A review of Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth – 240228

In the twenty-fifth book in her Miss Silver series, originally published in 1953, Patricia Wentworth blends two familiar topics, an incipient romance between an impoverished relative used as a skivvy by her mean-spirited benefactress, Rosamond Maxwell, and a dashing all-action hero, Craig Lester, with a murder mystery, although the murders are more collateral damage than the key component of the mystery.

Two women have mysteriously vanished from a village that is close to an Air Ministry’s experimental station. There have been some information leaks and the bigwigs want to make sure that there is no connection to the data loss and the disappearances, call in the Yard in the form of Frank Abbott. Fortunately, he has one of his many relatives living in the neighbourhood and he can hunt around unobtrusively and unofficially. Maud Silver, too, has an old school friend living in the village and she is invited to assist using her almost supernatural facility to pick up local titbits and assess their relevance.

There is a distinct sense of wistfulness about the book. It is another post war novel in which the loss of the old ways of life is mourned and the modern ways of life are lamented. Miss Silver is seen as an anachronism as are those who attempt to maintain the old standards with their servants and rooms packed full of furniture. The motive behind the mystery is a fanatical desire to maintain the old ways of life that an established county family has enjoyed for centuries. This is certainly not a paean to progress or minimalism!

Lydia Crewe, the controlling and domineering woman who rules over her house and her friends with a rod of iron has more than a touch of Miss Havisham about her. She has never recovered from being jilted in love and now that her former fiancé, Henry Cunningham has returned to the village to write a book on etymology, she, ostensibly, makes a point of cutting him dead at every occasion in public. However, his skill in preparing etymological specimens for despatch abroad is put to an ingenious and nefarious end.

Rosamond, whose sense of entrapment and despair is epitomised by the dark wood in which she finds solace. She has accepted her role in life to protect her sister, Jenny, who had been seriously injured in a car accident. Despite her tender years, Jenny is an aspiring author and sends her derivative romantic guff complete with a photograph of her sister to a publisher, whose agent just happens to be Craig Lester who is immediately smitten by the image. Jenny’s literary attempts allow Wentworth to satirise the genre of romantic fiction. When, to Rosamond’s horror, Miss Crewe proposes sending Jenny to school almost immediately, Craig steps up to the plate, as all gentlemen do, by offering his hand in marriage to Rosamond so that he can whisk them both away to safety and to sunny uplands.

The crucial parts of the plot involve midnight perambulations. Jenny wanders about and discovers beads and a hand sticking out of some sacking, Miss Crewe flits from her house to the Cunninghams in the middle of the night and Miss Silver, having an intuitive belief that Lydia Cunningham is in danger wanders around at night to ensure that the culprit is unmasked. Her habit of being at the right place at the right time to hear the guilty unburden themselves of their secrets pays dividends, but I prefer my sleuth to use intuition and deduction rather than snoop around keyholes.

Mr Selby, about whom much is hinted, has a role to play in the goings on at Hazel Green, the data leakage is solved and is an attempt to stitch another member of the unfortunate Cunningham family, but when all is boiled down this is a plot inspired by greed and where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

As ever, Wentworth deploys her mastery of the art of storytelling to good effect and while it is probably overlong and rabbits do seem suddenly to be pulled out of hats, it is entertaining enough.