The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Margaret Yorke’s Speak For the Dead

Y, here we are, almost at the end of the alphabet! The Alphabet in Crime Fiction community meme has reached our 25^th stop on our criminal journey – the letter “Y.” Thanks, as ever, to our leader Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for expert guidance. My contribution to this week’s stop is Margaret Yorke’s Speak For the Dead, published in 1988.

As the novel begins, Gordon Matthews has recently got out of prison after being convicted of manslaughter in the death of his wife Anne. Anne’s father Oliver Randall is afraid that now that Matthews is out of prison, he’ll try to take their two children, who’ve been living with Randall and his wife. So Randall hires private investigator Michael West to locate Matthews and see what he’s doing and how he’s living. West agrees and begins to look into the case. As he starts to ask questions, he finds out something disturbing: Anne Randall wasn’t at all the kind of person that her husband made her out to be. At the trial, Matthews claimed his wife was a promiscuous, alcoholic shrew who made his life miserable. His claim was that they’d had an argument that got out of control when she pushed him too far, and that’s why he killed her. The jury believed him and he was given a light sentence. West, however, discovers that Anne Randall was a quiet, loving woman who rarely drank and was, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, faithful to her husband. It now seems that there’s much more to this death than it seems on the surface. So West prepares to dig deeper.

Since his release from prison, Gordon Matthews has remarried. He met his new wife Carrie Foster in a London café, but what he doesn’t know is that she’s been working as a prostitute. When they marry, Carrie gives up the life and looks forward to settling down. Gordon admits he was married before but claims that his wife left him; he doesn’t tell Carrie what really happened. For a time, Carrie and Gordon are happy enough, but within a few years, she realises that Gordon Matthews is not the man she thought she’d married. She’s bored with her life and what’s worse, Matthews has shown himself to be petulant, demanding, a liar and a heavy drinker. He doesn’t seem able to keep a job, and blames everyone else for his problems.

Bored and restless, and with her husband often unemployed, Carrie returns to her former line of work. Once a week she goes to London to meet her clients, telling her husband she’s doing volunteer work. Although Gordon and Carrie are deceiving each other, all goes tolerably well until Carrie meets Nicholas Fitzmaurice, a young man who’s taking classes in London. Carrie doesn’t tell Nicholas that she’s married, and it’s not long before he falls very much in love with her. With her marriage to Gordon falling apart, Carrie’s attracted to Nicholas, too – mostly to his innocence and good nature.

While all of this intrigue is going on, Michael West is closing in on Gordon Matthews. When he finds out Matthews has married again, he’s all the more determined to do so in order to spare this new wife Anne Randall Matthews’ fate. All of the plot threads come together in one tragic incident, and we see the consequences of deception (including self-deception).

In fact, deception is a key theme in this novel. Gordon Matthews deceives himself about what happened to his first wife. He’s blamed everyone else, including Anne, for his problems for so long that he’s come to believe the lies he told the jury. To him, everything would have been fine if Anne had been a better wife. When we meet Matthews’ parents Hannah and Donald, we see where this self-delusion comes from. Hannah Matthews has delusions about what her family “should be.” She’s pushed her husband up the proverbial corporate ladder and she’s pushed her children into paths they never wanted. The Matthews family is highly dysfunctional, but Hannah deludes herself into blaming everyone else. For instance, she blamed Anne Randall for “ruining” her son Gordon, instead of seeing that situation for what it was. Nicholas Fitzmaurice deceives himself about the kind of person Carrie is, too. He wants to believe she’s a nice young woman, and for a long time, doesn’t want to know the truth about her. There’s a lot of deception of others in this story, too. Carrie and Gordon Matthews deceive each other and their families. Carrie deceives Nicholas as well, and as the novel plays out, we see how this deception acts like a “house of cards.” When the façade crumbles, the result is devastating. In a few cases, the self-deception continues, and that result isn’t much better.

Another element woven through this novel is the set of characters. Carrie Foster isn’t exactly a “nice girl,” but she’s friendly, loving, appealing and we learn to care about her. She’s vivacious and energetic, and it’s easy to admire her independence. Nicholas Fitzmaurice is a conscientious young man with a warm heart and a strong sense of ethics. We care about him and his grandmother, with whom he lives, quite a lot. It’s also easy to care about the characters of Anne Randall’s parents, who’ve been through so much, and we can empathise with Oliver Randall’s determination to keep his grandchildren safe and to clear his dead daughter’s character. Even the characters we don’t get to know as well are interesting and a good “fit” for this story. One of the ways in which Yorke makes these characters come alive is by telling the story from a variety of perspectives. For instance, we see Carrie Foster through her own eyes, through her husband’s eyes, through Nicholas Fitzmaurice’s eyes, and through the eyes of her friend Arlene. Each of their points of view is slightly different, and it gives readers a clear picture of that character. Some readers find the use of multiple perspectives distracting, but Yorke makes it clear whose perspective is being shared, so it honestly didn’t pull me out of the story.

It’s in part because of the characters that readers also get a real sense of suspense, and that, too, is woven throughout the story. We want to warn Carrie not to marry a man like Gordon Matthews. We want to shout out to Nicholas Fitzmaurice to be careful getting involved with Carrie. We even feel the sense of suspense as Gordon Matthew gets into a desperate situation himself, even though he’s not a sympathetic character. The timing and pacing of the novel also contribute to the suspense. Bit by bit, Michael West and the journalist he works with uncover the truth about Gordon Matthews. Bit by bit, as Carrie and Gordon’s relationship falls apart, and as Carrie gets more and more involved with Nicholas, we sense the danger to her. That slow buildup of tension is a very effective “fit” for this novel of psychological suspense.

There are a number of characters in this novel, and keeping track of them takes some effort. But they’re all there for a reason, and Yorke ties all of the plot threads and characters together. A psychological mystery that focuses as much on characters as on a murder, Speak For the Dead shows the many consequences of living a lie. But what do you think? Have you read Speak For the Dead? If you have, what elements do you see in it?