A review of The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman by Moray Dalton – 230416

One of Rupert Heath’s last acts before his untimely and tragic death was to prepare for the release of five more of Moray Dalton’s murder mysteries, an event I was eagerly anticipating and, if The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman, originally published in 1936, is anything to go by he has left a lasting and enjoyable legacy to followers of Dean Street Press. Moray Dalton, the nom de plume of Katherine Renoir, had always struck me as an interesting writer whose plots gave her readers food for thought over and above the usual whodunit and whydunit.

1936 was in retrospect a turning point in the fortunes of Europe, a time when for many the activities of the Nazis in central Europe and the fascists in Italy and Spain brought a sense of deep foreboding, while for others, scarred by the terrors and brutality of the First World War, vowed never to repeat the same mistake again. Many in Britain were fundamentally opposed to war, the support for the Peace Pledge Union being at its height, but even its politicians were beginning to realise that some form of rearmament might be prudent and some even that another pan-European war was inevitable.

In her plot Dalton reflects this schism in public opinion through two of her principal characters. The local vicar, John Clare, idolizes his son who won the Victoria Cross in the first conflict and died from injuries sustained during a gas attack. Rather like his namesake the romantic poet, devastated by the impact on a once peaceful countryside of mechanization, Clare will do anything to stop the world making the same mistake again.

Misanthropic recluse, Simon Killick, who also has a wartime tragedy which only emerges as the story proceeds, has devoted his later years to developing a poisonous gas that is so lethal that it will kill anyone inside nine seconds. He announces to Clare at their weekly chess game that he is about to sell the formula for the gas to foreign agents. He will not sell to the British because he blames them for what happened to his son.

Shortly afterwards Killick is found murdered, his head bashed in, hours after a stranger, later identified as Michael Constantine, is found in his death throes by a young boy, “Toby” Fleming, muttering enigmatically about a Kneeling woman before he dies. By the time the leads have gone cold, Hugh Collier, Dalton’s series detective from the Yard, this is his sixth outing, is called to solve two murders which ostensibly seem to be unrelated but are.

In a further twist, there are two more murders, two sons of a retired businessman by the name of Webber, who were poisoned after ingesting some tampered chocolates. “Toby” Fleming was also at the house at the time but while this is mere coincidence, there is a link with one of the earlier deaths.

Collier is an empathetic investigator in contrast to the local force but in the ledgers of investigative success, this is a thorny set of problems that he fails to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. He never identifies the killer of Constantine and the suspect he arrests for Killick’s murder is acquitted in a trial, the highlights of which make up the penultimate case. Clues include a brass rubbing (the kneeling woman) and an African grey parrot whose mimicry settles in Collier’s mind what really happened to Killick. At least he has the satisfaction of providing the local force with the clue that leads to the resolution of the Webber boys’ murders, even though it was not his case.

Collier is in danger of compromising his professionalism by getting dangerously romantically close to “Toby’s” mother. A single mother herself, Dalton’s portrayal of Mrs Fleming is interesting. By modern standards she is a terrible mother, leaving her son at the moment when he is vulnerable to attack because of the information he has, but she is painted in a sympathetic light, juggling her priorities and doing what she considers best. At heart she is the polar opposite of Lady Webber, an equally terrible mother whose sole concern is for herself.

The ending has a twist to it, raising the imponderable question of whether it is ever right to do a terrible thing in order to prevent an even greater tragedy. As ever Dalton gives much food for thought.

I am looking forward to reading the next and I hope Curtis Evans is successful in finding a publisher to reissue her other books. She is sadly underrated.