The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White

As she listened to the gush of words behind her, Iris was again perplexed by the discrepancy between Miss Froy's personality and her appearance. It was as though a dryad were imprisoned within the tree-trunk of a withered spinster. (78)

Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, The Wheel Spins, attracted Alfred Hitchcock’s attention and in 1938 it was made into the film The Lady Vanishes. Before I had read the book, I thought the film had the better title. But now, I believe the film just has the more obvious title, and while that perhaps makes it more suited to cinema, The Wheel Spins is the superior choice for this novel. 

The Wheel Spins opens with Iris Carr on holiday in the mountains somewhere in Europe. Her friends and herself have made general nuisances of themselves during their stay, and destroyed the tranquil setting that no doubt would have attracted the other guests to the location. Iris, who, by the end of the trip, has grown tired of her friends, happily waves them off at the train station. Glad to see the back of them, she is looking forward to some quiet time in the remaining days of her holiday.

Her solitude becomes a bit too real when she gets lost in the mountains without food, water, map, or the means of asking directions. Because as well as not knowing the language, she is unable to tell the one person she comes across the name of the village where she is staying. So when it comes time for her to return home she is starting yearn for company, though she is barely able to acknowledge this herself. When one of her fellow guests, a vicar’s wife, extends an olive branch, Iris snaps it in two, making it perfectly clear she is not interested in making nice.  

Iris was awakened that night, as usual, by the express screaming through the darkness. Jumping out of bed, she reached the window in time to see it outline the curve of the lake with a fiery wire. As it rattled below the hotel, the golden streak expanded to a string of lighted windows, which, when it passed, snapped together again like the links of a bracelet.

After it had disappeared around the gorge, she followed its course by its pall of quivering red smoke. 

[…]

Once again she was flooded with home-hunger, even though her future address were an hotel. Mixed with it was a gust of foreboding—which was a legacy from the mountains.

“Suppose—something—happened, and I never came back.” 

At that moment she felt that any evil could block the way to her return. A railway crash, illness, or crime were possibilities, which were actually scheduled in other lives. They were happening all around her and at any time a line might give way in the protective square in her palm. (45)

Previously, she had been told that the lines on the palm of her hand formed a protective square, which Iris has been willing to believe keeps her from harm. Her experience in the mountains is the first time Iris has felt the weakness in her belief. Iris is coming to feel how vulnerable she is as a woman travelling in a foreign country without friends and not speaking the language.

While waiting at the station for the train that will start her on her journey home, she collapses and we begin to wonder if Iris’s feeling of foreboding wasn’t warranted. She wakes up not knowing how much time has passed. Overcome with panic that she has missed her train, she struggles to get up. But she is forced to rest and drink something. Still feeling ill and disoriented, she is bundled onto the train, a porter aids her in squeezing into a packed compartment as the train pulls away from the platform. She gets a cold feeling from people in the compartment, as though they don’t like her. But that doesn’t make any sense. They don’t even know her. It’s not like they could have talked to anyone from her hotel. Thankfully, a woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy, befriends Iris and noticing she doesn’t look well, takes her under her wing. Feeling better after a cup of tea, Iris drifts off to sleep.

When Iris awakes Miss Froy is no longer across from her. At first Iris assumes the woman has just stepped out of the compartment for a bit—a trip to the lavatory or the dining car would explain her absence—but as time goes on, Iris’s worry builds. The train is full to the brim, so she couldn’t have simply changed compartments. When Iris finally gets to the point of questioning her fellow passengers about the missing woman, they all say they don’t know who she is talking about. The suggestion is made that she has dreamt the woman up, and Iris herself admits that she was suffering from heatstroke. Could she have hit her head when she collapsed? Iris even begins to doubt herself, at first. But the more she thinks of all the details that chatty Miss Froy shared with her, Iris knows Miss Froy is not simply a figment of her imagination. She was too unexpected. Too unlike the person she appeared. She may have looked middle-aged and dowdy, but she was almost girlish in her behaviour and vocabulary. 

“Oh, isn’t all of this fun?”

Her pleasure was so spontaneous and genuine that Iris could not condemn it as gush. She stared doubtfully at the faded old gold plush window-curtains, the smutty tablecloth, the glass dish of cherry jam and then she glanced at her companion.

She received a vague impression of a little puckered face; but there was a sparkle in the faded blue eyes, and an eager note in the voice, which suggested a girl.

Afterwards, when she was trying to collect evidence of what she believed must be an extraordinary conspiracy, it was this discrepancy between a youthful voice and a middle-aged spinster, which made her doubt her own senses. In any case, her recollection was far from clear, for she did not remember looking consciously at her companion again.

The sun was blazing in through the window, so that she shaded her eyes with one hand most of the time she was having tea. But as she listened to the flow of excited chatter, she had the feeling that she was being entertained by some one much younger than herself. (73)

I just loved this book. Everything is against Iris, not least of all herself. For a person who is bored and doesn’t do much of anything, it is easy to imagine that she has never gone out of her way for anyone in her life. Frankly, as privileged young woman, she has never had to. Ethel Lina White does a fabulous job of laying the groundwork for Iris’s character, so by the time Iris gets on that train, we have a good idea of what she is like and what she would do in most circumstances. 

One of her fellow passengers, a young man offers to help, but he is as sceptical as everyone else about Iris’s claim that Miss Froy has disappeared.

“Have I got it right?” he asked. “Is this Miss Froy a complete stranger to you?”

“Of course.”

“Yet you’re nearly going crackers over her. You must be the most unselfish person alive. Really, it’s almost unnatural.”

“But I’m not,” admitted Iris truthfully. “It’s rather the other way round. That’s the amusing part. I can’t understand myself a bit.’

“Well, how did it start?”

“In the usual way. She was very kind to me—helpful, and all that, so that at first, I missed her because she wasn't at the back of me any more. And then, when every one declared I dreamed her, it all turned to a horrible nightmare. It was like trying to explain that every one was out of step but myself.”

“Hopeless. But why had you to prove that she was there?”

“Oh, can’t you understand? If I didn’t, I could never feel that anything, or any one, was real again?” (123)

If Iris had been travelling with even one other friend she would not have worried herself about Miss Froy. She likely wouldn’t have treated her disappearance with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders between pulls on her cigarette. And this begins to explain why I think The Wheel Spins is such a fantastic title. It is only by chance that a selfish person like Iris takes any interest in Miss Froy’s disappearance. As more and more of her fellow passengers plead ignorance or claim the woman didn’t exist, Iris realises that if the situation were reversed and something were to happen to her on that train, no one would do anything about it, except for Miss Froy. She feels sure Miss Froy would have caused a commotion and searched until she was found, because Miss Froy showed her a kindness when she needed it most, and Iris is sure Miss Froy is that sort of person. With each spin of the wheel, the fate of Miss Froy is put into question. Will the wheel of fortune spin in favour of Miss Froy, or not?

The wheel is part of “the great machine” which is capable of catching people up in one of its revolutions (183). This great machine might be the wheels of the train that can bring a person safely home, or not, which we can see from Iris’s feeling of foreboding in contrast to other characters in this book who also view this train from their windows and interpret the image with hope and anticipation. This intertwining of the unpredictability of Fortune’s Wheel with the wheels of the train conflates the idea that on this train ride fates will be decided and all of the passengers take a turn at spinning the wheel that decides the fate of Miss Froy, and Iris’s fate, too. 

The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy. (180)

Wheel imagery continues to appear in unexpected places throughout this book. At one point even “the drone of masculine voices” make a drumming sound “like the hum of a spinning wheel” as they decide a woman’s fate (225).

This is a beautifully written book, full of atmosphere, tension, and—a rare thing to find in a mystery thriller—hope. If you pick up one British Library Crime Classic this year, I highly recommend choosing this one.

Oh, and here’s a small spoiler, but I anticipate it will offer comfort to some, so I have decided to share it. This is a mystery with only the passing mention of a murder, but no actual murder on the page. The Wheel Spins is a very rare book, indeed.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Wheel Spins for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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