A two-in-one review for you today, as this pairing offered a brilliant chance to compare and contrast. The first book was read for my Galley Beggars Critical Reading Class, the second filled our ‘Y is for’ slot at Book Group.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

This was the fourth pick of six for my Galley Beggar Press Critical Reading class led by chief Galley Beggar Sam Jordison. Previously we’ve discussed:

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien

It’s years since I read any Sayers; I probably have read this before as a teen, but I couldn’t remember it at all. This is the book in which Harriet Vane is the main character and Lord Peter Wimsey is relegated a supporting role. Gaudy Night, published in 1935, is the third novel to feature Vane, who we first met in Strong Poison when Wimsey saved her from the noose, fell in love and proposed, and was turned down – but not rejected. With hindsight, I wish I’d had the time to read Strong Poison first to build up to Gaudy Night, which is many peoples’ favourite of Sayer’s novels, although it has its critics too!

Harriet, now a successful author of detective novels, is invited back to her alma mater, the fictional Shrewsbury College in Oxford (based on Somerville, the women’s college which Sayers went to) for an alumni dinner – a Gaudy – in Oxford parlance. She was pleasantly surprised at her reception, having expected some hostility and enjoys her return to college. However, the evening’s festivities take a sour turn when she discovers a note accusing her of being a ‘foul murderess’ and an obscene cartoon in the quad.

Afterwards, when more acts of vandalism and poison pen letters arrive at the college, the Dean asks Harriet if she could subtly investigate what’s happening, so Harriet returns under cover of researching Sheridan Le Fanu and editing another Don’s book manuscript. However, the events escalate. Importantly, the use of a quotation from the Aeneid (which Sayers leaves untranslated), shifts suspicion from college support staff to the Senior Common Room, but still Harriet has to call for Wimsey’s help. I won’t say more about the plot or whodunnit there.

There are many themes running through the novel: women’s education naturally, but also class, and attitudes to marriage. Harriet has time to consider her relationship with Wimsey and later come to a resolution – say no more.

There was one paragraph, early on in the novel, which made me guffaw with laughter – we couldn’t say this nowadays. Harriet, having arrived at college is talking to an old colleague and friend at tea, she asks after Phoebe’s children…

All the children seem to be coming out quite intelligent, thank goodness. It would have been such a bore to be the mother of morons, and it’s an absolute toss-up isn’t it?

There are plenty more witticisms. The Dean is asking Harriet what Lord Peter is like to talk to.

‘I met him once at a dog-show,’ put in Miss Armstrong unexpectedly. ‘He was giving a perfect imitation of the silly-ass-about-town.’
‘Then he was either frightfully bored or detecting something,’ said Harriet, laughing. ‘I know that frivolous mood, and it’s mostly camouflage – but one doesn’t always know for what.’

There is some solid detecting too. When they noticed that there wasn’t a single spelling error in any of the poison pen messages, leading them to suspect an educated person, or at least a ‘dictionary-conscious – as the new slang would call it,’ one. For ‘The educated person often fakes bad spelling rather badly; misspells easy words and gets quite difficult ones right.’

But it takes so long for Harriet to get anywhere. We’re into a second term before things start hotting up and she involves Wimsey. Although I did enjoy the novel, it was so long-winded – I longed for Christie’s brevity, which brings me to…

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott (aka Agatha Christie)

Agatha Christie wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, choosing it to distinguish these mysteries of the heart and psychology from her murder mysteries. Her granddaughter describes her premise for them thus:

The Mary Westmacott books have been described as romantic novels but I don’t think that is really a fair assessment. They are not ‘love stories’ in the general sense of the term, and they certainly have no happy endings. They are, I believe, about love in some of its most powerful and destructive forms.
Rosalind Hicks, agathachristie.com

This novel was a personal favourite of Christie, published in 1947, and I loved it.

Our narrator throughout is Hugh Norreys, a schoolmaster and former officer. It begins with a framing chapter, in which he is requested to come to the bedside of a dying man, John Gabriel, who wishes to make amends before he dies. ‘He and I, in our different way, loved the same woman.’ This allows Hugh then to take us back to how he met Major John Merryweather Gabriel VC, but first Norreys sets the scene for the car accident that led him to the West Country where, as an invalid he is looked after by his brother and sister-in-law, Robert and Theresa.

It is at St Loo where they live, one of Christie’s oft-used fictional locations (probably based on Torquay) that Gabriel is standing as the Tory candidate for the elections. Being confined to an invalid chair, Hugh becomes a keen observer of all the goings on locally, ‘My role was clear. I was the looker-on.’ From the garden, he can see St Loo castle where Lady St Loo lives with her sister, sister-in-law and granddaughter Isabella. Norreys describes them to Theresa as ‘pure fairy story. The Three Witches and the Enchanted Maiden.’ This is the first of many fairy tale metaphors to describe the St. Loo family.

Isabella is a strange young woman. Today we would probably describe her as neurodivergent, she’s a quiet girl of few words. But she has taken to coming over to sit with Norreys in quiet companionship. She is looking at a horse figurine in Robert and Theresa’s music room.

‘Do you like it?’ I asked her.
She considered quite carefully before replying. Then she said – and gave the monosyllable a lot of weight, as though it was important – ‘Yes.’
I wondered if she was a moron.

It’s that word again! Made me laugh.

Seriously though, I loved Christie’s descriptions, as did our book group. She’s also nowhere near as wordy as Sayers, (which is a good thing in my book). We all wondered at what Lady Tresalian meant precisely when she said of Major Gabriel, ‘It’s such a pity that he’s got such common legs.’ What surprised me was the amount of politics in the book. Gabriel isn’t a natural Tory – there wasn’t a vacancy for a Labour...

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