Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
A voice in the Norwegian wilderness? Nina, a professor of Literature, joins a public discussion and, in the face of some aimless waffling involving Proust and poetry and tyranny, she surprises even herself by questioning the purpose of literary scholars. They should, she says, get out of the universities and do something important – such as assisting the police: introducing empathy into murder investigations…. Her colleagues are dumbfounded and the media erupts in a feeding frenzy.
Her suggestion has echoes of profiling but that’s immaterial; it’s the spark that fires the plot that follows. For Nina and her husband own a property which they let to Mari, a single mother who disappears after a fraught confrontation with Nina’s daughter, leaving her small son behind.
Horrified and guilty in the face of her daughter’s behaviour Nina suits action to words and offers assistance in the search for the missing woman. The police are dismissive and she is left with the alternative: of going it alone, of “opening doors”. This is when reality and symbolism become enmeshed as Bluebeard’s Castle is staged in Bergen’s Grieg Hall.
The opera is directed by Mari’s estranged husband who explains the performance as a tribute to his wife, but in view of its plot, and the woman’s continued absence, Nina finds the choice overwhelmingly sinister.
In Bluebeard’s castle there were seven doors, each opening on a vista imbued with blood until the last door reveals his murdered wives. For Nina speculation concerning Mari’s fate focuses; foul play must have been involved and the priority is always the next-of-kin. The first suspect is obvious.
Too obvious for, implicit in the absorbing intellectual discussions between a number of clever and articulate people, there are clues to other suspects: family, friends, colleagues. A series of revelations has Nina (and reader) wrong-footed at every turn until the seventh door opens on an appalling scenario. And even that is followed by one last shattering twist.
Good, bleak, and subtly noir - and the translation flows like a stream.
Editor’s Note: Translated into the English Language by Rosie Hedger.
