RogerBW's Blog

Death in Ecstasy, Ngaio Marsh 25 September 2016

1936 classic English detective fiction; fourth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. At a meeting of the House of the Sacred Flame, a small cult, the Chosen Vessel drinks from the Flaming Cup, gabbles nonsensically, and dies of a dose of sodium cyanide.

The setting is the first odd thing about this book. I know a certain amount about spiritualism, Theosophy, and fundamentalist evangelicalism, but very little about other new religious movements of this sort of period. When I see a group like the House of the Sacred Flame, a small personality-cult of the kind that G. K. Chesterton had parodied in The Eye of Apollo (1911), I assume it's crooked; but would a reader in 1936 have done so?

Cheek by jowl with these, in gloomy astonishment, were ranged a number of figures whom Nigel supposed must represent the more robust gods and goddesses of Nordic legend. The gods wore helmets and beards, the goddesses helmets and boots. They all looked as though they had been begun by Epstein and finished by a frantic bricklayer.

It's clear we're not supposed to like the organisation, its priest, or its seven Initiates.

All of them would have suggested that they went to the House of the Sacred Flame because it was the right thing to do. M. de Ravigne would not have replied that he went because he was madly in love with Cara Quayne; Cara Quayne would not have admitted that she found in the services an outlet for an intolerable urge towards exhibitionism. Miss Wade would have died rather than confess that she worshipped, not God, but the Reverend Jasper Garnette.

But are we supposed to be surprised when (for this is after all a detective story) they do in fact pretty much all turn out to have dark secrets?

I think one has to read this very much from Alleyn's side, or one would wreck oneself on the rocks of snobbishness. Not only is he always right, his tastes and preferences are always the right ones, and he represses a shudder on learning that the sacramental wine is in fact Invalid Port. But this isn't just a character study; it's the book where for me Marsh has come into her own as a detective writer. All right, there are indulgences, as when Alleyn speculates on how various writers would resolve the case if it were in their fiction:

If it's Agatha Christie, Miss Wade's occulted guilt drips from every page. Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter would plump for Pringle, I fancy. Inspector French would go for Ogden.

but while the evidence is, at best, pretty thin, and yet again the villain gives him/herself away during a discussion of the crime (though admittedly it's not a reconstruction this time), it is possible to work out from various inconsistencies and trivial details who is the guilty party.

All right, I don't think taking heroin makes one bright-eyed and enthusiastic while up, then nervous and twitchy while down; that sounds more like cocaine. And I'm dubious about taking either of them in a cigarette that still has enough tobacco in it to be smokable; but never mind. A more serious problem is the two utterly stereotyped gay acolytes, all scratch-your-eyes-out posing and too too delicate, despised by everyone, who probably seemed terribly daring at the time but now come over as even more thoroughly obsolete than any non-white characters would (had they been in the book at all). (And it seems Marsh had gay friends, which just makes this hard to understand.) Nigel Bathgate continues to act as Alleyn's Watson, and has very little to do.

The other characters are more interesting: rarely sympathetic, but one can at least see how they got to be the way they are, and indeed why they ended up associated with this cult despite its superficial ridiculousness. And there are some bits of writing that are lovely.

In the days when women of breeding did not stand in queues to get a front seat at a coroner's inquest or a murder trial, melodrama provided an authentic thrill. Nowadays melodrama is not good enough when with a little inconvenience one can watch a real murderer turn green round the gills, while an old gentleman in a black cap, himself rather pale, mumbles actor-proof lines about hanging by the neck until you are dead and may God have mercy on your soul. No curtain ever came down on a better tag.

Followed by Vintage Murder.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: The Nursing Home Murder | Series: Roderick Alleyn | Next in series: Vintage Murder

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1