Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the seventh volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteriesOFF WITH HIS HEADWhen the pesky Anna Bünz arrives at Mardian to investigate local folk-dancing, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bünz is not the only source of friction. When the sword dancers' traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a complex case of gruesome proportions…SINGING IN THE SHROUDSOn a cold February London night, the police find a corpse on the quayside, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. The killer, who walked away singing, is known to be one of nine passengers on the cargo ship, Cape Farewell. Superintendent Roderick Alleyn joins the ship on the most difficult assignment of his career…FALSE SCENT Mary Bellamy, darling of the London stage, holds a 50th birthday party, a gala for everyone who loves her and fears her power. Then someone uses a deadly insect spray on Mary instead of the azaleas. The suspects, all very theatrically, are playing the part of mourners. Superintendent Alleyn has to find out which one played the murderer…
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Ngaio Marsh
INSPECTOR ALLEYN 3-BOOK COLLECTION:
Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Off With His Head first published in Great Britain by Collins 1957 Singing in the Shrouds first published in Great Britain by Collins 1958 False Scent first published in Great Britain by Collins 1960 My Poor Boy 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 1956, 1958,1960
My Poor Boy copyright © Ngaio Marsh (Jersey) Ltd 1989
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007328758
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007531417 Version: 2018-10-02
Contents
Contents
| Mrs Bünz | ||
| Dame Alice Mardian | Of Mardian Castle | |
| The Rev. Samuel Stayne | Rector of East Mardian, her great-nephew by marriage | |
| Ralph Stayne | Her great-great-nephew and son to the Rector | |
| Dulcie Mardian | Her great-niece | |
| William Andersen | Of Copse Forge, blacksmith | |
| Daniel Andersen |  | His sons |
| Andrew Andersen | ||
| Nathaniel Andersen | ||
| Christopher Andersen | ||
| Ernest Andersen | ||
| Camilla Campion | His granddaughter | |
| Bill Andersen | His grandson | |
| Tom Plowman | Landlord of the Green Man | |
| Trixie Plowman | His daughter | |
| Dr Otterly | Of Yowford, General Practitioner | |
| Simon Begg | Of Simmy-Dick’s Petrol Station | |
| Superintendent Carey | Of the Yowford Constabulary | |
| Police Sergeant Obby | Of the Yowford Constabulary | |
| Superintendent Roderick Alleyn |  | |
| Detective-Inspector Fox | Of the CID | |
| Detective-Sergeant Bailey | New Scotland Yard | |
| Detective-Sergeant Thompson |
To anybody with the smallest knowledge of folklore it will be obvious that the Dance of the Five Sons is a purely imaginary synthesis combining in most unlikely profusion the elements of several dances and mumming plays. For information on these elements I am indebted, among many other sources, to England’s Dances by Douglas Kennedy and Introduction to English Folklore by Violet Alford.
N.M.
Over that part of England the Winter Solstice came down with a bitter antiphony of snow and frost. Trees, minutely articulate, shuddered in the north wind. By four o’clock in the afternoon the people of South Mardian were all indoors.
It was at four o’clock that a small dogged-looking car appeared on a rise above the village and began to sidle and curvet down the frozen lane. Its driver, her vision distracted by wisps of grey hair escaping from a headscarf, peered through the fan-shaped clearing on her windscreen. Her woolly paws clutched rather than commanded the wheel. She wore, in addition to several scarves of immense length, a handspun cloak. Her booted feet tramped about over brake and clutch-pedal, her lips moved soundlessly and from time to time twitched into conciliatory smiles. Thus she arrived in South Mardian and bumped to a standstill before a pair of gigantic gates.
They were of wrought-iron and beautiful but they were tied together with a confusion of shopkeeper’s twine. Through them, less than a quarter of a mile away, she saw on a white hillside, the shell of a Norman castle, theatrically erected against a leaden sky. Partly encircled by this ruin was a hideous Victorian mansion.
