But one isn't murdered

Elizabeth Bowen's The little girls

Sandra Kemp

pp. 130-142

in: Clive Bloom (ed), Twentieth-century suspense, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

There are plenty of murders in Elizabeth Bowen's fiction. In the early stories (particularly those written in the 1930s) lurid episodes out of the popular press are re-created as comic horror pieces ("one of Mrs Bentley's hands was found in the library…. But the fingers were in the dining-room").¹ But The Little Girls (first published in 1963) contains all the elements of the classic detective story.² Suspense is established right from the start when Dinah Delacroix (née Piggott) places a notice in the personal columns of the major daily newspapers in an attempt to renew contact with two old schoolfriends, Clare Burkin-Jones and Sheila Beaker: "Whole affair now looks like coming to light. Essential we meet before too late…. If alive but in hiding, the two should know they have nothing to fear from Dicey, who continues to guard their secret" (p. 28).³