Daily Blague

A few minutes ago, I finished P D James's latest Adam Dalgliesh Mystery, The Lighthouse (Faber and Faber, 2005), and a very satisfying read it was. Incriminating evidence was not discovered until forty-two pages before the end, and the suspect, while unexpected, made a great deal of sense. More than that, I can't tell you.

About the mystery, that is. I'd like to share two or three amusing passages, however. First I have to tell you something about the setting, a redoubtable island off the Cornish coast. (It doesn't exist, we're told, and neither does the mainland jumping off point, a town called Pentworthy; but helicopters come and go from Newquay.) The site of Combe House, the former summer home of a once-great family, the island has been turned into a sort of Yaddo for VIPs. Because the island is impregnable, accessible only through a small harbor into which it is impossible to sneak, world leaders and tycoons can escape their entourages and security details along with their responsibilities. Guests may stay in the main house, but most prefer the stone cottages that are sprinkled at either end of the island. They can dine at the big house or alone in their rooms. The staff is minimal but proficient.

In short, Lady James has invented another variation on the theme that has underlain at least three other recent novels, The Murder Room, Death in Holy Orders, and Original Sin. All four books take place at great houses that have been converted to some interesting use. The settings are either literally or figuratively remote. And the denizens are to varying degrees engaged in resisting change. Has anyone noted this? It's not a trivial detail. Here, to be sure, it is the entire island, and not just Combe House, that has been endangered by murder, but as in the three predecessors that I've named, the location is a character in its own right. Certainly one of Lady James's abiding themes is mortal man's vain but impassioned desire to claim monuments that will outlive him. Sometimes this impulse is related to the crime; sometimes, as here, it is not. But in each book the police effort to get to the bottom of things is baffled by pride of place.

Needless to say, the last surviving Holcomb, octogenarian Emily, lives in one of her cottages; happily, it is semi-detached, and the much smaller adjoining cottage shelters her butler. I really liked Emily, as I always do, on the page, like somewhat crusty but very intelligent and impatient English gentlefolk - a class that included Lady James before she was granted her peerage. Here is Emily/the author, musing on the butler's holidays.

She had no idea where he went of what he did, nor did he ever confide in her. She had always assumed that long-term residents on the island were escaping from something even if, as in her case, the items on her list were too commonly accepted by the malcontents of her generation to be worth dwelling on: noise, mobile phones, vandalism, drunken louts, political correctness, inefficiency and the assault on excellence by renaming it elitism.

Hear, hear! The other two passages come in the course of Commander Dalgliesh's interview - "interrogation" would be too strong a word - with Combe's cook, Mrs Plunkett, and they are both anecdotes that she retails. Not surprisingly, she attests, her contact with the guests is limited to serving them at table, but there have been a few times when, instead of ranging the island's scrublands, a bigwig found deep contentment remembering childhood, as indeed Dalgliesh has done the moment he entered the kitchen.

They come here to be alone. Mind you, we had a prime minister here for two weeks. A lot of fuss that was over security, but he did leave his protection officers behind him. He had to or he wouldn't have been allowed to come. He spent a lot of time sitting at that table just watching me work. Didn't chat much. I suppose he found it restful. Once I said, "If you've nothing better to do, sir, you might as well whisk those eggs." He did.

Now, that's what we pay P D James for. Or this:

There was a gentleman - I think they called him a captain of industry - he liked his bread and dripping. If we had roast beef - we did more often then, especially in winter - he'd whisper to me before he left the dining room, "Mrs P, I'll be round to the kitchen just before bed." I would've done my cleaning up before that and be having a quiet cup of tea before the fire. He loved his bread and dripping. He told me that he'd had it as a boy. He talked a lot about the cook his family had. You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you sir?"

"No," said Dalgliesh [who was just thinking about his father's housekeeper], "You never do."

Janet Maslin, in her Times review, writes of Lady James's "voluptuous tone." That's it, exactly. And nobody "makes up" more nicely in TV serial form. I've read that actor Ray Marsden has grown a bit impatient with Dalgliesh, but I'm sure that there are very few readers who don't see him and hear him as they follow the Commander through the author's intricate imbroglios.

You'll have noticed that I bought The Lighthouse from Amazuke, when the novel first appeared. It was Janet Maslin's review - which I didn't read until just now - that spurred me to pull it out of the pile. I'd been saving it for Puerto Rico (now tentatively scheduled for February), but with Kathleen out of town, and afflicted by a very minor bug, I decided that I needed a treat. And a treat it was. Ms Maslin is right about something else, too: The Lighthouse is better than The Murder Room. So, if you've been dithering, dither no more.

So, is there an unread Donna Leon lying around somewhere?