Death Comes to Pemberley

 

Jane Austen’s works are quite beloved, so beloved by some, that certain writers and readers alike just can’t get enough of them, even though her oeuvre have been exhausted for centuries. There were only six novels, after all (seven if you count Lady Susan), two others left unfinished, a host of Juvenilia, and poems, prayers, and letters. That’s not a lot, but she died young, only 41 years old.

Now considered one of English Literature’s greatest writers, it only stands to reason that more than a few people lament she had not published as many novels as Stephen King. Then again, it is, possibly, that want for more that has risen Jane so high in our imagination. P.D. James is one such person. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given her fame as a mystery writer. But what one writes and what one reads and loves need not be the same. That may be a good thing. To read what one writes might haunt her, with bits of other crime novels creeping into her own, unexpectedly.

P.D. James has only written two novels (as far as I’m aware) that are not crime fiction. The first was Children of Men (1992), a rather chilling near-future SF novel, the other Death Comes to Pemberley (2011).

Death Comes to Pemberley is a continuation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set six years after its events. It’s a pastiche, but also a Georgian mystery novel. (Excepting her Children of Men, it would appear that her apple does not fall far from her tree.) Events begin when Captain Martin Denny and George Wickham are passing through a wooded area of Pemberley, when Denny calls for the carriage to stop, he leaps down and runs into the wood. Wickham chases after him. The coachman hears shouts, but horrified by the cries, does not run into the wood. He raises the alarm, and Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam discover Denny’s bloodstained corpse, Wickham beside him, confessing the death is his fault.

An investigation follows. Then a court case. I’ll leave out the rest. You know: spoilers.

P.D. James received generally favourable reviews for her effort. Some were wildly enthusiastic.

I found the book an altogether enjoyable read. Those characters from P&P are true to Austen’s original; and I’ll hazard that P.D. James did her homework concerning English law of the period. But I’m not wildly enthusiastic about this book. It contains a healthy dose of deus ex machina, followed by lengthy denouement. The book fails, in that regard.

If you are unfamiliar with those terms, deus ex machina (god in the machine) is a plot device where an unsolvable conundrum is brought to resolution by an unexpected, or unlikely, occurrence. Denouement occurs after the climax of a novel, where all the dangling strands are drawn together. Consider Hercule Poirot unfolding a mystery by lengthy exposition. Too long a denouement generally points to the author either weaving an unsolvable narrative, leaving out details, or being so oblique in pointing to crucial clues so that the reader could not possibly solve the mystery. (I should not be so dishonest in using Poirot as an example; one must read Agatha Christie carefully; she is never so perfidious; the clues are there, but you must be an industrially observant reader to catcher her out: her most crucial clue may only be a fragment of a sentence.) These days, such practice is generally frowned on. It leaves a bad taste in readers’ mouths.

Is this novel worth your time? That depends: Are you a Jane Austen fan? Do you love novels where contemporary authors revisit, or carry on, the narratives of others? (I have: early Star Trek novels. Long ago. Before the glut. But only those concerning the original series. But that’s another tale.) If you do, you will likely love P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley.

I found it lacking because of that deus ex machina.

The Five

 

To begin, I’m not a True Crime fan. Far from it. I can think of innumerable pursuits more palatable than consuming a steady diet of the misery of others.

That said, I am a fan of history. What’s more, I have a desire to understand, in as much as it is possible to do so, the subtext of the literature of its time, be it fiction or non-fiction. Nothing exists in a bubble. It goes without saying that Jack the Ripper was foremost in peoples’ minds in the autumn of 1888.

How could they not have been? The Whitechapel Murders were splashed across every newspaper in London as Jack terrorised that now famous district. Regardless that terror, not everyone residing there could escape it: Where might the poor go, one could ask? Poverty limited their choices. They must live where they could afford to, even if they could afford to live nowhere at all.

Which brings us to the “canonical five.” Five hapless women fell to Jack’s gruesome pursuit, becoming the stuff of legend. Jack might be more famous, but let’s face facts: even to this day, we know little, if anything, about history’s most famous serial killer. We know a great deal more about those five women who were his victims, perhaps more now than we did then.

Which brings me to Hallie Rubenhold’s 2019 study of Jack’s victims. Her book, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, is not another exploration of the Whitechapel Murders (there are quite a few of those already); it is a forensic dissertation on the lives of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, insofar as she was able to piece together as accurate a biography of each as is possible, given how little might be known about any woman in the latter Victorian era.

National Police Gazette illustration, 1889

Let’s be clear: this is not a book about the murders. They are biographies, from birth until their last sightings. There are brief afterwards, where their next of kin, or closest acquaintances, identified the bodies. But there is no speculation as to how each met their end; no imaginings on how Jack stalked then, approached them, whether they were even aware of his very presence. Any such scenes would be pure fiction; and Ms. Rubenhold had no desire to pile on more speculation than already has been. Ms. Rubenhold had one goal, to give these women the fair trial they deserved when they passed, and not the derision they received in the court of public opinion.

In short, each was painted a prostitute. They were not, most likely. Only two of the five can concretely be proven to have engaged in sex work, ad only one was what one might officially be called a bonified prostitute. The others were only guilty of misfortune and, in some cases, addiction. Each began what one might call a promising life. And it was only by circumstance that they found themselves living a life of poverty in one of the worst slums in London at then time.

Each led an interesting life, each unique from the others. Thus, each biography does not cover the same ground. Mary Ann married, had children, and likely found herself on the street owing to her husband’s infidelity, regardless his citing her alcoholism as the reason for their estrangement. Annie was the daughter of a soldier, married a coachman, and was not a member of the labouring class, but she too had a weakness for alcohol, which became her undoing. Elizabeth was not English, but Swedish, a “fallen” woman who had to emigrate to escape a life of judgemental scrutiny, having contracted venereal disease (likely contracted from her employer, not that she could ever have accused him of that). She most certainly suffered from mental issues at the time of her death due to syphilis. Catherine was a free spirit: a bit of a gypsy, a busker, and a bit of a con artist. Little, if anything, is known of Mary Jane. That was probably not her real name. She told everyone she knew a different origin story. She was one a posh call girl. But after being betrayed by her madam, she found herself in ever diminishing prospects.

They had, for the most part, little in common. Poverty, at the time of their death, is the only thing that bound them as a group. Alcohol was prevalent. “Sleeping rough” (on the street, under the stars), on occasion, was also shared (except Mary Jane), when they could not scape together the few pence needed for a bed, when the workhouse was filled to capacity. Why then did Jack targeted them? One wonders.

Ms. Rubenhold could have added more material to this work; she might have included those other victims who are not canonically considered Jack’s victims; she might have detailed Emma Elizabeth Smith’s life, so too Martha Tabram’s, and Rose Mylett’s, and Alice McKenzie’s, and Francis Cole’s. They may very well have been Jack’s victims. But thy were not officially linked with Jack. So, she limited herself to those famous five.

Dorset Street, Spitalfields, London, 1902

What I found most interesting was how Ms. Rubenhold drew on not just these women’s lives, as records illuminate, but also censuses, and other sources, both contemporary histories and historical ones, giving us a more detailed picture of what life was like for labouring classes, for household servants, for soldiers and coachmen and tinplate artisans, what life was like in debtors’ prisons and workhouses, and indeed, what it was like for those who had little choice but to find shelter under eaves and alongside the sewage flowing in the gutter.

The Five has found its way onto many lists detailing the best Ripper books. Most concern themselves on the actual murders and the investigation, I imagine. I can’t say for certain if that is the case. Few, I believe, concern themselves with the actual lives of the victims, except in the most cursory fashion. This one does. And thus, Mr. Rubenhold’s book may be the only one to fill in thos glaring gaps the others leave wanting.

It's not a literary work. I was not swept off my feet by her mastery of poetic prose. She is not lacking in skill, either. All in all, it is a good dissertation, which is, what I expect, what she was aiming for.