarterly magazine, Rural Industries. This was an ideal very close to Hay's heart and she took up a position as a researcher for the RIB. The rest of Hay's life was devoted to her first love, the promotion of rural crafts. Under her married name, Mavis Fitzrandolph, Hay wrote and published many books about rural crafts, including 30 Crafts, written for the Women's Institute. She wrote numerous books about her passion, quilting, and won great respect for her work in developing the Welsh quilting industry.

Hay made her home in Gloucestershire and died at the age of eighty-five. Her last book, Quilting was published in 1972. She showed no obvious desire to return to writing detective fiction.

To all appearances, despite the terrible losses that Hay suffered in the two World Wars, she went on to have a long and fulfilled life doing work that she loved. However, I am intrigued by the question of why Hay wrote three  detective novels in three years and then abandoned crime writing. While none of her crime novels can claim to be profound or ground-breaking, all three of them are pleasant and enjoyable reads, especially to lovers of the  Golden Age, who are used to the language and manners of the 1920s and 1930s.

 

Carol Westron  is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 5 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. To read the interview click on the link below. 

https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.html www.carolwestron.com
http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/

To read a review of Carol latest book This Game of Ghosts
click on the title.

‘The Body in the Silo’ by Ronald Knox

Published by The Murder Room,
31 Jnauary  2013
ISBN: 978-1-47190045-7 (PB)
Originally published 1933

The book opens with a lively exchange of views between Miles Bredon and his wife, Angela, regarding whether they should go and visit some acquaintances on the Welsh border.

“It's no use,” said Miles Bredon. “The man's a bore and the woman's a pest, and if I did ever say I'd go there I must have been drunk at the time. Let us leave it at that.”... “You were, rather, as far as I can remember,” admitted Angela. “I can't always wait until you come round. The pity is that I didn't give you an extra glass to lay you out, put you straight in the car, and decant you at the Hallifords' there and then. A sensible wife would always cart her husband about the country in a sack.”'

Angela has her way and they go off on their visit. Lost in country lanes they are advised by villagers to look for the silo, a formidable landmark, “Like as it might be a church tower.”' Following this advice they come upon 'a large building made like a lighthouse, forty feet high, with no windows, except a skylight in its conical top, no door, and indeed,

no opening at all except on one side, where a series of square hatches, one above another, led right up to the roof.' Their host, Mr Halliford, is playing at being a farmer and the silo is his favourite toy. The vast building is filled with grass and hay, which ferments and provides food for the cattle in winter. It can be a dangerous place, as the fermenting grass gives off carbon gases, and being trapped inside the silo can be fatal.

The entertainment is as dire as Bredon fears. Previously having made herself and her guests loathed throughout the countryside with scavenger hunts, Mrs Halliford is determined to hold an eloping hunt, where an 'eloping' couple are pursued in cars through the countryside and towns. In order to maintain authenticity, she insists that this has to be at night. This programme is put into action and, in an atmosphere of artificially created excitement, the hunt takes place. The pursuers travel either as married couples or singly, and one non-driver elects to stay at home. This means that nobody has an independent alibi when, the next morning, a body is discovered in the silo, having died of carbon gas poisoning.

The Coroner brings in a verdict of Accidental Death but Bredon has grave doubts about its validity. These are strengthened when his friend, Inspector Leyland of Scotland Yard turns up and is keeping covert surveillance on the Halliford household. Despite his objection to investigating a family with whom he is staying as a guest, Bredon cannot resist a mystery and is soon on the trail of clues, many of which were laid deliberately to mislead.

The Body in the Silo is a whodunnit, with few clues in the characters of the suspects but all the physical clues are meticulously offered to the reader so that they can try to solve the puzzle for themselves. The problem in intriguing and the interaction between Miles and Angela Bredon is warm and amusing. It is an interesting read for lovers of classic Golden Age crime fiction.

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was a British cleric. He was born in Knibworth, Leicestershire, the son of the Bishop of Manchester, and was the brother of the writer EV Knox. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and worked in Military Intelligence during WW1. He was ordained into the Anglican church in 1911 and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1917, being re-ordained as a Catholic priest soon after. Knox achieved many academic prizes and honours. He lectured and acted as Catholic chaplain to Oxford University until 1939, when he retired to translate the Bible. He wrote many other books on religion and other topics.

Carol Westron is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 5 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. To read the interview click on the link below. 

https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.html www.carolwestron.com
http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/

To read a review of Carol latest book This Game of Ghosts
click on the title.