Death at the Opera

With two short breaks from school life, she pursued parallel careers until retirement from teaching at sixty, then continued writing until her death in 1983, producing in all a prodigious sixty-eight crime novels under her own name, six as Malcolm Torrie, five as Stephen Hockaby, almost a dozen children’s books and over two dozen short stories.

Death at the Opera was her sixth crime novel and already displayed many of the characteristics of the superb series of her later years, when the eccentric Dame Beatrice’s shrewd intelligence was balanced by the good-humoured practicality of her Scots companion-secretary Laura Menzies, a young woman of physical toughness and laconic delivery, with a taste for the great outdoors. Laura was to marry a rising CID officer in London’s Met, conveniently adding a further authoritative dimension to their cases.

In Death at the Opera, however, the inventive Gladys had yet to supply Laura and a supporting cast of chauffeur, chef and personal maid. Here, instead of the later semi-royal progress by limousine, the psychiatrist-sleuth visits distant witnesses by train and taxi, but already calling on the willing services of her extensive family and young friends.

Behind a front of witch-like posturings, her method consists of mixing freely with the disconcerted staff and pupils to list those ‘temperamentally capable of the crime’, her angle more Behaviourist than Freudian. It is then that, beset by countless apparent irrelevancies and complications, she consults her copious notes to consider the practical factors of opportunity and means.

It is tempting to speculate how far the outrageous persona of Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley represented a natural exuberance which in everyday life her schoolmistress author was obliged to suppress. Not that the liberated, elderly psychiatrist ever quite becomes a creature of farce. Apart from her ‘eldritch screech’, ‘harsh cackle’, and ‘hoots of laughter’ which greet the wilder opinion of those whom she interrogates, her voice is rich and deep; her manner can be dangerously persuasive. Her smile—which, due to her peculiar cast of features, becomes a leer—is not so sinister as to mask her energetic intention to set right things which have clearly gone wrong.

Mitchell’s clothing of a quick and humorous mind in a grotesquely witchlike figure with hands that are ‘yellowed claws covered in rings’, who dresses ‘in queer but expensive garments’ of clashing colours, and is frequently likened to various toothy amphibians—is less likely to repel than to make one embrace her eccentricity with the delight of a child in a beloved stuffed cayman. The test of the reader’s sympathy is whether that eternal child’s response is there to be invoked.

As Mrs Bradley makes each fresh discovery, suspicion swings like a ship’s lamp on a stormy sea. But in Gladys Mitchell’s skilled hands the storyline sails us safely home with no nerves shredded, no sensibilities overshocked. The fun trip has been brisk, an entertainment full of the unexpected, and certainly exercising for the mind. If the sceptical reader is afterwards conscious of strained credulity, this is met by Mrs Bradley’s confident claim: ‘Nobody can say without fear of contradiction that any motive for murder is too trivial.’ And, considering life around us, can you fault her?

Clare Curzon

Clare Curzon has written over thirty novels, half of them under her earlier pseudonyms of Rhona Petrie and Marie Buchanan. All, except a few concerned with paranormal psychology, are works of crime fiction. She lives in South Buckinghamshire, where the Thames Valley Force provides inspiration for her police procedurals with serial detectives Superintendent Mike Yeadings and DI Angus Mott.

THE BLACK DAGGER CRIME SERIES

The Black Dagger Crime series is a result of a joint effort between Chivers Press and a sub-committee of the Crime Writers’ Association, consisting of Marian Babson, Peter Chambers and Peter Lovesey. It is designed to select outstanding examples of every type of detective story, so that enthusiasts will have the opportunity to read once more classics that have been scarce for years, while at the same time introducing them to a new generation who have not previously had the chance to enjoy them.

chapter i: dispersal

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i

The Headmaster shook his head and smiled ruefully.

“There is nothing for it but Shakespeare,” he said.

“Dull,” suggested the Senior Science Master, grimacing, Puck-like, at the Senior English Mistress, who had played at the Old Vic.

“Quite,” the Headmaster agreed meekly, and waited for further suggestions.

“The parents won’t come,” said the Junior Music Mistress, sadly. She liked lots and lots of the parents to come. She waylaid them in corridors and places where parents get lost and, guiding them to the main hall, booked orders for their offspring to take Extra Music. The fees for Extra Music were heavy, and the Junior Music Mistress received twenty per cent of them. “I’m sure they’ll think Shakespeare too boring.”

The Senior History Master did not agree. The parents would come, whatever the Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society produced, he thought. The parents would come to see the children act and to hear them sing. The parents did not care whether it was Shakespeare or a revue. At least, that was his opinion, and it was based on a twenty years’ experience of parents and their peculiar psychology.

At this point the Senior Mathematics Master wanted to know whether they could not produce a revue. Surely, with so much talent on the staff…?

The Headmaster replied cordially that if the staff thought they could collaborate in the production of a revue, he should be delighted to assist them by any means in his power. A brisk discussion followed, but the idea was dropped. As the Junior English Master put it: “It sounded something like work.”

“What about another comic opera?” suggested the Arithmetic Mistress. “I am sure everybody enjoyed The Gondoliers.”

“I think that was the Head’s point, wasn’t it, sir?” said the Junior English Master, blending carefully the