I can’t remember now where I came across Clues to Christabel. Originally published in 1944 (and set in the 1930s), it and a handful of other novels by Mary Fitt have been recently re-issued by Moonstone Press, an independent publisher specialising in republishing vintage crime and detective fiction. (Fortunately, as second-hand copies of most of Fitt’s novels are pricey.) Here is what they have to say about her work:
Her intellectual background produced elegantly written crime fiction with a strong sense of the literary and the overtones of Greek tragedy – dealing with love, loss, pride, the abuse of power and fraught relationships. But it is her method of upending the traditional format of whodunits that was unusual (perhaps unique) among Golden Age mystery writers. Fitt’s novels do not follow the traditional “crime-followed-by-resolution-through-deduction” pattern; although they start with a death, it might appear to be from natural causes or an accident or a suicide. Some are virtually devoid of any detection and have no detective to speak of — the mystery in Fitt’s books is not whodunit, but whether it was done, and if so, why it was done. How a character is formed by environment and connected chains of circumstances is the puzzle to be solved.
Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman. Born in 1897 and daughter of a brewer’s traveller, despite her humble beginnings and her sex, Freeman taught herself Ancient Greek, studied Classics at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she was appointed a lecturer and later received her Doctor of Letters, wrote twenty-nine mystery novels, was elected to the Detection Club and co-habited with her partner, Liliane Clopet, for a good thirty years. So, an impressive woman and an unusual approach to crime fiction, a difficult combination to resist.
(Portrait of Kathleen Freeman found on Wikipedia)
Clues for Christabel certainly falls into that category described as a whether or why dunnit rather than a whodunnit. The central character, Christabel Strange, has died of undulant fever (nowadays more commonly called brucellosis) a year before the novel begins. Only thirty-two, she was a very successful novelist; so successful that she was able to buy her ancestral home out of mortgage and allow the rest of her family to live there. In her Will she leaves the house to the family with the proviso that her friend Marcia Wentworth is permitted the use of one wing. She also bequeaths her diaries to her family, but Marcia is to write her biography. Alas, the family loathes Marcia and refuses to let her see the diaries or interview them about Christabel.
Not one to give up easily, Marcia assembles a group of people who knew Christabel at the family pile. The group includes Dr George Cardew, a childhood friend of Christabel’s, and is split between the family, headed by the manipulative and possibly mad Granny Strange, and Christabel’s more ‘bohemian’ friends. Hostility bubbles away and ends of course in murder.
The name Christabel conjures up Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem and while I wouldn’t say there is an overt connection between it and Clues to Christabel, it adds an atmospheric layer to the novel. The themes of a sort of vampirism or parasitism, and hatred returned for kindness, as well as something of Christabel’s character, do seem to be shared. Maybe there is also some repressed lesbianism?
If her depiction of her characters is pin-sharp, it’s Fitt’s structuring of her novel which distinguishes it from other crime novels of the time. Fitt shifts between omniscient, first-person and close third-person forms effortlessly, including entire sections narrated by one person and, near the end, Christabel’s stolen diary is reproduced. These shifts give us the sense of being presented with a range of ‘clues’ to the novel’s heart: the character of Christabel herself. What really happened to her, and why did she write a Will that frustrates everyone included within it? Eventually, the identity of the murderer is revealed but I don’t think it’s difficult to guess at all, because the real mystery is Christabel. You will have to draw your own conclusions from this clever but ultimately saddening novel.
(The other mystery is: what is a chippette box? The chemist shop issues Christabel’s pills in one. Even the OED can’t tell me what it is. Some sort of pulped wood? Cardboard?