A review of The Benevent Treasure by Patricia Wentworth – 240418

I am wearing a beige granddad collar tee shirt, a quarter zip black specked lambswool sweater, a pair of blue Levi 501s and moccasin slippers as I sit at the PC to compose this review. My apparel might seem irrelevant to what I have to say about The Benevent Treasure, the twenty-sixth in Wentworth’s long-running Miss Silver series, originally published in 1954, but its pages are full of detailed descriptions of what her characters are wearing. For fans of clothing from the Golden Age of detective fiction, and there are some, this might be manna from heaven but most readers will after a while regard it as tiresome padding.

As a prolific writer, Wentworth is prone to repeating passages throughout her books. If she quotes the rhyme about the Benevent Treasure once she repeats in extenso at least five times. At times her style seems to be like cut and paste for the pre word processor package era or, charitably, an attempt to ape the Homeric epic style with its repetitive epithets and set phrases which gave the narrator the opportunity to catch their thoughts before launching into the next section. I have noticed this tendency before but it struck me as too prevalent in this book not to comment on.

There are also some of Wentworth’s familiar plot lines in the story. There is a young woman who is on her own in life, who falls into the grasp of an evil, domineering old distant relative, and who comes within an inch of losing her life only to be rescued by a young man with whom she has fallen in love and marries. There is a family which has been split asunder by a quarrel – one of the three Benevent sisters having the audacity to marry someone tainted with trade, even though he is a cleric – and a contentious will which passes, upon the death of the eldest sister, Cara, the house of Underhill, the estate and the Benevent treasure, should its whereabouts be located, to the surviving relative of the estranged sister, Candida Sayle.

The book opens with a prologue in which the fifteen-year old Candida finds herself marooned on a cliff edge after going for a walk along the shoreline, having been assured by two old women, whose identities soon become clear, that the tide did not turn until later in the evening. She is rescued by a knight in shining armour, Stephen Eversley. Five years later, after the death of her guardian, Barbara, whom she had nursed, she receives an invitation from her grandmother’s sisters, Cara and Olivia Benevent, to stay with them at Underhill. As she is without anywhere to stay and low on resources, Candida accepts.

There is a very gothic feel about Underhill, a rambling old property with its secret passages, peculiar servants, the domineering Olivia and the doormat that is Cara and a hoard of family treasures, which is cursed, anyone touching it doomed to a violent death, and its whereabouts unknown. Cara is still distraught about the disappearance of the former secretary whom she intended to marry, supposedly having been dismissed by Olivia for stealing a jewel and some money. It is his disappearance that Miss Silver is brought in to investigate.

Inevitably, Cara dies a violent death, the position of the corpse suggests that she was murdered rather than simply fell down some steps while sleepwalking, some tell tale cobwebs quickly brushed off from her shoes confirming that, and the estate passes, to Olivia’s chagrin, to Cara. Fearing for Cara’s safety, Stephen Eversley asks Miss Silver to stay in the house with her, but Cara still goes missing. Olivia then tries to reassert her control over the house.

The avid knitter, empathetic and observant amateur sleuth that Miss Silver is soon realizes that the disappearance of the secretary, Cara’s death, and Candida’s disappearance are linked and, frankly the culprits are not to difficult to detect. However, despite her best efforts there is not enough evidence to convict the culprits, although some sort of natural justice prevails as they both dies, leaving Candida to live happily ever after. Oh, and the treasure is found.

For all Wentworth’s stylistic idiosyncrasies, she is a consummate storyteller and if you are prepared to go with the flow, you are in for an entertaining read. It is one of the better Miss Silver stories.