Spring may yet reach those of us yearning to breathe free after a couple of months of "social distancing." So I've been to the Classic Mysteries vault again to find something either appropriate to Spring or wildly inappropriate to the season. I'll leave it up to you to decide. What I can say with some confidence is that my candidate from the vault, attached below, is called A Hearse on May-Day, it is by Gladys Mitchell, one of Britain's cleverest and quirkiest Golden Age authors, and I think you'll have a fairly difficult time trying to make it declare itself either "appropriate" or "inappropriate." It was the subject of my audio review several years ago on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and I present the text of that review for your enjoyment and possible education about some May Day, er, customs. As usual, it has been slightly edited:
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Something very peculiar appears to be happening in the tiny English village of Seven Wells on the night before May first – May Day. Hard to say exactly what is strange about it…except for the gathering of twelve people, wearing elaborate masks representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac…except for near-pagan fertility rites…and except for the very odd activities in the local churchyard. Could it all be related – somehow – to the murder of the local squire, whose body would be buried on May Day? We’ll find out what’s going on in A Hearse on May-Day, by Gladys Mitchell. During her lifetime, Mitchell was widely regarded in England as the equal of the other great Golden Age crime queens, such as Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy L. Sayers. She is far less well known in the United States. Her detective character, Mrs. Beatrice Bradley, is a respected criminologist and psychoanalyst. She appears to live and work primarily by her own moral code, which can be a bit unnerving to those who know her. And, fairly late in her career, she is given a title and becomes Dame Beatrice.
Mitchell’s 1972 novel, A Hearse on May Day, begins with the very unusual adventures of Mrs. Bradley’s niece, Fenella Lestrange. Fenella is on her way to visit relatives, planning to be married in a few days’ time. While driving to their home, she turns off the main road on a whim, following a narrow and apparently little-used road to the tiny village of Seven Wells. She has lunch at the oddly-named More to Come pub there – then discovers that her car, which was working perfectly when she arrived at the pub, mysteriously won’t start. She will have to spend the night at the pub. It is the evening before May Day – or, as the locals call it, “Mayering,” a holiday that seems to have deeply pagan roots. And Fenella is warned by the pub personnel to stay in her room, keeping the door locked and bolted, for her own safety – for “no maiden be safe, except under lock and key, at the Mayering of Seven Wells.” Naturally, she doesn’t stay put – and so begins a series of extremely odd adventures involving a group of people costumed as signs of the Zodiac, an apparent fertility ritual involving animal sacrifice and human bones, a rather odd young man dressed up as the Jack-in-the-green of May Day folklore, and a good deal more, not to mention murder. And some of the villagers are a bit upset over the lack of sufficient human skeletons to continue the ancient rites…
When Fenella leaves the pub at Seven Wells on May Day morning after her fairly harrowing adventures, she manages to retrieve her car, now repaired, and continue her journey to her relatives. She finds that her great aunt – Mrs. Bradley – is most interested in her account of the peculiar goings-on in Seven Wells, in no small part because she is investigating the murder there of the local squire, who was buried on May-Day. Why would anyone kill the popular squire? Who are the people hiding behind those Zodiac masks? Why did the original hosts and servants at the More to Come pub disappear suddenly, to be replaced by an entirely new staff? What is the real story behind some newly-uncovered skeletons? And are the very odd activities observed by Fenella on Mayering Eve connected in some way with the murder?
In A Hearse on May-Day, readers familiar with other books by Gladys Mitchell will find what for her is a remarkably straightforward story, full of odd twists and bizarre occurrences but quite easy to follow, and the explanations and solutions eventually presented for the various aspects of the mystery are quite well done. The behavior of Mrs. Bradley – or, as she is now titled, Dame Beatrice – is less outrageous in this book than in many of the earlier novels in the series, which I think could make her more acceptable to a new audience. Perhaps it is because there are so many gothic trappings surrounding the events in the book that the relatively calm demeanor of Mrs. Bradley is welcome here. I found that it was almost impossible to put down A Hearse on May-Day until I had finished the book.
My thanks to Sally Powers for letting me freely quote from my review in the I Love a Mystery Newsletter [Ed.note-now, alas, sadly defunct] and for providing me with a copy of the book for review.
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You can listen to the original review by clicking here.
Next: Fatal Descent, by John Dickson Carr and Cecil Street
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