Read The Dying of the Light: A Mystery Online
Authors: Michael Dibdin
The Dying of the Light: A Mystery
The Dying of the Light: A Mystery
Michael Dibdin
Vintage (2012)
Tags: Mystery, Contemporary
Mysteryttt Contemporaryttt
One of England's most acclaimed younger mystery writers, the creator of Detective Aurelio Zen, gives us a brilliant and haunting variation on the classic drawing-room murder novel. The setting is Eventide Lodge, where the guests have gathered for tea. Colonel Weatherby is reading by the fire. Mrs. Hargreave III is whiling away her time at patience. And Miss Rosemary Travis and her friend, Dorothy, are wondering which of their housemates will be the next to die.For even as Michael Dibdin's elderly sleuths debate clues and motives, it becomes clear that Eventide Lodge is not a genteel country inn but a place of ghastly cruelties and humiliations. A place where the logic of murder is . . .almost
comforting
. At once affectionate homage and audacious satire,
The Dying of the Light
will delight any aficionado of Patricia Highsmith, Peter Dickinson, or Ruth Rendell.
From Kirkus Reviews
Immured in a beastly nursing home run by smarmy William Anderson and his foulmouthed sister Letitia Davis, Rosemary Travis, abetted by her cooperative chum Dorothy Davenport, keeps her spirits up by embroidering the horrors of life at Eventide Lodge into a baroque Golden Age mystery plot--a plot that casts each of her innocuous fellow-geriatrics as a possible suspect when Hilary Bryant dies or George Channing attempts to escape and is mauled by Anderson's Doberman. But when Dorothy, on the eve of her departure for the hospital for terminal-cancer treatment, dies of a fantastic concoction of liquor and pills, Rosemary has a real-life mystery on her hands. Or does she? Did Dorothy really kill herself? Or was Anderson getting rid of her as expeditiously as possible? Or was the killer some other patient? Or is the whole plot one last fictional legacy of Dorothy's? Once again, Dibdin, author of Ratking and the Aurelio Zen novels (Vendetta, 1991, etc.), produces a tale as piercingly funny as Tom Stoppard--and as wise about the powers of fiction to deal with an unspeakable world. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader. He writes the unmentionable calmly and with devastating effect."—Ruth Rendell"Horribly, monstrously funny . . . a merry and maddening
jeu d'esprit
."—
The Independent on Sunday
"An elegant novel."—
Boston Globe
"As appealing as it is inventive."—
The Sunday Times
The Dying of the Light: A Mystery
Michael Dibdin
Vintage (2012)
Tags: Mystery, Contemporary
Mysteryttt Contemporaryttt
One of England's most acclaimed younger mystery writers, the creator of Detective Aurelio Zen, gives us a brilliant and haunting variation on the classic drawing-room murder novel. The setting is Eventide Lodge, where the guests have gathered for tea. Colonel Weatherby is reading by the fire. Mrs. Hargreave III is whiling away her time at patience. And Miss Rosemary Travis and her friend, Dorothy, are wondering which of their housemates will be the next to die.For even as Michael Dibdin's elderly sleuths debate clues and motives, it becomes clear that Eventide Lodge is not a genteel country inn but a place of ghastly cruelties and humiliations. A place where the logic of murder is . . .almost
comforting
. At once affectionate homage and audacious satire,
The Dying of the Light
will delight any aficionado of Patricia Highsmith, Peter Dickinson, or Ruth Rendell.
From Kirkus Reviews
Immured in a beastly nursing home run by smarmy William Anderson and his foulmouthed sister Letitia Davis, Rosemary Travis, abetted by her cooperative chum Dorothy Davenport, keeps her spirits up by embroidering the horrors of life at Eventide Lodge into a baroque Golden Age mystery plot--a plot that casts each of her innocuous fellow-geriatrics as a possible suspect when Hilary Bryant dies or George Channing attempts to escape and is mauled by Anderson's Doberman. But when Dorothy, on the eve of her departure for the hospital for terminal-cancer treatment, dies of a fantastic concoction of liquor and pills, Rosemary has a real-life mystery on her hands. Or does she? Did Dorothy really kill herself? Or was Anderson getting rid of her as expeditiously as possible? Or was the killer some other patient? Or is the whole plot one last fictional legacy of Dorothy's? Once again, Dibdin, author of Ratking and the Aurelio Zen novels (Vendetta, 1991, etc.), produces a tale as piercingly funny as Tom Stoppard--and as wise about the powers of fiction to deal with an unspeakable world. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader. He writes the unmentionable calmly and with devastating effect."—Ruth Rendell"Horribly, monstrously funny . . . a merry and maddening
jeu d'esprit
."—
The Independent on Sunday
"An elegant novel."—
Boston Globe
"As appealing as it is inventive."—
The Sunday Times
MICHAEL DIBDIN
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Michael Dibdin is the author of eight other novels, including
Ratking
, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award and, most recently,
Dead Lagoon.
He lives in England.
ALSO BY MICHAEL DIBDIN
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
A Rich Full Death
Ratking
The Tryst
Vendetta
Dirty Tricks
Cabal
Dead Lagoon
FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, JANUARY 1995
Copyright © 1993 by Michael Dibdin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited, London, in 1993. First published in the United States in hardcover by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1994.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Dibdin, Michael.
The dying of the light / Michael Dibdin.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82248-2
1. Women detectives–England–Fiction. 2. Hotels–England–
Fiction. I. Title
PR6054.I26D95 1994
823′.914–dc20 93-11747
v3.1
To the memory of Eileen Coleman
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Before entering the lounge, Rosemary paused to check her appearance in the mirror at the foot of the stairs. It was a proper, old-fashioned, full-length looking-glass in a solid rosewood frame, not like the cheap rubbish they turned out these days. That sort of thing might be just about adequate for checking whether your hair was presentable and your seams were straight, but was worse than useless when it came to showing how you looked at a glance, whole and entire.
And that was what mattered, Rosemary reflected, surveying the results of her scrutiny with a certain modest satisfaction. Details were important, of course, but she had been brought up to believe that people were more than the sum of their parts. Anyone with enough money could acquire the trimmings, but what really counted was whether you were the right sort. There was no buying
that
. It was something which registered instantly, without your even being aware of it.
Everyone had their allotted role in the play of life, and the fitting thing to do was to try and look your part. Miss Rosemary Travis was pleased to see that she had been eminently successful in this respect. From her tightly waved silver-grey hair and steady hazel eyes to her sensible tweed skirt and stout rubber-soled shoes she proclaimed herself for what she was, an elderly maiden aunt whose life had been outwardly uneventful but who was no fool, and did not easily suffer those who were.
She opened the door into the lounge. The marble clock on the mantelpiece read ten past four. Tea had not yet been served, but the other guests had already gathered. Colonel Weatherby was installed in his usual chair by the fireplace, reading
The Times.
Some distance away the wealthy invalid Mrs Hiram Hargreaves III, swathed in pullovers and blankets, was whiling away the time with a game of patience. At a table near the French windows giving on to the lawn, Charles Symes and. Grace Lebon were bent over a jigsaw puzzle, their heads almost touching. His back pointedly turned to the beauties of the landscape, Samuel Rosenstein stood muttering into the telephone in a guttural undertone. Lady Belinda Scott sat rigidly upright on the piano stool, her fingers lightly touching the keys, while in the corner Canon Purvey nodded over a book. Only George Channing, the corned beef millionaire, appeared to be missing.
Rosemary made her way towards the bay window where her friend Dorothy Davenport sat absorbed in her knitting.
‘I’ve got it, Dot!’ she announced excitedly.
‘I do hope it isn’t catching, dear.’
‘No, I mean I’ve worked out who did it.’
The clacking of Dorothy’s needles ceased as she turned her pale, elfin face to Rosemary.
‘Did what?’