Death in a White Tie: Inspector Roderick Alleyn (Volume 7) - Ngaio Marsh Audiobook

Written by Ngaio Marsh
Read by Peter Wickham
Format: Opus
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
Unabridged

Death by suffocation is much quicker than most people imagine. Whoever murdered Lord Robert Gospell (`Bunchy’ to his friends) must have calculated on this, for he knew that death would have to be quick enough and quiet enough to enable him to surprise and smother Bunchy in a brief taxi ride together - and then emerge dressed as his victim whilst the taxi continued its journey to deposit the `other passenger’. This much Chief Inspector Alleyn can deduce when he proceeds to probe the mystery of his friend’s murder. For Bunchy was his friend, and in a way he felt partly responsible for Bunchy’s death, because he had been helping Alleyn privately in trying to establish the identity of a particularly loathsome blackmailer. In fact Bunchy was about to go on to Scotland Yard the very hour that he was murdered, and all that eventually reached Alleyn was - his corpse. Several people might have done it for very obvious reasons, but unfortunately the motives were almost too obvious to bear examination. For instance, Bunchy’s young nephew Donald had quarrelled with his uncle about his debts, and Donald was his uncle’s heir. It might be Captain Withers, about whom Bunchy knew more than Withers liked to think. It might be General Halcut-Hackett who believed that his wife was blackmailed by Bunchy. It might indeed have been any one of the eight hundred guests who attended Lady Carrados ball on the night of the murder.