Money in the Morgue: The New Inspector Alleyn Mystery
Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy in a way that has delighted reviewers and critics alike.Shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award 2018.It’s business as usual for Mr Glossop as he does his regular round delivering wages to government buildings scattered across New Zealand’s lonely Canterbury plains. But when his car breaks down he is stranded for the night at the isolated Mount Seager Hospital, with the telephone lines down, a storm on its way and the nearby river about to burst its banks.Trapped with him at Mount Seager are a group of quarantined soldiers with a serious case of cabin fever, three young employees embroiled in a tense love triangle, a dying elderly man, an elusive patient whose origins remain a mystery … and a potential killer.When the payroll disappears from a locked safe and the hospital’s death toll starts to rise faster than normal, can the appearance of an English detective working in counterespionage be just a lucky coincidence – or is something more sinister afoot?
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COLLINS CRIME CLUB
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime Club 2018
Copyright © Stella Duffy and the Estate of Ngaio Marsh 2018
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photograph © Hayden Verry/Arcangel Images
Stella Duffy and Ngaio Marsh assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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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Source ISBN: 9780008207106
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008207120
Version: 2018-02-01
| Mr Glossop | A payroll delivery clerk |
| Matron Ashdown | The Matron of Mount Seager Hospital |
| Sister Comfort | A Sister at Mount Seager Hospital |
| Father O’Sullivan | The local vicar |
| Sarah Warne | The hospital Transport Driver |
| Sydney Brown | The grandson of old Mr Brown |
| Rosamund Farquharson | A hospital clerk |
| Private Bob Pawcett | A convalescent soldier |
| Corporal Cuthbert Brayling | A convalescent soldier |
| Private Maurice Sanders | A convalescent soldier |
| Dr Luke Hughes | Doctor at Mount Seager Hospital |
| Roderick Alleyn | Chief Detective Inspector, CID |
| Old Mr Brown | A dying man |
| Will Kelly | The night porter |
| Sergeant Bix | A Sergeant in the New Zealand Army |
| Duncan Blaikie | A local farmer |
| Various patients—convalescent soldiers and civilians | |
| Several night nurses, nurse aides and VADs |
At about eight o’clock on a disarmingly still midsummer evening, Mr Glossop telephoned from the Transport Office at Mount Seager Hospital to his headquarters twenty miles away across the plains. He made angry jabs with his blunt forefinger at the dial—and to its faint responsive tinkling an invisible curtain rose upon a series of events that were to be confined within the dark hours of that short summer night, bounded between dusk and dawn. So closely did these events follow the arbitrary design of a play that the temptation to represent Mr Glossop as an overture cannot be withstood.
The hospital, now almost settling down for the night, had assumed an air of enclosed and hushed activity. Lights appeared behind open windows and from the yard that ran between the hospital offices and the wards one could see the figures of nurses on night duty moving quietly about their business. Mingled with the click of the telephone dial was the sound of distant tranquil voices and, from the far end of the yard, the very occasional strains of music from a radio in the new army buildings.
The window of the Records Office stood open. Through it one looked across the yard to Wards 2 and 3, now renamed Civilian 2 and Civilian 3 since the military had taken over Wards 4–6 and remade them as Military 1, 2, and 3. Those in Military 3 were still very ill, those in Military 1, their quarantine and spirits up, were well into the restlessly bored stage of their recuperation. Each ward had a covered porch, and a short verandah at the rear linking it to the next ward. Before each verandah stood a rich barrier of climbing roses. The brief New Zealand twilight was not quite at an end but already the spendthrift fragrance of the roses approached its nightly zenith. The setting, in spite of itself, was romantic. Mr Glossop, however, was not conscious of romance. He was cross and anxious and when he spoke into the telephone his voice held overtones of resentment.
