Universal Grieving

The Murder Room is writtem by PD James. This is a blog as I read the book.

At the end of chapter one, we drive up to the museum along a narrow drive. (Narrow is important to the action later on in the book.)

Dalgliesh sees a young man and an elderly woman engaged in gardening. The young man is Ryan Archer we will recognize. And the older woman must be Mrs. Faraday, the elder.

We meet Mrs. Muriel Godby, librarian -- I believe. At least she is a guardian of some sort. Cold. Steely.

James Calder-Hale, curator. A poof? Urbane, to be sure. We find out later that he has some tie to the government's anti-terror bureau. He's an ex-FCO, Middle East expert, speaks Arabic and two or three dialects.

But it is interesting that Calder-Hale in a subsequent chapter does not volunteer this information about himself, when the author shows us Calder-Hale through his own internal dialogue.

A new gap murder is introduced: The Blazing Car Murder of 1930. A tramp is murdered by Alfred Arthur Rouse in an attempt to disappear from his womanizing troubles. The tramp is doused with petrol and set ablaze in Rouse's car. Unfortunately for Rouse, two young chaps walking home saw him and asked him about the blaze. "It looks as though someone is having a bonfire," he says as he leaves the scene.

This is important. We find the first murder victim (jumping ahead a week) in the E-type Jag -- a car beloved by Neville Dupayne -- burning in the garage at the museum. Tally Clutton (yet to be introduced) is almost run down by a fair haired young man in a car driving away from the blaze. The young man stops to see if she is hurt and in leaving says, "It looks as though someone is having a bonfire." Tally does not recognize the young man but says that he looks familiar.

Now I have not read so far as to know who the second victim will be in Book Two, but I predict that it will be Tally.

Dalgliesh is wandering through the museum when he comes to stand beside a young man looking at a painting, Passchendaele 2. A thin young man with a pale and delicate face. A painting of dead bodies on a WWI battlefield. Had any modern conflict produced such universal greiving? thinks Dalgliesh.

The young man says mysterously that this painting was purchased from his grandfather by Max Dupayne who got it cheap because grandfather was desparate for money.

As the chapter ends, Dalgliesh is glad to leave Conrad to his research and wonders what about this time period so fascinated Max Dupayne?

It is an excellent question. We see this time period mostly through The Murder Room and only once through this painful painting. What is it about the discouragement and malaise after WWI that fascinates? So much changed in English society. So much was lost. But Lady James has not shown us the details. She has not dwelt on it. For the time, it is merely a backdrop to murder and the intreguing statement that murder, the unique crime, is a paradigm of its age.

We find out later that Max's fascination for the museum caused him to ignore and hurt his children, most notably the middle child Neville. The other children too but they have not yet revealed how they were injured.

Cool Marcus keeps his emotions to himself.

Abrasive Caroline seems unfeeling.