Death of a Heavenly Twin Read online

  Anne Morice

  Death of a Heavenly Twin

  She lay on her back, her head and shoulders at an unnaturally curved angle, as though she had arched herself in a last tremendous convulsion as death overtook her. The grass around her was stained with blood and a dart was sticking out above the neckline of her dress.

  This is a sparkling whodunit in the best Anne Morice style: the action takes place in and around an ostentatious stately home where murder strikes at the garden fête.

  The gala is being thrown by a millionaire tycoon in aid of the local conservation society. Noted actress Tessa Crichton has been given the job of declaring the event ‘open’. While not expecting open season on murder, Tessa is unable to resist the chance to do some on-the-spot investigation, especially as the police are building a damaging case against someone she considers to be innocent.

  There are plenty of suspects and plenty of motives; nobody shows much inclination to tell the whole truth and Tessa’s involvement becomes more personal and more dangerous when another corpse is discovered soon afterwards.

  Death of a Heavenly Twin, originally published in 1974, is a crime story of ingenuity and wit, with a cast of sharply-observed eccentrics and a final surprise revelation. This new edition features an introduction and afterword by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  ‘Anne Morice has a gift for creating intelligent, affection-generating characters, set in light and entertaining atmospheres.’ Spectator

  ‘Relaxing, polished entertainment of high order.’ Daily Telegraph

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Curtis Evans

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Titles by Anne Morice

  Copyright

  Introduction

  By 1970 the Golden Age of detective fiction, which had dawned in splendor a half-century earlier in 1920, seemingly had sunk into shadow like the sun at eventide. There were still a few old bodies from those early, glittering days who practiced the fine art of finely clued murder, to be sure, but in most cases the hands of those murderously talented individuals were growing increasingly infirm. Queen of Crime Agatha Christie, now eighty years old, retained her bestselling status around the world, but surely no one could have deluded herself into thinking that the novel Passenger to Frankfurt, the author’s 1970 “Christie for Christmas” (which publishers for want of a better word dubbed “an Extravaganza”) was prime Christie—or, indeed, anything remotely close to it. Similarly, two other old crime masters, Americans John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen (comparative striplings in their sixties), both published detective novels that year, but both books were notably weak efforts on their parts. Agatha Christie’s American counterpart in terms of work productivity and worldwide sales, Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, published nothing at all that year, having passed away in March at the age of eighty. Admittedly such old-timers as Rex Stout, Ngaio Marsh, Michael Innes and Gladys Mitchell were still playing the game with some of their old élan, but in truth their glory days had fallen behind them as well. Others, like Margery Allingham and John Street, had died within the last few years or, like Anthony Gilbert, Nicholas Blake, Leo Bruce and Christopher Bush, soon would expire or become debilitated. Decidedly in 1970—a year which saw the trials of the Manson family and the Chicago Seven, assorted bombings, kidnappings and plane hijackings by such terroristic entities as the Weathermen, the Red Army, the PLO and the FLQ, the American invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings and the drug overdose deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin—leisure readers now more than ever stood in need of the intelligent escapism which classic crime fiction provided. Yet the old order in crime fiction, like that in world politics and society, seemed irrevocably to be washing away in a bloody tide of violent anarchy and all round uncouthness.

  Or was it? Old values have a way of persisting. Even as the generation which produced the glorious detective fiction of the Golden Age finally began exiting the crime scene, a new generation of younger puzzle adepts had arisen, not to take the esteemed places of their elders, but to contribute their own worthy efforts to the rarefied field of fair play murder. Among these writers were P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Emma Lathen, Patricia Moyes, H.R.F. Keating, Catherine Aird, Joyce Porter, Margaret Yorke, Elizabeth Lemarchand, Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey and the author whom you are perusing now, Anne Morice (1916-1989). Morice, who like Yorke, Lovesey and Hill debuted as a mystery writer in 1970, was lavishly welcomed by critics in the United Kingdom (she was not published in the United States until 1974) upon the publication of her first mystery, Death in the Grand Manor, which suggestively and anachronistically was subtitled not an “extravaganza,” but a novel of detection. Fittingly the book was lauded by no less than seemingly permanently retired Golden Age stalwarts Edmund Crispin and Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley Cox). Crispin deemed Morice’s debut puzzler “a charming whodunit . . . full of unforced buoyance” and prescribed it as a “remedy for existentialist gloom,” while Iles, who would pass away at the age of seventy-seven less than six months after penning his review, found the novel a “most attractive lightweight,” adding enthusiastically: “[E]ntertainingly written, it provides a modern version of the classical type of detective story. I was much taken with the cheerful young narrator . . . and I think most readers will feel the same way. Warmly recommended.” Similarly, Maurice Richardson, who, although not a crime writer, had reviewed crime fiction for decades at the London Observer, lavished praise upon Morice’s maiden mystery: “Entrancingly fresh and lively whodunit. . . . Excellent dialogue. . . . Much superior to the average effort to lighten the detective story.”

  With such a critical sendoff, it is no surprise that Anne Morice’s crime fiction took flight on the wings of its bracing mirth. Over the next two decades twenty-five Anne Morice mysteries were published (the last of them posthumously), at the rate of one or two year. Twenty-three of these concerned the investigations of Tessa Crichton, a charming young actress who always manages to cross paths with murder, while two, written at the end of her career, detail cases of Detective Superintendent “Tubby” Wiseman. In 1976 Morice along with Margaret Yorke was chosen to become a member of Britain’s prestigious Detection Club, preceding Ruth Rendell by a year, while in the 1980s her books were included in Bantam’s superlative paperback “Murder Most British” series, which included luminaries from both present and past like Rendell, Yorke, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth, Christianna Brand, Elizabeth Ferrars, Catherine Aird, Margaret Erskine, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson, June Thomson and last, but most certainly not least, the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie. In 1974, when Morice’s fifth Tessa Crichton detective novel, Death of a Dutiful Daughter, was picked up in the United States, the author’s work again was received with acclaim, with reviewers emphasizing the author’s cozy traditionalism (though the term “cozy” had not then come into common use in reference to traditional English and American mysteries). In his notice of Morice’s Death of a Wedding Guest (1976), “Newgate Callendar” (aka classical music critic Harold C. Schoenberg), Seventies crime fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, observed that “Morice is a trad
itionalist, and she has no surprises [in terms of subject matter] in her latest book. What she does have, as always, is a bright and amusing style . . . [and] a general air of sophisticated writing.” Perhaps a couple of reviews from Middle America—where intense Anglophilia, the dogmatic pronouncements of Raymond Chandler and Edmund Wilson notwithstanding, still ran rampant among mystery readers—best indicate the cozy criminal appeal of Anne Morice:

  Anne Morice . . . acquired me as a fan when I read her “Death and the Dutiful Daughter.” In this new novel, she did not disappoint me. The same appealing female detective, Tessa Crichton, solves the mysteries on her own, which is surprising in view of the fact that Tessa is actually not a detective, but a film actress. Tessa just seems to be at places where a murder occurs, and at the most unlikely places at that . . . this time at a garden fete on the estate of a millionaire tycoon. . . . The plot is well constructed; I must confess that I, like the police, had my suspect all picked out too. I was “dead” wrong (if you will excuse the expression) because my suspect was also murdered before not too many pages turned. . . . This is not a blood-curdling, chilling mystery; it is amusing and light, but Miss Morice writes in a polished and intelligent manner, providing pleasure and entertainment. (Rose Levine Isaacson, review of Death of a Heavenly Twin, Jackson Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, 18 August 1974)

  I like English mysteries because the victims are always rotten people who deserve to die. Anne Morice, like Ngaio Marsh et al., writes tongue in cheek but with great care. It is always a joy to read English at its glorious best. (Sally Edwards, “Ever-So British, This Tale,” review of Killing with Kindness, Charlotte North Carolina Observer, 10 April 1975)

  While it is true that Anne Morice’s mysteries most frequently take place at country villages and estates, surely the quintessence of modern cozy mystery settings, there is a pleasing tartness to Tessa’s narration and the brittle, epigrammatic dialogue which reminds me of the Golden Age Crime Queens (particularly Ngaio Marsh) and, to part from mystery for a moment, English playwright Noel Coward. Morice’s books may be cozy but they most certainly are not cloying, nor are the sentiments which the characters express invariably “traditional.” The author avoids any traces of soppiness or sentimentality and has a knack for clever turns of phrase which is characteristic of the bright young things of the Twenties and Thirties, the decades of her own youth. “Sackcloth and ashes would have been overdressing for the mood I had sunk into by then,” Tessa reflects at one point in the novel Death in the Grand Manor. Never fear, however: nothing, not even the odd murder or two, keeps Tessa down in the dumps for long; and invariably she finds herself back on the trail of murder most foul, to the consternation of her handsome, debonair husband, Inspector Robin Price of Scotland Yard (whom she meets in the first novel in the series and has married by the second), and the exasperation of her amusingly eccentric and indolent playwright cousin, Toby Crichton, both of whom feature in almost all of the Tessa Crichton novels. Murder may not lastingly mar Tessa’s equanimity, but she certainly takes her detection seriously.

  Three decades now having passed since Anne Morice’s crime novels were in print, fans of British mystery in both its classic and cozy forms should derive much pleasure in discovering (or rediscovering) her work in these new Dean Street Press editions and thereby passing time once again in that pleasant fictional English world where death affords us not emotional disturbance and distress but enjoyable and intelligent diversion.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER ONE

  I waited in the shadows, in my high suede boots and frilly dress, just outside the pool of light which illuminated one corner of the sleazy arcade, watching as he reeled forward on the balls of his feet, then sprawled head first over the pin table. Still with his back to me, so that the bullet hole below his left shoulder blade was clearly visible, he slid very slowly down on to the floor, and I held my breath as for the fifth time that afternoon Christopher Cosby breathed his last and the camera swung in for a close-up of his staring, lifeless face.

  We had already wrapped up the bit where I collapsed in a whimpering heap over his dead body, which naturally came later in the sequence, and this was the last shot on the day’s schedule. I was the only one left on the set with no job to perform, and had remained there simply to make sure that Kit would get it right at least once and that I could allow myself to believe that the lovely, long, free weekend was really about to begin.

  There had been a pin-dropping silence during the take, and then the voice of Peter Bliss, our director, rang out loud and clear:

  ‘Cut!’

  A second later there followed the blessed words: ‘Print that!’ and relief flowed over us like the gentle rain from heaven upon the stage beneath.

  ‘That was fine, Kit,’ Peter went on, speaking now in a conversational tone, as he emerged from the darkness behind the camera to confer with the continuity girl. ‘Absolutely bang on!’

  As though it were literally connected to them by wires, the tension subsided when, one by one, the lights were doused and Kit, who had now sat up and wrapped his arms round his drawn up knees, flung them out sideways and came up on his feet in one beautifully co-ordinated, rather showing-off spring.

  Peter addressed us again: ‘Okay, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen and comrades, we pack it in. Have a lovely weekend, and see you all at nine sharp on Monday.’

  There was a groan from somewhere up in the rafters, echoed by laughter from the floor, and after a startled pause Peter said:

  ‘Sorry, chaps. I forgot it was Easter. See you all at nine sharp on Tuesday.’

  I gathered up the book and knitting from my chair and went over to say goodnight to him.

  ‘Time for a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d love to, Peter, but I’ve got a longish drive.’

  An unaccountable reserve had made me hesitate to tell him where I was going, and before I could overcome it his mind had flown back to his own concerns. He was staring abstractedly at Kit, now engaged in back slapping farewells with a group of technicians, and he muttered grimly:

  ‘God, how I hate re-takes. And I hate Bank Holidays even more. We’ll all be as cold as mutton by Tuesday morning. Still, you were great, Tessa me old love, absolutely great, as always, and I think we may get by with that last one. At least he kept in his marks. Oh well, all hands to the pump on Tuesday and we may pull him through yet.’

  ‘You will, if anyone can,’ I said, laying it on a bit because he looked so harassed. ‘You’ve coped with a lot worse than this in your time.’

  He patted my shoulder. ‘Bless you, love. Enjoy yourself and don’t lose your shirt at Le Touquet or wherever.’

  It was a second chance to tell him where I was going, but before I could take it Johnny, the assistant director, came up with some query about striking the set, and the moment was lost. I waved goodnight to them both and to the accompaniment of merry cries of ‘Watch it!’ and ‘Mind Your Backs!’ picked my way through the writhing coils of wires and cables out into the daylight and down a short passage to my dressing room which was one size larger than a match box. In view of this, it was rather annoying to find Kit Cosby already installed there and occupying the only chair.

  ‘There isn’t room for both of us in here,’ I reminded him. ‘Not if I’m going to change, that is; and I suppose there would be cold looks if I were to turn up at Eglinton Hall in this outfit?’

  ‘I just looked in to see if you felt like nipping up for a quick one first?’

  ‘No thanks. Can’t we stop somewhere on the way? These boots were not made for walking, even up two flights of stairs. What I really feel like is taking them off and getting cleaned up.’

  ‘Okay. How long?’

  ‘Twenty minutes at the outside.’

  ‘God, Tessa, do you really need as long as that? Oh well, whatever you say. I’ll meet you by the car.’

  ‘You can take my suitcases out of the boot and put them in yours,’ I said, handing over the keys. ‘That�
�ll save a few minutes.’

  He stood up, once again demonstrating that impressive grace and agility which characterised all his movements, then stopped by the door for a moment, tapping his watch with a finger nail:

  ‘I’ll see you down there at six fifty-eight precisely.’

  He was wearing his secretive look and I felt certain he was really calculating that he had ample time for a couple of quick ones in the interval.

  Nevertheless, he was slightly better than his word, and so was I, for it was still only ten to seven by the porter’s clock when he slowed down his brand new, cream-coloured Bentley to say goodnight, before we drove through the studio gates and on to the main road.

  ‘How far is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Forty miles, give or take. We could do it in an hour with no trouble at all, if it wasn’t for going through bloody Maidenhead.’

  ‘Can’t you find a way round?’

  ‘No, duckie, I can’t. There’s this little waterway known as the Thames and we have to cross it somewhere. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Well, don’t drive like a maniac, because I’d much rather be late than dead.’

  ‘Couldn’t possibly matter less, anyway. They’re much too grand to have dinner before eight thirty. I suppose you’re going to feel quite at home, aren’t you, my little one?’

  By tacit consent, neither of us made any allusion to the day’s work just completed, probably because we both knew that it accounted for his prickly mood, as well as for the fact that we should reach our destination approximately one hour late. The truth was that a quite simple shooting schedule had been dragged out to a ridiculous degree, largely through his own incompetence. It wasn’t even his fault either, for the predicament of Christopher Cosby was the far from unusual one that he had soared to stardom long before he had the guns or experience to carry it.