Nicholas Blake : Thou Shell of Death, 1936

 

 

Thou Shell of Death is the second novel by Nicholas Blake with his regular character Nigel Strangeways. And it is a small masterpiece. Dating back to 1936, it is one of those novels that remain impressed, not only for the plot, very melodramatic, as the protagonist also says, but also for how it was written.

WARNING: SPOILERS !

Fergus O’Brien was an ace of the English air force during the war, and then was the protagonist of enterprises as amazing as they were reckless. Having retired to private life, one day he begins to receive threatening letters that threaten his life. So it ends up that Nigel is asked by his uncle John Strangeways, Advisor to the High Commissioner of Police, to go and investigate at Fergus’ house.

Immediately an understanding is created with the aviator, and Nigel from some of the man’s “expressions”, begins to suspect that deep down, something in the threats is to be taken with caution.

Nine people are in the house on December 25, when Fergus, fearing for his life, tells Nigel that instead of sleeping in his room, he will sneak away at night to the shack where he works on a secret project, and where he has some personal effects. Nigel will have to watch over him so that nothing happens to him, but that very night both he and Bellamy, the butler and former steward of Fergus are drugged and fall into a deep sleep. When Nigel wakes up, Fergus has gone to the shack but approaching it, preceded by the financier Edward Cavendish, one of the guests, he does not perceive any presence inside it. Outside in the snow there is a series of footprints that leads there. Having managed to get inside, they discover the body of Fergus, killed by a gunshot.

The investigations soon begin. First of all, we need to understand how the murderer and the victim entered the shack, leaving only one set of footprints that lead there: even considering that the victim or the murderer had arrived at the shack first, we would then need to explain how the murderer got out. We are faced with an impossible crime, no more, no less. But Blake is not interested in focusing on the impossibility as the reason for the novel and therefore explaining how the murderer managed to get out, it is only one of the characteristics, not the characteristic, of the novel. And to underline how for the author, impossibility is not a basic note of the plot, he has his protagonist immediately explain how he thinks he could have gone.

There are, however, other interesting things:

Nigel who enters the shack for the second time (the first time, Fergus was still alive) no longer finds a photograph that was there the first time; furthermore, the dead man's shoes, which were not there at Bellamy's first reconnaissance after finding the body, mysteriously appear. But the even more interesting thing, which is realized later, is that in that shack, on that holy night, not only the victim and the murderer entered, but also a third person, looking for a ticket, which is then found by Bellamy. The discovery of the note will cause Bellamy to be attacked with a poker that will seriously injure him, but then there will be the second crime, with a rather original method: another of the guests, the ambiguous Cyril Knott-Sloman, manager of a nightclub and former military staff officer, who supplements his income by blackmailing, in agreement with Fergus' lover, Lucilla Thrale, is killed in his bedroom with cyanide: the murderer, knowing his tendency to break nuts with his jaw, has sawed one, extracted the kernel, filed the shell from the inside, glued the two halves together and finally made a tiny hole using a syringe with a needle and injected the cyanide.

Nigel, explaining the first crime, directs the investigation towards a character. But to connect this character to a phantom will that cannot be found, to the attack on Bellamy and to the murder of Knott-Sloman, it takes a lot. And so, since there is no news about Fergus' life, he was a person without a past, Nigel decides to go to Ireland, where John Fear lived, a dear friend of his on patrol, whom he had tried to protect several times in flight, unfortunately unable to avoid his being killed. And it is precisely from Fear's entourage, that is, from the nanny who had raised John and Judith Fear, that he will learn everything about the tragedy that had seen as protagonists Judith Fear, Edward Cavendish and Jack Lambert, the assistant gardener of the Fear house, recommended by a Viscount (whose natural son it was said he was). And when it is ascertained that Jack and Fergus were the same person, Inspector Blount of Scotland Yard will believe he has the elements to accuse Edward of murder. And besides, his escape and his death on the plane will confirm his guilt, and the end of the case.

However, although Edward had a significant part in the first murder, he was not the murderer of Fergus, even if he was afraid of being accused of it, and it will be up to Nigel to reconstruct the tragedy of the Fear house, place the figure of Edward in the story, and explain the death of Fergus and that of Knott-Sloman, framing the real murderer.

THE END OF SPOILERS

Superbly written, Thou Shell of Death together with The Beast Must Die, can be said to form a pair of masterpiece novels.

First of all, what is striking about this novel is how it was conceived and structured: differently from the canonical ending in which the detective gathers everyone and hands over the murderer after a reconstruction of the events (in the manner of Poirot), here Nigel gives the reader and those who assist him, namely Superintendent Breakley and the Scotland Yard Inspector Blount who intervenes at a later time, the elements and his solutions, “in progress”, together with dazzling psychological splits of the events and the characters who experience them: for example, he explains Fergus's temerity during the war, before and after the death of Judith and John, as a sort of venting and also the attempt to die several times.

The melodramatic side of the story, which in a certain sense reveals the filiation first of all from Conan Doyle, for how a story of the past explains one of the present, and how the investigation into it also leads to the identification of the murderer, explaining a sort of posthumous revenge, is the linchpin of the entire story, which for pathos and yearnings, is very close to other cornerstones of the English tradition, such as Wutherings Heights by Emily Bronte. 

Another characterizing element of the novel is the very refined writing, of an Oxford academic, and the frequent digressions and literary citations (also present in works of other Oxford scholars versed in classic mystery such as Innes or Crispin): an example (but there are many) is the one present in the final explanation of Nigel to his uncle and in front of his former professor Philip Starling, also a character in the tragedy. Thou Shell of Death , would seem to be linked to the death of Knott-Sloman (Shell of Death would seem to be connected to the weapon of the second murder): in reality, it is connected to the citation of a play by Cyril Tourneur The Revenger's Tragedy, later attributed to Thomas Middleton.

In the final chapter, the filiation of the tragedy of Fergus and Judith Fear from that of Vindice and Castizia is explained:

‘“And now methinks I could e’en

chide myself

For doating on her beauty, though her death

Shall be revenged after no common action.

In essence, The Revenger's Tragedy, follows exactly or almost exactly the Tragedy of Fergus O’Brien and Judith Fear. The murderer had noticed it and had used some phases of its plot, as the basis of the murderous action in the shack.

In another passage taken from Middleton’s drama, it is explained what the Shell of Death is: not the shell of (nut) of death that it might seem at first sight, but the skull that the protagonist of the tragedy has in his hand (that of his lover, killed by the Duke):

'“My study's ornament, thou shell of death,

Once the bright face of my betrothed lady. ...

Noteworthy is how the photo with Judith that was in the shack and that disappears when Nigel enters the second time and finds Fergus dead, Fergus the first time had called her "The ornament of my study". It is therefore clear the assimilation of Judith to the photo, and to the skull, Shell of Death. And so it is as if the title of the novel was "You, Judith Fear". Beyond the parallelism, which already reveals the literary passion of the author, Cecil Day Lewis, "Laureate-Poet" in England (the highest recognition for a poet in England), there are countless other literary references present in the novel.

In chap. 2, two lines from Coleridge's Ancient Mariner are reported:

'He prayeth best who loveth best.

All things both great and small.

In chap. 3 another poetic contribution is reported:

Nigel, listening, reflected that he was probably hearing the last splendour of an art whose delicate tones could not live long against the ubiquitous bawling of the loudspeaker. He muttered to himself:

‘Who killed Cock Robin?’

‘I,’ said John Reith,

‘Will contribute to a wreath.

I killed Cock Robin.’

Who Killed Cock Robin is a traditional nursery rhyme for children. The line quoted by Nigel is a transformation of the nursery rhyme-

In chap. VIII the line is reported:

Non sum qualis eram (..bonae sub regno Cynarae) which probably refers to the poet Ernest Dowson.

In chap. XI, Starling reports the line Doth the silkworm expend her yellow labours. Doth is an archaic form of does and therefore the question mark is missing from the English text, which I read as a full stop. Here the Italian translation goes beyond the English text: in fact, it translates the original line from which the novel’s quote is taken: Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours For thee?, taken from The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (later attributed to Thomas Mindleton: in 1936, the hypothesis of the attribution to Mindleton had already been advanced but had not yet been accepted by everyone).

In chap. XII, the line is reported: Et ego in Arcadia vixi, which probably refers to the painting by Poussen.

In chap. XIV, Nigel is chasing the alleged murderer in a car that is slower than the one the pursued is driving and therefore must be driven recklessly. Nigel bounces from one side of the car to the other, especially on the bends in the road and he is reminded of the serpent, one of the musical instruments that Thomas Hardy (author of Far from the Madding Crowd), a nineteenth-century British writer, was so fond of. 

“There is a place provided in hell

To sit upon a serpent’s knee,”

“One of those twisted brass instruments that Thomas Hardy liked: a serpent.”

The following couplet is taken from a famous English Christmas carol, A Dialogue Between Dives and Lazarus. In essence it is the story of Lazarus who is a poor man who goes to knock on the door of the rich where a party is being held and who is chased away. When he goes to Heaven, he is told: There's a place in Heaven prepared for thee, To sit upon an Angel's knee. Instead, when rich people die they are told: There is a place provided in hell To sit upon a serpent’s knee.Finally, in the last chapter there are the poetic references I mentioned before.

The last thing to note is Nigel's evolution. While in A Question of Proof, which is his debut, Nigel is a strange guy who sleeps under many blankets and drinks tea all the time, here in the second novel he appears different, more self-confident, less awkward and above all less strange. This evolution will also be that of Georgia Cavendish, one of O'Brien's guests, who had been her lover, an adventuress who has the characteristics... "having a monkey face and walking around with a parrot on her shoulder", with whom Nigel falls in love, who will evolve in the following novels, being the main character of a novel unpublished in Italy, The Smiler with the Knife, 1939.

Pietro De Palma