I finished Margery Allingham's "Traitor's Purse" the other night. It's going to be hard for me to talk about it TOO much without some spoilers - but I think the book is worth reading (even if it's a little spoiled), so I'll try to be careful.
This is one of the Albert Campion novels - apparently the eleventh in the series, so I am reading it out of order (for a while, was trying to read them in series, but some are hard to find in the US these days, which is a pity, because they are enjoyable).
This novel is much less a murder mystery (which many of the Campion novels are) than it is a novel of suspense. Oh, there is a murder, and the murderer is caught in the end, but that subplot, while it's tied in to the main story, is really secondary.
I alluded to the theme of the novel earlier: Campion wakes up in hospital. He remembers very little (it turns out he is concussed, and while the amnesia he suffers isn't quite medically accurate from what I know about post-concussion amnesia, it's not too far off). He gets the horrified impression, from overhearing a police officer and nurse out in the hall, that he has killed a policeman. He realizes, even though he does not know who he is or where he is, that that is enough for him to face capital punishment. So, he decides he has to get out of there. Which he does. And he steals a car. Later, when that car dies, he is picked up by a woman and a man. It turns out the woman is Lady Amanda (Fitton), who is actually his fiancee. (We have met Lady Amanda in one of the earlier books; I remember her - she is a smart, tough, clever woman and a good match for Campion).
Anyway. It gradually becomes clear that he's been drafted to do something of vital importance. (The book is set during the "phoney war" of 1940, and the whole plot that Campion stops is ironically rather like one the Germans tried LATER in the war....though Allingham could not have known of the idea when she wrote the novel, the real-world plot was not revealed until after the war). The number fifteen is important somehow.
And it seems that the survival of Britain and the British Empire hinges on Campion stopping....whatever it is. There is a very strong sense of "the barbarians are at the gates" and that there is a vital need to preserve the way of life ordinary Britons had enjoyed....and that that way of life is something worth fighting for and even dying for, if it comes to that. The level of patriotism might be....somewhat unfashionable in some circles today, but given the alternative that was brewing in Germany at the time, I understand the horror of "giving up."
(Also, without giving too much away: the big baddie is one of those megalomaniacal types who thinks if he were in charge of everything, how much better things would be - how he would be such a benevolent dictator, and fix things. And I'm reminded of the famous CS Lewis quotation about how a tyranny "for the good of its subjects" is the worst kind of tyranny, and presumably that was what this guy was angling for - so not only did Campion have to prevent something that could presumably lead to the Nazis winning, but also he had to prevent this guy from taking over)
So Campion knows he cannot fail; that the way of life he has always known, the way of life his countrymen and women have known, depends on his success.
But because he's concussed and suffering amnesia, Campion cannot for the life of him remember why it's important or what he has to do. This is what gives the first 2/3 or so of the novel its nightmare quality that makes it so suspenseful - you keep rooting for Campion, wishing he would remember more, wishing SOMEONE would let something drop that would help him remember. But it turns out that (a) the people who are his allies are very much in the dark on it, (b) Campion is fearful of admitting his disability, even to Lady Amanda, and (c) several of the characters who SEEM like "good guys" turn out not to be.
Eventually things begin to become more clear, but not without a lot of agony:
- Lady Amanda breaks off the engagement, because she is falling in love with another (who later turns out not to be the man most thought he was)
- Campion has to race around with a severe headache, with no food, with very little besides weak tea with sugar to keep him going
- Being taken into a hollowed-out hill/ancient fortification that is sort of like a guild hall and it being expected he'd know just what to do, but not.
Finally, he punches the policeman who was trying to help him (breaking the man's jaw, as it turns out), and madly flees in a sort of fugue-state. He turns up, not knowing why, at a small shop, is taken into the back......where there is a fat balding man with coal-colored eyes.....
and it gradually dawns on the reader, just as it does on Campion, that it's the wonderfully-named Magersfontein Lugg, his manservant. (And yes, I breathed a sigh of relief: "Oh, thank God, it's Lugg. Now things will get straightened out.") Lugg is a former criminal (cat burglar) himself, but he's reformed and has been a great help and friend to Campion.
But there are still some hours of agony - Campion has to go to a rickety hotel and interview the sister of the dead man. He then has to escape across the roofs (in his headachey state) and run for it, because "the rozzers" show up. Eventually he is caught, knocked unconscious, and....
.....when he wakes up in a cell, he has regained his memory. ("She fall down a well, eyes go crossed. She gets kicked by a mule, they go back. I don't know."). He realizes how badly he behaved before, he realized how close he came to totally funking what had to be done...and he has to get out of jail. Finally, through Lady Amanda's assistance (and the assistance of the broken-jawed CID, Hutch, who doesn't seem to bear much of a grudge), he does.....and the denouement happens fairly quickly, the plot is averted, the big baddie is led off in cuffs.
There is some collateral damage; Campion steals and has to use a grenade sort of object (which is actually, now I think of it, not that different from the "pinpoint bomb" Connie Willis speculated on in one of her stories). But order is ultimately restored, they are saved (well, for now....it's still the Phoney War, the Blitz will be later). And yes, Campion decides he and Amanda must marry THAT evening, and presumably they do.
I will say, the whole, "Oh, thank God, it's Lugg" moment is one of the reasons why I love these serial stories; the fact that I recognized him and realized that he would be a step towards getting everything right. It's nice to revisit familiar characters and see their further adventures.]
Oh, and as it turns out: he did not kill a policeman. A policeman was NEARLY killed - in fact, commissioner Stanislaus Oates, a recurring character - but not by Campion; he was severely injured in the initial skirmish where Campion lost his memory. And as it turns out: the policeman talking to the nurse that Campion hears at the beginning, he is sitting by Oates' bedside waiting to call for a doctor if one is needed - he is not, "out in the hall" watching for Campion to try an escape, which is what Campion thought. (One of the things I like about mysteries, especially the Golden Era ones: everything is put back right in the end. Campion isn't a bad guy who killed a cop! It was one of his police colleagues who nearly got killed, and by one of the bad guys! And he gets his memory back, fixes the problem, gets his fiancee back......and Britain is saved, at least for now.)
(I looked at my set of Campion dvds just to be sure: no, they did not produce this one for the series. On the one hand, that's a pity - it would be very interesting to see it filmed. On the other hand, this is definitely a much less "light hearted" Campion than the other stories - more suspenseful, more of a feeling that, not only COULD he fail, but the consequences of his failure would be severe.)
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