The Saltmarsh Murders
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 04
1945
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
CHAPTER I: Mrs. Coutts’ Maggot
CHAPTER II: Maggots At The Moat House And Bats At The Bungalow
CHAPTER III: Sir William’s Large Maggot And Daphne’s Small One
CHAPTER IV: maggots in the church porch and public house maggots
CHAPTER V: The Village FÊte
CHAPTER VI: A Student Of Dickens
CHAPTER VII: Edwy David Burt—his Maggot
CHAPTER VIII: Bob Candy’s Bank Holiday
CHAPTER IX: The Village Speaks Its Mind
CHAPTER X: Sundry Alibis, And A Regular Facer
CHAPTER XI: Reappearance Of Cora
CHAPTER XII: Permutations And Combinations
CHAPTER XIII: Bats In The Jury Box
CHAPTER XIV: Twentieth-Century Usage Of A Smugglers’ Hole
CHAPTER XV: Black Man’s Maggot
CHAPTER XVI: Mrs. Gatty Falls From Grace, And Mrs. Bradley Leads Us Up The Garden
CHAPTER XVII: Mrs. Bradley Sticks Her Pig
CHAPTER XVIII: The Last Straw
APPENDIX: Mrs. Bradley’s Notebook
The Saltmarsh Murders
Gladys Mitchell
New Introduction by Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan
THE HOGARTH PRESS LONDON
Published in 1984 by
The Hogarth Press
40 William IV Street, London wc2n 4df
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1932
Hogarth edition offset from original Gollancz edition
Copyright the Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell
Introduction copyright © Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan 1984
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
INTRODUCTION
‘Gladys Mitchell’s classic The Saltmarsh Murders’ (Nicholas Blake’s description) was first published in 1932. It was the fourth detective novel in a series of sixty-six; Gladys Mitchell (1901-83) increased her output from one to two books a year in the final period of her life. All her detective fiction features the same central character, the redoubtable Mrs Bradley (later Dame Beatrice), a distinguished psychiatrist who, for maximum effect as an investigator, combines ‘extraordinary pothouse accomplishments’ with an old-fashioned elegance of speech.
There is nothing ordinary about Mrs Bradley or the way she goes about her investigations. She looks like a reconstituted pterodactyl and behaves like the Cumaean Sibyl. It is her habit to keep suspects on the alert by poking them in the ribs. Her percipience is frightening and her humour prodigious. From the moment of her first appearance, in Speedy Death (1929), she imposed herself on author and audience alike. Gladys Mitchell, actually, had intended to create a male detective but in the course of writing this novel she found herself vanquished by Mrs Bradley. The irresistible old lady moved to the forefront of the action and has stayed there ever since.
The Saltmarsh Murders, like everything in the earliest group of detective novels by Gladys Mitchell, is an exceptionally stylish and high-spirited piece of work, with strong comic overtones. One of the author’s practices is to poke fun at a minor convention of detective fiction by pushing it to an extreme; in this novel she has a go at the cosy village setting from which so many detective writers gained their most pointed effects. The village of Saltmarsh, where Gladys Mitchell’s clergyman-narrator has his first unfortunate curacy, is peculiarly prone to disturbance. It is a place where the vicar may be taken for a goat and tethered to a stake in the ancient pound, while his wife remains in a state of outrage over various licentious goings-on. In certain respects it bears a resemblance to the Cold Comfort hamlet of Howling. Adultery, high jinks, horseplay, an illegitimate birth, a hidden baby, rumours of infanticide, exhibitions of lunacy, a couple of murders, a lost corpse, an illicit trade in pornography, even a spot of incest all keep things lively for Gladys Mitchell’s benighted villagers before Mrs Bradley gets to the bottom of the imbroglio.
The literary ancestry of the blithe young curate who tells the story can be traced back to Dr Watson via Captain Hastings, but Noel Wells’s mannerisms are all his own, and all agreeably ingenuous, down to the repeated use of the phrase ‘of course’. He isn’t exactly an admiring acolyte: ‘I like old women to be soothing,’ he declares, while the gnomic detective, of the eldritch cackle and outlandish actions, goes out of her way to unnerve everyone around her. In the interests of justice, naturally, as well as bedazzlement; Mrs Bradley’s integrity is never in question, any more than her wits or her wit.
It takes great confidence and aplomb, as well as technical expertise, to go in for singularity and convolution on such a scale; and Gladys Mitchell deserves credit for possessing all these qualities. Her originality cannot be too highly praised. The Saltmarsh Murders, long out of print, is wonderfully eccentric and entertaining.
Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, London 1983
CHAPTER I
mrs. coutts’ maggot
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There are all sorts of disadvantages in telling a story in the first person, especially a tale of murder. But I was so mixed up in the business from first to last, and saw so much of it from all conceivable angles and from nearly everybody’s point of view, that I can’t very well stand outside the story and recount it in a detached manner.
I had taken an arts degree at Oxford, and was intending to read for the Bar when a bachelor uncle died and left me thirty thousand pounds on condition that I went into the Church. Well, my mother and sisters were living on about two hundred and fifty a year at the time, and I owed my father’s friend, Sir William Kingston-Fox, for my University fees, so I took the will at its word and did three years slum curating in the South-East district, Rotherhithe way. After that, Sir William recommended me to the Reverend Bedivere Coutts, Vicar of Saltmarsh, and I became the curate there.
I didn’t like Mr. or Mrs. Coutts, but I liked Daphne and William. Daphne was eighteen when I first knew her, and William was fourteen. I fell in love with Daphne later, of course. Well, not so much later, really. Daphne and William were surnamed Coutts, and were old Coutts’ niece and nephew.
As I look back over the whole thing, I can see that the match laid to the train of gunpowder must have been the day upon which it became known to Mrs. Coutts that our housemaid, a quiet, softly-spoken, rather pretty country girl called Meg Tosstick, was going to have a baby. I think Meg herself had known for about three months that the thing was going to happen, and had kept a shut mouth and a demeanour of great calmness. Awfully creditable, at least, I think so, because I imagine it must be a rather hysteria-making—(Daphne’s word, of course, not mine)—thing to be carrying a baby when one isn’t married and has a boss like Mrs. Coutts.
The net result of Mrs. Coutts’ discovery that the poor girl was with child, was as may be imagined. Out went the girl, in spite of the fact that she told Mrs. Coutts her father would thrash her and kick her into the street if she lost her place—the old devil used to turn up regularly at both the Sunday services, too!—he was our verger—and Mrs. Coutts told the vicar that public prayers would have to be said for the girl.