Death at the Dolphin

I've been a fan of Ngaio Marsh since I was a young teenager, when my mother introduced me to detective fiction by means of her books and those of Margery Allingham. I had heard of this one, but I was pretty sure I had never read it, and that proved to be the case. The reason is probably that by the time it was published, in the mid 1960s, I had other fish to fry and probably thought I'd grown out of detective stories. So it was a great pleasure to get hold of it and I devoured it pretty quickly. One of Marsh's enduring interests was theatre -- she had wanted to have a career in that field at one time -- and she wrote several novels based around that: Vintage Murder, Final Curtain, Light Thickens, and this one. Here, the main protagonist is the rather charming, sensible and talented Peregrine Jay, a young playwright and director who happens one day upon a deserted and crumbling theatre on the banks of the Thames. A chance meeting with a curious, reserved millionaire, Mr Conducis, results in Perry being given an astonishing opportunity -- Mr C will pay for the restoration of the building and for Perry's new play to be put on there. He also gives Perry an amazing gift, or rather loan -- a single Elizabethan glove which is proved beyond doubt to have been made by Shakespeare's father for the poet's son Hamnet and given to him the day before his death at the age of eleven, as a note in Shakespeare's own hand confirms. Inspired by this wonderful artefact, which is put on display in a heavily protected safe in the theatre, Perry writes a play which revolves around the story of the glove. All goes wonderfully well -- the play is a huge success despite the infuriating temperaments of the actors -- but a terrible murder and theft throw everything into disarray and it is left to Marsh's suave and intelligent detective, Roderick Alleyn, to sort it all out. Classic stuff.
I'm now reading two very disparate books, both courtesy of very kind publishers: Sybil Brinton's Old Friends and New Fancies, the very first Austen sequel, published in 1913 and now reissued by the wonderful Sourcebooks -- this is an absolute delight and I will be raving about it soon -- and Owen Shears' Resistance, a novel set in Wales in WW2 -- fascinating. More on this soon too.