The Curious Case of the Dolls House Girl.

My friends are really clever, I'm regularly astounded by how talented they are. Today, I'm mostly astounded by the cleverness of Laura and Cathrin, who perform their quirky and unique songs under the delightful moniker 'Goodnight Astor'. Not so very long ago, they released their debut album, The Curious Case of the Dolls House Girl, a concept album surrounding the events leading up to the murder of a housemaid in 1900.

Each song introduces us individually to a cast of shady characters, all of whom have a secret to keep. The songs are all delivered in unique style, the music, melodies and instrument choices tailored to the personality of the desperado they represent, each one revealing tantalising snippets of information about the person and the case, through to the conclusion.

Which does not conclude the case. If you want to know who killed The Dolls House Girl, you're going to want to pop your deerstalker on and get deducing. 

So I did.

Track one: The Case

The opening track begins with the delicate sounds of a jewellery box being wound and played before it becomes a simple piano track that introduces us to the case; in 1900 a maid is discovered dead, in the home of her employers.

We discover that the master, the Lord in this situation, is out. He appears to be at the opera. With his wife. I deduced this from the lyrics, which specify that 'They'll be home soon', not 'He'll be home soon.'

Oh good. That wipes the two of them off of my suspect list. There's no way they could be at the opera AND doing a murder. Why would they even bother to kill the maid anyway? We all know from Downton Abbey that good, reliable and trustworthy maids are hard to find. Unless there is something we don't know...

Track two: The Butler

It seems though there is more than meets the eye to this Butler. He reveals the now-dead maid was twenty, having held her position for some time. We also learn she was a bit nosy and that the butler isn't too saddened by her death.

AHA! THE BUTLER DID IT. CASE SOLVED.

Not so fast, grasshopper. Let's have a look at why The Butler didn't like her. Did she perhaps spurn his advances? Unlikely - a butler during that time would have worked his way into his position over many years, and his job would have a great many privileges and perks. Franternisation with other staff members, if discovered, would have lost him that and he'd be very unlikely to jeopardise his position for a lowly maid. Even if he does have a secret yearning for someone. Someone forbidden. Like a housemaid. He speaks of having a secret, a secret he hopes she took to the grave. A secret she likely learned accidentally, as we know she likes to pry. It's almost certain she didn't read "Butler hearts Maid" in his diary, so it must be something she overheard. And now she's dead, he's hardly going to still be worried about it if it concerns her. So who is The Butler's mysterious paramour?

It also emerges that something that was there before, now isn't. This is vexing The Butler, so it's not a great leap to surmise it's a household object. Given the fact a girl is now dead, it's easy to assume that the missing object was the murder weapon.

So she was murdered in the house, with an object from the house. Which means the killer must have had access to the house and their presence would not be a cause for concern. Aha indeed...

Track three: The Gambler

The Gambler is a jaunty, vaudeville-esque little number, with rolling piano chords and jazzy high-hat and snare raps which evoke a character who is flamboyant, charming, morally bankrupt and, above all, desperate.

When I first started to look at this, I was utterly convinced that The Gambler was blackmailing another character, namely The Butler's secret lover, who I will reveal later. I believed that The Gambler's sister, The Maid, (he says in the lyrics "sister dear, I'll miss you" - The Maid is the only dead character. Take that, Sherlock) had revealed to him the identity of the erstwhile lover and he was using the information to blackmail them to keep it quiet. However, on later examination, I've changed my mind. I believe The Gambler is blackmailing someone else. I also believe he's caught in this spiral of blackmail and gambling to try and retain the love of another character. More on that later.

Finally, I'm a little worried his sister was stealing from the house, to pay her brother's gambling debts. The line which begins 'Sister dear I'll miss you,' ends with 'You'd always foot the bill.' But how would a housemaid, who would have earned around 15 guineas a year, been able to pay off his debts? Unlikely that she would, not without topping up her own funds a little. Unless he was also using his knowledge of the affair to blackmail someone in return for his keeping it quiet. Mentioning his sister footing the bill might not mean she literally handed over the cash. She could have easily just supplied him with the means of extorting the money from someone else, using knowledge.

Track four: The Lady

My favourite track on the album, The Lady is a wistful, mournful peek into the mind of a woman emotionally destroyed by love. The harmonies between the girls on this track are simply gorgeous, the lyrics and music are simple and sorrowful and I love it.

The Lady. So, it seems the Lord was having an affair. And she knew. She talks of scandal, the impact it would have on their reputation and how she won't be separated from him. She says 'lonely nights and wandering eyes are taking their toll'.

It is The Lady who I think The Gambler is blackmailing. He talks of how he's read about them in the papers, and that he's made a pretty penny from his sister's not so pretty end. He says 'got to pay to keep your man.' It's clear from the song that despite his apparent indiscretions, The Lady loves her husband still, and would take him back in a heartbeat. The Gambler says he'll lead along his lady until the diamonds fall away. The Lady is the only character in the tale that could have diamonds, assuming they are real diamonds. I believe The Maid foolishly revealed information to her brother about the Lord's little dalliance and The Gambler is happy to use that to extort money from The Lady to keep his own dearest darling happy.

But what is he blackmailing her with? The potential social stigma of revealing her husband is playing away, or something more sinister?

Track five: The Maid

In this song we discover that the maid too, is in love. With someone she shouldn't be. Someone who steals glances at her. Someone, therefore, who lives or works in the house she works in. Given that the last song introduced us to a woman almost crippled by the grief of having a straying husband, and for reasons I'll reveal later, I believe the girl was having an affair with The Lord of the house. A man she is horrified to find, before her untimely demise, seems to have no intention of accounting for his actions.

She says: 'Won't go in the background, won't go unnoticed,' so clearly her Romeo is happy to leave their affair as a bit of a josh and say no more. I don't think this went down too well with her, given that she 'has a gift he can behold'. Was she pregnant when she died?

Track six: The Spy

I've decided The Spy is Russian. Based solely on the way the girls sing it, he's Russian. This is another one which reminds me of The Beatles, though possibly in their slightly madder days. There is something very trippy and spiralling about this number. Which isn’t apparent at first, given the military precision of the drum track. But it happens. Trust me.

God, The Spy. I don't know. I don't know at all. From the lyrics, I surmise he has interests in The Gambler, The Dancer and The Doctor, but I've no idea what it is. He talks about wanting 'The girl', and wanting to know who killed her. He talks about running the house and playing the mouse...

Wait.

Running the house? Like a butler? Playing the mouse? Discreet, like a butler? The mission being hard? LIKE A SPY PRETENDING TO BE A BUTLER?!

Is The Spy also The Butler?

Track seven: The Lord

Yup, he was boffing The Maid. He talks about committing a crime; the crime that I believe he is referring is adultery, which for a man in his position was not really a crime. But to a man who clearly had a bit of a dark moment and seduced a housemaid behind the back of his loyal wife, it would seem criminal. He says he loves his wife, he's sorry for the hurt he's caused. I also think it might have helped that The Maid was MENTAL. He talks about her inability to let go, heck, in her song even she admits she's having some problems with it.

Track eight: The Doctor

Ah yes, The Doctor. How his heartbeat races when a certain someone stares at him oh so intently. We know from The Spy that The Spy had plans to interrogate ‘the medic’. But, assuming my premise that The Spy and The Butler are one and the same, and that I pondered whom The Butler was pining for, could it be The Doctor’s heart is racing, not from the pressure of being questioned, but from lust? Are The Doctor and The Butler having a bit of a carry on?

I think so.

Again, The Doctor talks of something being ‘forbidden’, just as The Butler did. He talks of innocence, touching and hearts yearning. He questions whether the love was ever real. He then says ‘Was his love ever real?’ Whose love? It’s my belief that he is talking of The Lord’s love for The Maid. If she were pregnant, The Doctor would know, as at some point she would have to have seen a doctor to have it confirmed. And unluckily for him, he seems to be the only one around.

So, The Butler/Spy questions The Doctor, wanting to know what he knows. Why? If he is a spy, he’s not going to care to much if his ‘master’ is having it away with a maid. But what if he has another purpose? What if he needs to know about The Maid, to lead him to her brother, The Gambler, and his lover? What if his purpose in being there is nothing to do with the murder at all?

And where does that leave the poor Doctor when his forbidden love eventually disappears into the night?

Track eight: The Dancer

I don’t like The Dancer. I think she is a devious little minx who is nowhere near as clever as she believes. She’s enjoying pretending she’s putting on a show, trying to impress someone. Which means someone has let her into their plan. The only two likely suspects, in my opinion, are The Gambler and The Spy. She’d want to impress The Spy, assuming she knew what he really was. So of course, a bit of devious activity would appeal.

She talks of playing a part; ‘I learnt my lines you, taught me well’. And whoever it is, she loves them as she’s adamant that ‘no-one’s going to take my man away’.

I believe it’s The Gambler she’s talking about. Firstly, why would anyone take The Spy away? He’s a spy; he’d be gone way before it gets too hot in the kitchen, and of his own volition. But The Gambler… If he is blackmailing The Lady, he’s playing a dangerous game. Game. The very word The Dancer says in her song; ‘This game got out of hand’. Gamblers play games. By ‘out of hand’, I believe she is referring to The Maid’s death. Which prompts her to seek help from beyond the veil…

Track nine: The Medium

I’m a bit unsure about her. I’m not largely sure she has anything to do with the case, other than using her powers to reveal that the murder weapon is hidden in the theatre and is a china beast. She does say some very intriguing things though, leading me to suspect that The Dancer is not her first client.

‘Oh, she came to know, how her love would go, as she tore the world apart. How could she know, that her time to go, would be soon and she’d depart.’

The Maid saw The Medium. The Medium foresaw her death, foresaw that The Lord would try and pull away, though too late for The Maid. So The Maid took action in the only way she could…

Track ten: The Conclusion

Aha! We discover that the murder weapon was a china Basset hound. And also that the killer had an alibi, as the narrative clearly states it will be proven false.

So… Who had an alibi? The Lord and The Lady… Both of whom had motive to kill The Maid, and easy and unrivalled access to the house. And both of whom allegedly spent the night at the theatre.

I might be wrong, but here, here is my conclusion to The Curious Case of the Dolls House Girl.

The Maid was having an affair with The Lord. She loved him and initially believed him to love her. At some point, she sought out The Medium to determine their future. When The Medium told her it wouldn’t happen, that The Lord would never leave his wife, The Maid got herself pregnant in a last-ditch attempt to win him.

The Maid confided in her brother, The Gambler, who used the information of the affair, and therefore ensuing scandal, to blackmail The Lady for money to keep his lover, The Dancer, in the manner she in her shallow, showbiz way had become accustomed to. The Lady would never have told her husband of the blackmail, because of the loss of face and pain it would cause her to hear him admit to his indiscretion. A woman in her position could never confront her husband with that information, both for social and practical reasons.

The Doctor confirmed The Maid’s pregnancy, before revealing his knowledge to The Butler, his own love. However, The Butler is also The Spy, positioned in the house to get close to The Maid, seeking knowledge on her brother, The Gambler.

On the night of the murder, The Lord and The Lady leave for the opera. But one returns, perhaps faking illness. They kill The Maid with the Basset hound ornament and leave her dead, taking the ornament back to the theatre with them and secreting it there, in the territory of The Dancer. She finds the ornament, recognising it somehow, possibly from a description The Maid gave to her brother, prior to her death. She feeds this to The Gambler, giving him the ammunition he needs to ramp up his blackmail on the Lady.

Because The Lady killed The Maid.

Finally, The Lady knows The Butler is The Spy. He was hired specifically for that purpose, at The Lady’s behest. Feeling guilty over his affair, The Lord acquiesced to her wishes, allowing The Spy into his home. His job is to keep an eye on The Maid, report her actions back to The Lady, and discover what he can about her brother, with The Lady hoping for information that will turn the tables on The Gambler. It is the discovery of her pregnancy, via The Spy’s chat with The Doctor, which prompts The Lady to kill her supposed rival. 

What no-one, other than The Maid, knows is that The Butler/Spy has fallen in love with The Doctor, a crime in 1900 which would bring shame and imprisonment on them both. What began as a simple investigation turned into love, and then fear as The Maid learned that The Butler, who The Lady knew to be The Spy, was in love with The Doctor. Luckily, the Maid never had chance to tell her brother what she knew, which is just as well as The Gambler would have used it to his advantage. And possibly ended up in the grave next to his sister.

My initial workings out. A lot changed. A lot. 

So there you have it. My attempt to solve The Curious Case of the Dolls House Girl. Have I succeeded, has my tutelage at the knees of Poirot and Holmes paid off? Or has my penchant for salacious scandal run away with me?

Only Laura and Cathrin, and let’s face it, probably James know…

The Casual Vacancy

I've read The Casual Vacancy. In April, we found out the title of the book, leading to heavy speculation regarding what it would be about. "It's not for children!" was bandied about quite a lot.

And it's not. It's very much the anti-thesis to Harry Potter. 

But I'd be disappointed in anyone who says J.K Rowling can't write after reading it. I can see why it might not be everyone's cup of tea; it's brutal and bleak and distinctly non-magical. There are no miracles in this book. The lines between good and 'evil' are heavily blurred. But then, 'evil', in this context at least, is quite subjective. I suspect most evil-doers aren't consciously committing acts of evil, particularly the ones in this story. After all, everyone is the hero in their own story, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the shallow but idyllic village of Pagford. Beautiful, historic Pagford with its rolling fields and quaint cottages. And its poverty-ridden council estate. 


And there is the crux of the book; all of the action contained within boils down to the problem of the Fields council estate. Pagford, sadly understandably, doesn't want it. They don't want to pay for it, they don't want the children that live there in their schools, or on their streets. But then Yarvil, the neighbouring 'big town'  doesn't want it either. Barry Fairbrother, a former Fields boy-gone-good, thinks that with the right help, everyone from the Fields has a shot at a decent, educated and drug-free life. The Parish Council strongly disagrees. So when poor old Barry drops dead on his wedding anniversary, battle lines are drawn between those want to continue Barry's fight and those who want nothing more than to fence off the Fields from their beloved village.

It's a winding sort of book; I realised three-quarters of the way through that I'd been cleverly drawn into a web of deceit and anger, without even noticing it. Characters are introduced rapidly, at first it can be hard to keep up with the myriad of personalities and their foibles, but at some point it just clicked and I felt as though I lived in the village, and was watching the events unfold alongside the cast, albeit with a lot more foresight than they had. 

And then I realised I didn't particularly like any of the characters. There were a few I didn't dislike, as such, and a few I outright wanted to slap, but none I felt a true connection with and that phased me at first. I'd always believed that one of the first rules of writing a successful story was to create an engaging character, someone you could see with qualities similar to your own, a hero or heroine to connect with, if you will. I'd always thought that you had to see through their eyes to be able to endure their struggles with the appropriate amount of understanding. 

But there is no-one in this book I truly connected with and yet I really enjoyed it. It was bitter-sweet to watch these lives unfold, to see how it spiraled out of control, how little things added up to make big things. I saw it head, ever swiftly, towards disaster and observed the minutiae of the characters' worlds exposed, literally in some cases. Some of their struggles, their dreams seemed so petty, some seemed almost ludicrous in their ambitiousness. This book goes beyond the characters to tell a story and it's the first time I've experienced that. But I wanted more. I marathoned through the book, and had that sense of delicious bleakness at the end that comes when you've left a bit of yourself inside the world you've just left. There were tears, and most bizarrely, the tears stemmed from a sense of impotent guilt, that I'd seen this coming, I knew the whole story and yet could do nothing to stop it from reaching the inevitable climax. In that, I think for the first time I made some connection with the characters. That I stood with them, aghast at my inability to do anything. And equally, at the end I closed the book and walked away, relatively unscathed, just as a lot of them did too. 

It's an uncanny, honest and fairly ugly depiction of the human condition at its worst, exposing all of the pettiness and greed that people harbour inside themselves when they forget they're just a small cog in a big machine, when they become or try to become insular and independant. But there is also hope. The Casual Vacancy comes chock-full of hope, and that's what makes it so compelling, in my opinion. That each character, for all their faults, dreams of it getting better, in whatever way they can.

It really is a good book. 

Best of all, my copy is signed by the lady herself! I was lucky enough to have secured tickets to go to the launch of A Casual Vacancy at the Southbank Centre on Thursday 27th September. After falling down the stairs and nearly killing myself (Ha, like that would've stopped me) Jules and I made our way into London, said hello to the usual suspects and settled in for a giddy evening listening the woman who is mostly responsible, however indirectly, for me being the person I am.


I won't bore you with the platitudes of it, but I did get emotional, in both the teary and the beaming sorts of ways, and I did manage to blurt a very heartfelt 'Thank you', at Jo when she was signing my book (she was drinking white wine, we should be best friends. I knew it). I was also 'quoted' in an (ahem) Daily Mirror article about it. By 'quoted', I mean they used a tweet which said I'd got the book, and the accompanying photo, and tweeted back at me to say they'd used them. Ah, the wonders of journalism.

A video can be seen here of the event, which featured a short reading, Jo being interviewed about the book, another reading and then questions from the audience. I did wave my hand about a bit, but was sadly not chosen, so instead I asked my question to anyone who stood vaguely near me in the queue. No-one knew the answer. Or they didn't care because why am I talking to them when J.K-blinking-Rowling is just over there...

It was an amazing night. I'm still in the phase where I'm clutching it to my heart a bit, being a little cagey about it because I'm still not 100% convinced it happened. But it did. And I was there. And I've read the book and I liked it. I liked it very, very much.