Author does
not allow the romance to dominate the story
Death in a White Tie is the seventh Alleyn novel
Detective Chief
Inspector Roderick Alleyn and artist Agatha Troy meet up again in Death in a
White Tie, the seventh novel in the series of Inspector Alleyn mysteries by
Ngaio Marsh, which was published in 1938.
Although
Alleyn and Troy’s romance makes progress during the novel, the focus of the
story is on Alleyn’s investigation into the murder of a popular member of the nobility,
who has been helping Scotland Yard to uncover the identity of a blackmailer who
has been preying on wealthy women.
Alleyn
feels responsible for Lord (Bunchy) Gospell’s death and vows to catch and
punish the killer himself because Bunchy, who is murdered in a taxi on his way
home from a ball, has been gathering information for the police.
Bunchy was
also a close friend of Troy’s, and therefore the detective and the painter find
themselves once again thrown together during a murder investigation.
Ngaio, who
was a native New Zealander, and spent some of her time living in England,
provides a vivid picture for the reader of the London season as it was during
the 1930s. She shows the debutantes and chaperones doing the rounds of the
cocktail parties, dinners, and balls, based on her own observations of society while
she was staying in London.
But the
hunt for Bunchy’s killer is kept centre stage during the novel and the police investigation
is interesting to follow. Alleyn has friends and relatives at many of the social
occasions featured in the story and so events can unfold naturally. In the
earlier novels, when Alleyn was an outsider called in to investigate in an
unknown environment, he had to conduct a series of interviews to establish the
facts.
Patrick Malahide and Belinda Lang played Alleyn and Troy in the TV adaptation
Ngaio does
not allow Alleyn to reveal who killed his friend until near the end of the
novel, when there is a dramatic showdown scene in the Assistant Commissioner’s
office at Scotland Yard.
Death in a
White Tie was adapted for television in 1993 when it was an episode in the BBC’s
Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series. The role of Alleyn was played by the actor
Patrick Malahyde.
I enjoyed
Death in a White Tie and thought it was even better than the previous six
novels in the series.
Alleyn falls in love but he still has to be professional and solve the murder
Artists in Crime was Marsh's sixth novel featuring Roderick Alleyn
Artists in Crime introduces Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn’s love interest for the first time, the painter Agatha Troy. She is reserved, independent and a successful professional artist and Alleyn instantly finds himself falling for her.
The detective first meets Troy when he is returning from a long holiday in New Zealand and boards a ship to Vancouver. As the ship leaves the port of Suva after calling at the Pacific island of Fiji, he sees Troy up on the deck painting the wharf before it fades into the distance.
Alleyn already knows and admires Troy’s work and he has an awkward conversation with her about it. He finds himself drawn to her at once, but she seems unimpressed with him and is offhand.
They next meet when Alleyn is sent to investigate a murder that has occurred at the country house in England she has inherited from her father. He is staying with his mother, who has a house near Troy’s home, before he returns to work after his long absence. His superior officer at Scotland Yard telephones to ask him to start work early to investigate a murder near where he is staying.
When he goes to the house, he again sees Troy, who is still shocked after a woman has been killed in her home in a macabre way. She does not welcome Alleyn and his officers searching the rooms of her guests or keeping them under supervision in her dining room while they embark on their investigation.
Alleyn tries to maintain a professional detachment but finds himself apologising to Troy for the things he must do to investigate the murder. It is only at the end of the novel, when the case has been solved and the murderer arrested, that we see a softening in Troy’s attitude towards him, which gives Alleyn hope for the future
Patrick Malahide (left) played Chief Inspector Alleyn in the 1990 BBC TV adaptation of Artists in Crime
The suspects in the case are all Troy’s students, who pay her ‘substantial fees’ to study under her in the studio she has built in the garden of her home. The victim. Sonia, is an artist’s model, who the students are painting in the nude. She is posing on a bed that has been draped with a silk cloth. Earlier, a dagger has been attached to the underside of the bed and the model is impaled on the point when she takes up her pose for the class.
Troy inherited the house from her father, but he did not leave her much money so she has to earn her own living. However, she is shown living comfortably in the world of the 1930s upper classes in England. She has a well-staffed country home and enjoys living in the Bohemian art world of London, where she stays at a club and has many society friends.
Artists in Crime was televised in 1968 and 1990. It is a well-plotted mystery with a surprising ending and it is interesting for the reader to see Alleyn’s character developing from the way he is portrayed in the earlier books. He is once again ably assisted by his subordinates, Fox and Bailey, and his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.
I did not find the details about methods of painting and artists’ equipment very interesting, but I realise Ngaio would have found it fascinating because she enjoyed painting herself and studied art before becoming an actress and then a crime writer.
First published in 1938, Artists in Crime is the sixth Roderick Alleyn mystery and is well worth reading for the whodunit element of the novel alone. The love interest between Alleyn and Troy is well set up and has immediately made me want to read the next novel in the series, Death in a White Tie, in which Troy appears again.
Novelist
draws on her love for New Zealand and the theatre
Vintage Murder begins as Roderick Alleyn makes a train journey across New Zealand
Ngaio Marsh
transports her upper class, English sleuth, Roderick Alleyn, to her native New
Zealand in Vintage Murder, her fifth novel to feature the Scotland Yard
detective.
Alleyn is on
holiday while recovering from an operation and the story begins as he makes a
long journey by train across New Zealand. On the train, he encounters a
travelling theatrical troupe and among them is Susan Max, a character actress he
had met in Enter a Murderer, Ngaio’s second novel. The detective had encountered
the actress while he was investigating a murder that occurred on stage during the
performance of a play at a West End theatre.
He gets talking
to different members of the troupe, which is run by Incorporated Playhouses,
and it is not far into the story when Alfred Meyer, the owner of Incorporated
Playhouses, who is married to the leading lady, Carolyn Dacres, reveals to Alleyn
that someone has tried to push him off the train.
After the
train has arrived at its destination, Carolyn invites Alleyn to see the first
night of the play and to her birthday celebrations with the rest of the company
on the stage afterwards. At the party, as a surprise for his wife, Meyer has
arranged for a jeroboam of champagne to descend gently on to the dinner table from
above, but something goes horribly wrong and the theatrical manager is killed.
The latest HarperCollins edition of Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder
It soon
becomes obvious that the mechanism set up for the stunt has been tampered with
and Alleyn is invited by the local police to sit in on their investigation. He sets
aside his holiday plans to try to help them catch the murderer.
Vintage
Murder, which was published in 1937, enables Ngaio Marsh to describe the
scenery of her homeland as seen through Alleyn’s eyes. He meets a Māori doctor,
Rangi Te Pokiha, and buys a Māori fertility pendant, a ‘tiki’, which plays an
important part in the plot.
Vintage
Murder was one of four Alleyn novels adapted for New Zealand television in
1977, when the role of Alleyn was played by the actor George Baker.
Ngaio’s
inspiration for the travelling theatrical troupe was the Alan Wilkie Company,
which she was once a part of, so it is not surprising that the characters and
their behaviour come across as so real in the story.
The story
does consist of a long series of interviews conducted by Alleyn along with the
New Zealand police officers, which many on line reviewers have complained about,
but I still think it is a well written novel that presents a good mystery for
the armchair detective to try to solve, and I would recommend it.
A detective
novelist who brilliantly describes backstage life
Ngaio Marsh, who
was one of the leading female detective novelists of her time, died on this day
– 18 February – in 1982 in her native New Zealand.
Ngaio began
writing detective novels in 1931 after moving to London to start up an interior
decorating business. Stuck in her
basement flat on a very wet Saturday afternoon she decided to have a go at
writing a detective story and came up with the idea for her sleuth, Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective.
Ngaio Marsh came to be seen as one of the Queens of Crime
She sat down
to write what was to be the first of a series of 32 crime novels featuring Alleyn,
who she named after an Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn. Her detective was to work
for the Metropolitan Police in London, even though he is the younger brother of
a baronet.
Her second
novel, Enter a Murderer, published in 1935, and several others, are set in the
world of the theatre, which Ngaio knew well as she was also an actress,
director and playwright at times during her life.
After leaving
school she had studied painting before joining a touring theatre company. She
became a member of an art association in New Zealand and continued to exhibit
her paintings with them from the 1920s onwards.
Ngaio allows her
detective, Alleyn, to meet and fall in love with an artist, Agatha Troy, in her 1938 novel, Artists in Crime.
She directed
many productions of Shakespeare’s plays in New Zealand and Australia and the
430-seat Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand is
named in her honour.
In her 1946
short story, I Can Find My Way Out, which features Alleyn, Ngaio once again
uses the theatre as her setting. A new playwright, Anthony Gill, is waiting
nervously for the premiere of his first play at The Jupiter Theatre in London.
The female
lead, Coralie Bourne, has been kind to him and advised him on his play, but the
male lead, Canning Cumberland, is known to have a drinking problem and can be
unpredictable, which worries Gill. Two of the other actors also resent Cumberland,
one because he was given the best part and the other because he was given the
best dressing room.
Meanwhile,
Roderick Alleyn and his now wife Troy are entertaining a friend, Lord Michael
Lamprey, for dinner. He is keen to join the police but his conversation with Alleyn
is constantly interrupted by phone calls that are actually meant for a delivery
firm. When one of the callers asks if they can deliver a suitcase to playwright Anthony Gill at the Jupiter Theatre, Lord Michael thinks it would be fun to
take the job as he has been unable to get a ticket to see the play.
Sophie Hannah's collection of stories is published by Apollo
Before he
reaches the theatre, the case falls open and he discovers a false ginger beard
and moustache, a black hat, a black overcoat with a fur collar and a pair of
black gloves.
On an impulse
Lord Michael puts the whole outfit on and insists on being allowed to deliver
the case in person to the playwright backstage.
As Coralie makes
one of her exits from the stage, she sees him standing in the wings wearing the
beard and black clothes and faints. The male lead, Cumberland, also reacts with
horror when he sees him and locks himself in his dressing room.
Lord Michael
continues to watch the play from the wings with fascination, although he becomes
increasingly aware of the smell of gas. Eventually, he traces the smell to one
of the dressing rooms, gains access and drags out the unconscious occupant, but
sadly it is too late to save him.
He rings
Alleyn and the detective arrives at the theatre with his men, where it does not
take him long to discover that one of the actors has been murdered.
In just 18
pages, Ngaio sets up the story, establishes the characters and their
relationships, brilliantly describes the dressing rooms, equipment and
atmosphere backstage, drawing on her experience of the theatre, and allows
Alleyn to solve the crime.
Along with
her fellow Queens of Crime, Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L
Sayers, Ngaio was to dominate the genre of crime fiction from the 1930s onwards
with her novels, short stories and plays.
In 1948 Ngaio
was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in
connection with drama and literature in New Zealand. She became a Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts in the
1966 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Ngaio’s autobiography,
Black Beech and Honeydew was published in 1965. She was inducted into the
Detection Club in 1974 and received the Grand Master Award for lifetime
achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America.
Her 32nd and
final Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was completed only a few weeks before her
death. The story revolves around one of her greatest theatrical passions,
Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
Ngaio died in
her home town of Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy
Innocents, Mount Peel.
The Ngaio
Marsh Award is given annually to the writer of the best New Zealand mystery,
crime or thriller novel. Her home in Christchurch is now a museum and displays her
collection of antiques. On her desk lies her fountain pen filled with green ink,
which was her preferred writing tool.
Ngaio Marsh’s
32 Roderick Alleyn crime novels and her collections of short stories are available in a variety of
formats from or
An unusual
setting for a 1936 detective novel with a closed circle of suspects
Death in Ecstasy is available as part of a Ngaio Marsh collection
When bored journalist
Nigel Bathgate attends a meeting of a dubious spiritual cult just out of curiosity,
he gets more entertainment than he bargained for. As he watches a group of
people at the altar pass round a silver flagonof wine, he sees one of them drink from a jewelled cup and then immediately
fall dead to the floor.
At first the
other initiates think the young female victim is experiencing ecstasy, but then
one of them notices her clenched teeth and ‘lips drawn back in a rigid circle’
and makes the others aware that she is dead. Nigel keeps his nerve amid the
panic and asks to use the telephone to ring his close friend, Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn of
Scotland Yard.
Alleyn and
Bathgate soon discover that the victim, Cara Quayne, a beautiful and wealthy young
woman, was a deeply religious initiate who had been training for a month for the
bizarre ceremony of becoming the Chosen Vessel at the House of the Sacred Flame.
Nigel’s
suspicions had been aroused by the distinctive smell coming from the victim,
who had died immediately after drinking the ritual wine. He and Alleyn quickly discover
that the wine had been poisoned with cyanide.
As Bathgate
was present when the death occurred, Alleyn allows the journalist full access to
the investigation, allowing him to take notes while he questions the witnesses.
He also encourages Bathgate, who in many of the novels serves as Alleyn’s ‘Watson’,
to befrienda young couple who were
present at the altar when the murder took place.This would of course not happen in real life,
or modern detective novels, but I think the author can get away with itbecause the story was written more than 80
years ago.
The actor Geoffrey Keen played Marsh's detective Roderick Alleyn in TV adaptation
Alleyn takes
the names of all the people who were with Cara at the altar. They are all
suspects because any of them could have added the cyanide to the wine as they
passed the flagon round. And at the top of the list is Father Jasper Garnette,
the officiating priest.
This fourth
Detective Chief Inspector Alleyn mystery by Ngaio Marsh, published in 1936, is
a departure from the country house mystery that was so fashionable at the time.
But it has a limited circle of suspects, as they are all middle-class people living
in flats and houses in an upmarket area of London, who pay calls on each other
and dine with each other.
Alleyn and Bathgate
uncover the usual motives for murder, such as lust, jealousy, greed for money
and unrequited love. They come across a significant clue when they find a book
hidden in Father Garnette’s bookcase that falls open at a page with a recipe
for home made cyanide. Ngaio is very clever with this clue, which keeps the
identity of the murderer hidden until the end, and she provides enough twists
along the way to distract the reader.
I would
recommend Death in Ecstasy because it is a well written, satisfying puzzle that
reveals more about the character of Ngaio’s series detective, Roderick Alleyn.
Death in Ecstasy was adapted for television in 1964 with Geoffrey Keen in the Alleyn role, Keith Barron as Bathgate, Joss Ackland as Jasper Garnette and Nigel Hawthorne as a temple doorkeeper.
One of three novels featured in Book Two of a Ngaio Marsh Collection published by Harper Collins, it is available from or
Alleyn investigates the killing of a Home Secretary
New Zealand-born crime writer Ngaio Marsh displays an impressive wealth of knowledge about English life and the inside workings of the British Government in The Nursing Home Murder, her third novel to feature the gentlemanly Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
The book begins with a Cabinet meeting at No 10 Downing Street, where the Home Secretary and other ministers are discussing a controversial Bill they are planning to introduce to deal with anarchists. The Home Secretary begins to feel ill during the meeting, alarming the other members of the Cabinet, and decides to go home early.
After being examined by a doctor, it is decided the Home Secretary will go into a nursing home, which was the equivalent of a private hospital at the time, for an operation on his appendix. The operation is a success, yet the patient soon dies. His widow later becomes suspicious and calls the police and eventually the investigation is assigned to Roderick Alleyn.
The Nursing Home Murder was published in 1935, just seven years after Ngaio had first visited England. It was her third detective novel and it appeared only a year after the publication of her first novel, A Man Lay Dead, and second novel, Enter a Murderer.
Alleyn eventually discovers that among the staff in the operating theatre at the time of the operation there were at least three people who might have wanted the Home Secretary dead. This might seem rather far-fetched, but Ngaio explains the circumstances convincingly.
Alleyn is assisted in his investigation by his colleague, Inspector Fox, and his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.
Patrick Malahide, who portrayed Inspector Alleyn in a TV series
Ngaio was well known for doing thorough research for her novels and her descriptions of London in the 1930s are very interesting and evocative.
Her 32 novels featuring Roderick Alleyn later became so popular she was often referred to as a Queen of Crime along with her contemporaries, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.
In the preface to my copy of an omnibus edition of her first three novels - A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio describes how she first came up with the character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
It was a wet Saturday afternoon and she had been reading a detective story borrowed from a library, although she says she can’t remember whether it was a Christie or a Sayers. By four o’clock, as the afternoon became darker and the rain was still coming down relentlessly, she had finished it.
She wondered whether she could write something similar and braved the rain to go to a stationer’s shop across the street where she bought six exercise books, a pencil and a pencil sharpener. When she got home, she sat down to write what was to be the first of a series of crime novels featuring the gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.
After The Nursing Home Murder was published in 1935, the reviewer for The Times claimed the novel had transformed the detective story from just a puzzle to a full blown and fascinating novel.
One of Ngaio’s fellow Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, paid her the compliment of having one of her characters in Murder in Mesopotamia being seen reading The Nursing Home Murder.
I found The Nursing Home Murder very readable and enjoyed the way Ngaio keeps the reader guessing about who murdered the Home Secretary right to the end.
Book One of the Ngaio Marsh Collection, published by Harper, comprises her first three novels including The Nursing Home Murder and is available from:
Complimentary
theatre ticket gives Inspector Alleyn a front row seat for murder
Patrick Malahide played Alleyn on TV in the 1990s
Ngaio
Marsh draws on her experience as a theatre director in New Zealand to describe
the background of her second Inspector Roderick Alleyn novel published in 1935.
In Enter
a Murderer, she places Inspector Alleyn near the front of the audience at a
London theatre when one of the actors is shot dead on the stage.
A
character in the play is meant to be shot with a gun loaded with dummy
cartridges, but when he falls down and the horrified cast realise he is dead
for real, the gentleman detective, Alleyn, suspects foul play immediately.
He had
been invited to the theatre by his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate, who
he met when investigating the death of a guest at a country house party in the
first novel, A Man Lay Dead.
Nigel has
been given complimentary tickets for the play by his old University friend,
Felix Gardener, who is playing the male lead in the production.
Alleyn
and Bathgate visit Felix in his dressing room before the play starts and are
actually introduced to Arthur Surbonadier, the actor who is going to be the
murder victim. He is clearly the worse for wear because he has been drinking
and demonstrates that he is jealous of Felix because of his blossoming
relationship with Stephanie, who is playing the female lead.
Alleyn
and Bathgate leave to take their seats front of house because they feel
uncomfortable in the acrimonious atmosphere of the dressing room.
After
Arthur has been shot and it becomes clear that he really is dead, the
production is halted and the audience sent home.
You can read Ngaio Marsh's first three Alleyn novels in one volume
Helped by
his team who arrive from Scotland Yard, Alleyn secures the forensic evidence
and interview all the members of the cast.
At this
point I was surprised by Alleyn’s demeanour as he makes jokes for the benefit
of Bathgate and his fellow officers, which hardly seemed appropriate, but then
I thought of Dorothy L Sayers and her sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Margery
Allingham and her investigator, Albert Campion, and I realised this clowning
around was the fashion at the time and perhaps a nudge to the reader not to
take the story too seriously.
I was
also surprised Alleyn allows Bathgate to play an active part in the case and
sit in on the interviews and take notes.
Bathgate
is involved in the investigation in Ngaio’s first novel, A Man Lay Dead, but
that was because he was actually staying in the house where the murder
investigation takes place and couldn’t be sent away.
But then
I realised Bathgate is kept around in Enter a Murderer to be the Watson for
Alleyn. He gets to know some of what the detective is thinking but not all of
it and, like the reader, he has no idea what to expect at the end.
I was
slightly disappointed at the denouement when Alleyn uses the same trick as in
the first novel, A Man Lay Dead, and holds a re-enactment of the murder. This
time he has all the actors taking part, which eventually leads the murderer to
incriminate himself.
But Enter
a Murderer certainly fulfils what the reader expects from a detective novel as
it is an interesting story with a surprise at the end. Ngaio describes life
backstage at a theatre very well, drawing on her own experiences of acting and
directing
Ngaio Marsh
Her great
passion was the theatre and she joined a touring company in New Zealand as an
actress in 1916. Later in life, she directed several of Shakespeare’s plays for
New Zealand audiences and lived long enough to see the theatre firmly
established in her own country and provided with proper financial support.
The
University of Canterbury in New Zealand named their theatre the Ngaio Marsh
Theatre and she was made a Dame in the 1966 Queen’s Birthday Honours for
services to the arts.
The title, Enter a Murderer, is taken from a line of stage direction from Shakespeare’s
play, Macbeth.
Enter a
Murderer by Ngaio Marsh is available as a hardback, paperback, Kindle or
Audiobook. I read it as part of an omnibus edition comprising A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder - the first three Roderick Alleyn mysteries.
Talented New Zealander contributed to art, the theatre and crime writing
Ngaio Marsh pictured in 1935, early in her writing career
One of the four Queens of Crime during the Golden Age of detective fiction, Ngaio Marsh, died on this day – 18 February – in 1982 in her native New Zealand.
Her 32nd and final crime novel, Light Thickens, was completed only a few weeks before her death. The story revolves around one of her greatest theatrical passions, Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
Ngaio began writing detective novels in 1931 after moving to London to start up an interior decorating business. She has written that the idea for her first crime novel, A Man Lay Dead, came to her when she was living in a basement flat off Sloane Square.
In the preface to my copy of an omnibus edition of her first three novels - A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh describes how she came up with the character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
It was a wet Saturday afternoon and she had been reading a detective story borrowed from a library, although she says she couldn’t remember whether it was a Christie or a Sayers. By four o’clock, as the afternoon became darker and the rain was still coming down relentlessly, she had finished it. She wondered whether she could write something similar and braved the rain to go to a stationer’s shop across the street where she bought six exercise books, a pencil and a pencil sharpener.
She sat down to write what was to be the first of a series of 32 crime novels featuring the gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.
Along with Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers she was to dominate the genre of crime fiction for the next 50 years with her novels and numerous short stories.
With Marsh, Margery Allingham (left), Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers were the Queens of Crime
All her novels feature Alleyn, who works for the Metropolitan Police in London even though he is the younger brother of a baronet, and several are set in the world of the theatre, which Ngaio knew well as an actress, director and playwright.
After leaving school she had studied painting before joining a touring theatre company. She became a member of an art association in New Zealand and continued to exhibit her paintings with them from the 1920s onwards.
Her hero detective Alleyn was named after an Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn, and Ngaio allows him to meet and fall in love with an artist, Agatha Troy, in her 1938 novel, Artists in Crime.
She directed many productions of Shakespeare’s plays in New Zealand and Australia and the 430-seat Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury is named in her honour.
Patrick Malahide (centre) starred in a BBC adaptation of Marsh's Alleyn novels
In 1948 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in connection with drama and literature in New Zealand. She became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts in the 1966 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Ngaio’s autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew was published in 1965. She was inducted into the Detection Club in 1974 and received the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America in 1978.
Ngaio died in her home town of Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy Innocents, Mount Peel.
The Ngaio Marsh Award is given annually to the writer of the best New Zealand mystery, crime or thriller novel. Her home in Christchurch is now a museum and displays her collection of antiques. On her desk lies a fountain pen filled with green ink, which was her long time writing tool.
Ngaio Marsh’s 32 crime novels are available in a variety of formats. You can find many of them at: or
How Ngaio Marsh first started writing
crime stories
Ngaio Marsh in a picture thought to have been taken in around 1935
Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh, a New Zealand
writer and theatre director, wrote 32 detective novels featuring Inspector
Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective working for the Metropolitan Police in
London.
She became known as one of the Queens
of Crime, sharing the distinction with the English writers Agatha Christie,
Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.
Agatha Christie led the way with The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. Then came Dorothy L Sayers with
Whose Body? published in 1923, followed by Margery Allingham with The Crime at
Black Dudley, published in 1929.
Ngaio Marsh was born and educated in
Christchurch New Zealand and studied painting before joining a touring theatre
company as an actress. She divided her time between New Zealand and the UK from
1928 onwards, when she started up an interior decorating business in
Knightsbridge, London.
The idea for her first crime novel,A
Man Lay Dead, came to her in 1931 when she was living in a basement flat off
Sloane Square.
In the preface to my copy of an
omnibus edition of her first three novels - A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer
and The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh writes about how she came up with the
character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
It was a wet Saturday afternoon in 1931
and she had been reading a detective story borrowed from a library, although
she couldn’t remember whether it was a Christie or a Sayers. By four o’clock,
as the afternoon became darker and the rain was still coming down relentlessly,
she had finished it. She wondered idly whether she had it in her to write
something similar.
The Ngaio Marsh Collection, Book 1, published by Harper
Then she braved going out in the rain to a stationer’s shop
across the street where she bought six exercise books, a pencil and a pencil
sharpener. And that is how the writing career of the fourth Queen of Crime from
New Zealand began.
With many eccentric detectives
already operating at the time, such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Lord
Peter Wimsey, Ngaio decided to opt for a professional policeman, with a
background resembling that of some of the friends she had made in England.
Revealing her interest in the
theatre, she chose the surname of an Elizabethan actor called Edward Alleyn,
gave him the Christian name Roderick, inspired by a recent visit to Scotland,
opened an exercise book, sharpened her pencil and began to write.
In A Man Lay Dead, Inspector Alleyn
is asked to investigate the murder of a guest during a country house party. The
host had suggested they play the Murder Game, which at the time was very
popular with guests at weekend parties, but when the lights go up it is
discovered that the victim is dead for real.
Alleyn arrives at Frantock ‘a
delightful old brick house’, views the corpse, interviews the guests and
gathers evidence with his team of police officers,
He enlists the help of one of the
guests, a young journalist called Nigel Bathgate, as his ‘Watson’.
Bathgate later becomes a friend of
the detective and appears in several of Ngaio’s 32 Inspector Alleyn novels.
The mystery centres round a valuable
Russian dagger, which ends up in the back of the corpse, a disappearing Russian
butler, a criminal gang of Russians in London and the victim’s unfortunate
habit of philandering.
Alleyn picks up on the smallest of
clues, such as a button from a glove and a trace of face powder on a man’s
suit. He eventually tricks the murderer into giving himself away.
A Man Lay Dead was first published in
1934. It is now available in a variety of formats.
Margery
Allingham introduces her series detective Albert Campion
Fans of
classic crime fiction still enjoy reading the work of authors from the Golden
Age, who were writing between 1920 and the beginning of the Second World War.
A measure
of the popularity of this genre is the amount of TV and film versions of the
books that are still being made.
When
people talk about the Queens of Crime from that era, the names Agatha Christie
and Dorothy L Sayers will immediately spring to mind, with the New Zealand
author Ngaio Marsh not too far behind.
You can
usually find books by these three talented ladies on the shelves in the crime
sections of most public libraries.
Margery Allingham's first crime novel
But you
might struggle to find any of the novels of Margery Allingham, the English
writer who was the fourth member of the elite Queens of Crime club.
Margery Allingham
was born in 1904 in London and began writing at the age of eight when she had a
story published in a magazine.
Her first
novel was published when she was 19, but she did not make her breakthrough as a
crime writer until her novel The Crime at Black Dudley was published in 1929.
This introduced her series detective, the gentleman sleuth Albert Campion, even
though he appeared only as a minor character in her first book.
He was at
first thought to be a parody of Dorothy L Sayers’ hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, but
Campion matured as the series of books progressed showing there was a lot more
to him than you see at first glance and he became increasingly popular with
readers.
Vintage
Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group, have now republished all Margery’s
novels featuring her series detective Albert Campion, making it likely that
some of them will eventually be stocked by public libraries.
While
Agatha wrote an amazing 66 detective novels, Ngaio comes in second with 32, and
Margery is third with 18, finishing ahead of Dorothy, who wrote a total of 16
crime novels during her career.
I had
never read any of Margery’s books and so, because I like to begin at the
beginning, I started with The Crime at Black Dudley.
A group
of young people have been invited to a country house party for the weekend,
which is being held in a remote mansion in Suffolk. The story is told from the
point of view of a young doctor, George Abbershaw, whose book on pathology had
made him a minor celebrity. He is a friend of the host, a distinguished scholar
named Wyatt Petrie.
Margery Allingham wrote 18 detective novels
When the
host’s uncle is murdered, the young people find themselves being held hostage
by a small number of armed men, who claim that an important item has been taken
from the body of the victim and that the guests must remain at the house until
it is found and handed in.
It is a
novel full of suspense and there is violence, fighting and many shots are
fired. My first thoughts were that it was unlike the Poirot and Miss Marple
novels of Agatha Christie or the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers.
The atmosphere of action and danger was more like that of the The Secret
Adversary by Agatha Christie, which was published seven years earlier.
George
Abbershaw eventually solves the crime with the help of the other guests,
including a strange young man named Albert Campion, who no one seems to know
anything about.
It is a
satisfying conclusion, and although the society and way of life Margery
describes might seem rather dated now, it has left me wanting to read more.
Next on my list is Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham, first published in 1930.
Margery
died at the age of 62 of breast cancer and her final novel, Cargo of Eagles,
was finished by her husband Philip Youngman Carter and published in 1968, two
years after her death.