RogerBW's Blog

Swing Brother Swing, Ngaio Marsh 01 May 2017

1949 classic English detective fiction; fifteenth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Lord Pastern and Bagott, sitting in on the drums in a jazz band, has set up a bit of business where he "shoots" the piano-accordionist, Carlos Rivera, who falls down and is carried off stage. But Rivera's made himself offensive to everyone, and he's not going to be getting up again. US vt A Wreath for Rivera.

The toff who wants to have a go on the drums seems to have been a persistent idea in British jazz, as memorably parodied in the 1980s by Andy Leggett and Henry Davies. Here he's talked himself into a gig with the band, and is clearly aiming for a permanent position… but he's been having enthusiasms for years, and nobody but him expects that this will last any longer than the others.

"Your uncle," Lady Pastern continued, "has, during the last sixteen years, made periodic attempts to introduce prayer-wheels, brass Buddhas, a totem-pole, and the worst excesses of the surrealists. I have withstood them all. On one occasion I reduced to molten silver an image of some Aztec deity. Your uncle purchased it in Mexico City. Apart from its repellent appearance I had every reason to believe it spurious."

…and that's one of the few things going on that isn't a motivation for Rivera's murder.

'He was ripe for bumping off, was Mr Rivera.'

The victim is aiming to marry the Lord's step-daughter, he makes himself profoundly offensive to everyone at a dinner before the show, he's at outs with his fellow musicians, and one does rather start to wonder what Félicité could ever have seen in him.

His lightest remark was pronounced with such a killing air that it immediately assumed the character of an impropriety.

This is definitely an "everyone hated him" sort of mystery, though the build-up to the death was more satisfying for me than the investigation and resolution. Lord Pastern does his best to look guilty (for reasons that never become entirely apparent), everyone else does their not-very-good best to look innocent, and all sorts of tangles (including a newspaper's Agony Uncle with whom several of the suspects seem to have had correspondence) will end up being cut away to get at the murderer.

'George,' Félicité whispered fiercely, 'do you want to do us in?'

'I want the truth,' her stepfather shouted crossly. 'I was a Theosophist, once,' he added.

'You are and have been and always will be an imbecile,' said his wife, shutting her lorgnette.

I found myself wondering about one particular test that would surely have suggested itself, the result of which would have made obvious the answer to a particular question that was, oh dear, carefully not being asked and turned out to be quite important. But this is the main shortcoming in an investigation that otherwise works well.

There is a romance of sorts; it's very clearly signposted and carefully set up with a Big Misunderstanding, but just as one thinks it's about to get its dénouement the book ends. Nobody else is a particularly sympathetic character, and it's a shame this resolution had to be omitted.

Alleyn is almost peripheral to his own investigation, though Inspector Fox has more of a role, and we do get a brief bit of Troy as Alleyn and Fox go back to Alleyn's after the night of the murder to get a couple of hours' sleep before the business of the next day.

As for the music itself, it's clear that Marsh doesn't have much time for this degenerate modern stuff, though it seems that another cliché of the jazz world also has roots at least this old:

A young woman in a beautiful dress and with hair like blonde seaweed came out of a side door and stood in the spotlight, twisting a length of scarlet chiffon in her hands. She contemplated her audience as if she was a sort of willing sacrifice and began to moo very earnestly: 'Yeoo knee-oo it was onlee summer lightning.' Carlisle and Edward both detested her.

Followed by Opening Night.

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Previous in series: Final Curtain | Series: Roderick Alleyn | Next in series: Opening Night

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