The Coverdale family hires Eunice Parchman as their housekeeper and find her perfect in almost every way. But Eunice is harboring what she considers a deep dark secret--she cannot read or write. She is constantly dreading being left written instructions or a written list of groceries to purchase, and comes up with a variety of artifices to hide her illiteracy. Things come to a head on Valentine's Day when Eunice murders the entire Coverdale family. (This is not a spoiler--the first sentence of the book is, "Eunice Parchman killed the Cloverdale family because she could not read or write.") The police are mystified, however, and must figure out what happened and why.

This is a fairly typical Ruth Rendell psychological domestic thriller. I enjoyed it, but I sometimes had difficulty understanding the extent to which Eunice feared the discovery of her illiteracy. In my logical mind I was wondering why she didn't just sign up for a class to learn to read. For the most part, however, Rendell did a good job of conveying Eunice's obsession with her illiteracy, and how she viewed and experienced her entire life and all her relationships through the lens of her inability to read. I just sometimes had trouble believing this could be a motive for murder. So maybe not one of Rendell's better ones.

2 stars ( )

This book wasn't the type of crime novel I generally read; it isn't a mystery or a thriller or even very suspenseful. You learn who the killer is in the very first sentence and what her motive was. And yet, Rendell managed to hold my interest the entire book.

I did find some of Rendell's statements about the illiterate bothersome. These things may be true for some illiterate people (obviously she has made them true about her character Eunice Parchman) but I doubt that they are true for all of them. ( )

Maid to Murder
Review of the Arrow Books/Cornerstone Digital Kindle eBook edition (2010) of the original Hutchinson hardcover (May 2, 1977)

This continues my 2023 binge read / re-read of Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) and it is my first non-Inspector Wexford book of the binge. A Judgement in Stone is one of the classics of the crime/mystery genre due to its inverted structure where the murderer, the crime and the motive are revealed in its very first sentence (which I won't spoil here). The tension and suspense of the book is then gradually spun out in flashbacks and flashforwards as we wonder how can such a motive possibly be the reason for the crime.

The omniscient third person narrator reveals all as they go along and the repressed and secretive natures of the villains are gradually exposed. There are some bizarre twists before the police investigation finally catches up to the perpetrators.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Ajudgementinstone.jpg
Cover image for the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover edition from 1977. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Trivia and Links
Read about Five Key Works by Ruth Rendell in The Guardian, May 2, 2015. A Judgement in Stone is considered 1 of the 5 key works.

A Judgement in Stone has been adapted twice as a feature length film.
The first adaptation was The Housekeeper in 1986 directed by Ousama Rawi with Rita Tushingham as Eunice Parchman. You can watch the entire movie here. This version transplants most of the story to America and sensationalizes it into more of a horror film.

See poster at https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYmRkM2NjNmItNWUwZC00OWRlLWE2YmMtYWYxYmMw...
Publicity poster for "The Housekeeper" (1986). Image sourced from IMDb.

The second adaptation was the French language film La cérémonie in 1995 directed by Claude Chabrol with Sandrine Bonnaire as Sophie (renamed from Eunice Parchman) and Isabelle Huppert as Jeanne (renamed from Joan Smith). Ruth Rendell said that this was one of the few film adaptations of her work that she was satisfied with. You can watch a French language trailer (without subtitles) for the film here.

See poster at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Laceremonieposter.jpg
Publicity poster for "La cérémonie" (1995). Image sourced from Wikipedia. ( )

Would you kill a whole family of four because they found out you couldn't read? Well that's what you Eunice Parchment, their housekeeper, did.

In "a judgment in stone," Ruth Rendell creates the character of Eunice Parchman, a volcano waiting to explode (if you find out that she can't read.) A stodgy, Big woman who dresses like a policewoman, Eunice has had people offer to teach her to read but no-o-o-o-o, Eunice doesn't want that. I cracked up when the author would very often remind the reader that someone leaving notes for Eunice, or asking her to look at an article in a magazine was "not a smart thing to do!", making us all so scared of her!

Before the Coverdales find Eunice, Jacqueline Coverdale employs Eva Baalham, a woman who is poor, but Gentry!, whose ancestors have lived in Greeving (UK) for 500 years. Eva barely does any work, which is why Jacqueline Coverdale is looking for a housekeeper.
".... She [Eva] didn't like Jacqueline, who was mutton dressed as lamb and who gave herself some mighty airs for the wife of the owner of a tin can factory. All that will-you-be-so-good and thank-you-so-much nonsense..."

Joan Smith and her husband Norman own a shop and the mini post office in the closest town to the Coverdales. Joan Smith belongs to a cult, and it's in the stars that the two of them will meet, Joan and Eunice.
A bit like Eunice, who suffocated her father when he wanted Eunice to look after him as she had her invalid mother, Joan encourages her mother-in-law towards death.
"Norman had no idea how she earned her living, believing her story that she had taken in typing and occasionally been a freelance secretary. They lived with his mother. After a year or two of furious daily quarrels with old Mrs smith, Joan found the best way of keeping her quiet was to encourage her hitherto controlled fondness for the bottle. Gradually she got Mrs Smith to the stage of spending her savings on half a bottle of whiskey a day.
... So old Mrs smith, with Joan's encouragement, became a self-appointed invalid. For most of each day she was in bed with her whiskey, and Joan helped matters along by crushing into the sugar in her tea three or four of the tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed for her own 'nerves.' With her mother-in-law more or less comatose, Joan returned by day to the old life and the flat in Shepherd's Bush. She made very little money at it and her sexual encounters had become distasteful to her. a remarkable fact about Joan was that, though she had had sexual relations with hundreds of men as well as with her own husband, she had never made love for pleasure or had a 'conventional' illicit affair except with the bakers roundsman. It is hard to know why she continued as a prostitute. Out of perversity perhaps, or as a way of defying Norman's extreme working-class respectability."

Giles Mont, Jacqueline's son from her previous marriage, and Melinda's step brother, is a strange sort. He's brilliant, but has terrible acne. He has a fascination with Melinda.
"... He saw them sharing their flat, devout Catholics both, but going through agonies to maintain their chaste and continent condition. Perhaps he would become a priest, and if Melinda were to enter a convent they might - say twice a year - have special dispensation to meet and, soberly garbed, have tea together in some humble cafe, not daring to touch hands. Or like Lancelot and Guinevere, but without the preceding pleasures, encounter each other across a cathedral nave, gaze long and long, then part without a word. . ."

Eunice, in her youth, had been accustomed to blackmail people. she never asked for much, 10 shillings a week or so, but when Melinda discovers her inability to read, she thinks she can blackmail Melinda by telling her family about her pregnancy scare.
" 'why didn't you tell us?' She said as Eunice got up. 'We'd have understood. Lots of people are dyslexic, thousands of people actually. I did some work on a study of it in my last year at school. Miss Parchman, shall I teach you to read? I'm sure I could. It would be fun. I could begin in the Easter holidays.'
Eunice took the two mugs and set them on the draining board. She stood still with her back to Melinda. She poured the remains of her tea down the sink. Then she turned around slowly and, with no outward sign that her heart was drumming fast and heavily, fixed Melinda with her apparently emotionless implacable stare.
'if you tell anyone I'm what you said, that word, I'll tell your dad you've been going with that boy and you're going to have a baby.'
She spoke so slowly and calmly that at first Melinda hardly understood. She had led a sheltered life and no one had ever really threatened her before.
'what did you say?'
'you heard. You tell them and I'll tell them about you.' Abuse wasn't Eunice's Forte but she managed. 'Dirty little tart, that's what you are. Dirty interfering little bitch.'
Melinda went white. She got up and walked out of the kitchen, stumbling over her long skirt. Out in the hall her legs almost gave way, she was shaking so much, and she sat down in the chair by the grandfather clock. She sat there with her fists pressed to her cheeks till the clock chimed six and the kitchen door opened. A wave of sickness hit her at the thought of even seeing Eunice Parchman again, and she fled into the drawing room where she fell onto the sofa and burst into tears."

When Melinda's father finds out what Eunice told her, he sends her to her room, and tells her not to come out until she leaves, a week later, while she looks for another job. But George Coverdale has not reckoned with Joan Smith's influence on Eunice. ( )

Fantastic novel about a housekeeper who for no APPARENT reason murders members of a family, together with an eccentric, religious fanatic friend. The woman's secret, that she holds fast to her breast and tries to hide from others, controls her life and leads her to her actions. ( )