Speedy Death by Gladys Mitchell
An off the rails take on the country house mystery - and i loved every minute of it
Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers!
This is a crazy book (complimentary) and I couldn’t possibly do the plot justice without revealing major spoilers throughout. You’ve been warned.
Mrs. Bradley, amateur detective and professional psychoanalyst, appeared in sixty-five (!) novels written by Gladys Mitchell, the first of which is 1929’s Speedy Death.
A brief (ha) summary of the plot: A group of guests have gathered at the home of Alaistair Bing to celebrate his birthday. They include his daughter Eleanor, who lives with him and is the definition of an uptight spinster (I know), his medical student son Garde, Garde’s flighty fiancée Dorothy, family friend Mr. Carstairs, Garde’s friend Bertie (also in love with Dorothy), renowned explorer Mr. Mountjoy and Mrs. Bradley. It is hinted that Mrs. Bradley got Garde out of some (girl) trouble and has been invited to the house as a kind of thank you.
If that sounds like a pretty standard setup for a Golden Age detective novel, just give it a sec. Things are about to go off the rails. In short order, Mountjoy is discovered drowned in the bath, it is revealed that Mountjoy was semi-secretly engaged to Eleanor and that Mountjoy is actually a woman who has been living as a man. Pretty much everyone had the opportunity to murder Mountjoy, as the time of death coincides with when they were all dressing for dinner and the bathroom window was accessible from the adjoining balcony.
Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Carstairs and Bertie team up in an oddly endearing trio of investigators and confidantes, bouncing ideas off each other throughout. This also narrows down the list of suspects considerably, assuming none of them is guilty, leaving only the Bings and Dorothy as possible killers.
Speedy Death doesn’t contain plot twists in the traditional mystery sense; rather the plot just keeps getting wilder and wilder. Repressed and rigid, Eleanor is the most likely suspect, and she is, in fact, the culprit. Mrs. Bradley figures this out early on based on her analysis of the psychology of the killer and she delights in dropping hints to the police and family, seemingly unconcerned that a killer is on the loose. Eleanor’s guilt is revealed fairly early on to the reader as well, and we spend some time witnessing Eleanor’s further descent into madness and its repercussions.
Eleanor eventually makes an attempt on Dorothy’s life by sneaking into her room in the dead of night and bashing her in the head with a poker (Mrs. Bradley has anticipated this and substituted a dummy in the bed). Then an attempt is made on Eleanor’s life. This is the only true plot twist in the story, as it casts doubt on Eleanor’s guilt. It was actually Bertie who tries to kill Eleanor in revenge for the attempt on Dorothy’s life (everyone keeping up so far?). Mitchell cleverly plants the clue that Bertie is responsible when Eleanor’s body is discovered, seemingly drowned in the bath. After a Herculean effort by her brother, Eleanor is revived:
At this point when Eleanor, by deciding to return to life, had somewhat alienated public interest, Bertie Philipson created a diversion by suddenly falling prone across her body in a dead faint.
Bertie confesses to Mrs. Bradley but never faces repercussions because everyone low key thinks Eleanor is the worst and kind of deserved it. It’s nuts, but we’re not done yet. Eleanor then makes an attempt on the life of Pamela, a young girl who is forced to spend the night due to a storm. This attempt is again anticipated by Mrs. Bradley and witnessed by Carstairs and Bertie and we are finally given Mrs. Bradley’s perspective on the case:
“But—but damn it!” cried Carstairs. “She’s—she’s dangerous.”
“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Bradley answered. “But she’s only dangerous when anybody takes a liking for Bertie Philipson. Even Mountjoy was safe until Bertie arrived, I fancy, but Eleanor’s motives in that case must have been mixed. She wanted Bertie. She also discovered that Mountjoy was a woman. The two things together may have unbalanced her mind as neither of them separately would have done. Then she attempted Dorothy Clark’s life when she discovered Bertie’s infatuation for Dorothy. Now tonight Bertie addresses this child Pamela in carelessly affectionate terms, therefore Eleanor determines to annihilate Pamela. And so it will go until she gets herself hanged for murder. It’s an awful—an impossible situation! Still,” she added, with her horrid cackle, “we must hope for the best.”
Mrs. Bradley gives Eleanor a drug to help her sleep and locks her in her bedroom. But — are you ready for this? — Eleanor is found dead in the bath the following morning and Mrs. Bradley is arrested for her murder. Yep, this book includes a trial in which our heroine is thoroughly amused to be in the dock (she gets off).
If the plot occasionally beggars belief, it’s easy to see why Mitchell continued to write (so many!) Mrs. Bradley mysteries. She is a fascinating protagonist, sharp, shrewd and somewhat amoral. She enjoys playing with people, withholding information and teasing it endlessly. She is perfectly capable of taking matters into her own hands, not for justice, but to prevent others from doing the same. When it is revealed at the end of the novel that she did kill Eleanor, it’s chilling because she is so pleased with herself for having done so.
Mrs. Bradley cackled delightedly. “Yes,” she continued. “I did not, in the everyday, newspaper, pot-house sense of the word murder Eleanor Bing. I merely erased her, as it were, from an otherwise fair page of the Bing family chronicle.”
Her physical appearance matches her outlook: she is repeatedly described as reptilian or birdlike.
Mrs. Bradley smiled her reptilian smile. Carstairs had seen boa constrictors at the Zoological Gardens with the same expression on their wide, thin mouths, and he shuddered involuntarily at the recollection of it.
But my favorite description of her comes from Bertie early in the novel: “Little, old, shriveled, clever, sarcastic sort of dame. Would have been smelt out as a witch in a less tolerant age. I believe she is one.”
Further Reading
There are dozens and dozens of Mrs. Bradley books, should this crazy summary intrigue you enough to explore them. If you prefer your Mrs. Bradley a bit more telegenic, the beautiful and glamorous Diana Rigg played her in a five-episode series that originally aired in the 1990s.
Read with me
I’ll be taking a short vacation and won’t publish next week. I’ll be back in two weeks to kick off my summer murder series with “The Murder on the Golf Links” by M. McDonnell Bodkin.