Krishna
Maisie Dobbs used to work as a nurse and with the encouragement of Lady Rowan Compton, opens a detective agency. She is a cerebral detective but was a nurse in the army in France
(Why do all Victorian mystery writers place important characters in France? Anne Perry’s lady whom Monk loves also was in France as a nurse.)
The super of the building, Billy Beale, turns out to be a soldier whose life she saved with her old love who was the surgeon there.
Dave Cunningham is referred to her by Lady Compton but he is surprised that she is a woman. He says that he suspects her wife of infidelity. (This is not what Maisie wanted to do in her career).
She follows Celia once when she goes on the Tube. She realizes that Celia is attending a grave that is simply marked Vincent. She pretends to attend another grave nearby and two things ensue. She notices Celia watching her and gives a friendly nod. The grave-keeper notices her and thinks she is a relative of the grave she is pretending to tend to. He tells her that Vincent’s full name is Whitehead and he was a war veteran who was wounded, returned and died of his injuries. He did not want the family name revealed due to bitterness among family members.
She notices Celia in a restaurant, and based on her previous ‘acquaintance’ in the graveyard, manages to engage in conversation with her. She learns that Celia lost a brother to the war and the other brother mentally suffered after also being in the war and returning. Vincent was the elder brother’s friend (the surviving one’s friend) and she was in love with him when she was a little girl of twelve.
Maisie gives the news to the husband. She still talks to Celia and learns that Vincent became a recluse due to the shattered face. She also learns that he had a discord with his superiors prior to being discharged.
Maisie joined Lady Rowan’s manor as a servant girl and rose up by dint of her intelligence and hard work. She was discovered secretly reading books in the library. She thought she was going to be expelled but was put by Lady Rowan under the tutelage of her scholar friend Maurice. In the meanwhile she makes friendship with another maid in the place – Elsie, who is in love with Rowan’s son James, and who seems to love her too. She is alternately hot and cold with Maisie.
She wins a seat in Cambridge and makes a friend in her neighbour Priscilla. Maisie goes to a party with her and meets her brother Thomas. As Priscilla had coached her, she even manages to dance – and well, at that. Priscilla quits the university and enlists to help with the War (WW I) and is deployed in France as a nurse.
She meets Elsie when the latter comes to send James off and realizes that James loves her too. Elsie had quit service at Lady Rowan’s and had joined a munition factory where she was making a lot more than as a maid. She challenges Maisie to do ‘something to help the country’ before she leaves back for the ammunition factory but gets tragically blown up in an accident there the next day.
Maisie however takes up her challenge and enlists in the army. After serving in the hospital in England to minister to the wounded soldiers returning, she is deployed in France – and finds herself the most seasick in the boat that takes her there.
All this feels like the background build up for Maisie – after the first bit – and so her detective work will go full fledged only in the second book in the series, perhaps? Still it is in itself interesting to read.
She meets Simon, Priscilla’s brother and he and she seem to hit it off in a brief dinner date with chaperons, of course. She joins nursing in France to minister to the wounded soldiers.
There is a hint of how she lost Simon and she sends Billy incognito into the lion’s lair, so to speak, by enrolling him in the Retreat. Initially Billy is totally thrilled with Major Anderson who runs the place but Maisie has her doubts. They are confirmed when she discovers that the ‘Major’ was really a Lieutenant in the army and even this position was conferred due to paucity of soldiers in the war.
When Billy proves too nosy, they capture him and take him in front of a huge crowd and there is already a noose around his neck when Maisie gets there. She skillfully manages to keep him alive until the police arrive and arrest the ‘Major’.
In the end, Billy becomes her assistant for future cases and Maisie reveals what really happened to her old love Doctor Simon, who worked with her in France in the same hospital (which was under attack by the enemy) during World War I
All in all, a good book – at least this first one lacked depth but perhaps the serious investigations in the following books may make up for it.
The Victorian detective setting invariably brings comparisons with the other well known author in the same genre, Anne Perry. This book lacks the depth and the layering for which Anne is known. We have reviewed Anne Perry’s books here too – for instance see A Breach of Promise or The Twisted Root.
5/10
– – Krishna