Margery Allingham, 1936

It’s no secret that I’m a big Campion fan. Originally designed to be a parody of the upper-class amateur detective, particularly Sayer’s Peter Wimsey, as time goes on and the series develops, Campion develops himself and becomes his own distinct(ish) self. This is helped by the two authors’ different writing styles, with Allingham leaning towards the lighter and more absurd in her novels, with a fast-rotating cast of comic characters coming into each novel. As a side note, if you haven’t listened to the Campion audio books as narrated by David Thorpe, then you are missing out. His voices and characterisations bring the already lively series to life and are a true treat.

In Flowers for the Judge, Allingham certainly leans into the absurd, if not as much in the mystery, then so much so in the solution to it and in the characters who feature in the narrative. (Spoilers to follow)

The general plot is that a director of a publishing house is found dead in the strongroom, a locked room. His cousins, most with shares in the business are the obvious suspects, and suspicion falls on his youngest cousin, Mike, who happens to also be in love with the dead man’s wife. A lot of the book takes place in the courtroom, first at an inquest then the subsequent trial (taking place only days after the inquest seemingly), with short forays outside as the reader follows Campion about London as he tries to clear the name of Mike and find concrete proof of who the real killer is in time. As usual, things look bleak, then a last-minute death of a second cousin (and co-director) helps the case unravel – though is this too what it seems?

Things not being quite what they seem is a core theme of this book, with the first chapter starting with the anecdote of the man who “walked out of his suburban house one sunny morning and vanished like a puff of grey smoke in a cloudless sky”, and how the story has adapted and changed with each retelling. This can be seen clearly in the courthouse, as each bit of evidence, some told maliciously, some told to help, some scientific etc, shows a different way of reading events and when lacking the truth, the solicitors and barristers focus on how they can adapt and tell what they do have: “Cousin Alexander, on the other hand, was staring over his head, no doubt considering Truth from yet another angle.”

The character of Mr Rigget is one of two that needs addressing. Mr Rigget is a fantastically detestable little man – think Uriah Heep if Uriah was self-aware.

“For it was a tragic fact that, in spite of his struggles against his destiny, Mr Rigget remained what he had been born and reared to be, an inquisitive, timid, dishonourable person with a passion for self-aggrandisement which was almost a mania”

Despite his prominence in the narrative, Mr Rigget is not a key figure in anyone’s life and is just ‘from the Accounts Department’ in the publishing house. His relevance is all self-chosen, and the reader is introduced to a man desperate to be involved in ‘the heart of the excitement’ with a tendency to snoop and eavesdrop and use the information gathered to gain attention. Later in the book, Rigget clashes with Campion, both coincidentally sneaking into the saferoom the same night. After a brutal fight (during which Campion realises his opponent is crying in terror, whist still attacking), Rigget confesses to being “not a nice chap… my instincts are all wrong… I’m dirty… I’m rotten… I’m nasty… I’m not ordinary. I’m not decent. I haven’t got any instincts against prying into other people’s affairs.” As readers of Dickens will know, there is not many more dislikeable than someone of this type, and Allingham revels in making Rigget as repugnant to the reader (and Campion) as possible, keeping him on the outskirts of the action, trying to sneak into the middle but ultimately being irrelevant.

On to the second character I’d like to call the reader’s attention to, and one of my favourites – Cousin Ritchie. Like Rigget, Ritchie is in the background of the book, a step aside from the main drama, and both men have the epithet ‘pathetic’ assigned to them at one point, but that is where the similarities end.

“He was out of the circle, leaning back in a chair in the shadows, a quiet, slightly melancholy, or if one felt sentimental, pathetic figure. Ritchie… was the only cousin who had received no share of the business under the Old Man’s will… His own explanation of this mystery was never sought, but a clause in the will which charged the beneficiary cousins to ‘look after’ Richard Barnabas threw some light on the Old Man’s opinion of this nephew.
… No one considered him and yet everyone liked him in the half-tolerant, half-condescending way with which one regards someone else’s inoffensive pet.”

Ritchie pops up throughout the novel, and assists Campion with his investigations, showing a lack of inhibitions around social niceties that help him cut through where Campion (who is all about the social niceties) would struggle. Like many who sit in the shadows, Ritchie seems to see more than the other characters and lacks the personal stakes that feeds into the different versions of events that we see from others.

“There had been from time to time sentimental young women, although these were not encouraged in the firm, who saw in Ritchie a romantic and mysterious figure with some secret inner life too delicate or possibly too poetic for general expression, but always in time they gave up their investigations. Ritchie, they discovered, had the emotional outlook of a child and the mind of a schoolboy. He was also not even particularly unhappy.”

There is a risk when it comes to diagnosing fictional characters. Even more so when the fictional character was written before the diagnosis itself existed. However, there is a wide range of scholarship (some well done, some less so) that looks at reading autism in both real and fictional people from before the 1940s and I’d like to throw my hat into the ring with the character of Ritchie. (I’m also not a qualified medical practitioner or anyone who should be throwing out diagnoses of any kind, but bear with me.) Beyond the initial descriptions quoted above, the reader is told about Ritchie’s particular communication style, “flitting from subject to subject, linked only by some erratic thought process at which one could only guess” and how “the man had a disconcerting way of fixing one with his gentle blue eyes with an earnestness which was somehow pathetic. It was evident that he wanted to be understood but found speech very difficult”. It’s not just in Ritchie’s verbal communication that he stands out, but we are told that he uses “long sweeping gestures, completely meaningless in themselves” when talking. Autistic communication style varies from person to person of course, but both of these may sound very familiar to fellow modern-day autistics.

Another link to autistic characteristics is when we are shown: “Although he was still obviously very shaken, Ritchie seemed more at ease now that he was back in his own little room”, and his pride and comfort in both his office and his living quarters is shown to the reader, being his safe space which he has occupied for over 20 years, following the same routine each day. His style of organisation will equally resonate to anyone who has struggled with object permanency “This ledge was the most striking feature of the place, and first caught a visitor’s attention, since it evidently contained practically all Mr Richard Barnabas’s worldly possessions. Books clothes and manuscripts were there stacked together neatly, albeit a trifle dustily”.

Having made this argument, the ending is slightly questionable in its potential offensiveness. For it turns out Ritchie is a clown. The novel ends with him deciding to take matters in his own hands and kill the cousin who killed the first cousin before running away and joining his brother (the man who disappeared like a puff of smoke 20 years before the events of the novel) at the circus he had run away to. Clear? At no point is Ritchie condemned for his foray into criminality – his otherness is such that he is outside of common law, and as it was a killer he killed, it seems to balance out. And it’s worth noticing that he realised what happened and who the true killer was before Campion fully got there – go Ritchie! At the same time, while this is shown as something positive for Ritchie, shedding the world that doesn’t fit and becoming his true self, a clown called Moulin-Mou, there’s also something deeply sad about Ritchie’s otherness being ‘solved’ in such a way – instead of finding space in a world that doesn’t quite fit him, he removes himself from this world completely, and live in this transient ‘other’ space.

“From the moment he appeared he was a success. His flail-like gestures were here understood. Here his mute appeal as answered, his wide smile echoed … Campion was aware of tw very gentle blue eyes, infinitely appealing, infinitely friendly, and so far away that they peered at him from another world… Moulin-Mou threw up his arms and bellowed. Campion saw him, rigid for an instant, his great flail-like arms outstretched, his face hidden forever behind the most impenetrable disguise in the world.”