BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

AN UNPUNISHED CRIME

(By

U.S.)

"Moss Rose,” by Joseph Shearing. 'William Heinemann Ltd., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth.

When the first rather unpleasant description of back stage theatre lives ends in the murder of a woman of the streets in a sordid London lodging house the reader of “Moss Rose’’ is inclined to flunk the book is but one of the clever mystery stories of which the late Edgar Wallace was the great exponent.

Mr. Shearing has made much more of his book than that. It is a study in character and a very clever analysis of the effect of fear, remorse and cool and calculating determination on the part of the three chief actors in the drama. “Belle Adair,” an unsuccessful actress who has known better days, Maarten Morl, the young German clergyman arrested for murder, and Lili Schoppe, his fiancee are the pi'incipals in the story. Belle Adair occupied the next room to the one in which “Daisy Arrow” was murdered by a man of whom the only police clues were his “gentlemanly appearance and foreign pronunciation of English.” Belle had other evidence she kept secret, seeing in her possession of that evidence the way out of the misery of her sordid existence. The illegitimate child of wealthy parents, she had been well educated and given to understand she would be wealthy. She had marriad almost from the schoolroom and went to India with her husband. There she became involved in a scandal and was divorced. Little by little Belle had drifted from riches to poverty and to completer degradations. The arrest of the German, Dr. Schoppe, doctor on a German steamer bound for Brazil was the first move by the police. The doctor had no difficulty in proving his innocence, but was visited at the. police court by his friend Maarten Morl who was going to Brazil as a missionary. A few words spoken by Morl- convinced some of the Crown witnesses against the doctor that the clergyman was the man they had heard talking to Daisy Arrow, and his arrest followed.

Once again the withholding of evidence by Belle Adair broke down the Crown’s case and Morl was discharged. During the proceedings, however, Belle had informed Dr. Schoppe that she held certain evidence against Morl and that her silence must be paid for. It brought her into touch with Lili Schoppe, the doctor’s daughter betrothed to Maarten Morl. Her evidence of having spent the evening with Morl completed his alibi, but Belle was convinced that the evidence was not so straightforward as it appeared. An interview with Lili made this impression a certainty and tightened Belle’s grip on Maarten Morl. Belle found Lili full of remorse for having committed perjury even to save her lover. The marriage of Lili and Maarten had been postponed and they were not going to Brazil. The change in plans suited Belle, but weak visionary as the older woman had considered Lili “Belle knew now that in dealing with her she would have to deal with .a fanatic. She was fairly experienced, - but she had never yet had to handle simple, single-minded piety, which she sensed could have an iron resolution behind it, for ~ surely Lili’s look of a china angel concealed a stem obstinacy of purpose.” Nor does the author interpret just the greed of the ordinary, blackmailer in his description of Belle Adair. She had determined to pull herself - out - of the Slough of Despond from which suicide had seemed, on the night of. the murder, to have been the only way out. It was not luxury for luxury’s sake Belle craved. It was the right to the treatment to which she felt her trained intellect, her breeding and her good looks entitled her that she desired to emphasise, and in her determination to assert that right she was ruthless. The price of her silence was that Maarten take her as a friend—a slum social worker who had done him great service at a time of peril—to his mother’s home in Germany. From that vantage point he was to find her a position that would allow her intellect to win her a place in decent society and to forget the past. The demand is met. Belle, goes to Maarten’s home to find instead of the gentle retiring housewife she anticipated that Frau Morl is as strong a personality as herself. The courtesy of Maarten's mother “had a blank quality, she seemed to take her guest for granted in a fashion that set her more completely the other side of a barrier than any resentment or rage could have done. She seemed quite indifferent as to whether this was a serpent or a dove that she cherished in the midst of her austere household; never by a look or a gesture did she betray what her feelings were towards her dead husband and her dead son, or towards Maarten and Lili, how she had viewed the expedition to Brazil, or how that sudden cancellation of that project and the disaster that had led to her son’s return to Germany.”

The monotony of the correct, colourless, German country life nearly made Belle give up the project. “But fatigue and relief conquered her revulsion against futile monotony—she was safe, she was cleansed, she had struggled out of the filth. She hears one day that Frau Morl expects Lili Schoppe to pay her a long visit. The outcome of that visit, Belle’s infatuation for Maarten, and her discussions with Lili prepare the way for the climax of the story. As it develops the character of Maarten Morl also emerges. It is the old story of the youth with many possessions and a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” personality. The reader is left to form his own conclusion about Daisy Arrow’s death, but the attractiveness and the fineness of character possessed by Maarten are shown in clever contrast to the other and very unlovely side of his nature.

The narrative ends as it began, with an ugly drama in a mean street. Belle Adair achieved much that she had desired, and the reader is forced almost against his will to admire the courage that could dare so much and come so near achievement. She paid a fearful price for the success she achieved, but even that might have been preferable to being slowly overwhelmed in the degradation from which she had climbed.

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