Patricia Wentworth

• Born: 1878
• Birthplace: Mussoorie, India
• Died: January 28, 1961
• Place of death: Camberley, Surrey, England

Types of Plot: Private investigator; cozy

Principal Series: Maud Silver, 1928-1961

Contribution

The more than seventy novels of Patricia Wentworth, more than half of which feature Miss Silver, Inspector Lamb, or both, have been variously judged anodyne, dependable, and engaging—solid praise for such an extensive canon. Often compared to Jane Marple, Wentworth’s heroine, Miss Silver, is enriched with much detail, making her one of the most successfully and clearly drawn private detectives in the genre. She inevitably brings a happy solution to varied maidens-in-distress who have been wrongly accused of crime and stripped of their good names and reputations. Wentworth’s style, though in no way poetic or memorable, is sufficient to tell the story, and is, at times, mildly witty. Her plots play fair with the reader, even though they are at times highly unrealistic. They are successful, however, because they create considerable suspense by placing ordinary, decent people from comfortable English settings into extreme danger, a plot device that Wentworth helped to initiate. Like other prolific mystery writers, notably Agatha Christie, Wentworth wrote novels that are uneven in quality, with the least successful written at the end of her career. Yet her charming, rational heroine, Miss Silver, and her skill in creating suspense ensure Wentworth’s lasting popularity as a writer of detective fiction.

Biography

Patricia Wentworth was born Dora Amy Elles in Mussoorie, India, in 1878. She was the daughter of a British army officer. She received a high school education at the Blackheath High School in London, where she and her two brothers had been sent to live with their grandmother. When she completed her education, she returned to India, where she married Colonel George Dillon in 1906. He died soon after, leaving her with three stepsons and a young daughter. She returned to England with the four children and established a successful writing career, publishing six well-received novels of historical fiction between 1910 and 1915.

In 1920, Wentworth (then Dillon) married another British army officer, Lieutenant George Oliver Turnbull, and moved to Surrey. He encouraged and assisted her in her writing and served as a scribe while she dictated her stories, the two of them working only during the winter months between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. In 1923, she began writing mystery novels with The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith; in 1928, she introduced Miss Silver in Grey Mask. Then, after an interim of nine years and fifteen mystery novels, she revived the Maud Silver character in 1937 and used her exclusively in her books written between 1945 and 1961. She died on January 28, 1961.

Analysis

Like many other prolific mystery novelists, Patricia Wentworth began her professional career writing in another genre, historical fiction. Unlike her peers, however, she earned a solid reputation as such a writer, with her first novel, A Marriage Under the Terror (1910), appearing in ten editions and winning a literary prize. She wrote five more , which were published annually through 1915. Although technically unremarkable, these early volumes helped her develop style, plotting technique, and the extensive use of detail in characterization.

When Wentworth began writing mysteries in 1923, she was a polished writer already showing the traits that would become the hallmarks of her entire body of work. In her first novel of detection, The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, while using generic mystery plot elements, she conjured up considerable suspense and intrigue. In many of her books, the typical English settings of pastoral country village or urban London gain deadly and suspenseful qualities with the emphasis on secret passageways and gangs of disguised criminals who have mysterious though entirely mortal power. Such plot elements are saved from becoming silly and absurd throughout her work because of the suspense they consistently generate.

Wentworth’s settings offer the orderly, romanticized views of England that the reader of English mystery novels has come to expect. The small English village, made most famous by Christie, contains within itself all the plot and character requirements. The village green is surrounded by a few small cottages with their requisite gardens, fewer still larger homes built in the Georgian style and filled with unpretentious furniture that, though worn, is very good indeed, a group of small shops containing collections of innocuous items for sale, and the necessary official places, a vicarage and a solicitor’s office. Such exaggerated peace in the setting is stressed to create a strong contrast to the strange and nearly diabolical evil that enters and temporarily cankers the village. It is also the peace to which the village returns after Miss Silver has excised the evil. Thus, Wentworth uses setting in a traditional mystery fashion.

On the surface, too, Wentworth’s characters resemble those of Christie. First among them is Maud Silver herself, an elderly female whose powers of knitting and detection seem unbounded. Often compared to Jane Marple, she is only superficially similar. Interestingly, Miss Silver’s appearance in Grey Mask predates that of Miss Marple in Murder in the Vicarage (1930) by two years. Wentworth’s creation of Miss Silver is highly detailed, perhaps more than that of any other detective hero. These details function to make her comfortably familiar to the reader and often stunningly unpredictable to her foes. Nearly everything about her is misleadingly soft, pastel, and chintz, from her light blue dressing gown and pale smooth skin to her little fur tie and ribbon-and-flower-bedecked hat. She is not a fussy elderly lady, however, and, it is important to note, not an amateur. With her detective agency she has established a professional reputation, and her skills are acknowledged both financially and socially.

Other characters in the books, particularly the dozens of damsels in distress, may be fit into categories. This placement must be made with caution, however, to avoid the mistaken conclusion that they are similar, interchangeable, or two-dimensional. The damsels’ behavior is a result of more than beauty and virtue; each has her own consistent weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that are not extraneous but instead primary sources for the movement of the plot. The characters who reappear from book to book are also endowed with their own traits, but they gain their entertainment value from the pleasant familiarity the reader soon establishes with them. A newly introduced character may suddenly realize that he or she knows one of Miss Silver’s longtime favorites, a niece or a student perhaps, and the requisite order of social class, inherent in the world of the English detective story, is underscored.

Such order is clearly seen in Wentworth’s plots. Although plot conflicts range from the unlikely to the downright silly, they succeed because the characters who are placed in outlandish predicaments are themselves down to earth. Hence, manmade monsters threateningly lying in wait for realistic victims are not entirely foolish. Even when the threat seems to be an ordinary person using no mechanical monsters, that person is horrible within; the individual’s evil becomes diabolical, almost unmotivated. It is comforting to purge such characters from the ordered society. Considered a pioneer in the use of artful suspense, Wentworth has been compared to Charlotte Armstrong, the most successful writer of suspenseful detective fiction. It is Wentworth’s own method, however, to juxtapose the everyday and the horrible in order to sustain suspense and bring consistently satisfying conclusions.

The style of Wentworth’s novels, while often pedestrian, serves the plots well, particularly as a result of its nonintrusiveness. Readers pause neither to admire its brilliance and wit nor to shake their heads over the jarring clichés. In a chatty, second-person style, the nearly omniscient narrator briefs readers on the personalities and motivations of the various characters and also allows them to hear their ongoing thoughts. Short lines of light wit also color the descriptions so that Wentworth’s books become something other than reportage.

Miss Silver Comes to Stay

In Miss Silver Comes to Stay (1949), Wentworth presents a story typical of many of her successful novels. The closed setting of the small village of Melling provides the predictable scenes of a manor house library with doors leading to the garden, cottage parlors, a solicitor’s office, and a general store. The proximity and the small number of these scenes enables the reader to imagine easily their location; further, it allows characters to socialize and to be aware of one another’s business. The setting also functions as a presentation of the order to which this little village of Melling will return after Miss Silver removes the chaotic element.

The cast of characters, too, is pleasant and predictable. Miss Silver has come to Melling to visit her friend, appropriately named Cecilia Voycey. Acting as a to Miss Silver, she is an old school chum who chatters and gossips, while Miss Silver, on the other hand, quietly and methodically solves the murders. The heroine, Rietta Cray, is the damsel in distress, the leading suspect; for variation, however, she is forty-three years old, has big feet, and is often compared to Pallas Athene. In this volume, she becomes the wife of Chief Constable Randal March, the recurring character who is Miss Silver’s favorite student from her governess days. He is attractive both in his admiration and affection for Miss Silver and in his common sense and wisdom. His subordinate, Inspector Drake, impetuous and imprecise, acts as his foil. The victim, James Lessiter, a wealthy lord of the manor, is amoral and unscrupulous, thereby arousing sufficient numbers of enemies who become suspects to puzzle the police. Both he and the second victim, Catherine Welby, are unlikable, which ensures that their deaths raise no grief in the other characters or in the reader. A final important suspect is Carr Robertson, Rietta Cray’s twenty-eight-year-old nephew, whom she reared. He and his aunt are the chief victims of misplaced accusations; they are also both involved in their own star-crossed love affairs and are unable to marry their lovers. Thus Miss Silver not only purges the village of evil but also opens the path to love for four deserving people. She herself is drawn with no new strokes. A first-time reader is easily introduced to her knitting, good sense, and prim appearance, while the longtime reader of Miss Silver is seduced with the pleasure of familiarity.

The plot is not outlandish and depends on only one scene of outrageous coincidence, the fact that Marjory Robertson, Carr’s first wife, happens to have run away with Lessiter. Otherwise, the plot contains no twists that are not acceptable in the detective-story genre. A weakness of this particular story, however, is the lack of a sufficient number of suspects, and a few more lively red herrings are needed. The murder of Lessiter in his library is accomplished by bashing in his head with a fireplace poker. Ordinarily, men and not women commit murder using such means; still, only four men are possible suspects, one of whom is the loving and loyal Carr. The others are two minor characters, who are not involved enough to have committed the crime, and the real murderer himself. His means, motive, and opportunity for murdering Lessiter are logical but not overwhelming, and the solution is not one that completes a splendid puzzle. The pacing of the plot is classic, with the cast of characters being introduced as future suspects in the first few chapters and the murder scene being described in detail with the curtain drawn on the reader at the necessary moment. It is during this scene that Wentworth creates her standard suspense scene when the evil Lessiter acts as both the aggressor with Rietta and as the victim with the unknown murderer. Following this scene comes the questioning of suspects, the second murder, the discovery of secrets in everyone’s closet, and the final revelation. The latter, however, is somewhat carelessly revealed too soon. The finger of blame seems not to point falsely at successive suspects; it simply appears and aims at the real killer. Clearly this work follows a formula plot and utilizes formula characters. Nevertheless, it is ordinarily with the expectation of such formula writing that the reader takes up such a book in the first place.

Although language and style are appropriate, the dialogue is stilted and mannered. Descriptions of the physical are clear but often repetitious. The bloodied sleeve of Carr’s raincoat, for example, the most gruesome image in the story, is noted an extraordinary number of times, considering that it is unimportant in the solution to the crime. In a similarly repetitive manner, lovers kiss, embrace, and kneel beside the beloved so many times that a pervasive tone of romance is cast over the entire story. Murder—romanticized, unregretted, and evil—suspensefully committed and covered up, with several pairs of happy lovers united in the end, thanks to Maud Silver: Such is the formula for the entire canon of Wentworth.

Principal Series Characters:

• Maud Silver a professional private investigator, unmarried, operates her detective agency from her drawing room after her retirement from a position as governess. Her clients are usually young females who are friends or have been referred by friends. Seemingly acquainted with people throughout England, including the police, she works carefully and efficiently, not only proving the innocence of her clients but also reinstating their inevitable social respectability.
• Ernest Lamb is the woolly and not entirely skillful chief investigator who often works with Miss Silver. His three daughters are all named after flowers.
• Ethel Burkett is Miss Silver’s favorite niece, whose four young children receive most of the bounty from Miss Silver’s perpetual knitting.
• Gladys Robinson is Miss Silver’s other niece. Her complaints about her husband make her less than pleasant both to Miss Silver and to the reader.
• Randal March is the chief constable in the county where many of Miss Silver’s cases occur. When she worked as a governess, Randal was her favorite child, and their devotion to each other remains.

Bibliography

Amelin, Michael. “Patricia Wentworth.” Enigmatika 25 (November, 1983): 3-9. Brief but useful discussion of Wentworth’s career and her contribution to detective fiction.

Dresner, Lisa M. The Female Investigator in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. Study of the figure of the female detective and her role in popular culture. Provides context for understanding Wentworth’s writings. Bibliographic references and index.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory. Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Wentworth is compared with other successful and notable female writers of detective fiction.

Kungl, Carla T. Creating the Fictional Female Detective: The Sleuth Heroines of British Women Writers, 1890-1940. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. Study of the fifty years immediately preceding the primary beginning of Wentworth’s career; details the evolution of the conventions that Wentworth worked with and the state of the female detective subgenre when she inherited it.

Malmgren, Carl D. Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001. Includes analysis of Wentworth’s The Gazebo. Bibliographic references and index.

Reynolds, Moira Davison. Women Authors of Detective Series: Twenty-one American and British Authors, 1900-2000. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Examines the life and work of major female mystery writers, including Wentworth.