Swing, Brother, Jones (Inspector Alleyn #15), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2012 (originally published in 1949).

Summary: An eccentric British Lord joins a swing band for a number that involves a gun, and the person at whom he shoots is actually killed with an unusual projectile–a knitting needle–right in front of Alleyn!

Lord Pastern and Baggott fits the stereotype of an eccentric English Lord. His latest craze is swing and he sponsors Breezy Bellair and His Boys as they rehearse in his ballroom for gigs at the Metronome, a swanky club. He’s so into it he even writes a piece in which he stands in for the veteran drummer, Syd Skelton. At the climax of the piece, he plans to fake the shooting of the rest of the band beginning with Carlos da Rivera, who is nearly engaged to his daughter, Félicité. He even makes an elaborate show before his wife’s niece Carlisle Wayne, of showing how he has extracted each bullet to make the blanks in the pistol.

No one likes Rivera, with the possible exception of Lord Pastern. Cecile, his wife, detests him. The band leader, Breezy Bellair, is upset with him because he is not going to continue getting him his drugs. Félicité has been dragging her feet and at a dinner before the show, broke off the relationship. Rivera didn’t help things with making a pass at Carlisle. Ned Manx, a drama critic who writes for Harmony, a tabloid-type paper had words after dinner and socked him one on the ear.

We all see it coming, don’t we? I feel like crying out, don’t go through with the gag! Breezy is nervous about it and has Syd Skelton check out the gun before the act. He see’s nothing amiss. The gun is placed under a sombrero located near the table of Lord Pastern and Baggott’s party. Conveniently, Alleyn and Troy, who is expecting (!) are at the next table. Lord Pastern and Baggott goes through with the gag, and Rivera, unlike the other band members really falls down, and Breezy places a wreath over him, only to find that Rivera has really been seriously wounded with a needle-like projectile in his chest. Bellair has him taken out to an office and a doctor called, but it is too late. Rivera is dead. Lord Pastern and Baggott turns over the gun to Bellair who gives it to Alleyn. Scratches are found in the barrel consistent with the projectile, held in place by an umbrella release.

And Alleyn has a host of suspects–nearly everyone in Lord Pastern and Baggott’s party as well as several band members. Meanwhile he has to calm down the drug strung out Bellair and deal with the eccentric Lord who all but incriminates himself. Meanwhile, he has to figure out how the projectile, a knitting needle from Lady Cecile’s workbox found its way into Rivera’s chest..

I didn’t see the resolution of this one coming. Marsh’s red herrings drew me off. The plot where a pretended murder becomes an actual one is one Marsh will use again in Light Thickens, once again with Alleyn in the front row, a witness to the murder. Alleyn and Fox work patiently, refusing to be deflected by neither an annoying family nor the red herrings the killer used to throw Alleyn (and us) off track. An altogether satisfying ending, although it leaves us feeling that wealth is wasted on the rich.

When in Rome (Roderick Alleyn #26), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2015.

Summary: Alleyn goes undercover on a Roman holiday tour led by a sketchy tour guide suspected of drug smuggling and other corrupt activities and ends up collaborating in a murder investigation.

This Ngaio Marsh work is different. Alleyn travels alone and incognito to Rome to find convicting evidence on a drug smuggler who is a British subject, and discover the other key figures of a syndicate led by a man named Ziegfeldt.. Fox and Bailey are back at Scotland Yard providing support. The story draws upon Marsh’s own Roman holiday in 1968, reproducing a tour of a basilica, street scenes, and even a student demonstration which she observed in Paris.

The novel begins with author Barnaby Grant enjoying a coffee at an outdoor café when a melee occurs, sending him sprawling with a blow to the shoulder. When he recovers, he discovers that the brief case with the only copy of his latest novel manuscript is missing. Three days later, the manuscript turns up in the form of Sebastian Mailer, who accepts no reward but a dinner with Grant. He mentions he also is a writer, then invites Grant to less reputable entertainment…and then turns around and blackmails him the next day. But what does he have on Grant?

What he does secure is Grant’s presence on an exclusive and expensive tour Mailer organizes, the first of which begins after the launch of Grant’s novel. An elderly Dutch couple associated with a religious publisher, a reputed former military figure, Major Sweet, a dissolute young man, Kenneth Dorne, and his mother Sonia, Lady Braceley are signed up. Rounding out the group are a young girl, Sophie Jason, from Grant’s publishing house, and Alleyn, trying to get close to Mailer.

When the tour reaches the Basilica di San Tommaso several things happen. A card seller verbally attacks Mailer, and is later seen in the shadows on the lower level of the structure. Mailer disappears as does she. Subsequently she is found in a sarcophagus while Mailer remains missing but was never seen leaving the Basilica. Alleyn reveals himself and joins the Roman investigators. It turns out that every man in the entourage is being extorted in some way by Mailer and Sweet and Dorne were absent during the time when the murder may have occurred.

A few days later, Mailer turns up at the bottom of a subterranean well in the Basilica. He was the lead suspect in the death of the woman, but who killed him? Was it one of the men or Mailer’s capable assistant? Eventually, the Roman authorities identify the suspect, who dies in an accident. But Alleyn connects the dots differently, and, in a first as far as I can determine, does not reveal him but lets him go.

This twist makes for an unusual ending, far different from the exciting “revcals” in many of her stories. We also see Alleyn in more of an undercover role, even stealthily surveilling one of the tour members. While he contributes, he really takes a back seat to the Romans in the murder investigation. All this represents something of a departure for Marsh in breaking out of the typically British upper crust settings of he books (although her characters are drawn from this class). She even writes a love story into the plot. When in Rome…

Light Thickens, Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem, 2016 (originally published in 1982).

Summary: Set once again at the Dolphin theatre as Peregrine Jay stages Macbeth, a play surrounded by superstition, a production plagued by macabre practical jokes, and the real murder of the title character discovered just after the play’s climactic scene, with Alleyn in the front row.

This is the last Chief Inspector Alleyn mystery by Ngaio Marsh, completed in 1982 when she was 86 and just weeks before her passing. She returns to the scene of an earlier murder, the Dolphin theatre, as the accomplished Peregrine Jay undertakes one of the most audacious productions, and one surrounded by superstition–Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The superstition is that it is ill luck for any production members to mention the play by name or speak its lines elsewhere than in rehearsal or performance.

Jay has assembled an brilliant, but eccentric cast. The title character is played Dougal MacDougal, a true Scot and a vain one at that. Both he and his opposite, Simon Morten, who plays Macduff are real-life rivals for the affections of Margaret Mannering, who plays Lady Macbeth. Gaston Sears, who plays Seyton, has an obsession with arms, including the Claidheamh Mòr (emphatically not a claymore according to him), a wickedly sharp two edged sword used in the climactic fight between Macbeth and Macduff. He choreographs and trains them in the fight.

Banquo is played by Bruce Barrabell, a union leader and participant in fringe causes, and has a connection to the child actor, William Smith, who plays Macbeth’s son. William’s father was an insane murderer who killed by decapitation. The most superstitious is Nina Gaythorne as Lady Macduff, although Rangi, a Maori actor and one of the Three Witches rivals her.

A series of incidents arouse superstitions during rehearsals. A costume decapitated head is found in a bag during a rehearsal, and later under a covered platter. A warning message about William and his father is found on the manager’s typewriter. Then the opening weeks of the performance come off flawlessly to acclaim. That is, until Alleyn has front row seats, compliments of the house, after having provided security for some royals attending an earlier performance, and realizes as the climactic scene concludes that something has gone horribly wrong and Dougal MacDougal is really dead, and in the manner of his denouement as Macbeth.

It’s obvious that a number could have a motive and Marsh keeps us guessing until the end while Alleyn methodically interviews witnesses. Yet there is something off in the chronology. There wasn’t enough time for any of the suspects to commit the murder…or was there?

One of the most interesting themes is that of not charging children with the sins of their parents. There are several turns during which William is allowed to shine as his own person, and to be encouraged with the prospects of his future rather than haunted by his father’s past acts. In this, Marsh invites us to heed the better angels of our nature, and to believe the best of others.

Whether this was one of Marsh’s best, I will leave to others. All I will say is that she concluded her last act well.

Death at the Bar (Roderick Alleyn #9), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2013 (first published in 1940).

Summary: A holiday at a secluded seaside inn, and a challenge at darts ends up in murder from prussic acid (cyanide).

Three friends return to the remote seaside village of Ottercombe for a holiday. Luke Watchman is a renowned barrister, his cousin Sebastian Parish, a well-known actor, and Norman Cubitt, an accomplished artist who is doing Sebastian’s portrait. They stay at The Feathers, an inn with a pub operated by Abel Pomeroy and his son Will, who is active in a local communist cell with Decima Moore, a stunning local farmer’s daughter returned from Oxford who Will hopes to marry, and Bob Legge, an older gentleman with a mysterious background who already is secretary and treasurer for the group. Legge lives at The Feathers. Also staying at the Feathers is the Hon. Violet Darragh, who hangs about doing amateurish water color sketches while paying particular attention to Legge.

Things start off badly between Watchman and Legge. They have a fender-bender resulting from Legge charging into a blind intersection. The gentlemen extricate their cars, which were not damaged, only to discover on arrival that they are both staying at Feathers. It’s clear from an encounter the first night that they don’t like each other, and Watchman expects he’s seen him before. Legge has a stellar hand at darts, defeating Watchman, and challenging him to a trick where Legge will outline a hand on the dartboard with darts. Watchman declines.

The next day starts benignly enough with Cubitt off painting Sebastian’s portrait. Violet paints nearby. Over a rise Watchman encounters Decima Moore and we learn they’d had a fling on a previous visit by Watchman. Now she wants nothing more to do with him and he forces himself on her only to be repulsed as the painter come over the rise. The weather turns ill that night and Legge can’t make an appointment in nearby Illington because the tunnel into Ottercombe, its only access is impassable. So they are all in the bar. Pomeroy opens a special brandy for the guests, who have already drunk freely. Legge resumes his dart challenge, Watchman takes it up. Abel breaks out a new set of darts to which Legge approves.

The fourth dart pierces one of Watchman’s fingers. He turns pale, sits down. He is averse to blood and his friends chalk it up to that. Abel dresses the wound with iodine, but Watchman worsens. Someone suggests brandy, which Decima pours into Watchman’s empty glass. He barely takes any, saying “poison” through clenched teeth, knocking the glass away in a spasm-like motion. Just then the lights went out amid the storm, things are hectic with broken glass everywhere. When the lights come back on, Watchman is dead.

The local police do a credible investigation of the scene. The dart is found to have traces of prussic acid (cyanide) on the tip. Abel Pomeroy, who had bought prussic acid to kill rats is muttered against by the locals for not securing it. He goes to Scotland Yard to clear his reputation, sees Alleyn, who consults with the locals and is asked in, along with his fellow investigator, Fox. Attention is focused on Legge, but it becomes clear that he could not have put cyanide on the darts before throwing them. Nor was the brandy nor the glass tainted. But lethal levels of cyanide were found in Watchman’s blood. How was he poisoned? And who did it? Both Parrish, who is in financial straits and Cubitt stood to inherit from Watchman. It is clear Decima disliked him. Will was aware of the affair from the previous year. And Legge turns out to have been part of a case prosecuted by Watchman under the name Montague Thringle, taking the fall for a partner, perhaps unjustly.

Alleyn’s challenge is to sort all this out when virtually no one wants to cooperate. Legge is pathologically afraid of the police. And then an attempt is made to poison him and Fox, with Fox getting very ill.

I really enjoyed this story for the delightful cast of characters (Violet Darragh turns out to be quite interesting!), the rustic inn, and the unique seaside setting with its difficult to navigate tunnel that foreshadowed the twisty plot of this story. I found myself surprised at the end by who the murderer was–I had been thinking “anyone but this person.” A very satisfying read!