The Book of Tobit is an apocryphal biblical text, still found, so I read, in Catholic Bibles but not Protestant ones, which tells the tale of Tobit, Tobit's son Tobias and Sarah. On a journey to recover ten silver talents owed to his family Tobias, guided by the archangel Raphael, meets Sarah, who as it happens is rather afflicted with a jealous demon, Asmodeus, in her life. This dreadful fellow, it seems, has slain Sarah's previous seven husbands (who says seven is a lucky number), but brave Tobias, who is smitten as well with Sarah (she must have been really something), with Raphael's assistance vanquishes demonic Asmodeus and lives happily ever after in wedded bliss with his bride. Seems like some of the most entertaining parts of the Bible ended up in the Apocrypha!
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| Wedding of Tobias and Sarah; Raphael Binds the Demon, by Jan Steen, c. 1660 |
In Past Praying For, the fourteenth of Sarah Woods' Anthony Maitland detective novels, the author seems to have drawn a bit on the Book of Tobit. Her barrister sleuth Maitland jocularly mentions the story to his uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding, who in 1965, when the novel is primarily set, is defending a certain Camilla Barnard (her maiden name is Spencer!) on the charge of having murdered her second husband. Beleaguered Camilla has already served four years in prison for having shot to death her prior husband in 1957. Both her dead husbands were Barnards, second cousins in fact, and members of the family firm, a Yorkshire manufacturer of kitchen and bathroom fixtures.
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| Asmodeus pretty sure this illustration is from the 1980s Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual Traditionally I think that he's portrayed as rather less human. |
Anyway, Uncle Nick is having trouble coming up with a good defense for Camilla, so Antony whimsically suggests pinning the crime on Asmodeus:
"There's always Asmodeus....You might try it on the jury....There was this lass--Sara, I think her name was--and they kept on marrying her off, and every time a devil called Asmodeus killed the bridegroom on his wedding night. She got through seven perfectly good husbands that way, which I admit seems a trifle excessive."
Antony was involved in Camilla's prosecution eight years earlier and it was his empathetic questioning that actually got Camilla off with a mere four-year sentence. (Her husband Alan apparently was an emotionally and physically abusive adulterer.)
Camilla then married, on the rebound, Alan's stodgy "safe" second cousin Oliver. Most unfortunately, Oliver has recently died from consuming an arsenic-laden rice pudding prepared by Camilla herself. Camilla does always seem to be stepping in it, as it were!
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| Great jacket by Paddington illustrator Fred Banbery does justice to a great Sixties crime novel |
Defending Camilla Spencer Barnard (twice over) looks like a tall task indeed, but with Anthony doing detecting behind the scenes, anything is possible. He's pulled miracles, along with scribbled old envelopes, out of his pocket before in thirteen recorded instances now.
In many ways this is a delightfully traditional detective novel, complete with a floor plan, a family tree, a wealthy old family firm, old family servants and poison in the pudding. There are questions about just who could have gotten to that rice pudding in the kitchen on the fatal day and Antony's wife Jenny makes a very pertinent point about nutmeg. I happen to love rice pudding myself and have made it many times, but never with arsenic, let me assure you.
A highly recommended Sixties detective novel that is being reprinted, along with four other Sixties Sara Woods this year, by Dean Street Press. Read it!
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| my recent rice pudding, some nutmeg already added before cooking No arsenic, guv'nor, I swear! |
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