With a book entitled Tea on Sunday, what can you do but post your review on a Sunday, featuring photos of your own little tea party? Thankfully, ours was murder-free!
I had a great time reading Lettice Cooper’s Tea on Sunday. The book was not doing anything ground breaking. As it was originally published in 1973, Lettice Cooper did not push the limits for the murder mystery genre at the time. If anything, this book felt a bit dated. Even after I had checked to see when it was originally published I had to go back periodically to remind myself that the book I was currently reading was in fact that British Library Crime Classic that had been originally published in the 1970s. But, you know what? Not every book has to be doing something new and different. Sometimes new and different can be a bad thing, like when it is not doing it well, or when it is just being new and different for the sake of it. And Lettice Cooper does old and reliable very well indeed. This homage to vintage crime might not be the fabulous bit of writing one would expect from a Persephone Books author (not that I’ve read any of her other books), but it is a very satisfactory way to spend an afternoon.
The story opens with a prologue, which begins…
There were eight cups on the tray. Alberta Mansbridge added the ninth, her own, the dark blue and gold Rockingham cup that her father had used till the day of his death. “As I hope to do till mine,” Alberta had said to Mrs Bramley on her first morning there. “So I shall always wash it up myself, then it will be no one else’s fault if it gets broken.” (17)
Well, we know what’s going to happen, don’t we? Before the guests arrive, Alberta Mansbridge will be murdered. As she would have needed to let the person in, and as she is nervous of being alone for the afternoon—which is in part why she always has people over for tea on Sunday when her tenants are out—she must have known her killer. It is quickly decided by the police that the killer must have been someone invited to the afternoon gathering. They must have arrived early, killed Alberta, left, and then returned later to huddle on the stoop with the others, waiting to be let inside. But of course, they wait in vain, because Alberta lies dead inside.
Set on a snowy February afternoon in London, this would be a great one to read in winter. Although I read this book just a week ago, we were experiencing a snowstorm at the time, so the setting couldn’t have been more perfect. Because I always enjoy when books have descriptions of nature, especially when it is of snow, I must share this passage. Alberta is gazing out the window, waiting for her guests to arrive.
She walked across to the window and looked out at the Square. The usually pleasant water-colour prospect was, on this February afternoon, either white or drab. The sky was drab, the pale stucco houses looked drab; the snow that had begun to fall at midday had already melted to a drab-coloured slush on the pavements and in the street, but in the Square garden the lawn was still iced with it; the bushes were rounded white beehives; every branch of a tree delicately supported three times its own thickness in half-frozen snow. (18)
Without having read the blurb on the back of the book, I had expected this one to be mostly set in Yorkshire, because the stunning cover is an old travel poster for the Yorkshire coast. The inspector in charge of the investigation, Inspector Corby, does travel to Yorkshire to get some answers into Alberta’s past and about the family business interests that have Alberta travelling back to her home town of Hithamroyd on a semi-regular basis. But Corby takes the overnight train and the trip does not take up much of the book, only 38 pages of the book’s 269. I only mention this because I had an expectation about this book that was not fulfilled, and at the time, I was a bit disappointed. My mum was born in Yorkshire and as I have not yet been, I always take a particular delight in reading about the place she grew up. If I had known at the outset I would be reading a mystery set in London, I wouldn’t have minded a bit. But as I said, I didn't read the back cover. I almost never do. If I had, I would not have had the expectation of a Yorkshire setting. The blurb mentions London twice and only refers to Alberta's "Yorkshire roots". That'll teach me for judging a book by its cover! Now, I’ll stop dwelling on what this book is not, and get back to what it is.
Perhaps, the most interesting aspect of the story are the characters. Alberta’s eight guests are a motley crew, including her accountant, an ex-convict she was helping, her family doctor, the manager of her father’s company, an Italian playboy she was also helping, and who appeared to be moving in—both figuratively and literally—in hopes of helping himself to her money, her once good friend Myra with whom Alberta had recently had a falling out over that same Italian man, and her nephew and his awful, but very entertaining, wife.
But I have to say that my favourite character in the book is Inspector Corby, who travels to Yorkshire himself, though his boss is always encouraging him to get the juniors to do the legwork. He suspects it is his tendency not to strictly follow the rules that landed him with Sergeant Newstead when his partner of five years went off to head a North London Station of the C.I.D.
To start on a case with Bob had been like slipping into gear. Newstead, Corby had already found out, was an efficient detective; thorough, accurate in his observation and painstaking. But costive; he seemed to have swallowed the book of words whole and got a permanent stiff neck from it; so far no fun in him. Oh well, it was early days yet. (37)
We know from the start that we are in for some fun with Corby, though! Newstead’s serious nature sets off Corby nicely, and he does prove to be a reliable partner.
While this was not my absolute favourite Crime Classic—that would has to be Christianna Brand's London Particular, which I recently reviewed—I did read this book remarkably fast, in just a couple of sittings. This one is slow-paced but so well-written that I sped straight through it, right to the climactic finish.
Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Tea on Sunday for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.
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