In true Agatha Christie style, a murder is announced on the opening page of Louise Hegarty’s debut novel, which blends an entertaining country house murder mystery with a poignant exploration of grief.
A group of friends are invited by hostess Abigail to celebrate her brother Benjamin’s 33rd birthday, which coincides with New Year’s Day. With a fairly large cast of characters appearing early on, I was impressed by how distinctive Hegarty makes each of them. There’s the newly engaged Cormac and Olivia. Ne’er-do-well Declan. Old friend Stephen. Jilted fiancee Margaret. Mousy secretary Barbara. Loyal servant Dorcas. When everyone arrives, Abigail announces the details of the game they’re about to play, and it’s obvious that someone isn’t going to make it out alive.
I suspect that Hegarty, like me, spent much of her teens devouring Christie novels for there are multiple references throughout, from Miss Marple’s crime-riddled village of St Mary Mead to a couple of dogs named Tommy and Tuppence and a neighbour called Westmacott, one of Christie’s pseudonyms. Dorothy L Sayers gets a shout-out too and there are probably many more allusions to the golden age of crime that I missed. It makes for a witty novel, but Hegarty is not parodying the tradition, she’s celebrating it.
Locked-room mysteries were hugely popular during the early 20th century, the basic idea being a murder takes place in a room locked from the inside, leading everyone to wonder how the killer made their escape. By chance, I read two last year, Edgar Wallace’s The Four Just Men and Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and they’re ingenious pieces of work. Hegarty throws herself into this with gusto, ultimately needing a strong pair of shoulders to knock down a door so the victim’s body can be discovered.
Enter the famous consulting detective Auguste Bell, along with his bumbling sidekick, Sacker, and a member of the constabulary, Detective Inspector Ferret, who reluctantly accepts their help.
Bell is a wonderful creation, filled with confidence, delighted by his celebrity, and prone to recalling past cases with glorious titles, such as The Death in the Drain Pipe and The Mystery of Mr Plimpton’s Good Hat. If they sound like books, it’s because – and here’s the twist – they are. For Bell and co are conscious that they’re players in a novel, regularly referring to things they’ll do “in Chapter Twenty-Three” or alibis provided “in Chapter Five”.
Here’s where the concept stumbles a little, for Abigail is in fact living a life far removed from the cosy crime setting, has no servants, and does not live in a grand country house. She’s a modern working woman in a claustrophobic office environment. I was willing to play along with the back and forth between the lighthearted mystery and the darker contemporary scenes, but Hegarty walks a fine line between amusing and confusing. Is this a novel within a novel? Has the murder taken place at all? And, if it has, shouldn’t we eventually find out whodunit?
Setting aside the high-concept architecture, Bell and Sacker make a terrific pairing, both of them as daft as brushes, and I would cheerfully read more of their adventures. DI Ferret believes it was a suicide, and perhaps in the modern-day section it was, but in the detective story, the grieving party is looking for someone – anyone – to blame.
In time, Bell invites the reader to solve the crime for ourselves as his deductions have become, to put it lightly, a little unfocused. “You should, through the use of logic and deduction, be able to not merely guess, but prove, the identity of the culprit,” we are advised. “You should also be able to explain how the murder occurred, and indeed, why.”
Having fully invested in the novel and been delighted by it throughout, I found this rather unsatisfactory. It’s a bit like going to one of those restaurants where you have to cook your own food and pay for the privilege. That said, the final chapter is a masterclass in creeping out the reader, presenting a scene that initially appears unconnected to the previous pages but which, by applying the little grey cells, pays great dividends.
It takes skill, and even a sense of anarchy, to produce a novel as funny, baffling, and occasionally moving as Fair Play. Some readers may be frustrated by the lack of answers provided but no one will doubt its wit and originality.
