Three by Tey: Inspector Grant at Work

Josephine Tey: Four Five and Six by Tey (1959)

    The Singing Sands (1952, published posthumously). Inspector Alan Grant convalesces, at his cousin Laura’s home in Scotland, from a severe case of claustrophobia. As he detrains, he comes upon a dead man in an adjoining compartment, and subconsciously picks up his newspaper. The dead man has scribbled a verse about the Singing Sands which catches Grant’s attention; and that’s the beginning of a nicely convoluted investigation into an almost perfect murder.

     Along the way we learn a good deal about fishing, Scottish legends, explorers, Grant’s childhood, megalomania, and assorted other bits and pieces. Tey allows herself room for digressions that add to character and ambience, and refer the reader to what were then current events, and current notions of British nationhood. She also delivers herself of definite opinions on the current state of civilisation, usually inserted into the remarkably civilised conversations between her characters. The result is a novel threaded onto a crime investigation, and a very satisfying one. ***

 

Young and Innocent is based on A Shilling for Candles. Available on YouTube.

     A Shilling fo Candles (1936) Christine Clay, a famous film star who has worked her way up from a factory girl,  turns up drowned on a beach in Kent. Grant is called in because a couple of small details and an implausible alibi flummox the local police, and Grant and Williams, too, when they take over. A couple of well-done plot twists extend the tale to novel length. This is Tey’s second Grant and fourth novel: she manages to insert the digressive illuminations of character and ambience that make her books such a pleasure to read. The title refers to a phrase in Clay’s will (which also drags a monstrous red herring across the trail). Well done. ***

     The Daughter of Time (1951) Grant lies in hospital waiting for his broken leg to heal. He’s bored. Very bored. His friend Marta Hallard suggests that he work on an unsolved mystery. A few chance remarks about Richard III and the two princes in the Tower stir his interest in a portrait of the king. The face does not, in Grant (and Williams’s) estimation belong to the kind of man who would murder two nephews. With the help of Brent Carradine, a nice young American that Hallard sends to help out (he’s besotted with one of the actresses in her current play), Grant resolves the puzzle to his satisfaction: Richard III did not arrange for the murder of the two princes; Henry VII did. How he arrives at this conclusion is beautifully told. That it’s found to be a widely held opinion doesn’t detract from Grant’s success.

     The opening scenes allow Tey to give a few neat observations on hospital care, fashionable novels, the problems of boredom, the “tandypandy” of popular notions of history, etc. Tandypandy refers to an historical legend that completely contradicts the known facts. The Canadian “freedom convoy”, trumpism in the USA (and elsewhere), and the rise of ultra-nationalist far-right groups everywhere, show that tandypandy can have very nasty consequences.

     A beautifully written novel. ****

 

Footnote: Many of the radio and TV dramas and audiobooks of Tey's novels are available on YouTube.