The Seaside Corpse

The Seaside Corpse is now the fourth of the “Aggie Morton Mystery Queen” series, and, if the blurb on the dust jacket is to be believed, it is the last. It has a certain final feel to it. The cast of characters is all gathered, Aggie, herself, (in her role as Queen of Crime), Hector Perot, and Grannie Jane (aka, respectively, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple), but the venue is very different from the Victorian drawing rooms of the previous books. Aggie's brother-in-law James has arranged for Aggie and Hector to be part of a Young Scientists League "introducing inquiring youth to the facts and the mysteries of Mother Earth". There are, as James says, advantages to being Lord Greyson (and also to having pots of money!). This particular group is going to learn about fossil hunting and preservation, how to identify different fossils, and, specifically, to help excavate a giant icthyosaur from the bed of the sea where it has been for a million years unnoticed, exposed as it is for only about a half-hour at low tide.

James takes Aggie and Hector to the shore where the fossil hunters have set up a rather primitive camp. Hector, who definitely prefers civilization to "le camping", views the washing facilities in particular with something akin to horror; Aggie minds less, but then she has to share a tent only with the daughter of the cook and not with several other boys (one of whom snores). It does not take them long to notice a general tension in the camp, mainly between Mr and Mrs Blenningham-Crewe, the anthropologists in charge of the removal of the icthyosaur from the sea. Mrs B-C, who insists on being called Nina, is a rabid feminist long before the days when this was a fashionable, or even acceptable, stance. She is also the better scientist. Mr B-C mainly succeeds in getting everyone's back up: his wife's because he claims the credit for her best finds, the Young Scientists' just by being generally unpleasant, and the cook's because he thinks Mr B-C is making improper advances to his daughter. He even quarrels with Mr Osteda, an American millionaire whose son, Oscar, is one of Young Scientists, and who has an interest in acquiring the giant fossil for his collection in Texas. Naturally, therefore, he is the victim that Aggie and Hector find lying on the beach at the foot of a cliff one early morning with his head bashed in.

Suspicion falls on practically everyone in turn, including Cavalier Jones, the strong man and proprietor of the circus which had just come to town. However, the reader needn't worry -- Aggie and Hector, to say nothing of Grannie Jane who has come to stay in a hotel in the nearby town for the weekend and who is a great aid to straight thinking, are on the case, and they, of course, uncover the true facts of the matter.

As well as the mystery, readers get some very interesting sidelights on the art of fossil hunting. Hector brings his analytical mind to bear on the problem of moving the giant chunks of rock (the ichthyosaur is too large to be shifted in one piece) from the floor of the seabed away from the advancing tidal waters to the shore when the barrow they had thought to use proved impossible to manoeuver over the rough stones, even when empty. Since the corpse of Mr B-C had been taken to the town pier by boat, why couldn't the same technique be used for the fossil? It could! By the time the Izzy had been loaded onto the boat (by that strongman from the circus, Mr Cavalier Jones, himself) and rowed around the point by Oscar, a champion oarsman and much lighter than the owner of the boat, and Aggie, herself, had explained how Mr B-C had managed to get himself killed, the whole enterprise ended up owing a great deal to the children involved!

As you can see from the above, I found the whole tale enthralling, more particularly because of the background material and the fact that I had recently read another novel based on the life of Mary Anning, the first female paleontologist and the basis for Mrs B-C. However, a good collection of information always goes down better with a good story to hang it on! The Seaside Corpse has both elements in spades, making a winning combination.

Isabelle Follath’s pen-and-ink sketches at the head of each chapter do not leap out at you as you turn the page, but they are, in fact, worth noting as they tend to give a gentle nudge in the direction of the clue about to be reveled. The cast of characters pictured at the beginning of the book, however, is a clever collection of sketches indicating quite a lot about the people pictured. Notable is that there is a sketch of Miss Spinns, the secretary for the group, and not one of Mr. Augustus Fibbley, a reporter, in spite of the fact that the local newspaper featured an in-person apparently on-site report of the excavation by that same Mr Fibbley.

I, with Aggie, was sorry to hear that Hector had been summoned back to Belgium after his year in Britain, thus putting an end, at least temporarily, to this promising detective collaboration. Who knows, however? After Aggie has reluctantly said good-bye to Hector, handing him over to his family in Calais, she says to James, "If I haven't found another dead body before Hector's birthday, ... I shall write him a murder story in a letter, but I won't put in the ending. I'll write the clues and the suspects and possibly the weapon, but my present to him will be that he can puzzle it out all by himself." Do I hear the hint of more to come?