I believe I've found yet another author where I feel I 'must read all her books' now that I've read one. Several of you had recommended her to me and you were right, she's extremely talented and had me completely caught up in the drama of The Franchise Affair. I'm not sure if this one novel is representative of all Josephine Tey's work, but I'm happily willing to find out. I understand Inspector Grant is her sleuth, yet he takes a back seat to the events that unravel in the small country town of Milford. Instead it's a local solicitor, Robert Blair, who's determined to prove the innocence of his clients who solves the case.
Curiously I've come at Josephine Tey and Inspector Grant in a somewhat backwards manner. I recently read Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder, where Upson created a fictionalized Josephine Tey getting caught up in the murder of a young woman she met on a train journey. Upson's Inspector Archie Penrose was modelled on Tey's Alan Grant, though I've yet to get a good sense of him. The other impetus for picking up The Franchise Affair, aside from just wanting a good solid mystery to read, is Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger, which I understand was inspired in part by Tey's novel. I loved The Little Straner and I can see bits and pieces of characterization and atmoshere and certainly attitude coming through in Waters's writing now that I've read about the strange circumstances regarding the Franchise affair.
The Franchise is a flat, unattractive, white house enclosed by a high wall of solid brick with a large double gate plopped down in the middle of a field. "The place was as irrelevant, as isolated, as a child's toy dropped by the wayside." The purported crime committed at the Franchise is a rather unconventional one. There's no body in the library, but there is a young woman, almost still a schoolgirl really, who claims the two women living at the Franchise kidnapped her and held her there in the attic for nearly a month. Their motivation was a desire for her to become their maidservant and when she resisted they beat her and held back food. When one night she discovered the door unlocked she escaped to the main road and made her way home wearing nothing but a slip and covered in bruises.
The victim, or the accuser, depending on how you look at it is one Betty Kane. Having just left school she was visiting relatives, enjoying her first taste of independence by traveling daily into town to window shop, have lunch and go to the pictures. She had missed her bus one day and accepted a ride and ended up at the Franchise, she states. The thing is, she can describe the women, the house, and particularly the attic so perfectly that the police are persuaded to believe her (enter Inspector Grant from Scotland Yard). And Betty Kane looks reliable, not one to tell lies. Fifteen, just going on sixteen Betty's a quiet girl, bland and ordinary looking --"not at all the type to be the heroine of a sensation."
The Sharps deny any knowledge of Betty Kane or how she might have ended up bruised and half clothed. Once wealthy they are now living a shabby existence by themselves at the Franchise. Mrs. Sharp is a formidable woman, no longer prosperous but still entirely dignified. Her daughter Marion, a spinster, is contented to live a quiet life in the country making do on their own. They call in Robert Blair, a gentleman who's "like themselves" to be present when the Yard brings Betty to verify her claims. Outraged by the preposterousness of the situation Blair becomes enmeshed in the ordeal unwilling to let go until the Sharps have not only been proven innocent but vindicated as well. He's not aided by a press taking up Betty Kane's cause and villifying the Sharps, as Milford becomes increasingly hostile and violent towards the Franchise and its inhabitants.
Aside from being an excellent mystery that was hard to set down, I was fascinated by the many implications of the accusation--who made it and against whom and what the reaction of Milford was. The novel was written shortly after WWII when the country was amidst so much social turmoil and it seems reflected in Tey's writing. It's interesting to note the attitudes of the different classes towards each other. There was a certain amount of vitriol exhibited between the "upper class" and their "lowers" (Betty Kane in particular) which I was surprised by but didn't necessarily question since I considered it part of the era when it was written. I've come across an excellent article by Sarah Waters in which she "deconstructs" The Franchise Affair and talks about her response to it and and its influence on her writing. I highly recommend it if you've read The Franchise Affair (she does give away plot so be aware if you've not read it yet).
The Franchise Affair is a clever story, which is based on an actual court case from the eighteenth-century. It's well plotted and smoothly written with nicely rounded characters, all in all a totally satisfying read. Too bad Tey wrote only a small handful of mysteries, but I'll be keeping my eye out for them now.