Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

     Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) The title is too cute for the tale, which deals with murders done not by Georgia, the apparent beneficiary, but by Ferdi Paul, who depends on the income she affords him as leading actress in his company. Campion’s sister Val (I didn’t know he had a sister) is caught up in the mess, and Campion fails to prevent a death. In the end, he uncovers the murderer, at no little risk to himself.
     So much for the mcguffin. Allingham delivers herself of a number of comments on what we now call feminism which sound strange to current readers. Val ends as the wife of Alan Dell, in his sense of the word: that he will provide for her and protect her and expects her to devote herself totally to him. Val accepts this; yet she has been a very successful business woman as designer of high fashion (whence the pointless allusion in the title.) It seems as if Allingham wanted to write a social comedy with serious under- (over?) tones, and had to match her ambitions to the constraints of a detective story. Sayers (who comes close to giving Harriet a similar subservient role in her marriage to Wimsey) does the ‘tec story as novel much better. But one wonders whether Allingham might not have done more interesting work if she hadn’t had to keep herself in groceries by writing these slight but intriguing entertainments. Perhaps her hostility to the independent woman was at bottom a complaint about having to make her own way without a companion. I’ll have to find out more about her. ** (2005)
     Wiki's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham
     It appears she was happily married, but had no children.