MURDER AS A FINE ART

Carnac’s whodunit, first published in 1953, might just as well have been titled “Murder Among the Not-So-Fine Art.”

In the initial glow following the Second World War, John Joyce-Lawrence, the first to be appointed the U.K.’s Minister of Fine Arts, plastered his own office in Medici House with paintings which, owing to the new ministry’s financial constraints, were a distinctly mixed bag. After Joyce-Lawrence died of pneumonia, he was succeeded by the Right Honourable Alfred Higginson, who had no eye for the visual arts and no interest in the building’s collection. He’s been replaced in turn by Humphry David, a man of undoubted intelligence and capability who’s no more expert in the field. But he does agree with his chief deputy, Edwin Pompfret, that the enormous marble bust of the last Earl of Manderby, allegedly created by the sculptor Canova in 1815 and now prominently displayed at the top of the state staircase, is “frightful” and should be hidden away. As it happens, Pompfret and the bust, both nicknamed Pompey, exit Medici House on the same night, when the bust apparently falls from its perch down the stairs and Pompfret is crushed to death under its rubble. Chief Detective-Inspector Julian Rivers, called to the scene, must establish whether the death was accidental or deliberate—and, if it was deliberate, who killed Pompfret, and why, and above all how. The answers, sad to say, are much less interesting than the questions. What lingers most appealingly is Carnac’s sharp-tongued portrait of the Ministry of Fine Arts, an impoverished boondoggle populated under the purview of civil servants who have no clue about their nominal area.

Readers who don’t know much about art but know what they like will still be able to look down their noses at these worthies.