1935 classic English detective fiction; second of Marsh's novels of
Inspector Roderick Alleyn. When Arthur Surbonadier is fatally shot on
stage during the last act of The Rat and the Beaver, there's no
question about who pulled the trigger: the shooting was part of the
play. But there wasn't supposed to be live ammunition in the gun.
Marsh had an extensive theatrical background, so it's a little
disconcerting to find that her fictional theatre is filled with
horrible people, most of whom had motives.
Surbonadier had tried to push Felix Gardener out of the lead role and
claim it for himself; and they've both been keeping company with the
leading lady, Stephanie Vaughan. And he's been trifling with one of
the dressers. And he's been blackmailing his uncle, the manager…
Alleyn happens to be present in the audience, and immediately starts
his investigation. We still don't learn much about him as a person,
though; he wavers between serious and facetious, and veers remarkably
close to a dalliance with one of the suspects. He clearly sees his job
in part as to make himself unpleasant.
"Ow yow – yow – yow," Saint echoed the inspector's pleasant voice
with the exasperated facetiousness of a street urchin. "All Oxford
and Cambridge and hot air," he added savagely.
"Only Oxford, and that's nothing nowadays," said Alleyn
apologetically.
As in A Man Lay Dead, the principal (but not exclusive) viewpoint is
of Alleyn's friend the journalist Nigel Bathgate – who can't resist
the urge to get involved, and does indeed contribute some valuable
clues, but whose main role as the Watson is to reason incorrectly. In
this case he's also a friend of one of the suspects, and at one point
threatens to walk out entirely, though of course he comes back before
the end.
"All amateurs are tiresome. You want to be in on this, but you shy
off anything that is at all unpleasant. We had this out before in
the Wilde case. You'd much better keep out of it, Bathgate. I should
have said so at the beginning."
But where Alleyn is enigma, Bathgate is caricature; there's very
little to him, he's entirely predictable, and indeed rather dull. I'd
rather have spent more time with Alleyn's assistants, Fox the
plain-clothes man and Bailey the fingerprint expert.
Most of the other characters are simply unpleasant, several of them
are hiding secrets, and they tend to go on at great length about how
they are genuine while everyone else theatrical is a fraud. The
mystery is a decently challenging one; the culprit was still on my
list at the point of revelation, but so were several other people.
There is an unfortunate forcing of the point, as the murderer is
trapped into an admission rather than proven guilty, but as Alleyn
says, "We haven't been very clever. I'm handing no bouquets to myself
over this case."
This isn't a great book in any respect, and Marsh seems very much the
weak sister in a year that also gave us Three Act Tragedy and Death
in the Clouds from Christie and Gaudy Night from Sayers. It is
still enjoyable, though, just not on a par with the top flight of
mysteries at this point.
Followed by The Nursing Home Murder.
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