The characters were so well drawn, and they always offered me a question to ponder. Often the story was quiet, but it was always engaging. There was little physical evidence, little witness evidence, but a careful, methodical investigation began, and in time the dead man was identified, his life examined, and suspects identified. A detective without the gimmicks, or idiosyncracies of many of his contemporaries, but with a great deal of intelligence and charm, I soon suspected that his creator was a little in love with him … quite understandably … The investigation fell to Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard. And rising slant-wise from the grey tweed of his coat was a little silver thing that winked wickedly in the baleful light.Īn audacious murder, in the middle of a queue of people, all pressing forward, eager to see the final performance of popular musical. In the clear white light of the naked electric in the roof, a man’s body, left alone by the instinctive withdrawal of the others, lay revealed in every detail. A woman shrieked three times horribly and the pushing, heaving queue froze suddenly to immobility. He was about to bend over the limp heap when he stopped as if stung and recoiled hastily. But no one did and so a man with more social instinct or more self-importance than the rest moved forward to help the collapsed one.
Minding one’s own business in a crowd today is as much an instinct of self-preservation as a chameleon’s versatility. It was beautifully written and it was clear that Josephine Tey, already a successful playwright, knew and loved the world she was writing about. And that she understood the importance of the big picture, of the small things, and of the psychology of her characters.Īnd in the very first chapter there was the crime. A wonderful opening pulled me straight into the 1920s.
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