Measure for Murder

Clifford Witting’s Measure for Murder (1941) belongs to that strand of Golden Age crime fiction whose pleasures lie as much in social observation as in puzzle-solving.

One of the enduring appeals of the genre is the glimpse it can provide into an England now almost unrecognisable, yet still just within living memory. Here that includes the novelty of car ownership, intergenerational boarding houses with communal meals, social pretensions, small-town gossip, amateur dramatics, and the reassuring presence of the “cosy” police.

Witting sets his tone immediately. The opening paragraph is atmospheric, comic, and a bit unsettling:

“It was early in the morning of the first Thursday in 1940 and, although the ugly, bustling town of Lulverton was already going about the day’s affairs, the Little Theatre was silent and still – too silent and still for Mrs. Mudge… The low-ceilinged passage and rooms, the rows of seats in the tiny auditorium, the grim etchings and Grand Guignol photographs on the walls of the foyer, the Comedy and Tragedy masks above the stage – all gave her – she would confess over her second milk stout – the perishin’ creeps…” 

Murder in the Blackout

Mrs Mudge keeps her fear at bay by singing Roll Out the Barrel while vacuuming – an image that neatly establishes the novel’s balance of comedy, menace, and ordinariness. When she discovers a corpse in the ticket office, stabbed with a dagger that turns out to be a prop from the local amateur dramatics society’s production of Measure for Measure, the stage is set with deceptive lightness.

Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels, Measure for Murder is rich in sociological detail: class, work, domestic arrangements, and the texture of everyday life. Witting once worked at Lloyds Bank, and his narrator shares that background. The novel offers fascinating period detail about clerical work – who knew what being a bank clerk involved in the early 1920s? What some crime-fiction purists might call superfluous – the routines of boarding-house life, the pretensions of landladies, the minutiae of minor jobs – is precisely what to me gives the book its richness and charm.

The novel presents a particularly strong picture of small-town English life as war looms. One extraordinary passage telescopes the personal, the local, and the global into a single breathless paragraph:

“Life went on in Lulverton… Muriel Jones continued to make good tea. Two more Hindenburgs (office boys) came, lingered awhile and went… America gained all five championships at Wimbledon… Russia signed a non-intervention pact with Germany… The Lulverton Amateur Dramatic Society held their second meeting and decided on ‘Measure for Measure.’ Germany invaded Poland… At ten o’clock on the morning of September 3rd we were asked by the B.B.C. to await an important announcement at a quarter-past eleven.”

The scene in the boarding house as the residents wait for Chamberlain’s broadcast—announced at 10 a.m. for 11.15 – is particularly effective. It is punctuated by a motorcyclist failing to start his engine, a sudden outburst of romantic jealousy, and finally the group standing for the National Anthem. 

The exchange that follows is quietly devastating in its ordinariness and I’ve quoted at length to give a sense of Witting’s strength at revealing character through dialogue:

The last notes of the Anthem died. Then:

 “Well, that’s that,’ said Paul Manhow.
   “Poor Mr. Chamberlain,” said Myrna. ‘It’s worse for him than for any of us.”’
    “He sounded so sad,” agreed Miss Tearle, ‘‘yet so terribly firm.”
It was seldom on Sunday mornings that Mrs. Doubleday strayed far from the kitchen, yet she came in now in a large white apron.
   “Has it come?” she asked, and we told her. ‘There, now,” she said, and serenely returned to her cooking.
   “This is the end of everything,” decided Mrs. Stoneham, reshuffling the pack.
Mr. Mortimer Robinson had not stirred from the window, but now he turned. There was an unusual air about the quiet little man; a light in his soft grey eyes.
   “No, Mrs. Stoneham,” he told her, “‘it is not the end. It’s the beginning. There’s been too much shuffiing – too much so-called appeasement. I have never been a soldier. I am, like Mr. Chamberlain, a man of peace; but now that war has come, I’m glad.” He paused before adding: ‘‘And proud.”
   “Hear, hear,” said Paul. ‘‘The English have stood about far too long, behaving like little gentlemen.”
We caught a sound that stiffened every one of us. The tall new siren at the top of Beastmarket Hill was sending out its warning.
   “They’re coming!’ whispered Miss Tearle.
Old Mr. Garnett broke one of his long silences.
   “What did you expect ’em to do?”’ he growled, and reapplied himself to the Hardware Trade Journal.
   “Who’s for the cellars?” asked Tiddler.
   “If they want me,’’ came the decided voice of Mrs. Stoneham, “they will find me here.”
Myrna said: ‘‘I’ve never been down to the cellars.”
Tiddler bowed with mock gallantry.
They went off together, but the rest of us stayed where we were. One was enough to show Myrna the cellars.

Domestic routine resumes almost immediately, while opinions fracture, nerves jangle, and the air-raid siren intrudes. It feels convincingly messy, emotionally varied, and real.

The novel has an interesting structure:  After the prologue, the narrative – Vaughan Tudor –  introduces his backstory before telling of the formation of the amateur theatre group and the web of relationships around Mrs Doubleday’s guest house, where he lodges. Vaughan’s past intrudes in the form of Peter Ridpath—“Tiddler”—a childhood friend down on his luck whom Vaughan generously helps. Tiddler quickly ingratiates himself, particularly with women, is perpetually short of money, and becomes a source of friction.

The character list is large, comprising the six guest-house residents as well as the members of the dramatic society. Among the most sharply drawn are Jack Gough, a bank clerk and poet with an unrequited love for Myrna, a local schoolteacher; Myrna herself, far more attracted to Tiddler; and Elizabeth Faggott, a new leading lady in the theatre company, whom Vaughan worships from afar. Even the rather odd admission that the otherwise sensible Vaughan rereads The House at Pooh Corner when in need of comfort and consolation somehow fails to make him irritating.

Witting’s gift for comic characterisation surfaces repeatedly, as in this perfect aside:

“That was the curious thing about Mrs. Cheesewright; everyone describing her began: ‘The old…’ the last word varying according to individual preference. Mrs. Cheesewright was inevitable; as much an ineradicable part of an English country town as the chromium-plated shopfronts in the High Street.”

His dialogue is frequently larded with humour, linguistic oddities and period flavour. 

   “As we roared along the straight, Harvey shouted over my shoulder: ‘We’re knocking up the parasangs!’”

Or, in a moment of jealousy:

“I made a damn fool of myself this morning… I went completely fantods when he started looking at her in that – possessive way.”

It has been years since I last encountered someone having “the fantods,” and good to hear of them again. 

Amateur Dramatics

Amateur dramatics are at the novel’s heart. In the interwar years such groups flourished, offering community, social connection, and entertainment, particularly in expanding suburbs and provincial towns. Witting understands this world intimately. The Little Theatre in Lulverton becomes a pressure chamber in which rivalries, romantic entanglements, resentments, and ambitions quietly ferment. When the group decides to tackle Measure for Measure, the play’s moral ambiguities and sexual tensions stir already fragile relationships.

What makes this impressive is that Witting’s sustained engagement with Shakespeare never feels heavy-handed. Many crime novels of the period veneer themselves with “high culture” in ways that stall the plot and invite irritation and skim reading. Here, the Shakespearean material is integrated with character and action and never impedes the novel’s forward movement. The debates about the suitability of Measure for Measure, especially on the eve of war, are lively, funny, and entirely believable.

The Investigation

When the story returns to the night of the murder, it is no surprise that several people had reason to be at the theatre late. Inspector Charlton is called in. His investigation begins with factual notes that are a little dry, but soon settles into what he himself regards as real detection: “asking innumerable questions and weeding out the answers.” The case involves missing manuscripts, unexplained injuries, sudden departures, and a tangle of theatrical and romantic grievances. There is one far-fetched plot strand, but it is balanced by the novel’s acute sense of political tension and social reality.

Even the novel’s small mysteries amuse. Vaughan explains his childhood nickname:

“I was christened Walter Vaughan… when I went to school I was known by my surname until some bright form-mate… dubbed me ‘Turtle’ Tudor.”

Um Why?

Thanks to this blogger I learned that this is a reference to the Lord Mayor’s Show and the tradition of fattened turtles for civic banquets. Would many readers in1941 have known that?

Measure for Murder was inspired by a real production of Measure for Measure that Witting saw at the Bromley Little Theatre in Kent in May 1939. I was amused to find that the online edition I read had an introduction by Jacques Barzun, co-author of A Catalogue of Crime, and included an alphabetical  list of Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction,1900–1950. Measure for Murder appears at number fifty. Many crime-fiction devotees would doubtless quarrel with the list. (See list below)

The book’s pleasures are quiet rather than showy, but its plot is especially well constructed even though one strand is a bit of a stretch. The characterisation is consistently sharp, and its handling of war – both its imminence and its intrusion into ordinary life – provide the novel’s strongest and weakest element. All in all, it is a satisfying and enjoyable novel: a clever whodunit, and an absorbing portrait of an England poised on the brink of irreversible change.

The featured image is from Edward Bawden 1930. Calendar for April.