Obscurity and obfuscation

A London particular, or peasouper

London Particular
by Christianna Brand.
[Also published as Fog of Doubt,
Inspector Cockrill No 5.]
Introduced by P D James.
Pandora Women Crime Writers, Pandora Press, 1988 (1952).

‘In the long, white, firelit drawing-room, the victim bowed and smiled and reeled off his devoirs before the serious work of the evening should begin; within the radius of one fog-bound mile were these seven people, one of whom was very shortly going to murder him.’
— Chapter Four.

In the decades before the first Clean Air Act of 1956 proved pivotal, London’s notorious smogs – a combination of fogs due to the capital’s low lying situation and polluting smoke from household fires and industry – were inconvenient, unpleasant and, especially during the Great Smog of December 1952, very deadly.

Christianna Brand’s crime fiction, set in London’s Maida Vale late one November in the early 1950s, plays on one such smog providing the kind of obscurity that made murder possible, and further allowed suspects the occasion to obfuscate for what they saw as valid reasons.

But who would want to murder a middle-aged visitor from Geneva and, as a layman, how was the stranger able to gasp out in his dying breaths that he had been hit with ‘a mastoid mallet’? It will take a retired police inspector all his experience to approach the truth while severely testing his loyalty to old family friends.

London smog, 1947: Anthony Linck, Hans Wild

London Particular opens with a pair from the London Welsh community, Rosie Evans and Dr Edwin (‘Tedward’) Edwards, edging slowly through a peasouper in his car towards Rosie’s brother’s house, from which a mysterious telephone call from the murder victim has apparently been made. When they eventually get there, around 9.30 in the evening, Raoul Vernet is indeed found dead; and then the whole household becomes somehow implicated as retired Inspector Cockrill and his former junior Inspector Charlesworth try to penetrate the figurative murk that soon descends around the committing of the crime.

Who are the seven people in the frame? Surely not the seemingly ditzy Rosie who took the call, or Tedward who drove her to the house from his surgery? And what about Rosie’s brother Dr Thomas Evans, who seems to have a reason for killing Monsieur Vernet? Should we rule out Thomas’s wife Matilda who was putting the baby to bed at the time, or dotty old Mrs Evans from upstairs who is arthritic, or Melissa from the basement flat who says she was out in the fog with her boyfriend Stanislas at the time? And where does Rosie’s revolutionary boyfriend Damien figure in the case?

This is such a clever, convincing and even at times humorous murder mystery penned by Brand. We’re presented with lots of opportunities to deduce possible motivations, opportunities and means by which each individual could have ‘done it’, with suspicion transferred from one to another of the seven and back again. And yet, after all the investigations and trial scenes, the scenario is patently obvious right from the start in Chapter One – if only we were only able to interpret it right.

London smog 1952

Unlike some Golden Age crime fiction I’ve read, here I got quite invested in the characters, all of whom came over as distinctive and occasionally idiosyncratic. Brand describes them with humour and some fondness but nevertheless remains critical. It turns out that all indeed have different, personal reasons for dissembling, but eventually truth will out. Above all, I found it easy to suspend disbelief, whether in the patient sleuthing, the interviews or the trial scenes, first in the magistrates court and then at the Old Bailey, where tragedy and comedy seamlessly segue and alternate.

In her introduction to this edition fellow crime writer P D James tells us that Brand declared London Particular “her favourite among her novels” and proceeds to list the author’s virtues: “a zest and liveliness which are typical of the writer herself and characters who are observed with an affectionate but unsentimental eye.” (Curiously her generous tribute didn’t stop James misspelling Matilda as “Mathilda” and “shrewd, irascible Kentish detective” Cockrill as “Cockerel”.)

Finally, I return to the title Brand chose for the mystery which, perhaps understandably, was sometimes reissued as Fog of Doubt. ‘London particular’ was an alternative name for the capital’s poisonous yellow peasouper, but I see that ‘particular’ was also slang for ‘a mistress’, which is appropriate in considering certain actors’ motivations; also we know it was the particulate matter from coal fires that were so deadly in London’s smogs. And, as we discover there’ll be more than one deceased, of course death is very much the name of the game.

Smogbound London in the famous peasouper of December 1952.

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Cité du Livre and Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-en-Provence. © C A Lovegrove.

Bibliocity thread: for this continuing meme I shall be including reviews of books which contain either “city/cities” or the actual name of a city in the title (eg The Last Days of New Paris or Lyra’s Oxford).

Bookforager’s Picture Prompt Book Bingo, 2024: https://wp.me/p7GrCV-1nN

London Particular is represented by the clouds, No 16 in Mayri’s Picture Prompt Book Bingo, which I’m interpreting as the smog created by atmospheric inversion and pollution.