Murder in the Family (1936) by James Ronald

Last month, I reviewed James Ronald's Six Were to Die (1932) and a handful of his shorter works collected in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023), which is the first in a reportedly 14 volume reprint project by Moonstone Press – aiming to reprint all of Ronald's crime fiction over the next few years. The first volume is a sampling of Ronald's earliest, tentative steps as a writer of crime stories and pulp mysteries. So quality tended to vary between stories, but what difference a few years makes!

Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 2: Murder in the Family (2023) collects a novel, a novelette and a short story. I'm going to save the two shorter works for another time and concentrate on the titular novel.

Murder in the Family (1936), alternatively published as The Murder in Gay Ladies and Trial Without Jury, is a novel of crime rather than detection, but there's nothing pulpy about this deeply human, sometimes downright uneasy crime novel. This book is not what I expected from the man who wrote the Dr. Britling series and have never agreed with Jim so much when he wrote this about Murder in the Family, "something that's so far from the sort of thing I'd expect to like that I honestly don't know what to make of it." Not only because it's a character-driven crime novel, but, in a way, it can be read as a criticism of treating murder as a parlor game. Not my poison, yet I loved it.

Stephen Osborne, a man in his fifties, worked for the firm of Samuel Padbury & Son for more than two decades, "twenty-four years of clerical drudgery," but a small sacrifice in order to support a large, loving and everyday family – a family he started with Edith in the small, charming village of Gay Ladies. They have a handful of children, Dorothy, Ann, Michael, Marjory and Peter, who range from twelve years to twenty-three. This loving household is rounded out by the house help, Hannah Gale, who's dog loyal to the family and sporadic stays from the children's Uncle Simon Osborne. A "graceless reprobate" whose only legitimate source of income was occasionally churning out "a thriller for the publishers of twopenny bloods," but there was always a bed waiting for him at Gay Ladies when he needed to get away from his creditors. So with five children to feed, cloth, educate and helping out Uncle Simon every now and then, they had never been able to save money. And when, one day, Stephen is let go from his job with no prospect of finding a position elsewhere. Just like that, Stephen's dreams of a better life for his children are shattered.

There is, however, one option still open to Stephen, but not one he relishes. Stephen has a rich half-sister, Miss Octavia Osborne, who cut him off without a penny when he married Edith against her wishes ("that's why he's been slaving his heart out on an office stool..."). Uncle Simon explains to his niece Ann that with her Aunt Octavia "quarrels may slumber, but they never die," predicting she'll turn down her father ("her veins flow with vinegar"). The family is not exactly looking forward to a week-long visit from "acid-tongued, sniffy-nosed old megalomaniac" as she's only happy when she can fault in the children, criticize how the house is run and generally having a beastly temper. When she arrives in Gay Ladies, Octavia makes short work of establishing herself as top 10 material for most murderable victim in a detective story.

Just as predicted, Octavia not only considers it her duty to withhold her assistance, but, gleefully, announces she has taken steps of drafting a new will – which cuts out her brother and his children completely. So tempers begin to flare and think a lot of readers will get some satisfaction from this unvarnished confrontation, but Octavia simply brushes it off and informs them she'll be leaving immediately. But while waiting in the sitting room, someone sneaks up behind her and tries to strangle her, causing a fatal heart attack. Ann was in the room reading Shakespeare, but says she didn't hear or see anyone enter the room.

Conventional enough for something written in 1936 and the following police investigation does not immediately dispel the illusion of a typical, Golden Age village mystery, but the police soon retreat into the background of the story. Simply for the reason that they can make a good case against every member of the family, even its youngest members ("a child could have done it"), but they can't put them all on trial. So the focus of the story shifts to showing the often brutal fall out the family has to endure of being implicated in the murder of a close relative in their own home. Firstly, there's the press descending on Gay Ladies and having to read about themselves in the papers complete with descriptions of each family members and "veiled hints that no outsider could have been responsible" ("...cunningly enough to avoid an action for libel"). Secondly, the heart breaking way in which the family is cast aside by their own community or at best treated as a morbid curiosity. There's a gaping crowd at their garden gate, their letterbox is over flowing with hate mail and their ghoulish neighbor, Miss Whipple, talked her way into the house to sit in the murder chair – delighted that she now had a story to tell. The eldest daughter, Dorothy, was about to be engaged, but the parents of the boy immediately packed him off to France when the news broke. And the two youngest find that they have no friends left at school.

The blows to this sympathetic family keep coming, one after another, which only appear to stop to take a breather, but never veering into over the top dramatics. On the contrary. Murder in the Family is uncomfortably homely with on the one hand a once loving and caring household put through hell, while the outside world sees their situation as nothing more than a good story that sells newspapers or give people something to speculate over at the pub. This stark difference becomes painfully clear at the end when you see just how much they're willing to sacrifice in order to protect each other. After all, someone knotted that scarf around Octavia's neck. But who?

I feared Ronald had written himself in a corner here, because how can you possibly deliver a murderer who's not coming across a letdown or cop-out? Do you actually pick someone from the household, because whether they're allowed to get away with it, or not, it would be dark, unrewarding end either way. The preceding events made that abundantly clear. But picking an outsider would be a cheap cop-out to go for a happy ending. So became increasingly more skeptical towards the end as there appeared to be no way for the story to deliver a worthy ending that was not going to feel like a letdown, one way or another. My first response to the murderer finally being pulled out in the open was thinly veiled disappointment. Only to be then told the motive for the murder! What it implied as to what happened after the murder. Someway, somehow, Ronald's pulled it off in the end and created, what's essentially, an anti-detective story which even a proponent of murder-as-a-parlor-game can enjoy. You can call me a radical, if you want, but I believe the only place for murder in a civilized world is in fiction. So I'm not going to apologize for being a ghoul who enjoys a good game of whodunit crammed with locked rooms and dying messages, but appreciated the point that was being made. More importantly, how it was made. If I'm ever redoing my list of 101 all-time favorite crime-and detective novels, Murder in the Family has secured a spot on it! So never let it be said I only care about the nuts-and-bolts type of detective story. Anyway, highly recommended!

A note for the curious: you know what I haven't done in a while? Share one of my half-baked, incorrect armchair solutions I concocted and entertained while reading. On the day of the murder, Peter gets into a fight with the village bully, Ernie Piper, but get pulled apart by Marjory. She returns in kind everything Ernie throws at them ("Ernie hated games that two could play") and beats a hasty retreat, while vowing revenge. Octavia died of shock from suddenly having a scarf pulled across her throat without any force. Not strangulation. Which is why the police couldn't discount the two youngest as the deed required no strength whatsoever. So began to wonder if Ernie could have been sulking around the house, looking for an opportunity to settle his score, noticed Dorothy's scarf and Octavia in the sitting room with his back towards him. Why not scare the hell out of the old bat and place the blame with the Osborne children? Ernie is the post office messenger boy and could approach the house without arousing curiosity. For example, from the all-seeing of Miss Whipple's telescope. Of course, the intention was to frighten, not to kill, but Ernie is a cowardly bully who would initially keep his mouth shut, but, over a long enough time, would probably give himself away. It would not have been best solution, but it would have made for an interesting enough ending. After all they went through together, the police stroll back into their home to casually announce the whole matter has been resolved complete with a confession. A terrible tragedy and all that. No hard feelings or harm done and take their leave. A solution that likely would have deflated the entire story, but a possibility I seriously considered. Fortunately, Ronald came up with a much better conclusion.