Murder, She Wore

I have a denim jacket that is perfect for this time of year. Its longer length and creamy buttons down the front make it feel like a shirt, but it has diagonal pockets in the front firmly placing it in the ‘chore coat’ category. I cruised up to my sister Sally’s house on my bicycle recently wearing this denim jacket. She clapped her hands together and said, “Welcome, Jessica!”

This was a huge compliment. Sally was referring to Jessica Fletcher, the protagonist of the television series Murder, She Wrote. Jessica Fletcher bicycled around her fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, always in the appropriate outfit. LLBean often worked its way into her looks; I remember a scene where she wore a canvas chore coat, tapered jeans, a popped pink collar. Her hair was always short, a caramel-coloured softly permed version of the Princess Diana cut, gathered in the back, no doubt, with a spray of Aqua Net. Or the time where she wears a chocolate brown grandfather sweater while clicking away at her kitchen typewriter then pops up to answer her avocado-coloured telephone, or how about that cashmere camel coat, a leather purse on her shoulder, and just a touch of creamy silk at the neck? The late Angela Lansbury played Jessica Fletcher. Lansbury was 59 when the show began; it wrapped when she was 71. “It was like watching our Gran solve mysteries,” Sally once said. 

Gran was always outfit appropriate, just like Jessica. There are photos of her as a young mother, standing at the cottage with the ocean at her back, wearing a summer blazer. She wore denim overalls when she was out in the garden and a smock while standing at her easel. There was a floral bathing suit with a skirt attached, and a smart, quilted dressing gown that lived perpetually on the back of her bedroom door at the cottage, ready for those chilly late August mornings. 

Gran lived with us in the years before she died.  Every morning she would wake up, wash her face, pull on pantyhose and dress herself in a knee-length skirt, a matching blouse and a broach at her neck. Dementia had taken away her short term memory. Her mind was occupied by her early years as a teen in north-east Alberta, reliving her life as a girl who played the piano and helped her father at the pharmacy. She didn’t know who I was when I came home from school, but I was a guest, one who deserved a smart looking hostess and a hot cup of tea. 

Before dementia set it, long after my grandfather died and my dad and his siblings had moved out, Gran would spend her evenings in the little study just off the kitchen, reading by the fire. Canadian greats like Ernest Buckler and Hugh MacLennan were on her shelves, and later, Margaret Lawrence, Alice Munro and David Adams Richards. Her collection says she craved darkness in her comfort, and if Richards’s novels were any judge, she didn’t mind a violent death either. 

Once a week she’d put her books down for Murder, She Wrote. Despite the name, the show was gentle. I’ll never know why she loved it so much; Gran died in 1994, during season 11. Perhaps it was Jessica’s wardrobe, always appropriate, always tidy. Maybe it was because they both lived on quiet streets in quiet towns. Grandfather clocks kept the beat in their lives. They tied their trench coats tightly at their waists. They were curious. They had the same haircut, and they both liked a good plot twist. Gran and I watched a few episodes together after she moved in with us. She couldn’t follow the plot at that point in her illness, but she sat there, hands on her knees and eyes bright with the awareness that Jessica Fletcher was someone familiar. I was only mildly interested at the time. I preferred fashion forward characters with teen angst like Emma on Kate & Allie (check out Emma in her quarter zip, the thick gold chain, and those bangs.)

Kate & Allie didn’t resonate with viewers for twelve seasons like Murder, She Wrote. When health issues and infertility plagued my sister Sally in her twenties and thirties, Jessica Fletcher would appear on screen in a silk dressing gown, polished and capable, even in the middle of the night. Jessica would find out who did it. Jessica would solve the murder. “I’ve tried to pull that look off in real life, but it’s impossible without a steamer,” says Sally. “But I have successfully ironed the collar of my nightshirt, once.” It was never the murder that mattered, or the nightshirt. It was the knowledge that everything would be okay.

My younger sister Lee has also watched all twelve seasons of the show. She fell in love with Jessica when she was newly married living in a damp, basement apartment in Dublin. The show came on every day at noon, filling the space with the Murder, She Wrote theme song - piano notes ascending and descending in that trustworthy way. Lee was lonely that year. Her husband was in classes all day while she studied at home on her own. Jessica kept her cozy and comfortable, solving problems, one tidy, unscary murder at a time. 

There’s an instagram page called @Murder_She_Wore that colour matches Jessica Fletcher’s outfits with desserts. Jessica in a deep orange jacket paired with pumpkin sticky toffee pudding. Jessica in a mokka blouse and a gold rope chain with Vietnamese Coffee Tiramisu. I like to think that this blue chore jacket, with its creamy buttons and its nod to Cabot Cove would be a tall and gently bedazzled blue cake, like something Marianne Pfeffer Gjengedal of @sweet.n.pfeffer would make. Modern but comforting. Familiar yet quietly fabulous. That’s what I’m looking for in life.

*photo via @murder_she_wore, thanks for the introduction @grahamsherrie