This one is classic Ngaio Marsh: A bizarre means of death, an isolated setting, multiple suspects, and Roderick Alleyn on the case. And because it takes place in 1942, Alleyn is also doing some anti-espionage work for the British government, which brings him to Marsh’s homeland of New Zealand.
The murder took place at a prosperous sheep farm known as Mount Moon, owned by Arthur Rubrick and his wife Florence. Florence, called Flossie by some, was an outspoken member of the New Zealand Parliament; one night she disappeared, only to have her body found several weeks later, wrapped in a bale of wool, in the storage room of a textile company. When Alleyn arrives, it’s a year later and the New Zealand police have given up on the case.
Alleyn interviews the people closest to Flossie: her nephew Douglas Grace, her ward Ursula Harme, her secretary Terence Lynne, and her husband’s nephew Fabian Losse, all of whom live in her house. (Her husband Arthur, who was in poor health, died a few months after Flossie’s murder.) Each of the four gives an account of the events of the night Flossie disappeared. Several of the farm workers are interviewed as well, including a young protegee of Flossie’s who is a gifted pianist. The characters’ views of Flossie herself are very disparate, though most agree that she was opinionated and outspoken.
There was, for me, a bit too much about the process of shearing sheep. Marsh, the daughter of a bank clerk, didn’t grow up on a farm as far as I can tell, so this must have taken some research on her part. But as Alleyn says at one point: “They’re New Zealanders, dyed in the wool, and they understand.”
The solution to the mystery isn’t a great surprise, but arises logically from what has come before. And as always, Alleyn is a very human detective, missing his wife Troy and his colleague Inspector Fox, and caring about the eventual outcomes of the people he encounters in his work.
I greatly enjoyed this book!