The Stratton Story
By: Elizabeth Cadell / Narrated By: Helen Taylor
Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
Something sinister! The game is afoot!
No, this wasn’t my favorite Elizabeth Cadell of the week, but it had my favorite character in it, tho’ I did wonder what she was up to.
Though Gail Sinclair comes from a rough and tumble set o’ siblings (A sister who lives the farm life with her husband and scalawag children, and a brother whose rowdy naval-friends all stay at her flat, generally thinking of her as a sister), she’s really quite poised… and a bit naive… The elderly Miss Teller (Tho’ nowhere near as elderly as the brothers of Beetham Brothers publishing house) is always filling her in on what she really SHOULD know.
For instance, they’re setting up a big-to-do shindig to shine the lights on the newly famous Anita Stratton’s book. Why, has Gail not read it? Nope. Okay, so Miss Teller cues her in.
Anita Stratton had written a bit of a memoir, a musing on Life, whilst nursing her husband through a devastating disease. Now that he’s dead and she’s filled with grief, it’s become all the rage, and soon Gail has indeed read it and is ready to meet Mrs. Stratton. She’s NOT, however, ready to drive Anita three hours out of her way when she’s to drive her brother’s car to him to Spain, by way of France. You see, Gail just doesn’t wanna get involved.
Turns out, she’s about to get waaaay involved.
The shindig is crashed by the outRAGEous Mrs. Westerby, sister of Anita’s late husband. She’s loud, and charming in a brash kinda way, but Anita haaaates to be noticed (This fame thing is such a trial…!), so seeing her is NOT good.
Then a Beetham Brother’s wife ensures that Gail WILL drive Anita to a chateau in France since she overheard the request.
Then Gail winds up having to meet Mrs. Westerby before the jaunt, and she’s actually okay, just a tad eccentric…
But then once in France, there’s a weeeeird detour that gets a band of cars stranded in a remote village, and wouldn’t ya know it: One of those people just happens to be, yesss, Mrs. Westerby and her sedate and Uber-dignified godson.
Who is this Mrs. Westerby? and WHAT is going on? Gail doesn’t know whom to turn to, and boy does she hate getting dragged ever deeper into it all, esPECially when the godson starts doing hinky things like purloining one of Mrs. Westerby’s scarves that was found by police… wrapped around and hiding a Turn Here/Detour sign. But the quiet Anita is looking more and more peaky with each passing day, each time Mrs. Westerby foists herself upon everyone.
All this is handled ever so well by Helen Taylor, of COURSE. It was a delight when the first of the stranded cars pulls up beside Gail and Anita and an American tourist and his family step out. Nooooo, this is NOT The Ugly American, as most non-American narrators would choose to do. Usually, they choose a Texas twang or a Southern drawl, as tho’ those are the only two options in a fairly decently populous country. Nope, it’s just gentle American tones, though the man IS awfully tickled pink that his son figured out they were going the wrong way.
But Helen’s real charm is in the clamorous Mrs. Westerby with her BOOMing laugh, and her raucous, riotous, ways, her outRAGEous behavior which is sometimes tamped down and earnest. But never do we know just what-all went on between the obstreperous Mrs. W and the reluctant Anita. Gail doesn’t know whose word to take, and it’s all so very fishy.
A trifle darker than the lovely The Corner Shop, The Stratton Story is still an engaging Listen, and I can’t even say that “darker” is even the right word. It’s just that its mystery is a bit more ominous, I s’pose, and its bit o’ romance kinda darts in at the end, like it was just a bit of an afterthought. But with soooo many characters, and with the redoubtable Miss Teller’s earlier warnings proving that maybe with age comes wisdom, and with such sweet writing that isn’t sickly sentimental in the least, it’s still a good way to while away 6 hours.
Hey, the pandemic aint’ over; we neeeeeed the good and charming stories that E. Cadell provides!
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