From The Turn of the Screw to Strangers on a Train #SixDegrees

As a starting point for a chain of connections #sixdegrees The Turn of the Screw has everything. Is it a mystery story or a study in overwrought and morbid psychology? There’s gothic horror, ghosts and governesses. Jane Eyre and Murdoch’s The Unicorn come to mind. It starts on Christmas Eve; there are strange children, one of whom has, for some unnamed reason, been expelled from school. The villain of 101 Dalmations – Cruella de Vil was expelled for drinking ink. Plenty of books with odd and sinister children. Among them, William Trevor’s wonderful novel set in a fictional seaside town in Dorset, The Children of Dynmouth.  And in another and actual seaside town we have Graham Greene’s teenage mobster in Brighton Rock. And so on.

But I’m choosing the point of connection with the setting: an isolated and remote country house. The classic setting for a classic detective story. So many to choose from but An English Murder (1951) is one of the best

An English Murder (1951)

Cyril Hare’s novel has all the right elements – an old and distinguished family gathering for Christmas. An outsider in the form of the scholar and concentration camp survivor is there to research the family history. One of the party is the Right Honourable Sir Julius Warbeck, M.P. Chancellor of the Exchequer “in the most advanced socialist government of Western Europe” and he conveniently travels with his own Scotland Yard Special Branch officer. Not a detective but he’ll do in a pinch.

The guests arrive for Christmas and so does the snow. Soon they are isolated and snowbound

the telephone was dead. The wireless reported at nine o’clock that lines were down all over the country. We are completely cut off.

And the poisonings begin.

Among the delicious elements of the novel are the little bits of politics that pop up in the dialogue. This is post-war England and social change is in the air.  Warbeck Hall is reputed to be the oldest inhabited house in Markshire. Lord Warbeck is dying.  The victim is the heir to the estate and the leader of a fringe fascist party.  Everyone seems to have a motive for wanting to see him dead.

The ousider is Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwink, Ph.D. of Heidelberg, Hon.D.Litt. of Oxford, sometime Professor of Modern History in the University of Prague, corresponding member of half a dozen learned societies from Leyden to Chicago. He is the pretext for all kinds of wry commentary on the peculiarities of the English language and the English.  Bottwink is there to research the family papers concerning the development of the British Constitution in the 18th century

Bottwink—preferred the eighteenth century.

With a regretful sigh, he bade farewell to the age of reason and preceded the sergeant down the narrow stone stairway.

And there’s a key player in the form of a perfect butler.

The butler, the English countryside of the landed gentry and a family disgraced by collaboration with the Nazis – bring to mind The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro to mind – the Booker prize winner that was made into a memorable film with Anthony Hopkins as Stephens, the butler. Instead I’m picking Christmas and with an even older favorite – Great Expectations (Charles Dickens 1860)

Great Expectations (1860)

After his terrifying encounter with the convict on the marshes,  Pip has to endure a Christmas dinner with the relatives.

Pip, who is squeezed in at an acute angle of the table has the Pumblechookian elbow in his eye, is not allowed to speak, not that he wants to. He is fed the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain.

He is in an agony of  guilt at his theft of food for the convect and is subjected to the moral goading of the company who take the opportunity of the festive season to subject Pip to their moral sanctimony.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe Gargery in an act of silent love and fellow feeling silently ladles more gravy on to his plate..  Pip grips the table leg dreading the moment of the discovery of the disappearance of  the beautiful round compact pork pie.

The opening chapters of Great Expectations make for the best novel ever. And the first setting is the raw, bleak, windblown marshes of the estuary.

The Nine Tailors (1934)

And marshes leads to my next book  The Nine Tailors (Dorothy L. Sayers 1934) starts on a New Year’s Eve when Lord Peter Wimsey is stranded in the marshes in a Fenland village.

This provides an opportunity to help the men of the village change-ring in the new year with the nine-hour Kent Treble Bob Major.

It ends the following Christmas as he unravels the last pieces of a complicated murder plot involving a war deserter,  a dishonest butler, an emerald necklace, the bigamy, murder and just deserts. The title The Nine Tailors is a reference to a bellringing and of course Wimsey knows all about it. The bells are an integral component of the story and that brings me to my next book.

The Bell (1958)

The Bell by Iris Murdoch is about the search for spiritual meaning in a modern world. Imber Court is a secluded Anglican community separated from an abbey by a lake. Various characters are assembled for a spiritual retreat and the usual Murdochian muddles begin. There’s a legend that the abbey bell flew from the tower and into the lake after a nun broke her vows. There’s a plan afoot to forge a new bell. Meanwhile one of the young men at the retreat – Toby – finds what he thinks is a bell in the lake.

The Bell is another example of Murdoch’s spellbinding ability to weave a tale that is full of surprises.

It opens with:

Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason

The Bell was probably the first contemporary adult novel that I read by choice and it made an impression. It introduced me to the word rebarbative and to a fictional world of educated sophisticated people who got themselves into all kinds of emotional tangles and catastrophes.  And I remember something symbolic about a Red Admiral butterfly. It’s high time I gave it another read.

Early in the novel Dora is on the train to Gloucestershire with it turns our strangers heading for the same destination.

Strangers on a Train (1950)

'Guy! I just thought. Oh, yes! You murder my father and I'll murder Miriam. The police will never find us. We're strangers, we met on a train and nobody knows we're friends. It's perfect.

A tennis playing architect – Guy Haines – wants a divorce so he can marry the woman he loves. He meets psychopath Bruno Antony on a train who introduces the notion of a perfect murder scheme.

Inexorably, Guy is drawn into the plot and the downhill spiral gathers speed.

This was Patricia Highsmith’s first novel (1950) and the first of many unsettling psychological thrillers.

Alfred Hitchcock recognized its value and managed to buy the movie rights for a mere $7,500. His film grossed $7million.

So that’s it. From Henry James to Patricia Highsmith in five good books. So many missed opportunities on the journey.

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