Murder on French Leave Read online

  Anne Morice

  Murder on French Leave

  ‘What if he’d done it in reverse? Supposing the murder had already been committed by the time you saw him?’

  The elegant actress Tessa Crichton is starring in a film to be made in Paris. Her husband Robin (otherwise Detective Inspector Price of Scotland Yard) and her cousin Ellen travel with her but the trip is off to a peculiar start when Tessa’s jewel case disappears – and mysteriously turns up again; no jewellery missing. She and Robin go racing at Longchamps, attend an evening of Indian folk music, and get invited to lunch by a chance acquaintance. Their social activities seem perfectly innocent and enjoyable – before murder is committed and Tessa finds herself in possession of some very dangerous knowledge.

  Anne Morice’s talents for characterisation and humour are well displayed in a classical whodunnit with elements of espionage and kidnapping.

  Murder on French Leave was originally published in 1972. 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

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  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 traditionalist, 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 i
ndicate 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

  Prologue

  ‘Well, who’s going to get murdered on this trip, I wonder?’ my cousin Ellen asked, studying our reflections in the mirror as I replaced my ticket, passport and travellers’ cheques neatly in my bag and then tipped them all back on the formica shelf to unearth the small-change purse.

  ‘You are,’ I informed her, ‘if there’s any more of that talk. This is strictly a holiday, so far as Robin is concerned, with no nasty crime to spoil things, so try to remember that. I should remind you that you are here on sufferance as it is, and if word gets around the French capital that we are travelling with the fameux Inspecteur du Scotland Yard, I shall know who’s responsible. You’ll find yourself on the next plane back to that domestic science outfit.’

  ‘I should think I’ve been expelled by this time,’ she replied calmly.

  ‘They can sort that out when you get there,’ I told her, finding an English coin at last among all the francs and depositing it in the saucer.

  I did not catch her riposte to this, because it was smothered by the public address system announcing a delay of twenty minutes in the departure of Air France Flight Eight Two Nine to Orly, owing to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft.

  ‘So you will have time for the duty-free shop, after all, Tessa,’ she said philosophically. ‘That should help to get Robin’s holiday off on the right foot.’

  One

  (i)

  ‘What should I buy?’ Ellen asked, as we edged our way through the noisy, overheated departure lounge towards the duty-free supermarket. ‘Brandy? Vodka?’

  ‘No, you’re under age and Robin is not on holiday to that extent. You might go and find him and explain what’s happened. He may not have heard the announcement. They don’t tell us what caused the delay to the incoming aircraft, you notice?’

  ‘I expect it took them longer than usual to find the bombs. Anyway, Robin’s not worried; he’s teamed up with the great dane. They’re over by the window.’

  I glanced towards it and easily picked out the back of Robin’s blond head, but the farouche-looking man facing him was a stranger to me and I felt positive that, once seen, I could never have forgotten him. He was wearing a bulky, greenish overcoat, open to reveal a brown tweed jacket, with a maroon pullover under that, and there was something self-consciously exhibitionist about him, even at a distance. It was not merely the impression he gave of having flung on whatever garments first came to hand which distinguished him from the average traveller; there was also a defiance in his thrust-up chin and roving glance, hinting that he was supremely indifferent to what others thought of the result, so long as they thought something. If I had been playing the personality game, though, I would not have given him the dog image. He looked to me more like some untidy old bird, and one could picture him whirling down corridors, the overcoat flapping behind and beak thrust forward, about to stake out a stiffish claim for his territorial rights.

  ‘Why did you call him a great dane?’ I asked, as we formed up in the queue for the cash register.

  ‘Well, he’s either that, or a train robber with forged papers. I saw his passport. He was standing just behind us when you checked in. I think his nerves got all in a jangle over the time you took writing a cheque for the excess baggage. That red suitcase was the last straw. What have you got in it, apart from bombs?’

  ‘Apart from those, just my shoes and all those scripts my agent unloaded on me at the last minute. And my jewellery, come to think of it. Oh damn!’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Something I forgot. Can’t be helped, though.’

  ‘Well, anyway, this man was getting in a fantastic stew and waving his passport around and I saw it was a Danish one.’

  ‘He’s certainly not speaking Danish, to judge by the fascinated expression on the back of Robin’s head. Oh, is it my turn now? How lovely!’

  As we emerged into the lounge again there was a second announcement on the public address system, regretting the further delay to Flight Eight Two Nine to Paris.

  ‘More bombs,’ Ellen said resignedly. ‘Oh look! Robin’s friend has gone. I expect he’s given up.’

  ‘Not gone for good,’ Robin said when we joined him, ‘Only as far as the bar. He’s buying me a drink.’

  ‘He might have waited for us,’ I complained, slinging my bag and bottles on to the green leather chair, where Robin had already disposed half a dozen pieces of hand luggage and a couple of extra coats. ‘A drink is what I feel I could do with. Since we seem destined to remain in this doom-laden place for the entire weekend, we might as well enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘I shan’t enjoy myself if you start drinking at four-thirty in the afternoon,’ he told me. ‘We’ve got enough complications without your lurching on to the plane minus your ticket and passport.’

  ‘I hope I don’t count as a complication,’ Ellen said sadly. ‘
Though I suppose I must do, when you think of it. I shall cheer myself up with a coke. How about you, Tessa?’

  ‘A coke would be better than nothing,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll take two of my seasick pills and get high that way.’

  ‘Is he a film director?’ I asked, when Ellen had gone.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your kind friend, who’s buying you a drink.’

  ‘No, try again.’

  ‘Script writer?’

  ‘No, you’re stuck in the wrong groove. It’s all that show-off which reminds you of your own profession. This one works for IDEAS.’

  ‘How quaint! I usually prefer to make them work for me.’

  ‘I.D.E.A.S. It’s an offshoot of United Nations. International Division for Engineering and Science. Their head . . .’

  ‘Tell me later,’ I mumbled, ‘he’s coming back.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Robin said smugly, as he accepted his treble pink gin. ‘This is my wife, by the way.’

  ‘Carlsen,’ the man said, bringing his heels together and pulling my hand up to the regulation two inches from his nose.

  ‘She was convinced that you had some connection with the film business.’

  ‘Coming from you, madame, I take that as a tremendous compliment.’

  ‘But Robin tells me you’re with something called IDEAS. It sounds rather mysterious.’

  ‘Oh no, all too prosaic, I’m afraid. Do let me get you a drink?’

  ‘You’re very kind, but my cousin is getting me one.’

  ‘That rather smashing young person I saw you with just now? Asinine of me, but I took her for your sister.’

  ‘Oh well, she’s eight years younger than me, but she could be my sister, I suppose; if I had one.’