The Strange Fate Of Kitty Easton

Elizabeth Speller

Hachette

Otago Daily Times, May 8th 2011

The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is an old-fashioned mystery story that reminded me of nothing so much as one of those wonderful BBC period pieces that used to feature in Mobil Masterpiece Theatre. 

In the 5 years since the end of WWI, former infantry officer Laurence Bertram has finally started to look to the future.  Faced with the choice between a permanent teaching position in Westminster and a year as a private tutor in Italy, he receives an invitation to from his architect and friend William Bolitho to examine a church he is restoring in Easton Deadall, a small Wiltshire village on the Easton estate. 

Although the heir to Easton Hall was killed during the war, it remains the home of his widow Lydia, younger brother Julian, and Lydia’s sister Frances.  Run down during the war, it remains a beautiful place but Laurence soon learns that the shadow that pervades the once vibrant estate runs deeper than mere neglect.  At first he thinks it is the result of the mysterious disappearance some thirteen years earlier of Lydia’s 5-year-old daughter, Kitty; her mother continues to believe she is alive and will one day return, and both Frances and Julian fear that the renovations may unearth her remains, a shock that would devastate the frail and ailing Lydia. 

The arrival of the youngest Easton son, Patrick, reveals other tensions within the family, and hints at further secrets buried in the past.  Then a young maid from the Hall vanishes and a woman’s body is discovered buried beneath the church, and Laurence finds himself drawn into the role of detective, a position very much at odds with the reclusive life he has adopted since the war.

With its flashbacks to the war and examination of the damage caused to individuals and communities of such conflict, it has drawn comparisons to Birdsong and the Regeneration trilogy.  Whilst I didn’t find this novel as compelling as either and it could have done with some firmer editing (the welter of introductions and background in the first few pages left me rather confused), it is very readable. 

Competently told from Laurence’s viewpoint, with the odd exception of one chapter that is details one of Julian’s dreams, Speller largely refrains from following the most obvious routes through the story and leaves many threads unfinished.  This is partly because it is the second in a series and more are obviously planned, but I think I prefer it as a stand-alone story; a brief glimpse into lives that extend backwards into the darkness of the past and forwards into a future foreshadowed by reader’s knowledge that worse is yet to come.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/explorations-aftermath-war