Post After Post-Mortem

An Oxfordshire Mystery by E.C.R. Lorac

The British Library Crime Classics
edition of Post After Post-Mortem

A respected and successful female writer, Ruth Surray, is found dead in bed at her parents’ country house with a suicide note and a box of sleeping medication on her bedside table.

Her family and friends all agree that she had been finding it difficult to sleep and had been in low spirits recently. They conclude, regretfully, that things must have got too much for her and that she has taken her own life.

The family want to avoid publicity, and having Ruth’s private life discussed in court, so they are relieved when the inquest goes off smoothly, without too much said about her that would provide material for the newspapers. They all accept the verdict of suicide given by the coroner.

But then Ruth’s brother, Richard Surray, who is a distinguished psychiatrist, receives a letter from his sister, written just before her death. It had been delivered to the wrong address in London and wasn’t redirected to him until after the inquest. In the letter, Ruth tells him that she is feeling much better and is now completely refreshed after enjoying a stay with her parents. She apologises for having worried him about her sleep problems.

This cheerful letter makes Richard have doubts about the conclusion reached by the coroner, and he enlists Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald to investigate his sister’s death more fully, just to make sure the wrong verdict hasn’t been reached at the inquest. He realises there is an alternative to suicide and that Ruth could have been murdered by one of the other people staying in the house at the time. However unpleasant the idea might seem, he decides Ruth’s death should be thoroughly investigated.

The Surray family are prolific writers with many academic books and detective novels, which they jokingly refer to as ‘defectives’, to their names. Ruth’s death had occurred during a weekend when the family had been hosting among their guests, a publisher and some fellow writers, at their Oxfordshire mansion, one of whom she has named as her literary executor in the event of her death.

I found Post After Post-Mortem, which was published in 1936 by Collins, to be a beautifully written story by E C R Lorac, one of the pen names used by the author Edith Caroline Rivett.

She wrote under the pseudonyms E C R Lorac, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne during the Golden Age of Detective fiction.

E C R Lorac was a pseudonym
of Edith Caroline Rivett

She chose E C R Lorac because Lorac was the name Carol, which was part of her own name, spelt backwards. Her first detective novel, Murder on the Burrows, which introduced Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, was published in 1931 when she was 37, but sadly, it is now out of print and original copies are difficult to find.

She wrote 48 mysteries as E C R Lorac, and 23 as Carol Carnac, along with other novels, short stories, and radio and stage plays, before her death on 2 July 1958. 

Thankfully, Post After Post-Mortem, which is her 11th Robert Macdonald novel, has now been reprinted as part of the British Library Crime Classics series.

It is a fast-moving story with some of the events occurring in London and Scotland as well as in Oxfordshire. Macdonald and his assistant, Detective Reeves, both face danger during the investigation and many attempts are made to point them in the wrong direction.

E C R  Lorac serves up a satisfying solution at the end of the story but skilfully keeps the reader guessing until the final pages.

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