My Wife Melissa – Francis Durbridge (1967)

Between the 1930s and the late 1960s Francis Durbridge was a prolific writer of mystery novels and plays for both TV and radio. He would have been a famous name back in the 1940s and 50s, and his detective novels featuring Paul Temple were widely read. I have yet to read any Paul Temple novels, though I did read The Other Man, one of Durbridge’s other standalone novels – well I was going to say a couple of years ago – I just checked, it was five years ago! So, with lots of Bello books still unread on my kindle from my Bello splurge of a few years ago, I decided to read My Wife Melissa for the 1967 slot in my ACOB.

There are lots of questions in this little 60s mystery, the main one being who killed Melissa? Who was it called her husband Guy an hour after she had died doing a very good impersonation of her?

When Guy arrives home on the night of his wife’s death, he finds her preparing to go out with two of their friends Paula and Felix, another enormous hat box sitting in the hall.

“It was one of those whimsical things in gold and crimson stripes, all tied up with a colossal silk bow; there was no price-tag on it, of course, but with a sinking heart I mentally deducted another twenty guineas from the not very rosy level of our joint bank account. Melissa was a sucker for new hats. It sometimes seemed to me, the longer I was out of work, the more fancy hats she bought though heaven alone knew what she did with them; she hardly ever wore them. “My Love in her attire doth show her wit,” wrote the poet, “For every season she hath dressings fit”. That was Melissa all right.”

Guy Foster is a writer – a struggling writer would be more appropriate. Coming home that day, Guy has no wish to go out. Following a non-too serious tiff, it seems Melissa is happy to go without him and Guy is happy to let her – he will have uninterrupted hours to himself in which to work. Melissa, Felix and Paula head out to racing driver Don Page’s birthday party, and Guy never sees his wife alive again.

Later in the evening Guy receives a phone call from Melissa – only it is soon apparent that Melissa had been dead at least an hour when the call was made, she had been strangled. Guy is immediately put under suspicion by Inspector Cameron – an eminently sensible man, who we suspect won’t have the wool pulled over his eyes too easily. Inspector Cameron finds a piece of paper in Melissa’s bag with the name of a doctor on it – Dr Norman Swanson of Wimpole Street. Guy claims never to have heard of him, to have no knowledge of his wife consulting Dr Swanson. He is stunned therefore, when Inspector Cameron informs him that he – Guy – is well remembered by both Dr Swanson and his secretary following his recent consultation two weeks earlier. What on earth can it all mean?

Guy can’t rest, he must try and find out what is going on. Talking with Don, Felix and Paula about Melissa and the time before her death, Guy starts to find out things he didn’t know – which puzzle him further and makes him wonder how well he knew his wife.

Later another young woman is found murdered in Guy’s remote little cottage, Guy discovers her body following another hushed phone call late at night, again sounding just like Melissa.

“I went into the kitchen, and a split second later wished that I had not done so wished with all the futile intensity we summon up at such moments, when we pray desperately for the power to put the clock back. But it was too late. The girl in the old wicker chair was dead, and I was there, staring at her, instead of being safely tucked up in my bed in my London flat. There was no putting the clock back.”

Unfortunately, the young woman is someone Guy was seen talking to earlier that day as he tried to find out more about the secrets Melissa seemed to have been keeping.

This was an enjoyable quick read – it really seemed to end ever so quickly, but then I read it while I was ill, and sleeping badly, so I possibly just flew through it. The mystery itself is a good one, there are few people in the frame so to speak, so perfectly possible to guess at least part of the mystery.

“Slowly, I reached out and pulled the window shut. As I turned I sensed that someone was in the darkened room with me. I could see and hear nothing, but I could feel the alien presence. I began to inch towards the lamp on my desk, next to Melissa’s picture. The long curtains behind the desk rustled over my shoulders as I bent to snap on the light. A gun stabbed my spine, the muzzle softened by the curtains, and a voice whispered: “No light!” “

Regular readers may know that two things lift a book above the ordinary for me, depth of character and a strong sense of place – I felt this book lacked both these things – not surprisingly it isn’t that kind of narrative, Durbridge is not that kind of writer. Still, the plot zips along at a cracking pace, making it a novel the reader can’t help but fly through. What Durbridge does do really well is to set a scene (the playwright in him no doubt) and to reproduce a sense of threat and unease.