A Brush With Death by Ali Carter

Point Blank, 320 pages, $14.99, c2018

“A Brush With Death” gives you a chance to see how the rich (not “wealthy” — tsk, such a common word) in Britain’s upper-crust world live. Author Ali Carter uses the vehicle of a young artist who has fallen into doing pet portraits for a living. It may be a stereotype that the landed gentry love their animals more than their children, but it’s useful premise for setting artist Susie Mahl in among the aristocrats. Although Susie’s family is of modest means, her ancestors once walked among the mighty. And Susie has hung around with enough of their kind to be able to mind her manners expertly.

Two of Susie’s friends, the Earl and Countess of Greengrass, are much older than she, but she has spent several pleasant weekends over the years in their mansion. This mansion comes complete with servants, including a nanny and a butler. Lord and Lady Greengrass (Alexander and Diana, when they’re at home) are elitists, privileged, and old-school. It’s hard to envision why Susie has such a fondness for them. In her first-person narrative, she tries to explain about their kindnesses extended to her, especially by Diana. But it is worth noting that Diana accepts Susie as an impecunious member of her class.

Susie silently criticizes the Greengrasses’ sense of entitlement, but she is also an enabler. That becomes clear when Lord Greengrass is found dead among the tombstones of the old village (the very twee Spire) churchyard, and Susie becomes involved. At first, it is believed he suffered from dizziness, fell, and accidentally banged his head on a stone. Inspector Grey, who probably would prefer rubber-stamping the cause of death as an accident, soon determines Alexander was murdered. 

Everyone becomes a suspect, including Susie, who was staying up the road in Ben and Antonia Codrington’s quaint cottage. It was Diana who introduced Susie to the Codringtons in the hope that Susie would be asked to do their dog’s portrait. And so they did.

It was Ben Codrington, Susie, and another weekend guest, Henry Dunstan-Sherbet —these names, so British! — who discovered Alexander’s still-warm body among the graves. They had walked the short distance from the Codringtons’ home to the church, where a commemoration service, attended by Alexander, was in progress. In fact, Carter’s book begins with the scene of Alexander finding a place to relieve himself (“spend a penny”) in the graveyard and falling instead. In that short introduction, we also learn that Alexander has shadows in his past that “would come back to haunt him.” The main story, however, begins with Alexander alive. That scene is revisited from a different angle when the body is discovered in its proper time.

Diana is the imperious widow who refuses to believe what the police investigation begins to reveal. She has asked Susie to move back to her manor down the road, to stay and keep her company. It turns out it is less like friend-company than personal assistant-company. But that’s okay, because Susie is determined to find out who murdered her friend. Ah, how little she realizes she knows about her “friend”!

Susie gets to sit in on all the pertinent family meetings with the police and the estate attorney. She is privy to how much Diana loathes her daughter-in-law Asquintha because she is lowly born. And most of all, Susie heard Alexander’s death rattle as he lay in the graveyard. Her ascendance to the inner sanctum seems to be stretching plausibility. She was friendly with Alexander and Diana, but she hardly ran around in their circles. Although Arthur, their son, and his wife are more Susie’s age, she barely knows them.

If you can accept the premise that all doors are opened to Susie and it’s a-okay if she doesn’t immediately share everything she discovers with the police, then you will find this book enjoyable.

Here is Susie translating upper-class culture for us:

What you have to be clear on with the Greengrasses, who run and own Beckenstale Manor and its estate, is that the family surname is Russell. At the head of the family are Alexander and Diana, the Earl and Countess of Greengrass. Their eldest son Arthur and his wife, Asquintha, use one of his father’s courtesy titles, Viscount and Viscountess Cornfield, ‘Lord and Lady Cornfield’ in conversation. All sons and daughters of a viscount put ‘The Honourable’ before their names. So Arthur and Asquintha’s sons, so far, are The Honourable Michael Russell and The Honourable James Russell.

Ali Carter’s whisperings to us about all the goings on in the upper levels of class are fetching. The whodunnit isn’t meant to be a brainteaser. There are strong elements of romance and how to draw good doggies, if those are good inducements to read this book.

Carter’s third book in her series, “A Trick of Light,” was released in March 2021.