In this 3rd book in the Laetitia Rodd series, the private detective investigates the death of a thespian. The book works fine as a standalone.
*****
In the mid-19th century Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, needing a source of income after her archdeacon husband dies, becomes a private detective.
Conservative and respectable, Mrs. Rodd wouldn't normally mingle with theatrical people, who rate VERY low on Britain's rigid social scale. However when Mrs. Rodd's neighbor Benjamin Tully, a retired thespian, brings a delicious seed cake and asks Mrs. Rodd to help his actress friend Sarah Transome.....
.....the detective agrees to listen to his request.
Tully explains that his friend Sarah Transome's husband, Thomas Transome, has an acting company to which Tully himself belonged until ten years ago.
At that time the King's Theatre leased by Thomas burned down, and Tully was injured, and subsequently retired from acting. Thomas Transome went on to lease another theatre, and he's now fallen in love with an 18-year-old actress called Constance Noonan.
Transome wants to separate from his wife Sarah, with whom he has three adult daughters, and live with his new love. Tully asks Mrs. Rodd to negotiate a fair settlement between Sarah and Thomas Transome, so the abandoned wife has a nice house and the means to survive.
The three Transome daughters, Maria, Olivia and Cordelia - all of whom are actresses - are divided in their loyalties. The oldest daughter, 27-year-old Maria, married actor Edgar Betterton, the scion of a rival theatrical family - which infuriated her father;
the middle daughter, 24-year-old Olivia went to live with her father;
and the youngest daughter, 19-year-old Cordelia, remained with her mother. All the daughters still compete to go on the stage, which causes some ruckus in the family.
Mrs. Rodd helps to arrange an equitable financial resolution between Sarah and her adulterous husband Thomas Transome - and thinks her job is done - when there's a startling development.
The Transomes' daughter Maria and her husband Edgar are renovating the old King's Theatre that burned down a decade ago. During the repairs a corpse is found beneath the floorboards, and it turns out the murdered man was a member of Transome's theatrical company.
The dead man was thought to have left town after the fire, which was written off as an accident. However, with this new discovery, both the conflagration and the death must be investigated by the police. Police Inspector Blackbeard gets the case and asks his friend (and unofficial colleague) Mrs. Rodd to help with the investigation since she 'can talk' to theatre folk.
Before long there's another murder, and Inspector Blackbeard and Mrs. Rodd run all over London to view bodies, locate witnesses, interview people, and so on. Along the way various scandals are revealed, such as unwed girls becoming pregnant; illicit love affairs; bankruptcies; coerced witnesses; and more. Unfortunately every witness in the case lies, and when caught out, just lies some more.
For me, the endless questioning and requestioning of witnesses by Blackbeard and Mrs. Rodd slowed the story too much and I got bored waiting for a resolution. On the upside, it's interesting to see the mores of 1800s London through the eyes of a respectable widow. Mrs. Rodd contantly frets about girls being 'ruined' by things like love letters; pregnancies; scandalous relatives; etc. This kind of thing could literally leave a girl homeless and starving. Of course social norms have changed considerably since the mid-19th century and it's interesting to contrast then and now.
The mystery part of the book is belabored but compelling, and - though I didn't identify the killer - I sussed out a major plot point. I'd recommend the book to fans of historical mysteries who don't mind a sluggish tale.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Sasha Higgins, who does a fine job.
Thanks to Netgalley, Kate Saunders, and Dreamscape Media for a copy of the book.
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