health and safety – Debbie Young's Writing Life

Cover of Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer — How did I get to be this old without ever reading a Georgette Heyer novel before?

The first in my new “Monday Musings” series, in which I’ll write about whatever’s top of mind at the start of each week

This weekend while reading a classic mystery story from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, Georgette Heyer‘s Footsteps in the Dark, I was startled by the irresponsible behaviour of some of the key characters:

copious cigarette smoking (the ashtrays are always full, and the cover of the edition I read shows a man chivalrously lighting a lady’s gasper)
casual attitude to alcohol (the butler brings in a tray of whisky and soda at 10pm as a nightcap, to round off the day’s drinking )
reckless driving (or rather, wreckful – when Margaret takes a corner too fast and puts her car in a ditch, she acts like its par for the course)
dangerous attitude to firearms (just about all the characters have easy access to a handgun at will and are ready to use them if crossed)

A Product of Heyer’s Age

The last of these points especially surprised me. I had never before associated such general ownership of handguns with English society.

And then the penny dropped. The guns are mostly old service revolvers, and when the book was published, in 1932, many adults would have firsthand experience of using them during the First World War, as did many of the characters in this novel.

To anyone spending any time in the trenches of the First World War, carrying a pistol in your pocket would seem relatively low-risk.

cover of A is for Arsenic — This one’s on my to-read list

The conflict’s influence was long sustained. Heyer’s contemporary Agatha Christie’s knowledge of poisons as a means to murder was learned while she worked as a pharmacy assistant during the First World War. Dorothy L Sayers’ detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, who appointed his military batman as his butler, suffers from shell-shock well into the series.

The Modern Obsession with Health and Safety

This realisation makes my fretting about health and safety issues in my Sophie Sayers Village Mystery series seem over-cautious:

In Best Murder in Show, the murder victim is wired to the safety barrier that surrounds the carnival float on which she’s travelling to stop her falling off, and Sophie worries about the profusion of dangerous implements at the Village Show
In Trick or Murder?, the Headmistress give out health and safety instructions to the children playing with sparklers on Guy Fawkes Night, while Bob, the village policeman, patrols around the bonfire on the look-out for hazards to the public
In both books, I’ve been slightly concerned that too much alcohol is flowing, (the village bookshop serves its teas with illicit hooch for those who want it), and I’ve been thinking of making Sophie go on the wagon in a future book

My health and safety allusions are largely tongue in cheek, but the fact that I’m even thinking about them makes me realise how much more nervous we as a society have become.

Misplaced Nostalgia?

Cover of Clouds of Witness — One of my favourite Lord Peter Wimsey stories

It’s ironic then that one of the reasons that classic crime novels are still so popular is that they offer us the chance to be nostalgic for a bygone age. Yet behind Heyer’s facade of witty banter and genteel behaviour lies significant scars still healing.

We may still call hers a Golden Age of Detective Fiction, compared to ours, but I know which one I’d rather live in, even if a late-night Scotch and soda does have a certain appeal.

How different would the novels of Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L Sayers be if they were writing today? And will modern crime novels age as gracefully? I wonder…

The sequel, set around Halloween, will launch on 26 August

Best Murder in Show is now available as an ebook and in paperback.
Trick or Murder? will be launched on 26th August at the Hawkesbury Village Show, which I hope will be free of murders.

My review of Footsteps in the Dark is here.

As we potter south through Belgium in our camper van, en route to Luxembourg, I am astonished at this otherwise civilised nation’s apparent disregard for basic health and safety rules.

They’re not quite as lax as those in Greece, where I’ve seen a lump of jagged concrete serve as a landing pad at the bottom of a children’s slide, but they still come as a surprise, considering we’re all meant to be part of the same European community, with high standards for such things. We see many perilous features that an English tourist attraction would never get away with.

A Dangerous Climb

Perilous staircase in Bouillon Castle — I hope they’ve got good accident insurance

To reach the Citadel that overlooks the riverside town of Dinant, many of the 411 steps that we climb are badly worn and slippery with water or ice. On the way back down, I try not to look below me, because we are protected from a precipitous drop only by a single, slim railing.

The next day, we besiege the castle at the tranquil riverside town of Bouillon, an intriguing maze of a place with a warren of different-shaped chambers, cellars and halls linked by numerous, ancient, spiral stone staircases. As in Dinant, many of the treads are worn and wet. Yet mostly there is no handrail to save the less than sure-footed visitor (e.g. me) from a tumble. The few handrails that do exist are mostly pitted with rust. Duct tape has been used half-heartedly to repair places in which the rust has worn right through.

Most of the rooms are damp underfoot, many are scattered with puddles. Often, we look up to find icicles or stalactites hanging perilously above us. Raised paths atop the castle walls lure the visitor to enjoy the view, but only feeble, low-slung barriers stop them taking an accidental step to certain death. Only eagle-eyed visitors will notice a single faded, low-profile sign reminding them that it’s not a good idea to sit on the walls, but that’s as far as the official warnings go.

A Cellar Full of Danger

Walking through the cellars, we have at most five feet clearance of headroom. There is nothing to alert taller people to watch their heads. While my four-feet-seven daughter skips carefree ahead of me, I stumble forward, hunchbacked, wondering how many cases of concussion the castle has to treat each year.

Along the way, my daughter gleefully collects icicles. We break them off from low arches, and she brandishes them as weapons against cut-out figures of crusaders dotted about the main hall.

I need no reminding that this castle is not managed by the National Trust, I think to myself, as I cling to a flimsy wooden handrail while descending shaky wooden steps. The National Trust would never be guilty of such lassitude. It wouldn’t dare.

A Safe Perspective

But then we reach a room that casts a whole new light on our tour. It is the torture chamber. Displayed above a rack are helpful, thorough directions on its use. It’s the most detailed sign we have seen so far. Evenly spaced along its bed are five spiked spools, designed to pierce the victim’s flesh many times over, just in case it’s not tortuous enough to be stretched by his hands and feet, with the tension maintained by a granite weight the size of a millstone.

There’s no photo here because I couldn’t bear to look at it for long enough to take a picture. Besides, my daughter had already danced off into the distance with her icicle, refusing to look, just as she’d shielded her eyes from the guillotine cheerfully displayed at Dinant, alongside a mini guillotine designed to chop off hands, rather than heads (torture-lite, I suppose you’d call it).

Suddenly, my 21st century attitude to health and safety seems ridiculously cautious. Taking this torture chamber as Belgium’s baseline for danger, losing my foothold on a stone staircase would be very small beer indeed. I continue my tour without complaint.

If you’d like to read more about our trip through Belgium, these are the other posts I’ve put up so far (more to follow shortly):

Just when we thought it was safe to go back into la piscine

When in Belgium, drink as the Belgians do (Oxo)

Why Belgium is being rebuilt

Close Encounters of the Belgian Kind

(More to follow shortly – click the “Follow” button on the right to make sure you don’t miss an episode!)