A review of Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh

Published in 1947, Final Curtain is Ngaio Marsh’s fourteenth book in her Inspector Alleyn series. After two novels set in New Zealand, this is a country house murder set in England. Once more Alleyn’s wife, the painter Agatha Troy, rather like Bobby Owen’s fiancé, Olive Farrar, is a magnet for trouble and a one-woman generator of work for her husband.

One of the sub themes of the book is the anticipation and trepidation of couples reuniting after the war. In many ways it is a chance to reset relationships, a moment of intense joy to be reunited with a loved one after so long, in Alleyn’s case over three years serving King and country, one in which to reflect how their marriage could be improved and yet a sense of dread that the person they married may have been changed irretrievably by the long separation and the hardships of war. It is a theme sensitively handled by Marsh and Agatha, who has always been appalled that the result of her husband’s day job is sometimes the judicial murder of someone, decides to become more appreciative and understanding of the stresses and strains caused by his cases.  

With just three weeks to go before Alleyn’s return, Agatha is approached by Sir Henry Ancred, a famous actor, to paint his portrait to mark his seventy-fifth birthday and one which on his death he would bequeath to a grateful nation. Initially unwilling to accept the commission, she eventually agrees and makes her way to Ancreton Manor where she meets the rest of the actor’s extended family.  

They are an eccentric lot, rivalling the Lampreys, but a bit more rounded. The characterisation of Cedric, the heir to the Ancred fortune, will strike the modern reader as controversial and homophobic, a sign of our respective times and attitudes, I suppose. The Ancred apple cart has been upset by the arrival of Sonia Orrincourt, a rather full-on chorus girl whom Sir Henry has installed as his mistress and subsequently decides to marry. The rest of the family, probably correctly, see her as a gold digger. As is the way in Golden Age detective fiction, Sir Henry uses his will as a stick to obtain his family’s compliance and frequently either changes it or threatens to, as the mood takes him.

When Agatha arrives at Ancreton Hall, a series of practical jokes are played, including the daubing of Agatha’s portrait at the great unveiling. The family attribute the pranks to Sir Henry’s youngest granddaughter, who goes by the nickname of Panty, but at the time of the vandalism of the painting she was confined to the dormitory of the school which now occupies a wing of the house, after receiving treatment for an outbreak of ringworm. Sir Henry reads the latest version of his will out at the party to celebrate his birthday and it causes consternation amongst certain parts of the family.

Sir Henry retires to bed in a bad mood and is found dead the following morning. It turns out that he has been poisoned and that just before his death, he had changed his will once more leaving the estate to his fiancé, Sonia.

Agatha and Alleyn are reunited, and she tells him of the strange goings on at Ancreton Manor and, surprise, surprise, he, along with his longstanding sidekick, Fox, are sent to investigate. It was Sir Henry’s wish to be embalmed using an old-fashioned method involving arsenic. The presence of arsenic in the body, which is duly exhumed, could have caused a problem in ascertaining what was used to kill Sir Henry, but none is found as the undertakers who carried out the embalming ignored his wishes and used a modern method. The poison found in his body was thallium, used to treat ringworm.

Another murder, this time of one of the principal suspects, narrows the field down and a moulting cat helps Alleyn discover the truth. In what is a well-constructed plot, with Marsh spending time building up the tangle of relationships and passions in a dysfunctional family before unleashing the inevitable murder and investigations on her reader, the identity of the culprit will surprise the reader, especially as they did not benefit directly from their crime. Marsh spends.    

This is one of Ngaio Marsh’s better stories.