Book Review//Post After Post-Mortem by E. C. R. Lorac

The Surrays are a family that seems to be winning at life. The parents live in a beautiful home, they are all successful in their chosen careers, and they all love each other. Lorac does a beautiful job of setting the scene and the atmosphere in just the first few paragraphs.

Her slim fingers busy with the task of fitting the stems into the block at the bottom of the great cut-glass bowl, she reflected that flowers had a magic all their own. Each season the garden gave her a fresh shock of joy, for there was about flowers none of that feeling which haunts middle-age: “It’s lovely, but surely not so lovely as it was when I was young.” This year the profusion of flowers seemed more than ever a miracle; after the May frosts, when all the gardeners had surpassed Job himself in their lamentations, the garden had broken out into a belated flowering, so that the blossoms of midsummer were ablaze late into July. The delphiniums and lilies, the roses and sweet peas, seemed intent on making up for their tardy advent with incredible richness of scent and colour. Mrs. Surray marvelled at the ardent tones of the sweet peas–purple, dusky and rich, flaming red, lilac that was almost blue. “Delicious,” she said to herself, standing back to admire her great bowl of great colour and heady scent, “and they look perfect here.”

“Here,” was the drawing-room of Upwood, the square-built William and Mary house, embowered in trees, which had given Mrs. Surray’s heart a shock of delight when she had first seen it, twenty-five years ago. Only to her husband had she ever admitted in words how dearly she loved the house. When other people praised it to her, Mrs. Surray only smiled, her grave grey eyes lightening softly as she replied:

“Yes, it’s a pleasant spot, isn’t it?”

I don’t know about you, but I want to live at Upwood now. Unfortunately, life does not stay as peaceful and calm for the Surray family. The eldest son, Richard, who is a psychiatrist becomes worried about his sister Ruth. She is an author and, while her books are a great success, she has seemed unhappy recently. Before anyone can do much to help her Ruth is found dead in her bed at Upwood during a weekend visit with some of her literary friends. A suicide note and a new copy of her will are found at her bedside. So far, there does not seem to be much of a mystery about her death. However, when Richard returns home after the inquest he finds a letter from Ruth that makes it clear that she had no intention of killing herself. Richard goes to Inspector MacDonald for help in investigating what he is increasingly convinced was murder.

Lorac writes a good, atmospheric mystery that investigates the psychological aspects of the crime and the reactions of people to an unexpected death. The plot is reasonably believable but there is a lot of deliberate withholding of information by many characters and one character is conveniently sent on a trip to a remote location which means she can’t be interviewed. As usual, I felt like yelling at them all and telling them all to just speak up and answer the questions. But, if they did that we wouldn’t have a mystery to read, would we?

I have enjoyed all of Lorac’s books that I have read. The British Library is to be commended for bringing her back into the public eye after so many years. I hope they republish more of her books in the future.

My thanks to the British Library for the review copy of this book.