Death and the Pleasant Voices, Mary Fitt, Dover, $4.50
(out of print, check for used copies at our ABE store).
Though Mary Fitt apparently wrote 30 mysteries, this is the only title generally available, and it's a shame, because
it's a delight. Written in 1946, it utilizes many of the conventions of the time, while at the same time totally ignoring
others. She has no detective or all knowing police inspector to guide the reader; you're left as clueless as the main character
to puzzle your own way through the story. Though it's a definite classic British country house mystery, it has much of the
psychological underpinning and shading that Josephine Tey brought to her work, and the plot is a wonder.
Hapless Jake Seaborne, caught in a storm, takes refuge in a great house he stumbles across. When he walks into a room full of people, all conversation stops as everyone stares at him in horrified fascination. Jake is unsure what's going on until someone kindly takes him aside and explains that they are awaiting the man who has inherited the house - a man known to none of them - and everyone had thought that he was the mysterious Hugo Ullstone. When Hugo does show up, a man of Indian extraction and thus more "other" than he would even ordinarily have been, Fitt deftly sets up a story where judging anything by its appearance is a complete mistake.
Jake becomes completely drawn into the life of the house, and begged by a friend of the family to keep an eye on things for him (the friend conveniently has business in London), Jake stays on and learns about the twins, Ursula and Jim, who were to have inherited; the cousin, Evelyn, who had come to nurse Ursula, Jim and Hugo's dying father; the older and obligatory Aunt and Uncle; and an admirer and hanger-on of Ursula's, Hilary Parmoor. The plot, of course, thickens when one of their number is murdered. Willy nilly, practically every member of the household takes Jake aside and into their confidence, except for the manly, violent and selfish Jim.
The detailing of the characters and the setting, and the fiendishness of the plot make the reader almost as likely as Jake himself to fall into the author's little traps, and in a very modern style, the traps are not ones of plot, but of character. When the story is satisfactorily resolved, the conclusion has been so deftly laid in place that it seems inevitable - and he revelations it contains, while terrible, are more in the golden age fashion - they leave every surviving character a little better off. If you have any affection for the English country house mystery, this is a book well worth seeking out, as I've rarely seen it better executed.
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