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Hand in Glove
by
Ngaio Marsh
detective mystery, vintage mystery in a Kindle edition that was published by Felony & Mayhem Press on February 15, 2015 and has 182 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Dead Water, Killer Dolphin, A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder, Death in Ecstasy, Vintage Murder, Artists in Crime, Death in a White Tie, Overture to Death, Death at the Bar, Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Died in the Wool, Swing, Brother, Swing, Night at the Vulcan, Colour Scheme, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Scales of Justice, The Death of a Fool, Singing in the Shroud, False Scent, Clutch of Constables, When in Rome, Tied Up In Tinsel
Twenty-second in the Inspector Roderick Alleyn vintage mystery series revolving around a Scotland Yard detective. The focus is on Pyke Period’s obsessions and Andrew’s troubles. Originally published in 1962.
My Take
It’s weird to read about Alleyn in the 1960s when the series started in the 1930s. It’s also weird to read about him and the culture of the 1960s. If Marsh hadn’t so selfishly died, would he have lived on to the age of cellphones and computers?
Damning with faint praise, Marsh describes the inside of Period’s home in dismal tones through Nicola’s first impressions. It seems Pyke is a stickler for proper manners. He’s also insecure about his antecedents. Naughty boy.
Connie Cartell also seems rather desperate — she can’t see anything wrong with Moppett, who treats her like dirt. Moppett is, in turn, treated like dirt by Leiss and both collude in unfavorable activities.
Ooh, Lady Bantling (who refused to give up her title when she remarried) is quite the colorful woman with her orange hair and lips and reputation for partying. Her current husband, Bimbo, brings in some dubious doings . . . that Alleyn recollects. It also appears that Bimbo is not exactly in good financial form, an issue that cleared up about a year ago, when he married Desirée.
Poor Pyke. I do agree that Harold is quite irritating. And Marsh is not clear on why Pyke takes on a housemate. And why didn’t he do his due diligence on his potential tenant?
Nicola is friends with the Alleyns, and it’s a friendship that undergoes a change in perspective when she’s one of Alleyn’s targets in the investigation. Nicola has her own encounter which opens the story up to yet more characters that add to the conflicts and fun.
We learn all this through Marsh’s use of third person global subjective point-of-view from most of the main characters in Hand in Glove. Naturally, Alleyn, Nicola, and Pyke are the primary perspectives. Yep, the perspectives are not limited to only these three.
Per usual, the witnesses in this murder leave things out. And Alleyn and Fox dance with the local police in efforts at mollifying them.
It’s an interesting combination of character and action with the usual round of police interviewing and speculating. It comes down to a mix-up in letters that sets off the final incident.
The Story
Mr Pyke Period has been asked to write a book on etiquette by a publisher! A request that necessitates taking on a typist, Nicola Maitland-Mayne.
A chance meeting on the train takes Nicola to an English country house party and a flamboyant dowager’s treasure hunt party.
Then a man is found murdered — face down in the mire of an open drain — murder by sewer pipe.
The Characters
Chief Inspector-Detective Roderick Alleyn, a.k.a. Le Cid, is with CID at Scotland Yard. Agatha Troy is a famous painter who’s picky about what commissions she accepts, the students she takes, and the people with whom she surrounds herself. She’s also Roddy’s wife.
His team includes Inspector Teddy Fox, a.k.a. Br’er Fox, with his talent for disappearing and schmoozing staff; Detective Sergeants Bailey and Thompson — fingerprints and photography; Sir James Curtis is the Home Office pathologist; and, Bob Williams works the vacuum cleaner.
Nicola Maitland-Mayne is the typist Pyke has hired. General Basil Maitland-Mayne, an old friend of Pyke’s, is her grandfather. And Nicola has quite different memories of him than Pyke.
Percival Pyke Period, a bachelor with self-esteem issues, is famous for his letters of condolence. He’s also one of Andrew’s trustees. Alfred Belt is Pyke’s butler. Mrs Mitchell is the cook. Harold Cartell, a.k.a. Boysie, Andrew’s stepfather, guardian/trustee, retired lawyer, and Desirée’s second husband, is Pyke’s irritating housemate of seven months. Pixie is Cartell’s inconsiderate boxer, who’s in heat.
Connie Cartell is a spinster neighbor across the way and Harold’s sister. Li-Chi is Cartell’s indulged Pekinese. Trudi is her Austrian house-parlour maid. Miss Cartell has adopted Mary Ralston, a.k.a. Moppett, a bad’un who likes to live dangerously. Leonard Leiss is Moppett’s boyfriend, a really bad’un with a record.
Andrew Bantling is in the Brigade of Guards and only six months from his inheritance. Lord Ormsbury has died in Australia. Desirée, Lady Bantling, and now Mrs Bimbo Dodds, is Ormsbury’s surviving sister and lives at Bayneshole. She’s also Andrew’s mama. Bobo Bantling, the seventh baron, was the first of Desirée’s husbands and Andrew’s father. Bimbo, a.k.a. Benedict Arthur Dodds, is Desirée’s current husband.
Mr Cooper runs the local taxi. George Copper owns a garage and has a car for sale.
The Little Codling PD
Sergeant Bill Raikes is investigating Leiss. Superintendent Bob Williams is investigating the murder. Dr Elekton is the divisional surgeon.
Contemporaries include Felicité Sankie-Bond and Nancy. Lady Barsington left Pyke a memento. The Grantham Gallery is for sale. The Hacienda Club has seen some suspicious doings. Mrs Nicholls is the rector’s wife. The previous rector, Father Forsdyke, was rather vague about the records.
The Cover and Title
The theme color is mustard yellow for the cover’s background. The top “half” is a gray to mustard gradient with the gray on the top and sides softening to the lighter yellow. The title is white to gray against the mustard yellow. In the middle is a stretched-out banner in a peachy yellow with the author’s name in a yellowish brown Deco font with lines filling in and a white glow around it. The bottom “half” has rays of white scalloped lines radiating out from the bottom center with the spaces between a gradient of gray to mustard. The bottom center is a graphic of a calendar spotlighting April in colonial blue. At the very bottom is a pale yellow arch with the series info in brown.
The title is the primary clue, the Hand in Glove.
