Death in the Dollhouse

Sujata Massey

Dollhouses have a shelf in my life. I played with dolls and miniatures for a very long time--longer even than my little sisters. Our house had a tall, narrow built-in bookcase on the second floor landing, and I set up rooms for my tiny doll family on five "stories." These went from kitchen to living room, dining room to bedrooms. The coup de grace of a Victorian bathroom with pull chain toilet and free standing china tub. I could play "A Little Princess" or "Borrowers" or a story of my own devising. 

While I made doll clothes and tablecloths and tiny books, the home was furnished mostly with dozens of very fine wooden and porcelain furniture pieces, a long-term loan from a kind neighbor. These beds and sofas and dining cabinets dated from probably the 1940s and '50s and were often in the nostalgic Victorian or Colonial style. Was it the dollhouse that gave me an appreciation of antiques? And was the art of playing family stories set in the past practice for later writing historical and mystery novels?

Frances Glessner Lee, born in 1878, also loved dollhouses. But she transformed a picturesque child's hobby into a dark art. Her miniature rooms are the center of a magnificent show currently at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. 

A parlor scene with victim

Frances's path to her gory, tiny rooms was utterly original.  She was a lady of privilege, the only daughter of the industrialist John Jacob Glessner, who owned the International Harvester agricultural and construction machinery company.  Frances and her brother were tutored at home;  he attended Harvard, but her parents denied her the chance for higher education due to her gender. It was a sad, too familiar story.

Some of the activities that filled Frances' time as a girl were making dolls and miniatures and reading the novels of Sherlock Holmes. Her marriage to a lawyer named Blewett Lee was unhappy; she wanted much more than life as a society wife. Frances appreciated the central concept in Sherlock Holmes stories about clues being essential--and often overlooked. But her husband didn't want her to pursue the forensic pathology work that she spoke about learning. The couple divorced, and her parents dissuaded her from trying to enter the field. 

But Frances didn't give up. After her brother died, she he had access to her inheritance and used some of it to endow a brand new department of Legal Medicine at Harvard. She realized this could be a venue where she could contribute. The school was named Magrath in recognition of her lifelong friend,the doctor George Burgess Magrath, a coroner who was on Harvard's faculty. Her idea was to take a crime, create a tiny room filled with a victim and clues, and let police and coroners study it for their own education. 

Frances and Ralph Moser, her estate's carpenter, spent between three to six months fabricating a "nutshell," as she called these incredibly detailed dollhouse rooms. To make the piece known as "Barn", Ralph was directed to shave pieces of wood from an aged shed on her property and put them together to be the barn's boards. Frances knit tiny stockings using straight pins and recreated tiny newspapers by hand. 

The Barn. Did the farmer suffer suicide or murder?

All the ideas for the crimes presented were hers, and often featured women at risk in domestic situations, and the poor and working class. Her dollhouses show the real world of the United States between the thirties and the fifties. Some of them are still used by the Baltimore Police Department for training. 

I visited the exhibition over the Thanksgiving weekend, and it was packed with viewers, young and old, peering in at the lit-up nutshells. The line went out the door, the show was so popular. It was heartening to see a woman like Frances appreciated after her death. In her late years, she was the inspiration for some fiction by her friend, Erle Stanley Gardner. She also is said to have been the model for Jessica Fletcher in the television show "Murder She Wrote," although Jessica was a writer, not an artist.

The exhibition, "Murder is her Hobby" runs through February 2018 and is well worth a peek. If you visit the Renwick's web page about Frances Glesser Lee, you can take a virtual tour and also hear a podcast about the show.

some modern methods of murder for mystery writers

It's a little hard to read but here's a recap: poisoned by artisanal brioche, run over by self-driving car, organic, locally sourced cyanide, exploding e-cigarette, strangled with smart-phone charger cable, bludgeoned with sustainable firewood, scorpion hidden in Uggs, pushed off cliff while Instagramming. While my books are set in Paris in the 1990's I can definitely adapt several of these methods in an organic sustainable way. It reminds me of MacGuyver who was way ahead of all this using simple and at hand items for saving the world. MacGuyver would prevent an explosion etc by manipulating household items, remember? Even in France these items are easily obtainable at the quincaillerie, the hardware store or at the supermarket Franprix. Ingenious, sustainable and organic. Crooks, the smart and successful crooks, I was told by a French flic, keep it simple.

Here's two plots from the first season of MacGuyver: -MacGyver shorts out a missile timer with a bent paper clip causing the timer to stop, thus keeping the missile from detonating.

-MacGyver plugs a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate. He states that chocolate contains sucrose and glucose. The acid reacts with the sugars to form elemental carbon and a thick gummy residue (proved to be correct on Mythbusters). I can definitely do this with one of Patrick Roger's chocolate pencils, or his chocolate gorilla - he sculpts with chocolate.

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How about you? Cara - Tuesday

Fact and Fiction. The Crime Writers' Responsibility?

I recall being at a forensics event where my good pal the crime writer Alex Gray was speaking.  It was a few days after the spree killing in Cumbria where Derrick Bird had killed 12 people. Bird had shot his twin brother eleven times then drove to the office of the family solicitor and killed him also.  Derrick was a taxi driver himself when he opened fire on four other taxi drivers, killing the only one he actually knew. The police considered them targeted shootings, but Bird then went on a random spree killing another nine people.

Alex

Bird was a granddad, described as a popular and quiet man.  There have been many reasons speculated, a family feud over  money, he had just been  rejected by a Thai girl he had met on holiday and three of the dead had worked at the  Sellafield power plant where Bird had been  accused of stealing wood, found guilty and received a twelve month suspended sentence.

                                       

                                                       Derrick Bird

Against that background, Alex had to stand up and promote crime fiction to the police and forensic staff who deal with these tragedies day in and day out. It was a tough call.

She started her speech by saying that she wasn't that proud to be a crime writer on that particular day. I understood what she meant but it's not something that has ever troubled me in particular.  Real people commit real crimes. We write stories that amuse people waiting in airports and in dentists' waiting rooms. We set puzzles for people to solve. The two things are miles apart.

But thinking about it, I realise that I do have some reservations about a crime writing friend of mine who openly admits that all her fiction is based on fact. She cuts stories out of newspapers, changes the name, sexes them up a bit and hey presto there's a new novel. So much that the real people involved are recognisable in the fiction. I also remember listening to a TV scriptwriter who said that she bought stories from victims of crime to use in her TV series.  Big ones to base the series on and smaller stories to act as background.  (I think she called the little ones stringers). I then watched the TV show, the story was based on the murder of a four year old child who had been killed and put in a drain pipe. I knew it was based on a true story - and I couldn't watch it.

 I can watch true documentary of crime as long as they are well made, but not drama based on fact...because at the end of the day it is entertainment based on the tragic death of somebody's son, somebody's daughter.  Even in fiction, I think it is a big turn off for the reader when the murder becomes a technical exercise, with it having no emotional effect on anybody, especially the investigative team.

It's a line I think we all have to draw somewhere.

However to balance that I do believe that crime writers have a chip of ice in their heart, as do most medics. You need to have an investigative mind. As soon as the empathy is over, the investigation begins - the what if's, and the why's, and all the other questions.

I've thought a fair bit about including this case in this blog, as it is close to the bone. If I had read it in a fictional novel, it is fascinating, reading a factual account would be interesting

 but as it happened  in the last week, not to somebody that I know, but somebody who is a friend of a good friend it's a bit raw but also serves as an example that we should be aware of the tight rope that we walk sometimes.

                                    

                                                               Margaret and Nicola

This case raises all kinds of questions, something that we might never get to the bottom of. It is a tragedy in every sense of the word.

It concerns a mother and daughter, two very normal people from Paisley. Margaret was 52, a nice, happy woman, committed politically - she had stood for the Lib Dems in two local elections - a hard working woman, mother of five grown up kids, foster mother to another two. She was divorced but on very good terms with her ex husband.

Her daughter Nicola was 23, a graduate in social work and was working for a local charity.

Then last week something went drastically and horribly wrong.

On Thursday at 9am, Margaret dropped off one of the children at nursery in Paisley. She is then seen with Nicola in Balloch at about 11am. The 17 hours after that are confusing. At 2pm Margaret fails to pick up the child from the nursery, the staff alert the family, the police pay a  visit to the family home at night as a routine call. But it's not in Margaret character to fail to turn up where she was expected.  There are now concerns about their welfare.

                                     

                                             Premier Inn, Courtesy of The Daily Record

Later it was discovered they had driven to Greenock and checked into the Premier Inn (which is a respectable motel type of place ideal for short stays for business men, overnight stays for early morning flights etc)

On Thursday night, they are both spotted in Linwood and Paisley, before returning to the Premier Inn somewhere between 12.30 and 1 am.

                                    

                                                      The last known movements- courtesy of the Scotsman

The tragedy unfolds at 7am the next morning, when a guest of the inn walking along the corridor discovers Nicola, lying badly injured in the hall. Her mother is found in a nearby room. The wounds have been described as slash wounds.

Both are rushed to hospital, the mother is critical, the daughter is serious. Margaret died later in hospital. Nicola held onto life for two more days, her dad holding a vigil at her bedside. Then she too passed away from her injuries.

The local papers are all screaming blood bath.

But it has to be noted that the police, very early on said that they were not looking for any third party. Vague sources (who refuse to be named) say that there may have been a suicide pact between mother and daughter and that an amount of paracetamol was found in the room. As yet the police do not have the results of any tox screen.

The police are still very keen to find out why they were driving around the area back tracking on themselves, why book an inn less than twenty miles from where they lived?  And so the questions go on, so the chip of ice eats away. And I'm sure it is eating away at their family and friends more than anyone.

The police as yet have given no indication as to cause of death, but they have confirmed that the family was not known to them.

The whys and the what ifs - the strange drive, the last few hours,  what was going on in that room, why did nobody hear, why did nobody help, could anybody have helped... we just don't know... and we may never know.

Maybe at the end of the day it is none of our business.

It's all very sobering and a reminder that we do have some responsibility in what we write, and that we shrug off that responsibility at our peril. But I'm sure that some crime writers take comfort in trying to make sense of such heartbreak.

                                       

Here's Nicola in happier terms, a clever, bonnie lassie with everything in life ahead of her.   Like I said, a huge tragedy.

Caro GB 17/05/2013 

Factoids on France

Factoids about France

Marianne, the national emblem of France, is an allegory of Liberty and Reason. She represents France as a state, and its values. She's been represented by Brigitte Bardot,
Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, Mireille Darc and Laetitia Casta among others.


In France, people eat approximately 500,000,000 snails per year.


Louis XIV of France really was as an unpleasant a fellow as he's been depicted. In 1674, when he was visiting a school at Clermont, he heard from the school's authorities that one of the children, a nine- year-old Irish lad named Francis Seldon, had made a pun about the king's bald head.

Louis was furious. He had a secret warrant drawn up for the child's arrest, and young Seldon was thrown into solitary confinement in the Bastille. His parents, members of one of Europe's richest merchant families, were told simply that the child had disappeared. Days turned to months, months to years, and Louis himself passed away. But Francis spent sixty-nine years "in the hole" for making fun of the king's baldness.



Meetings in France are to discuss issues, not to make decisions.


The first Public Toilet was constructed in Paris, France, in 1824.



In World War I A French aviatrix and nurse disguised herself and flew combat missions for several weeks before being discovered.


It’s considered bad manners to cut salad with a knife and fork. Fold the lettuce on to your fork.


About 650 people a year end up going to the hospital after slipping on dog doo.



The most popular TV show at one time was watched by all ages and ws the news reported by puppets.


What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France.



Flowers should be given in odd numbers but not 13, which is considered unlucky.

Some older French retain old-style prohibitions against receiving certain flowers: White lilies or chrysanthemums as they are used at funerals; red carnations as they symbolize bad will; any white flowers as they are used at weddings.

Gifts are usually opened when received.


It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.

Oh and regarding the murder rate France ranks # 40 in the world with 0.0173272 per 1,000 people


Cara - Tuesday