The Horse Shows the Way: Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar, 1950
 

            In Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar, 75 major and 45 minor characters are crammed into 286 pages.  Among the characters are several horses.  Tey didn’t own a horse, or ride, but she liked horses, and studied them with an eye for the details that make her characters, human or otherwise, interesting and credible.

When the mystery novel opens, Brat Farrar has been persuaded by a “friend” of the Ashby family to impersonate Patrick Ashby, who disappeared and is presumed to have committed suicide 13 years earlier.  Brat and his accomplice—who approached Brat because of his striking resemblance to the Ashby family—will claim Patrick’s mother’s estate, which Simon, Patrick’s slightly younger twin, would otherwise inherit.

Brat, a foundling whose career working with horses ended when he never fully recovered the use of a broken leg, refuses the criminal role until he learns that part of his inheritance is a stud farm. Brat misses horses; the only creature he ever loved was Smoky, the horse Brat was forced to sell after his accident.  With the story of Smoky, Tey arouses the reader’s sympathy for Brat, and the fact that Brat’s interest in horses persuades him to undertake the impersonation makes his behavior seem less venal.  Tey has begun to transform Brat from a criminal to a hero.

 
 


            Tey deploys Smoky again when Bee, the Ashby’s guardian, meets Brat.  Bee asks Brat if he’d ever owned a horse, and his voice cracked when he told her about Smoky.

“A grey?” she asked.

“A soft, smoky colour.  When he had a tantrum he was just a whirling cloud of smoke.”

“A whirling cloud of smoke.”  Bee decides he must love horses to see them like that, and begins to hope that this is Patrick.

            A few days later, Brat meets the other Ashbys.  Because of his family resemblance, two of his “sisters,” Eleanor and Ruth, accept him.  Jane, the third sister, is skeptical until her pony, Fourposter, who doesn’t like people, succumbs to Brat’s charms, and Jane bows to Fourposter’s judgment.  Tey has used another horse to persuade Jane (and the reader) that Brat is acceptable, even lovable.

Bee tells the vicar that Brat is “mad about horses” and that “it is good that Latchett’s should go to a real (horse) lover,” contrasting him with Simon who doesn’t love horses.  Brat’s feeling for horses not only makes him preferable to Simon as the heir to Latchett’s, but also puts Brat in a class with Eleanor and Bee, a class to which Simon doesn’t belong.

            Simon introduces Brat to Timber, a beautiful black stallion, failing to tell him that Timber has deliberately killed two men.  Brat’s riding skill prevents Timber from injuring Brat, but Brat recognizes that Timber is vicious, and that Simon has attempted to harm him.

            Because Tey has made Timber an alter ego for Simon, Timber is one of the most vivid characters in Brat Farrar, and perhaps Tey’s most brilliant characterization.  Through Brat’s eyes, the reader gradually notices the similar traits of man and horse: both are well-bred with beautiful manners, but selfish and conceited—a pair of rogues.

            The champion horse Riding Light, acquired by her father for pretty Peggy Gates, causes Simon, said to be in love with Peggy, to drop the girl.  Brat realizes that Simon can’t tolerate the idea of Peggy as a rival.  A horse has provided another glimpse of Simon’s character.

            Brat becomes increasingly involved with the estate and its horses.  The stud groom, Gregg, prefers him to Simon; and because Brat works closely with Eleanor, their friendship grows.  Most of the family has accepted him, but Simon, in a drunken tantrum, calls Brat a lout, and insists that he’s not an Ashby.  Brat is suspicious that Simon killed his twin, but learns that Simon has an alibi.

            The penultimate episode of Brat Farrar takes place at a horse show, where Simon again attempts to injure or kill Brat by loosening the girth on the horse Brat is about to race.  Brat discovers the trick, and challenges Simon, who brags about arranging “accidents” for Brat, and murdering his twin.  Simon also vows to kill Brat.

When Brat explores his theory on how Simon murdered Patrick, and set up an alibi, he is attacked by Simon. They struggle, and fall into a dry quarry.  When Simon and Brat are found, Simon is dead, Brat is gravely injured, and Patrick’s bones lie nearby, with evidence that he was murdered.

 Since Simon is dead, the authorities conceal Patrick’s murder.  Brat recovers, but while he was unconscious, his family learned that he is an illegitimate Ashby cousin. In another plot twist, Eleanor, now the future owner of Latchett’s, confides to Bee that she is determined to marry Brat, who will ultimately return to Latchett’s.  Until then, Bee will lease another stud-farm, where Brat will work with her.

            In Tey’s intricate and clever plot, a young man who criminally impersonates another young man becomes the detective who investigates the death of the person he’s impersonating, proves he was murdered, and accidentally kills the murderer.  The originality of the plot is widely recognized and admired, but it is Tey’s unique use of horses to shape the reader’s view of the human characters, and to point the way to the murderer that is most ingenious, and so subtle, it is almost subliminal.

            Agatha Christie is often praised for her “strategies of deception,” and her “conjuring tricks.”  In Brat Farrar, Tey also employs “conjuring tricks” in what might be called a “strategy of persuasion.”