Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 4: A Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Colour Scheme
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the fourth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteriesSURFEIT OF LAMPREYSThe Lampreys were a peculiar family. They entertained their guests with charades - like rich Uncle Gabriel, who was always such a bore. The Lampreys thought if they jollied him up he would bail them out of poverty again. But Uncle Gabriel meets a violent end, and Chief Inspector Alleyn had to work out which of them killed him…DEATH AND THE DANCING FOOTMANIt begins as an entertainment: eight people, many of them adversaries, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. It ends in snowbound disaster. Everyone has an alibi - and a motive as well. But Roderick Alleyn soon realizes that it all hangs on Thomas, the dancing footman…COLOUR SCHEMEIt was a horrible death -lured into a pool of boiling mud and left to die. Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for enemy agents, knows that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised, or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted…
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NGAIO MARSH
Ngaio Marsh Volume 4
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Surfeit of Lampreys first published in Great Britain by Collins 1941 Death and the Dancing Footman first published in Great Britain by Collins 1942 Colour Scheme first published in Great Britain by Collins 1943 A Fool About Money first published in Great Britain in Death on the Air and Other Stories by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995
Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works
Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1941, 1942, 1943
A Fool About Money copyright © Ngaio Marsh (Jersey) Ltd 1989 Cover design © crushed.co.uk
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007328727
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007531387 Version: 2017-10-02
CONTENTS
For SIR HUGH & LADY ACLAND
with my love
For the one since he has helped me so often with my stories and for the other since she likes stories about London
CONTENTS
III. Preparation for a Charade
VIII. Alleyn Meets the Lampreys
IX. Two, Two, the Lily-White Boys
Roberta Grey
Lord Charles Lamprey
Lady Charles Lamprey
Henry Lamprey. Their eldest son
Friede Lamprey (Frid). Their elder daughter
Colin and Stephen Lamprey. Twins. Their second and third sons
Patricia Lamprey (Patch). Their second daughter
Michael Lamprey (Mike). Their youngest son
Mrs Burnaby (Nanny). Their nurse
Baskett. Their butler
Cora Blackburn. Their parlour-maid
A Ship’s Passenger
Stamford. A commissionaire
The Lady Katherine Lobe. Aunt to Lord Charles
Gabriel, Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune (Uncle G.). Elder brother to Lord Charles
Violet, Marchioness of Wutherwood and Rune (Aunt V.). His wife
Giggle. Their chauffeur
Tinkerton. Lady Wutherwood’s maid
Dr Kantripp. The Lampreys’ doctor
Sir Matthew Cairnstock. A brain specialist
Dr Curtis. Police surgeon
Detective-Inspector Fox. Of the Central Branch, Criminal Investigation Department
Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn. Of the Central Branch, Criminal Investigation Department
Detective-Sergeant Bailey. A finger-print expert
Detective-Sergeant Thompson. A photographic expert
Police-Constable Martin
Police-Constable Gibson
A Police Constable who has read Macbeth
Detective-Sergeant Campbell. On duty at 24 Brummell St
Nigel Bathgate. Watson to Mr Alleyn
Mrs Moffatt. Housekeeper at 24 Brummell Street
Moffatt. Her husband
Mr Rattisbon. Solicitor
A Nurse
Roberta Grey first met the Lampreys in New Zealand. She was at school with Frid Lamprey. All the other Lampreys went to school in England, Henry, the twins, and Michael, to Eton; Patch to an expensive girls’ school near Tonbridge. In the New Zealand days, Patch and Mike were too little for school. They had Nanny and, later on, a governess. But when the time came for Frid to be bundled off to England there was a major financial crisis and she became a boarder at Te Moana Collegiate School for Girls. Long after they had returned to England the family still said that Frid spoke with a New Zealand accent, which was nonsense.
In after years Roberta was to find a pleasant irony in the thought that she owed her friendship with the family to one of those financial crises. It must have been a really bad one because it was at about that time that Lady Charles Lamprey suddenly got rid of all her English servants and bought the washing machine that afterwards, on the afternoon it broke loose from its mooring, so nearly killed Nanny and Patch. Not long after Frid went to board at Te Moana an old aunt of Lord Charles’s died, and the Lampreys were rich again, and all the servants came back, so that on Roberta’s first visit Deepacres seemed very grand indeed. In New Zealand the Lampreys were a remarkable family. Titles are rare in New Zealand and the younger sons of marquises are practically non-existent.
