Blue Moon By James King Dundurn, 361 pages, $19.95 REVIEWED BY
One of Canada's most enduring mysteries involves the woman once known as Mrs. Evelyn Dick, who burst into the spotlight in 1946, charged with the murder of her husband, a 40-year-old Mennonite bus driver, John Dick. Now James King, literary biographer ( The Life of Margaret Laurence) and novelist ( Faking), uses that event as the starting point for his second work of fiction.
But first, the facts. When children on a hike discovered a dismembered male torso on the escarpment in Hamilton, Ont., the investigative trail soon led to the beguiling widow, Mrs. Evelyn McLean Dick.
The cellar of Evelyn's father's home was found to contain a small arsenal and a stunning amount of cash, money pilfered by Donald McLean from his employer, the Hamilton Street Railway. Because John Dick also worked at the HSR, the authorities assumed that the murder was connected to his knowledge of his father-in-law's racket. Bloodstains in a borrowed Packard and other physical evidence also linked Evelyn directly to the crime.
At the time of her arrest, Evelyn was only 26, but she had plenty of money, no visible means of support, an illegitimate child and a history of promiscuity. In the years prior to her brief, stormy marriage, Evelyn, posing as "Mrs. Norman White" to explain her daughter, had been involved with many men from a wide social spectrum. Courtesan, party-girl and sometime prostitute, she had a chameleon-like ability to mix with any level of society, but the city's class barriers ensured that she could not alter her "station" as her mother, Alexandra, so fervently wished.
When, during the investigation, the dessicated remains of an infant were discovered in a suitcase in Evelyn's attic, her notoriety grew. The press swarmed over this story like rats on a donut. Always willing to pose for pictures and garrulous to the point of absurdity, Evelyn was a reporter's wet dream.
In the end, Evelyn Dick was acquitted of the murder of her husband and convicted of man- slaughter in the death of her infant son, Peter. She served 12 years in the Kingston Penitentiary for Women and was released in 1958 under a new identity. Since then, nothing has been heard from the former Evelyn Dick.
King's fictional approach catches up with Dick in her new guise: Elizabeth Delamere, an acclaimed writer whose true identity has been unknown to her public. Blue Moon is presented as Delamere's last work, a memoir.
While King's ability to write descriptively is not in doubt, he doesn't imbue his characters with sufficient depth or resonance to sustain interest. Too often he detours from the narrative on tangents that only superficially connect with the progress of Evelyn Dick, Scarlet Woman, to Elizabeth Delamere, Woman of Letters. His grasp of dialogue is also unsure. Almost every character -- including Donald McLean, a Glaswegian janitor -- speaks in arch, theatrical language, and great dollops of exposition are served up whole.
Although Evelyn's sexual encounters are described in unstinting detail, the events surrounding her strange marriage are almost ignored. The dark triangle of the McLean family is explored, but not believably. In one scene, Evelyn and her dour Scottish mother knowledgably discuss the ways of the geisha, which seems like a big stretcher to me.
It may be fair game in historical fiction to ignore facts that are at odds with the author's point of view, but King avoids the evidence of Evelyn's unquestionable involvement in the murder, portraying her as a passive dupe of the unnamed killers and/or her parents. No means or motive for the killing of her husband is put forward.
If, as King suggests, in later life Evelyn overcame her passivity to become a writer of consequence, listed for the Nobel Prize, surely she would not leave behind a memoir that glosses over the most pivotal event of her life.
Perhaps it is reflective of my interest in the real woman, but the further King took me into the invented Elizabeth Delamere, the less convinced I was. In retelling a story that is operatic in its emotional scope, Blue Moon feels bloodless, heavy with psychological observation and thin on genuine insight and passion. Toronto writer Douglas Rodger's play, How Could You, Mrs. Dick? is based on the Evelyn Dick story and is acknowledged as a source by the author of Blue Moon .