The Affacombe Affair

 

The Affacombe Affair / Elizabeth Lemarchand
NY: Tandem, 1976, c1968.
192 p.

Another random mystery I picked up at a thrift store, this one has an unfortunate 70s cover that is quite hokey. And the Agatha Christie comparison on the cover is stretching it a bit. However, this story did hold my interest long enough to finish it, and I hadn't quite figured it all out by the end. That may be because the author broke a couple of the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction! 

It's a complicated story with a variety of characters. There are some townspeople, some employees of a nearby boarding school, a rich reclusive family who owns some of the school properties but only comes out to Affacombe weekends, and some youthful residents whose romance plays a part in the story. 

Olivia Strode is a historian, writing various local histories; she's well connected and is known in the village. She has sound judgement, and her statements to the police play a large part in their work once they arrive in Affacombe. They arrive because a young nursing sister working for the school has been found in the river below a lookout point. It's pretty clear it's a murder, although there is some suggestion of suicide. 

As the investigation begins, it's discovered quickly that the deceased Sister had also been a habitual blackmailer. This opens up the case to a plethora of possible suspects, even Olivia Strode herself, whose potential daughter has a dark secret... 

This is an odd story because it seems to start out with a great set-up, and has some enjoyable and clever scenes at a village fete and between families who are brought together only by their children's attachments. The author captures the awkwardness well, and it seems likely to develop. But it doesn't grow as much as I'd expected. Rather the story goes off in another direction that starts to feel melodramatic and honestly a bit vaudevillian. I started to get an inkling of what the solution might be very close to the reveal, but couldn't bring myself to believe she was going to do THAT. But she did. 

It definitely kept me reading though! I really enjoyed some of the characters - Mrs. Strode and her son, her potential in-laws, the earnest people running the school, even some of the locals working for the school were really interesting characters (with a few broad strokes in there). I don't think the conclusion was meant to make a reader laugh, but I just had to. This could have gone in many ways, and I was still thinking of how else it might have ended, long after I'd put it down. So a success in that respect!