I confess that I’ve had several mysteries by Catherine Aird sitting on my shelf for a few years now without having enough gumption to pick one up and read it. But thanks to Book Club, that has been remedied, and I have to say this writer may have a long career ahead of her. 

Actually, Kinn Hamilton McKintosh, born June 20, 1930, began writing mysteries under the pen name Catherine Aird in 1966. The Religious Body marked the first in the Chronicles of Calleshire series, which gave us the exploits of Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Berebury CID. Saddled with a Constable named Crosby in whom, at least early on, he seems to place little faith, Sloan is a patient if slightly grumpy policeman who uncovers the dark secrets and criminal tendencies of the residents of fictional Calleshire County through plodding method and legwork, exactly like a real policeman does it. 

I’m pleased to report that Ms. Aird, a member of The Detection Club since 1981, is still thriving in a little village in Kent where last June she celebrated her 93^rd birthday and then published the 25^th adventure of Sloan and Crosby. It’s only right that Book Club should show the lady a little attention, and to that purpose we selected Inspector Sloan’s second case, 1968’s Henrietta Who?

This is a village mystery, but the small village of Larking lacks the vintage color of St. Mary Mead and the eccentricity of those charming death-traps you find on Midsomer Murders. In fact, when death comes to Larking, it takes everyone by surprise. A longtime resident named Grace Edith Jenkins has been killed in a hit-and-run on a secluded street. A respectable war widow who kept to herself, Grace leaves behind a daughter, a 20-year-old college student named Henrietta. But almost immediately, the police and the townsfolk are hit with a series of shocks: Grace’s death was deliberate murder, and an autopsy reveals the impossibility that she ever bore a child. 

Thus, the investigation flies along two separate tracks: as Inspector Sloan starts to put together the facts of Grace Jenkins’ death, Henrietta searches for her real identity. Sloan assists her at each turn, figuring the answer to “Who is Henrietta?” will take him further toward unmasking the hit-and-run driver. But every clue the policeman and/or the girl uncovers seems to be a negative one, taking them further and further from an understanding of what happened twenty-one years earlier and how it may have led to Grace’s death. What appears to be a simple crime becomes more and more frustrating for our professional and amateur sleuths. And somehow it seems to Sloan that the clock is ticking: as Henrietta’s twenty-first birthday approaches, the Inspector feels a tremendous pressure building to find out the secret of “Henrietta Who” as soon as he can. 

While I tend to prefer private and amateur sleuths over cops, Sloane is something of a charmer. He must endure the temperamental demands of the maniacal Superintendent Leeyes and resist taking it out on the rather plodding Constable Crosby. But even as he struggles to keep his temper in check, Sloan displays an innate ability for reading each witness and asking the right questions, and he shows a touching degree of fatherly concern for poor, shocked Henrietta, even as he must keep open the possibility that she is lying to him. 

And even though the case progresses with painstaking slowness – one step forward, two steps back – the book moves at a brisk pace. Aird alternates between Sloan’s and Henrietta’s points of view, giving us a sympathetic portrait of the girl even as the Inspector remains firmly at the center of the action.  Despite a slight “just the facts, ma’am” feeling behind Sloan’s interviews, each provides a capsule portrait of villagers and witnesses and suspects, including the hearty squire, the dry solicitor, the young farmer who wants to marry Henrietta as soon as possible, the fatherly vicar and his wife, and the faintly vicious gossips who were frustrated by Grace’s desire for privacy. Aird writes with pleasing economy and a lovely sense of humor, as when she sums up the testimony of witnesses at the inquest:

“Harry Ford, postman, came next, and deposed how he had come across the body early on Wednesday morning. Graphically. Mrs. Callows described how Mrs. Jenkins had got off the last bus with her and Mrs. Perkins. Melodramatically. Then P.C. Hepple related that which he had found. Technically.”

The solution, when it comes, is as ordinary as the citizens of Larking, although Aird provides one big, obvious, old-timey clue that, to my shame, completely passed me by! But mostly, she seems to have taken the tropes of classic detective fiction and applied the more realistic wash of post-GAD crime novels. That’s okay – considering how enjoyable it was to observe Inspector Sloan handle his crotchety superior and train/scold his wary assistant. While I’ll have to wait till Sunday to see if Henrietta Who? passed muster with the majority of Book Club, it looks like the two other Catherine Aird novels sitting on my TBR shelf will require my attention in the near future!