Summary: A comedic play in a small village to raise funds for the church to buy a new piano turns into a murder mystery when the pianist is shot when playing the opening notes of the prelude by a gun concealed within,

An amateur comedic play in a local village to raise money for a new church piano for the church hall. What could go wrong? In the Village of Vale-of-Pen-Cuckoo, quite a bit. Even though the cast is small and consists of local talents, bringing them together is a combustible mixture that brings to a head simmering troubles in the village that results in murder. The production is directed by Dinah Copeland, the daughter of Rector Copeland. She is the one person with some professional stage experience. She’s also the serious love interest of Henry Jerningham, son of the village squire and constable, Jocelyn Jerningham. Jocelyn and his cousin Eleanor Prentice both oppose the marriage, albeit for different reasons. Jocelyn is a member of the species of impoverished landholders and Henry needs to marry into wealth, not a qualification of the Rector and his daughter. Eleanor, a religious spinster, came to live with her cousin after the death of Jocelyn’s wife as a kind of lady of the manor. Dinah, she fears, will supplant her.

This is not her only jealousy. When she moved to Pen Cuckoo, she developed a complicated friendship with another spinster, Idris Campanula. They loved to gossip about the rest of the village but saw each other as rivals for the affections of the rector who is trying his darnedest not to get entangled with either of them, who come to him with their “confessions” to spend time in spiritual intimacy with him

Meanwhile, the village newcomer, Selia Ross, is apparently having an affair with the handsome Dr. Templett, who has an invalid wife at home. Her suggested play is the one adopted, to the consternation of the two spinsters. Subsequently, Selia receives an anonymous and threatening letter, reeking of Idris Campanula’s favorite scent. She shares it with Dr. Templett. Meanwhile, Eleanor comes across Henry and Dinah in a passionate embrace on the day before the play and harsh words are spoken by all. Later that day Eleanor, coming for her confession with the rector, shows up at the very moment Idris throws herself in the rector’s unwilling arms. She was unseen and leaves, calling to make an excuse for cancelling.

Still, this cast manages to make it to the day of the play. Eleanor, chosen to play as overture to the play the “Venetian Overture” by Ethelbert Nevin, is found in pain in her dressing room from an infected finger. The doctor insists she must not play and Idris steps in triumphantly with her Prelude in C by Rachmaninoff. The two ladies had competed at gatherings with these pieces for years. This sounds like a comedic soap opera, right?

And then Idris Campanula plays the first three notes, stepping on the soft pedal with the third…and the piano seems to explode. When the smoke clears, Idris is slumped dead, a gunshot through the head, fired from inside the piano. They discover a gun, a Colt 32 belonging to Jocelyn, rigged with a “Twiddletoy” apparatus to fire when the soft peddle was depressed. The gun had been mentioned the previous evening at a cast gathering, was left loaded with a warning card in a box in the library, easily accessed from outside during the day. Anyone could have accessed it

But who was the intended victim, Idris or Eleanor? Idris substituted for Eleanor at the last minute, but as we see, there were people with motives to kill each woman. When a major theft ties up local investigators, Alleyn and his team are called in, along with his “Watson,” Nigel Bathgate to unravel this strange murder. Early on, they discover that the “Twiddletoy” belonged to the village prankster, Georgie Biggins, who had rigged up a water pistol. Somehow, another person had substituted the Colt for the water pistol. But when and how? Another woman had played the piano an hour before, using the soft pedal, with no lethal effect. And the stage was occupied in preparation for the play after that.

Alleyn must piece together the surviving cast’s movements and figure out the significance of a box at the church hall window with some fragments of rubber, and an onion found on the scene. Meanwhile, all the principals are withholding information, closed as only a secluded village can be.

It seemed to me that the character of Bathgate plays a much more minor role than in previous works. We also learn Alleyn is engaged to Troy, but apart from a love letter at the end, she’s absent, pursuing her own work. And Alleyn? He seems at his refined best, asking the hard questions with a velvet touch, not surprised by the transgressions common to adult human beings, and willing to keep quiet the things not essential to the case, all the while gathering and arranging the threads until the climatic scene where he calls the cast together one last time…. ( )

I listened to both the Abridged and Unabridged versions of this from Audible. The narrator for the Unabridged was less ( )

Good entry in the Inspector Alleyn series though I wish that Fox had a bigger role. ( )

Wanda McCaddon (who also narrates under the names Donada Peters and Nadia May) was perfect for this Golden Age mystery.

August 2017: Very enjoyable even knowing the solution. I could appreciate how well Marsh gives the reader a the clues without making it obvious. ( )

I thought I’d read this one before, because the cover of the Felony and Mayhem edition looked familiar, but apparently not. This was a good story. Small village rivalries and a bit of a theatre angle kept me reading. I also like the dynamic between Alleyn and Bathgate, how they sass each other while helping each other out. ( )