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| Toby frill |
You might think this is one of the limpest titles ever, but for the Cathcarts it's not a simple proceeding. One of a family of spinster sisters goes missing, and they eventually call in the law. "After all, I know the Chief Constable."
Before this happens, we peer into the inside workings of one of the most toxic families ever put on the page. Three "girls" and their helpless mother barely see outsiders, and constantly call each other "darling". The youngest, Nancy (38), is addressed as "baby". They have nothing whatever to do (large staff of servants), and don't think this odd. Nancy passes the time sewing. Sheila (red-headed and plain) plays the piano or just sits about. Delia runs the show, and also has some equestrian skills and is part of the local horsy world. Resemblance to the Borden family purely coincidental?
It's Delia who goes missing. Guy Northeast of the Yard is called in, and the middle of the book sags as he goes about his investigation. Meanwhile the ladies reveal a lot about the mores of the time (the 30s).
Someone says, mysteriously: "Well off you may be, but you’re only biscuits when all’s said and done.” I wondered if "biscuits" was contemporary slang, but it turns out the Cathcart family made its money selling digestives.
"I don’t believe there is such a thing as an artistic temperament. It’s not temperament, darling; it’s temper.”
The Cathcarts relate: "We decided that we’d keep calm till eleven” – before calling for help about Delia's absence.
It's the author who despises meals such as this: Besides
the tea there was a white loaf, half a pound of margarine, a slice of
Canadian cheddar, some beetroot swimming in vinegar, a pot of strong
tea, a jug of thin milk, a basin of lump sugar, a cold boiled onion, and
seven fancy cakes on the table.
“We never leave any of our personal belongings in the bathroom,” said Mrs. Cathcart. “It’s so suburban.”
The rude servant is "a short young man with oily hair that smelled of violets".
"Rather suburban tidiness" is referred to.
"The Cathcarts were biscuits, but they’ve been out of it for some time," but "three generations and back to the plow?”
The characters come out with some pop psychology to diagnose the sisters, and in the frame of the book, turn out to be right.
"Can’t get ’usbands yourselves, so you don’t want no one else to. That’s what ’tis." An uppity servant says this directly to Delia, shortly before she vanishes.
"Sex repression," opines another character.
When Sheila meets Northeast, she doesn't answer his questions immediately because "she had been wondering if he were married, if his wife understood him, if he realized that a pretty face isn’t everything."
Delia is dismissed as a "repressed spinster, who had practically given up hope of any sex life — an easy prey for any man."
"She may have bottled things up all her life and cracked suddenly.”
"If a silly woman chose to give way to her nerves."
"You know what old maids are, especially at the time when they gives up ’ope."
As for the mysteriously absent Mr Willoughby, "I’ve heard of lots of men with kinks, who just left home for no real reason at all."
One theory is that Delia has run away with Mr Willoughby, who disappeared at the same time. This means Guy has to interview Mrs Willoughby, an irritatingly self-conscious Bohemian who winces at the word "sketching".
I’m too intelligent to worry about something that isn’t. Time isn’t. It only exists for the benefit of the insane majority.
Well, I hung about here thinking how sordid it all was.
“A fruit shop?” “A stall in the market place. I hate smug shops.”
Solicitors are so sordid and everything’s so simple and nothing’s ugly if you just bare your soul.
He was a "typical member of the lower middle class, quite cancerous with respectability".
Eventually, she exits: Of course, it’s been horribly sordid, but it’ll make us more sensitive to beauty, so in a way, you see, it’s been good for our souls. I feel terribly hurt — ugliness does hurt me terribly — and I’m going to rush off now to be healed by flowers and trees and birds.
Clothes are stressed throughout – pay attention.
Delia keeps her hair in order with a hairnet. The cretonnes in the
Cathcart's drawing room are "sweet-pea colouring" – mauve, pink and
blue. Nancy wears floral fabric.
Mrs Willoughby "wore an orange smock over a black satin skirt, black satin shoes with rubbed toes, and no stockings".
A platinum blonde waitress stepped through a curtain of bamboo and beads.
A peripheral character recalls her own outfit: Scarlet and white checked skirt, scarlet jacket, no hat and white shoes. (Probably marks her as not quite quite.)
Another wore: mauve jumper, mauve halo hat, and gray flannel coat and skirt. (A "coat and skirt" was what we'd call a "suit", but for some reason this word was taboo for women.)
At the inquest, Gerda Willoughby is "dressed dramatically in black and orange".
Nancy complains to her diary that Delia has accused her of wearing a dress with a "Toby frill" – as worn by Mr Punch's dog. "Whenever I make friends with anybody, she says they are boring or common," she adds.
It's maybe not so great as a mystery, but the snobbery and wit keep one reading. He hoped this wasn’t going to be the sort of case you read
about in novels, where the detective knows that the victim couldn’t have
been in the music room at the time stated, because so great a musician
would never have played Puccini.
More here, and links to the rest.
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