The Murderous Month of May

I had the good fortune in my teens to see a live performance of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton. They had a rather different take on this exuberant time of year than the sedate annual May processions to honor Mary, Queen of Heaven and mother of Jesus, that studded my childhood.

"Tra la, it's May,
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when everyone goes
Blissfully astray."

sings the faithless Guinevere to her adoring Arthur. And we all know how that story came out! At the end, facing his certain death, Arthur laments:

"Ne'er let it be forgot, that once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."

May is often like that––flowering everywhere with abandon, promising beauty that can't possibly be sustained, but glorious while it lasts. I welcome it joyfully every year and mourn its passing.

In many countries, the first of May is celebrated as  International Workers' Day, or Labor Day. This holiday had its origin in a violent 1886 Chicago clash between police and workers demonstrating for shorter workdays. After several demonstrators were tried and hanged, socialists and labor activists throughout the world adopted the holiday in memory of the "martyrs." The United States was so embarrassed by the negative attention that it officially moved our Labor Day to the end of the month, opting instead to name May 1 "Loyalty Day." I must confess that I had never even heard of Loyalty Day.

In Teutonic tradition, April 30––Walpurgis Night or Beltane––is the night when witches come out to play, dance, and make mischief. Weird and sometimes grisly rituals, often involving bonfires, still take place on this night throughout Europe, in preparation for the more staid and chaste May Day rituals to follow. In Gladys Mitchell's A Hearse on May-Day, young Fenella Lestrange, traveling on the last day of April to her cousin's house from which she will be married in a week, is starving. The next town on her route with a pub is over an hour away, so she consults her map and finds an out-of-the way town called Seven Wells. "At least I can get a ploughman's lunch there," she thinks, and off she goes over back roads rarely traveled. She finds the town eerily deserted for midday, although the early 16th-century half-timbered pub cryptically called More to Come serves her a decent lunch of chicken salad and sherry.

When she tries to get on her way, her car, which had been checked by her local mechanic only the day before, refuses to start. The pub owner takes a look, but pronounces it a "garage job" and offers to drive her several miles to a town with a mechanic after his meal. The only phone in town is a public one outside the post office, but the scruffy young man who directs her there says, "That's out of order. Us done her yesterday." Fenella suspects that he and his friends may have "done" her car today, but has no choice but to wait for the innkeeper to finish his meal. When the mechanic finds that he needs to order a part, and there is no inn nearby, the innkeeper grudgingly offers Fenella a room at More to Come for the night.

Both Mr. Shurrock, the innkeeper, and his maid warn her repeatedly to stay in her room for the evening and to take no notice of outside events. "Mayering" activities in the village are apparently ancient and very secret. Strangers are unwelcome. Mrs. Shurrock shows her to a clean but spare room, gives her the key and shows her the staples and bar installed just that afternoon in her honor. "See that piece of wood? Well, fix that across before you get into bed. It's teak, and the door's solid oak. Nobody won't break that down, don't you fret," she reassures the now thoroughly unnerved Fenella.

Her courage and rationality restored by the rather meager dinner served in her room, Fenella slips out by the back stairs she had spotted earlier. She is quickly joined by a well-spoken but slightly mysterious young man, who urges her to return to her room. Uncertain whether his complimentary personal remarks are a pickup attempt, she returns to the inn, deciding to pick up a book she had spotted earlier in the lounge for bedtime reading. To her amazement, she interrupts a meeting of a dozen robed and cowled figures wearing masks of the characters of the zodiac. They question her sharply, and several seem disinclined to let her go, but she escapes from the room with her book. She is certain that Aries was the rude young man who put the phone out of order, and is sure she will recognize most of the others if she ever hears their voices again. Later she spies on the same group performing some arcane ritual in a cellar under the back stairwell. They emerge with a few bleached bones, which they place on a bier and proceed with them out of the building. At that point Fenella wisely decides to go to bed.

Her car is returned the next morning, and she is urged by the suddenly much friendlier innkeeper to take a look at the well-wishing at the seven sacred wells on her way out of town. The villagers, he says, will be torn between attending the Mayering and the funeral of Sir Bitten-Bittadon, the local squire, murdered last week. At the wells, Fenella meets the Green Man, whose voice she recognizes as the man who had followed her last night and persuaded her back to the safety of the inn.

Much to her relief, her cousins have invited her great aunt Dame Beatrice Bradley, polymath, psychiatrist, and frequent consultant to the Home Office, to stay with them. She listens to Fenella's tale and promptly calls in a consultant, a local schoolmaster knowledgeable in folklore. Fenella, with her acute ear for voices, again instantly recognizes the Green Man she met at the wells.

Dame Beatrice, who has a dual errand, is also in the area to help Scotland Yard solve the murder of the squire. They solve it, but only after three more murders are committed and a grave is robbed. The village of Seven Wells, in its Mayering Ceremonies, has not only made a virtue of an ancient and gruesome necessity, but enshrined it in bizarre rites that have continued long after the need has passed.

I had never heard of this author, who was a contemporary of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She was nearly as prolific as Christie, writing over 60 books in the mystery genre, many with just a touch of the uncanny. If this story is indicative, her books are terrifically dense. It took a surprisingly long time to finish a book of less than 200 pages, although part of that may be due to the text, which in this Rue Morgue edition is small and difficult for my aging eyes to read. While A Hearse on May-Day was a little hectic and not really fair play––only one clue quite near the end nailed it for me––I  enjoyed it enough to hunt up another in Ms. Mitchell's extensive oeuvre.

Whatever flavor of May Day celebration you favor, don't forget to get outdoors and look around and breathe deeply. May only comes once a year and is over far too soon. And for those of us who can never have enough of Julie Andrews's astonishing voice, here is her welcome to this exuberant month.

Following a Trail of Blood

I've been practicing in front of a mirror for Mother's Day on Sunday. Started a wince and erased it, began a laugh and cloaked it with a cough. Registered pleased surprise when I'm thinking this gift will make my butt look enormous. Warned my reflection not to eat all the candy my sons always give me. I've also been reading some books by or about my fellow women. I've followed the trails set by my good friends here at Read Me Deadly, although I've veered off in some different directions.

Gladys Mitchell

Sister Mary Murderous loves Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey books. I agree they're great. Sayers is one of England's best Golden Age of Mysteries writers. Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie are two more. Another one not often mentioned in the U.S. is Gladys Mitchell, creator of Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, a psychiatric consultant to London's Home Office.

There are more than 60 books in the Dame Beatrice series, written over more than 50 years. The first book is Speedy Death in 1929. To say it's a memorable debut of an unusual sleuth may be putting it mildly. How many other sleuths are tried and found innocent of murder, only to happily confess to a son/defense attorney later? Dame Beatrice's appearance alone is remarkable. She is described as a wrinkled pterodactyl with a Cheshire Cat grin. She has yellow skin and hands like a bird's talons. I wish she laughed instead of cackled, but she does have a very melodious speaking voice. Children and animals instinctively like her.

Mitchell's books are strongly plotted and beautifully written, but there is often a supernatural element or a weird and comic aspect to the plot or the murder itself. These books are an acquired taste––like caviar, rap music, boxing or asparagus. You either learn to love them or you don't. I do. It takes me a few pages to get acclimatized to Mitchell's voice and then I appreciate her.

One book I've enjoyed recently is The Rising of the Moon, written in 1945 and set in a small English town before World War II. It's narrated by Simon Innes in reflection upon this time when he was 13. He and his younger brother Keith are fantastic characters. They are orphans and live with their older brother Jack, Jack's wife June, their young son Tom, and Christina, a beautiful young boarder who loves the Innes family but who isn't liked by June, because June is jealous of her.

Simon and Keith are prowling around one night after the circus has come to town, when they see a man leaning over a bridge. The knife he holds glints in the moonlight. Or that's what they assume. The next day, they learn that a circus performer has been found, hacked into pieces. This death begins a series of murders, and eventually Dame Beatrice arrives to investigate, but she plays a supportive role here. I loved Simon's take on people and their relationships, and the maneuvering he and Keith do to cope with house rules. It's an interesting depiction of life in a pre-War England. And yes, there are some bizarre but typical Mitchell touches with her eccentric characters, the haunting setting and the methods of murder.

A few months ago, Georgette Spelvin told us about Wallace Stroby's outstanding bad girl, Crissa Stone. I want to read Cold Shot to the Heart, that first series book, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Instead I read Stroby's stand-alone book, Gone 'til November. I'm happy to say this author does outstanding good girls too.

Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross is on her first overnight shift in eight months when she responds to a call. Fellow deputy and former lover Billy Flynn called in. He did a routine traffic stop on an out-of-the-way road and the stop went wrong. Sara arrives at the scene outside Hopedale, Florida and Billy tells her that he asked the young black driver, a stranger to him, to open his trunk. After he did, the driver spun around with a gun in his hand, so Billy shot him. It was self-defense, Billy says. The trunk contains a bag full of illegal guns. The driver now lies dead at the bottom of the bank off the road, a gun close to his outstretched hand. Billy's story and the scene look legit, at least at first viewing. Is it because Sara knows Billy so well that she's uneasy? The driver's wife appears in town and outside law enforcement investigators arrive to audit the deputy's shooting.

Meanwhile, in a bad part of a New Jersey city, another kind of investigation of the Hopedale roadside shooting is brewing. Mikey-Mike is a drug dealer interested in that shit down south. He hasn't gotten to the bottom of it yet, he tells his middle-aged enforcer, Nathaniel Morgan. Let it go, Morgan counsels. Mikey says he can't. He needs the Florida drug connections and the money because his court case is looming and his lawyers need cash. Get down there and find out what the fuck happened, he orders Morgan. Then settle the hash of those responsible for good. Morgan is reluctant to go for several excellent reasons. He hits the road anyway and the two stories connect. Wait. That's not a good way of putting it. The two stories collide.

What else can I tell you about this book? The best way I know to describe it is to say it's a barnstorm through hell with great perks. The dialogue is entertaining and the characterization is spot on. This insightful writer does bad and good guys equally well. And I mean well. Sara is a conscientious single mother and has a keen moral compass. She's as ballsy as everybody else in the all-male sheriff's department but she's kinda lonely. Billy, from a family of Florida crackers, lives with a trashy girlfriend but he still sorta hankers after Sara. Morgan is smart and ruthless, but he has hammered out a set of principles that make sense to him. The supporting characters, including a set of XX-large New Jersey brothers who work for Mikey and go to Florida too, are every bit as well done as these. They struggle to figure out each other, and their actions make sense given who they are.

The Everglades summer is hot enough to blister paint and Stroby's prose and plot made me sweat. The plot rolls on like God's own thunder, just hums right along. If you're lookin' for a noirish thriller involving every sort of human need and greed, this is your baby, baby.

This is where semi-following a trail laid down by Sister Mary and Georgette sent my reading this week. Next time, I'll tell you about where I went courtesy of Maltese Condor and Periphera. These are books by or involving women of distinction. Maybe a little like your own mom. Don't forget Mother's Day this weekend.