The Chianti Flask

December 1, 2021
Standing trial for murder is only the beginning of a new widow's tribulations in this breathless, mournful tale the author of The Lodger originally published in 1934. Three weeks after Dr. Grant signed a death certificate indicating that Fordish Dousland had died of natural causes, his growing unease led him to contact the Silchester police, who arrested Laura Dousland for dosing her much older husband's wine with rat poison. The question of her innocence or guilt evidently turns on the disappearance of a flask that held the victim's final drink. Dousland's Venetian servant, Angelo Terugi, testifies that he placed the flask on his master's dinner tray and that it vanished in the confusion after his death; Sir Joseph Molloy, the barrister representing Laura, suggests that Terugi is confusing the events of the fatal evening with those three weeks before, when the stingy Dousland hid the flask the servant had brought him to prevent Terugi from finishing it himself. Sir Joseph's questions are pointed enough to raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors, and Laura is found not guilty and set free. But not all that free, since her husband's death leaves her penniless; the publicity from the trial follows her to Loverslea, where she takes refuge with John and Alice Hayward, who introduced her to Dousland while she was working as governess for their daughter, and Alice's well-meant kindness becomes unbearably oppressive. Hiding under her mother's maiden name, Laura accepts the invitation of Dr. Mark Scrutton, Dousland's golfing acquaintance, to stay in an outbuilding of his parents' home. But she can't accept Mark's professions of love, which precipitate an all-too-expected ending. Eighty-six years on, Lowndes still presents a remarkably modern take on notoriety, guilt, and love.

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Starred review from January 31, 2022
Best known for The Lodger, Lowndes (1896–1947) inverts the traditional courtroom drama in this psychologically complex mystery, first published in 1935. Laura Dousland has been charged with murdering her husband, Fordish Dousland, by poisoning his wine with rat poison, supposedly motivated by his mistreatment. One witness, a physician who was a golfing acquaintance of Fordish, testifies that the deceased, who was depressed and may have been suicidal, asked him whether the rat poison Fordish had requested his wife to purchase would be painless if administered to a human. The key proof incriminating the defendant comes from the household’s sole servant, Angelo Terugi, who insists that the flask containing the tainted Chianti that killed Fordish mysteriously vanished the night Fordish drank from it. That damning account is interrupted by the defendant, who protests that Terugi has confused that night with a prior incident when her husband concealed a flask to keep the servant from imbibing from it. The jury’s verdict comes early on, leaving Lowndes to tease out over the rest of the book whether the jurors’ decision was the right one. This is another obscure title worthy of resurrection as a British Library crime classic.

February 1, 2022
Mrs. Laura Dousland is in the dock at the Silchester Assize Court, accused of adding rat poison to her elderly husband's chianti. After her lawyer reveals that Fordish Dousland had threatened suicide in the past, and Laura challenges the veracity of their Italian servant's testimony, Laura is acquitted. As she faces a straitened widowhood and scandal-driven notoriety, her only friends, the Haywards, the family for whom she served as governess following the death of her father and before her marriage, take her in. What follows is a psychological thriller that explores how the perceived shame of being indicted for murder affects relationships. The Haywards, though appearing benevolent, are disturbed by having their social life as country squires disrupted. Conversely, the doctor who testified on Laura's behalf seeks to protect her from societal pressures and ultimately falls in love with her. First published in 1934, this latest addition to the British Library Classic Crime series stands the test of time, thanks to Lowndes' emphasis on the why more than the who and her sharp critique of upper-class society and the disadvantaged role of women.

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