“There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.”    (Macbeth, I, iv)

Actor-manager Alan Russell is having a really bad day. He has squired his theatre company to the Irish town of Invermore, where they regularly perform, only to discover that Alan’s beloved wife, off to Hollywood to make a picture, has screwed up the hotel reservations. With no other lodgings available for miles and miles and the worst storm hitting the area since The Big Wind of 1847 – or was that the Great Rains of 1903? – Alan doesn’t know what to do! 

And then a charming local named Willie Standish invites Alan and his two juvenile stars to stay at his mansion . . . that is, if they can maneuver their cars through the rain and across the flooding bridge to a nearby island. They manage to reach their destination, but just as they are getting settled the bridge washes out, stranding the party for the time being. And then things go from bad to worse, for no matter how hot the baths, how tasty the food, and how comfortable the beds, even the best arrangements can turn sour when somebody turns up murdered. 

It seems like only yesterday that I flew to London and attended the 2019 Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library. A true highlight for me was dining the evening before with all the speakers and sitting across from Dr. John Curran, the noted Agathologist and general mystery expert. We shared our desert island Christies and other confidences, and then I got the pleasure of hearing John speak at the conference – not about Christie, but about two other favorite, if lesser-known, authors of his. One was D.M. Devine, the Scottish author whose debut mystery My Brother’s Killer was nominated by none other than Christie herself to win the Don’s Detective Novel Competition held by the Collins Crime Club. This novel happened to have just been republished, and so I excitedly bought it and brought it home to America – where it has patiently sat on my TBR pile for the last four and a half years. 

The other author Dr. Curran waxed enthusiastically about was Nigel Fitzgerald. Born in County Cork, Ireland in 1906, Fitzgerald had a successful career as an actor (evidently both onstage and the screen) before he began writing mysteries. He published a dozen titles, all but one during a ten-year period between 1953-63, that utilized his knowledge of the theatre world in the creation of series regular Alan Russell, who had a cordial relationship with Superintendent Duffy, Fitzgerald’s other series sleuth. 

Alas, I promptly forgot all about Fitzgerald – that is, until my sojourn this summer to The Mysterious Bookshop in New York yielded gorgeous first edition U.S. hardcover copies (with their jackets) of a pair of his mysteries: The Candles Are All Out and The Day of the Adder, a Superintendent Duffy mystery. And so, risking a loud “HAARRRUMMMPPH!” from the D.M. Devine novel sitting on the row above it, I grabbed Candles for my next read. 

Right from the start, the tone is humorous and a little bawdy, with a sophisticated wit that reminds one of Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward. The book opens with Alan entering and dashing upstairs to the only suite in the Invermore hotel in order to remove his sopping wet suit and climb into a hot bath. He makes his way naked into the bathroom, only to find the tub occupied by another naked man. This is Alan’s friend, Judge Palliser, who is in town along with a covenant of lawyers to lead the current session of the circuit court. Although he has prior rights to the room, somehow the Judge ends up at Mr. Standish’s island home along with Alan. Also present are actors Peter Traill and Rosa Marfrey, who just may be an item; Standish’s niece Millicent, a rather alarming veterinary surgeon; the beautiful and highly-sexed Kate Karmody, who never met an actor she didn’t want to bed; and a pair of men named Standish and Black, who claim to be attorneys stranded in the storm but can’t seem to keep their stories straight. As the storm rages outside and the electricity gives way to the titular lighting, our stranded group attempts to form a civilized house party, but it is clear that all sorts of peculiar goings-on are, well . . . going on! 

I had to adjust a slight disappointment that rather than a theatrical mystery, here we are dealing with your standard closed circle stranded in a country house affair. After that, I just sat back and enjoyed the amusing way Fitzgerald straddles the farcical and the procedural. The set-up is classical, but this is 1960, and the pre-murder events veer toward a sex romp, complete with a lascivious seduction scene and accusations of lesbianism. The author does a nice job of balancing the humorous with the more horrifying aspects of murder. I wasn’t sure who was going to get killed until it happened, and Fitzgerald paints a strong picture of what the day after a murder might look like for a stranded party: the shock, the vestiges of a person who was alive the night before, the growing net of suspicion that hangs over the company. Added bonus for the appearance of a pair of terriers (Mike and Mrs. Mike) who are not only adorable but fit quite nicely into the plot from start to finish.

And Fitzgerald’s prose is lovely. The book’s title means something – not only because Alan is desperate to get back to town and play the role of Macbeth, but also due to the fact that the electricity has gone out and candles become a necessity:

“In the ordinary way, one of the charms of dining by candlelight is the subconscious awareness that the surrounding shadows are there from choice, not of necessity, that they can be dispelled at the flick of a switch. One admires the reflection of the tiny flames in old silver and polished glass, and one finds particularly charming the way in which diamonds on white throats or slim fingers seem to take on a more independent, a more brilliant life. When candles are used perforce, one is conscious only of their shortcomings; plates become pools of darkness in which unidentifiable food swims dispiritedly, and the beaded bubbles winking at the brim of one’s glass seem to be the wrong color. The lack of bright light becomes even more disquieting went at the back of the diners’ minds is the thought of a broken body lying somewhere in the house and the realization that one of their number is a murderer.”

The denouement is sufficiently exciting and in keeping with all that has gone on before, in that one would probably not find such a confrontation between sleuth and killer in a Miss Marple novel. After one reading, I’m far from ready to place Nigel Fitzgerald in the pantheon of writers like Christie or Carr who knew how to craft a complex puzzle. But I enjoyed spending time in Alan Russell’s company and look forward to The Day of the Adder and any other Fitzgerald titles that happen to come my way.