I love pleasant surprises - and the ones I am given by favorite authors in their mysteries are most certainly pleasant ones. From the Classic Mysteries vault this week, here's a 1948 book from the amazing Christianna Brand, called Death of Jezebel. It is the story of a seemingly impossible murder - and more. Here's a slightly edited transcript of the audio review I presented on the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago. I hope you'll enjoy it - and I'm happy to see that Death of Jezebel is one of the seven books featuring her series detective, Inspector Cockrill, that are currently available as e-books. Short version of the following review: GET IT. READ IT. Longer version follows:
- 0 -
“Jezebel!” said Inspector Cockrill. He raised his head and stared up at the foolish narrow window and the little balcony. “And she went up into a high tower,” he recited. “And she painted her face and tiered her head, and she looked out of the window…” He paused, glancing about him brightly.
Sergeant Bedd’s eyes shone. “And they threw her down – three eunuchs it was, sir, threw her down; and her blood was sprinkled upon the wall. And the horses trod on her, and the dogs came…”
Biblical recitations in a murder mystery? Well…yes. Inspector Cockrill is on the scene of a most impossible murder – the murder of a rather unpleasant woman named Isabel Drew, known to her friends – if you can call them friends – as Jezebel. This Jezebel dies, rather spectacularly, strangled and thrown from a tower onstage in the middle of an industrial pageant show, in front of a couple of thousand witnesses – yet nobody saw what really happened. And so we have an impossible crime and a first-rate mystery called Death of Jezebel, by Christianna Brand.
Perhaps if she had written more novels in the course of her career, Christianna Brand would be remembered today as one of the great British Crime Queens. She began writing in 1941, at the tail end of the Golden Age of Detection, and pretty well wound down after the 1950s. But some of her books rank among the best – and fairest – traditional mysteries. I would have to say that her book Green for Danger, written in 1944, is one of the most breathtaking and brilliant mysteries I have ever read. [Ed. Note - I'll stand by that in 2020, too!]
And then, four years later, in 1948, came Death of Jezebel, which is a marvelous “impossible crime” story. For Death of Jezebel, Brand did something that only a handful of other authors have done: she put two of her series sleuths to work together on the mystery. One – the principal investigator – is Inspector Cockrill, of the police in Kent, England, her main series detective, who, in this novel, happens to be on hand in a London exhibition hall when the murder takes place. The other is Inspector Charlesworth, a London detective who appears on his own in two other novels by Brand. He’s the officer in charge of the Jezebel murder. I’ll have more to say about the relationship between these two men in a moment. But first, let me tell you a bit more about the plot – for Brand has a great deal of fun setting it up for the audience.
At one point early on in the novel, for example, after introducing us briefly to all the major characters, Brand writes:
Isabel prattled gaily on, and all unconscious of their doom, the little victims played. The kill had been selected. The killer at hand. The bystanders were gathering at the scene of execution; and Isabel with every careless word knocked yet another nail into the highly complicated structure of double murder.
Now that should get your attention! And what happens, in essence, is this: the central characters – from whom we will get both our victims and our suspects – are all involved in a British industrial pageant, taking place on a stage in an exhibition hall. The designers have built a fifteen-foot tower on stage. There is a pageant involving a dozen people (including several of the suspects) dressed in full suits of armor, mounted on horseback – yes, live horses – parading onto the stage in front of the tower. They will look up to the tower; the lights will come up at the top of the tower, and Isabel Drew – our Jezebel – will come out on the balcony and make a speech.
Only when they perform the pageant, in front of a couple of thousand spectators, and look up – what they see is Isabel Drew pushed over the railing and falling to the stage. And when the stunned knights look at the body, they discover that she has been strangled within minutes of being thrown over the balcony. But the tower itself apparently is inaccessible – for the only door to the tower backstage is bolted on the inside, and one of the crew members is sitting on the other side of that door, ready to swear than nobody passed through.
Or as Inspector Cockrill puts it to Inspector Charlesworth, as they try to make sense out of the case:
This is a projection of the ‘sealed room’ mystery. The scene of the murder was bounded on one side by a stage, under the observation of several thousand pairs of eyes; and on the other by a locked door, with somebody sitting on guard on the other side of it. The murderer must have been within these confines. And the place is as bare as a biscuit box, so that there is nowhere where he can possibly have hidden, or remain hidden.
Impossible? It certainly seems that way. The two inspectors have to struggle with two murders (and a possible attempted third murder) in this bizarre case. It doesn’t help that there’s some animosity between the two detectives. Remember what I said about the book Green for Danger? In that earlier book, set in a hospital in Kent, Inspector Cockrill makes some serious mistakes – and he is reminded of those mistakes frequently in Death of Jezebel. When Inspector Charlesworth meets Cockie, as he is called, he says:
“Cockrill, Cockrill,” said Charlesworth, thoughtfully biting upon his underlip. “Where have I…? Oh, yes! It was you who made such a muck of that hospital case down in Kent!” Innocent of the slightest intention to wound, he shook the inspector thoroughly by the hand. “Delighted to have you down here. Hang around!”
“Thank you,” said Cockie austerely.
As you might imagine, Cockie will be looking for a chance to get even on that score!
As for the impossible crime, you may be relieved to hear that there is a rational solution. In fact, this being a Christianna Brand novel, there is more than one rational solution – there are several possibilities. And again, because it is a Christianna Brand novel, there will be a number of excellent and disturbing twists to the story before it is resolved. This is not necessarily going to end happily ever after for all of these people. And Brand makes us care – deeply – about her characters – and, yes, that even includes the murderer.
Let me close this discussion by observing that Inspectors Cockrill and Charlesworth do agree on one important point – mystery fiction bears little relation to reality. Here’s what they say:
“This is not a detective novel,” said Cockrill. “In real life the police don’t ‘reconstruct the crime’ so as to confront the criminal. These writer people never get their police procedure right.”
“It would be so deadly dull if they did,” said Charlesworth. “I suppose they reckon that their job is to entertain and not to worry too much about what could or would or couldn’t or wouldn’t have happened. After all, their books are just fun to read – not treatises on the law.”
Enough. Death of Jezebel, by Christianna Brand, is a thorough delight, a brilliant impossible crime mystery, a sometimes bloody tale about believable characters. I recommend it very highly indeed. Oh, and if you haven’t read Green for Danger…well, you really need to read that, too.
- 0 -
You can listen to the complete original audio review by clicking here.
Next: Homicide Trinity, by Rex Stout.
Comments