Wretched Shades of Tartarus

The Shortest Way to Hades - Sarah Caudwell

This 1984 mystery opens with five young London barristers -- Cantrip, Selena, Timothy, Ragwort, and Julia – handling a trust in such a way as to save the 5-million-pound estate a 3-million-pound tax bill. But to support a court petition to make the trust incontestable, one of the cousins demands 100-thousand pounds for her signature – which makes the barristers of other cousins up their price for signatures too. But the demanding cousin suddenly dies, blunt force trauma due to a fall from a height. The coroner rules it was an accident.

The five young barristers call in their friend Hilary Tamar to rootle about and determine if the cause of death was in fact an accident. Or murder. Or suicide. Hilary is an Oxford historian with powerful reasoning skills. Not so much an unreliable narrator as a prejudiced one, Oxonian Hilary gets barbs into Cambridge in that offhand way only an English intellectual can pull off. Hilary plumps down on the side of rigorous scholarship, to an extent naïve and pompous at the same time. But narrator Hilary is never ridiculous and promises in a unique way, “Cost candour what it may, I will not deceive my readers.”

Indeed, ridiculous is saved for Julia Larwood. You would think a tax attorney has a good fix on details but Julia is absent-minded and disorganized (as the English say: scatty), with the tendency to lose key documents and tuck away never to be found again letters that she is too afraid to open and read. She’s also easily distracted by male beauty and dreamy carnal curiosity. Everybody knows she’s arrived because they can hear her knocking over coat racks and dropping her handbag. Best of all, she’s as quixotic as a thirteen-year-old, prone to get on a high horse about Sir Thomas More and all that ethics jazz. Julia is a marvelous comic creation.

Fans of old-school whodunnits will think of the Bright Young Things of Craig Rice novels when they hear the wit and raillery directed at Hilary by Cantrip, Selena, Timothy, Ragwort, and Julia. They will also like the family tree, the map of the layout of Rupert’s apartment, and some narrative given in letters. The plot is agreeably complicated and the legal-babble will call to mind the instructive explications of Henry Cecil. The stylized language is for readers who like highly literate mystery writers like Michael Innes, Nicholas Blake, and to a lesser extent Margery Allingham. There are British words all over the place: subfusc, rumbustious, tickety-boo, nip off to the loo, and get into a tizwozz.

But there’s nothing old-fashioned about the comic interludes. In a set piece so funny the reader doesn’t care that it doesn’t advance the plot much, Selena and Julia find themselves at an orgy. And while purely out of politeness Julia finds herself dressed in schoolgirl gymslip by a redhead named Rowena, Selena pulls her copy of Pride and Prejudice from her handbag and settles on a sofa, just like any of us hardcore readers would do at an orgy.

I recommend this delightful legal mystery. Caudwell wrote only three other Hilary Tamar mysteries. She passed away at the age of 60 in the year 2000.

Glossary: Ever one for self-improvement, I present the list of words in this novel that I had to look up. I recommend the Cambridge Dictionary because it gives British and American pronunciations though it will shrug at you for retroussé and dejectamenta.

Jocasta – Oedipus’ mother; mother and grandmother of Antigone

Hymettus honey - famous honey made from thyme grown on the slopes of Mt.  Hymettus in Attica near Athens

retroussé – (of noses) turning up at the end in an attractive way

dozy – British English informal  for drowsy and lazy; (of law firms) slothful and inattentive to detail

solecism – a grammatical mistake; a breach of good manners

quixotic - exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical

distrait - distracted or absentminded 

lacuna (in knowledge) – an unfilled space; a gap

subfusc – the formal dark academic attire required to wear for examinations and formal occasions at some UK universities

suet-faced – a big fat face resembling a pudding

rootle about – British English informal  for search by moving things around carelessly. American: poke around

dégagé  - free of constraint, nonchalant

Erskine May (1815-86) – He was a British constitutional theorist of such influence that the present-day guide of constitutional conventions and parliamentary procedure is called the Erskine May.

meunière – for fish, rolled in flour and fried in butter, usually with lemon juice and chopped parsley

officious – assertive of authority in an annoyingly domineering way, especially with regard to petty or trivial matters

dejectamenta – waste discharged from the body in form of excrement

dodgy – British for dishonest or unreliable, unsound, dubious, double-dealing

tickety-boo – dated British slang for hunky-dory

chiton – form of tunic that fastens at the shoulder, worn by men and women of ancient Greece and Rome. Careful of Greek origin! The ‘ch’ is said the same way as in ‘chaos’ or ‘chemistry.’

chuffed – British slang for very pleased, delighted

to trouser – British informal for to get or to take money for yourself, especially by stealing it

to nip off (to the loo, store, etc.) – To very quickly or discreetly depart (to some place), especially for a short length of time

woven hessian - woven fabric usually made from skin of the jute plant or sisal fibres, and can be highly refined for many uses – handbags, curtains, etc.

(get into a) tizwozz – British for tizzy; a state of excitement, anxiety, or confusion

rumbustious – British for rambunctious; boisterous, unruly

be/go round the twist – British for crazy, mentally unsound

barbican – a tower or other fortification on the approach to a castle or town, especially one at a gate or drawbridge.

broom – any of various shrubs of the genera Cytisus or Genista or Spartium having long slender branches and racemes of yellow flowers