Despite having written only a handful of fine mysteries in the course of her life, Josephine Tey remains an author with a substantial following of admirers. She's best known for The Daughter of Time, in which Tey's detective Alan Grant used standard detective work to solve the mystery of a dual murder hundreds of years before his time. But all of her books are quite strikingly original. Take, for example, her 1946 novel, Miss Pym Disposes. It's a very traditional mystery, one that is likely to mystify you several times over on its way to a brilliant conclusion. I reviewed Miss Pym Disposes in an audio review for the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago, but I think you'll agree that this book is well worth being brought back from the vault to entertain us again. The transcript of that review, slightly edited, is below, and I hope you will be as fascinated by the plot and the brilliantly drawn characters as I have been.
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If there is one criticism that truly annoys me, in the course of discussing classic mystery authors and their books, it’s the claim that authors writing traditional mysteries – especially those of the so-called Golden Age and the decade or two before and after those years – knew how to write plots and puzzles, but gave readers only cardboard characters and plastic settings.
While I am willing to admit that there were some authors whose plots were far more important and more carefully planned than their characters and locations, I think it’s quite untrue as a general rule. I just had the pleasure of reading – for the first time – a mystery which really shows how wrong that particular criticism can be. The book is Miss Pym Disposes, a 1946 book by Josephine Tey.
Josephine Tey was the pen name used most often by Elizabeth Mackintosh for her mystery novels. It is unfortunate that the author died fairly young, leaving us only eight first-rate mysteries. Five of them feature a detective, Alan Grant – he is, in fact, the star of Tey’s best known work, The Daughter of Time. But Miss Pym Disposes was a stand-alone novel – and it’s quite a work.
The central character in the book, Miss Lucy Pym, is a former French teacher who wrote – almost by accident – a best-selling book on psychology. As Tey explains it:
she read her first book on psychology out of curiosity, because it seemed to her an interesting sort of thing; and she read all the rest to see if they were just as silly. By the time she had read thirty-seven books on the subject, she had evolved ideas of her own
Her book having made something of a celebrity out of her, Miss Pym accepts an invitation from a former schoolmate of hers, Henrietta Hodge, to deliver a lecture to the graduating seniors at Miss Hodge’s school, the Leys Physical Training College for Women. Her lecture is a success, but, far more to the point, she finds herself attracted to the students and the staff at the school. And this, I think, is where Josephine Tey’s ability to create wonderful characters really pays off.
Student after student is presented to us, yet each is a different – and believable – person. The same is true of the teaching staff. In fact, for about three-quarters of the book, this might all be a sophisticated comedy of manners. Miss Pym is so charmed with the people and the place that she accepts invitations to stay on for a few days, rather than return at once to London, as she had planned.
But there is, of course, some underlying tension, which creeps into the story and gradually makes itself known to Miss Pym – and to the readers.
Listen to what Tey does here, as Lucy Pym gets ready for bed – she is staying in a college dormitory room – as she stands at her darkened window, looking out at the quadrangle where the students’ rooms were, as their lights were turned out for their regular bedtime curfew. (Editing a bit now for time as we go):
Could they see her then? No, of course not. Someone had heard the small noise of her curtains being drawn back.
“Miss Pym, we are so glad you are staying.”
…Before she could answer, a chorus of whispers came from the unseen windows round the little quadrangle. Yes, Miss Pym. We are glad. Glad, Miss Pym. Yes. Yes. Glad, Miss Pym.
“Goodnight everyone,” Lucy said.
“Goodnight, they said. Goodnight. So glad. Goodnight…
She thought how odd it was that only yesterday morning she could not wait to get out of the place.
And perhaps it was because no self-respecting psychologist would have anything to do with a thing so outmoded as Premonition that no small helpful imp from the Unexplainable was there to whisper in her drowsy ear: “Go away from here. Go away while the going is good. Go away. Away from here.”
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That’s a fine example of Tey’s writing – she lulls you with the gentleness of the scene, the whispering voices of the young women students whom Lucy Pym – and the reader – come to know and admire. And then she turns around and kicks you when you least expect it.
Now there will, of course, be a disaster. And Miss Pym will find herself in an extremely painful predicament. But I really don’t want to tell you much more, except to say – again – that perhaps three-quarters of the book will have gone by before that climax is reached, a climax which you may think you see coming. But there is more, and I will not spoil it any further for you. Josephine Tey tells the story with wit and humor, and she does so in a way that makes Leys Physical College, its staff and its students come alive for the reader. And I would echo the words of mystery reviewer and critic James Sandoe, who provided an introduction to the edition of Miss Pym Disposes that sits on my bookshelf. He says,
In a day when one opens the first page of a detective story to be blasted at once by a Tommy gun, the skill of sustaining human interest in itself seems as rich as it is certainly rare.
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Miss Pym Disposes, by Josephine Tey, is still available in various editions. If you haven't read it, I recommend it very strongly.
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