Three Sisters Flew Home

Three Sisters Flew Home - Mary Fitt, 1936

I’ve read only two mysteries by Mary Fitt, the other being Death andPleasant Voices. Even with little evidence, I have to conclude that though she was writing at the same time as Christie and Sayers, her stories don’t have the familiar elements of the Golden Age mystery. It takes a long time to get a corpse. No clues. No red herrings. No detective so no detecting. Nothing cozy that I can see, except that the action occurs in country houses filled with the rich, good-looking, and glamorous.

In fact, this story ends with the death of the character that we readers knew all along would be the vic. A cruel female artist invites her admirers, hangers-on, and enemies to a New Year’s Eve party. The guests include the enigmatic three sisters of the title. Each of the guests has a motive to knock her off. They play The Murder Game in the dark. In short, it is inevitable that the cruel artist will get her fatal come-uppance.

Inevitability is what Mary Fitt explores, as well as the psychology of women and the interplay of characters who are educated beyond their intelligence.  Kathleen Freeman (1879-1959) was educated at the University College of South Wales (Cardiff). She lectured there in the Greek classics from 1919 to 1946. English crime fiction writer H.R.F. Keating said, “As might be expected from a lecturer in Classical Greek, the novels of Mary Fitt are patently the product of a cultivated mind. A character in them is likely to comment on a situation with the words ‘as in Turgeniev’, and the reader is expected to pick up the allusion.”

Clearly, the novels of Mary Fitt are not for every reader. She’d be appreciated by readers who like academic mysteries by writers such as Michael Innes, Nicholas Blake, or Josephine Tey.