FFB: A House Possessed - Charity Blackstock

A House Possessed (1961) was published in England under the title The Exorcism. Both titles are apt but I prefer the US title for its multi-layered metaphoric possibilities. An exorcism does take place but it is not really the ghostly inhabitants who are affected by this arcane Catholic ritual. Collie Lodge is troubled by not only the haunting of other worldly spirits but by the troubled and haunted souls of its very human residents. It is a rich and evocative possession that grips the reader not unlike the complex ghost story The Turn of the Screw. And just as in Henry James' classic tale a child is at the heart of the problem.

Set in Inverness, Scotland by the shores of Loch Ness Collie Lodge is introduced to the reader via a newspaper advertisement in the very first paragraph of A House Possessed. Katie Murphy, the current caretaker of the inn and museum, wrote up a précis of Lodge's historical importance, the assorted 18th and 17th century furniture that still fills its rooms, the priceless Jacobite necklace on display and tantalizingly alludes to the ghost of Margaret Cameron, a wronged woman who eloped with her lover in 1813, who is said to haunt the Lodge. Peter Haynes, a twelve year old boy, is fascinated with the legend of Margaret and her soldier lover. He claims to have conversations with her and knows her story intimately. Miss Murphy is not the only one disturbed by Peter's morbid fascination with a dead 18th century woman. His father Nigel and aunt Barbara are also bothered though Barbara is more sympathetic to the imaginative boy's stories than is his belligerent father. Strangely, Margaret's ghost has been acting up with increasing frequency and Miss Murphy is determined to dispel her presence for good. Ghosts have their charms, she says, but when they start scaring the guests it's bad for business. She invites Father Andrews to perform an exorcism which serves as the climax of the book.

The novel flits between past and present as Blackstock tells two interrelated love stories. We learn of the tragic story of Margaret, her lover Dick Cole, and her disapproving father Colonel Cameron who banned her from his house when she asked for his blessing to marry dissolute Sgt. Cole. The story of Margaret and her lover and their doomed child is echoed in the story of Barbara, her brother Nigel, and the antiques broker Dick Ingham, a former flame of Barbara's whom she met in Athens years ago. Ingham has coincidentally shown up in Inverness and is staying at Collie Lodge. This allows for several flashbacks to Athens as Barbara recalls their meeting and her attraction for him. As her story is told we see numerous parallels to Margaret's story not the least of which is that both women have men they love who share the same first name.

All the while there are the strange manifestations in Collie Lodge. Footsteps are heard in the hallways and within the walls. A woman's moaning and keening travels down the corridors in the late night hours. Few people can sleep without some sort of disturbance intruding. The legend of a secret passageway is drudged up again. Peter becomes increasingly frenzied when he learns that Margaret's spirit may forever be driven from the house. He has hysterical fits and lets loose with foul curses at all the adults. He seems to have gone beyond obsessive thoughts to true demonic possession. Peter claims to have become one with Margaret and he will make sure that Father Andrews, the visiting exorcist, will fail in the ritual meant to bring peace to Collie Lodge.

Blackstock adds a few intriguing subplots among the minor characters. There is an unexpected moment of high drama that just misses teetering over into melodrama in the story of Miss Leslie and the troubled war veteran Flight Sgt. Major suffering from haunted visions and a private torment. Miss Leslie is at first introduced as a near caricature of the spinster tourist eager to hit all the top sightseeing spots and sample all the local fare at mealtimes. By midpoint, however, she has one of the book's most poignant moments when she pauses to listen to Major's life story filled with delusional thoughts and visions. She not only listens, she hears the truth where others hear nonsense, and she ends up preventing a tragedy. Blackstock always has the right touch to elicit a quick tug at the heartstrings without descending into sentimental bathos. Her depiction of a mentally ill war vet hits the right notes of compassion and insight.

The mystery here is more metaphysical than criminal. That is not to say there is no mention of crime. Blackstock manages to add another unexpected element related to the Jacobite necklace that I'll say no more about. A wary reader who pays attention to the characters and their professions may catch on to her plot tricks. Overall the book is more concerned with the complicated emotional lives of the residents of Collie Lodge, both living and dead, and how Peter Haynes and his eerie relationship with a ghost acts as a catalyst to bring about major changes in the lives of all involved. Dick and Barbara turn sleuth when the exorcism seems to have backfired and while some modern readers may find their antics to be a parody of juvenile fictional boy and girl detectives -- something which Barbara herself makes fun of -- in the end the mysteries of Collie Lodge and their resolution have a powerfully healing effect. A House Possessed while not a traditional detective story per se is most assuredly a mystery of another type that will hold sway over any reader willing to succumb to Blackstock's unequaled prose and perspicacious storytelling.

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Reading Challenge update: Silver Age card, space R2 - "Book published under more than one title"

FFB: Miss Fenny (1957) - Charity Blackstock

Two teenage boys skipping out on their English class on the last day of school come across a horrible sight while walking through Braxham Wood -- a skeleton half buried in a pile of leaves and wearing only one woman's shoe. They immediately report their grisly discovery to their teacher Tim Brennan who then calls Sergeant Hawkes and soon the entire village of Braxham Parva is caught up in a murder investigation.  Who was this woman? How long had she been dead? Why had no one reported her missing?

Miss Fenny (1957) was later retitled in its US publication The Woman in the Woods and is better known under that second title. The first title refers to the seemingly imaginary friend of a bedridden crippled boy named Daniel. The two of them become the most important characters in the book. Daniel is a petulant, demanding eight year-old, the only son of Nicole Sherratt who spends much of the book fretting over her son and pining for her dead husband. Brennan has been seeing Nicole for several months now and has developed a bond with Daniel. He tells the boy stories, creates nightly drawings for him, and listens to Daniel's fanciful tales of Miss Fenny, trying to win over Nicole in the process but frustrated repeatedly by her obsessive thoughts of her dead husband.

Little do Brennan and Nicole realize that Miss Fenny is far from imaginary. It doesn't take long for the reader to recognize that Daniel at one time befriended the woman whose skeleton was found in the woods. She was indeed murdered and the identity of her killer does not remain hidden for long. The killer also has daily visits with Daniel and when he keeps hearing the stories of Miss Fenny and the facts that Daniel unwittingly reveals in the conversations he has had with her the killer fears he may be found out. The story then becomes not so much a murder investigation but a suspense tale. As in the story of the boy who cried wolf the reader keeps hoping that the adults will finally see the truth in what Daniel has to say about Miss Fenny. Until they do the entire village is at the mercy of a killer who will not stop at more murder to keep his one crime secret.

Blackstock seems to me to be the missing link in the British school of suspense writing bridging the post-war detective novel with the modern day crime or suspense novel. Prior to her appearance on the mystery scene it was the American women writers like Margaret Millar, Charlotte Armstrong, and Usula Curtiss who were pioneering domestic suspense and malice domestic novels. Blackstock brings to mind modern writers like her fellow countrywomen Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters in the use of sardonic humor and the creation of loathsome characters ripe for satiric attacks like the haughty racist Lady Grale, the prattling hypochondriac Miss Brooks, and the vile physician Dr. Heslop more interested in using the contents of his doctor's bag to harm than cure. Among the British women crime writers I can think only of Blackstock's contemporaries Shelley Smith and Joan Fleming who were writing similar tales of menace and murder at the time of the publication of Miss Fenny. What Blackstock does in Miss Fenny, however, is rather remarkable. She has written a story in which not just a violent crime but death itself has an inexorable affect on an entire village. And she does so with the macabre effects of a modern Poe.

Nicole is truly haunted by her husband, almost as if she is in thrall to his ghost. Brennan cannot compete for her love as she is more in love with a memory than anyone alive, including her son. Yet he too finds himself haunted. There is a chilling scene in which Brennan realizes that the skeleton belongs to a woman he held, caressed, and kissed. Linking the corrupted skeleton to a living being and then connecting that to a memory of a tender sexual encounter is something straight out of Poe.

Dr. Heslop, the cruel physician caring for Daniel; Rose, the doctor's simple-minded mistress and office assistant; Matthew Plumtree, an effete writer battling between cowardice and heroism are also key players in the drama and all have had their past encounters with the woman Daniel has come to know as Miss Fenny. When the identity of the skeleton finally comes to light and Daniel's stories are seen to be truth and not fiction it is only a matter of time before the cowards will make bold confrontations and the killer will strike out again.

Anthony Boucher, champion of new crime fiction writers of immense talent, was thoroughly impressed with Blackstock's novel when it first appeared. He noted her "technically faultless" construction, solid characters of "believable complexity" and an "evocative hint of fantasy" in the person of Miss Fenny. But notably as I have mentioned above he writes "...there is a spell of the sharp immediacy of death itself, such as is too rarely cast in our novels of violet crime."  Contemporary writers have since capitalized on this crucial aspect of crime fiction, but it was Charity Blackstock who perhaps was one of the earliest pioneers to recognize the dread power Death has over the living. Her ruminations on this conceit captured in evocative writing and impassioned emotions make Miss Fenny -- or The Woman in the Woods -- a book worthy of your attention.

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age Bingo card, space O6 - "Book with a Woman in the Title"