Excellent Quotes: Enter a Murderer

Agatha Christie was only the most famous of the British writers during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. An equally charming contributor to the genre was New Zealand import Ngaio Marsh, herself both an award-winning writer and a theatrical producer.

Marsh's Poirot was Inspector Roderick Alleyn--the hero of thirty-two stories. He is a gentrified Detective Chief-Inspector whose Oxford erudition and sarcastic humor belie a street-wise tenaciousness and a feeling heart.

The detective's second adventure, 1935's Enter a Murderer blended Marsh's two great loves, centering on a play wherein one actor is killed onstage by a gun that has mysteriously been filled with real bullets rather than the usual blanks. Alleyn is, of course, in the audience for the fateful event and you'll be shocked that the denouement of the story involves reassembling the cast on stage to walk the "it's you, unless it's you, but really it's you" bases:

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Alleyn, "I have asked you to come here this morning in order that we may stage a reconstruction of the first scene in the last act of The Rat and the Beaver. In that scene, as you know, the deceased man, Mr. Arthur Surbonadier, loaded the revolver by which he was subsequently shot. You are all aware that Mr. Jacob Saint is under arrest. He will not be present. Otherwise, with the exception of the deceased, whose part will be read by Mr. Simpson, we are all here."

-- Marsh, Ngaio. Enter a Murderer. New York, NY: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2012. P. 186.

If I had a dollar for every drawing room conclusion I've read I'd be a jillionaire. Still, both as an example of the enduringly popular genre and as a too-little-known character, Detective Alleyn is worth spending time with.

PS - Speaking of classic Golden Age mysteries, this month Twentieth Century Fox is releasing a lavish, star-studded remake of "Murder on the Orient Express." I wonder whodunnit? But you don't have to wonder about whether or not you should listen to Dunez's "I'm a Rebel Just for Kicks"; now playing on iTunes.