Fatal Charm: A Tessa Crichton Mystery

By Anne Morice

'Rotten news, isn't it?'

'Rotten,' I agreed, taking it that he referred to the state of the national economy, 'but I daresay it will come all right in the end.'

He stared at me as though I were either raving mad or drunk, which was excusable, since it turned out that he had been talking about the untimely death

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781914150364

Anne Morice

Anne Morice, née Felicity Shaw, was born in Kent in 1916.Her mother Muriel Rose was the natural daughter of Rebecca Gould and Charles Morice. Muriel Rose married a Kentish doctor, and they had a daughter, Elizabeth. Muriel Rose's three later daughters-Angela, Felicity and Yvonne-were fathered by playwright Frederick Lonsdale.Felicity's older sister Angela became an actress, married actor and theatrical agent Robin Fox, and produced England's Fox acting dynasty, including her sons Edward and James and grandchildren Laurence, Jack, Emilia and Freddie.Felicity went to work in the office of the GPO Film Unit. There Felicity met and married documentarian Alexander Shaw. They had three children and lived in various countries.Felicity wrote two well-received novels in the 1950's, but did not publish again until successfully launching her Tessa Crichton mystery series in 1970, buying a house in Hambleden, near Henley-on-Thames, on the proceeds. Her last novel was published a year after her death at the age of seventy-three on May 18th, 1989.

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Introduction

By 1970 the Golden Age of detective fiction, which had dawned in splendor a half-century earlier in 1920, seemingly had sunk into shadow like the sun at eventide. There were still a few old bodies from those early, glittering days who practiced the fine art of finely clued murder, to be sure, but in most cases the hands of those murderously talented individuals were growing increasingly infirm. Queen of Crime Agatha Christie, now eighty years old, retained her bestselling status around the world, but surely no one could have deluded herself into thinking that the novel Passenger to Frankfurt, the author’s 1970 Christie for Christmas (which publishers for want of a better word dubbed an Extravaganza) was prime Christie—or, indeed, anything remotely close to it. Similarly, two other old crime masters, Americans John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen (comparative striplings in their sixties), both published detective novels that year, but both books were notably weak efforts on their parts. Agatha Christie’s American counterpart in terms of work productivity and worldwide sales, Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, published nothing at all that year, having passed away in March at the age of eighty. Admittedly such old-timers as Rex Stout, Ngaio Marsh, Michael Innes and Gladys Mitchell were still playing the game with some of their old élan, but in truth their glory days had fallen behind them as well. Others, like Margery Allingham and John Street, had died within the last few years or, like Anthony Gilbert, Nicholas Blake, Leo Bruce and Christopher Bush, soon would expire or become debilitated. Decidedly in 1970—a year which saw the trials of the Manson family and the Chicago Seven, assorted bombings, kidnappings and plane hijackings by such terroristic entities as the Weathermen, the Red Army, the PLO and the FLQ, the American invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings and the drug overdose deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin—leisure readers now more than ever stood in need of the intelligent escapism which classic crime fiction provided. Yet the old order in crime fiction, like that in world politics and society, seemed irrevocably to be washing away in a bloody tide of violent anarchy and all round uncouthness.

Or was it? Old values have a way of persisting. Even as the generation which produced the glorious detective fiction of the Golden Age finally began exiting the crime scene, a new generation of younger puzzle adepts had arisen, not to take the esteemed places of their elders, but to contribute their own worthy efforts to the rarefied field of fair play murder. Among these writers were P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Emma Lathen, Patricia Moyes, H.R.F. Keating, Catherine Aird, Joyce Porter, Margaret Yorke, Elizabeth Lemarchand, Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey and the author whom you are perusing now, Anne Morice (1916-1989). Morice, who like Yorke, Lovesey and Hill debuted as a mystery writer in 1970, was lavishly welcomed by critics in the United Kingdom (she was not published in the United States until 1974) upon the publication of her first mystery, Death in the Grand Manor, which suggestively and anachronistically was subtitled not an extravaganza, but a novel of detection. Fittingly the book was lauded by no less than seemingly permanently retired Golden Age stalwarts Edmund Crispin and Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley Cox). Crispin deemed Morice’s debut puzzler a charming whodunit . . . full of unforced buoyance and prescribed it as a remedy for existentialist gloom, while Iles, who would pass away at the age of seventy-seven less than six months after penning his review, found the novel a most attractive lightweight, adding enthusiastically: [E]ntertainingly written, it provides a modern version of the classical type of detective story. I was much taken with the cheerful young narrator . . . and I think most readers will feel the same way. Warmly recommended. Similarly, Maurice Richardson, who, although not a crime writer, had reviewed crime fiction for decades at the London Observer, lavished praise upon Morice’s maiden mystery: Entrancingly fresh and lively whodunit. . . . Excellent dialogue. . . . Much superior to the average effort to lighten the detective story.

With such a critical sendoff, it is no surprise that Anne Morice’s crime fiction took flight on the wings of its bracing mirth. Over the next two decades twenty-five Anne Morice mysteries were published (the last of them posthumously), at the rate of one or two year. Twenty-three of these concerned the investigations of Tessa Crichton, a charming young actress who always manages to cross paths with murder, while two, written at the end of her career, detail cases of Detective Superintendent Tubby Wiseman. In 1976 Morice along with Margaret Yorke was chosen to become a member of Britain’s prestigious Detection Club, preceding Ruth Rendell by a year, while in the 1980s her books were included in Bantam’s superlative paperback Murder Most British series, which included luminaries from both present and past like Rendell, Yorke, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth, Christianna Brand, Elizabeth Ferrars, Catherine Aird, Margaret Erskine, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson, June Thomson and last, but most certainly not least, the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie. In 1974, when Morice’s fifth Tessa Crichton detective novel, Death of a Dutiful Daughter, was picked up in the United States, the author’s work again was received with acclaim, with reviewers emphasizing the author’s cozy traditionalism (though the term cozy had not then come into common use in reference to traditional English and American mysteries). In his notice of Morice’s Death of a Wedding Guest (1976), Newgate Callendar (aka classical music critic Harold C. Schoenberg), Seventies crime fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, observed that Morice is a traditionalist, and she has no surprises [in terms of subject matter] in her latest book. What she does have, as always, is a bright and amusing style . . . [and] a general air of sophisticated writing. Perhaps a couple of reviews from Middle America—where intense Anglophilia, the dogmatic pronouncements of Raymond Chandler and Edmund Wilson notwithstanding, still ran rampant among mystery readers—best indicate the cozy criminal appeal of Anne Morice:

Anne Morice . . . acquired me as a fan when I read her Death and the Dutiful Daughter. In this new novel, she did not disappoint me. The same appealing female detective, Tessa Crichton, solves the mysteries on her own, which is surprising in view of the fact that Tessa is actually not a detective, but a film actress. Tessa just seems to be at places where a murder occurs, and at the most unlikely places at that . . . this time at a garden fete on the estate of a millionaire tycoon. . . . The plot is well constructed; I must confess that I, like the police, had my suspect all picked out too. I was dead wrong (if you will excuse the expression) because my suspect was also murdered before not too many pages turned. . . . This is not a blood-curdling, chilling mystery; it is amusing and light, but Miss Morice writes in a polished and intelligent manner, providing pleasure and entertainment. (Rose Levine Isaacson, review of Death of a Heavenly Twin, Jackson Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, 18 August 1974)

I like English mysteries because the victims are always rotten people who deserve to die. Anne Morice, like Ngaio Marsh et al., writes tongue in cheek but with great care. It is always a joy to read English at its glorious best. (Sally Edwards, Ever-So British, This Tale, review of Killing with Kindness, Charlotte North Carolina Observer, 10 April 1975)

While it is true that Anne Morice’s mysteries most frequently take place at country villages and estates, surely the quintessence of modern cozy mystery settings, there is a pleasing tartness to Tessa’s narration and the brittle, epigrammatic dialogue which reminds me of the Golden Age Crime Queens (particularly Ngaio Marsh) and, to part from mystery for a moment, English playwright Noel Coward. Morice’s books may be cozy but they most certainly are not cloying, nor are the sentiments which the characters express invariably traditional. The author avoids any traces of soppiness or sentimentality and has a knack for clever turns of phrase which is characteristic of the bright young things of the Twenties and Thirties, the decades of her own youth. Sackcloth and ashes would have been overdressing for the mood I had sunk into by then, Tessa reflects at one point in the novel Death in the Grand Manor. Never fear, however: nothing, not even the odd murder or two, keeps Tessa down in the dumps for long; and invariably she finds herself back on the trail of murder most foul, to the consternation of her handsome, debonair husband, Inspector Robin Price of Scotland Yard (whom she meets in the first novel in the series and has married by the second), and the exasperation of her amusingly eccentric and indolent playwright cousin, Toby Crichton, both of whom feature in almost all of the Tessa Crichton novels. Murder may not lastingly mar Tessa’s equanimity, but she certainly takes her detection seriously.

Three decades now having passed since Anne Morice’s crime novels were in print, fans of British mystery in both its classic and cozy forms should derive much pleasure in discovering (or rediscovering) her work in these new Dean Street Press editions and thereby passing time once again in that pleasant fictional English world where death affords us not emotional disturbance and distress but enjoyable and intelligent diversion.

Curtis Evans

ONE

Being a party to someone else’s secret is something I try to avoid. Fearful of breaking my Trappist vows through forgetfulness, or for some less laudable reason, I tend to lock the information away in the dark recesses of my mind and then lose the key. But this is a poor solution. To be unaware of possessing a secret can, as I have discovered to my cost, lead to as much trouble as betraying it.

Marriage, in this respect as in so many others, has been a great blessing, since sharing a confidence with Robin is the nearest equivalent to lowering it forty fathoms deep on to the ocean bed and whispering it to a drowsy mollusc. On the other hand, since this is the only resemblance he bears to such a creature and can be relied upon to bring the subject up from time to time in the privacy of our own apartments, it remains exactly as it should be, alive but quiescent.

These attributes, granted to him by nature, have been refined and developed during his career at the CID and have doubtless contributed to his steady promotion to the rank of Chief Inspector and they have often proved invaluable to me on a less exalted level. By a curious coincidence, however, on more than one occasion, some seemingly trivial piece of gossip or information which has been passed on to him in this way has eventually landed up in the files of New Scotland Yard.

There appeared to be no such threat hanging over the story which I related to him one evening a few months ago. It arose from the fact that I had been prevailed upon by my agent, more or less at gun point, to take part in one of those television surprise tributes to a celebrated figure of our time, which are so dear to the hearts of television companies and their accountants.

‘What have accountants got to do with it?’ Robin asked.

‘Pretty well everything. Do you mean to tell me you’ve never watched Birthday Tribute?’

‘Only when it was called Trooping the Colour.’

‘Oh no, nothing like that. This is just some cheeseparing studio production which goes out once a month to honour some celebrity or other. It’s usually an actor because they’re so much better at pretending to be bowled over by surprise than most amateurs and it must be one of the cheapest fifty-minute shows ever devised. No writers, no costumes, only one set and a cast of dozens, who don’t get paid a penny, apart from expenses.’

‘A kind of glorified chat show, by the sound of it. Who’s the lucky victim this time?’

‘Evadne Proctor, equally well known as Lady Deverell. I suppose one of those names conveys something to you?’

‘Yes, indeed! Wasn’t she the old girl who was in that play you did at Bath last year?’

‘The same, only she might not have described our separate contributions in quite that way.’

‘And wife of the old barnstormer, Hartley Deverell?’

‘Widow. He toppled downstairs during one of his drinking bouts a few months ago and no one seemed to notice, so he died of exposure, or maybe frustration. You’re doing very well, Robin.’

‘And I haven’t finished either. I seem to recall a number of offspring who are also well known in your world. Is that right?’

‘Yes, not to mention an assortment of grandchildren waiting on tiptoe in the wings.’

‘So what is there for you to worry about?’

‘Plenty, I should have thought. Your knowing so much about them confirms my theory that most other people in this country are equally well informed.’

‘But you’re not asking me to believe that a brood like that wouldn’t brief the mother hen in advance about every move in the game? I can’t see them leaving anything to chance where their public image is concerned.’

‘Neither can I. Candida will see to that, but it’s not the old lady herself who bothers me.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Well, you see, Robin, it’s estimated that up to twelve million viewers tune into this programme, mainly out of curiosity. A large proportion of them get hooked in the first two minutes and stay with it, even when they’ve discovered the birthday boy or girl is someone they’ve never heard of, or actively dislike. But, if they knew this in advance, more than half of them wouldn’t bother to switch on in the first place, so it’s of the highest importance that the cat should remain in the bag until the very last second. Quite apart from my honour being at stake and although I only have a tiny part, hardly more than a walk on, I wouldn’t want them to miss that, as well. That’s why I’ve told you. It’s a kind of safety valve.’

‘How flattering! And how long will you have to hold out with the rest of the world? When does this event take place?’

‘Monday evening, which means that I shall have to be particularly on my guard at the weekend, when we’re staying with Toby.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think you’d have much to worry about there. Admittedly, your cousin Toby is not the most discreet of men, but he’s unlikely to be touched by anything so far removed from his own concerns and he certainly never watches television, so far as I know.’

‘Maybe not, but Mrs Parkes does, and she’d be certain to choose that moment to bring the potatoes in. She does so love being in the know ahead of everyone else and, in her prim and supercilious way, she’d manage to spread the news round the entire neighbourhood in less time than it takes her to scramble an egg. Not forgetting to name the source either, and that would really fix me. Come to think of it, though, I might tell Ellen. She’s another like the grave and not a great television watcher, so she’d be almost certain to miss it.’

‘Will Ellen be there this weekend too?’

‘Yes, but without Jeremy, you may be relieved to hear. I know it must have come as a great relief to Toby.’

‘They haven’t parted, have they?’

‘Oh, my goodness, no. That is, only temporarily. Jeremy’s in New York on one of those business trips he’s so keen about. That’s why Ellen thought that, rather than stay alone and forlorn in London, she’d spend the weekend with us. I’ll tell her about Birthday Tribute in muffled undertones as we stroll on a deserted part of the Common. It will have a special interest for her because one of Jeremy’s sisters is married to a cousin of Eliza Deverell’s husband, if you can work all that out.’

‘I could, if I considered it necessary, but in fact Eliza Deverell is a new one on me. I’ve never heard of her. Is she an actress too?’

‘Not any more. She’s Evadne’s youngest child and the only one of them to opt out. Like all the others, she was shoved on to the stage at the age of sixteen, but she hated it and a year or two afterwards she ran off and married an anthropologist. They now live on some godforsaken island in the Pacific, so remote and primitive that you have to do the shopping in Australia, as far as I can gather.’

‘So she won’t be taking part in this celebration?’

‘Not in person. They have a two-minute film clip of her, shot in Sydney, saying that she would give the whole world to be there on this day of days, telling everyone that Evadne is the loveliest Mum ever and blowing kisses to one and all, and that suits Candida down to the ground.’