Death in the Stocks (1935) by Georgette Heyer

Heyer is a relatively well-known vintage writer, yet in comparison to authors such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and John Dickson Carr, she is surprisingly underrepresented in my blog reviews. One key reason is timing, as I read all of Heyer’s mysteries before I started my blog, unlike Carr’s work for example, where I still have plenty of mysteries left to read for the first time. To date I have only re-read and reviewed one of Heyer’s mysteries, A Blunt Instrument (1938), but she has come up quite a bit in recent #MurderEveryMonday themes, so I decided it might be time to re-read another one by her. I went for Death in the Stocks, as it received some thumbs up from readers on Twitter.

Synopsis

‘A moonlit night. A sleeping village. And an unaccountable murder…
An English bobbie returning from night patrol finds a corpse in evening dress locked in the stocks on the village green. He identifies the body immediately. Andrew Vereker was not a well-loved man, and narrowing down the suspects is not going to be an easy job. The Vereker family are corrupt and eccentric -and hardly cooperative …
It’s another case for the resourceful Superintendent Hannasyde, who sets off on the trail of a killer so cunning that even his consummate powers of detection are tested to their limits…’

Overall Thoughts

I was quite interested to see how contemporary reviewers reacted to this book. What intrigued me the most was how reviewers seemed to perceive her work differently, influenced perhaps by the fact that she was already a well-known author of regency-set historical novels, before turning to detective fiction. These two reviews below highlight the snobbery that was extended to crime fiction by some critics at the time:

‘Death in the Stocks, is that rare and refreshing thing – a clever problem stated, developed, and finally solved in terms of character.’ – The Times

 ‘… not only a very neat and mystifying detective story, it is also an excellent example of what can be achieved when the commonplace material of detective fiction is worked up by an experienced novelist. Miss Heyer’s characters act and speak with an ease and conviction that is as refreshing as it is rare in the ordinary mystery story.’ – Times Literary Supplement

I think what I disagree with the most in these reviews is this idea that Heyer was doing something different, original, or better with the genre than many full-time mystery authors of the era had already been doing. Heyer, for me, is not an innovative mystery writer.

It is also important to note that the positive comments that Heyer receives are centred on her characterisation work, rather than the mystery elements or plotting. For example, Dorothy L. Sayers, reviewing this title for The Sunday Times wrote:

‘Miss Heyer’s characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me. The plot of “DEATH IN THE STOCKS” shows a great advance in plausibility upon that of “The Unfinished Clue”; but even if it did not, even if there were no plot at all, time and money would be well spent in making the acquaintance of the maddeningly inconsequent and attractive Vereker family.’

Whilst The Saturday Review of Literature opined that the novel had a ‘much uncommonly good dialogue, an almost too gentlemanly sleuth, and a guessable but unconvincing ending.’

The opening pages of Death in the Stocks sees a suspicious man drive away from the crime scene, in which a corpse, dressed up in evening wear, is residing in the stocks at Ashleigh Green. The corpse is swiftly found by a policeman. Heyer seems to be trying to use sources of light e.g. moon, head lamps, as a way of directing our attention across the scene, like a movie camera. However, I think she overuses this strategy, and it comes across as her trying a little too hard to be “poetic” and “literarily descriptive”. Even petrol pumps are said to look ‘a little ghostly’. Edmund Crispin could be quite creative with his choice of imagery, and he could probably have got away with describing petrol pumps in that way. But I think that is because he would have done it for overt comic effect, and he would have tried to find the absurdity in the situation.

To begin with in this investigation, everything runs to routine and is quite predictable until Inspector Jerrold goes to the victim’s weekend cottage, where he discovers a woman there. This woman transpires to be the victim’s half-sister, Antonia Vereker. From the outset it is clear that she has an entitled outlook on life, which leads to fairly selfish and obstructive behaviour when being questioned:

“Do you mean I’ve got to hang about in a Police Station all day?” demanded Antonia. “I’m damned if I will! I’ve got a luncheon engagement in town at one o’clock.”

Also, within her review of this book, Sayers mentions that she ‘took [a] violent fancy’ to the Verekers ‘from the word “Go”’ and I believe this is key to getting the most out of this novel, which spends most of its page time with the surviving members of the Vereker family. Further to this thought, I agree with Sayers that ‘it is the Verekers who carry the book upon their shoulders […]’. Nevertheless, I think I was somewhere in the middle with these characters. I didn’t love them like Sayers did, as I found such self-centred behaviour hard to warm to and I found them to be a bit obtuse when they expressed surprise that their choices continually incriminate them. However, I did find some of their conversations wonderfully catty.

The primary murder victim, Arnold Vereker, is a stereotypical choice, being an unpopular and rich businessman. His library and its furniture are said to speak ‘aloud the unguided taste of a high-class firm of decorators; nothing gave any indication of the owner’s personality.’ Nevertheless, I did wonder at some point whether the unpleasant victim, was less awful than the suspects, given the way they behaved at times. I can’t remember which part of the book prompted this next thought, but in my review notes I suggested that the suspects fester in this story, like food going off. Some of Arnold’s actions prior to his death are actually quite reasonable. They just don’t seem that way to the suspects who are rather like spoilt children who mercilessly discuss the case with one another and exhibit an irresponsible attitude towards money.

Heyer does include some interesting social details in her story and the one which stuck in my mind the most was how a police sergeant decided to attract the attention of the waitress for his bill:

“It’s a wonder anyone ever gets out of these tea and bun bazaars, the trouble it is to get the girls to come across with the bill. I’ve been trying to catch Henna’ed Hannah’s eye for the past ten minutes.” […]

“Here, Gladys – Maud – Gwendolyn, whatever your name is – tell me this: Are you standing us this tea?”

“I never did! You haven’t half got a nerve!” said the waitress, giggling.

“I only asked because you seemed kind of shy of bringing the bill,” said the Sergeant.

Clearly being rude seems to work!

Moving on to the plotting of the book, I think this is where we see the mystery’s biggest weaknesses. The story has insufficient content, which was unexpected given that it is not a long book. The structure of the novel rests on the suspects having endless conversations and having these conversations reported to a third party. This dialogue is full of back biting, but it is rather light on the clue front. This might have been less of an issue for me if I had loved the characters as much as Sayers did. There is a second late death, which seems to be introduced as the only way of breaking the investigation deadlock. Furthermore, the final solution, which the police have no part in, is an 11^th hour find and has the typical frustrating elements of including withheld information from the reader and off-the-page detective work. To be honest, when reading this mystery, it didn’t seem like Heyer knew how to get the characters to arrive at the solution. Perhaps the first murder is made too hard to crack. This read hasn’t put me off Heyer’s work and I am sure I will return for another re-read at some point, but perhaps it has reminded me why I have not gone back to her work as often as I have for other classic crime writers.  

Rating: 3.5/5