BINGO: Family, right? Has to be.
I fear my patience for the obstacles that are constantly strewn in Miss Tilney and Mr. Darcy Jr’s way is starting to smart a bit. I’ll admit that this one was rather clever, and even though it took a while for the penny to drop when it did I genuinely felt the tension (and could hear the soundtrack to the movie — Scene: our ladies of leisure browse the art exhibition…people are whispering…the music crescendos… suddenly the whispers get louder…and then it all goes muffled as they see it…).
But — it’s good that Austen has such an extensive back catalogue of characters, because at this rate Gray is going to have offed all the ones that we can’t spare. This outing, I think, is particularly inspired by virtue of the setting — while the previous murders all had a bit of a “locked room” mystery air, here the entirety of (civilized) London is at play. The story breathes a bit more and chaperones are readily available (even if the conceit that ‘London streets are so busy they serve as chaperones’ is disabused by half of our suspect alibis–“I was here at x time” being unverifiable due to the anonymity of cities).
I also enjoy that Jonathan and Juliet’s expertise has become known and opens doors, which means we spend less time hand wringing… although the same cannot be said of Fanny, who spends most of this novel in need of smelling salts. It’s not to trivialize the experience of infertility or the trauma of miscarriage, but she’s a pernicious wallflower in a way and then ‘comes out of it’ only by proximity to motherhood in a way that I felt lessened her moral fiber as the staunchest abolitionist in the Bertrand household.
But PLEASE can we move the marriage plot forward in the next outing? I fear Gray is falling into the trap of thinking the only drama in relationships comes from the will they / won’t they / how will they. There’s plenty to explore once our lovebirds are together, do a reader a solid 🙂