It should be noted that N or M? can, when written in capital letters, look like NORM? This is unfortunate. Let us assume that Agatha was unaware of this. N and M are actually two very highly-regarded Nazi agents, N or M? (1941) being a wartime thriller.
It is spring 1940 and the Beresfords feel unwanted by the war machine. Their son is in the RAF and daughter in codebreaking, which is extraordinary as we last met them in 1929 and Tuppence announces she is pregnant only at the end of Partners in Crime. Even assuming the short stories occurred earlier in the decade… well, never mind, chronological consistency is the hobgoblin of feeble minds.
They are visited by ‘Mr Grant’, a friend of ‘Mr Carter,’ who asks Tommy to find the Enemy Within. The late Farquhar pointed towards ‘N or M?’ and ‘sans souci’ – which is a guesthouse in Leahampton on the south coast. His cover story is an admin job in Scotland but when he gets to Sans Souci, as Mr Meadowes, he meets not only proprietress Mrs Perenna but also Mrs Blenkensop, Tuppence under cover. She fooled Mr Grant, rather easily for a high-level intelligence officer, one might think.
We are given a good view of the other guests. Could N be the dull Major Bletchley? Refugee Carl von Deinem? Hypochondriac Jeremiah Mr Cayley? Could M be young mother Mrs Sprot? Looming hairy Irishwoman Mrs O’Rourke? Tempestuous Sheila Perenna, who loves Carl?
Well, Mrs O’Rourke spots inconsistencies in Tuppence’s knitting. Sheila’s father was shot for being in league with Casement. Tuppence surprises a strange foreign woman outside Sans Souci who says she’s looking for ‘Mr Rosenstein.’ She listens on the phone extension – another technology baffling to anyone under 60 – and a man says “on the Fourth, then.” A woman agrees. Who was using Mrs Perenna’s phone? It wasn’t Mrs Perenna.
C5 introduces Commander Haydock, up the hill at Smugglers’ Rest, who bores Tommy with his tale of unmasking its previous owner as a German spy. Carl is a research chemist. Tuppence gushes about receiving ‘coded letters’ from her [for the purpose, fictional] sons. She sees the strange foreign woman talking to Carl. Using old-school techniques – the eyelash in the paper and so on – she proves that someone has been rifling her box of letters. Little Betty Sprot removes the laces from Tuppence’s shoes and puts them in a glass of water, bless her.
Tommy contrives a room-change to keep an eye on Tuppence’s. She gives stirring advice to Carl on patriotism, real people and the ‘war mask’ and she thinks of Edith Cavell, which in the context of a 1941 novel is impressive. Disappointingly, Tommy sees Carl in Tuppence’s room for fifteen minutes. Tuppence snoops in Mrs Perenna’s room, unconvincingly seeking aspirin, but finds nothing.
The strange foreign woman abducts Betty. A threatening note is found in Mrs Sprot’s room. The chase ends up on the downs and the edge of a cliff, where Mrs Sprot shoots the woman in the head. The dead foreign woman turns out to be Vanda Polenska, a Polish refugee, who seems to have had no reason to abduct Betty (after all, it wasn’t her shoelaces). The police detain Carl, to Sheila’s distress. A list of Fascist sympathisers, some pretty hard-core chemical sabotage and secret ink activated by shoelaces are all found in Carl’s room.
Tommy tries to draw out Haydock by hinting that Bletchley is nefarious. In the bathroom at Smugglers’ Rest, he slips and activates a secret panel, which opens to disclose a wireless transmitter. He suddenly realises “the shape of the head – the line of the jaw – nothing British about them,” a surprisingly narrow form of physiological racial typing. Tommy pretends to believe Haydock’s assurances that he’s working for British Intelligence, but is coshed at the gate of Sans Souci. Mrs O’Rourke finds a hammer lying on the drive. From the point of view of the inhabitants, he has disappeared.
Deborah Beresford has discovered that her mother hasn’t been in Cornwall as she claimed. Tony Marsdon, an admirer of Deborah, comes to Leahampton to warn Tuppence. He assures her that he’s on the same track. Tommy awakes in C12 to find that he’s imprisoned in the cellar of Smugglers’ Rest. Albert, their former office-boy and general domestic help in the manner of Bunter and Lugg, is summoned to help. He goes to explore Smugglers’ Rest and accidentally alerts Tommy by whistling ‘If You Were The Only Girl In The World.’ Tommy, being gagged, snores SOS in return.
Tuppence receives a letter in the approved code, as she told Tony. Mrs Perenna thinks Tommy is a Fifth Columnist. Tuppence is taken to Tony, who disguises her as a German agent disguised as a nurse with directions that take her to ‘Dr Binion,’ who turns out to be Haydock. Not only that, but Haydock is handler of the Fifth Columnist Tony Marsdon! He would really like the Beresfords to help him run the ‘New Britain,’ but Tuppence’s response is only ‘goosey goosey gander,’ which for some reason really annoys him. He threatens Tuppence with death but Mr Grant arrives in time to shoot Haydock. They all dash back to Sans Souci, where Tuppence reveals that M is… Mrs Sprot!
Betty was abducted by Betty’s actual mother, which is why Mrs Sprot wasn’t too bothered about the risk to Betty when she shot Vanda. The secrets were written in invisible ink in tatty copies of Betty’s nursery rhymes. She planted the evidence in Carl’s room, although in fact Carl wasn’t Carl but an English agent who knew Carl in Germany and assumed his identity when he, Carl, shot himself in despair. Tommy and Tuppence will adopt Betty.
This is a wonderful little book, taking (to be all pseudo-intellectual) the genre’s interrogation of surface, reality and identity to maximal lengths. Without being all pseudo-intellectual, it’s a splendid espionage thriller and a pleasure to see Tommy and Tuppence again. It’s at its best in and around Sans Souci, which weakens the denouement a touch, but it’s very satisfying nonetheless.
Surfeit of Lampreys (1941) concerns an aristocratic family called the Lampreys. The reader wonders if the name were chosen for the sake of the pun. We meet them in New Zealand, where they are unconvincingly sited in order to befriend a young girl called Roberta Grey. In C2 the Lampreys are back in England and Roberta’s parents are killed so she goes to an English relative… who happens to be ill, so she goes to the Lampreys. The reader wonders if C1 couldn’t simply have been a couple of sentences.
However, here we all are in two conjoined London flats, haunted by bailiffs. Their ancient relative Lady Katherine unexpectedly turns up. Lord and Lady Wutherwood, elder brother and his wife, expectedly turn up and are expectedly odious. She’s into witchcraft and neither are impressed by Lord Charles Lamprey’s protestations of poverty. Gabriel and Charles, the two brothers, argue and no help seems forthcoming from the former.
Gabriel is not-quite-murdered in the lift, but with a skewer through his left eye and into the brain is beyond help. His chauffeur and her maid, Giggle and Tinkerton (no, really) are introduced to the plot. Inspector Fox is there at the death, but there are no useful last words. Nobody in detective novels ever offers useful last words. It seems that the lift briefly descended with Lord and Lady Wutherwood and one of the Lamprey twins before Violet, Lady Wutherwood discovered the assault. She then screamed a lot. Alleyn is called in.
A bruise on the corpse’s temple suggests he was concussed on the lift interior, possibly by someone who read Death in a White Tie. Bloody driving gloves are found under the lift seat, this being an old-school elegant lift. Each twin claims that he was in the lift. The commissionaire of the building and the Lampreys’ cook account for the possible entrances, proving that it was an inside job.
We are given a sketch plan of the flats in C9 and are very happy.
Gabriel entered the lift first and called for Violet, who was ‘in the bathroom.’ Alleyn senses the Lampreys closing ranks. Michael, the youngest Lamprey, confirms that Giggle was helping him with his trains. He also tells Alleyn that he picked up a gift for Gabriel from a bedroom in #26, crossed the landing to #25 and saw the skewer in the hall with the other accoutrements for the charade with which the Lampreys utterly failed to amuse the Wutherwoods. Having failed to deliver the gift, he returned to the landing with Giggle and the skewer was gone.
Lady Katherine returns, having pawned her pearls to keep the wolf from the Lampreys’ door. “I needn’t have taken all this trouble” now Gabriel is dead, she sighs. That’s one way of looking at it.
Violet seems to be fingering a demon as the murderer (‘the Little Master’). Also, she wants the body. Alleyn wonders if she’s mad, drugged or both or simply a very accomplished actress. She is Hungarian, after all.
It is proven that Gabriel was rendered unconscious by a blow to the temple and carefully skewered by a right-hander. Tinkerton is remarkably uncommunicative about everything, especially the Wutherwoods. Lady Charles deliberately attempts to disturb Alleyn’s composure, which she does, but he’s entirely aware so it was all a bit futile. He’s curious about the family dynamic. They are attempting to communicate / connive in French, which Alleyn has foiled by posting a Francophone constable in the room with them.
Stephen admits to working the lift. Alleyn knows the Lamprey children eavesdropped on the brothers’ row. Roberta lies and tells Alleyn that Gabriel agreed the loan. There is a fascinating joust in C15 between the police, who know the truth, and the Lampreys, who don’t know that the police know. According to their story, they received the news of the loan and all sat in silence.
Nigel Bathgate turns up, for no obvious reason beyond contractual obligation. Lord Charles is remarkably ambiguous about the brothers’ conversation but Fox gets the truth from the parlourmaid who overheard it ending on a very bad note.
In C16 Henry and Roberta accompany Violet to her London townhouse / terrible Victorian mausoleum. Alleyn meets, rather too conveniently, a Macbeth-quoting constable on night duty who puts ideas in his head.
It is discovered that Tickerton was also eavesdropping through a cupboard wall; her shoe-prints were found on a mackintosh. She is very loyal to the (now dowager) Lady Wutherwood and, with Giggle, follows her to the mausoleum.
Rattisbon the solicitor, making a welcome return, confesses that (the late) Lord Wutherwood (a) feared black magic and (b) intended to change his will so that his wife would receive the bare minimum. At the Wutherwoods’ stately pile in Kent, Fox discovers the classic voodoo effigy, with pin, and a rather suggestive book of witchcraft.
Edgar Allan Poe seems to have written C18, in which Henry and Roberta are wakened – in separate bedrooms, to be clear – by the sound of Violet sawing the right hand from the corpse of Gabriel. Alleyn arrives at the London house to find the corpse of Giggle with his throat cut.
The clue, Alleyn points out, was in Roberta’s evidence. She registered that the movements of the lift, which she heard, did not match the timing of Lady Wutherwood’s screams. Marsh uses a classic technique of hiding key evidence in plain sight but within a fairly dull passage. Tickerton liked Giggle and instructed him to kill Lord Wutherwood; the lift descended one floor for the murder then Tickerton recalled it and promptly ran downstairs. Nobody consciously registered that it had made two trips. She is the Lady Macbeth figure, although less so when she killed him in the fear he would crack (and hoping to place the blame on the utterly cuckoo Violet).
There’s a pleasing claustrophobia to Surfeit of Lampreys, accentuated by the horrible method deployed. It’s weakened by the obvious delight taken in the charming Lampreys, which suggests to a first-time reader that one of them can’t be the murderer and therefore one of them must be the murderer, resulting in a slight sense of both relief and anti-climax. The Giggle and Tickerton angle is introduced rather late, but on the whole it’s a good story.