Sara Woods, Malice Domestic

Sara Woods, Malice Domestic
© 1962 Sara Woods
Avon reprint 1986
(Out of print; readily available from used book sellers)

“…Duncan is in his grave,
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,
Treason has done his worst, no steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.”
Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2 [1]

Late one evening, William Cassell, returned to England after 18 years in Portugal to visit his brother Ambrose and family, is shot through a window while writing a letter at his brother’s desk.  One of Ambrose’s grandsons, Paul Herron, is found outside, barefoot, holding the rifle that fired the fatal shot.  He was heard to say, to his grandfather, “I thought it was you.”  Unsurprisingly, he is arrested and charged with the murder of William.  Ambrose arranges for Paul’s solicitor (Mr. Bellerby), and is adamant that Paul plead not guilty by reason of insanity.  Bellerby takes the case to Sir Nicholas Harding (and his nephew, Antony Maitland).  Harding himself is opposed to using insanity as a defense, and there is some doubt that an insanity plea could be supported.

As is happens, 18 years earlier, on the day that William Cassell left England for Portugal, Matt Herron (Paul’s father; there’s a twin brother to Paul as well, Timothy; they were 6 at the time, and asleep in the house) shot and killed his wife Ruth, his twin brother Mark, and himself.  Paul’s insanity (and his subsequent history of sleepwalking), Ambrose argues, stems from the trauma of his parents’ deaths.

Antony Maitland, also a barrister, undertakes to investigate the circumstances of the current murder, which entails a series of conversations with all concerned.  (And the cast of characters, who are mostly related in one way or another, is large.)  He comes to believe that understanding what happened on that night 18 years ago, and what led William to return to England, are essential to developing a defense for Paul.  Clearly we have a tangled situation, and one that reminded me, the first time I read the book (probably in the 1970s) and again today, of nothing so much as Ross Macdonald’s complex and multigenerational Lew Archer books.  (Maitland is, to my tastes, a more interesting protagonist than Archer, but that’s clearly a matter of taste.)

I thought the characters of Paul and Timothy, in particular, were very well portrayed, and that keeping all the characters clear in our minds as readers was handled quite well.  This was the second entry in the Maitland series, and it is as characteristic of the whole as one could ask.  Although we have yet to see Harding and Maitland at work in a courtroom, we get a very strong sense of their approach to the law, and how they work so well together.  This was, when I first read the books decades ago, one of my favorite continuing series, and I am greatly enjoying re-visiting it.  Highly recommended.

[1] All the titles come from Shakespeare; I have quoted above the passage from which this title comes.