The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh

This was one of the Marsh's I'd read before but had no memory of. In fact I had a false memory, a vague idea that it started with an elderly lady in a bed in hospital, when actually it starts with a Home Secretary with appendicitis, foolishly putting off seeing a doctor because of an important bill he needs to see through.

And as if his inconvenient appendix wasn't enough, he's receiving threatening letters from the Bolsheviks, hysterical letters from a young nurse he has ‘wronged’ (Jane Harden) and an angry visit from a Dr Phillips, who used to be a friend, but since he is in love with Jane and Jane has turned down his proposal of marriage on the grounds that she 'belongs' to the Home Sec now she's 'given' herself to him, might be regarded as an enemy.

The book was written, incidentally, in 1935, and the reactions of our three protagonists are interesting. Our Home Sec, O'Callaghan, takes the view that Jane is a modern young woman who 'knows how to enjoy herself', Jane realises she may have thought that but if so she was lying to herself, and Dr Phillips takes the view that O'Callaghan has 'ruined Jane's life'.

Anyway, back to the story. The appendix erupts (if that’s what an appendix does) at the worst possible moment, and O'Callaghan's wife - who O'Callaghan thinks of as cold, but who seems unable to express any warmth rather than unable to feel it - begs his old friend Dr Phillips to perform the operation, little knowing that she is delivering her husband into the hands of a man who might want to kill him.

And when O'Callaghan does die, and she does realise, she naturally calls Scotland Yard and insists her husband has been murdered.

Enter Inspectors Fox and Alleyn. To find the waters further muddied by the fact that among the two doctors and three nurses assisting Dr Phillips' in the operation were Jane Harden, and a Bolshevist who makes no bones about saying what a good thing it is for the proletariat that O'Callaghan has died.

This, luckily, gives recurring characters Nigel Bathgate and his lady love Angela something to do. Because by tNHM, Alleyn is centre stage and the young couple are fairly redundant. If they didn't have the odd Bolshevist meeting to infiltrate or lofty bit of exposition about eugenics to listen to they'd be pretty well redundant. 

So - how is it? Actually, very good.  Marsh is witty without being harsh and even the minor and seemingly one dimensional characters develop nuances as the book goes on – the apparently emotionless wife who is vengeful and angry at her husband’s death, the wronged woman who later admits she lied to herself about how she felt.  The Bolshevist nurse who takes the time to tell Alleyn the others wouldn’t have done it because of their medical ethics (thus revealing, I thought, her own line in the sand).

Lovers of pure puzzles might be disappointed - Alleyn himself admits it’s the purest fluke that gives him the answer - but I found it a joy (except my attention always wanders in the Bolshevist meetings. I think they're meant to have an 'into the jaws of the enemy' excitement to them, but actually they remind me of every dull committee I ever minuted where people said the same things over and over..)

Next in the series is ‘Death in Ecstasy’, which I’ve actually already read (I read this one early too, it's not the reading what takes the time), and like to think of as Bathgate's last hurrah. But I get ahead of myself..