Mitchell, Gladys - Laurels are Poison (1942)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

'Is it a dagger that I see before me, its 'andle to me 'and? No, but it is that same circular saw with which Hawley Harvey carved up his spouse, et voici la plume de ma tante. Goroo! Goroo! (Dickens—or thereabouts.) Stop me if you've heard it before. Young Alice, there must be a murderer on the premises!'

This is Mitchell's own favourite among her novels, because it "recalls the college years which I enjoyed so much." Certainly, she seems to be having a ball. The tone is very high-spirited, the humour a brilliantly funny mixture of farce and wit, and the dialogue of Laura Menzies (introduced here as a young woman studying to become a teacher) is a pleasure. The training college setting is vividly evoked, so that the reader receives an impression of what such an establishment would have been like, and Mrs. Bradley ("with degrees from every University except Tokio") is in fine form as the Warden of a House. The plot is inventive, mixing the high-spirited with the macabre, and involving such things as disappearing Wardens, a fatal accident in a school gymnasium, rags (both stupid practical joking, and malicious attacks / vandalism), a ghost, a drowned cook, and human skeletons. The exposition of the murderer's identity and motive in the penultimate chapter is, as Philip Larkin pointed out, eerie and bizarre - Swinburne's "Itylus" is used to great effect.

An excellent, well-written, literate, highly readable book -- thoroughly researched, very funny in places and historically important as the first appearance of quote-loving Laura Menzies, later to become Laura Gavin and Mrs Bradley's legwoman. It is clear that during this period, at least, Gladys Mitchell knew precisely what she was about and could have written a classic detective story had she wanted to. Clearly, then, she didn't. But what she did want to write, and how she felt she had achieved by it, remains to me one of the great puzzles of detective fiction. As usual, I reach the end of this Bradley book feeling that all the minor problems have been cleared up while the major issues remain shrouded in impenetrable mystery. For instance -- if I can risk a few spoilers here:

• How could a biology teacher not know that a doctor can estimate the age of death by examining a skeleton?
• Why would anyone think it funny to release poisonous snakes in a classroom full of young children?
• Why, having killed someone and thrown them into the river to make it look like suicide, would you then throw their corsets in after them?
• How does the Home Office feel having their top investigator away for six months on a case that may not even be murder? Don' t they even feel the need to send a hurry-up telegram?
• Why does said investigator put off for nearly three months interviewing people prominently involved in the case?

And most importantly, why does the murderer hang about near Mrs Bradley at all? If I had committed a murder in Kent and there was nothing to keep me there I would be on the next train to Yorkshire. Too many of Mitchell's murderers seem to feel that their only object in life is to stick around and try to make things difficult for the investigator, at great inconvenience to themselves. I might accept a week or two of this, but six months? Surely even a murderer has got something better to do with their time.

So what was Mitchell trying to achieve? Why such immaculate presentation and such gaping holes in the denouement? I am starting -- and I say this with trepidation -- to come around to the theory that she started with no idea of the outcome and made it up as she went along. If anyone can convince me otherwise I'll be glad to hear it. But read the book by all means -- it's far more entertaining than a run-of-the-mill sleuthing tale.

Jon.