This is one of my three favorite Edmund Crispin mysteries, along with The Long Divorce and Buried for Pleasure, although most experts would cite The Moving Toyshop as his best known. I like The Moving Toyshop but I think Crispin’s best novels are the ones where Fen breaks free from his home turf.
The book opens in a pub, where a reporter approaches Fen and his neighbor and lunch companion, the Major. The reporter is writing an instabook about the gruesome murder that took place locally six weeks previously, just before Fen arrived for a sabbatical where he plans to write a book of his own about some singularly boring British authors1. In this homicide, a local psychopath who systematically tortured animals was killed, dismembered, and his severed head was used to frighten the widow of a factory farmer who continued the poor stewardship of the animals in her charge. A mentally-disturbed animal sympathizer has been arrested and placed in care for the murder. Case closed. The instabook author is not questioning the solution, but he feels like his book is missing a little je ne sais quoi; so he is coming to the scene of the crime to gather additional atmosphere for his book.
And then an old barfly by the fire speaks up and says that the arrested man could not have done the murder because the old man saw him there, in the yard outside the pub, at the time that the murder was committed. And then begins a “house that jack built” – the old man refers them to the pub owner – a man who decided he didn’t like working and so spends his entire day in a bed upstairs while his wife runs the pub, happy not to have his interference, and giving him a perfect view of the place where the barfly said he saw the arrested man. The pub owner says his view that day was blocked by a pantechnicon2 that was unfortunately parked in his way, and refers them to the vicar, who happened to be passing at the time. They interrupt the vicar in socially torturing a “man from SWEB” who is investigating a malfunctioning power line nearby, and the vicar refers them a local pig farmer.3 The pig farmer, however, categorically denies everything the old man said: the murderer was definitely not in the pub yard at the time that the murder was committed.
This journey draws Fen’s attention to this murder that he has been resisting getting involved in since it was apparently solved and because it would interfere with his procrastination of the writing he is supposed to be doing. He digs up the appropriately old newspapers and reads the articles about the murder and learns that it was ear-witnessed by a teenaged girl who happened to be passing the field where the murder occurred (on the other side of a high hedge). The murder victim, in fact, stumbled out onto the road in front of the girl and died there on the road in front of her while she is mentally trying to remember her first aid training and bring herself to the sticking point to perform mouth-to-mouth. She rushed home and spilled the story to her parents who, furious because she is late and that is making them late for an evening out, refuse to listen. And so the body is not found until the next day, after it had been cut into pieces. The more Fen learns, the more curious he becomes, and the less likely to work on his book.
And then a second murder occurs, the victim partially dissected: one arm was cut completely off, the head was removed, and a second arm had started to be sawn off before the murderer was interrupted by a loud and aggressive dog and retreated with the head and the body’s clothes. The head is later rediscovered somewhere else most unexpectedly.
Do they have the right murderer in custody? Why did the head of the second victim end up where it did? What is going on with the horror music composer who took a cottage locally? What is in the Rector’s attic? And who is the man from SWEB, really? Who stole the recovered head from the local police? And why was one arm removed? And does this have anything to do with the possibly accidental death of a woman who seemed to have made it her purpose in life to sleep with all of the married men in town? All these questions and more will be answered in the course of this book, absolutely hilariously. Every time I read this book, I burst out laughing, and I must have read it at least 20 times.
I was thinking this morning about why we read murder mysteries. I often say that they remind me of the kind of work I do, where I am trying to figure out what’s going on, look for clues, put them together in a way that helps me understand the bigger picture, and solve mysteries that allow people to take action and get results. Yawn.
But then, I was thinking this morning, about death and wondering if, perhaps, one reason that we read murder mysteries and true crime, is because the mystery we are trying to solve is the mystery of death. Not why do we die, why were we born, all of that – it’s less of a question and more of a feeling, of an angst, of knowing that someday we will, ourselves, die.
I also think of that scene in Heathers where Winona Rider is sitting in a funeral with her boyfriend, giggling at something he said, and she glances back over her shoulder and sees the victim’s little sister quietly weeping, and the seriousness, the finality of what has happened sinks in on her. Although the victim had been a jerk to her and teased her and socially tortured her, the little sister loved the victim and is sorry that they’re gone. Something changes in Winona’s character then…
Mysteries are rarely written to make you weep for the victim, they (the victims) are just a problem to be solved. That emotional distance is what makes mysteries enjoyable, acceptable, a safe escape from all that worries us.
It feels funny to be writing about death in a post about murder mysteries. Excuse me for being morbid, one of my cousins died recently and today was his celebration of life, and I can’t help but think how much emptier the world is without his presence. He is the type of person that we need more of in this world and, measured by his ruler, my contributions to the world are negligible. But they are what I have to offer, as small as they are, and I hope they contribute in their own small ways to a better place.
- Fen’s day job, as you may recall, is Oxford professor of English literature, a profession that people are strangely envious of in Crispin’s books. It is a running joke that Humbleby, a Scotland Yard detective, is strangely obsessed with and always trying to discuss literature with Fen; while Fen is obsessed with and always trying to discuss murder with Humbleby, which leads to some hilarious cross-talk, although that is in other books not this one. In this one, a local pig farmer’s widow gifts Fen a piglet’s head to make brawn with. Don’t ask me what brawn is – as a vegetarian, I don’t want to know, I’m going to assume that it’s some kind of head cheese or something. In fact, when the novel begins, Fen is returning home after picking up the head which the kind lady left wrapped up on her porch for him to fetch. This is an important part of the plot. ↩︎
- The furniture truck, not the espresso maker. ↩︎
- All of these detours become important later in the book when they come back to fit together and solve the mystery and apprehend a thief and a murderer. ↩︎
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