It’s one of the
most mesmerizing scenes of a death that I’ve read in a murder mystery. A man is
standing on a bridge over a small river (or large creek). He’s hit on the head
and tumbles to the bank below. His body lies undiscovered – but not undisturbed
– for a week. And it is paired with a second death, of an old man of apparently
natural causes but (this is a murder mystery),
we will come to discover, something else entirely.
This riveting
scene is how Margery Allingham opens The
Beckoning Lady, originally published in 1955 and recently reissued. It
is one of the later Albert Campion novels; he’s now married and has a son who’s
inherited his mother’s blazing red hair and his father’s inquisitiveness.
Campion, Allingham’s celebrated detective, still looks slightly insipid to the
casual observer but it is a look that masks a probing, first-class mind.
The Campions are
in the country for summer holiday, joined by Divisional Detective Chief
Inspector Charles Luke, recovering from gunshot wounds received during a recent
(and overall successful) case. Luke soon finds himself the object of attention
from one of the local unmarried ladies, and for all his squirming and
resistance we suspect he’ll succumb. It’s not an Allingham mystery without some
level of romance.
This is the area
where Mrs. Campion grew up; she knows all the locals and their histories.
Everyone is mourning the recent death of the old man known as “Uncle William,”
who had been determined to live at least through Guy Fawkes Day in November.
And planning is underway for the Midsummer’s Eve party at The Beckoning Lady,
the home of close friends of the Campions (it was, apparently, a country pub at
one time, thus explaining the name).
 |
| Margery Allingham |
Plots and
sub-plots run through the story – designs on getting control of The Beckoning
Lady and its surrounding property, a watcher who keeps an eye on the body, a
local police investigator who may be one of the most annoying characters
Allingham created, and a nearby estate that is less a house and more something
from a Hollywood set.
Allingham
(1904-1955) is associated with the Golden Age of mystery writing – the 1920s
and 1930s – but continued to write the Campion and other stories until her
death. Campion was one of the better known fictional detectives of the period,
along with Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and others. She
wrote some 28 novels or story collections featuring Albert Campion and 15 other
mystery works.
The Beckoning Lady requires some close reading discipline
to keep tracks of sub-plots, all of the characters, and some of the English
euphemisms, but it is another fine story produced by one of the best mystery
novelists.
Related:
Top illustration: “Couple on Bridge” by
David Wagner via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
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