All Done by Kindness – Doris Langley Moore (1951)

December has been declared #DeanStreetDecember by Liz – a chance to read our lovely Dean Street Press books, and I think it should be an annual event. I always have plenty of DSP waiting to read – usually some in book form, with lots more on my kindle (can’t resist those deals). So, of course I had to join in, although I originally only committed to reading one, I have just finished my third. Such a lovely ten days of reading, two Furrowed Middlebrow titles and a Golden age mystery. I will do my best to review them all properly, but no promises.  

Anyway, the first title I took down off my shelf was an easy choice All Done by Kindness by Doris Langley Moore. I had already read the three other titles DSP publish by her, so I had been looking forward to this one, I wasn’t disappointed. Doris Langley Moore is an excellent writer, the plot of this one, like My Caravaggio Style (1959) showing her knowledge of the creative arts. Where My Caravaggio Style was about an audacious literary fraud, this novel is a comedy of errors centring around the authenticity of a pile of potential Old Masters. It is incredibly compelling.  

Dr George Sandilands is a kindly, family doctor, a widower with two adult daughters and two almost grown-up children still at school. When he shows particular kindness towards an elderly patient who has fallen on hard times, she insists that he allow her to gift him a lot of old paintings that have been stored in the attics of her house for many years. Unaware of the drama these paintings will unleash after the old woman’s death the good doctor accepts the trunkful of old damaged paintings.  

The doctor’s house is run, and managed very well by his eldest daughter Beatrix, who as well as being a superb housekeeper is a bossy, managing kind of person, she is immediately horrified by the pile of old paintings which she considers an eye sore and an untidy nuisance.  

“If it had not been for Mrs du Plessis, Dr Sandilands might never have discovered that, far from having sold a horse for green spectacles, he had, so to speak, exchanged a cow for a handful of coloured beans.”  

Four years after the death of the old lady who gave him the pile of paintings (now stored in his own attics) Dr Sandilands makes the acquaintance of Mrs du Plessis, a young widow who had been previously living in Rhodesia and is now the boss of Linda Sandilands – the doctor’s other adult daughter – at the library. Mrs du Plessis is an amateur art connoisseur, and amateur or not she really knows her stuff. When Mrs du Plessis is shown the old paintings, she gets herself into a fever of excitement, undertaking a lot of detailed research and finally developing a theory about what the works really are, which if correct would take the art world by storm. Mrs du Plessis is totally convinced, and her enthusiasm eventually ignites a little flame of excitement in the doctor and his family.  

A decision is made to get a foremost expert to authenticate the works, should he agree with Mrs du Plessis then any remaining doubt will be put to rest, and the paintings can finally be shared with the art world, sold and out of Beatrix’s hair. Sir Harry Maximer is generally considered the leading art expert in the country, a man of unblemished character. With his trusty and adoring secretary never far away, Sir Harry is himself a collector of art, and he can’t help but be quite the snob about what he likes and what he doesn’t. However, there is more to Sir Harry than meets the eye.  

“He laughed with unwonted nervousness, perceiving for the first time that his coup – so tremendous if he were to bring it off – might be classed by those who did not understand his praiseworthy motives as fraudulence on a rather considerable scale. He was not afraid; he had abounding faith in his own cleverness, but he was excited and a little overwhelmed at the daring of the steps he had already so coolly achieved, like a man who looks down from somewhere near a mountain top and wonders how he has succeeded, without losing his head, in scaling such a height.” 

The battered old pile of pictures that Dr Sandilands has in his attics will unleash all manner of nefarious plotting and machinations. Enter a sleazy London art dealer and the director of a local art museum who comes to side with Mrs du Plessis, who is not about to give up her theory without a fight, and the stage is set for a rollicking good read, that becomes increasingly hard to put down.  

Not wanting to spoil the rest of the plot for future readers I shall leave it there.  

I know that Doris Langley Moore wrote a couple of other novels so far not reissued by Dean Street Press, so of course I am hoping that at some point they will.